Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  The only bright spot these revelations brought Howard was that, at the very least, now he no longer had to fear that Joseph’s warriors would lay an ambush for his column somewhere along the Lolo Trail or fear that the village would double around and sneak back to the Camas Prairie, where they would recommence their deviltry, destruction, and murderous rampage.

  Dropped right in his lap at that moment was the justification for splitting his force and attempting a junction with Gibbon. Hope rekindled, the glimmer of victory sprang eternal in his breast. Howard was about to put the frustratingly slow pace of the climb up the west side of the pass behind him.

  On the following morning of 5 August, after they had awakened to ice in their water buckets, the general impatiently pushed ahead with his staff, the “skillets,” and part of his pack train. Riding out at dawn with them and seventeen of the trackers were Major George B. Sanford’s cavalry and Captain Marcus P. Miller’s artillery battalion—who were serving as mounted infantrymen—leaving the foot soldiers and most of the pack train to follow behind at its slower pace. With this detached advance of some 192 cavalrymen, thirteen officers, and twenty of the Bannock scouts, in addition to one officer and fifteen artillerymen given charge of both mountain howitzers and that Coehorn mortar, Howard hurried for the summit of the pass, hoping to reach the Bitterroot valley in time to form a junction with Gibbon’s undermanned infantry as quickly as possible.

  While Joe Baker would continue as a guide for Howard, the general sent Cearly and Little on west to Lapwai, carrying messages for McDowell and Sherman.

  The following day, 6 August, this fast-moving advance nooned at Summit Prairie,* where they finally gazed down into Montana Territory. They had crossed from McDowell’s Division of the Pacific and entered General Alfred H. Terry’s Department of Dakota, part of Philip Sheridan’s Division of the Missouri. From here on out Howard was acting upon the direct orders of the commander of the army himself, William Tecumseh Sherman, ordered to forsake all administrative boundaries in running down the Nez Perce to their surrender or to the death.

  From there Howard pressed on until they reached the lush meadows that surrounded the numerous hot springs. It was this afternoon of the sixth that Joe Pardee, one of Gibbon’s civilian couriers, reached the Idaho column, explaining that the colonel’s men had struck south from Missoula City two days before, pressing up the Bitterroot with all possible dispatch. Gibbon was requesting a hundred of Howard’s cavalry. That electrifying news, and this beautiful spot with its magically recuperative powers, went far to lifting the spirits of every officer and enlisted man, newly cheered to learn they were closing on the Nez Perce.

  That following morning, the general composed a message for Gibbon that he himself was hurrying ahead with 200 horsemen:

  I shall join you in the shortest possible time. I would not advise you to wait for me before you get to the Indians, then if you can create delay by skirmishing, by parleying, or maneuvering in any way, so that they shall not get away from you, do so by all means if you think best till I can give you the necessary reinforcements. I think however that the Indians are very short of ammunition, and that you can smash them in pieces if you can get an engagement out of them. Your judgment on the spot will be better than mine. I will push forward with all my might.

  This same morning he would send his quartermaster, First Lieutenant Robert H. Fletcher, ahead to the Missoula post with frontiersman Pardee, asking that rations and forage for his stock be waiting for him at the mouth of Lolo Creek.

  If he hadn’t felt McDowell’s spur before, General Oliver Otis Howard sensed it cruelly raking his ribs at this moment. He found himself in another commander’s department.

  Joseph’s hostiles were almost within reach.

  Now the race was on.

  *Historians have concluded that Colonel Gibbon was incorrect when he listed seventy-six soldiers on his duty roster for that day.

  *Wolf Mountain Moon, vol. 12, and Ashes of Heaven, vol. 13, the Plainsmen series.

  **A small bronze, twenty-four-pounder, Model 1841, used primarily as a seige or garrison mortar, mounted on a sturdy wooden bed. With a maximum range of 1,200 yards, this fieldpiece, including its bed, weighed about 296 pounds, and was easily transported by a mule. This particular gun had not been used in the Battle of the Clearwater, so I have to presume it arrived with the fresh batteries of the Fourth Artillery from San Francisco.

