Lay the Mountains Low (90 page)

The distinctive slap made his own wounds ache all the more, his soul whimpering as the men around him were hit, one after another.

Sometimes he could tell when a bullet struck bone. Other times it was no more than a moist slap as lead penetrated soft tissue. Woodruff couldn't help cringing when he heard a man cry out in pain, begging for help from his bunkies.

One at a time, the wounded were adding up, not just the ones they had managed to drag up here with them in the retreat but also those wounded the snipers were accounting for as Nez Perce marksmen sighted in on the soldiers' perimeter. By now there wasn't a white man who still had his hat on—they made such fine targets of a fellow.

Without a surgeon along, they had no clean bandages for each new wound. Instead, the men did what they could, pulling free their long shirttails and using their dirty digging knives to hack off wide strips of greasy, soiled cloth. At first it had galled Woodruff to see how the old files and the civilians spit a little tobacco juice into the wounds of their comrades before knotting a bandage over the puckered hole, but it didn't take long for him to accept that this was the way of things with these veteran frontiersmen.

Still, for a few of the worst cases, mere tobacco juice wrapped up with a piece of shirttail wasn't nearly enough to stop the bleeding of a blood vessel nicked by a Nez Perce bullet.

An old sergeant was the first to crab over to a rifle pit to help two young soldiers with their seriously wounded comrade. Quickly fingering a rifle cartridge from a loop on his
prairie belt, he snapped open his pocketknife and deftly pried the lead bullet loose from its copper casing.

“Hoi' 'im down, boys,” he grumbled as he positioned the open cartridge right over the oozy leg wound.

As the two soldiers rocked their weight on top of their reluctant comrade, the old file reached in one of his belt pouches and pulled out a sulphur-headed lucifer he stuffed between his front teeth. Now with the fingers of his left hand, the old sergeant gently spread apart the ragged edges of the gaping wound and up-ended the cartridge before tamping the last of the black powder grains into the hole with a dirty fingertip. He quickly brushed away the excess powder, then leaned back.

As the sergeant pulled the match from between his teeth, the wounded soldier on the ground quit thrashing a moment, gazing up at the old file, and said, “H-hell, that wasn't so bad, Sarge.”

But when the old soldier dragged his thumbnail across the head of the match, the young soldier went cross-eyed staring at the sudden flare as the whitish-blue flame inched closer and closer to his wounded leg. “Wh-what you gonna do with that—”

His question was instantly answered as the sergeant laid the burning lucifer down against the pocket of black powder with a sudden fiery
phfffft.
Spitting a momentary tongue of flame, a narrow tendril of greasy smoke rising from the wound, the fire had done its work, cauterizing the injured blood vessel.

“Looks like he'll be out for a while,” the sergeant said, inspecting the soldier by gently raising the unconscious man's eyelids. He rolled back onto his knees and crabbed away, passing the young lieutenant on the way to his rifle pit.

The sergeant nodded at Woodruff and said, “How your bullet holes, sir?”

“T-they aren't bleeding like his was, Sergeant.”

The old file grinned, his eyes crinkling. “Call me if you need me, Lieutenant.”

Woodruff gulped, knowing exactly what the soldier was referring to. “A fine job over there, Sergeant. Man won't bleed to death now.”

“Thankee, sir,” he said, a little embarrassed as he started to move on. “Jus' a li'l something I picked up many a year ago during the Great War.”

W
HEN
Yellow Wolf and his uncle reached the point of timber on the hillside overlooking the camp, a sporadic rattle of gunfire was still continuing as
Ollokot
's warriors settled into the siege around the
suapies.
Many of the men on all sides were continuing to sing or chant their war and victory songs—each warrior calling on his
wyakin,
his individual spiritual power.

Yellow Wolf rode up to a knot of men surrounding Five Wounds, the famous warrior called
Pahkatos Owyeen.

The grieving warrior stood in the middle, talking in low tones to the rest as Yellow Wolf slid off his pony, tied it to a nearby sapling, and stepped over to listen to their quiet discussion. He recognized the grave expressions on all the faces … but most especially that ghostly look on Five Wounds's face. His skin had taken on a gray pallor that only served to accentuate the reddened eyes, swollen from much crying.

