Cries from the Earth: The Outbreak Of the Nez Perce War and the Battle of White Bird Canyon June 17, 1877 (The Plainsmen Series)

by Terry C. Johnston

  Wounded Head dismounted, landing right before her to hold out his hand so he could perform that gesture the Shadows put so much stock in. The white woman understood, took his hand, and they shook.

  “Go,” he said quietly and shooed her away. “Go now; go fast.”

  She turned and took some first, tentative steps. But she got only a few pony lengths before she stopped and looked back over her shoulder, as if afraid someone would shoot her in the back.

  Instead, Wounded Head shooed her again, waving both hands. “Go!” he shouted loudly this time, hoping to scare her.

  If this was what it took to save her life, to keep the soldiers from attacking again to get back their white woman … then he would scare her away, to make her run far and fast. If he could save his people from another soldier attack, then Wounded Head decided he would give his prisoner back her freedom.

  Chapter 39

  June 17, 1877

  Captain David Perry hadn’t seen such panic in a retreat since Gordon’s Confederate raiders surprised the Union army’s Eighth Corps in their blankets at Cedar Creek, back to October of ’64.

  Already Trimble’s men were well up the canyon, scratching their way across the grassy, timbered slopes above him. Off to his right a ways was Parnell.

  Good man, Perry thought as he fought his horse to keep it from rearing and losing its footing on a steep stretch of hillside. Parnell had persevered on Perry’s left as long as he could after most had deserted the captain. There at the last, the Irish lieutenant had refused to retreat—standing like a huge, fleshy oak, barking orders at his immigrant soldiers. But in the end Parnell was left with no more than a double handful after the rest broke and ran. After losing command control, Parnell had little choice but to settle for his few hardcases, all of them covering the rest of the retreat from horseback.

  What of Theller, though? Why, with the way the lieutenant’s command had disintegrated so quickly and fled for their lives, Perry was sure Theller’s men had to be far enough ahead of Parnell that he simply couldn’t spot them anywhere on the slopes above. More than likely Theller’s detachment was already close to Camas Prairie and on their way to the settlements in headlong retreat.

  So with no sign of Theller, Perry was left with Trimble’s and Parnell’s outfits to make their way out with him. Trimble appeared to have a steady hand on things, holding those few men of his together more than four hundred yards ahead of Parnell. Strung out the way they were, Perry was nonetheless determined to make theirs an orderly retreat. So much ammunition had been wasted by the incompetent recruits—bullets fired at the sky, bullets burrowed into the ground—even more ammunition lost now in the saddlebags strapped to every one of the stampeded horses.

  “Slow down!” he shouted at the troopers repeatedly, uselessly, as the horses flew past.

  Off to his right Perry heard Parnell, that survivor of Balaclava, growl at the men of H Company who were spread out on the hillside that was leading them into the mouth of the canyon and escape. His great booming voice, every bit as imposing as his body, thundered over the frightened soldiers, “Form up, men! Form up and cover the bloody retreat!”

  On his side of the withdrawal, Perry hollered, “Turn around and cover the file closers!”

  Already his throat was raw from yelling above the snorting horses, the curses of the frightened men. He continued to lope his weary horse left, then right, from one side of the retreat to the other, shouting orders at small squads of men. But just as soon he managed to shame one group into turning about, the warriors rushed in to nip at their exposed flanks—and the soldiers would bolt like terrified quail. All across these hills, what had begun with some semblance of an orderly retreat had quickly deteriorated into nothing more than small groups of desperate men hacking their way out of certain death—

  “Turn back or I’ll shoot you for cowardice!” he cried without effect.

  But he couldn’t bring himself to shoot any of these men who gazed at him with their blank, dazed expressions, then dashed on past. Men whose eyes filled with such abject apology that they had been found wanting of courage under fire.

  So as much as Perry and Parnell begged and pleaded, as much as either one of them threatened to shoot these men clearly deserting the battlefield, nothing slowed the frantic pace of this retreat.

