Lay the Mountains Low (86 page)

His lip curled in instant fury. With his arms pinned behind him, the Shadow lashed out at that woman the only way he could, kicking her savagely in the leg with his muddy boot. She crumpled to the ground, clutching her shin and crying in pain as a warrior jumped from the crowd, shoving his gun against the white man's chest, and pulled the trigger. It was Yellow Wolf's cousin
Otskai.

“Why did you kill him?” Rattle on Blanket shrieked as his prisoner crumpled to the ground at his feet.

“We can't waste time-—we must kill him,”
Otskai
sneered, a big and powerfully muscular man. “No use to keep him alive. The difference is, had he been a woman, we would have saved him. Sent him home unhurt. Are not warriors to be fought and killed? Look around you! These babies, our children are killed! Were
they
warriors? These young girls, these young women you see dead all around
you. Were these young boys, these old men, were they warriors?”

“They were not warriors” Rattle on Blanket replied. “But does it make you brave to kill an unarmed man?”

“We
are the warriors!”
Otskai
snorted with scorn. “But these Shadows are not brave men—coming on us while we slept in our beds! And once we had a few rifles in our hands, these cowardly Shadows ran away to the hillside!”

“So must we become as evil as these white men?” Yellow Wolf demanded of his taller cousin.

Whereupon
Otskai
whirled on him, snarling, “My brother, tell me if these Shadows who came with the soldiers are our good friends from the Bitterroot? See how they traded with us for our gold—then sneaked behind us with the soldiers to rub us out. Our promise given in the Bitterroot was good and honorable … while their Lolo treaty was a lie made with two tongues! Why should any of us waste time saving this Shadow's life?”

The more Yellow Wolf thought about it, the more he found he could not argue with his cousin. Even though
Otskai
was impulsive and was well known to do the wrong thing at the wrong time, he could never be faulted for his bravery. He never hid from a fight.

At first Yellow Wolf had believed
Otskai'
s act one of crude and bloody impulsiveness, thinking Looking Glass was right—that the Shadow might have told them a little more news about how that “day after tomorrow soldier chief,” Cut-Off Arm, was following closely on their heels now.

But the more Yellow Wolf considered it … maybe they had already heard everything they needed to know to save themselves.

 

*
Later determined to be the soldier's Rice or trowel bayonet, which hung from the belt in a leather scabbard.

*
As best as historians can ascertain, this was Campbell Mitchell, civilian volunteer from Corvallis, Montana.

A
UGUST
9, 1877

BY TELEGRAPH

—

THE INDIANS.

—

More About the Indians.

HELENA, August 8.—W. J. McCormick, of Missoula, writes to Governor Potts on the 6th, as follows: A courier arrived from Howard at 6 o'clock this evening. He left Howard Saturday morning last; thinks Howard will camp near the summit between the Lolo and Clear-water to-night. He is distant about fifty miles from the mouth of the Lolo. The courier reports that Joseph, with over one-half of the fighting force has gone to the head of the Bitter-Root valley by the Elk City trail, and will form a junction with Looking Glass and White Bird near Ross Hole. He says Howard has 750 men, and 450 pack mules, and is moving forward as rapidly as possible. Advices from the upper Bitter-Root say the Indians will camp to-night in Ross Hole. Gibbon is following rapidly. Other advices say the Indians were still at Doolittle's sixteen miles above Corvallis, and Gibbon expects to strike them on the morning of the 7th, before they break camp. Couriers say the hostiles have Mrs. Manuel with them as the property of a petty chief called Cucasenilo. Her sad story is familiar.

J
OINING THOSE FIRST SOLDIERS AND CATLIN'S VOLUNTEERS
in flight, Henry Buck scrambled toward the point of timber that stretched down from the western slopes in a narrowing V, a small flat-topped promontory that jutted out from the mountainside, terminating just above the boggy slough they had struggled across in their retreat.

The Nez Perce horse herd was already gone—successfully driven off by a few mounted warriors. Which meant Gibbon had failed to put the hostiles afoot.

And now it looked damned good the army wouldn't end up destroying the village, either. While many of the lodgepole cones had been pulled over, only eight of the damp covers smoldered back there in the enemy camp.

Neither of those failures would have caused a man great consternation, at least to Buck's way of thinking. Henry was certain there wasn't a soldier or a civilian who would fault Gibbon for failing to capture the herd or to hold onto the village long enough to destroy the hostiles' homes and possessions. Not with the way the Nez Perce had surprised every last one of them by striking back with such fury.

So what stuck in Henry's craw so bad was the fact that Gibbon didn't make sure the warriors would give up when they were attacked.

As bullets hissed and whined about the retreating white men like acorns falling on a shake roof in autumn winds—smacking tree limbs and knocking leaves off the surrounding willow, even digging furrows into the ground at their feet or where they planted their hands whenever they stumbled in their race—it was plain as the sun rising at their backs that the Nez Perce had no intention of scooping up their survivors and fleeing the valley.

Isn't that what Indians are supposed to do?
his mind burned with the question.
To run away when attacked?

These
… these
red bastards aren't about to give up!

There was a good number of the warriors already on the slope, positioned in the timber, by the time the soldiers started clearing out of the village. That meant the whole of Gibbon's command suddenly found itself caught in a hot little cross fire, strung out in the bottomground between those warriors pushing out of the encampment itself and those warriors tidily ensconced on the western slope above the creek.

