Lay the Mountains Low (69 page)

Suddenly it appeared Howard was struck by a thought
that caused a crease of intensity to furrow his brow. The general turned round, spotted the officer he sought in the front ranks of the crowd, and called out, “Captain Jackson, select your best rider! A steady man, one enured to hardship—one who can make the ride without faltering.”

“The ride, General?” asked James B. Jackson.

“I want a man I can depend on—no, a man General Gibbon can depend on—to get my message through.”

Without a flicker of hesitation, Jackson turned on his heel and quickly located the half-naked Sutherland in the crowd.

“Sergeant Sutherland?”

“I'll be back with my horse inside twenty minutes, Cap'n,” he had answered. “No sir, Gen'ral Howard. Beggin' your pardon—I'll be ready to ride in
ten
minutes, sir.”

Now he was loping through the gathering darkness, speeding toward the mouth of Lolo Creek beside that taciturn Flathead who had accompanied civilian Joe Pardee to Howard's camp.

The sergeant's real name was Sean Dennis Georghegan. Wasn't all that odd a happenstance for a man to have his name changed once he set foot on the shores of Amerikay. Not long after reaching his adopted homeland, Sutherland had volunteered for the Union Army, rising in rank to serve as a noncom in the Eighteenth Infantry, regulars. Later in that war against the rebellious Southern states, Sutherland was transferred to the Tenth Infantry, where he distinguished himself in battle and rose to become a second lieutenant by the time the cease-fire was called at Appomattox. Rather than return back to the Northeast, Sutherland itched for more travel and adventure. He scratched his itch by enlisting in the postwar First Cavalry and coming west.

An arduous ride awaited the sergeant as both a gathering darkness and an intermittent rain descended upon the two horsemen. But this was just the sort of adventure a hardened boyo like himself had prepared for. Trouble was, the adventure awaiting Oliver Sutherland was not anything like the Irishman had planned.

Upon reaching the mouth of Lolo Creek and the Bitterroot River as first light embraced the western slopes, the Flathead did his best to shrug and gesture, attempting to communicate that he was not going any farther with the soldier. He pointed off to the north, in the direction of Missoula City, and tapped his chest. Then he signed that the Nez Perce and the other soldiers would be found moving off to the south, somewhere
up
the valley.

It was up to Sutherland alone from here on out.

The sun was refusing to blink its one dull eye through the sullen gray clouds overhead, suspended near midsky, when Sutherland realized his horse had been pushed to its limit and was all but done in from the punishment he had given it over the last eighteen grueling hours. Limping along on that exhausted animal with its bloody, spur-riven sides, the sergeant reined up in the yard of the next ranch he came across, hallooing with a voice disused for the better part of a day.

“I'm bearing dispatches from General Howard to General Gibbon,” Sutherland croaked.

“Gibbon, you say? Yes, yes—you'll have to ride right smart to catch Gibbon's bunch.”

“How long ago they come by?”

The settler considered that at the door of his small barn. “He streamed it by with his men in their wagons day before yestiddy … yes, yes. They've got three days on you now.”

“Howard's give me authority to get a remount,” Sutherland sighed, his body already aching for that hard road yet to come. “Back down the road, I was told this place might have a horse I could ride. Need to swap you a played-out cavalry mount for one what's fresh, mister,” he explained while the settler stepped from the double doors of his small barn, shovel in hand, his britches stuffed down in gum boots, busy at mucking out the horse stalls.

After bounding over to quickly inspect the strong but lathered army horse, the civilian looked up and said, “I ain't got but two sorts. One is big and strong, but a mite slow—there's two of 'em pull my plows and wagon. Only other
horse I can swap you is a green colt, half-broke by a neighbor cross the valley. I ain't had time to gentle it to the saddle yet. But by damn if you don't look like a spunky feller.”

Sutherland ground his teeth on the dilemma, then hurried his decision. Hundreds of men were counting on him. Bringing a rapid conclusion to this Nez Perce war would depend upon his finishing this ride.