  Fighting off the numbing frustration to simply give up and join in the headlong flight, the captain thought, Dear Lord, for all of us now this has become a race for God … and the devil’s taking the hindmost—

  His horse was wheeling an instant before Perry became aware of the smack of the bullet as it struck the big beast in the chest. It reared once as he clawed to stay on. And when it settled onto all fours, the front legs suddenly buckled and the captain was hurtled off. Landing on his back, stunned, Perry watched the horse rolling toward him. He would have his legs pinned if he didn’t …

  The captain rolled out of the way, stared at the dying animal as he rocked onto his knees, slowly becoming aware again of the rising noise as the war cries steadily drew closer and closer.

  “Soldier!” he cried as four men beat their horses toward him, preparing to dash on by in their escape.

  One of them slowed enough for Perry to reach out and grab the man’s leg and stirrup.

  “Colonel—leggo! For Chrissakes, leggo of me leg!”

  “I’m climbing up behind you!”

  As the wide-eyed soldier nodded once, it appeared he understood, and he reluctantly reached out with his arm to swing Perry up behind him on the horse’s flanks.

  After crossing no more than a few leagues, Perry shouted into the soldier’s ear, “Halt, trooper!”

  Upon stopping, they both turned to look over their shoulders at the slope behind them. Enough men were still scattered in disarray, the captain decided, that he should again attempt some sort of orderly retreat. Here—where it seemed the Indians were growing wary as most of the soldiers were succeeding in reaching the narrow mouth of the canyon. Because the enemy appeared to be hesitating in its pursuit, Perry calculated he might stand a chance of reclaiming control of these scattered remnants of H Company.

  “Lookee there, Colonel!” the soldier in front of him shouted. He pointed as his horse side-shifted nervously with the approach of another handful of cavalrymen. “A horse for you, sir!”

  Perry spotted the animal. A weary, lathered, riderless horse blindly following its own kind—the only one not burdened by a trooper as it clawed its way up the slope, coming straight for them.

  “This is where I get off, soldier,” Perry said as he pushed himself backward off the mount’s broad flanks and struck the ground in time to dart toward that stream of horsemen.

  Some troopers reined left while the rest pulled right the moment Perry stepped into the middle of the trail—then suddenly leaped forward in a desperate attempt to grab the reins of that riderless horse. The leather filled his palms.

  He jerked the animal to a halt, and it spun them both around, nostrils flaring, staring at this two-legged creature that had interrupted its flight. When the horse came to a halt, Perry took that chance to loosen his two-handed grip on the reins and gaze down at one of his palms. A light film of red coated the flesh between the grimy seams of dirt and gun-smoke that had congealed within the long, deep, and distinctive wrinkles. Glancing back of the skirt and cantle on the McClellan, he spotted the troop designation on the saddle blanket.

  F Company.

  When he stuffed his left boot into the hooded stirrup and gripped the cantle with his right hand, Perry felt more sticky moisture. The saddle was smeared with a trail of blood. This was a dead man’s horse. He shuddered.

  Throwing his right leg over the cantle and settling onto the moist leather, the captain turned quickly to stare into the creek bottom. The dead man would still be lying somewhere below. As he spurred the animal into motion and turned away for the mouth of the canyon, Perry prayed the soldier would not have died in vain.

  Loping sideways al
ong the upper diagonal of that ridge leading into the narrowing canyon, once more the captain felt assured he could re-seize command of what men were still streaming up these slopes. After looking around and not finding Trimble anywhere in sight, Perry bellowed orders, shaming those who were still in hearing distance, reminding them that they were soldiers.

  “Halt and re-form your lines!” he growled at the horsemen and the rest who were huffing toward him on foot. But he knew they wouldn’t.

  They were enlisted. Simple men. Uneducated for the most part. And many of them weren’t even born in this nation. So how could they know, how could they ever feel the way he did about the West Point Code: “Duty, Honor, Country”?

