Lay the Mountains Low (80 page)

“This way!” his mother ordered, unable to pull anything more about her in the instant panic than a leather skirt that she had knotted at her waist. Gripping her oldest son's elbow in one hand, she dragged About Asleep's younger brother along by the wrist while the tiny child sobbed in confusion and fear, bullets striking the lodges all about them, splintering poles.

Together now, the five women and two boys dashed right over the lip of the cutbank and into the shockingly cold water,
the leap of each one dispersing a little more of that thick fog clinging to the rippled surface of the creek.

One of the older women pointed out a different direction, saying, “We must take cover beneath those willow!”

Without a word of argument, the seven began wading into the deeper part of the creek, struggling over the slippery rocks and hidden holes to reach the west bank where they could hide beneath the lush overhanging branches.

Just as they were reaching the leafy cover, strange voices speaking the Shadow tongue began crying out both up- and downstream from them. This close to cover, the women did not have a chance to get beneath the long, bobbing branches before three
suapies
appeared, suddenly parting the brush to stand almost directly above the seven cowering
Nee-Me-Poo.

Unable to comprehend that what he was watching could actually be real, About Asleep saw the first bullet strike the woman beside his mother. She whimpered as if an infant, with that faint cheep of a newborn sage chick when she slipped beneath the water.

The other four women cried hideously at the sight, both in anger and in panic as they bent to scoop her from the water that swirled in this deep eddy, soaking those who wore any covering to their armpits.

A second of the soldier guns fired. About Asleep's own mother jerked, back arching violently; then she eased down into the water, slowly turning around on the surface, her eyes wide but already lifeless.

About Asleep shrieked in terror, his younger brother, too, their voices joining those of the three gray-headed women.

With another gunshot, About Asleep felt the burn along his upper arm, heard the big bullet
ploosh
into the water beside him.

“Come on!” he screamed to his brother, waving desperately for the women to follow before he grabbed the youngster with his other hand.

But the women were not as quick as the youngsters.
While About Asleep and his brother lunged out of the water to grab a soldier's ankle, vainly attempting to upset him, the women were paralyzed in fear.

The young soldier easily kicked himself free, then wheeled away into the brush, crying for his companions. About Asleep realized the two of them would never have a better chance of escape.

“Get out of the water!” he ordered his younger brother.

Dragging himself onto the grassy bank among the thickest growth of the willow, About Asleep reached out and pulled his brother into the brush.

Four soldiers suddenly burst through the thick vegetation, their rifles already pointing down at the older women in the creek. Even though those women waved their arms and pleaded for mercy, the bullets erupted from the guns in a fury—driving the victims back, back, back until they slipped lifeless beneath the surface turned white with angry foam, tinged red with the blood of their many wounds.

“Run!” About Asleep shouted at his brother, pushing the youth ahead of him into the leafy brush that whipped and cut and lashed their naked bodies.

Yet About Asleep did not feel the mere touch of a single branch or suffer the clawing of any of the sharp alder limbs.

To stay alive, they had to run far, far from this killing place.

C
ORPORAL
Charles N. Loynes quickly looked left, then right. Every other soldier was too consumed with something else to notice what the young corporal had just witnessed, disbelieving. No one else saw it … so maybe those women weren't really there.

Loynes blinked his eyes, rubbed them with the heel of his left hand, and looked again.

But there they were, four Nez Perce squaws sliding that buffalo robe over their heads once they had slipped over the creek bank and all were in the water.

Moments ago he had breathlessly watched the four, admiring their courage and amazed at their audacity, as the
side of a lodge was split open with a huge butcher knife and the women popped out of that long slit like peas from a crisp pod, dashing for the edge of the stream, one of them dragging a hairy buffalo hide behind her—the sort he knew these Nez Perce curled up in to sleep. Every few seconds Loynes had looked left and right to check if any other soldier in his I Company, even one of the civilians, had spotted what he was watching.

Somehow the four had managed to dash through the fog and gunsmoke unnoticed by anyone but the corporal, who found himself somehow separated from the rest of his unit at this moment—Captain Rawn's own company, men who had watched these same Nez Perce skip right around them on the Lolo.
They're a tricky bunch, these Injuns!

He immediately scolded himself for not inspecting those women more closely. Since both the bucks and squaws wore their unbound hair long and loose, it was hard for him to remember if all of the four truly were women. Maybe there was a fighting man or two among them. Just fine that the women should make a run of it—but if one or more happened to be a warrior with blood on his hands, then Loynes wouldn't be doing his job as a soldier to clean up this village of rapists, thieves, and murderers. A warrior who would escape death today could well be a warrior who would kill more soldiers, pillage more settler homes, and shame more white women with his evil somewhere on down the line.

With their buffalo robe unfurled upon the surface of the creek he had lost all chance to tell buck from squaw. But he immediately knew how to get himself a good look at the four: Loynes figured he would shoot at the floating robe while the four started downstream past the middle part of the enemy camp.

“What the bloody hell you shootin' at down there, Cawpril?” a voice demanded just after Loynes had pulled the trigger for the first time, standing on the bank overlooking the hide.

“Look!” he exclaimed as Sergeant Michael Hogan
stomped over to his elbow and peered at the creek, too. “Watch that robe—there's four of 'em under it!”

“Four?” the sergeant boomed, bringing up his Long-Tom. “Warriors?”

“I think some of 'em are,” Loynes answered with a swallow, noticing the edge of the robe rising slightly from the surface of the water as if one of the four were peeking out from under the hide. “Lookee there—them bucks is sneaking in a breath of air!”