That's when Yellow Wolf remembered the courageous death of Five Wounds's best friend, Rainbow, earlier that morning in the village fight.

“This sun, this time,” Five Wounds was saying as he stared down at his repeater, “I am going to die.”

“You are going to make a bravery run against the
suapies?”
asked
Ollokot.

“No, this is not a run against them,” Five Wounds explained. “I am going to charge right into their burrows and have them kill me when I reach them. Kill me when I am so close I can see the fear in their eyes.”

His words, perhaps more the tone of Five Wounds's voice, immediately tugged at Yellow Wolf's heart. He knew the story—every
Nee-Me-Poo
knew that tale by heart—how
these two had begun their friendship as small boys, a kinship that would be nurtured over more than two decades as they traveled ancestral lands and journeyed many times to
Illahe
together—sometimes fighting enemies, side by side, in that buffalo country far to the east.

Theirs was a bond not of blood but of the heart, even of their very spirits. And now that Rainbow had been killed, every man gathered there knew it was Five Wounds's day to die as well. Everyone knew that years ago the two brothers-in-arms had taken a vow that they would die on the same day.

No one dared stand in his way as he sought to fulfill his vow to Rainbow.

Otskai
rode up and dismounted, holding out a soldier canteen as he stepped toward the group. “Five Wounds—see what I have found in the village.”

“I am not thirsty,” Five Wounds said.

Removing the stopper,
Otskai
held the canteen under Five Wounds's nose. “This isn't water, my brother.”

“Whiskey,” Five Wounds said, taking the canteen. “Yes, I will have a drink now.”

“The white men drank whiskey before they attacked us?” Yellow Wolf asked as Five Wounds passed him the canteen, but he passed it right on. He never touched liquor.

“My brother is killed today,” Five Wounds reminded those who needed no reminding while each man took a sip from the fragrant canteen. “And I shall go with him … while the sun is in this sky. We will die together the way his father and my father died together in the buffalo country. They lay side by side where the battle was the strongest. And now I shall lie down beside my warmate. He is no more and I shall see that I follow him.”

Yellow Wolf remembered how the two fathers had been killed in a fight with Lakota over on the eastern plains. “Do you want us to lay down some cover fire as you make your charge?”

The dark, red-rimmed eyes in that tortured face turned to the younger man as Five Wounds said, “Yes. That would
help me to get as close as I can to the white man's burrows before their bullets kill me.”

Ollokot
seized Five Wounds's forearm in his, and they shook, wrist to wrist. Several other men offered their arms, too, and Five Wounds took the forearm of each, to grasp in that manner of men who have suffered hardship together, men who have stood against powerful enemies together, men who have repeatedly placed their bodies between their families and the
suapies …
together in the brotherhood of warriors.

It made Yellow Wolf's eyes mist as Five Wounds turned away from him and the others, stepping to the edge of the shallow, narrow gulch that separated them from the soldiers.

Instead of immediately dashing for the white men's hollows, Five Wounds paused to look up at the sky, declaring, “Rainbow—may your spirit look over me now. I am coming! I am coming to join you!”

As those last words escaped his tongue, Five Wounds bolted away at a sprint, racing around the head of the ravine and dodging between trees as the first of the soldier bullets began to whine around him, some smacking the narrow trunks of lodgepole pines, others snapping off small branches.

They saw the first bullet hit Five Wounds, striking him in the shoulder, momentarily slowing his gait as the impact shoved him around to the side, knocking him off-stride but for an instant until he shrugged off the injury and ran even faster, half bent over, nearing the soldier burrows.

The others joined
Ollokot
as their war chief started singing his own war song in a loud, strong voice. Yellow Wolf raised his voice with the rest. In chanting their own medicine song, Five Wounds's warrior brothers were sending him on his way to meet his dearest friend—their songs his medicine songs at this fragile moment between life and death. Their combined strength would become his strength alone for as long as he needed theirs to accomplish this last great act of friendship.

