Lay the Mountains Low (20 page)

Hearing stories told at Mount Idaho about the war party's raid conducted against the civilians and Ben Norton's death back on 14 June, when the Nez Perce outbreak was just getting under way, Rains was completely surprised to discover that the hostiles hadn't put a torch to any of the buildings. Upon the battalion's arrival here at this peaceful place, the lieutenant had taken a deep breath of air and looked about, finding it hard to believe there was an Indian war breaking out—and that it had started here.

“You two going to search from along the hillside?” he asked as he came to a stop near the two civilians and their horses. Foster was rising to the saddle.

Blewett swept his arm across the slope of nearby Craig's Mountain. “It makes sense to. There's plenty of timber for cover while we have us a look over the other side to see them Injuns come over the Craig Billy Crossing.”

Foster reined his horse in a half-circle and tapped it with his heels as both civilians started away. He said, “Yonder side of that ridge, Lieutenant … that be where we figger we'll find us some Injuns.”

“J
ESUS
God!” William Foster hissed under his breath as he yanked back on the horse's reins, his heart suddenly a lump in his throat.

Beside him, Charles Blewett spotted the large herd of horses at the same moment. Together their animals dug in their hooves and slid to a stop on the bare slope.

That herd of Indian ponies had suddenly appeared around the brow of a nearby hill barren of timber, north of the Cottonwood near the road to Fort Lapwai and Lewiston.

“That ain't no loose stock,” Blewett said as they both quickly glanced this way and that for possible cover.

“They'll have herders with 'em,” Foster grumbled the moment before he spotted the riders arrayed on the flanks of the large herd.

At this distance, he could tell those outriders wore feathers and carried weapons. No youngsters these. A war party for damned sure.

Foster started to wheel his pony around, saying, “Let's get afore they—”

But he was interrupted by the first pop of a far-off rifle.

As the sun had come out and their damp clothing began to steam that morning following days of hard, intermittent rain, the two civilians had traveled northwest on the Lewiston stage road to the point where it crossed Boardhouse Creek, then angled off to the left on the Salmon River Trail in the direction of Lawyer's Canyon. It had been a trail that took them over a long, rolling ridge before it descended into a little open saddle, then climbed once more up the shallow slope at the southwest side of Craig's Mountain.

That's where the broad, open terrain butted up against some light timber on this east side of the mountain rising more than a thousand feet above the Cottonwood. They were two ridges away from the soldier camp when they spotted the herd … and those warriors.

Jerking his head around to look over his shoulder at the distant gunshot, Foster saw the puff of smoke drifting on the cool wind, finding more than a handful of the warriors already galloping full-tilt in their direction.

“You don't need to ask me to get more'n once!” Blewett screamed as he flailed the side of his horse with the long reins.

Foster pointed as his horse shot him past Blewett's. “We make that brush, maybe we can lose 'em!”

The pair of civilians had covered no more than a hundred
yards when Foster heard his friend call out with the sort of cry that instantly brought a chill to a man's spine.

“Bill!”

It took a moment for Foster to yank back on the reins and get his hell-bent-for-leather horse to slow to a halt. By the time he could turn the animal around in place, he watched Blewett finish his brief flight through the air, hitting the ground, hard, on his hip—his horse rearing back on its hind legs and pawing the air before it came down on all fours and tore off, riderless.

“Goddammit, Bill!”

“I'll go catch that damned horse for you!”

Before he got very far, Foster heard the first snarl of a bullet passing by his head, watching first one, then another, of the Indian guns spew gunsmoke in the distance as the half-dozen warriors approached at a gallop. That's when he realized he wasn't going to reach Blewett's horse in time to pick him up and ride on out of there with his friend. The horse was tearing off hell-for-leather toward Lawyer's Canyon, too damned close to those warriors.

“Get hid!” Foster screamed loud as he could while he sawed back the reins, shoving down on the stirrups, wrenching his horse around in mid-stride. “I'm goin' for help.”

“No!”
Blewett pleaded in dismay from the distance, hands up and imploring. “Come back an' get me yourself! We kin ride double—”

“I'll bring some soldiers!” Foster promised. “Get hid in the brush, Charlie! Get hid!”

Then he was pummelling the horse's ribs again, no longer able to look at that frightened, pasty blur of Blewett's face. The dismay, the terror, written there as he had to hear the pounding hooves straining ever closer.

William Foster had just made his best friend a promise. And a man never broke a promise to a friend.

He'd get some of the captain's soldiers and they'd hurry back to drive off the small war party. It wouldn't take long
for him to reach Cottonwood Station from here, Foster told himself as another bullet whined past his ear. It wouldn't take him long to bring back some help.

After all, William Foster never broke his promise.

 

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

K
HOY
-T
SAHL
, 1877

“S
EE HOW THE TWO OF THEM RUN!” SHORE CROSSING
roared to his cousin as the two riders in the distance wheeled and bolted away.

Red Moccasin Tops, the one called
Sarpsis Ilppilp
by their people, laughed. “I haven't seen men run so afraid since we chased the
suapies
and their Shadow friends from the valley of
Lahmotta!”

Already Rainbow and Five Wounds, another pair of inseparable warrior friends, were yelping, too, waving their rifles as their ponies shot away from the herd they were guiding back to their camp on the upper Cottonwood. It was a bright and beautiful morning after many days of intermittent rain and wind. Nothing more than a light breeze had blown in their faces as they started some captured Shadow horses back for the village. The sun felt good on the bare skin stretched across Shore Crossing's tawny, sinewy limbs.