“Lemme shoot one of them red bastards when he pops up for a breath,” the sergeant growled, shoving his Springfield into the crook of his shoulder.

“I get another shot after you, Sarge.”

One after the other, the two soldiers swapped shots at the floating buffalo hide, their bullets piercing the robe here, then there. One time Loynes caught a glimpse of a hand, another time a cheek, and once he saw an eye peer beneath the dark blot of shadow before the robe was dropped onto the surface again. Inching slowly along the brushy bank, both sergeant and corporal followed the floating robe, reloading while they kept a watchful eye locked on the hide—strangely oblivious to the terrible fight raging behind them in the Nez Perce camp.

One at a time, the bodies of the Indians they had killed rose to the surface at the edge of the robe, twisted and rolled gently in the current, then bobbed slowly downstream … until there were no more to shoot' and the hide finally swerved about and became ensnared on some overhanging willow—now that no one controlled its movements.

“Four more bucks won't be cutting no shakes no more!” Sergeant Hogan exclaimed, immensely proud of himself.

Loynes smiled wanly. “Four … four more. That's right, Sarge.”

“Won't be jumping no more white women now, Cawpril.”

“No, the four bastards gonna feed the coyotes now,” Loynes replied, remembering how that eye had peered out at him.

Hogan pounded him on the shoulder. “You helped me make 'em good Injuns!”

The corporal nodded. “Yeah, Sarge. We made all of 'em good Injuns!”

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

S
TRUCK IN THE HEAD BY A
SUAPIE
BULLET,
HUSIS OWYEEN
had no idea how long he had lain there, stunned and unable to move, while more wayward bullets hit both his son and wife near their lodge at the southern end of the village.

His muscles not heeding his desperate cries, Wounded Head cursed the spirits for dealing him such an agonizing blow as this—not only having to watch his beloved family die right before his eyes but being unable to go help them. Forced to listen to the boy's whimpers as the child struggled again and again to rise, Wounded Head could see how his son couldn't roll this way or that because of his broken hips.

And Wounded Head was forced to watch the way his wife's hand clawed at the grass at her side for the longest time. It was the only part of her body that moved, all she could do, so badly wounded through the chest was she.

Slowly, with excruciating discomfort, he sensed feeling beginning to return to his body, an icy tingle eventually creeping down his legs, worming its way out through both arms, until all his limbs finally did as he willed them.

Wounded Head sat up in the midst of that yelling and gunfire, the hammer of running feet and the whine of bullets.

“Father!”

Instantly he knew what he must do.

Rocking onto his feet unsteadily, running in a lumbering crouch, Wounded Head clambered toward his son. He paused to scoop the boy's bloody body into his arms, then wheeled about and made for a patch of thick willow on the creekbank. Inside that modest cover, he laid his son upon the ground.

“I'm going back for your mother” And he touched his son's cheek, his fingertips wet with the boy's blood.

The moment he reached
Penahwenonmi's
side, Wounded Head stretched out upon the ground beside her—the better to appear wounded or dead himself. Carefully he reached out and rolled Helping Another onto her back. A flood of relief washed through him when his wife's eyes fluttered open.

“Th-the boy?”

“He should live,” Wounded Head whispered.

“Take good care of him … always,” she said in a raspy voice pierced with much pain.

“I'm taking you to him now,” he vowed.

“No!” she whimpered, tears bubbling from her clenched eyelids. “It hurts too much.”

“If I leave you here, surely you will die,” he said with a touch of anger at her refusal. “Or the soldiers will find and kill you, maybe even shame you with their lusts before they put a bullet in your head.”

Only her eyes moved as she peered at him, each of them with a cheek resting on the ground, their faces only inches apart, noticing his head wound. “You are hurt, too.”

“I'm taking you now,” he said suddenly, scrambling up to a kneeling position, looping his hands beneath her shoulders, and gripping her armpits.

Whirling her around despite her shrill wail of pain, Wounded Head started backward in an ungainly wobble, making for the brush where he had secreted their son. All around them, on both sides of the creek, the booming of guns and the shouts of fighting men failed to drown out the screeching of those terrified women and children who were unable to escape the village before the soldiers were upon them.

Not far to his left stood the maternity lodge.

Wounded Head wondered if any young mother would still be in there, if one of the aged midwives remained with her. Forced by nature to be giving birth at this hour of travail and horror. It could not be a good omen for the child.

In heartbeats he got his wife inside the concealing brush with the boy. She held out an arm as he gently slid the boy across the blood-soaked grass, nestling their son against his mother.

“Stay here until I—”

“Don't go!” she whimpered in a gush.

“There is a fight,” Wounded Head said as he bent over her and kissed her damp cheek. “If the Creator decides that I am to come back for you, I will return when the fighting is over.”

“Father?”

“I brought you both here where you will be safe,” he told the boy. “And when you cry, do not cry out loud so those soldiers will find you like hungry wolves sneaking through the willow. Bite down on your teeth so they do not hear you cry. I will come back for you when this fight is done.”

In a matter of a few breaths he was back beside his lodge, stabbing a slit through the side of the spongy dewsoaked hides. Diving inside, he quickly gathered his soldier rifle and cartridge belt taken from the
suapie
he had killed at the
Lahmotta
fight back in the season of
Hillal.
While he was buckling the belt around his waist, he heard a familiar voice sing out a brave-heart song just beyond the lodge cover—the great warrior Rainbow, calling for the men to rally around him.