  So Perry waved his pistol, more a defiant gesture to the enemy who, it seemed, chose to remain below on the gentler part of the slope rather than continue their pursuit right behind the soldiers as the white men reached the steepest part of the ridge.

  “You see that, boys!” a graying soldier shouted with a raspy throat as he lunged up on foot. Out of breath, he grabbed a younger trooper nearby and forced him to turn around. “See—them red-bellies ain’t got the stomach to foller us all the way into the canyon!”

  It was true, the enemy horsemen really were hesitating in their pursuit, allowing the soldiers to gain some ground on them as the white men made it into the canyon and started their climb along the foot of the high western ridge. Down there it had been like shooting fish in a barrel for the Nez Perce … but for now they don’t show any desire to follow us into these close quarters—

  “Form up, I told you!” Perry yelled, gesturing with that pistol arm, energized by the enemy’s reluctance to push their advantage.

  Of those who stopped and paid him heed, the captain was able to organize two squads—one composed of mounted men and the other made up of those who were on foot. This was going to be an exercise he hadn’t used since those scraps in the Lava Beds during the Modoc War. One squad would lay down cover, firing at the enemy enough to hold back the Nez Perce, while the other squad retreated some fifty yards farther along the base of the ridge. That’s where he had one of the old corporals stop his squad, turn them, and kneel so they could be more sure of their aim as they covered the retreat of Perry’s detail.

  On and on, rotating one squad after the other like a child’s game of hopscotch … leapfrogging into the protection of the canyon, where the warriors grew all the more hesitant to follow. Yard by yard, minute by minute, these men with their powder-blackened faces, their eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep and the sting of burnt gunpowder, their mouths compressed in lines of grim determination, their faces stony in acceptance of an honorable death while most of their companions had chosen life at all costs, fleeing like … like barnyard chickens when the turkey buzzards swoop overhead.

  Halfway now, he told himself as he turned his squad and started them back to where the corporal’s men had stopped and waited to lay down some cover. Perry gazed on up the far ridgeline to their left, noticing the tattered strings of blue that had once been his battalion. Up there now were horses carrying soldiers and men on foot straggling up the last few yards of the upper canyon, straining for its summit, where they had waited for dawn that morning. Deep in the marrow of him it felt as if they had been fighting these bastards all day.

  Far ahead, Perry spotted Trimble, still on his horse. A number of men were gathered around the captain, clearly under the officer’s command.

  “Trimble!” Perry shouted, hopeful his voice would carry up the wrinkles of the ridge. He listened to the word echo up the ridge three times, then go flat.

  They couldn’t be that far away if he could recognize the captain up there. Surely the man had to hear him call.

  “Trimble! Return with your men! Return and cover our retreat!”

  For a moment the canyon fell silent: no gunfire and no wild screeching from the enemy.

  So he cried out again into the void, “Trimble—return with your men to cover our retreat!”

  Perry heard his voice echo, echo, and echo again on up the folds of grassy slopes certain that his orders had been heard by Trimble, at least by those clustered around the captain of H Company.

  Then he watched as Trimble slowly turned; saw a handful of the soldiers with the captain wave an arm just before Trimble and those men with him pivoted on their heels and followed the captain over the top of the canyon … disappearing into the few trees scattered across the crest.

  On their way for the settlements.

  “Keep at it, Corporal,” he commended the old soldier as Perry took his squad on past the corporal’s detail, still leapfrogging.

  There just weren’t that many targets for their men any longer. Only a few of the warriors still dared to push their ponies along the foot of the ridge now that the soldiers were into the canyon. But booming volleys of rifle fire continued to echo just below and to the east. The louder, lower-throated boom of army carbines. Then the sporadic, discordant rattle of smaller arms: Nez Perce repeaters.

  Since he couldn’t see that many of the enemy horsemen anymore, because of that distant volley gunfire, Perry figured someone was still having a scrap of it.

  “Halt and hold!” he shouted to his squad as he dragged back on the reins and wrenched the horse around.

