So this morning when Randall issued his call for volunteers, Wilmot could think of nothing more than his Louisa and their four young children. Brooding not only about the aging and infirm father he was caring for, as well as his wife, Louisa, and their three daughters … Lew’s thoughts were also all wrapped up in that two-day-old son Louisa had just given him. What sort of place would this be if the Nez Perce weren’t driven back onto their reservation? How would life on the Camas Prairie go on if this bloody uprising wasn’t put down and the murderers hung? Lew Wilmot had to do what he could to make this country safe for women and children.
He had come here from Illinois when he was but a lad himself—his father marching the family to Oregon on that long Emigrant Road. Not once in all those years growing up in this very country had Lew ever done one goddamned thing against these Cayuse or Palouse or the Nez Perce. But … the way they had screamed for his blood during that dark night’s horse race across the prairie sure convinced Lew those warriors had some score to settle with somebody.
Lew and Pete had lost just about everything when they lost their freight, those two big wagons, and the rest of their draft animals to the war party.
“But we got our hair, Pete,” Lew had reminded his younger partner as they reached the barricades at Mount Idaho in the inky blackness. “Just remember that: We still got our goddamn hair.”
When Wilmot carried the news of the skirmishing at Cottonwood back to Randall, the captain announced he would be leaving for Norton’s ranch within the hour.
“Lew! Lew!”
Wilmot turned as he finished tying off the horse to the hitching post outside Loyal P. Brown’s hotel. It was a redfaced Benjamin F. Evans, a local.
“You coming along, Ben?”
“I’d like to go, but don’t have no horse.”
Turning slightly, Wilmot patted the rump of his horse and said, “Listen here—I’ve got a friend who owns one of the best horses on Camas Prairie, and he told me any time I went out for some scouting I could have his horse to ride. You can ride this’un here, and I’ll go fetch that other’un for myself.”
Although twenty-five men had offered to ride with Randall earlier that morning, only fourteen others answered D. B.’s call, joining Wilmot and Evans when they rose to the saddle a half hour later, all seventeen starting out of Mount Idaho for Cottonwood. Lew looked around him at the others. At least ten were joking and slapping at one another, acting like this was going to be some Fourth of July church picnic.
At the same time all Lew could think about were those three girls of his, Louisa, and that two-day-old baby boy—the five of them taking cover back there in Loyal P.’s hotel.
Cottonwood lay some sixteen miles off across the gently rolling Camas Prairie. A lot of bare, goddamned open ground to his way of thinking.
“CAPTAIN Whipple!”
He turned on his heel at the cry.
“Two riders coming in—at a gallop!”
Stephen Whipple could see how those men licked it down the road from Mount Idaho. Clearly soldiers, the yellow cavalry stripes on their britches aglitter in the summer sunlight that late morning, their stirrups bobbing with every heaving lunge the horses made, hooves kicking up scuffs of dust as they tore down the aching green of the Camas Prairie.
“They’re gonna have trouble now, Captain!” announced Second Lieutenant William H. Miller, pointing off to the east, where a war party of some twenty warriors suddenly popped over a low rise. A half-dozen of them immediately reined aside and started angling in a lope toward the two couriers while the rest came to a halt to watch the attack.
As soon as this news was reported to Captain David Perry, the commander ordered half of L Company to saddle their mounts and prepare to go to the aid of that endangered pair of riders.
“How far off do you take them to be, Lieutenant?” Whipple asked Miller, who had his field glasses pressed against his nose.
“Two miles, Captain. No more than that.”
Whipple turned at the rumble of hooves as those mounted cavalrymen rattled past at a walk, then broke into a lope as soon as they cleared the outer rifle pits. A quarter of a mile away the detail halted and shifted into a broad front, removing their carbines from the short slings worn over their shoulders. As the soldiers at Cottonwood watched, puffs of dirty gray smoke appeared above the detail. Then, two seconds later, the loud reports reached the bivouac. Volley by volley, the rescue detail was shooting over the heads of the couriers, laying their fire down at those six pursuing warriors.
“It worked, Captain!” Miller cried. “By damn, it worked, sir!”
Whipple only nodded, his attention suddenly snagged on something else. “Let me see those glasses, Lieutenant.”
Miller handed the binoculars to him. Putting them to his eyes, Whipple slowly twisted the adjustment wheel, bringing the distant figures into focus.
The lieutenant asked, “More Indians, Captain?”
“I’m not really sure,” Whipple replied. “They don’t look to be riding like Indians. And they’re coming across the Prairie from Mount Idaho.”
“How many? Can you tell, sir?”
“Less than two dozen,” the captain said. “No more than twenty at the most.”
“With news from us about the Rains defeat,” Miller began, “would General Howard be sending us any reinforcements from his column?”
“No—I think that’s a band of civilians, Lieutenant.”
Then Whipple slowly dragged his field of vision to the right, scanning the Camas Prairie just west of the Cottonwood-Mount Idaho Road. But he stopped, held, took a breath as he twisted the adjustment wheel.
“The village is on the move, gentlemen.”
Out in the lead of the distant mass were the horses, two—maybe as many as three—thousand of them. As he watched, Whipple’s heart sank.
