Cries from the Earth (48 page)

Trimble kicked his horse into a lope. “Mr. Theller!”

The lieutenant stopped immediately when Trimble called, then turned slowly as Trimble brought his horse beside him. Theller stared up at him, blinking, as if not recognizing the captain.

“Are you … are you wounded, Lieutenant?” Trimble asked.

“No. No, I'm not, sir,” he replied vacantly.

The captain twisted in the saddle, spotting one of his steadiest veterans. “Lieutenant Parnell! Bring that horse over here!”

Parnell and two of Sergeant Arend's men came up and quickly boosted Theller into the saddle. No sooner was he atop the horse than he dropped his carbine and grabbed the reins with both hands, frantically kicking his spurs into the panic-stricken mount.

“That's a goddamn thanks for you,” one of Arend's soldiers grumbled as they stood there a moment, watching Theller tear off, racing for the gentler east side of the slope that would carry him to the top of the canyon.

Staring at the fleeing lieutenant a moment longer, Trimble became aware of the rifle fire coming from that distant outcrop of rocks where Sergeant McCarthy and his half-dozen were still working their trapdoors with studied effectiveness. Everywhere else on the battlefield the enemy was swarming, noisy, belligerent, and cocky. But nowhere near that squad of riflemen hunkered down behind the pitiful breastwork of rocks were the horsemen pulling their deadly shenanigans.

“That's some brave men back there, Major,” Parnell observed, admiration thick in his voice.

The captain had spotted McCarthy's squad too. But now Trimble realized those seven men were so separated from the rest of the retreating company, for the most part with their backs to the rest of the battalion, that they hadn't heard the order to retreat … that they hadn't seen the full-scale retreat already in process across the rest of the battlefield.

By the time Trimble got his horse turned and started yelling at his other sergeants, H Company was almost four hundred yards distant from McCarthy's squad.

“Turn back, men! Turn back!” he cried at those troopers around him, waving vigorously, thrashing his arms in a vain attempt to command their attention. “We can make a stand with those men! Halt and turn! Back to the rocks!”

But it was already too late, no matter that Parnell and their four sergeants did the best they could. It made little difference how many of the retreating soldiers they grabbed hold of and dragged to a stop—once Arend or Reilly, Schneider or even John Conroy released a man, then that man was gone, continuing his retreat just that much faster. How Trimble had prayed that panic would not overwhelm H Company, prayed that this would be an orderly retreat to the rear until they found a defensible position … prayed that it didn't become a rout.

Despite the fact that he still had a half-dozen of these old files around him, Joel G. Trimble figured it was already too late. Already … it had become every man for himself.

*   *   *

Husis Owyeen
sprinted after the fleeing soldiers.

His name was Wounded Head on account of a long-ago battle in buffalo country. This was not like fighting a real enemy. This was like chasing frightened buffalo in a stampede.

As wounded soldiers fell, warriors vied with one another to be the first to overrun them, finishing off the Shadows with their
kopluts,
sometimes a bullet. Then the warrior stripped the rifle from the dead soldier's hands, tore the cartridge belt from his waist … and ran on after the fleeing soldiers.

There were so many to fall victim to the
Nee-Me-Poo
that morning. Still, Wounded Head hadn't been quick enough to reach the fighting, fast enough to reach one of the wounded or the dead, to be the first to strip the enemy of his weapons.

Truth was, he'd had too much of the white man's whiskey to drink last night. Wounded Head could not be sure, but he fuzzily remembered stumbling toward the edge of camp, where he fell, passing out right where he landed. He had awakened to find his wife slapping him, yelling at him that No Feet brought word of the soldiers coming! Carrying their two-year-old son strapped in a shawl at her shoulders, she helped Wounded Head back to their lodge, where he searched for his old rifle—but neither of them had found it. So with a groggy, pounding head, the warrior had loped after the other fighting men long gone from camp, lots of gunfire still coming from White Bird Hill.

Not far from cemetery hill, where his people had long buried their dead, Wounded Head caught up with another warrior and asked him for one of his weapons, since the man carried a carbine in his hands and a pistol stuffed in his belt.