  *Present-day Packer Meadows.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  AUGUST 4–7, 1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  —

  News from the Indian War.

  —

  WASHINGTON.

  —

  General Sherman’s Report: Pittsburgh

  Wants a Garrison.

  WASHINGTON, August 4.—General Sherman, in a letter to the secretary of war, says: “With the new post at the fork of Big and Little Horn rivers and that at the mouth of the Tongue river, occupied by enterprising garrisons, the Sioux Indians can never regain that country, and they can be forced to remain at their agency or take refuge in the British possessions. The country west of the new post has good country and will rapidly fill up with emigrants, who will, in the next ten years, build up a country as strong and as capable of self defense as Colorado. The weather has been as intensely hot as is Texas. I am favorably impressed with the balance of this country on the upper Yellowstone …

  “IF YOU CAN DO WITHOUT THE SLEEP, SERGEANT,” THE GENeral said as he peered up at the veteran noncommissioned officer, “it will be a feather in your cap to reach General Gibbon that much earlier.”

  First Sergeant Oliver Sutherland saluted, his backbone snapping rigid there in the saddle as he gazed down at General O. O. Howard. “Sir, I’ll do my damnedest to stay bolted to this saddle until I have delivered your dispatch to General Gibbon “

  Howard took two steps back, joining the ranks of his headquarters staff and a gaggle of more than a hundred curious soldiers and civilians as Sutherland jabbed the heels of his cavalry boots behind the ribs of that well-fed and -watered cavalry mount he would ride on down Lolo Creek, reaching the Bitterroot valley, where he was to chase after the rear of Colonel John Gibbon’s pursuit of the fleeing Nez Perce camp.

  The general and his advance had been the first to reach the hot springs on the downhill side of the pass, with the rest of the command not trudging in till late that afternoon. Sutherland was amazed at just how fast the men could get shed off their clothing, flinging off their boots and stripping out of greasy sweat-caked trousers to ease themselves down into the steamy pools. After that initial plunge, the soldiers dragged their clothing into the steamy water with them as the sun sank behind the Bitterroot Mountains, doing what they could to scrub weeks of campaigning from their shirts, stockings, and britches, not to mention the frayed and graying underwear. Soon it had all the makings of a laundresses’ camp, what with all the wet clothing airing on every bush, hanging from every limb.

  It was as Sutherland was dragging his limp, but renewed, body out of the sulphurous waters that a civilian and a Flathead warrior rode into camp. The tall, lanky frontiersman dropped to the ground, announcing that he was carrying a message from Gibbon for the general.

  “The Seventh Infantry departed Missoula City on the fourth,” Howard told those hundreds who crowded around the two riders from the valley. “He’s requested one hundred men to overtake his column before he pitches into the hostiles. I believe I alone can drive my troops more miles in a day than an officer less spurred by a sense of responsibility than myself. Therefore, I resolve to start in the morning with this advance force intact, marching as fast as possible with those two hundred men in hopes of reaching Gibbon before he reaches Joseph’s camp.”

  Suddenly it appeared Howard was struck by a thought that caused a crease of intensity to furrow his brow. The general turned round, spotted the officer he sought in the front ranks of the crowd, and called out, “Captain Jackson, select your best rider! A steady man
, one enured to hardship—one who can make the ride without faltering.”

  “The ride, General?” asked James B. Jackson.

  “I want a man I can depend on—no, a man General Gibbon can depend on—to get my message through.”

  Without a flicker of hesitation, Jackson turned on his heel and quickly located the half-naked Sutherland in the crowd.

  “Sergeant Sutherland?”

  “I’ll be back with my horse inside twenty minutes, Cap’n,” he had answered. “No sir, Gen’ral Howard. Beggin’ your pardon—I’ll be ready to ride in ten minutes, sir.”

  Now he was loping through the gathering darkness, speeding toward the mouth of Lolo Creek beside that taciturn Flathead who had accompanied civilian Joe Pardee to Howard’s camp.

