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

  He waited some minutes to be sure the Indians were gone before he thought to pull out his pocket watch and see if all that time in the water had stopped it. The second hand still shuddered its way around the tiny face, and there was a reassuring click-click when he pressed it to his ear. Then McCarthy stared at the hands, dumbfounded.

  Surely now it couldn’t already be half past six o’clock in the evening! He simply could not recollect the sun passing overhead, climbing in the heavens during the fighting, falling from midsky during the fleeing. Looking up to locate the sun sulled over the eastern terminus of the canyon wall, the sergeant realized it had to be six-thirty in the morning.

  Joseph and Mary!

  Of a sudden, McCarthy recalled that he hadn’t once pulled out his watch after Colonel Perry started them off the ridge and down the canyon for their attack on the village. In the fading starlight of the predawn gray he remembered seeing that it was just then four o’clock as the column moved out.

  An excruciating drop into the canyon, followed by an eternity of fighting and dying, the whole ordeal crowned by this endless hell endured as he crawled for his life … all that in less than three bloody hours!

  Chapter 42

  June 17, 1877

  By the time Second Lieutenant William Russell Parnell reached the Henry C. Johnson ranch, some four miles from the top of the canyon, Captain Perry already had that squad of his men who had deserted him at the ravine positioned on a high, rocky escarpment just to the right of the abandoned house and barn. At the foot of the ridge a narrow stream cut its way between the rocks and the ranch buildings, spilling off the back side of the White Bird Divide and onto the Camas Prairie.

  “Position your men on the firing line, Mr. Parnell,” Perry ordered as the lieutenant rode in. “But I’ll hold your detail in reserve should we face a frontal attack here.”

  The lieutenant sighed. “Look at these men, Colonel. They’re all about at the end of their ropes. It’s been a bloody time of it—what with the fighting in the valley, not to mention having to fight for every foot of this … this retreat.”

  With a nod of agreement Perry pulled his watch from a tunic pocket, glanced at the hands and face but a moment, then stuffed it away again. “Seven o’clock, Mr. Parnell. We don’t have long to go now before sunset. I firmly believe we can defend our position until dark.”

  For an awkward, breathless moment Parnell studied the captain’s face—suddenly unsure if Perry was merely having a joke at his expense … or if his superior might be losing control of himself. “C-colonel, it’s seven o’clock in the morning, sir. Not the evening.”

  Turning to peer into Parnell’s face, the captain blinked several times, then turned away to watch the timber beyond the house. Quietly he said, “Of course it is, Mr. Parnell. Seven o’clock in the morning.”

  Perry’s mental state was just one more thing for Parnell to worry over now. This pitifully undermanned band of survivors might be able to hold back the enemy, he figured, but only as long as their ammunition held out.

  When he excused himself from Perry, the lieutenant started down the left side of their line and asked every man to count his cartridges. Some had more, many had less—but by the time he had redistributed what these twenty-two men had in their britches and saddle pockets, each soldier ended up with some fifteen bullets for his carbine.

  Reassuringly Parnell patted the small two-shot derringer he always carried in an inside pocket. If the time came, he could always kill Perry, then shoot himself. Better that than be taken alive by the savages. His skull crawled with the remembrance of those pitiable cries the wounded made when they were abandoned on the battlefield, the unearthly wails that made his skin crawl when the Nez Perce discovered each of the wounded soldiers, dispatching them one by one—

  Lead began slapping against the rocks around them, singing and zinging while every soldier pitched himself onto the ground and took cover from the ricocheting bullets that were flying from both their front and along their right flank.

  “Where they shooting from, Lieutenant?” wailed Private Charles E. Fowler as he and others frantically studied the ranch grounds below them.

  Poking his head up cautiously, Parnell spotted puffs of muzzlesmoke from the enemy’s weapons, many of which had to be cavalry carbines now. And it stood to reason that the Nez Perce would have plenty of ammunition too. In all likelihood, more firepower than these soldiers possessed.

