Lay the Mountains Low (83 page)

A
UGUST
9, 1877

H
ENRY BUCK HAD BEEN WITH CAPTAIN RAWN AT THAT
barricade the newspapers in the region had already christened Fort Fizzle. Later he and his two brothers had watched the great Nez Perce village drag its horse herd past Fort Owen and go into camp, then mosey into Stevensville the following day for some trading—flour and cloth were all the Buck brothers would sell at their store, even though other merchants had traded whiskey and cartridges.

Well, now them chickens was coming home to roost!

Following in the wake of the Nez Perce, this Colonel Gibbon had taken his pitifully small bunch of soldiers and licked out after the Indians. When the valley's leading citizens issued a call for volunteers, forming militia companies of their own, Henry Buck offered his services to John Catlin of Stevensville. Their bunch caught up with Gibbon's men just shy of Ross's Hole—more than half turning back for home with “Captain” Humble, while the rest ended up pushing over the divide in the advance with Lieutenant Bradley to find this enemy camp.

That march seemed so damned long ago now—thinking how them warriors drank up all that whiskey, every last one of them redskins wearing a full cartridge belt around his waist, the whole of this foolishness made possible by those traders … more correct to call them
traitors,
Henry Buck brooded the moment Lieutenant Bradley's charge faltered at the far northern end of the village, positioned at the extreme left of Gibbon's line.

Not one of the men, soldier or civilian, had been told to ask any mercy of, or to give any mercy to, this enemy that had blazed a wide swath of murderous destruction through central Idaho. Now the time had come for those Injuns to
pay the piper, the officers had told their men in those last hours before the attack.

“When you get within firing range of the village,” explained one of the cavalry sergeants who had crawled over from Bradley's company to relay the message to the volunteers, “fire low into the tepees. That'll scare the bejesus out of 'em, and kill a bunch, too.” Then the trooper paused a moment before adding, “The general, Gibbon I mean—ain't said it right out … but we all been told he don't want no prisoners.”

Some of Catlin's men laughed at that, buoyed up by bravado and feeling this would be a quick, easy fight as they waited restlessly to start the advance.

Then that old man had to show up on his horse and all hell busted loose. Catlin finally barked the order for a half-dozen of them to fire. The ball was opened and Bradley led the whole outfit toward the north end of the camp … where things stalled and turned ugly.

“Bradley's dead!”

Another claimed, “Shot in the head!”

And by then, there were a couple of dozen warriors with carbines—not just those old muzzleloaders but good repeaters probably bought off some low-minded trader, if not taken off some white man they'd killed. Those warriors had that north end of things snarled up and bogged down just across the creek. Even before the civilians and soldiers got anywhere close to the village.

Natural was it that those men around Henry Buck drifted to the right, making for the two companies already pressing against the village and having a hot time of it: Hell, so hot a time that Gibbon hadn't held any companies in reserve but ended up throwing every man right into the fray as soon as their advance stalled, his advance moving slower than he had a liking for.

“Give it to 'em!” shouted one of the officers in those companies at the center of the line, prodding his soldiers forward. “Push 'em! Push 'em hard now!”

A sergeant was bellowing, “Shoot low! Shoot low! Into the lodges, boys!”

Henry had levered another round into the chamber of his Winchester carbine and was preparing to fire at a group of warriors making from right to left, frog-hopping from lodge to lodge, when he suddenly realized they weren't warriors at all. A small knot of women and children, all of them running hunched over, arms looped protectively over the little ones.

He gulped a deep breath, glad he hadn't fired—then blinked his eyes, startled.

Right there in the midst of those women and children was a blond woman!
*
Her waist-length honey-colored hair whipped this way and that. There was no mistaking its color among those squaws and children. She glanced Henry's way, gazing at those soldiers and civilians they were racing past; then she was gone behind another lodge.

“Did you see that?” he asked, turning quickly to the man on his right.

Tom Sherrill was struggling over the action of his rifle, intent on the weapon he held in his hands. “See what, goddammit?”

“N-nothing,” Henry murmured and looked back at those lodges where she had disappeared, the open ground between him and the camp littered with a clutter of fog and a little gunsmoke.

Suddenly he caught a glimpse of the group as it reappeared for an instant among more of the stacks of lodgepoles and the last few tepees at the far northern end of the village … but he never saw the honey-haired woman again.

Squeezing his eyes shut, then opening them quickly, Henry Buck wondered what the hell a white woman was doing with all them squaws—and dressed just like them, too.

“Give 'em hell, boys!” an officer bawled near his shoulder, moving up behind the volunteers.

“You heard 'im!” Catlin cheered. “Shoot anything what moves afore it shoots you!”

Henry Buck brought that carbine to his shoulder, sighting down the barrel, looking for a target as they continued for the creek bank.

Then he glanced one last time between those northernmost lodges where she had disappeared. Wondering if he really had seen her at all.

H
IS
uncle was Joseph, chief of the
Wallamwatkin
band from the
Wallowa
Valley.
Ollokot,
the great war chief of their people, was his other uncle.

But he wasn't old enough to talk in council or to become a fighting man—not yet he wasn't. Because
Suhm-Keen
was barely ten summers old. He lived with his parents and his father's parents in a small lodge after leaving their old homes west of the mountains to come to the buffalo country. Here at the Place of the Ground Squirrels, their lodge stood in the midst of those erected at the far southern end of camp.

