Lay the Mountains Low (78 page)

But when she turned back to her husband,
Wahlitits
was flat on his back, sprawled there near the log he could have taken cover behind, right in front of their lodge.
*

Her heart froze a moment as she gazed down at him—struck with the fact that he looked so much the way she had seen him just moments ago: lying so still and unmoving on his back, eyes wide open and staring right up at the sky….

Moving on instinct, she lunged across his body, snatching up the carbine he had dropped. Without thinking of what to do, she pressed the weapon against her shoulder, laying her cheek along the stock as she had always seen him do—then found the soldier at the end of the barrel.

The same
suapie
who had killed Shore Crossing.

She pulled the trigger, surprised with the force of the kick against her shoulder as the carbine bucked upward in the air.

Knowing she had to lever another fresh cartridge into the weapon for it to fire another time, she shoved the lever downward, watching the hot, empty casing come spinning out of the action—immediately feeling a tongue of fire course through her upper chest.

Making her feel so heavy she didn't think she could breathe.

Struggling to draw in a breath as she lurched to the side, she felt a second bullet smack into her body, just below her left breast. A third, at the base of her throat. It spun her around violently, flinging her off her feet.

Where she landed, she could almost reach out and touch
Wahlitits
with her fingertips.

It was the greatest struggle of her life—but one that the wife of a great warrior had to make, she told herself with every inch she dragged herself across the grass grown soggy with their blood.

Until she found herself at his side, peered into his wide,
staring, glassy eyes one last time—then collapsed across his body … her final thought that the bloodline of Eagle Robe and
Wahlitits
was no more.

“G
ET
under that buffalo robe and stay there!”

He could tell by the look in his father's eyes that he meant for his son to obey. All little Red Wolf could do was nod his head. No words would come out, he was so frightened.

Although he was tall for his age, this was only his sixth summer. And he was scared to his core. Never had Red Wolf heard such a clatter of gunfire, all the screaming of the women, so much yelling from the men as they darted here and there past his family's small lodge.

“
Suapies!
They have come to kill us!” a voice screamed.

Another warned, “
Suapies
in the river!”

From those first loud shots that brought the whole family awake, Red Wolf looked to others to tell him what to do. First to his mother—but she was busy dragging his younger sister out of the blankets, where the girl had been sleeping beside Red Wolf after the late night of dancing and singing that had followed a long summer day of swimming and watching the young men race their ponies on the bench near camp. His little sister clung to their mother like a plump deer tick not yet ready to drop off its host.

“What of Red Wolf?” his father had asked as he reached the door of their lodge and stopped.

“I cannot take him, too,” his mother said. “He would have to hold my hand.”

That's when his father dived back into the lodge, knelt, and dragged up the buffalo robe over his six-year-old son. “Stay here until one of us comes back for you. No matter what. Stay under that robe!”

It went dark. He listened as his father dashed away, swallowed by the screams, the gunfire, the terror that had struck their village in the gray light of dawn.

“Do as your father says,” his mother's voice came to him
muffled by the robe. “One of us will be back for you very soon.”

“Good-bye, Red Wolf,” his little sister said through the robe.

He did not answer her as he carefully raised the edge of the buffalo hide and peered out at his mother's face one more time before she turned away and squatted through the doorway, that little girl clinging to her back.

The moment they disappeared from view, Red Wolf disobeyed his father and rolled toward the side of the lodge, raising up the edge of the sleeping robe, then tugging at the side of the buffalo hide so he could watch his family make their escape. He did not see his father at all but quickly found his mother racing toward the eastern plateau that stood several short arrow flights from the cluster of lodges.

Strange voices—unfamiliar words—snagged his attention, suddenly yanking his eyes to the left. Red Wolf spotted the first of the strangers standing in the creek: working their rifles, moving forward a few steps, aiming and shooting, then working at their rifles again before they would advance a few more steps.

That one clearly had to be aiming at his mother.

Quickly Red Wolf twisted his head to the right there beneath the edge of the lodgeskins—watching the bullet strike his sister in the back. Watching her spin away and fall, unable to hold onto their mother any longer.

Then he saw the red patch on his mother's bare back as well, the same blood-smeared hole she scratched at with her arm as she stumbled forward a few more steps after losing his sister. Watching his mother pitch onto her face—arms spread wide, legs tangled in each other. She did not move—

A lodgepole just above his head splintered.

On instinct he dropped the edge of the lodgeskins and quickly ducked back under the buffalo robe as his father and mother had instructed. He lay there in the deafening darkness, the suffocating sounds of death all around him—
screams of horses, cries of other children he had played with in the creek now possessed by the soldiers, the grunts of those struck by the white man bullets. Crackle of fractured lodgepoles above him as the bullets splintered new wood. Hot lead whining through the air, hissing through one side of the lodgeskins and hissing on out the other side.

He trembled in the darkness. Drawing his legs up fetally. Covering up both ears with his arms, Red Wolf began to cry. Silent sobs as he realized his mother and sister would never come back for him, even though they had promised. Knowing somehow that his father would never return, either. That he was already dead somewhere on that bank of the creek where a few of the first warriors had stepped out to confront the
suapies
emerging from the willows and fog still hugging the ground the way his sister had clung to their mother's back.

No one would be coming back for him now. Little Red Wolf's agonized sobs were drowned out in the darkness that embraced and cradled him.