  One of the men pointed at the hillside about a hundred yards at their front. “The reds’re above us, Colonel!”

  “There’s more over there!” cried Albert Myers.

  Parnell spotted the motion off to their left. The Nez Perce had dismounted and were scurrying behind a fence line that angled away toward the timber and brush behind the ranch buildings. They were making for the hillside in an effort to flank the command, seize the horses, and have the soldiers surrounded with no avenue of escape. Thank God that company blacksmith had spotted them.

  “They’ve got the upper hand, Colonel,” Parnell growled at Perry as he peered at the knoll behind them, sensing just how trapped and vulnerable they were.

  Perry nodded. “That bunch makes it up the back of that hill, they’ll be right among our horses—and we’ll be pinned down here.”

  “With respect, sir: I suggest we pull back immediately!”

  “Pull back?”

  “Retreat before it’s too late,” Parnell said sharply. “A strategic withdrawal. We don’t fight a rear-guard action all the way into the settlements, we’re gonna die here.”

  “That’s more than six miles, Lieutenant,” Perry argued.

  But Parnell could tell that the captain was already relenting as lead steadily ricocheted from the rocks at their backs. “Colonel, we can die here together … or we can give these men a chance to fight their way back to the settlements. I beg you, sir: don’t make ’em die like rats trapped in a grain shed!”

  “Yes, you’re right!” Perry agreed. “I’ll mount my detail while you cover us.”

  Parnell drew his lips into a thin line of displeasure, about to register his complaint—then agreed as a good line officer should. Even though his men were again asked to protect Perry’s detail—soldiers who had scampered off and abandoned them at the ravine—the lieutenant resolutely snapped a salute to his brow. “I’ll form my men to protect your retreat, sir!”

  * * *

  The next time First Sergeant Michael McCarthy pulled his watch out, he found it was just past seven-thirty. Which meant he had been lying half-submerged in the narrow creek for more than an hour: listening to how the gunfire had died off, how the mountainside had grown so still without the comings and goings of horsemen or those squaws either.

  He was starting to sense some relief until the wary, feral side of him warned that with the end of the battle, with the warriors having finished off those wounded soldiers down below in the creek bottom, it made perfect sense that the Nez Perce would start up the canyon in a concerted effort to locate even more wounded and dead white men … searching for every carbine, revolver, and bullet they could take off the bodies.

  He didn’t have long before they’d be coming.

  Dragging his legs out of the creek and bellying himself onto the grassy bank there beneath the overhanging willow, the sergeant kneaded his muscles for a few minutes as his mind raced on what course to take. That time spent in the cold water had revived the cramped, overwrought muscles. He figured the legs might just carry him up the steep canyon wall. They had to.

  But with the soaking he had given his boots, they had become heavy, waterlogged, and useless—what with the way the seams were coming apart. Rocking onto his back, he yanked them off one at a time and shoved them down into the water, where they sank to the creek bottom, out of sight. Then he crawled to the edge of the wild rosebushes and studied the hillside, especially the wagon, road as it led down into the valley.

  Taking in a deep breath, McCarthy burst out of hiding, dashing on his renew
ed legs to the next clump of brush thirty yards uphill. There he rested less than a minute, planning his next sprint in his soggy socks that threatened to trip him with every step across the grassy slope.

  The sergeant hadn’t gone more than a half-mile up the trail when he came across a large piece of bread, big enough to be the half-loaf rationed to every one of the cavalrymen back at Fort Lapwai. He scooped it up and slid into the bushes, his heart pounding as he greedily tore off a dry, crusty bite. Chewing, he suddenly remembered Trumpeter Jones passing his bread down to the white woman and her children as the column descended into the valley only hours ago.

  He swallowed, peering from his hole in the bushes, looking up the trail, then down—wondering where that disheveled woman had disappeared. Why she had left the bread behind? Had she been taken prisoner and lost the loaf in a struggle with her captors?

