Cries from the Earth (52 page)

From atop his weary, staggering horse the sergeant bawled at them, “This is where we hold the bastards back, men! This is where we save our hides … or this can be where we spill the last of our blood! There's no one else gonna help us now.” And the raw taste of sentiment choked him a moment before he could speak again. “Now it's up to us!”

“It sure as hell ain't up to them thirty warriors!” Parnell bellowed at the other side of the road.

No, now there were forty of the savages—by the grace of Joseph and Mary!
Damn but there's bloody well at least fifty of them coming at us now!

He was sure these other men had seen what he had witnessed below them on the slopes during their desperate retreat: how every wounded man, those either paralyzed with fear or so completely exhausted with fatigue, had been killed without resistance right before his eyes as the battalion pulled back.

So with no more soldiers left alive for all the warriors to fight down below, the red bastards were congregating, hurling themselves on the rear of the fleeing column. Even the bastards' war ponies had to be exhausted. Why, in the last desperate minutes since fleeing from the rocks McCarthy had seen one warrior's squaw bring her husband three changes of horses!

“Every march has them brave men what close the file, boys!” he shouted above the rising of the war cries as the warriors came rushing toward his few steady hands.

And he thanked his God that that was what Parnell had left him: these unflappable old files who hadn't bucked and run at the first shot of the fight earlier that morning. These were the ones who had remained steadfast until the very last. These were the men he could count on to fire slow and low. Around Sergeant Michael McCarthy at that moment were men who understood the final duty of true soldiers might well be to protect the retreat of the others … even unto the sacrifice of their own lives in the bargain.

Four times the hordes of screaming horsemen threw themselves against McCarthy's thin line of blue. And four times the old files held like an immovable rock wall. A soldier dropped here or there—winged or wounded—but the sergeant's line never broke.

Then just as he was thinking the warriors had pulled off so they could mass for a fifth charge, the horsemen surprised him by splitting and circling wide, racing high along the slope above the last man on his right flank, making for the rear of the fleeing column. A few of the enemy thundered past farther down the slope below them, their ponies lunging by the left end of his line.

“Time to go, boyos!” he shouted.

“But the Injuns are atween us and the column now, Sarge!” one of the men protested as the line stood and helped the wounded scramble to their feet.

Those few who still had horses remounted. And the rest who no longer had a horse to carry them out of this valley of death moved out among the riders, trudging up the hillside while their weary legs protested with the fiery burn of their superhuman efforts against this excruciating climb.

McCarthy heard the unmistakable sound the bullet's flight made at the very instant his horse shied, sidestepped, then almost went down before it gamely regained its legs. Directly in front of his right knee McCarthy watched the crimson glisten against the claybank's pale coat.

Loud voices instantly snapped his attention up the slope. The warriors who had swept around their right flank were doubling back and were pressing in on that upper end of McCarthy's line. Those men farthest up the slope were falling under the greatest pressure, unable to hold no more than moments before they bolted down the slope, some scattering onto the trail to race after the other outfits who had already fled, the remainder bunching up as they rejoined McCarthy's file closers.

“Halt and hold!” he cried at those now left him, sensing his horse shudder beneath him when he kicked it to start after those who would not stop. “Halt, men—and hold this line!”

But the animal would not move. He realized it was dying where it stood.

Down, down, down the slope came the horsemen, chasing the soldiers before them, rolling up the end of that thin blue skirmish line. When his horse shuddered again, whipping its head wildly, the sergeant could tell it was getting watery in the knees and about to go down. Leaping off before he was thrown aside or trapped beneath the animal as it sank, McCarthy saw how the left of his line had continued away, curving up the slope. Those men were already well past him on the trail, skirmishing with a few horsemen as they retreated.

Here he and a handful of men remained at the center of the line—which meant they were the last. Having scattered his right flank, the warriors were streaming down from the slope above. Other Nez Perce were blocking the trail with a line that angled around to shut off his hope of escape—a pulsing, screaming, horse-mounted barricade that stretched from the foot of the hill across to McCarthy's left, where it intersected his route of escape.

Turning on his heel there in the middle of the trail, the sergeant realized for the first time that he was without cartridges for his carbine. Dropping to a knee beside the horse, he yanked up the flap to his saddle pocket and stuffed a hand inside. Empty. And with the way the heavy carcass lay, he couldn't get to the other pocket—

As McCarthy stood, the danger immediately struck him. He was suddenly alone. Every other man was on his own and on the run, clawing up the slope.

The carbine in his hands did him no good now. He flung it aside, spun around in a crouch, and broke into a sprint, wheezing as his boots slipped on the damp grass.

Just ahead an Indian horseman appeared through the scrub brush. The sergeant lunged to a halt, prepared to fight with his bare hands if he had to—when he saw a second rider appear behind the first. An old soldier, one from his company—Private Fowler! Then McCarthy recognized the Indian horseman as one of the Nez Perce friendlies who had come along to scout for Colonel Perry.
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As the soldier and the tracker halted their horses on either side of him, at the same time the brazen warriors pulled wide and raced on past, the tracker held down his arm and helped McCarthy scramble up behind Charles E. Fowler. By the time the three had started up the trail, the sergeant gazed up the slope to see how most of the warriors had bypassed his file closers, choosing instead to pursue the main column.

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.