  The sergeant’s real name was Sean Dennis Georghegan. Wasn’t all that odd a happenstance for a man to have his name changed once he set foot on the shores of Amerikay. Not long after reaching his adopted homeland, Sutherland had volunteered for the Union Army, rising in rank to serve as a noncom in the Eighteenth Infantry, regulars. Later in that war against the rebellious Southern states, Sutherland was transferred to the Tenth Infantry, where he distinguished himself in battle and rose to become a second lieutenant by the time the cease-fire was called at Appomattox. Rather than return back to the Northeast, Sutherland itched for more travel and adventure. He scratched his itch by enlisting in the postwar First Cavalry and coming west.

  An arduous ride awaited the sergeant as both a gathering darkness and an intermittent rain descended upon the two horsemen. But this was just the sort of adventure a hardened boyo like himself had prepared for. Trouble was, the adventure awaiting Oliver Sutherland was not anything like the Irishman had planned.

  Upon reaching the mouth of Lolo Creek and the Bitterroot River as first light embraced the western slopes, the Flathead did his best to shrug and gesture, attempting to communicate that he was not going any farther with the soldier. He pointed off to the north, in the direction of Missoula City, and tapped his chest. Then he signed that the Nez Perce and the other soldiers would be found moving off to the south, somewhere up the valley.

  It was up to Sutherland alone from here on out.

  The sun was refusing to blink its one dull eye through the sullen gray clouds overhead, suspended near midsky, when Sutherland realized his horse had been pushed to its limit and was all but done in from the punishment he had given it over the last eighteen grueling hours. Limping along on that exhausted animal with its bloody, spur-riven sides, the sergeant reined up in the yard of the next ranch he came across, hallooing with a voice disused for the better part of a day.

  “I’m bearing dispatches from General Howard to General Gibbon,” Sutherland croaked.

  “Gibbon, you say? Yes, yes—you’ll have to ride right smart to catch Gibbon’s bunch.”

  “How long ago they come by?”

  The settler considered that at the door of his small barn. “He streamed it by with his men in their wagons day before yestiddy … yes, yes. They’ve got three days on you now.”

  “Howard’s give me authority to get a remount,” Sutherland sighed, his body already aching for that hard road yet to come. “Back down the road, I was told this place might have a horse I could ride. Need to swap you a played-out cavalry mount for one what’s fresh, mister,” he explained while the settler stepped from the double doors of his small barn, shovel in hand, his britches stuffed down in gum boots, busy at mucking out the horse stalls.

  After bounding over to quickly inspect the strong but lathered army horse, the civilian looked up and said, “I ain’t got but two sorts. One is big and strong, but a mite slow—there’s two of ’em pull my plows and wagon. Only other horse I can swap you is a green colt, half-broke by a neighbor cross the valley. I ain’t had time to gentle it to the saddle yet. But by damn if you don’t look like a spunky feller.”

  Sutherland ground his teeth on the dilemma, then hurried his decision. Hundreds of men were counting on him. Bringing a rapid conclusion to this Nez Perce war would depend upon his finishing this ride.

  “Bring out that green-broke colt. Howard’s quartermaster will settle with you when they come through. While you fetch up the colt I’ll take my saddle off this’un here,” he grumbled, his brogue thick as blood soup. Then as the settler turned away for the paddock behind the barn, the sergeant asked, “You got a saddle blanket I could swap you? This’un’s near soaked through.”

  The two of them managed to drape a dry saddlepad on the back of that wild-eyed colt they had snubbed up to a fencepost, then laid the McClellan saddle across its spine, drawing up the cinch to tighten it down as the horse sidestepped this way, then that, forcing the two men to scurry left, then right, as they finished the job of securing the snaffle-bit over the animal’s muzzle.

  He tugged the brim of his shapeless rain-soaked campaign hat down on his brow, then stuffed his hand between the buttons of his shirt, fingertips brushing the folded message he had taken from General Howard’s own hand—as if to remind him that he alone had been hand-picked for this duty. Shifting his pistol belt nervously as he glanced one last time at the colt’s wide, terror-filled eye, Sutherland seized the reins in hand, then slowly poked his foot into the left stirrup.

  “When I’m nested down into this here God-blasted army rockin’ chair,” he told the grim-faced settler, “you free up that knot and step back, real quick “

  “You a good horseman, soldier?”