As had been his grandfather's practice for many years now, early every morning, the old man would leave to go check on the horses or walk off by himself to watch the sun come up. That's when his grandmother,
Chee-Nah,
would softly whisper for
Suhm-Keen
to come join her beneath her buffalo robe, where he would drift back to sleep beside her warmth.

Many rifleshots had startled him just as he was drifting back to sleep that morning, curled against her soft bulk. Many horses tied outside the lodges were calling out, neighing in fear. His father grabbed up his rifle and dived out of the door, closely followed by his mother. Now the boy was alone with
Chee-Nah
in the shattered grayness of that dawn yet unborn.

“Grandmother!” he cried when she brushed by his shoulder and started for the door.

“I must see for myself,” she said, then knelt at the opening
and peered out as bullets came thick, like summer hail rattling on the taut hides.

Chee-Nah
had no sooner settled to her haunches when she was driven back into the darkness near the firepit, a soft whimper escaping from her throat.

“You are hurt!” he cried, frightened, as he vaulted to her.

Although blood streamed from the wound in her left shoulder, the old woman firmly grabbed hold of his bare arm and pushed him toward the side of the lodge, where she quickly jabbed a knife through the pliant, fog-dampened buffalo hide.

“Get out,
Suhm-Keenr
she ordered. “Run to the trees and hide! Run as fast as you can!”

As he stood frozen, staring at the blood oozing from her wound, his grandmother had to nudge him one more time before he turned and did as she instructed. Stretching apart the sides of that slit, he jumped free of the lodge and started running, barefoot and naked but for his little breechclout.

He dived to the left out of a horse's way, then scrambled to the right as two fighting men sprinted around a lodge, headed for the gunfire that was rising steadily, grown almost deafening … except for that pounding of his heart. Already there were other children, some younger than
Suhm-Keen,
some older, too, all dashing for the brush on the south where the low plateau bordered the valley. Bullets clipped the branches and rustled leaves on either side of him as he clawed his way up the slope—more frightened than he had ever been.

As the sun had gone down yesterday, he and some other boys had been playing the stick game near a large clump of brush beside the creek. With the coming of darkness, they lit a small fire for light and warmth and continued to play happily. That was when one of his friends noticed two men stepping out of the nearby brush. Both were wrapped in gray blankets up to their noses, not Indian blankets at all.
Suhm-Keen
looked close and could see the men were not Indian. Frightened, the boys ran away.

But rather than alarm the adults, one of the older youngsters said, “Leave it be. Our parents and the chiefs know we are being watched by spies. Leave it be.”

“That's right,” another boy said. “Awhile ago I saw a Shadow on horseback cross the canyon on the other side of the creek. No one was excited when they talked about it. Some of the adults think he must be a spy. But other men think he is a miner, working his mine somewhere close by. He might have quarreled with other miners and be looking for a new place to stay away from the other Shadows.”

When the group came back to their little fire later, the strangers were gone—as if they never had been there. The boys returned to their play, and those two spies were quickly and completely forgotten.

Until now. What if they had reported their news to the chiefs? he wondered. Would it have made any difference? Would the headmen have put out guards to watch for soldiers?

As he fled,
Suhrn-Keen
found a depression in the ground not too far from the lodges and sank to his belly in it. Peering over the edge, the boy had watched the madness for the longest time when his attention was caught by one of the
suapies
who limped behind one of the lodges and settled against the buffalo-hide cover with a loud grunt. He took something large and flat from inside his blue shirt, then removed a small twig from somewhere else in his shirt. The youngster was mesmerized, watching the small soldier scratch on the thin, flat object with that twig
*
while the battle raged on around him.

Not a lot of time passed before the
suapie
was hit by a
bullet. His hands flew up—the flat white object flying one way, the small twig sailing in another.
Suhm-Keen
was even more astounded as he watched the white object slowly become many, all of them gradually scudding across the ground like the dance of swirling feathers with each gust of breeze.

Suddenly he heard a man's loud voice booming nearby.

“Soldiers are right on us! They are now in our camp! Get away somewhere or you will be killed!”

Breathless, but afraid to stop until he had scrambled to the top,
Suhm-Keen
raced to the base of the plateau and started climbing to the rim. Only then did he turn to glance over his shoulder, surprised to find so many other children right behind him, scratching up the side of the ridge to join him. Then he peered back at the village. Hard as he looked, he could not find his parent's lodge at first, what with the gunsmoke, people scrambling here and there, and the dense ground fog.

He squatted on the ripi of the plateau with the other children, watching, listening to the battle as the white-skinned
suapies
entered the village, spreading out to search the lodges….

He managed not to cry until he saw the soldiers start to burn the first of those lodges. That's when
Suhm-Keen
buried his face in his arms, realizing that first one had started to smoke, a greasy black tendril stretching to the sky.

It was the lodge where his grandmother lay bleeding.

A
T
this side of camp where the fiercest fight was raging, Yellow Wolf watched many things that he was certain would stay burned in his memory for as long as he lived.

Somehow through the noisy din of battle he nonetheless heard the cries of a small infant. Turning in a squat to peer over his shoulder, he spotted the tiny child sobbing next to the body of its mother. The woman lay sprawled, blood on her leg and belly—unmoving and clearly dead. Then there was a rush of blurred motion, and a knot of soldiers appeared around the side of a lodge, yelling very loudly. Out
of the lodge crouched an old woman, her hands held out in supplication. Yellow Wolf was afraid she was about to be shot….