Lay the Mountains Low (22 page)

“L
IEUTENANT
!”

Rains heard the war whoops and those hoofbeats at the same moment the rest of them realized the Nez Perce were swooping up behind them.

“They want to get between us and our relief!” the lieutenant shouted. “Shut off our escape! But they don't realize Captain Whipple is coming!”

“There ain't that many of 'em,” Private William Roche said.

Private Patrick Quinn agreed. “We can knock 'em all down, Lieutenant!”

Yanking back on his reins, Rains spun his horse around in a half-circle, staring farther up the slope at the barren hilltop. In an instant he realized he had been a little too eager, too anxious to distinguish himself—and had outrun his support. In too much of a hurry the lieutenant had followed Foster along the ridge that angled away from the valley of the Cottonwood toward Craig's Mountain. After loping two quick miles to the northwest of Norton's ranch, the scout led them down into a broad swale before they began their
gentle ascent of the mountain slope. At their rear now, cutting south from the saddle, extended a shallow coulee, but … Whipple and his support were nowhere in sight.

“We better get onto the high ground, men,” Rains ordered the instant he caught sight of those warriors. He knew they could hold out until Whipple's outfit arrived in a matter of minutes. “C'mon!”

They had just kicked their horses into motion, these dozen men no longer clustered in formation—no more than thirty yards from the top of that rise when the patch of skyline that had been their destination suddenly bristled with at least eighteen warriors.

“Shit!” Private John Burk cried as they all sawed backward on their reins, horses colliding with one another, bumping their riders as they milled and wheeled about.

“I'll take my chances against them others behind us!” Sergeant Charles Lampman roared. “Ain't as many!”

“We can ride right through 'em!” Private Daniel Ryan proposed, pointing.

Private Frederick Meyer bobbed his head. “Ride through 'em. We can do that, can't we, Lieutenant?”

His eyes scanned the distance, quickly trying to calculate how far back it would be to make their run, to figure just how long before Whipple would show up on the next hilltop. Foster had done it. The civilian had made it back in one piece. Maybe they could ride downhill right through that smaller band of warriors and be at a full gallop before the rest could be on their tails—

“Them rocks, Lieutenant!” Lampman shouted, pointing along the slope. “We can hold out in them rocks!”
^*

At that moment those boulders seemed to be a far smarter idea. Far more inviting than a long, ten-mile horse race back to Cottonwood. Rains hollered, “To the rocks!”

Private Otto H. Richter was the first to start at an angle for the boulders, William Roche right behind him. Rains
twisted around in the saddle as the others broke past him. “C'mon, Dinteman! Ride, goddammit, man!”

The private was having trouble with his mount. The animal sidestepped as George H. Dinteman kicked and flailed it, trying to goad it into motion. Just as it started to rear onto its hind legs, the horse suddenly twisted aright and flung itself into motion. The private was suddenly ahead of him, less than a full length … making them the last two riding for the rocks—

That sound was like no other on earth. He immediately remembered what his father—that great Confederate hero—had repeatedly said: A man always heard the bullet that got him.

But by the time Second Lieutenant Sevier M. Rains turtled his head into his shoulders, the bullet had already passed and struck the private in the back less than three yards ahead of him. Dinteman screwed off his horse, his arms flailing, hung momentarily in the off-hand stirrup, then was flung free to tumble through the grass like a sock doll.

Rains shot past the private before he could react, yanking back and sawing the reins to the side at the same time. For a moment he could not locate Dinteman in the tall grass; then he saw the private's knee sticking up. Just the one knee. Unmoving. And coming on at a full gallop was not just one bunch of bare-chested, feathered, screeching horsemen but a second: streaming out of the broad coulee behind them!

Dinteman was dead already. If he still breathed, Rains told himself, it wouldn't be for long. Since he wasn't moving, then he couldn't help in his own rescue—and the lieutenant realized he didn't have enough time to make that rescue on his own. Step out of the saddle, kneel and lift the deadweight, hurl it onto the back of his horse, then remount … none of that was possible now.

There went Foster, the son of a bitch, racing off to the south on his own. Rains hated him: a man who could run away from his friend minutes ago, and now the civilian was
scampering away from this fight. The lieutenant almost felt good a moment later when he watched a bullet knock Foster off his horse and a pair of warriors ride up to fire down at the body sprawled in the tall grass—

“Lieutenant!”

One of Winters's men was shouting, standing exposed there in the smaller of the two rings of low boulders. Patrick Quinn, good Irishman that he was. The private was waving Rains in, urging him on.

As Rains wheeled his horse and goaded it with those small brass knobs at the back of his spurs, he gradually sensed something not quite right. Quinn's face suddenly began to swim, growing more and more watery as the horse carried him closer and closer to the boulders. The lieutenant looked down, saw the black molasses stain of blood spreading across his belly, seeping into his crotch.

“Hep! Hep!” he growled at the horse, angry at himself for getting shot, then yanked at the bottom of his blue blouse, pulling it up to have a close look at the wound.

A small finger of intestine was already protruding from the exit wound. As he watched, more of the gut squirted from that ragged hole with every rugged lunge of his exhausted horse. By the time Quinn and Moody grabbed hold of the bridle and were dragging him down out of the saddle, Rains had his forearm filled with his own sticky gut.

“Set me down! Set me down where I can shoot!” he shouted at them through gritted, bloody teeth. Bright crimson gushed up at the back of his throat, hot and thick. He struggled to swallow his gorge back down. Better that than to puke it up in front of his men.

Lord Almighty
, Rains thought as they positioned him against the rocks and knelt around him,
a gut wound is a slow way to die. A damned slow way to die
.

“Make every shot count!” Quinn was reminding the others for him. “Shoot low for the horses first!”

