Lay the Mountains Low (71 page)

“That bunch of spavined cayuses are all sick and sore-mouthed, just plain used-up comin' over the Lolo!” the civilian yelped to Gibbon.

“I recommend that you file a complaint with Captain Rawn once the two of you return to the valley after we have subdued these predators, Mr. Lockwood.” Gibbon brushed aside the vandalism he saw as a minor irritant when compared to the larger goal of stopping murderers, rapists, and thieves. “State the dollar amount of your loss, and I'm sure the Indian Bureau will consider your motion for recompense.”

It was here that the volunteers held a heated argument among themselves on whether to go on or not, because they were low on provisions and many thought it better to return to their homes.

“Gather your volunteers,” the colonel told Catlin and Humble. “I'll speak to them myself.”

Minutes later when he stepped before the civilians, Gibbon said, “I want to assure you men that my soldiers will share their supplies with you, down to the last ration.”

That got some of the heads nodding, a little of the gray worry draining from the faces. Gibbon continued, “And another thing I know I can assure you: We can give you a fight with these Nez Perces.”

That singular remark elicited the first cheers and boisterous displays of the march, arising not only among the civilians but from all his soldiers as well.

“I plan to put these Nez Perces afoot,” Gibbon explained as the crowd quieted. “So one last thing I can promise you civilians—-you'll have all of the hostiles' ponies you can capture.”

Setting off from that brief halt, Fort Shaw post guide H. S. Bostwick and local Joe Blodgett led them up toward the low saddle that would eventually carry them over to Ross's Hole.
*
On their rumbling journey up the twisting, torturous switchbacks in those wagons Gibbon and Kirk-endall had commandeered from Missoula City civilians, the colonel and his men were suddenly struck with how the Nez Perce trail up the mountainside lacked a lot of those scars made by travois poles. Indeed, what they had been seeing at each of the enemy's camping grounds over the past two days was that the women weren't pulling along many drags burdened with heavy loads. Instead, the wide areas stripped of trees surrounding each new campground showed that the squaws were cutting down saplings and some lodgepole pine, leaving those temporary poles standing when they moved on come morning.

In the Hole, the colonel called “Captain” John Humble aside, asking him to take some of his locals and scout ahead.

“Scout how far ahead?” Humble sounded dubious.

“As far as is necessary to locate the enemy,” Gibbon explained. “When you find them, engage and delay the village until I can catch up with my men.”

Humble didn't give it much consideration. He wagged his head. “Don't think it's a good idea, General. Too damned risky.”

“You're refusing to go?”

Humble hemmed and hawed, then said, “I'll supply four or five men, and you can furnish the same number of your soldiers. We can scout for the village, then send back a man to tell you where we've found them.”

Gibbon was startled. “But you won't engage them, won't hold them till I can catch up with the rest of this command?”

“No, General,” Humble eventually admitted. “I refuse to imperil my men on any such risky adventure.”

Fuming, the colonel asked, “Do all your men feel the way you do, Mr. Humble?”

“They elected me as their leader, so I'm speaking for 'em—”

“Let's go have a talk with your … your outfit,” Gibbon interrupted, turning aside.

He stomped over to the seventy-plus civilians who all got to their feet as the officer approached. Quickly he told the citizens of the conversation he just had about the scouting mission.

“I've been told you men would refuse to be part of such an important scout to find and hold down the enemy.”

“General?” Myron Lockwood, the rancher whose house had been looted and stock stolen from his pastures, took a step forward, his eyes glowing with a fierce anger. It was clear he had undergone a change of heart. “I demand to see the color of the feller's hair who refused to go.”

Before Gibbon had a chance to speak, John Humble stepped out from behind the colonel to say, “Mr. Lock-wood, you better look at my hair. I am that man! If you choose to get into a scrap with those Indians, you will damn well know you have been somewhere!”

“It was you, Humble?” Lockwood took another step toward the man, his hands clenching.

Gibbon quickly moved in front of Humble. “Now's the time for all you men to decide on your own, or together, if you will continue with this army until we run the Nez Perce into the ground.”

Those first moments were deathly quiet. Then Humble shuffled off to his horse tied nearby. Slowly, close to forty more civilians wordlessly went to their animals, too.

“Mr. Humble?”

The civilian leader turned before he climbed into the
stirrup. “This is as far as I propose to go with your army, General. I am not out to fight women and children.” Immediately turning and rising to the saddle, Humble snubbed up his reins and concluded, “I am going home now. Any of you who want to come with me are welcome on the ride back to the Bitterroot. And those of my company who want to go on can throw in with Captain Catlin there.”

For a few moments Gibbon watched Humble nervously shift in his saddle. When the man was sure no one else was about to join him, he turned and rode away, leading those forty-some for home.

The colonel waited a minute more, then turned to the thirty-five volunteers who would forge on. He sighed, “Let's get on the move.”

As twilight deepened that evening of the seventh, making the narrow trail even more difficult to follow, the colonel ordered that camp be made there and then, just short of the summit of the divide. The site offered the men and stock no water to speak of.

“From the odometer I attached to a wheel on one of the wagons,” Gibbon confided to Lieutenant James Bradley and the other officers, “it appears the hostiles are moving at a leisurely pace: no more than twelve to fourteen miles each day at the most.”

“It won't take us long to overhaul them at the rate we're covering ground, sir,” Bradley declared.