Sixty, seventy, shit—more than a hundred horsemen began peeling away from both sides of the column now, feathers and bows and rifles bristling atop their painted, racing ponies. More than a hundred-twenty of them now made their appearance from the back side of Craig’s Mountain. And instead of coming for Perry’s bivouac at Cottonwood, they were angling off for that small group of horsemen coming out from Mount Idaho.
Whipple moved his view back to the south, finding those civilians once more, as the massive war party put their ponies into a gallop.
“Something tells me those riders aren’t soldiers,” the captain declared. “I figure them for a band of hapless civilians whose luck has just run out.”
* The term the Nez Perce veterans historically used to describe the rifle pits in their testimony on the Cottonwood skirmishes after the war.
* Whipple’s Gatling gun.
* Craig Billy Crossing.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
KHOY-TSAHL, 1877
FOR THE NEE-ME-POO THESE WERE THE FIRST DAYS OF THE season when the blue-backed salmon made its mating run in Wallowa Lake. The meat of those strong fighting fish was red and sweet. Every bit as sweet as were these days now that they had the suapies on the run.
After they had ambushed the two Shadows and fought the rest of the soldiers all the way back to their burrows on Cottonwood Creek, Yellow Wolf proudly rode into the village singing an echo of his medicine song. This echo, as his people called it, was a peculiarly intoned melody that announced to the camp that the singer had met and killed an enemy. Oh, how the young women looked at him then! It had been a good night of dancing, singing, and celebrating with those soft-eyed ones who peered at him from beneath thick lashes in the firelight.
Early this morning, the older women and men were up before dawn, preparing for another day’s march across the Camas Prairie. This time they were packing for the short journey that would bring them to Piswah Ilppilp Pah, or the Place of Red Rocks, a good campsite in the canyon that would take them down to the Clearwater.
As Yellow Wolf crawled on hands and knees from his brush shelter into the bright light, gazing around at the bustle of activ
ity, Weesculatat rode up, calling out, “You, young fighter—come with me this morning!”
He ground his knuckles into his red eyes sleepily. “I was awake too long last night.”
“I have a ride for you,” offered this warrior, who was also called Mimpow Owyeen, or Wounded Mouth. “If you want to come with me.”
Running his tongue around inside his mouth, Yellow Wolf did not think his belly was particularly hungry for breakfast. He squinted up at the older man, a father whose son was a Christian living on the reservation. “All right. Where do you want to ride this morning?”
“We will call out some other young men,” Weesculatat replied. “No older fighters—just young men like you. And we will go ride over to see who we might find along the Shadow road out on the prairie. There might be some horses, or rifles, maybe some fighting, too, if we catch anyone out.”
By the time Weesculatat and Yellow Wolf had moved through camp, calling out to other young men still a little groggy from their long night’s celebration, two-times-ten riders were, strung out in a crude V that passed right on by the soldier camp.
“See down the road!” Weesculatat shouted, waving the arm that he pointed south across the prairie. The older man announced, “We have two in the hand!”
Yipping like playful coyote pups setting off to chase and harass a jackrabbit across a grassy meadow, a handful of the young warriors kicked their ponies into a gallop, reining for the pair of suapies.
“You aren’t going, Yellow Wolf?” Weesculatat asked.
“No,” and he shook his head as the pair of distant horsemen spurred their horses into a terrified sprint, both men lying low in the saddle and whipping their animals without mercy. “There are already enough to see to those unlucky soldiers. I killed two of my own yesterday.”
“This will be great fun to watch,” Weesculatat said as Yellow Wolf turned on the back of his pony to peer across the great heaving expanse of the prairie.
Surely there had to be a better game than this. What with all those Shadows holed up in the two settlements nearby, with so many suapies hunkered down in their gopher burrows on the Cottonwood, there had to be better sport for a real fighting man than wiping out two lonely mail carriers caught unawares and in the open.
It wasn’t long before the soldier chief sent out some men who halted their horses, aimed their rifles toward the six warriors closing the gap on the two horsemen, and fired three volleys.
It was easy to see how the soldiers aimed over the heads of those two oncoming riders so their bullets would land in front of the charging warriors. Weesculatat and the five others were just breaking off their chase when the breath caught in Yellow Wolf’s chest.
“Now that’s what I call a challenge for a fighting man!” he suddenly announced with a shrill cry, every muscle in his body tensing with anticipation. “See who is coming now!”
At the far sweep of grassy prairie, more riders just made their appearance, advancing from the southeast.
“Are they more suapies?” asked Weesculatat.
“I don’t think so,” Yellow Wolf replied, one hand tensing on the reins, the other gripping the hardwood carbine he had captured at the White Bird fight. “None of them are dressed the same, and they are coming from the Shadow settlements.”
“Hi-yiii!” the older warrior shrieked exuberantly. “Yes, this is far better for a fighting man!”
Two Moons reined up beside Ollokot in a cloud of dust their horses kicked up with their hooves. “String out!” Two Moons ordered loudly to the rest, all five-times-ten of the young men arrayed along the white man’s road. “String out and make a broad line!”
Yellow Wolf agreed, “Yes—we will charge into them and break them up!”