“Bring out that green-broke colt. Howard's quartermaster will settle with you when they come through. While you fetch up the colt I'll take my saddle off this'un here,” he grumbled, his brogue thick as blood soup. Then as the settler turned away for the paddock behind the barn, the sergeant asked, “You got a saddle blanket I could swap you? This'un's near soaked through.”

The two of them managed to drape a dry saddlepad on the back of that wild-eyed colt they had snubbed up to a fencepost, then laid the McClellan saddle across its spine, drawing up the cinch to tighten it down as the horse sidestepped this way, then that, forcing the two men to scurry left, then right, as they finished the job of securing the snaffle-bit over the animal's muzzle.

He tugged the brim of his shapeless rain-soaked campaign hat down on his brow, then stuffed his hand between the buttons of his shirt, fingertips brushing the folded message he had taken from General Howard's own hand—as if to remind him that he alone had been hand-picked for this duty. Shifting his pistol belt nervously as he glanced one last time at the colt's wide, terror-filled eye, Sutherland seized the reins in hand, then slowly poked his foot into the left stirrup.

“When I'm nested down into this here God-blasted army rockin' chair,” he told the grim-faced settler, “you free up that knot and step back, real quick “

“You a good horseman, soldier?”

His puckered ass ground down into the saddle and he heeled up the stirrups, tight as he could. Then swallowed. “I'm a horse soldier, mister. Ain't a horse gonna throw this boyo. Now,” and he paused, “… let 'im go.”

And go that horse did let go. Like lightning uncorked.

Screwing up its back, head tucked south and tail tucked north, nearly folding itself in half, that green-broke colt compressed all its energy on a spot centered just beneath that man stuck on its back. The pony flung itself into the air just starting to rain once more with a fine, soaking mist. As it slammed down hard on all four hooves, Sutherland felt his teeth jar, the side of his tongue grazed painfully, some of the pasty hardtack still digesting in his stomach brutally shoved up against his tonsils.

The sting of bile and the pain beneath his ribs robbed him of breath. As he wheezed in shock, the pony beneath him twisted itself in half again, but sideways this time, attempting to hurl the rider off to the left. From the corner of his eye he saw the fence coming up in a blur as the pony's rear flank wheeled round. Suddenly wondering how in Hades he would get the general's message through with a broken leg, on instinct Sutherland hammered the pony's ribs with his boot heels.

Just inches from that crude lodgepole fence, the colt shot away toward the middle of the corral, racing with its head down for three mad leaps, then twisted sideways again, preparing to uncork itself once more. This time the pony shuffled left, then suddenly right, bounding up and down on its forelegs—each jarring descent to the rain-soaked ground hammering his breakfast against the floor of his tonsils, tasting stomach gall each time he landed with a smack in that damned McClellan saddle.

The wind gusted of a sudden, driving a sheet of the fine mist right into his face. Blinking his eyes that fraction of an instant, he opened them to find the colt tucking its head down as it careened toward the lodgepole fence anew but suddenly planted all four hooves, skidding in the drying mud, jerking to a halt as it flung its rear flanks into the air, catapulting the man ass over teakettle like a cork exploding from a bottle of fermented wine.

For a heartbeat Sutherland found himself suspended upside down, peering at the horse through wondering eyes,
unable to make out the fence coming up behind him as he completed that graceful arc out of the gray, rainy sky, but having no time at all to realize anything before he collided with the top rail and a rough-hewn post of that paddock fence.

With a shrill wheeze, the air was driven out of his lungs … but it wasn't until after he had landed in a heap at the bottom of the fencepost that he realized he was lying in a shallow puddle. Dragging the side of his face out of the caking mud, Sutherland immediately sensed he had broken something deep inside him. The pain was faint-giving, hot and cold at the same time. Starting cold in his lower spine, as it radiated outward through his gut and lower chest, the agony flared with a white-hot fury.

“You hurt, soldier?” the settler asked as he came over and bent at the waist to stare down at the sergeant.

“Get that g-goddamned horse …” he rasped, then gritted his teeth together and clenched his eyes shut while the pain exploded through him, “tied off again afore I shoot it an'you both.”

