Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  “What would you have us do?” White Bird asked, the crowd parting as he stepped into that tight circle gathered round Lone Bird.

  “Let us be gone to the buffalo country, if that is where we are bound, you chiefs,” Lone Bird demanded as he tapped his bare heels into the sides of his pony and moved into the crowd. “Let us be gone from this place. As quickly as the women can take down the lodges and pack the travois, let us be gone from the trouble and death that is already nipping at our heels.”

  For long moments Yellow Wolf watched the old warrior’s back as Lone Bird’s pony carried him away. That’s when he recognized the face of Burning Coals, known as Semu, a man rich in horses. “Come,” he said, tapping the arm of his friend Seeyakoon Ilppilp, the one called Red Spy.

  Trotting over to the wealthy man, Yellow Wolf begged, “Burning Coals, please let me and my friend borrow two of your fastest horses—”

  “You have horses of your own,” Burning Coals responded, gazing down his expansive nose at the young warriors. “Why would I loan you two of mine?”

  “Everyone knows you have the finest—the fastest—horses in all the bands,” Yellow Wolf praised, hoping the compliment would seal the loan. “I grow concerned by these warnings from Lone Bird’s lips.”

  “He is just a man given to unfounded fears,” Burning Coals sneered, waving off argument.

  “We should see for ourselves,” Red Spy admitted. “Your horses are best for a hard scout up our back trail.”

  “Scout? Up our back trail?” echoed Burning Coals. “No. I will not let you use up my horses for that. They are too fine for the likes of you and your friends, Yellow Wolf. Go somewhere else to get horses to carry you on your fool’s errand!”

  “Even Wottolen, a man with strong powers, dreamed yesterday of soldiers!” Yellow Wolf argued in disbelief. “Surely you cannot dispute the medicine of Wottolen!”

  Burning Coals turned away without a word, no more than a smug arrogance on his face as he waddled off.

  “Go hunting, Yellow Wolf. There won’t be any more fighting. I have seen it.”

  He twisted suddenly, finding the eyes of White Bull staring into his like two-day-old embers.

  “You have seen this in a vision of your own?” Yellow Wolf asked. “A vision as powerful as that of Wottolen or Lone Bird?”

  This loyal supporter of Looking Glass shook his head. “Fighting is over, young man. The war is done—war is far, far behind us now. Go hunting and think no more of war.”

  Many of the young men did just that. Quickly their thoughts shifted from making that scout to hunting the swift antelope. Children shuffled off in giddy play. Some of the women went back to their knees, digging the big, shallow pits they would line with heated rocks and grass, before covering the camas roots with more grass and letting them steam overnight. To be good, camas had to bake in the heated ground until the following morning.

  As the crowd dispersed, their feet and lower legs kicking up swirls of ground fog here in the bottoms near the twisting creek, Yellow Wolf’s gaze was drawn up the hillside, there to the south and west—across the stream, to the patches of dark timber … then back along the trail they had followed down from the high pass to reach this campground.

  Place of the Ground Squirrels.

  Realizing his own heart was sorely troubled. This was not a place of peace any longer. Too many upsetting visions already. As much as he tried to squeeze the dark, somber thoughts out of his mind, one question repeatedly floated to the surface.

  If they had actually left the war behind them … then what trouble and death could be racing up on their back trail?

  AT 5:00 A.M., just as soon as it wais light enough to travel that dawn of the eighth, Colonel John Gibbon had stirred his men from their blankets and pushed ahead. Word was they had a little over two miles before reaching the pass. One way or the other—with mountain travel or the possibility of battle—they had a long day ahead of them. But as they put hour after hour behind them, Gibbon’s hope that they would be able to launch an attack on the hostile camp this Wednesday faded.

