Lay the Mountains Low (19 page)

Slowly the chief looked over that suddenly hushed gathering. A small child whimpered from the dark. Then it was quiet, so deathly quiet, again. The summer night held its breath around them.

When he finally spoke again, Looking Glass said, “We
will leave as soon as our women have everything packed on what horses we managed to save from the enemy.”

“Where is it you would have us go?”
Hatalekin
asked as the black of night seemed to swallow all their hopes of staying neutral in the struggle.

“We will go in search of the fighting bands,” the chief answered. “Our only strength now lies in fighting the white man together.”

The moon had just made its appearance at the horizon, its creamy yellow color illuminating the underbellies of some scattered clouds by the time Looking Glass and two old men started the village downstream for the Clearwater. From there they would strike upstream for the mouth of the Cottonwood. It was that creek and its canyon they would follow up and onto the Camas Prairie in the dark of this night.

How noiseless they made that march. The children who had been wrapped in arms or carried on backs had surely fallen asleep. No one talked but some headmen who spoke in low voices of hearing reports of the few warriors who rode both flanks, out there in the dark. From time to time Bird Alighting and the other young men came in to report their news on what lay ahead upon the route Looking Glass had chosen for them all.

In the first, early light of the sun's coming Bird Alighting saw the smudge along the western horizon of the prairie. He rubbed his eyes again, blinked, and stared. He had never been one of those far-seeing men who had the ability to find distant objects without the far-seeing glasses of the Shadows. So he did his best to determine what the smudge meant.

“Is that dust?” Arrowhead asked in almost a whisper as she rode up and came to a halt beside Bird Alighting.

“I cannot tell if it is dust … or maybe smoke.”

The warrior woman asked, “Where is it? Can you tell that?”

“Far up Cottonwood Creek,” Bird Alighting said. “Perhaps as far away as that Shadow settlement on the road to the soldier fort.”

“I think it is dust,” Arrowhead asserted. “That much dust … cannot be Cut-Off Arm's
suapies
. He has his army far to the south of here. No, Bird Alighting, that can only be some of our own people.”

How he wanted to smile, his heart wanted to hope. But his head would not let him. “Let's hope your eyes are right,
Etemiere
. I pray those are not soldiers barring our way.”

 

*
Cries from the Earth
, vol. 14, the
Plainsmen
series.

*
The Salmon River.

**
While the white men would come to know this as Craig Billy Crossing, to the
Nee-Me-Poo
this was “Luke's Place,” named after
Pahka Yatwekin
, one of their people who was called Luke Billy by the Shadows, a man who had a poor cabin standing on the south bank of the Salmon River.

*
The Camas Prairie.

J
ULY
3, 1877

I
T HADN'T TAKEN VERY LONG FOR FIRST SERGEANT
Michael McCarthy to figure out that Trimble's H Company should have stayed at Slate Creek with the civilians huddled there. Far, far better than what they had been forced to endure as they slogged along after those damned fleeing Indians.

From downriver at the crossing General Howard sent orders by “Colonel” Edward McConville and his Mount Idaho volunteers that Captain Trimble's outfit was to rejoin him on the west side of the Salmon. In company with that band of volunteers, they had made their own crossing right there at the mouth of Slate Creek in a driving rain, then marched down the west bank until they reached a house said to belong to a Mr. Rhett. While Trimble's horse soldiers began to take cover out of the soggy weather, Rhett showed up and angrily ordered the men out of his cozy cabin. McConville's men shared their meager canvas shelters with the cavalrymen that stormy night of 1 July.

“Not a good goddamned reception from one of our own citizens!” McCarthy grumbled, wishing he could pry the wet boots off his feet.

“Sorry that son of a bitch ain't got a touch of hospitality in his soul,” McConville apologized. “Some folks don't give a damn what the army's here to do for ‘em.”

Ascending Deer Creek the next morning, Captain Trimble had started them into the rugged hills, following the route taken by the fleeing Nez Perce.

A perfect sea of mountains, gullies, ravines, and canyons.

Each day's march of ten miles seemed more like a march three times as far made on level ground. What had been merely difficult terrain before the incessant rains had now
become treacherous as the slopes turned into rivers of mud. With the cavalry assigned to lead the way, that first afternoon they had reached the top of a small plateau just at dusk, turning in their saddles to peer back at that long line slowly snaking its way up the precipitous mountainside. Trimble ordered a bivouac made near some stunted pines, and the men did what they could to make it a cheerful camp. Still, most everything, tents and rations included, was back with the pack train and infantry, neither of which would likely catch up to the advance until midday tomorrow. So all these troopers had was what little coffee, hardbread, and bacon remained in their saddlebags.

To add to the misery of their bivouac at the summit of Brown's Mountain on the evening of 2 July, a cheerless camp made in the open without much in the way of supper, just after dark a hard and icy rain began lancing out of the sky. Most of the officers ended up crowding into the general's headquarters tent, leaving the noncoms and enlisted to fend for themselves around those sputtering fires whipped by the stormy gales, that tortured the top of this high, barren plateau. Howard's aide, First Lieutenant Melville C. Wilkinson, graciously named this spot “Camp Misery” in his daily report.

The following morning, 3 July, the advance command awoke to find that a dense fog had descended upon the mountaintop. While they remained in camp, recuperating and waiting for the pack train and infantry to catch up, the general dispatched Trimble's company and McConville's volunteers to search the trail ahead as far as they could march and still return by dusk. Late in the morning the patrol found the Nez Perce trail had split into two, the troopers following one branch, the civilians following the other. By late in the afternoon Trimble's patrol bivouacked where those two fresh trails rejoined—a place where Canoe Encampment and Rocky Canyon trails intersected. From all the sign, it appeared the last Nez Perce camp was at least three days old.

