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

  Within the next quarter of a mile, their two horses overtook some of McCarthy’s men gone afoot, slowed as they helped the wounded retreat. Now there were seven of them struggling up the steep hillside together … when on the slope above his bunch he spotted a detachment being brought back by Lieutenant Parnell.

  In addition to First Sergeant Alexander M. Baird of F Company, Parnell had enlisted the service of six more men from H Company to return. They were deploying in good order to cover the rear of the retreat as McCarthy heaved himself off the back of Fowler’s horse so he could catch up a riderless mount that was loping past, on its way up the road to rejoin its kind.

  Sweet blessed Joseph and Mary! McCarthy thought as he looked over the dirty faces of those old soldiers who had returned down the hill. Thank God in heaven Lieutenant Parnell brought these noncoms and enlisted weeds back! They’re the only men who could hold fast under the heat of a fight!

  With the crack of a rifle, the sergeant wheeled to look over his shoulder—discovering more than a dozen warriors riding out of the valley and coming their way.

  “Play yourselves out!” McCarthy hollered as Parnell approached. “We’ll take our retreat slow! Two squads!”

  “You heard the sergeant!” Baird yelled above the rising of the war cries. “Form up two squads!”

  McCarthy took one and Baird led the other. Yard by yard, minute by minute, they backed up the ridge, moving from depression to depression, rock to rock, leapfrogging their way out of the jaws of certain death as one squad covered the retreat of the other—maintaining a foothold only until more than a dozen warriors swept around on their flanks and the squads had to pull back again.

  “Hold your fire till you’re sure of a target!” McCarthy ordered time and again. “Make sure your bullets kill!” He wondered how long these soldiers would have enough ammunition to turn back the Nez Perce pressure.

  Step by step they struggled out of the valley, not losing a man as they held off the warriors, who didn’t seem very anxious to get all that close to these steady hands. Once, the enemy horsemen even took enough time to halt and tighten their cinches—convincing the sergeant of just how reluctant the warriors had become to push into the Springfields’ effective killing range.

  Then the Nez Perce suddenly pressed their advantage again and attempted to sweep in on both sides, close enough that Parnell kept his pistol bucking, first to the left and then to the right. By the time the warriors pulled back from their fiercest assault, McCarthy had another horse shot from under him and was compelled to continue his retreat on foot while those few who remained with him were all mounted, though some were riding double on the weary horses.

  None of them tarried long enough or turned back to take him up behind them. They had their own struggles to contend with the farther they stabbed into the canyon. Here and there warriors dogged them from both sides of the march, not only from higher vantage points on the slope but from the hillside below as well. None of Parnell’s men had any time to notice that Sergeant Michael McCarthy was steadily falling farther and farther behind, simply because each of them was consumed with his own desperate flight.

  Every muscle in his legs burned with torture. With each step they threatened to crumple beneath him as he trudged up the slope a yard at a time, halting to drag a breath into his fiery lungs, then drag his boot another step up the side of the hill. McCarthy stumbled again and again—spilling to his knees, ordering himself back onto his feet, where he willed his legs to take a step, then one more, and another …

  The red bastards were gradually closing in, their ponies clattering nearer and nearer on both sides as Baird’s and Parnell’s men pulled farther and farther away from him. McCarthy’s boots failed him again and he went down, spilling onto a hip so that when he landed in the grass he peered back down the trail to find just how close the horsemen were getting.

  Close enough to use the revolver.

  McCarthy dragged up the mule-ear on the holster as he rose onto his knees and yanked the pistol from his belt, lunging onto his feet. He heard them—damn well near enough they could club him if they chose to ride up behind him and knock his brains out.

  The sergeant spun at the snort of their ponies, snapping off a wild shot as his feet sailed out from under him and he spilled off the side of the trail onto the dew-damp grass.

  Tumbling, falling, spinning down the hill completely out of control until a clump of brush arrested his slide.

  Michael McCarthy lay on his belly, holding his breath as the hoofbeats and war cries shot past … slowly fading on their way up the slope.

  Then the sergeant found himself alone.

