Lay the Mountains Low (98 page)

As I sit here on the hillside above the Big Hole Battlefield this cold, cold dawn in May of 1999, I ask myself again: Why am I so consumed by this mystery? Is it only because I sit here in the remnants of last night's crusty snow, staring down on the cones of skeletal lodgepoles erected where the Non-Treaty village once stood, thinking of that young blond-haired white woman Henry Buck glimpsed for two fleeting instants as she fled the pandemonium and terror in the camp, protectively surrounded by other squaws? If it was Jennet Manuel, and she did turn to look directly at the white civilian—why in hell didn't she cry out to him, yell something, anything, to beg for help?

Could it be that she had long ago decided she was already dead? Jennet had seen her husband fall from his horse, her young daughter, too. Although she would have known Maggie was going to survive her wounds, Jennet had to believe her husband dead. Then the young mother had watched the murder of her son, perhaps even witnessing the first flames starting their destruction of her home. After unimaginable abuse at the hands of some unnamed
petty chief, could it be that Jennet believed nothing would ever be the same again, that she could never return home, that she was … as good as dead already?

Where did she go after the Big Hole? I brood on that simple mystery this subfreezing morning as the wind picks up and the sun finally emerges, briefly bubbling into that narrow ribbon of sky between the far mountains and the low gray hulking clouds that betray the reputation of this Big Sky Country.

There never was another report of the mysterious blond-haired woman spotted with the Non-Treaty bands. Did she live to make it to the Camas Meadow fight? And did she last out their perilous passage through Yellowstone National Park? The Canyon Creek fight? Cow Island? … And was Jennet Manuel still with the
Nee-Me-Poo
when they reached the cold, windswept hills at the foot of the Bears Paw Mountains when both a winter storm and Miles's Fifth Infantry caught them just short of the Medicine Line and the sanctuary of the Old Woman's Country?

Was Jennet Manuel still alive then?

Blood always answers blood.

This battlefield is like a lonely, hollow hole in the heart of the earth, especially now as I remember that all-too-quiet cemetery on a shady hillside back at Mount Idaho where stands a tall marble headstone erected for Jennet Manuel. I remember how I paused there, gazing down at that patch of ground, knowing hers was an empty grave … this silent haven adorned with a simple, beautiful piece of marble. If her body could not be laid to eternal rest, then I figure some of this war's survivors sought to put Jennet's soul at peace.

In a very real sense this morning, I feel a palpable connection between these two places—both sites are cemeteries. In both I sense the death of some innocence. You only have to walk among the tombstones and marble markers at the Mount Idaho cemetery to realize this was not a war between fighting men. In both places—the quiet cemetery and here at the hallowed Big Hole—lie the innocents: the
women and children who gave a lie to the belief that this was a war between soldiers and warriors.

Right from the-outbreak on the Salmon River, and on into Montana Territory, this was a dirty war that recognized no gender, nor youth.

The wind comes up as the sun disappears behind the low clouds, and I feel even colder than before. In chasing down the Nez Perce, Sherman and Sheridan once more had their “total war.”

But blood will always demand more blood.

The great and deep wound Gibbon's men inflicted at this place of tears will now be answered in a frenzy of murder, an orgy of senseless killing that will mark with shame the return of the
Nee-Me-Poo
to Idaho and their migration through Yellowstone Park—pausing only when they discover that their old friends the Crow won't join them in a war against the soldiers.

I wipe the moisture from my eyes and stand, hoping I have what it will take to finish this sad story many months and many, many miles from here among the cold hills at the Bear's Paw. Blood always answers blood.

It has always been that way. I doubt anything man can ever do will change that.

Blood cries out for blood.

Terry C. Johnston
Big Hole National Battlefield
13 May 1999

TERRY C. JOHNSTON was born on the first day of 1947 on the plains of Kansas and has lived all his life in the American West. His first novel,
Carry the Wind
, won the Medicine Pipe Bearer's Award from the Western Writers of America, and his subsequent books have appeared on best-seller lists throughout the country.