Cries from the Earth (25 page)

After no more than a half-dozen miles, Ben Norton spotted the flickering light of a campfire up ahead at one of the wide spots in the road where travelers preferred to camp on their way across the Camas Prairie. As they drew closer, he spotted the two high-walled freighters with their tongues down, a dozen horses grazing in the meadow just beyond.

A figure rose beside the flames, rifle in hand, and quickly stepped back to the edge of the firelight.

“Ho there, fellas!” Norton called.

“That you, Ben?”

As a second figure emerged from behind one of the wagons, Norton answered, “It's all of us, boys. Chamberlins, and Lew Day too.”

Pete Ready came into the firelight with his carbine in his hands. “Lew Day?”

“Goddamned right,” Day grumped as he brought his horse to a halt in the light.

Luther Wilmot was beside him in a heartbeat. “You run into trouble?”

“One of the red bastards shot me in the back.”

“Damn,” Wilmot sighed, then whistled low as he stepped around to peer at the bloodstained back of Day's shirt, blinking in disbelief. “You better get down here and sit by the fire, Lew. Get warm and I'll rustle you up some coffee to drink, too—”

“We ain't staying, Lew,” Norton interrupted. “Figure to make Grangeville afore first light.”

Wilmot swallowed, looking first at Chamberlin on the wagon seat, then at Joe Moore in the saddle, and finally at his wounded friend again. “Least you can leave Lew here with us. He ain't in no shape to be busting ass down this road to Grangeville in the dark with you, Ben.”

“I figger he can make his choice,” Norton admitted.

Wilmot gazed up at his friend. “You figure to push on with the rest of these folks, Lew?”

“Yep. I need someone to look at this hole the niggers put in me,” Day groaned, leaning forward on the saddle horn. “I ain't getting no better.”

“Maybe both of you should come with us, too,” Norton suggested hopefully. “Better we're all together—”

“We already put the teams out to graze, and I'm 'bout ready for the bedroll myself,” Wilmot explained. “We'll get us some shut-eye and rest our stock, then be on the way afore first light.”

“Can't talk you into coming with—”

“Nawww,” Wilmot said forcefully this time. “You got plenty of guns. Them four Injuns who shot Lew Day won't jump all of you, not now.”

Norton swallowed hard. “Ain't just us. I'm afraid for the two of you staying here by yourselves.”

“We'll be fine, Ben,” Wilmot repeated.

“All right,” Norton relented. He waved Chamberlin on, watching the wagon rattle away with the women and children. Joe Moore fell in right beside Lew Day, who rode no more than a few yards behind the tailgate.

Then Norton leaned over and shook hands with Lew Wilmot and Pete Ready.

“So long, fellas,” he said as he straightened back in the saddle. “This is likely the last time we'll see you boys alive.”

Chapter 18

Season of
Hillal
1877

The only lodges standing that night after Joseph had returned to
Tepahlewam
belonged to his Wallowa band. Those loyal few were the only ones who stayed.

At the news of attacks made on the white settlers, visitors from the Treaty bands immediately flushed like coveys of frightened quail and streamed north across the reservation boundary. Looking Glass led his people north across Camas Prairie to camp on Cottonwood Creek, where they would wait to see what developed with the soldiers. White Bird's people and Toohoolhoolzote's band, most of whom could be counted among the war faction, had started southwest for the Salmon River and the scene of the murders—but not without first leaving some spies behind. That handful of scouts had orders to keep an eye on Joseph and Ollokot, so afraid were the war supporters that they believed the brothers would turn traitors and take off for Fort Lapwai.

That night in his darkened lodge, Joseph lay awake, anxious for the birth of this child. By tradition, his wife would keep herself apart from the rest of the village. So he waited for the midwife to come tell him when the child had come.

But the night remained quiet. No one stirred. What few women had been sobbing earlier that evening had evidently fallen asleep. Joseph knew the despair they were feeling. All of them, no matter what family they were a part of, no matter what band they belonged to, they were all
Nee-Me-Poo.