This meant that here late on the afternoon of 3 July
Howard's column was now something on the order of four or more days behind the hostiles.

With little food and not a swallow of coffee to speak of—but with all the rain, fog, and wind an Irishman from Nova Scotia could ever hope for—on top of everything else now they knew just how far ahead the enemy was. McCarthy was afeared the hostiles never would stop and give an accounting of themselves—so he could get in his licks for all those comrades who had fallen at White Bird.

Blessed Mary and Joseph! Oh, how Sergeant Michael McCarthy prayed those goddamned heathens would stop running away and give this army a fight to decide the matter, once and for all.

“C
APTAIN
Whipple!” Lieutenant Sevier M. Rains called out as he stepped up to his company commander. “I brought those two civilians you asked for.”

Whipple turned on his stool, positioned behind his field desk standing just outside his tent, and gave his second lieutenant a salute that early chill morning. “Very good, Mr. Rains. Please stay. I want you in on this.”

Rains nodded. “Very good, sir.” He pointed to the closest of the two Mount Idaho volunteers. “This is Foster, and this is Blewett.”

“Your nominal leader, Captain D. B. Randall, said I could depend on you to get me some intelligence.”

“Intelligence, Captain?” William Foster repeated.

“We need to know what we're facing here,” Whipple explained. “What bands are in the area. If there are war parties prowling the nearby Camas Prairie. That sort of thing. Captain Randall claimed you two know this area better than the others.”

“We know it,” Charles Blewett affirmed. “Been on this prairie a few years. So we know the ground, and we know the Injuns, too. Never would've figgered Looking Glass's people for turning bad on us the way they did up on Clear Creek.”

“I want you volunteers to find out what's become of
those Indians,” Whipple said. “They've had plenty of time to make it onto the prairie since yesterday morning. With Colonel Perry's supply train due along here from Fort Lapwai any day now, I don't want any war parties slipping up and surprising us.”

“Better to know what the bastards are up to and where they're going,” Blewett agreed.

Foster asked, “You gonna send some soldiers along with us, Captain?”

“No, more men would just make you a bigger target, easier to spot. With just the two of you, I figure any roving war parties won't spot you so easy.” Then, in afterthought, Whipple added, “I don't figure you'll be all that far from this road station that you can't make a fast dash back here if you confront any ticklish situation.”

“Awright, Captain,” Foster replied. “We'll get us some rations and ride out.”

Whipple nodded. “Can you make it over to the country by Craig's Landing, see if the hostiles are on the river, and get back by supper to make your report?”

“Back before dark,” Blewett assured.

Whipple had established his camp a day ago among the deserted, ransacked buildings then known as the Norton ranch. The captain had brought his battalion here early yesterday, 2 July, after returning to Mount Idaho at midnight on the first, the day his command had destroyed Looking Glass's village. Captain Lawrence S. Babbitt, a member of General O. O. Howard's staff, was waiting for them there with written orders for Whipple to establish this presence at the Cottonwood road station. There he was to await Perry and his supply train, as well as intercepting, if possible, the Nez Perce if they should happen along his way after recrossing the Salmon.

“The general commanding orders that if Perry does not arrive with his supply train in a timely manner,” Whipple had told his handful of battalion officers before they put Mount Idaho behind them yesterday, “I am to leave no stone unturned to ascertain where the Indians are heading.
We are to report to the general by courier as often as we can.” Then, the captain read another sentence from the note brought by Babbitt: “ ‘I expect of the cavalry tremendous vigor and activity even if it should kill a few horses.' ”

Have no doubt about it: Howard wanted Joseph caught, corralled, and defeated.

When they had put Mount Idaho behind them yesterday, Lieutenant Rains wasn't sure how any of them should feel about that. This small battalion augmented by a few undisciplined civilians wasn't meant to confront and give battle to the hostile Nez Perce who had demolished Perry's command at the White Bird. Laying into Looking Glass's small village was one thing, but ordered to stand in the middle of this open prairie and bar the way of that band of heathen cutthroats, murderers, and rapists was altogether different. If Howard figured the hostiles were coming this way, then why the hell wasn't he here with reinforcements?

So Rains wholeheartedly agreed with the tactical decision Captain Whipple made regarding gathering intelligence on the wandering, dispossessed people of Looking Glass. Better to know what your enemy was doing than for anything to hit you as a total surprise. In the meantime, Colonel Perry would be coming down from Lapwai with supplies and ammunition, and maybe the advance of Howard's cavalry would make it in, too. In another day or so there would be enough soldiers here to put an end to the great Nez Perce war with a dying whimper.

Norton's road ranch was the only structural complex of any consequence on the whole of the Camas Prairie. Originally laid out in a wide brush- and tree-lined gulch along the south side of Cottonwood Creek some twenty miles west of its junction with the Clearwater, the house, barns, stables, and corrals overlapped the Mount Idaho-Lewiston Road. The house itself, where Jennie Norton had run her hotel business, sat on the south side of the creek.

Fifteen years before, a settler named Allen had built the original way station, consisting of a store, a saloon, a few hotel rooms, and a stage stop. The next year it sold to a pair
of enterprising men, but within a year they had sold it to another man. John Byrom operated the place until Joseph Moore and Peter H. Ready of Mount Idaho bought the station. When they sold it to Benjamin and Jennie Norton, Moore stayed on to work for the new owners and Ready started hauling freight up and down the road to Lewiston,
*
which ran northwest from the ranch through a rolling countryside broken by some deep ravines carved by the tiny streams and rivulets feeding Cottonwood Creek.