 

*
Englishman Richard Devine.

*
Stake No. 10, Big Hole National Battlefield.

*
Stake No. 36, Big Hole National Battlefield—although Nez Perce testimony after the battle place the death of an officer wearing “braid and ornaments” at the nearby Stake No. 13.

A
UGUST
9, 1877

A
S THINGS TURNED OUT WHEN THEY INCHED DOWN TO THE
creek, the soldiers of William Logan's Company A had the farthest to go in reaching the village the moment those shots rang out.

They had been moving forward in perfect silence. A silence suddenly shattered.

For a heartbeat, the Irish-born captain wasn't certain what to do. He had heard Gibbon's aide-de-camp say the colonel would fire one shot—
one
shot would be his order to commence their three volleys followed by the rush into the enemy village.

But that had been more than one solitary shot.

Nonetheless, Logan could not deny that the battle had been enjoined. Not with that loud, unmistakable roar of voices all the way down the line that extended far to their left, a raucous cheer clear over to where Bradley led his horse soldiers and volunteers, too. Comba and Sanno were bellowing in the thick of it now. It seemed the whole line on their left had taken to yelling as they started forward.

“Volley-fire!” he reminded his company. “Three volleys—low! Fire low into the tepees! Ready … aim … fire!”

Although some men had instinctively jumped the gun and started for the village, with his loud bellow Logan yanked them to a halt. He ordered the second volley after a few seconds, watching the men palm down the trapdoors on their Springfields and thumb the heavy hammers back into position.

“Aim low! Ready!”

Ahead of them the Nez Perce were breaking from their lodges.

“Aim!”

They'd been caught by surprise. Ripped out of their beds at those first shots, half-clothed. Dazed and terrified, they scattered in half a thousand directions.

“Fire!”

More than fifteen rifles roared again.

“Reload for the third volley!” cried this solid, unflappable twenty-seven-year veteran of both the Mexican War and the rebellion of the Southern states, realizing his voice had risen in pitch. Probably in excitement, knowing that after the third volley his fourteen men and three officers would be pitching into the village.

This warmhearted Irishman well known for his rollicking sense of humor turned and peered momentarily into the camp. Amazed to see so many of the warriors already massing, appearing among the lodges, guns in their hands as they came forward to blunt Logan's attack. A few of the Nez Perce had already begun to kneel or drop to their bellies, carefully aiming their weapons at the fifteen men of Logan's A Company, Seventh U. S. Infantry.

He had to get his men into that camp, drive back those warriors, and put the Indians on the defensive—before the Nez Perce could muster enough fighting men to mount a counterattack.

“Ready!”

Suddenly he thought about his son-in-law, D Company's captain, Richard Comba, another good Irish-born soldier somewhere down the line to his right at this very moment. Regretting how just this past spring they'd both suffered the unexpected death of Logan's daughter, Anna, Comba's wife. And the baby, too. She was the captain's granddaughter, Anna's first child. Born sickly, the little thing hadn't lasted much longer than her mother after a hard and terrible labor.

Logan quickly stuffed his left hand in his pants pocket and fingered the rosary beads that had been his mainstay during those first tragic hours at Fort Shaw this past March. He gripped them tightly in his palm, the crucifix digging into his flesh—

“Aim …”

And as he said a prayer for his son-in-law, begging God to remember Comba now in battle before these screaming warriors—

“
Fire!

Captain William Logan turned right, then left, peering down his line. Some of the warriors had jumped over the bank into the creek at the extreme southern end of the village, attempting to take cover and return his company's fire from there. He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw a few women taking refuge there among the fighting men. Logan knew he would have to remind the men to watch for the women.

His company was out in the open now. They had the farthest to go before they punched to the far side of the creek and into the village. The farthest, by bloody damn.

But that was the sort of job the generals always gave to the Irish in this man's army. Cross the open ground where lesser men might shrink from duty. Close on the enemy no matter how they're throwing lead at you. Then seal the damned village tight.

“Reload, goddammit!” he hollered above the racket as they started taking a heavy fire. “Reload!”

On the bank just ahead of them a few young boys appeared with only knives in their hands—dashing headlong into his fifteen. The youngsters slashed, screaming, mouths open like deadly Os as the infantrymen clubbed them this way and that instead of wasting bullets on such small defenders.

“Don't shoot the women and the young!” he bawled. “Don't shoot the noncombatants!”

When most of his men had flipped open their trapdoors and the hot, smoking copper cases came spinning out of the chambers to land in the creek, only to stuff fat new shiny cartridges back down into the breeches, their captain knew the time had come to take the village.

He dragged the back of his hand beneath one end of his
grand, sweeping, gray-flecked mustache and gave his men their final order.

“Charge, you soldiers! Char—”

The bullet drove him off his feet with a deafening echo in his head.
*

Logan lay there on the damp grass, boots tangled in the willow, listening to all their feet pounding on the rocky cut-bank as his men carried out the last command he would ever give them.

Ah, now,
he thought as he opened his eyes slightly.
This truly is peace.

Tears slowly drained from Captain William Logan's eyes. There before him swam the face of his beloved Anna. Cradled in one arm was the newborn babe, every bit as lovely as Anna had been on her birthing day.

“Here,” Anna said in a whisper as she floated above him, stretching out her empty arm to him while brilliant light tunneled into eternity behind her, “let me help you along, Papa.”