And that meant the Shadows would make war on the innocent as well as those guilty of the killings.

So quiet was it in his village that black night. He wondered if he should pray … asking of
Tamalait
a special blessing for his woman and the child to come. Pray especially for those who were being drawn into this war that would destroy the very last of what the
Nee-Me-Poo
possessed.

Pray too for the white settlers who were in the middle of the conflict, even for Cut-Off Arm, who would soon lead his soldiers against the warriors.

And as Joseph sat up, deciding he would find his pipe and tobacco pouch in the dark of his lodge, he figured he should pray for White Bird's young warriors who had started it all, pray, too, for Sun Necklace's war party, who were shedding more blood at that very moment—

—when a bullet smashed through Joseph's lodge. Right over his head. Splintering the lodgepole just behind his bed before it sang out the back of the lodgeskins.

An angry voice called out from the hillside. Joseph couldn't be positive, but it sounded like white man words. Someone speaking a language Joseph had never learned.

He lay on his side, listening as the warning shouts faded, his heart hammering, his prayer pipe clutched in his hand.

Someone wanted to scare him, perhaps to frighten his Wallowa band very, very badly. A lone white man come here to do what he could to drive the Wallowa onto the reservation. Or perhaps one of those warriors who wanted a fight very, very badly—enough to attempt fooling the Wallowa into believing it was a white man out for blood. To goad the Wallowa into joining the war.

Joseph clutched the prayer pipe against his breast and began to cry hot tears. He cried for them all.

Most especially for those yet to die before the war could end.

*   *   *

Lord, how he was coming to hate the old man's grousing!

Patrick Brice turned to George Popham and whispered, “You stay put right here. I'm going to have me 'nother look at the back of the house.”

“You ain't gonna get yourself killed, is you?” Popham begged with an anxious pinch in his voice.

“I'll be right over here a little ways,” Brice explained. “You stay put.”

The Irish prospector crawled off far enough that he didn't think he would have to hear more of the old man's noisy laments. As if he hadn't already seen enough to make a blithering idjit of himself—but then he was forced to listen to Popham sobbing miserably one moment about watching the rape of his married daughter … when the next moment the old man whipped himself into a crimson fury at the Indians—vacillating back and forth all night, ever since they had abandoned the house to Jennet Manuel and her two children.

It had shocked Brice the moment the warriors took his Henry repeater and the old man's shotgun, then calmly as you please rode off without killing the two of them there and then on the front porch after they had surrendered their weapons. Popham had hugged his sobbing daughter and grandchildren as Brice watched the warriors ride away; then the immigrant suggested to the old man that they all skee-daddle away from the place as fast as possible.

“We ain't gonna have us 'nother chance like this,” he had whispered to the old man while Popham wiped tears from Jennet's cheeks. “They could be changing their minds and come back to finish us, George.”

Popham had gazed down into Jennet's face before he turned to Brice, saying, “We'll wait here for the night. Go fetch John's body in the morning and bring him back for a decent burial.”

Angry, and scared clear to the worn soles of his old boots, Brice had said, “Awright, so we stay till morning—”

“And watch out for Jennet and her babies,” Popham interrupted.

“So if we stay till morning, the least we can do is get away from the house and hide out there in the woods where we ain't so easy to find.”

After considering that for a moment, Popham had turned to Jennet, saying, “We won't be far away, honey. You need me, you just come outside and gimme a call. Two of us just gonna lay low till morning. Maybe you should bring the children out with us, too—”

“No, Pa,” Jennet protested with a hollow sound. “I want 'em to sleep in their beds, inside their house tonight. They lost their pa today—so I don't want Maggie and her little brother to feel like they gotta lose any more of what little they still got.”

As twilight approached and the first stars blinked into view overhead, Brice noticed three warriors appear on the hillside above the house. They dismounted and sat on the slope, doing nothing more than staring down on the place. Keeping watch perhaps. But he had never pointed them out to the old man. As long as those bastards just sat there on the hillside, then there was no reason to raise an alarm.