  Chapter 41

  June 17, 1877

  Somehow, David Perry had compelled enough men to halt and turn around that they managed to hold the Nez Perce at bay even as they made that terrible crawl up the rugged slopes of the ridge, struggling for the summit. Possessing the higher ground even provided the soldiers with their first advantage of the morning’s fight.

  Dividing his small force into two equal squads, the captain went at it by the book, leapfrogging his men as they covered one another’s retreat up the grassy slope. They were all Perry had, now that Theller and then Trimble had both scurried out of the canyon and were fleeing headlong for the closest settlement. Higher and higher Perry moved his men; then just shy of the top he was able to catch a loose horse for himself.

  And that’s where one of the civilians suddenly popped up. The man suddenly emerged from a large stand of brush, leading a clearly jaded horse.

  “Cap’n! Am I ever glad to see you!”

  Perry raised his arm, halting his small command. “I supposed all of your militia had escaped the valley long ago.”

  “No, Cap’n,” he said as he inched around his lathered horse so the soldiers could now see the blood crusted at the top of his left shoulder. “I was winged down there in the fight. Figger that’s why I got a little too slow to keep up with Chapman and them others.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Shearer, Cap’n. George Shearer.”

  “All right, Mr. Shearer: the more guns, the better. Throw in with my column if you choose—”

  “Column?” Shearer scoffed, taking his free hand from his shoulder wound as he inched toward his stirrup. “If this here’s all the men you got, it sure ain’t no column!”

  “The battalion was quite splintered.”

  Perry turned away from the civilian’s harsh, judging glare and felt his chest seized by the sight of that valley. Warriors, warriors, warriors. But not another soldier—or civilian—anywhere on the slopes below.

  “Let’s proceed,” he told them, setting out once more.

  The moment his men gained the top of the ridge, Perry wanted to let them break out in a cheer, but he decided there was no time for celebration. Once the warrior horsemen reached the summit right on the army’s tail, the weary Nez Perce ponies carried their riders in a renewal of their pressure on Perry’s men. But despite charge after charge, his soldiers held. No matter how the warriors darted along both flanks, doing their best to encircle them, these last soldiers out of the canyon turned back every daring foray.

  At the crest, Perry even caught sight of Trimble and his men one last time—far in the distance as they crossed over to the Camas Prairie. Then Trimble was gone.

  All through their long, grueling ascent of the ridge, Perry had been keeping his hope alive, counting on reuniting the entire command once he reached the top, where Trimble and Theller surely would wait for the last survivors to scramble to the summit. But now those prayers were dashed as he watched Trimble disappear beyond the horizon.

  For the longest time, Perry hadn’t seen any soldiers below him on the slopes, deciding that Parnell was either ahead of Trimble or lay dead somewhere in the creek bottom. With Captain Trimble and Lieutenant Theller on their way to Mount Idaho, no one was left to form a junction with him as he started his survivors northeast along the high, grassy ridgeline. />
  Suddenly, one of the men riding in the advance turned around and shouted, “Colonel! By damn—it’s Lieutenant Parnell!”

  That news, especially the sight of Parnell’s small detachment arrayed among the low trees ahead, lifted Perry’s spirits as nothing else had in a long time. Amid the spontaneous cheers from both groups of muddy, powder-grimed men, Perry and Parnell saluted formally, then shook hands as only survivors of a battle could. Taking stock, the officers found that their combined forces now numbered no more than two dozen men.

  “Have you seen Theller?” the captain asked breathlessly.

  Parnell shook his head. “Only saw Trimble hurrying off ahead of us. But I have no knowledge of Theller, Colonel.”

  “Then he must be ahead of Captain Trimble as I suspected,” Perry surmised. “We’re the last out, you and me.”

  “I was just about to cross this ravine, Colonel,” Parnell declared, pointing ahead of them at the deep, brush-choked scar that sliced the top of White Bird Ridge. “I can’t find any other way—”

  Both of them jerked around at the same moment, watching in amazement at how many of the Nez Perce had just gained the top of the ridge themselves. Crying out their blood oaths anew, the enemy swarmed forward. For the first few minutes they chuffed along both flanks rather than hit the soldier line directly.

