Lay the Mountains Low (16 page)

Seizing hold of the long halter, Bird Alighting was nearly yanked off his feet by the powerful animal before he looped the rope around one wrist and freed the knot with his other hand. Wild-eyed with terror, the pony watched as the man lunged past its neck and leaped onto the narrow back.

Drawing up the excess rope, Bird Alighting suddenly realized something was wrong. The horse stood perfectly still, as if turned into stone.

“Amtiz! Ueye!”
he shouted into the horse's ear, slapping its front and rear flank with that coil of rope. “Let's go! Run!”

It was as if the ground exploded beneath him when the pony started bucking. Interlacing his fingers within its mane, locking his toes beneath its belly, gripping that rope with all his strength, Bird Alighting bounced into the air, landing on the horse's bare back with a brutal thud each time the animal struck the ground.

As the pony whipped itself into a whirling dance, Bird Alighting spotted the
suapies
and the other Shadows reaching the middle of the stream, their horses threading through the strong current, all but having reached the near bank.

His horse landed again with a teeth-jarring thud, then trembled and stood still once more—

A burning ribbon of fire licked through his thigh.

Bird Alighting jerked from the pain, his eyes finding the soldiers on the near bank and beginning to urge their dripping horses in among the lodges. The muzzles of their weapons were smoking. And he knew he had been hit by one of their bullets.

“Mimillu!”
he screeched at the horse, knowing this was his only chance to flee. “You stupid creature!”

In his gut, Bird Alighting realized he would never stand a chance on foot, not with that wounded leg burning. He'd never manage to put any weight on that side of his body in a run to escape.

Whipping the pony with the coil of rope on one side, flailing his one good foot against the other side, the warrior finally got the horse started away through the lodges. But slowly. The animal took a few tentative steps, paused and whipped its head around, then set off again at a little faster pace.

Not far ahead Bird Alighting saw another man running in the same direction, for the base of the hill where the women and children had disappeared. One bullet, then a handful more, snarled past him and the horse as the warrior on foot peered over his shoulder and spotted Bird Alighting coming.

With those oncoming
suapies
and the Shadows, Bird Alighting realized death would not be long in finding the man left to flee on foot. He would be run down—shot from behind or clubbed with a rifle before he was finished off at close range.

“Come up behind me!” he shouted to the warrior as he drew near.

Without a word, the breathless warrior lurched to a halt and held up his hand. Grabbing it in his, Bird Alighting swung the man up behind him on the slow horse.

That exertion suddenly seemed to fill the morning sky with shooting stars. He found it hard to focus, could not see much of anything at all around him as he began to wobble on the back of the pony,

“Hold on! Hold on!” the warrior behind him yelled in his ear.

But Bird Alighting was having trouble staying upright. He wanted to tell the man about his leg wound, that he must be losing too much blood, that his head was not working right anymore and he could not see….

Then all color, all light, went out of his body—

R
ACING
out of the north and east sides of the village, more than a hundred of the Nez Perce were streaming away from Captain Whipple's troops and D. B. Randall's Mount Idaho volunteers.

They reminded Lieutenant Sevier M. Rains of rats streaming from the tall piles of grain sacks rising from the wharves in Lewiston. Why, if Whipple ordered these eighty-some men after the Indians, it would be like trying to contain mercury under their fingers. A worse than useless proposition. Little more than a fool's errand.

“Mr. Rains!”

He wheeled his horse at Whipple's call, found the officer approaching on horseback. “Captain?”

“You're to be commended, Lieutenant,” Whipple began, a bit breathless.

“Commended, Captain?”

“Racing ahead of the skirmish line the way you did—alone.”

“Truth is, sir … was hoping to catch Looking Glass myself. I figured he was the biggest prize of all. But I think he got away with the rest.”

“Next to that chief, their horses are the next biggest prize we could hope to corral,” Whipple advised. “With two of my lieutenants gone after the herd, I need you to take charge of the destruction of the camp.”

“Burn the lodges, sir?”

“Yes. See how the volunteers are already going through every one—looting all that is worth a pittance.”

“Firearms, powder, that sort of thing, Captain?”

“Save it from the fires, but torch the rest.”

Rains touched his fingertips to his brow in salute. “Very good, Captain!”

As it turned out, the lieutenant's detail could get no more than two of the lodges burning. The hides were either too damp with the morning dew to burn or simply too thick to do more than smolder. For the better part of an hour it was like a celebration for Randall's civilians as they whooped and hollered each time one of them dragged something of value from the captured lodges. Small buckskin pouches of black powder, satchels of vermillion paint, and finely tanned buffalo robes, not to mention cooking utensils, blankets, china dishes, and some clayware. Anything that could
not be set ablaze was stomped on or busted with the butts of their rifles, broken in pieces so small no one would waste time retrieving them from the damp ground.

“Hey, Lieutenant!” D. B. Randall called out to Rains as the officer came to a halt by a lodge standing at the edge of camp. “You see how my friend Minturn proved himself the best shot of this whole bunch, didn'cha?”

“Can't say as I had an eye on any of your men in particular, Mr. Randall.”

“Shit, Lieutenant!” Randall exclaimed, waving over one of his fellow civilians. “Here, this is Peter Minturn—best shot in this here territory, I'll wager.”

Rains glanced quickly at the young volunteer's face, saw the bemused pride in Minturn's eyes. He asked the volunteer, “So you accounted for some enemy dead, did you?”

Instead of Minturn answering for himself, Randall snorted, “Hell, Lieutenant—this here friend of mine was hungry for Injun meat, I'll tell you. The man damn well proved himself to be a dead shot each time he pulled the trigger!”

