Lay the Mountains Low (79 page)

H
USIS
Owyeen,
called Wounded Head, was not thinking clearly as he burst from the door of his family's small lodge at the southern end of the encampment.

With those first shots he was on his feet, shouting to his wife,
Penahwenonmi,
to get their son out of the lodge to safety. But he himself did not catch up his rifle so that he could fight these attackers. He forgot that soldier gun he had taken from one of the
suapies
who had raided their
Lahmotta
camp. With that gun and the cartridge belt he had taken off the dead soldier, Wounded Head had defended his family and his people in every skirmish that summer.

But this was the first time the soldiers had ever gotten this close to the women and children! To find them almost at their lodge doors, crossing the creek.

“Father!”

He wheeled suddenly, finding his two-year-old son staggering toward him, arms outstretched. Behind the child at the darkened doorway, his wife's frightened face suddenly appeared. Helping Another was screaming for their child—

As he was slammed forward, Wounded Head thought how the feel of that bullet striking the top of his skull, how the very sound of it, must be the same noise a
kopluts,
the short
Nee-Me-Poo
war club, would make in colliding against a man's head. From his first experience, he knew he had been struck a second time in his life by a soldier bullet not strong enough to penetrate his skull.

Stunned, knocked senseless, he lay there, strangely remembering the morning he had taken the soldier rifle in battle—the same day he had saved the life of a white woman on that battlefield,
*
back in the season of
Hillal.

Ho! How foolish were those white men to bring along their women merely to warm their blankets when taking to the war trail! But there she was, left completely alone, abandoned in the wake of the soldier retreat up White Bird Hill. Even though neither one could speak the other's language, he convinced her she would be safer with him than on the side of that grassy slope with the many enraged warriors chasing after the fleeing
suapies.

He started back to the village with his prisoner mounted behind him—no telling how much she might be worth if the
Nee-Me-Poo
had to barter for the return of prisoners when making peace with the Shadows following this fierce and bloody fight. That frightened, blood-splattered, mud-coated white woman might be worth something after all. Besides, he was anxious to show her off to his wife and others. Not only had he taken himself a rifle and bullets, but he had captured himself a prisoner, too!

Then five women had appeared and scolded him for wanting to keep her. That was something the white men did.
Nee-Me-Poo
did not take captives! Besides, she would only
bring them trouble if Wounded Head kept her. Finally he was convinced that he should let her go back to the soldiers so the white men wouldn't be angry with the
Nee-Me-Poo
for keeping their woman.

He let her go so the soldiers wouldn't come following the Non-Treaty bands to get their woman back … although one of the mean little chiefs had kept his white woman prisoner ever since he stole her from a house on the
Tahmonah
*
that woman with hair the color of honey.

Wounded Head had held out his hand to the woman he was freeing, and they had shaken before she turned to disappear in what brush dotted a crease in the grassy slope. At the time he figured that was what he must do in saving his people from another soldier attack. Give back the woman so the white men won't come looking for her.

As he lay there this morning, unable to move, it was abundantly clear to him that the soldiers had come looking for that honey-haired prisoner they had dragged along with them ever since the first troubles. The
suapies
were here to take her back and exact their revenge on the
Nee-Me-Poo
for stealing her from Idaho country, from her man, from her people.

“Wounded Head!”

Blinking his eyes groggily, he forced them to focus momentarily on his wife, who crouched at the lodge door, pointing frantically.

Helping Another screamed again, “The boy!”

His youngest child was staggering toward the line of soldiers less than an arrow flight away. More than two-times-ten of them, just dropping to their knees, drawing their rifles to their shoulders to fire into the lodges.

No-o-o!
his stunned mind cried out, even if his tongue could not make a sound.

But words never did stop a bullet. Lead whined overhead, slapped the lodgepoles, tore through the hide cover,
and made his wife scream in terror. Yet in the midst of all that thundering noise, Wounded Head still heard the startled grunt escape his hoy's throat as the child was pitched onto the ground no more than three pony lengths away from him. Rolling onto his back, the boy dragged a right hand over one wound, now covered with blood. Then a left hand over another wound. The bullet had gone in one hip, out the other, passing completely through the child's body.

With a shriek Wounded Head had never heard her make, Helping Another sprang to her feet, sprinting for the boy even though she was running toward the soldier guns. Smoke and fog clung low to the ground in riven shreds as she raced into danger, scooped up the child, and turned in retreat, hunched protectively over the boy she cradled in her arms. No more than four steps when a bullet caught her low in the back.

Wounded Head watched how the impact made her stumble as the bullet blew out the front of her chest, just below one breast. She dropped the child, their boy rolling across the trampled grass, crying piteously as he tumbled toward his father.

His wife lay on her belly, barely moving, lips trembling. Wounded Head knew she must be dying.

Their son lay on his back, arms flailing, unable to stand, even to roll over—in great pain.

Still Wounded Head could not move. It was as if the bullet that had struck him just above the brow had taken away all movement from his chin down to his toes. Wounded Head wore the front of his hair in the traditional upsweep of a Dreamer. But what made his different was that it was much longer than Joseph's or
Ollokofs.
With a thin strip of
hemene,
a piece of hide from a wolf he had used ever since he was a boy, Wounded Head tied up his hair in front—daring any enemy to take it. The wolf had always been his spirit animal.