  During the first two hours it took to cover no more than a half-mile, the ordeal of wrestling the wagons and their teams over the downed timber, fighting their way up the ungraded slope, was excruciatingly slow. After that, the struggle up the next mile and a half of rugged slope to the top became all but unendurable. His civilian volunteers and soldiers alike stripped off tunics and coats in the high-altitude August heat, sweating as they double-hitched the teams and attached draglines to each of the wagons, so the men themselves could assist the draft animals in yanking one heavy vehicle at a time toward the pass, managing each foot of elevation only under the most extreme exertion. Grunting, sweating, cursing, they purchased another yard of the trail, rarely looking back down the slope to where they had started their climb … never, never looking up the hill to where they needed to will these wagons.

  It would be small wonder, Gibbon brooded from atop his gray charger, that the Nez Perce didn’t hear his army coming—what with all the cussing and pained yelps from both men and draft teams alike.

  Just before one o’clock, as the hot sun sulled overhead like a stubborn mule and they reached the high, grassy divide* that meant the trail was all downhill from there on out, one of the advance men hollered that a rider was coming in. Gibbon’s heart leaped, wanting to hope—not daring to let that hope show on his face—as he watched the horseman in blue rein up before him, salute, then reach inside his sweat-stained fatigue blouse.

  “With Lieutenant Bradley’s compliments, sir!”

  Snatching the folded paper from the corporal’s hand, Gibbon exclaimed, “He’s spotted the Indians—this has to mean he’s found their camp!”

  “Yes, sir,” the soldier answered as Gibbon tore open the dispatch and his eyes eagerly raced over Bradley’s scrawl.

  Camp … horse herd … valley … will remain in hiding and await your arrival with the command.

  His heart rising to his throat, the colonel’s eyes misted. He would be the commander in at the kill. Howard was far behind. If any civilians from Bannack or Virginia City were coming west, they were still too damned far away to play any role in the coming fight. Gibbon squinted into the bright sun a moment, measuring what they had left of daylight.

  Then he turned back to his company commanders, the half-circle of them like expectant actors awaiting their cue offstage. “We will leave the wagon train here to continue at its own speed.”

  “You want us to follow your trail, General?” Hugh Kirkendall asked.

  Gibbon’s eyes found his wagon master. “Yes, you must redouble your efforts to follow along as quickly as the animals and conditions will allow. The rest of us will push forward on foot with all possible dispatch. Bradley’s found the village in the valley below us. We must … no, we will do everything in our power to reach his scouts before dusk.”

  “An attack at dawn, Colonel?” asked Captain James M. W. Sanno, commander of G Company.

  “Yes, Captain,” Gibbon said as he stuffed Bradley’s note inside his own damp tunic. “We engage Joseph’s warriors at first light.”

  “TANANISAI”

  Shore Crossing bolted upright as he cursed, shaking like a leaf, sweating as if he had been lying out in the sun instead of sleeping in the shade of his wife’s lodge, a gentle breeze wafting beneath the sides of the lodgeskins she had rolled up earlier that morning.

  “What is it, my husband?” she asked, settling beside him on the robes.

  For a moment he looked at her face, his eyes falling to glance at her swelling breasts, then staring at that rounded mound of a belly beneath her buckskin overshirt. She carried his child inside. In four more moons, no more than that, she would give him his first child.

  And for that he resented her. When her time came he would not only be her husband, but he would be a father. He was not old enough to settle down with one woman and to make a family. He wanted other women—especially the sloe-eyed girl who wat
ched him whenever he paraded about the camp or rode up and down the flank of their march coming out of Idaho country. He resented his wife for being here now, for carrying his child, for standing in his way of happiness.

  “Leave me be!” he snarled, pushing her aside roughly as he kicked his way off the heavy wool blanket.

  He heard her grunt in shock as she tumbled aside and he rose there beside the low fire. Like a quick flare of lightning he whirled on her, pointing his finger at her with an outstretched arm.

  “You will be happy one day very soon, woman!” he growled. “I will be dead and you will have all this to yourself!”

  “You are all that makes me happy!” she cried to him, both hands held up, imploring him as he escaped through the open doorway.

  As he stood there, his eyes adjusting to the bright afternoon light, he looked this way and that, seeing how many cones of lodgepoles stood drying without any hide covers. Then he heard her begin to sob. Shore Crossing stopped, took a deep breath, then steeled his heart. He simply must not let her touch him there. His days were numbered. Perhaps no more than hours now. His dream foretold the coming of the end.