“Come ride after the Shadows with us, Swan Necklace!” Shore Crossing cried to his younger nephew.

“Eeh!”
the one called
Wetyetmas Wahyakt
cried back in youthful glee. He wasn't nearly as old as his two companions, no more than twenty summers old now. “We haven't shot our guns at any Shadows since we fired them at Cut-Off Arm's soldiers when he started to cross the river
Tahmonah!”

In a broad line the warriors were streaming away from the herd now, right behind Rainbow and Five Wounds, the two daring warriors who had rejoined the bands the very day of the fight that had brought a resounding defeat for the soldiers. Two Moons, called
Lepeet Hessemdooks,
rode on the far right flank. And the strong and powerful
Otskai,
known as Going Out, brought up the left.

Shore Crossing, this young man called
Wahlitits,
had been the catalyst of this war. What had started out as his hunger to prove himself a man before a pretty young woman in those days of
Hillal
at their traditional gathering ground of
Tepahlewam,
had soon blown itself into a general uprising. So much the better! For now all the People had fallen in behind Shore Crossing's daring act to finally avenge the wrongful death of his father many winters ago.

Eagle Robe, known as
Tipyalhlanah Siskon,
had consented to loan a conniving Shadow named Larry Ott some of his land to graze a few cattle and horses while the
Nee-Me-Poo
rode east into the buffalo country. But when White Bird's band returned and Eagle Robe went to ask the Shadow to leave his land near the mouth of Deer Creek, Ott had pulled his gun and shot Shore Crossing's father.

When Eagle Robe did not return for the longest time,
Wahlitits
went looking for him, only to find his father dying against Larry Ott's fence.

“Please,” Eagle Robe begged. “Promise me … promise me you will not take vengeance—”

“I cannot!” his son had shrieked.

For the longest time Eagle Robe had tried to speak, but no sound came from his tongue; none crossed his bloodied lips. He was about to die … and Shore Crossing knew he could not let his father die without hearing the words he so wanted to hear his son speak.

Eventually, Shore Crossing spoke softly, very reluctantly, and most sadly.

“I promise you, Father.”

Eagle Robe had closed his eyes at last.
Wahlitits
heard that last breath gush up in a ball from his father's punctured lungs as his head gently sagged to the side.

Anguished, Shore Crossing had sobbed, pressing his head against his father's bloody breast, “I promise … promise not to kill this man who has killed you!”

But … that had been back when he considered himself a boy.

In the last three winters since his father's murder,
Wahlitits
had grown to manhood and taken a wife. Just this last spring she had announced she was carrying their first child.

“Maybe you want another woman because your first wife is growing bigger, eh?” Red Moccasin Tops had asked him that first day of their search for Larry Ott. Shore Crossing had been making soft eyes at a young woman in Joseph's band.

Bringing Swan Necklace along as their horse holder, the trio hadn't found the murderer, so they went in search of another man who had mistreated the
Nee-Me-Poo
before, even setting his dogs on them. After Richard Divine was killed, they remembered Jurden Elfers had many fine horses and were sure that he had some guns, too. They shot the horse breeder and three
^*
more men before starting back for
Tepahlewam
to the village—where the whole camp came alive with war fever. Sun Necklace,
^**
the father of Red Moccasin Tops, led out the first band of warriors who were hot to spill some more blood of the Salmon River settlers who had done them so much wrong for many seasons.

Now they had defeated the
suapies
in the canyon of
Lahmotta,
then led Cut-Off Arm's soldiers on a merry chase through the Salmon River breaks while the village had recrossed to camp at
Aipadass
, a sagebrush flat just north of Craig Billy Crossing, where the village had rested for a day before starting across the Camas Prairie for the Clearwater this morning.

Whooping and shrieking in glee this warm summer day, the exuberant warriors sped after the two fleeing Shadows. Like those raids of burning, raping, and murder, this chase, too, was nothing less than great fun. Too bad there were
only two of the Boston men—a term the
Nee-Me-Poo
had long, long used to indicate the pale-skinned traders who had come among them bringing goods from afar, carried on ships that plied the far oceans.

Wahlitits
and
Sarpsis Ilppilp
had grown up together, more like brothers than cousins. Much more than cousins, they were best friends in everything. Red Moccasin Tops was an excitable young man, part Cayuse in blood, in fact a grandson of
Tomahas,
one of the murderers of missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman many years before.

“He's mine!” Rainbow shouted the moment the Shadow was pitched off his rearing horse less than two hundred yards away.

“No!” protested Five Wounds, Rainbow's best friend since childhood. “It was my shot made him fall!”

“You two argue all you want over the one who is put on foot!” Strong Eagle bellowed. This capable warrior called
Tipyahlahnah Kapskaps
, like Shore Crossing and Red Moccasin Tops, had tied a red blanket at his neck as they rode into battle against the
suapies
at the White Bird. From that morning the three were known as the “Red Coats.”

Strong Eagle brought his rifle to his shoulder, preparing to fire. “I want the other Shadow who thinks he is getting away!”

“You will not be so lucky today, Strong Eagle!” screamed Shore Crossing. “That foolish Shadow is mine!”

The other Red Coat snorted with a wide grin, “Only if that poor horse of yours is faster than mine!”

“Farewell,
Wahlitits!”
cried Red Moccasin Tops as he pulled his pony aside for the Shadow put afoot. “I am going after the one hiding in the brush like a scared rabbit!”

“There is no sport in that!” Shore Crossing chided his cousin. “No bravery running down some poor, frightened ground squirrel who has soiled himself in fear of us!”