  “Looks like we better get across while we can, Colonel!” Parnell roared.

  “Agreed, Lieutenant. I’ll take my men over, then set up on the other side to cover your retreat.”

  “Very good, sir,” Parnell replied as he stepped away to form his men at the edge of the deep ravine.

  It was a struggle for Perry’s weary ten and George Shearer to slide down the steep banks, shove their way through the thick undergrowth at the bottom, then scramble up the far bank—but Perry drove them, prodded them, even though he knew that the sweetness of escape should damn well be goad enough.

  No sooner were his men pulling themselves over the top of the ravine than Perry was among them, barking orders to deploy left and right so the ten could cover the retreat of Parnell’s squad—

  —but instead of holding the line, Perry’s men bolted right behind Shearer, heedlessly scampering away.

  “Stop, goddammit!” the captain bellowed in frustration. “I’ll shoot deserters; by God in heaven I will!” Then he turned on his heel suddenly, finding the warriors making their charge on Parnell’s outnumbered forces. “Lieutenant—it’s now or never!”

  Run or be swallowed.

  Parnell immediately kicked his horse to one side, then the other, flushing his dozen men into the ravine before he himself jabbed his brass spurs against his obedient horse and sent it flying across the obstacle. Crashing onto the lip of the far side, the animal nearly collapsed under the extreme weight of its rider.

  The moment the lieutenant landed among his men, Perry was already reining up behind them, ordering Parnell’s detail to turn and cover their own retreat.

  “Turn and fire, men! Turn and fire!”

  Rather than scamper off like frightened field mice as the other squad had just done, these twelve men did turn their horses and face the enemy—some of the soldiers resolute, others just plain scared—firing two salvos at the Nez Perce when the horsemen neared the far side of the ravine Parnell’s squad had just abandoned. In a noisy clatter of crying horses and screaming warriors the enemy reined up short and promptly retreated out of rifle range.

  “Let’s continue our retreat, Lieutenant,” Perry advised as he reined his horse beside Parnell’s mount.

  “You take the advance, Colonel,” Parnell offered, “and I’ll have my men cover the rear.”

  “Whatever you do … see that your men don’t get strung out, Lieutenant,” the captain warned. “And don’t dally behind. The way I reckon it, we’ve got a little better than four miles till we reach that ranch we passed on our way here. We can take cover there and hold them off … if we don’t let them hack away at what few men we have left.”

  “Aye, Colonel!” Parnell roared enthusiastically. “It’s a four-mile race now, sir … ain’t it?”

  * * *

  “Joseph and Mary,” he grumbled to himself as he dragged his aching legs down the shallow scar of erosion as it descended the grassy ridge toward a tiny creek in the middistance.1 First Sergeant Michael McCarthy knew his exhausted legs wouldn’t hold him, even if he tried to stand, much less run from the warriors who had to be everywhere around him.

  Slow, slow, he reminded himself, wiggling like a snake so as not to disturb the brush as the narrow scar deepened into a ravine the lower he went. Reaching the sharp creek bank, the sergeant gently pushed himself over the edge and into the water. Because he now found himself exposed and in the open at the mouth of the coulee, McCarthy crawled downstream more than a hundred yards before reaching the cover of some overhanging willows. Breathing a sigh of relief, he slipped beneath the leafy branches and lay still in the icy water for the better part of a half hour as he listened, planning just how he was going to drag his hash out of the fire.

  From time to time he heard a distant shot or two, along with a periodic shriek, always accompanied by war cries from the Nez Perce. He figured the warriors were finishing off the last of the wounded, yelping in fiendish joy when they discovered another hapless soul they could dispatch with glee and fury. Gazing through the leafy branches, the sergeant himself despaired of becoming another victim they would soon fall upon. For the most part the hills on either side of him were covered by nothing more than grass. He would make himself an easy target if he attempted to crawl back up the canyon to escape.

