Lay the Mountains Low (62 page)

“Hello, Boston Men!”

The speaker stepped forward, a figure sporting his famous tall top hat decorated by a showy bird plume attached to the very front, sticking straight up.

It was Looking Glass. Henry didn't know if he should be relieved or even more scared.

“W-we're lost.” Buck could think of nothing more to say than the truth. The eyes of all those warriors gleamed in the starshine, measuring him and the rest of the citizens caught in this tightening snare.

The top hat walked closer to Buck's horse, held up his hand as if to shake. Grinned, too. “Me Looking Glass. You?”

“B-buck. Henry Buck,” and he held down his hand, thinking it quite odd that this Nez Perce chief would practice such a custom—to shake hands with a white man when the chief should realize that earlier this day these very white men had attempted to bar the Indians' entry into the valley.

“Looking Glass?” Myron Lockwood echoed, sitting on the horse next to Henry's. “Why, I didn't know this was Looking Glass. This here's the chief hisself—the one who come back and shook hands with a few of us this mornin'!”

“I guess he puts great stock in this hand-shaking thing,” John Buckhouse said, nervousness cracking in his voice.

“This ol' buck even had his eyes checked up to Missoula
City on his way back from the buffalo plains just this past spring,” explained Wilson B. Harlan. “Doctor fit him for a pair of glasses, too, Henry.”

“We're going home,” Buck explained to the chief, speaking his words slowly. He pointed on south up the valley. “Home, there, tonight.”

For a long moment Looking Glass turned to peer up the valley, too. “Yes, home.” Eventually, he brought his eyes back to Buck and smiled when he said, “You home, no hurt you home now. No war with white valley man here. No war come to Montana buffalo land. No war. You go home all now, too. All white man go home. No war now.”

He held up his hand to Buck and they shook again; then the chief moved among the civilians, eagerly shaking every white man's hand. When Looking Glass had greeted all the stunned horsemen he stepped back against that tight ring of warriors.

“No war now, white mans!” he cheered, doffing his tall hat, sweeping it to the south in a grand gesture. “Go home—you no fight. No war for you. No war for us.”

“Y-yes. We go home,” Buck repeated the chief's broken English, nodding as he urged his horse into motion. “No war. We'll go home because there ain't gonna be no war now.”

More than a hundred warriors slowly parted, gradually forming a very long and narrow gauntlet as the white men started away, every one of the Nez Perce silent, glaring.

It wasn't until they were three miles farther south up the Bitterroot that Henry realized how tense his muscles had been, feeling just how tight his ass had been clenched from the moment he realized they had moseyed into that village by mistake. Even though he and his brothers had seen quite a few Nez Perce coming and going through the valley across the years and some had even visited their store in Stevensville on every journey through the Bitterroot, Henry Buck had never seen that many Nez Perce warriors in one place … nor that many so goddamned
close
—all of them
glaring at him and the others. It was enough to make a man's scalp itch.

Henry Buck decided every fella was granted at least one second chance in life to make up for some stupid, lunkhead blunder. He figured he'd just used up his.

 

*
This angling, northward movement took them out of Lolo Canyon, over to Sleeman Creek, which they followed until joining Lolo Creek again about two and a half miles west of its junction with the Bitterroot River.

*
McConville's volunteers at Misery Hill.

**
Because of this very public fiasco, in the local press Rawn's abandoned log-and-rifle-pit fortress immediately became known as “Fort Fizzle,” its army and civilian defenders regarded as cowards afraid to fight, much less die, to halt the Nez Perce invasion of Montana Territory.

*
The Big Hole.

**
That first evening out of the Lolo Canyon, the Nez Perce erected their camp on the McClain ranch, about five miles south of the Lolo's mouth, on Carlton Creek.

J
ULY
29, 1877

U.S.
ARMY SURGEON JOHN FITZGERALD PAUSED, PEN
sively chewing on the wooden stem of his ink pen as he studiously gazed out upon the noisy clamor of that camp readying itself to follow General Oliver Otis Howard over the Lolo Trail into Montana Territory in pursuit of the escaping Nez Perce murderers and outlaws.

This might well be the last chance FitzGerald had for a long, long time to write Emily from the campaign trail—and know with any certainty that she would get his letter. Why, she might well be reading it by tomorrow afternoon. Each of the many officers had tossed a little something into a pool to entice one of the Christian Indians to ride off to Lapwai with their final messages before embarking on what they knew had to be a short campaign.

The Indian scouts will be in the advance. It is said and believed here that Joseph's Indians are all over in Montana and peacefully disposed among the settlers in that region. Doctor Alexander says that I will be back at my post in 30 days. I hope so, Darling, for I feel that I have been away from you for an age already. I don't see how I can stand it for 30 days. You may rest assured, Darling, that absence for that time, or maybe a week or so longer, is all you have to fear on my account.

Oh, how to tell her all that he sensed was ready to gush out of him here and now … yet how to keep from telling her what he must not let slip in there, even between the lines. He thought at first of somehow preparing her for the eventuality that he might not make it back home, then thought better of that idea and decided not to write anything morose or melancholy—exactly the way a man felt in those hours before riding into battle or setting off on an uncertain campaign.