But now it was only a matter of time until they all would be dead, he decided. Cursing the spirits for this terrible fate: forced to lie pinned to the spot, unable to move, watching as
his wife and young son died before his eyes, just beyond his reach. Unable to respond to the boy's calls, to drag his wife to some safe place to die … unable to give back hurt for hurt against these soldiers who had come to retake their honey-haired woman and punish the
Nee-Me-Poo
once and for all.

A hard lesson, this pain of watching his family die right before his eyes.

“C
LEAR
that goddamn tepee, Private!”

Young Charles Alberts nodded and gulped his reply. “Yes, sir, Sergeant!”

Captain Logan's A Company was spreading out through the south end of the village now, having started to push the Nez Perce out of their lodges after a little trouble stabbing into the camp at first, seeing how the captain was knocked off his feet and killed. But Sergeants John Raferty and Patrick Rogan were taking a few of the men off the firing line as the resistance slowed, sending a few of the privates here and there to check the tepees for any of the enemy who might be hiding inside and capable of doing some sniping.

It was dangerous work, but this San Francisco-born soldier never had been one to shy away from anything that smacked of danger.

Flicking open the trapdoor on his Springfield, the private assured himself that he had a live round in the chamber before he clicked it shut again and pulled the hammer back to full-cock. With the weapon braced against his hip, ready to fire, Alberts stopped just to the side of the loose hide suspended over the tepee door. Using the muzzle of his rifle, the private pushed the door flap away from him, staying well to the side in case one of the occupants fired a weapon at him.

He counted slowly to ten, then snatched a quick peek inside before he jerked his head back again. Not good to give them a target to aim at, he thought. After another quick look into the darkened interior, he felt ready to dive inside himself. In a squat, Alberts stepped through the doorway, stopping
immediately inside to let his eyes grow accustomed to the dim light—

Black shadows suddenly tore themselves out of the darkened interior, streaking his way. Two, then three, then more than five of them. Women and children all. His wide, frightened eyes instantly raked them to see if there was a warrior in their number, remembering that Colonel Gibbon had given orders to kill just warriors—women and children only when it was unavoidable. But later on in the dark as they had waited out those last hours before launching this attack, word quietly filtered through the units that Gibbon really had no use for any prisoners.

“You fellas know what to do,” Sergeant John Raferty told A Company. “When the time comes, the general's counting on you boys all knowing what to do for captives.”

Screaming, shrieking, making the hair rise at the back of his neck—the women and children clambered toward him in that heartbeat.

Alberts lurched back, his head and shoulders bumping against the low top of the doorway as he reversed the Springfield in his hands—intending to use it as a club. Even though he was a good soldier who obeyed orders and knew what to do when it came to taking women and children prisoner … the private nonetheless would do everything short of giving up his own life to keep from killing one of these innocents.

“None of 'em innocent,” an older soldier had grumbled in the darkness just before it got gray enough to move into their final positions. “Squaws and nits—they'll all gut you soon as look at you. Taught that right from the day they was whelped. Ain't no different than the bucks that way. You watch out for 'em, sonny—or they'll slip a knife atween your ribs!”

Before Alberts knew it he was swingings that rifle left and right, back and forth, in a panic, smacking wrists and whacking elbows—knocking their knives and axes out of the way as he stumbled backward through the doorway with the ferocity of their attack.

Kicking out with one boot, he freed his leg from a child attempting to hold him while the women and other children finished his execution. A woman flopped backward, senseless, when his rifle butt collided against her skull. That only emboldened the other two women and the last three children.

Alberts spilled backward, tripping at the lodge door. Dragging up the Springfield where he lay on his back, he pointed it at the open doorway, ready to fire at the first one of them who came vaulting out with a weapon in her hand.

But for the first heartbeat no one burst from the darkness. Two, then three more heartbeats—not one of his attackers showed her face.

Quickly Private Charles Alberts elbowed his way backward, never taking the muzzle of his rifle from the doorway; then he swallowed hard. Realizing he'd stumbled into a nest of vipers but—for some reason—had just been spared.

“S-sergeant!” he bellowed for Patrick Rogan, managing to catch his breath. “Gimme a hand for God's sake! They amost killed me in there!”

 

*
Isabella Benedict in
Cries from the Earth,
vol. 14, the
Plainsmen
series.

*
The Salmon River, where Jennet Manuel and her infant son were kidnapped in the outbreak of the Nez Perce War.

W
A
-W
A
-M
AI
-K
HAL
, 1877

E
ELAHWEEMAH
WAS CALLED ABOUT ASLEEP, NOW IN HIS FIF
teenth summer, he was nearing the age when young men began thinking of those rituals that would lead to full manhood.

Never before in the history of the
Nee-Me-Poo
had the killing of Shadows and
suapies
been part of those rituals.

While part of him was racked with the fright and terror of a child watching the soldier attack on his sleeping camp, another part of him felt the fury of a young warrior throwing himself into battle against the white men who had slithered up on this village, intent upon killing the innocent women and little ones who had never hurt another person in anger.

“Bring your brother!” his mother had yelled at him just before the three of them squirted from their lodge right behind his father.

While the man of the family sprinted off to join
Ollokot,
who stood hollering for others to rally with him near the center of the long, irregular camp, About Asleep's mother pointed to a nearby group of four women, all nearly naked, who were huddled just beneath the creek's sharp cutbank, frantically waving at the others to join them.