A bullet ripped into Five Wounds's thigh, sending a shudder through his body, causing him to slow noticeably. He was limping—but still he plunged on, closer, ever closer, to the soldier burrows.

Now the white men were yelling, some of the men beginning to stand behind their rifle pits, shouting at one another and pointing their weapons at that lone oncoming warrior. It was as if all those rifles were suddenly trained on Five Wounds, fixed on him alone.

One of the bullets that snarled his way smacked into his chest, blowing out a large hole in his back—but it did nothing to stop the man now that he was nearing his goal. Five Wounds was almost close enough that he could throw his
kopluts
at the soldiers….

Another bullet rocked him, striking him low in the other shoulder. He was so near the soldier hollows that the impact shoved him backward a faltering step. At that moment another bullet hit him low in the belly, knocking him sideways—before he visibly shook it off and bent over again, limping toward the hollows. But this time Five Wounds moved much, much slower.

Another bullet tore through his chest, leaving a second gaping hole in his back.

Yellow Wolf and many of the others stood there, every man openly weeping now as they watched this last selfless act of bravery for a friend.

“I am come this day to be with you, Rainbow!”

Though his body faltered, weaving and tottering very slowly toward the soldier burrows, Five Wounds's voice rang stronger than ever … even as another bullet rocked him, made him stumble and then collapse to his knees just short of the soldier lines.

Try as he might, he could not rise again, struggling to get his feet under him when two more bullets smacked into his body with the telltale breaking of bone as he was whirled one way, then the other, his weakened arms windmilling with the force of each impact. Still his head was held high as his undaunted will struggled to control his failing body.
Collapsing forward, he planted both hands in front of him. Five Wounds crawled on.

Three more bullets hit him: one in the leg, another in the chest, and the third in the hip, breaking the big bone that could no longer support his weight.

And as Five Wounds wobbled there on one knee, he looked up at the sky, opening his mouth to speak—

“Rainbow, I am come to join—”

A bullet slammed into his forehead, snapping it backward violently, driving him off that one knee and hand, pitching his body backward onto his side … just short of his goal.

But Yellow Wolf knew better than to think Five Wounds hadn't finished his quest. As he wiped a hand down his face and cleared his eyes, he knew Five Wounds had reached his goal. Even though he hadn't made it into the heart of the soldier hollows, he had nonetheless gotten close enough to gaze into the eyes of the men who would kill him.

By now, this brave man was already reunited with Rainbow.

“D
AMN
—will you lookit that down there!”

Turning painfully at that exclamation from a nearby soldier, Lieutenant Charles Woodruff slowly crawled over to have himself a look from the edge of the bluff.

A warrior was coming out from the village, mounted on a showy pony. He guided the animal into the willow as he headed for the base of the soldiers' hill.

“Five dollars to the man who knocks him down afore me,” proposed Second Cavalry Sergeant Edward Page, lying off to Woodruff's left.

After only two shots from the warrior, who reappeared in the brush below to fire up the slope—Page's head flopped backward, a neat, black hole below his chin, the top of his head blown off.

“I'll get that son of a bitch for you, Sarge,” vowed one of the cavalrymen near Page's body. “An' you won't owe me a goddamned fiver!”

When that horseman next appeared, he didn't even have the time to raise his rifle before the trooper's bullet knocked him off the back of his pony.

“Watch 'im,” the marksman warned those around him. “If he moves while I'm reloading, hit him again to make sure he's a good Injun—”

Down below in the creek bottom, a horrendous cry interrupted him. The sort of sound that would make any man's blood curdle.

“ 'Spect they found 'nother of our wounded, Lieutenant,” a soldier said quietly.

“Goddamn 'em to Hell!” a corporal cursed as they all listened to the pitiful screams of that white man—soldier or volunteer—whose life was slowly snuffed out in a most horrible fashion.

One of the older men ground his hands together, his words slipping out between clenched teeth: “If I just could get my hands on one of them monsters right now!”