 

… I forgot to tell you our Indians all wear soldier's uniforms with a kind of blue sash of stripes and stars. It looks, in fact, like a piece of old garrison flag. They belong to the Bannock tribe of Indians farther to the south, and they can be depended on …

I hardly know, Darling, what else to tell you. I suppose we will reach Missoula in a week at farthest. I was going to say you might write me there, but that would not do, as I suppose it would take two weeks for a letter to reach that place via San Francisco. There will be one or more opportunities for you to write me by courier from Lapwai. Take care of yourself and the babies, and wait for me as patiently as you can …

 

John FitzGerald quickly looked up to see if anyone might be approaching.

Furtively he dabbed his thumb at that errant teardrop soaking into the writing paper, then dragged the back of his
hand beneath the end of his nose. This surgeon, husband, and father did not want another man to misread his reluctance to leave his family behind. After all was said and done, this was his calling. He was a soldier. A doctor yes, but a soldier above all.

Jenkins FitzGerald had been an army doctor since the outbreak of rebellion among the Southern states. And this was what a soldier did: go off to war against his nation's enemies.

 

I keep thinking of the long absence from you, my dear wife, but it must be. I suppose there are 30 to 40 more gentlemen in this command who have left their wives and babies, and who, in case of more fighting, will be in far greater danger than your man can possibly be in, but, honestly, I don't think we shall see an Indian hostile. I said to Colonel Miller, “Colonel, what are we all going to do over there?” He replied, “Oh, we will have a big mountain picnic with no Indians to trouble us.”

… We will have some hard marching only, with no fighting of any kind
—

 

“Dr. John!”

He looked up of a sudden, finding the Indian leading his horse, walking easily toward the cluster of hospital tents and baggage where FitzGerald sat. The dark-skinned Kamiah courier wore a large leather pouch over his left hip, the wide strap looped over his right shoulder. Already there were two other, younger, officers hurrying their envelopes up to the rider. Chances were neither one of them had a wife or children at home, FitzGerald thought as his eyes connected with the Nez Perce courier.

“Dr. John,” the Treaty Indian said as he stopped a respectful distance away. “I go soon. Take mail to Lapwai. I go with your letter, yes? Take to Mrs. Doctor.”

“Yes,” he sighed sadly, then went back to chewing on the wooden stem of his pen, looking over those young men bringing their mail to the courier.

Such young, eager officers would have written home to mothers, perhaps even a sweetheart to whom they had pledged their hearts, planning a distant betrothal when affairs with the Nez Perce were settled.

So … until he got back from the far side of the Lolo … perhaps the far, far side of the world itself, this last letter to her might well have to be it for a long, long time—

 

Be patient, darling, sensible wife, as you always have been, and 'ere long I will be with you again. My ink is getting low, so goodbye, my honey, and believe me.

Ever your faithful,
John

 

“And I am especially glad to see you again,
Wa-wook-ke-ya Was Sauw!
” Looking Glass exclaimed as he moved among the small party of men, women, and children, touching hands, pounding backs.

The newcomers had just approached the large
Nee-Me-Poo
camp with their leader, Eagle-from-the-Light, being hailed by many of the Non-Treaty headmen who had come out to greet the new arrivals—six lodges of them, accounting for ten warriors.
Wa-wook-ke-ya Was Sauw,
this man called Lean Elk, was one of those fighting men who for the last few winters had paid his allegiance to the Eagle.

Weeks ago when the first flames were fanned in Idaho country, the men of their band had gone together to petition Flathead agent Peter Ronan at the Jocko agency for permission to camp on the reservation north of Missoula City, where they would be far from the danger of being swept up in a war should the Non-Treaty bands cross over the Lolo Trail, as everyone knew they would. For generations the Flathead people had been good friends of the
Nee-Me-Poo
, crossing over the Lolo each year to harvest those salmon doggedly fighting their way from the distant ocean to the high streams that fed the Clearwater River. When Ronan had refused their request, Eagle-from-the-Light kept his
small band near Chariot's Flathead, who themselves had steadfastly refused government orders to move north from the Bitterroot valley onto their own reservation.

Then just a few days ago Chariot and some of his fighting men had ridden off to join those soldiers who planned to block the trail—so Eagle and his men decided to find another place to lay back out of sight, somewhere they might let events on the Lolo take their own course. But when the
Nee-Me-Poo
managed to slip around the foolish soldier chief, Eagle's band figured they could no longer ride the fence. Agent Ronan had plainly shown that he did not care to have Eagle's allegiance, so … Eagle-from-the-Light, Lean Elk, and the others figured they would feel out the mood of things in that Non-Treaty camp.

This first morning after the debacle up the Lolo Canyon, those ten warriors led their women and children down the Bitterroot valley to find the Non-Treaty village.

“Last time I saw you was in your camp at
Pitayiwahwih
on the Clearwater, Looking Glass,” Lean Elk confided to the garrulous chief.

“Yes—just after you cut your leg carving the wood to make another one of your fine saddle frames,” Looking Glass replied to the short, stocky half-breed. “Do you still limp like you did when you left to ride back to Montana?”

“I do,” Lean Elk explained, patting his thigh. “But the wound is getting better.”

Looking Glass snorted with laughter, “I hope you are getting better using a knife, too!”

“It is a good thing he cut his leg,” Bird Alighting said with a smile as he came through the crowd. “He cannot race his horse against us until his wound heals!”