“H-hungry for Indian meat?” Rains repeated, bewildered by the crude expression.

Minturn finally spoke: “Just like I'm off hunting to make meat for the stew pot, Lieutenant. This here jump on Looking Glass's village was no different than shooting into a bunch of scampering jackrabbits!”

K
HOY
-T
SAHL
, 1877

S
LOWLY, GROGGILY, BIRD ALIGHTING CAME ALIVE AGAIN
.

He looked around. Felt the arms locked about him. Stared down at those two hands wrapped in the horse's mane and wondered whose they were.

Then all color and light returned to his mind—and he remembered the warrior he had stopped to pick up in his flight from the village.

Sensing the labored, uneven lope of the overburdened horse, Bird Alighting gazed down at his legging, finding half of it entirely soaked with his blood. Even though he was still light-headed, the warrior realized he had suffered a severe loss of blood and hadn't fallen for only one reason—the man behind him.

“See our friend?” the warrior behind him yelled in his ear. “She's coming out to us!”

Bewildered, Bird Alighting looked in the direction of the approaching hoofbeats—his eyes finding
Etemiere
coming off the hillside at a gallop. This woman, called Arrowhead among his
Nee-Me-Poo,
was racing toward them at a slant out of the skimpy timber. She had a large gray-black wolfskin tied around her neck, its head positioned atop hers, held in place by a cord knotted under her chin. With the speed of her pony, that drape fluttered behind her as she slowed to a lope, coming alongside them and matching the pace of their pony.

“I tried to find a place in the brush at the creek's edge where I could make some shots at the
suapies
” she said breathlessly. “Make some kills across the water—” but Arrowhead suddenly interrupted her words when her eyes saw Bird Alighting's wound. “You are bleeding—badly! Stop—stop your horse now!”

The warrior behind him pulled with one hand in the pony's
mane, the other tugging on that long coil of rope Bird Alighting still gripped in one palm, convincing the frightened pony to stop. Immediately vaulting from her horse, Arrowhead leaned over, pulling up the bottom of her cloth dress with one hand as she yanked a knife from its belt scabbard with her other and quickly hacked off two long strips of the wool cloth.

Standing at Bird Alighting's knee, Arrowhead quickly folded one piece over the seeping wound, then flung the other, wider strip around the leg itself. She pulled her makeshift bandage as tight as she could before looping the ends into a knot, then secured it with a second knot. “Perhaps this will stop the bleeding now.”

“Yes,” the warrior behind him agreed quietly. “Then his mind won't go to sleep again from losing any more blood. But we will need to get him some raw liver to eat soon.”

All Bird Alighting could do was nod. Eating raw liver was the best thing for the weakness caused from a great loss of blood.

“I saw a young herder boy killed,” Arrowhead told them as she inspected the bandage she had just tied around the leg. “He was trying to drive off the horses when the Shadows came charging up to steal the herd from us.”

“You saw him fall?”

“Yes. He pitched off the back of his pony and did not move,” she explained. “I wanted to go see to him, if there was any breath left in his mouth—but the herding ground was too crowded with soldiers by that time. They were shooting at me, so I hurried to the hills to catch up with the rest of our village.”

“What will we do now?” the warrior asked as Arrowhead turned away to leap atop her pony.

She said, “We should find the rest of our people.”

A crackle of sporadic gunfire sounded dangerously close as they gave heels to their ponies and started toward the top of the hill.

With desperation in his voice, the warrior declared, “No,
I mean to ask: What will Looking Glass's people do now that we have lost all our horses, left our lodges and homes and gardens behind … abandoned everything we own?”

“What law of warfare says an enemy has the right to shoot you when you are surrendering?” Bird Alighting asked, surprising them both that he was talking after so long a silence.

“It is evil treachery,” the warrior growled. “To shoot at innocents.”

“There is only one thing we can do,” Bird Alighting added, the colors in his mind more crisp and certain than they ever had been. “Blood will always follow blood.”

“Is your head right, Bird Alighting? Or is your thinking gone far away?” asked Arrowhead. “What do you mean—blood will always follow blood?”

In a stronger voice, he said, “Now is the time we must join the rest of Looking Glass's people and go in search of the others who are fighting these Shadows and soldiers.”

S
ECOND
Lieutenant Sevier M. Rains had done an admirable job plundering the village … even if he did say so himself. His father had ransacked Seminole villages in Florida, Mexican towns far south of the border, then struggled in a lost cause against Federal troops during the Civil War. He would approve of the way the lieutenant and his men left nothing of any value for the Nez Perce.

“Lieutenant!” Captain Whipple called out as he approached with Captain Winters.

“Sir!” and Rains snapped a salute as the officers' eyes raked over the destruction he had made of Looking Glass's camp.

Whipple asked, “Are you far from completing your assignment?”

“We are all but finished, Captain.”

“Good,” Winters said. “We're about to move out.”

“Where to, sirs?” Rains inquired.

“Back toward Mount Idaho,” Whipple explained. “We're
going to give more than six hundred horses to the volunteers, hoping to keep them out of the hands of the hostiles. Then we'll rejoin our column across the Salmon.”

Winters added, “General Howard should have the command across the river by now.”

“So we're going to join in the pursuit?” Rains asked after he had given the command for his detail to mount up.

“This bunch won't cause any more trouble, I'd wager,” Winters snorted.

Whipple agreed as he gestured for them to move out, starting upstream. “With what little we're leaving behind for his band, we've taken Looking Glass entirely out of the equation for the rest of the war, gentlemen.”