  He took a second huge bite, then stuffed the rest inside his damp, gray undershirt. Funny, how he could feel renewed by an hour in the creek, after no more than two bites of hard, stale bread. A soldier’s fare: creek water, half-cooked white beans, and some crusty old bread.

  But enough to make an old soldier feel pretty damned good about his chances!

  Checking the trail below him, McCarthy emerged from hiding again and climbed almost straight up the hill toward the far section of trail, where he reached a large stand of leafy willow. The sergeant congratulated himself as he wheezed, catching his breath. Looking back down the canyon, he was gratified to see he had scrambled more than halfway to the summit.

  Sweating heavily, his breath like liquid fire in his lungs, his legs quickly growing leaden and wobbly—Sergeant Michael McCarthy lunged from one clump of brush to another, following those hoofprints and boot scuffs scarring the side of the wagon road that was lifting him out of the valley, leading him up from the creek bottom, every step farther and farther away from the sudden death that had overtaken so many of the men who had been his friends.

  In the taller, windblown grass at the crest of the ridge he dropped to his belly and peered back into the canyon. McCarthy lay there, painfully catching his breath, giving his legs and swollen feet a rest—not wanting to be discovered against the skyline now that he had reached the top. After a few minutes he spied the younger of the two squaws coming to a halt no more than fifty yards from where he had been lying in the creek.

  The woman casually dismounted and pulled a buffalo robe from the back of her pony. Spreading it upon the grass, the young maiden lay back, her hands behind her head, staring at the sky above as her pony went to grazing nearby.

  How strange this was, he thought—struck by this scene of such idyllic repose where minutes before on that very spot he had been prepared to sell his life dearly had she and the other two revealed him. She must now be in some deep reverie, he figured. Perhaps thinking wistfully on some young warrior who had captured her heart, reveling on his heroic exploits and victories of this bloody day.

  Suddenly he imagined how this young woman might enjoy the pleasure of hacking him apart, joined by the older squaw and their aged companion with his muzzleloader. A tiny thread of relief flushed through him. He was beyond their reach now.

  Nonetheless, McCarthy anxiously studied the rolling landscape across some 180 degrees of the compass. Somewhere out there was the rest of Perry’s battalion. Off to the northwest he would find Grangeville or Mount Idaho.

  But to ever get to the settlements he would have to stay hidden, alert his ears to every sound, and keep his eyes moving—for this ridge descending to the Camas Prairie would surely be crawling with warriors in pursuit of the fleeing soldiers. As he hung here halfway between the creek-bottom battlefield and the leaden sky overhead, somewhere between the enemy who wanted to butcher him and the soldiers who had abandoned him … Sergeant McCarthy found that he had never felt so alone.

  One last time he gazed down from the canyonside, hoping against all reasonable hope to spot some other poor unfortunate like him making his escape from the bowels of that bloody battleground.

  But the sergeant saw no one. Not a single living thing moving down there. How many had gotten out McCarthy could not know.

  How many had been left behind … he did even not want to imagine.

  * * *

  The moment Perry’s detachment was mounted and on their way around the brow of the hill, Lieutenant Parnell gave his squad the order to evacuate the Johnson ranch.

  “Mount up!” he bawled. “Stay together! By God, whatever you do … stay together!”

  His men were climbing into their saddles without any further prodding from him, the first of the soldiers reining their horses around and bolting away, right on the tails of the last of Perry’s men as the captain disappeared into the timber northeast of the ranch, galloping hard along the base of the slope, making for the Mount Idaho Road.

  Whirling on his heel as the last three soldiers kicked their horses into a gallop, Parnell’s heart froze. He spun around again—this time in gut-churning panic—watching his detail racing away as his heart rose in his throat like a cold lump of stoker coal.

  He was left behind … without a horse.

  At that very moment his mount was running off riderless among the troopers he had just ordered away, galloping along with the men who were seeing only to their own welfare … none of them realizing what had become of their lieutenant.