No men had a hotter time of it than Captain Charles C. Rawn's I Company, detailed to lead the retreat—which as
quickly became both confusing and terrifying to boot, with a little eye-to-eye and hand-to-hand fighting in the brush and tall willows as they vacated the village itself. Skirmishing for the contested ground with their firearms was so close that a few of the men were powder-burned by their enemy's weapons; a warrior's shirt was set on fire with a muzzle blast. Men on both sides fell noisily, calling out, beseeching their friends to help as the tide of battle moved past.

Then men who had started their retreat in two lines, back-to-back, quickly began to drift apart as the fighting grew intense. Ordered to bring out their dead and wounded, many of the soldiers merely stopped long enough to pick up a fallen comrade's rifle so it could be pitched into the deep water in their retreat and kept from falling into the enemy's hands.

With the death of A Company's Captain William Logan, command had fallen to First Lieutenant Charles A. Coolidge, who had begun this Nez Perce War by scouting part of the Lolo Trail. In Gibbon's retreat, Coolidge's men were assigned to close the file.

But just short of the boggy slough, Coolidge dropped before Rawn's advance had even reached the bottom of the hill—wounded through both thighs in the nose-to-nose skirmishing the embattled A Company encountered in covering the rear of the retreat. Once more the command of A Company and responsibility for covering their retreat to the timber was transferred, this time to Second Lieutenant Francis Woodbridge, newly turned twenty-four years old.

Under Gibbon's orders, once the base of the timbered point of land was reached by Rawn's advance, Woodbridge wheeled his men about and anchored them just above the creek—where they were to cover the retreat of the rest of the command scrambling up behind them. Spread out some three to five yards apart, wherever they could find a little cover on the hillside, Rawn's foot soldiers watched the other infantrymen and civilians stream through the wide gaps in their line while they continued to lay down a hot
covering fire, until the last man moving out of the slough had been accounted for. Only then did Captain Rawn cry out his order to about-face.

Needing no more prodding than that, I Company bolted to their feet and resumed their retreat up the slope behind the rest.

Henry Buck turned his head quickly, glancing over his shoulder as he made his climb into the timber, hand over foot, slipping and falling, then crabbing back into motion again. He thanked his lucky stars he wasn't one of the stragglers slow in getting out of the village when the red sonsabitches came flooding back in. By that time the aim of those warriors had become deadly. At every crack of a rifle, it seemed, one of the white men fell somewhere in the retreat. Most of the wounded, and even a few of the dead, were promptly scooped up by the wrists or ankles and dragged along—those bleeding and unable to get out on their own begged not to be left behind, terrified those warriors and squaws would get their hands on them.

Just inside the point of timber the first of the soldiers staggered to a breathless halt and started to regroup, many of Catlin's civilians among them. They still were far from being safe. Bullets snarled through the trees, smacking trunks and branches, whining in ricochet as the lead hornets slammed against exposed rocks protruding from the loose soil. Henry's eyes darted about. This spot was about as good as they were going to find on the side of this mountain.

He sucked in a breath and flopped to his belly, clutching his carbine like life itself. Although it seemed like no more than mere minutes to the attackers, Gibbon's assault on, and temporary possession of, the village had lasted a little less than two and a half hours.

In bemused exhaustion, Buck watched several weary soldiers lunge right on past him and the others, running still farther up the slope—either terrified of the snipers already at work from the timber around them or frightened of those warriors herding the white men into this surround.

“Don't run, men!” Gibbon shouted as he limped into the timber, dragging his wounded leg, and started to collapse. “If you run away … I will be forced to stay right here alone!”

Through their midst sprinted a young corporal, head down and legs churning, huffing up the slope in full panic. “To the top of the hill!” he screamed as he ran. “To the top of the hill or we're lost!”

“Corporal!” Gibbon shouted above the tumult. “By bloody damn, your commanding officer is still alive!”

Henry watched that yank the corporal to a halt, wheeling around, his face flushed as he said, “General! We gotta get these men to the top of the hill! Only safe place—”

“As you were, Corporal!” Gibbon snapped, then turned to the rest, balancing on his one good leg. “This is the place, men. Take cover and dig in!”

From where Gibbon had sunk to the ground in utter exhaustion and pain, the south end of that enemy camp where the colonel had been wounded was no more than a half-mile away.

“Is this our last horse, General?” shrieked Adjutant Woodruff as he lunged up through the timber leading his mount.

“Get on the ground!” Gibbon hollered.

A spray of bullets spit through that stand of timber. The lieutenant instantly flopped to the ground with no more urging. For a few heartbeats it seemed all those men hugging the forest floor were staring at that lone horse among them. It tugged and pulled at the young lieutenant lying on the ground gripping its reins, nearly stepping on several men as it pranced about in fright.

“Sh-should I let go, General?”

“No!” Gibbon replied sternly. “Long as it's alive, we've got a chance to send a courier out on horseback.”

After no more than the space of another heartbeat, Captain Rawn lunged into the grove, surrounded by what he had left of his skirmishers, dragging four of their wounded
and one dead man slung between a pair of soldiers, the casualty's boots bouncing loosely over the rough ground.

“General Gibbon!” Rawn yelled. “Lieutenant English
*
is down, sir!”

“Get in here, man! Get in here!” Gibbon hollered in a crimson frustration. “Keep your heads down! Company commanders, spread your men out! Firing lines, dammit! Form a skirmish formation and give them back what they're giving us!”

With agonizing slowness, the soldiers and most of Catlin's volunteers did as Gibbon ordered—what good sense itself dictated. With the soldiers and volunteers bunched up the way they were, the warriors could slip in all the closer on them. So they began to spread out, forming a long irregular corral running, for the most part, up and down the slope, from east to west.