By the time Two Moons and Ollokot got their fifty-plus warriors started off the road and onto the long sweep of rolling grassland, Yellow Wolf began to quickly tally the enemy. There were three fingers less than two-times-ten. It would be interesting to see when the Shadows reined up in a hurry as they spotted the warriors, turned around, and fled back for their settlement barricades. But … the horsemen kept coming! Instead of halting and wheeling about on their heels, the white men began to spread out, just as Ollokot’s warriors were doing in a wide front.
“What trick do you think they are up to?” Weesculatat asked.
Yellow Wolf quickly looked over his shoulder, seeing how the mail carriers were just then reaching the soldiers sent out to rescue them and all were retreating to the rifle pits dug around the white man’s buildings raised at Cottonwood. Still, there weren’t any soldiers coming out to show themselves and lay down a cover fire to protect this bigger group of Shadows.
“I don’t think they have a trick to play on us at all,” Yellow Wolf said as he saw how the horseman in the center was waving and wildly gesturing while the entire line of white men suddenly kicked their horses into a frenzied sprint. “They are going to try to beat us to the soldiers’ gopher burrows.”
Weesculatat flicked a look over his shoulder as their ponies lunged into a low, grassy swale. “It is a long way to race us to safety!”
Yellow Wolf quickly glanced at the distance. Many, many bullet flights to the hollows. If the soldiers did not come out to lay down some cover, Ollokot’s war party could stop the outnumbered Shadows and cut them up one at a time.
Faint sounds erupted from the throats of those white horsemen as they raced closer and closer, heading on a collision course with the wide band of warriors. Then the first of their guns popped, a puff of smoke appearing at the muzzle of a belt gun, a gray mist whipped away behind the rider. Others fired, and Yellow Wolf heard the first snarl of a bullet as it sang past him. On either side of him, those who had firearms put them to use—more for noise and bluster than to do any good atop a racing horse.
Yellow Wolf hoped the others would not use up too much of their hard-won ammunition in such frivolous sport. They would need those bullets when the tough killing began. Better to save their cartridges until they were sure of hitting a target—
Yelling at the top of his lungs, Yellow Wolf swung his kopluts, that short hardwood war club, at the closest Shadow the moment both lines converged on the slope leading out of that low, grassy swale. In an instant the white men were beyond them, through the warriors and on their way to the soldier hollows.
Immediately all the warriors swung their ponies around in broad, sweeping curves, each rider leaning hard to the inside as he brought his horse tearing in an arch that nearly toppled a handful of the Nez Perce as they barely avoided colliding with one another. With yips and howls and screeches, too, they were after the galloping Shadows in a heartbeat, racing after the rumps of those fleeing horses, making as much noise as they could.
Yellow Wolf’s throat was a little sore by the time he saw the first of the white men’s horses stumble and pitch its rider into the grass. Another horseman quickly reined aside and took the dismounted Shadow up behind him.
“Yes!” Weesculatat cried. “Aim for their horses! Aim for their horses!”
“Put them on foot!” came the order from Two Moons.
Almost immediately another Shadow horse stumbled; then it kicked and bucked, throwing its rider clear before it settled onto the ground.
Up ahead of the white men, one of them had reached the top of a low hill where he threw himself out of the saddle and was waving with an arm that brandished a repeater. Yellow Wolf had a lever-action carbine like that in his mother’s lodge. But she was with Looking Glass’s people. How he wished he had that repeater now instead of this single-shot suapie gun.
One by one the rest of the white men were leaping off their horses around that first man, two of them lunging up on foot, their horses already down in the swale behind them.
“Yi-yi-yiiii!” Yellow Wolf yipped, his blood running hot.
Hot because they had the Shadows stopped on the brow of that low hill and the white men were going no farther. If those few horsemen had kept on riding, chances were very good
most of them could have made it on into the soldier burrows.
But, as it was, Ollokot’s warriors could now take their time and have some fun wiping out these foolish whites.
SINCE putting Mount Idaho behind them, Lieutenant Lew Wilmot and the other volunteers who rode with Captain D. B. Randall had done their best to save the strength of their horses. While he knew every man around him wanted nothing less than to gallop full-out for that soldier camp at Cottonwood Station, they nonetheless reined in then-mounts as they descended to the rolling prairie. No more than a fast walk. Save the horses’ strength for when it was really needed.
But the endurance of the animals beneath them wasn’t the only worry troubling Wilmot. As he looked around him, Lew quickly tallied the odds against this band of civilians if they did have to make a running fight of it. He himself had been up against it with the Indians more than once, but … besides Randall and three more, none of the other twelve had ever found themselves in an Indian fight.
As he looked around at the group tightly bunched behind their leaders, Lew realized there wasn’t a good shot among them. Make no mistake, he thought: The odds were in favor of the Nez Perce who had cleaned up every command sent against them so far.
“You see the smoke, D. B.?” Wilmot asked. He had just spotted the signal fires burning atop Cottonwood Butte, which straddled the divide.
“Seen it a minute ago,” Randall said. “Likely that’s them Injuns talking about those soldiers down below ’em.”
Lay the Mountains Low Page 18