A whitish look of fear crossed the settler's face as he tore his eyes from the old soldier and straightened, shuffling off toward the pony standing motionless, but for its head bobbing, near the barn doors.

Slowly, gingerly, Sutherland dragged an elbow under him, pushing himself up. The toughest part was the searing pain he caused his body as he attempted to rise. But once he was upright, the waves of nausea slowly dissipated. Only when he tried to twist round or slightly rocked side to side did he have to clench his teeth together to swallow down the bitter taste of gall as his stomach sought to hurl itself against the back of his acid-laced tongue.

Just the sort of motion his body would suffer on the back of a horse, any horse—even a plodding plow horse. But … Sergeant Oliver Sutherland, Sean Dennis Georghegan, did not have the luxury of time to find a gentle draft horse—

“Your saddle's broke.”

He blinked at the settler. Then glared at the pony with a
look of pure hate. The McClellan lay across the muddy, hoof-pocked corral, its cinch broken. “Get me one of yours.”

“I ain't got but the one—”

“Get me your goddamned saddle!” he snarled. “General Howard will damn well make it right for you when he comes through in a day or so.”

“Day or so? You sure the quartermaster gonna make it right by me? Like I said, them other soldiers is three days ahead—”

Sutherland gripped his holster menacingly. “Get that saddle on, or I'll have to shoot you right after I kill the horse.”

The frightened settler's Adam's apple bobbed nervously when he turned away from the old soldier, scurrying into the small barn.

In minutes the civilian had that colt snubbed to another post, the blanket dragged out of the mud and draped across the pony's back before he looped the cinch through its ring.

Sutherland moved slowly, each step its own agony, reaching the horse as the settler pulled up on the strap. “Kick the son of a bitch in the belly.”

“What?”

“Said: Kick the goddamned horse in the belly,” he wheezed. “ 'Cause I can't do it my own self. An' when you do kick it, the bastard's gonna take a deep breath—that's when you pull like the devil to get that cinch tight as it'll go.”

He watched the doubtful man do exactly as he had ordered—and, sure enough, the pony was forced to exhale, allowing the civilian to yank the cinch even tighter.

“Now, help me up … for I fear I might black out to do it my own self.”

“You're hurt,” the settler said, suddenly realizing what might be the extent of the soldier's injuries. “Maybe you'd be better off to wait out a few hours to see—”

“I ain't got a few hours,” Sutherland cut him off. “ 'Sides,
my muscles only gonna get tighter every minute we stand here jawing. Get me in the goddamned saddle.”

They both grunted as together they raised Sutherland into the old saddle. The sergeant's head swam with an inky blackness, and behind his eyelids swirled a cascade of shooting stars. But he managed to push through the faintness—tasting the bile over the extent of his tongue.

“I got a message to take to General Gibbon,” Sutherland explained when his eyes opened at last. “Gotta get to him … afore he gets to the Nez Perce “

Sergeant Oliver Sutherland … once known as Sean Dennis Georghegan, now studied that length of rope as the knot came untied and the settler stepped back against the fence.

But—for some reason this time the pony did not fling itself about wildly. It fought the bit as he yanked its head to the left but it obediently lurched into motion when the sergeant gently tapped his brass spurs into its flanks.

“I was chose for this mission,” Sutherland proudly declared to the civilian as he rode out of the yard for the Bitterroot Trail. “So … it's up to me.”

He grimaced in pain as every hammering step felt like a cold blast of agony from his tailbone all the way up to the crown of his skull. Yanking up a generous dose of double-riveted courage from some secret well, the sergeant pushed on up the valley, the Bitterroot and Sapphire mountain ranges looming higher and higher, closer, too.

And him sittin' on busted j'ints, blackened with a Welsh miner's crop of bruises, perched on top of the most unlikely of trail horses he 'd ever dared to ride!

From time to time, Sutherland clenched his eyes shut and reminded himself, muttering under his breath, “It … it's up to me. G-gotta find Gibbon's men afore they lay into that camp of murderin' hostiles.”