  Of a sudden there was no more time to feel miserable for his predicament, no time to experience fury for those who had abandoned him in their flight—the warriors were shrieking in dismay as they realized their quarry was getting away. Off the hillside they came, tearing down the slope for the rocks where William Russell Parnell now stood alone. Wheeling around and huffing away at a trot, the lieutenant pulled up his revolver and flipped open the loading lever with his thumb, drew the hammer back to half-cock, and rapidly clicked the cylinder past the loading aperture, cartridge by empty cartridge. Every primer dimpled. Every shot fired.

  Sensing despair overwhelming him, he shrieked at the blue backs of the retreating horsemen who were already a hundred yards away and gaining. With defeat about to overwhelm him, Parnell realized they couldn’t possibly hear him.

  Angrily he ejected the empty shells and jammed the useless pistol into the holster riding on his right hip. Immediately Parnell’s fingers flew to the pocket sewn inside his tunic, reassured he still had that derringer.

  Realizing he was not a man meant to run—built only to fight on horseback—the lieutenant clumsily rolled into a lope, straining to lumber faster as he heard the warriors and their own weary ponies approaching behind him.

  Frantically patting the pockets at the front of his sky-blue britches while he lunged step by ungainly step, the large and fleshy Parnell felt no spare cartridges for the pistol. Only his bone-handled folding knife. It and the derringer were all he had to either defend himself … or take his own life at the end.

  Then bullets were hissing past him, whining like angry summer hornets as the enemy horsemen rode into rifle range and began to shoot. On either side of him stood nothing but barren hillsides—nowhere to hide, to take cover and prepare for the final defense.

  Just as his legs were about to give out, when his chest burned with such a heated intensity that he was certain it was about to be consumed with the excruciating pain of an iron poker stabbing its way through his lungs and heart—at the very moment he realized he was crippled with utter exhaustion—Parnell blinked in teary disbelief. Up the road ahead he saw a half-dozen soldiers racing back for him!

  He choked on that lump in his throat, not completely sure the sight was real, and promptly stumbled. He nearly spilled but somehow caught himself before he pitched to his knees.

  As the six horsemen approached, Parnell realized there were really only five soldiers and six horses. God bless!

  “Reporting with a mount for you, Lieutenant!” shouted Corporal Frank L. Powers as he reined his horse up in a skid and yanked on the reins to the frightened, riderless m
ount.

  Lunging to a halt among the horses as two of the soldiers fired into the oncoming warriors, the lieutenant pulled himself into the saddle with that last reserve of his strength. “Y-you came b-back…”

  Powers grinned as all six of them wheeled and started away at a gallop. The old soldier said, “I looked around and didn’t see sign of you, sir. Asked a couple of the boys, and none of us see’d you leave the ranch with us either. So I reported to the colonel that you was left behind. He sent me back with this squad to fetch you up, Lieutenant.”

  “G-god bless!” Parnell praised again in a breathless huff as they raced to rejoin the rear of Perry’s detachment. “All my kingdom for a horse!”

  Chapter 43

  June 17, 1877

  He hadn’t eaten in almost four days, not a thing since Thursday morning. And chances were little Maggie Manuel hadn’t either. Nothing more in their bellies than what moisture they managed to lick off the leaves back in the brush where the two of them had been hiding since early Friday morning after the youngster crawled into the brush with him, whimpering as she told how her mother and baby brother had been murdered by Joseph, one of the Nez Perce chiefs.

  Just about the time Patrick Brice had hoisted six-year-old Maggie onto his back and was preparing to set off up White Bird Canyon toward Mount Idaho, the bottomground all around them came alive with Indians: warriors and women, children and ponies, everyone chattering as the Non-Treaty bands halted their march just south of the Manuel place and raised their buffalo-hide lodges beside the creek.

  No longer were the two of them in danger of being spotted by any roving war parties. Now they were as good as surrounded by every Nez Perce who had sworn vengeance on the white man.