“I have used this already,” he told Wounded Head, yanking the old, heavy, muzzleloading Walker Colt's revolver from his cartridge belt and handed it over.

All but one of its complement of black-powder charges and percussion caps were already used up.

The man shrugged as he started away. “I have fired it several times in our charge out of the bushes that began the soldiers' wild flight.”

“Thank you,” Wounded Head accepted the offer, hollering to the man's back.

A gun with one bullet was a little better than no gun at all.

Reining around the side of the hill, he spotted a Shadow ahead of him. Wounded Head saw no other warrior nearby. The soldier ran poorly, as if struggling with a sore ankle or an injured knee, lunging with each step so badly that Wounded Head's pony had no problem quickly gaining on him. The white man glanced back over his shoulder, hearing the warrior closing the gap.

When the soldier jerked to a halt, the flaps of his unbuttoned shirt flew open. The shirt underneath was smeared with mud. This much Wounded Head saw as the ashen-faced soldier dragged up his rifle and pointed it at him. But Wounded Head was faster with his heavy old pistol.

Pitching backward when the big bullet slammed into him, the white man landed on his back, his legs twitching as Wounded Head came up and dismounted, walking over to the soldier. A black hole between the Shadow's eyes seeped blood. Soon the eyes stopped fluttering, and the legs no longer quivered.

Kneeling, Wounded Head quickly laid his old Walker on the soldier's chest as a gift to this vanquished foe, then promptly set to work on the dead man's cartridge belt, shoving the leather strap free of the buckle. With some effort he managed to drag the belt from beneath the body. Remaining there on his knees, the warrior re-buckled it around his own waist, then snatched up the white man's gun. He had seen many of these carbines before, but never had he dreamed of having one of his own!

With his thumb rolling back the big hammer a second click, Wounded Head flipped up the trapdoor and found a loaded cartridge in the weapon's breech. With the palm of his left hand he re-seated the trapdoor, then stood. He bent and patted the old pistol, now empty of bullets.

Wounded Head left it for the dead soldier, exulting and giving thanks for this wonderful gift of the army carbine.

*   *   *

“Sergeant … look!”

Michael McCarthy turned when Private James Shay tapped on his shoulder and pointed to the rear.

He and his six were alone. Three hundred yards, perhaps more, separated them from the rest of H Company. Every last blessed one of those troops gradually moving away from McCarthy's fight. Their company splintering, breaking apart.

Then he spied two men on horseback coming to a halt at the top of a small hillock no more than two hundred yards along their backtrail. No trouble knowing who the big cuss was—that was Parnell. What a burden the man was to a horse!

And McCarthy thought he recognized the captain beside Parnell. They were waving wildly at him as they started their horses off that knoll, heading back toward his squad in the breastworks. The sergeant was about to rejoice when the pair of officers suddenly reined up only halfway there and stopped dead in their tracks. It appeared they dared venture no closer.

“Time to retreat, my weeds!” he bawled as he came off his knees and lunged toward their horses. McCarthy wasn't about to wait for any more of an order to retreat.

For the most part his squad had come to the rocks well-armed, prepared to hold out if the bloody horsemen made a seige of it. Besides their Springfield carbines and those .45-55 cartridges each of them had thimbled in their heavy ammo belts, not to mention the extra ammunition still rattling around in their saddlebags, every last one of the men McCarthy had hand-picked for this crucial mission was packing a side arm: his .45 single-action army Colt's revolver. While all of H Company's sergeants and most of the corporals wore their pistols on that march away from Fort Lapwai … none of the other enlisted men brought their revolvers into this fight, save for a trumpeter or two. A side arm was nothing more than extra weight many cavalrymen grumbled over and left behind at the first opportunity.

They had remained well-protected behind that rocky outcrop … at least until McCarthy got his men mounted and they were on their way toward Captain Trimble now. As the seven horsemen kicked their animals into a lope, the sergeant made out both Trimble and Parnell as they gestured and bawled at the soldiers streaming past the two of them. Suddenly he could hear fragments of those two officers ordering the troopers to return to the rocks McCarthy's squad had just abandoned.