  His puckered ass ground down into the saddle and he heeled up the stirrups, tight as he could. Then swallowed. “I’m a horse soldier, mister. Ain’t a horse gonna throw this boyo. Now,” and he paused, “… let ’im go.”

  And go that horse did let go. Like lightning uncorked.

  Screwing up its back, head tucked south and tail tucked north, nearly folding itself in half, that green-broke colt compressed all its energy on a spot centered just beneath that man stuck on its back. The pony flung itself into the air just starting to rain once more with a fine, soaking mist. As it slammed down hard on all four hooves, Sutherland felt his teeth jar, the side of his tongue grazed painfully, some of the pasty hardtack still digesting in his stomach brutally shoved up against his tonsils.

  The sting of bile and the pain beneath his ribs robbed him of breath. As he wheezed in shock, the pony beneath him twisted itself in half again, but sideways this time, attempting to hurl the rider off to the left. From the corner of his eye he saw the fence coming up in a blur as the pony’s rear flank wheeled round. Suddenly wondering how in Hades he would get the general’s message through with a broken leg, on instinct Sutherland hammered the pony’s ribs with his boot heels.

  Just inches from that crude lodgepole fence, the colt shot away toward the middle of the corral, racing with its head down for three mad leaps, then twisted sideways again, preparing to uncork itself once more. This time the pony shuffled left, then suddenly right, bounding up and down on its forelegs—each jarring descent to the rain-soaked ground hammering his breakfast against the floor of his tonsils, tasting stomach gall each time he landed with a smack in that damned McClellan saddle.

  The wind gusted of a sudden, driving a sheet of the fine mist right into his face. Blinking his eyes that fraction of an instant, he opened them to find the colt tucking its head down as it careened toward the lodgepole fence anew but suddenly planted all four hooves, skidding in the drying mud, jerking to a halt as it flung its rear flanks into the air, catapulting the man ass over teakettle like a cork exploding from a bottle of fermented wine.

  For a heartbeat Sutherland found himself suspended upside down, peering at the horse through wondering eyes, unable to make out the fence coming up behind him as he completed that graceful arc out of the gray, rainy sky, but having no time at all to realize anything before he collided with the top rail and a rough-hewn post of that paddock fence.

  With a shrill wheeze, the air was driven out of his lungs … but it wasn’t until after he had landed in
a heap at the bottom of the fencepost that he realized he was lying in a shallow puddle. Dragging the side of his face out of the caking mud, Sutherland immediately sensed he had broken something deep inside him. The pain was faint-giving, hot and cold at the same time. Starting cold in his lower spine, as it radiated outward through his gut and lower chest, the agony flared with a white-hot fury.

  “You hurt, soldier?” the settler asked as he came over and bent at the waist to stare down at the sergeant.

  “Get that g-goddamned horse …” he rasped, then gritted his teeth together and clenched his eyes shut while the pain exploded through him, “tied off again afore I shoot it an’you both.”

  A whitish look of fear crossed the settler’s face as he tore his eyes from the old soldier and straightened, shuffling off toward the pony standing motionless, but for its head bobbing, near the barn doors.

  Slowly, gingerly, Sutherland dragged an elbow under him, pushing himself up. The toughest part was the searing pain he caused his body as he attempted to rise. But once he was upright, the waves of nausea slowly dissipated. Only when he tried to twist round or slightly rocked side to side did he have to clench his teeth together to swallow down the bitter taste of gall as his stomach sought to hurl itself against the back of his acid-laced tongue.

  Just the sort of motion his body would suffer on the back of a horse, any horse—even a plodding plow horse. But … Sergeant Oliver Sutherland, Sean Dennis Georghegan, did not have the luxury of time to find a gentle draft horse—

  “Your saddle’s broke.”

  He blinked at the settler. Then glared at the pony with a look of pure hate. The McClellan lay across the muddy, hoof-pocked corral, its cinch broken. “Get me one of yours.”

  “I ain’t got but the one—”

  “Get me your goddamned saddle!” he snarled. “General Howard will damn well make it right for you when he comes through in a day or so.”