  After he hadn’t seen any sign of the enemy for a long time, McCarthy determined that he would belly-crawl back to where he had tumbled off the trail. If he could find enough brush on the way, he’d dare to struggle to the top of the canyon. If he couldn’t, then McCarthy vowed he would lie in hiding right there until nightfall. He might well have to wait until dark anyway, he told himself: likely his legs wouldn’t recover for hours, maybe not until the stars were out.

  But first, he decided to take off his black slouch hat and set it aside. It might well give him away. And then he removed his dark blue tunic. It too might lead to his discovery. His dark gray undershirt more closely matched some of the rocks on the nearby slopes. He could only pray that he just might blend into the hillside. But he would drag the wool tunic along anyway—knowing he would need it once the sun had fallen.

  More than an hour later McCarthy pulled himself into a clump of wild rosebushes and lay kneading a knotted muscle in his leg when he heard hoofbeats on the trail above him.

  Holding his breath, he peered through the dense vegetation and spotted two ponies working their way down the slope. The warriors passed so close McCarthy swore he could have reached right out and touched the blanket draped over the back of one horse. In those terrifying seconds as they brushed past his hiding place, he steeled himself to fight to his last breath.

  He simply couldn’t believe that they didn’t see him in the wild roses. When the pair had passed him by, one of the warriors spoke in Chinook pidgin.

  “Now we go shoot your horses.”

  As the riders continued by, unhurried, McCarthy was convinced the warrior spoke those words directly to him. If they were talking to one another, they would have spoken in Nez Perce. But the warrior used Chinook pidgin English: the common tongue of that region. It made McCarthy even more terrified that they were sure to turn around any moment and flush him from cover. But the pair continued on down the trail—when his attention was suddenly drawn by hoofbeats approaching at a fast clip.

  Not all that far uphill rode a squaw on her pony. Behind her came a younger woman on horseback. They stopped on the slope directly above his bushes and shouted at the departing warriors. In Chinook the older woman cried out that she had spotted a soldier in the brush and wanted the men to return so they could kill the white man. He watched her point downhill at the very bushes concealing him, squaw
king her news to the warriors. The woman even described McCarthy’s uniform, saying he must be a soldier and not a settler—then went on to describe the chevrons on the sleeves of McCarthy’s blue tunic he was clutching in his hand.

  Inch by inch, the sergeant pulled his legs sideways into the stream channel, submerging himself even deeper. Keeping only his head above the water, and it concealed in the thickest part of the rosebush, along with his right hand gripping a .45-caliber service revolver, McCarthy vowed to take one or two of them with him before … He would use a last bullet on himself rather than suffer the torture he was sure had marked the end of the wounded these warriors discovered in the valley.

  Then the sergeant realized that he might never have enough resolve to press the muzzle to his temple and pull the trigger. Life was far too sweet for suicide.

  Truth was, McCarthy told himself, he had already escaped death three times that morning.

  Just as he was beginning to believe that the squaws had passed on by because they were unable to convince the young warriors to return, the sergeant heard hooves approaching with a clatter. From his bushes, McCarthy watched the two squaws descending the slope—but now they were joined by an old man on a horse. The three of them passed on by his bushes slowly, but when the trio had gone some fifty yards downstream they turned around and retraced their steps, inching by his hiding place again, carefully studying the brush.

  As they leaned off their ponies and peered through the branches, McCarthy held his breath, amazed that none of the three could spot him. He saw their faces clearly as they searched the rosebush. And when the old man poked the muzzle of his smoothbore muzzleloader into the willow, that old weapon got so close to his nose that McCarthy figured he could reach right up and pull the Indian into the bushes with him. Slowly, silently inching his pistol into position, the sergeant prepared to shoot the curious old man, all the while trying to silence the loud drumming of his heart as each agonizing second ticked past.

  At long last the three moved off down the trail, but just as he was about to breathe easier, McCarthy watched the older squaw doggedly turn back along the trail and stop above him again, giving the brush one last, intense scrutiny before she rejoined the other two and the trio finally disappeared around a hill to descend to the battlefield.