“We can make a stand there!” the captain bellowed, his voice floating on the cool morning air littered with shreds of gray gunsmoke. “Back to the rocks with McCarthy, men! We can hold that high ground together!”

“Halt!” McCarthy shouted to his half-dozen, getting them stopped eighty yards shy of the officers. “The cap'm's coming back to us! He's bringing them others back to the rocks to reinforce us!”

Wrenching his reins to the left, he spun his mount and raced back for the breastworks they had just abandoned. Leaping to the ground once more, the sergeant realized that mindless panic had chopped his squad in half. Only three had followed him back to the rocks. The rest were just then streaking past Trimble, on their way out of the canyon.

After every shot, McCarthy and his trio of corporals would anxiously glance over their shoulders to look for those reinforcements the captain and Parnell had tried flushing back to the rocks. But in less than five minutes, after firing no more than a dozen more shots from his Springfield, Sergeant Michael McCarthy realized no one was coming to join them. There wasn't a single man from H Company to be seen anywhere across that some 350 yards separating his squad from those who were retreating farther and farther toward the mouth of the canyon.

As his fingers went to the loops on his belt and searched for another cartridge, the sergeant was suddenly struck with just how few of them he had left. Quickly glancing at the belts worn by the others, McCarthy lumbered to his feet.

“Saddle up, you weeds!” he growled. “Make sure you got a cawtridge tucked under your trapdoor, for we're riding out while we still can!”

En masse the trio rose and lunged in among their horses with their sergeant. Reining their mounts around even before they had stuffed their mud-crusted boots into the hooded stirrups, the four of them ripped away at a gallop even as the cries of the warriors flooded over those breastworks the soldiers were just abandoning.

If he and his trio of veterans didn't make it across this open piece of ground, McCarthy knew they would be surrounded and overrun.

If he and the six didn't get back across the next three hundred yards to rejoin the rest of H Company …

“Joseph and Mary!” he cursed.

He and the rest were cut off already!

Chapter 38

June 17, 1877

Drawn by the gunfire, Isabella Benedict herded her daughter alongside her as they descended the canyon trail, mysteriously drawn toward the clamor of battle. She had to see, to know for certain that it would turn out to be the massacre she had predicted.

Her arms ached with the weight of the little one as they emerged from the brush at the mouth of the canyon. Here the air began to smell of sulphur. Gunsmoke, she thought. And gray-white tatters of it hung like torn lace curtains over the creek bottom where horsemen swirled. For the most part the soldiers were hidden from view: a knot of them here or there on the crest of the distant knoll. Then closer and closer she heard the hammer of hoofbeats, the grunts of huffing men—

Figures in blue suddenly boiled over the gentle swale right before her, most on horseback, but some labored up the trail on foot. Among them were some civilians. She thought she recognized a face or two among them. The first were approaching at a gallop when Isabella started to yell.

“Stop! Stop, please!” she begged. “Don't you know me? Give us your horse!”

One after another she pleaded with the soldiers as they bolted past her alone or in pairs, a few in small bunches of no more than four at a time. Not a one of them appeared to pay her any heed, much less slow their wide-eyed, heaving horses as they thundered into the narrowing canyon. She trudged up to the top of the slope the soldiers had just crossed.

Upon that crude crescent of a ridge not far from where she herself now stood, Mrs. Benedict could see no more than a third of the soldiers holding their position—some atop their mounts, covering the methodical retreat of the rest slowly backing up the slope on foot. Then of a sudden something strange and evil seemed to sweep over those diligently holding back the Nez Perce horsemen: they turned and started for her, seeking escape in the canyon as if all hope was lost.

It was like a flood, she thought, watching how the horses bounded past her with their loud, labored breathing, flecks of whitish foam grown gummy around their nostrils, yellowish bubbles lapping at their bits. And she was yelling again, trying to make one of the soldiers stop to help her daughters.

Stepping into the open, Isabella was forced to weave from side to side, pulling her oldest girl out of the way to left, then right, as they leaped from the path of the mindless retreat—crying out piteously to the unheeding soldiers.