  As the soldiers were settling their mounts and bringing their weapons into position, Perry glanced over his shoulder at the top of the ridge, watching the last of Trimble’s stragglers push into the tree line far above him at the summit. And he wondered: from up there, surely they could see where that other fighting was taking place.

  It turned his marrow cold, forced to consider that rifle fire echoing distantly from his left where he could not see any warriors, nothing of any troopers.

  And he suddenly wondered about Theller again, about that frightened squad of F Company who had been the first to scatter pell-mell in retreat. Were they on ahead of Trimble in retreat?

  Were Theller and his men already halfway gone to Mount Idaho?

  * * *

  First Lieutenant Edward Russell Theller leaped from his saddle and tried pulling his horse up the steep hillside. It locked its legs and would not budge.

  Thick layers of foam crusted around the bit, at the edges of the surcingle, and soaked the saddle blanket. Theller reluctantly admitted that the animal was every bit as done in as he was. For a moment he glanced behind him … and counted only seven of them. He didn’t know where the rest of his company had gone.

  To the south he could still hear some sporadic gunfire. So he wondered if he and the seven might be the first to get out of the fight and this far up the canyon, thinking the rest would be along momentarily.

  As the first of those seven weary troopers and their snorting, panting horses halted around him, Theller turned and gazed up the brush-choked slope. Sure was he that this was the trail they had taken down to the creek bottom in the dim light of dawn. This would be the best choice for their escape from annihilation: return exactly the way they had advanced on the enemy.

  And there was plenty enough of ’em. Just over the heads of those last two soldiers struggling to catch up, Theller spotted the first of the pursuing warriors on their ponies. Three, then another handful, and finally more than a dozen of them squeezing into the narrow mouth of this winding canyon. With one last look up the hillside, he despaired of finding any cover sufficient for his seven men to hide behind and hold off their pursuers. He scolded himself, forced to admit that they might well have reached the end of the line. No other way up the steep, grassy slope but to abandon their horses and claw their way up hand over hand.

  Theller didn’t remember it being this steep on the way down at first light. He was just about to give the order for the men to strip their animals of all extra cartridges, then kill the horses and form a barricade of the carcasses … when at the corner of his eye he spotted the brush-lined cleft dimpling the slope to their left.

  Lunging a half-dozen steps farther up the slope, the lieutenan
t saw how the cleft quickly widened into a ravine. From where he stood, it sure as hell appeared that the ravine would make an easier go of their ascent to the summit.

  If not, then the ravine would be as good a spot as any to hunker down and hold off this war party till more help came up the canyon from below.

  “C’mon, men!” he yelled, waving them on.

  After stuffing his hand into his saddle pocket and removing the last of his pistol cartridges, Theller slapped the lathered animal on the rump and sent it clattering back down the slope toward the onrushing enemy horsemen, parting the warriors.

  “Grab your cartridges!” the lieutenant hollered as he waved them toward the brushy cleft. “Grab the last of your ammunition; then take cover in the ravine!”

  The seventh man almost didn’t make it. A bullet kicked up a clod of black earth at his feet, splitting his boot sole and knocking the soldier off-balance. Skidding onto his belly, the trooper crabbed the last three yards into the ravine to join the others. There he sat up, dragging one leg over the other thigh to inspect the bottom of his boot. The heel had been shot off, a narrow groove in the sole deep enough to expose the bottom of his grimy sock, which was starting to turn pink with oozy blood.

  “Ferget your goddamned hoof!” one of the others bellowed as the warriors lunged off their ponies and immediately spread out behind the skimpy brush downslope.

  In moments the soldiers could hear the Nez Perce creeping up on either side of the ravine.

  Completely stunned at how quickly they had been surrounded, Theller gazed up at the shadows flitting along the top at either side of the ravine. He prayed they had enough brush in here so that his men would not be exposed if the warriors crawled up to the edge and began firing down—

  A bullet slapped the man next to him, driving his head backward with an audible snap of his neck. After slamming back against the wall of the ravine, the soldier fell facedown, the entire back of his head a bloody, dirty, grass-choked pulp.