  Holding his arms to the sky, Shore Crossing raised his voice to those at the middle of the village.

  “My brothers! My sisters! Listen to my dream! Listen to the vision in my heart when I awakened moments ago!”

  He waited a few breaths as the murmur grew into a loud cacophony, as footsteps and hoofbeats drew near. Men, women, and children came—like the young babe he would never hold on his lap or bounce on his knee. He resented his wife for getting herself with child … because now he would never know if she carried a boy or a girl. If it would survive the coming horror.

  An old woman’s voice called from the crowd, “What do you have to tell us, Wahlitits?”

  “Yes, you are a brave fighter,” White Bird said as he stepped to the fore of the crowd. “You were one of the Red Coats who started this war, one of the Red Coats who made the bravery runs past the soldiers who came to attack us at Lahmotta in the first battle. Tell us of your dream.”

  He took a breath. “In the dream that awakened me now, I saw myself killed!”

  The crowd went to talking among themselves, a dull roar that seemed to crash about his ears. Some of the chiefs raised their arms, demanding silence from the hundreds.

  White Bird prodded, “Continue, Shore Crossing.”

  “I will be killed soon—I saw this in my dream. For this I do not care. I am willing to die. But, before I am killed, I will kill some soldiers!”

  “I will kill some soldiers, too!” cried Red Moccasin Tops, Shore Crossing’s best friend, as he lunged through the fringes of the crowd.

  Wahlitits laid his hand on his friend’s shoulder. Together they had started this war against the Shadows, killing four white men on the Salmon River. Together they had raced back and forth across the front of suapies at the White Bird fight.

  “I shall not turn back from the death that is coming my way!” Shore Crossing announced in a firm voice, finding that this knowledge that death was coming gave him a peace he had never known before.

  “And I shall be at your side when the soldiers come to kill you!” Red Moccasin Tops roared.

  As he slowly swept his arm across the gathered hundreds, Shore Crossing’s eyes touched one warrior after another, one woman after another … until he found his wife’s face, her eyes swollen and red from crying.

  With his agonized heart swelling in his breast, Wahlitits warned, “I tell you this from my dream—there will be tears in many, many eyes … for most of us are going to die!”

  *Even at this early date, the inaction of Rawn’s soldiers and the wholesale desertions from the barricades by the valley citizens, along with the fact that the Non-Treaty bands were able to slip around the barricade without so much as an attempt made to stop them, were proving to be fodder for vehement editorials across the region. Rawn’s log-and-rifle-pit structure erected across that narrow part of the Lolo Canyon was becoming known as Fort Fizzle.

  *In fact, Wheaton’s left column did not reach Spokane Falls in Washington Territory until August 10.

  *Today’s aptly named Gibbon Pass.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  AUGUST 8–9, 1877

  HOW COLONEL JOHN GIBBON WISHED BRADLEY HAD reached the Nez Perce camp before dawn that eighth day of August so the lieutenant could have initiated his preemptory attack and driven off the horse herd.

  But from Bradley’s report he had found the village situated a bit farther than where they had expected to locate it. Throughout the rest of that afternoon as his column was forced to cross and recross the twisting creek a half a hundred times, struggling through those boggy glades created by the meandering stream, Gibbon formulated his plan of attack—what companies would stand where on the line, who to put in the center with him as they stabbed into the heart of the hostile camp.

  No matter what demands the terrain might compel him to make in the way of minor adjustments to his battle plan, the colonel was determined to hold fast to his original strategy. By attacking the very moment there was enough light to make out the lodges and horses he hoped to catch the warriors completely by surprise. Theoretically speaking, his men should be in the village before the enemy could mount any resistance. With their horses driven off and the camp surrounded, the warriors would have no choice but to surrender—rather than risk a slaughter of the innocents.