Gibbon looked at his most trusted lieutenant. “I intend to have this column march at least twice that distance every day from here on out until we catch up to the village. If my calculations are correct, we should accomplish that in as many as four days, perhaps no more than three at the most.”

“From the summit of the pass ahead,” Bradley explained, “we should be able to determine if the Nez Perce have turned south and are making for their homeland beyond the Salmon River Mountains in Idaho—or if they've turned east to the buffalo plains, where they repeatedly told the settlers they were headed.”

Gibbon asked, “What's your instincts tell you they're going to do, Mr. Bradley?”

The lieutenant pointed toward the top of the divide. “Colonel—I'll bank a month's pay that Joseph and White Bird will take their families south and skedaddle for those mountains, where we'll have to pay the devil to ever get them out.”

 

*
In his
Tough Trip Through Paradise,
frontiersman Andrew Garcia explained Gibbon's uneasiness: “One side of the Bitter Root valley was set-tied mostly by Missourians. The other side … mostly by Georgeians. So in all this bunch of Jeff Davis's Orphans, it could not be expected that their Civil War record, from a union man's point of view, was good.”

*
”Sleeping Child” in Flathead.

*
Approximately four miles south of present-day Darby, Montana.

*
Named for Alexander Ross (of the British Hudson's Bay Company of Adventurers), who first came here to trade with the Indians in the early days of the fur trade.

W
A
-W
A
-M
AI
-K
HAL
, 1877

I
T INFURIATED LOOKING GLASS THAT THESE OTHER CHIEFS
should argue with him!

Who were they to carp and snipe at him anyway?

Hadn't they stirred up a hornets' nest all on their own—not listening to him from the very beginning of the troubles? Hadn't he told them they should do as he always had done: Simply stay out of the white man's way?

But when they went ahead with their foolish war, it had been like a kettle of bone soup suspended over a fire grown too hot—it boiled over, scalding Looking Glass's people, too, even though they had done everything they could to stay out of a war started by those who had no experience with war.

Looking Glass knew about war.

But these other chiefs who criticized him? Why, not one of them had fought against the mighty Blackfeet, or the Lakota on the plains of Montana Territory! Not like him, Rainbow, and Five Wounds—experienced war chiefs who regularly traveled to the buffalo country, where they would find themselves squarely in a disputed land, that country where the
E-sue-gha
held forth against stronger, more numerous tribes. No, none of these petty men arguing with him now knew anything of war!

But for some reason they prattled on like they knew everything better than Looking Glass.

Meopkowit! They are fools
, he thought as he listened. Wasn't he the one who had led them to that victory after two days on the Clearwater? Wasn't he the one who had held forth and convinced the Non-Treaty bands they should leave Idaho country until the troubles cooled down? Wasn't he the chief who had ordered the raids on Kamiah and that
scouting party along their back trail to delay the Treaty band traitors who were scouting for the
suapies
?

And wasn't Looking Glass the supreme chief who had toyed with the little soldier chief at the log barricades while they made ready to slip around the soldiers and Shadows in a maneuver of such genius that tribal historians would be singing his praises for generations to come?

In the end, wasn't it Looking Glass alone who was responsible for bringing the
Nee-Me-Poo
to the
Iskumtselalik Pah
, this Place of the Ground Squirrels,
*
this afternoon, a beautiful campsite where the People could rest themselves and their horses for a few days,
**
cut lodgepoles, and refresh their spirits before moving on to the buffalo country?

Why did these men of so little courage suddenly screw up enough bravery to dare ask that scouts be sent on their back trail now that they were nearing the western edge of buffalo country? To send back a party of young men simply to assure they were not being followed might well open the way for more stupid, foolish depredations against the settlers in the Bitterroot valley—perhaps even the thoughtless killing of any Shadows those scouts might run across. No, Looking Glass was still fuming at
Toohoolhoolzote's
young vandals for what they had done to break his word to the white men. He refused to send back any scouts.

“Here we are safe!” he roared back at the
tewat,
Pile of Clouds. “That little chief and his few walking soldiers up at Missoula City are not foolish enough to follow us and make trouble now!”

Looking Glass knew only too well how this respected shaman's premonitions were valued. Pile of Clouds might
well start a mindless stampede; then nothing would stop them. So he sneered a little at the taller, younger man. “Maybe you are afraid of those fools we cowered and shamed at the log-and-hole fort?”
*

“I am not afraid of any Shadow we passed to reach this place,” Pile of Clouds answered defensively. “I am only afraid of—”

“Of
what?”
Looking Glass demanded, smelling the scent of blood from his adversary.

The
tewat
sighed. “I am only afraid of those white men I
cannot see.”

Looking Glass glanced around the crowd, quickly studying the faces of the other leaders; then his eyes narrowed on Pile of Clouds once more. “If you are so frightened, perhaps you should make a
tewat
or chief out of one of your brave fighting men. Then I would have no doubts that I am supported as we take our families into the land of the
E-sue-gha
.”

Pile of Clouds blanched at the chief's slur on his courage. “When did you start turning your nose up at another man's medicine?”

Looking Glass scoffed at that transparent boast, “M-medicine?”

“My medicine has told me—not once, but twice!” the shaman asserted, waving his arm back up the hillside they had just descended. “Death is behind us! I am certain of that. We must hurry—there is no time to cut lodgepoles here. We must hurry away!”

Before Looking Glass could respond, even the elderly White Bird spoke of his doubts. “Why do you allow the women time here so they can drag lodgepoles from this place, Looking Glass? We should be hurrying away without lodgepoles!”