Maybeso they were just keeping watch on the house, come back to keep an eye on that white woman and children, too, just like him and George were doing.

After dark Brice and Popham watched a lone candle move from window to window, then come to rest as it grew colder out at the edge of the timber where he and the old man kept up their vigil. In that growing silence, the father, this old grandfather, began to quietly curse the red savages for what they'd done to his daughter's family.… Minutes later Popham would cry a little before more angry curses tumbled from his lips.

After taking about all he could of that for hours, Brice settled back against the trunk of a tree, wondering what the hell he and the old man would do if the bastards returned for the woman and her children, came back to murder two defenseless white men—because that's just what they were. Neither of them had any more of a weapon than a belt knife, maybe a folding knife down in their pockets. They'd given away their firearms to the enemy to save their hides.

From time to time the horrid image of the rape kept coming back and Patrick would have to struggle to push it out of his mind. How the little boy flew out of his mother's arms as she stumbled; how the warrior knelt between her legs as Jennet began to shriek, pulling his breechclout aside and flipping up her dress to expose the bare tops of her legs above her stockings so he could …

And then Brice would remember how Popham had listened to his daughter's screams, fighting with himself on whether or not to rush out there to kill the son of a bitch and likely get himself killed in the bargain—swearing to Brice that if they murdered Jennet after raping her, then he would go out there and kill as many as he could before they got him.

But one of their leaders had come up to stop any more of the warriors from raping Jennet, then turned to the house to offer them a chance for escape. All they had to do was—

And that made Brice ashamed. Angry with himself that he had surrendered his weapon rather than die with it in his hands.

So the Irishman was relieved that he had crawled over here away from the old man where he found he could doze a little, jerking awake suddenly at times to look at the house, then gaze up at the hillside in the starshine for those three warriors … but he couldn't see them any longer after it grew so dark. So he closed his eyes again, deciding that morning would come soon enough, when he and Popham could be slipping away for Mount Idaho at first light.

It was so dark and cold in Brice's dream that it seemed damn real when he came to sometime later, groggy and gritty-eyed. Brice found it still dark, yet the stars above the hill back of the house were in new positions. Some time had crawled past—

There, he heard that sobbing again … but this time it wasn't what he figured for his dream. And it sure as the devil wasn't old man Popham's voice.

Curious, Brice leaned forward, rocked onto his knees, and started crawling toward the whimpering. Closer and closer he drew to the sound, hanging back at the edge of the brush where he could approach the side of the house, the better to hear it more plainly. Perhaps one of the children had awakened with nightmares and Jennet was trying to console the child.

Then he realized it had to be little Maggie. What was she? Six or seven?

Of a sudden Brice saw her out of the dark, his ears locating her at the same moment—finding the child huddled, her knees drawn up fetally beneath her chin there beside some brush at the tree line. She jerked when she saw him, skidding back clumsily the instant she realized he was crawling toward her—emitting a pitiful squeak of terror that so reminded him of a wounded animal with its tiny leg caught in a trap, so weakened by its efforts to free itself that the animal could no longer fight back, couldn't even cry out very loudly.

“Maggie,” he whispered the moment he stopped, spreading his arms out to her. “It's Patrick. Patrick Brice.”

“Mr. Brice,” she said, clambering to her feet and rushing toward him, sobbing even as she took her first step, cradling her skinny left arm tightly against her tummy.

He was managing to get to his feet as she flung herself against him. With her face buried in his belly, her cries were muffled. He stroked her hair.

“What you doing out here now, Maggie dear?” he soothed softly in the dark. “Should be in there with your mamma and your wee brother, sleeping the night away till—”

“They killed 'em, Mr. Brice,” the girl interrupted with a steely cold that belied her tiny voice.

He knelt before her, staring directly into her eyes. “Killed who, Maggie? You sure you wasn't having yourself a bad dream from all what's happened to you, and only come outside sleepwalking so—”