Sergeant Lampman whined, “And ours run off with the ammo!”

“Hol' … hold 'em back till Whipple hears the gunfire.
He can't be far now,”. Rains told his men, wanting to inspire more hope in them than he felt for himself.

Out there in the grass, the warriors were swarming over the first of the six wounded men who hadn't made it into these rocks, each of those soldiers shrieking in terror and pain, their high voices more shrill and grating than the war cries—

A Nez Perce bullet spun John Burk around. He landed across the lieutenant's legs. Ryan dragged the body off Rains, knelt again, and continued to fire with his carbine.

Rains continued to speak in a practiced, even tone.
Gotta keep their spirits up.
“We can do this. We can do this, men. One of you, give me Burk's carbine. Load it and put it in my hands.”

Lampman had just handed Rains the dead man's carbine as more than ten of the warriors dismounted and spread out in a broad front to fire their weapons when Lampman himself was hit, low in the back of his head. Blood and brain matter splattered over Rains's face as the private fell atop Burk, knocking the lieutenant's carbine aside.

With a great exertion of conscious thought, Rains picked the carbine up, his gloves gummy with blood. So much blood.

Just how in Hades did you go through the whole of two goddamned wars and never get a scratch, Father dear?

A brigadier goddamned general—that's how,
he thought as he brought the sticky carbine to his cheek and gazed down the barrel at the warriors popping up out there in the grass.

Someone groaned and fell into the grass out there to his right. Dying noisily. Rains prayed the man would die quick. Sounded like Roche.
Godblesshim.

How did my own father command a guard of soldiers that protected the Walla Walla councils back in 1855, out here in this northwest territory, and not suffer one damned wound? How had my father played a role in the multitribal wars that followed those councils
…
and not once have a bullet blow a hole through his belly?

“Goddamned lucky, weren't you?”

“What did you say, Lieutenant?” Quinn asked.

“Nothing,” Rains said, his tongue thick with blood. “Just … we've got to keep them from getting any closer in that grass. They can hide. So, shoot low up that hill, men. Shoot low and conserve your cartridges until Whipple gets here with relief.”

Richter was next out there in the grass. Then Moody right behind him. The bullets that hit them shoved both soldiers back into the grass as they were crabbing toward the rocks. Not a good thing. The red bastards could see how few of them were still alive.

Ryan whimpered when a bullet slammed into the side of his head. But he didn't make noise for long. Almost immediately, Quinn was bending over his bunkie, laying the dying soldier down before he bent over to pick up his friend's carbine—when the private was hit twice and his own body flopped over Ryan in a leg-twitching sprawl.

The next time Rains threw back the trapdoor on his carbine, he found a cartridge already shoved into the breech. For a moment he thought the extractor wasn't working, that the empty cartridge had been fused into the chamber with heat and verdigris—but he was able to extract the copper case from the weapon, finding it hadn't been fired.

“You stupid son of a bitch,” he cursed himself as he shoved the cartridge back into the action and snapped the trapdoor closed over it.

He had been so intent on watching the warriors crawl up through the grass, watching as those six men were picked off and whittled down one by one, that he had forgotten to fire the damned carbine after reloading it.

The forestock was gummier as he brought it up to his cheek, aimed at a figure in the grass, then pulled the trigger.

While he was reloading with his sticky, bloody gloves, pulling a shell from Ryan's pocket, he willed his eyes to make a count. All the rest were down.

Getting so weak, barely able to lift the weapon … by the time he could get the carbine back into position, Rains
found David Carroll lying in a heap out there twenty yards away, curled up like a cat on an autumn day, groaning and pawing at the bubbling wound low in his' chest.

Who in Hades is going to hold off the red bastards till Whipple arrives? Everyone else gone already. I'm the only one for them to save now
.

For a moment he stared at two of them lying here, close enough for him to touch: Quinn had been driven backward by the impact of the bullet that had killed him, hurtled against the low rock where he had been kneeling, then slid down to crumple across Richter.

Irish and German
, Rains thought as he stared at their death masks.
Only one of us for Whipple to save now. All the Irish and German dead. Wasn't for the Irish and German … there'd he no goddamned frontier army
.

Gradually he became aware of the quiet. So very, very quiet as he fumbled in Ryan's pocket for another cartridge. Empty. Maybe Burk there had some. Where was the man in this jumble of arms and legs and blood and brain … and his own gut?

Grown so quiet out there now that he could hear the red bastards whispering, even hear the rustle of the tall grass as they moved closer.

Carefully, slowly—a few heads rose in the grass, dark eyes staring at him.

More than a dozen of them—

His fingers located a cartridge in Burk's pocket. Frantically he shoved it into the action as the warriors started to slink toward him in a half-crouch. The copper case pasted to the blood-crusted fingers of his gloves.

Maybe Whipple will hear now … now that things have gone so damned quiet up here.

Snapping the trapdoor down, he dragged the hammer back but found he didn't have the strength to raise the carbine to his shoulder. Rains could only position the butt against his lower chest. The instant he fired he realized his shot went wild, but the warriors nonetheless flung themselves into the grass momentarily.

With an ear-numbing shriek, in unison they rose as one and rushed him in a blur.

He watched the first, then a second and third gun explode, each muzzle spewing fire from close range. He felt the dull racket in his head; an instant later his chest was on fire.

Too late to call for Whipple. Too late
.

But it was time to call for his father.
A brigadier goddamned general would know what to do now. Just call for the general.

“Father … General … tell me, what am I to do now, s-sir? Help me…. Sh-show me now how a good officer dies.”

 

*
These rocks, still visible today on private property, are actually some 750 feet south of the old Lewiston-Mount Idaho Road.