  Gibbon knew those twenty men he left behind with Hugh Kirkendall and the wagons had their work cut out for them. When the iron-tired wheels weren’t sinking to the hubs at every swampy crossing, the soldiers were having to muscle those wagons up every grade by double-hitching the teams and utilizing draglines as the twenty assisted the struggling mules. It made him all the more unnerved that the mule-drawn Fort Owen howitzer he had brought along with his advance was encountering the same frustrating delays every step of the way.

  Then, near sunset, he caught sight of one of Bradley’s men, stationed to watch over the back trail. Not that far on down the slope, the lieutenant’s soldiers and civilians lay waiting in the timber.

  “How far to the camp?” he asked, his voice breathless with excitement as the lieutenant loped up on foot.

  “Five miles, maybe four,” Bradley answered. “No more than five, sir.”

  “Then we’ll await the wagon train here,” Gibbon explained to the rest of his officers. “Take our supper, then advance within striking distance in the dark. That way we’ll be in position come first light.”

  Just past dark, Kirkendall’s wagon train rattled in. Hardtack was distributed among the men and raw bacon for those who wanted it, the soldiers washing their cold supper down with creek water from their canteens because the colonel had forbidden any fires for coffee—no fires for the lighting of pipes. With orders to sleep for the next few hours, the men wrapped themselves in their blankets and settled on the cold ground. John Gibbon was an old warhorse, the affectionate nickname his men of the Iron Brigade had first called him. Because he could sleep on the eve of battle, he was the envy of those who were a bundle of exposed nerves, unable to drift off.

  He had graduated from West Point in 1847, a year after the war with Mexico had made heroes of, and bright futures for, the many. Instead, Gibbon tromped off to fight the Seminoles in Florida before he was selected as an instructor of artillery tactics at the military academy. In fact, he had authored the school’s new Artillerist’s Manual, which was finally published in 1863, about the time he was getting himself wounded at Gettysburg—his second of four wounds for that war.

  Leaving orders with First Lieutenant Charles A. Woodruff to awaken him at 10:30 P.M., the colonel laid his cheek upon an elbow and for some reason thought back to the final miles on that journey from Fort Shaw to Missoula City. The Nez Perce had gotten around Rawn; Governor Potts was headed home saying the soldiers may no longer be needed; it appeared the crisis in the Bitterroot was over.

  That’s when the starch h
ad seemed to go out of his men. They had endured a long, hot campaign the previous summer and ended the Great Sioux War a bridesmaid—without firing a shot at the enemy! Ever since they had received word they were moving out, Gibbon’s men had known they were going to get in their licks against the Nez Perce. But over the past five days the colonel had kept their minds on the pursuit, put their vision on the horizon—and convinced them the enemy was within reach.

  Pretty soon, it reminded him of a pack of hunting dogs howling down a hot trail the way his men were showing their eagerness for this fight.

  By blazes—the Seventh wasn’t going to be denied this fight!

  Gibbon was snoring within minutes of closing his eyes.

  ARISING in the dark, Gibbon gave the command to awaken the men and distribute ninety rounds of ammunition to each soldier for his Long-Tom Springfield rifle—fifty rounds stuffed into the loops of their prairie belts and twenty each in their two leather belt pouches, ofttimes called sewing kits.

  “Bring the howitzer and fifteen shots forward at dawn,” Gibbon gave the order to the gun crew under sergeants Patrick C. Daly and John W. H. Frederick. “Along with a pack mule carrying those two thousand rounds of extra ammunition for the men.”

  Everything else—rations, blankets, shelter halves, and more cartridges—would remain behind with Kirkendall’s wagons.

  Except for the horses of Gibbon and three other men, the animals were left behind with the wagon master, placed in a rope corral beside Placer Creek, a small guard to watch over them until the column’s return or Gibbon ordered them forward. When all was in readiness, the colonel gave the command for the heavy wool greatcoats to be left behind at the corral; they would impede a man’s movement not only on the nighttime trail ahead but also in the coming battle.

  The civilians and those foot soldiers of the Seventh U. S. Infantry stood shivering slightly with the cold in that hour before midnight, 8 August, 18 and 77.