Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Lieutenant Bradley,” Gibbon said as those around them fell to a hushed silence beneath that starry sky and the nervous soldiers shuffled from foot to foot, “take us to the enemy’s doorstep.”

  They moved out on foot, single-file behind Bradley, Blodgett, Bostwick, and Catlin’s thirty-four civilian volunteers from the Bitterroot valley. A total of seventeen officers and 132 enlisted bringing up the rear.

  Over the next three miles of sharp-sided ravines and washouts, swampy marshlands of saw grass—where they sank up to their ankles in cold mud and muck—alternating with thick stands of timber, where they stumbled and tripped over fallen and uprooted trees in the dark, broken up by patches of rocky ground strewn with sharp-edged boulders, Gibbon grew more and more anxious. Initially certain the Nez Perce would have sentries posted along their back trail, as his men marched farther without encountering any sign of guards, he became more and more convinced that he was being lured right into a trap.

  His eyes straining into the moonless night, ears attuned for any sound that would mean they had been discovered, they crept toward the sleeping camp. On two occasions some of the men at the rear of the column got separated in the dark and mazelike forest, requiring the rest of Gibbon’s men to stop and wait for the lost and the laggards to catch up before pressing ahead once more.

  Of a sudden the whole sky seemed to open up to them as they emerged from the thick evergreen canopy, finding themselves on a gentle slope overgrown with sage, jack pine, and a fragrant mountain laurel. The heavens ablaze with stars, it was easy for a man to gaze across the full extent of the Big Hole and recognize where the distant, seamless mountains raised their black bulk against the paling horizon.

  The grassy hillside where they found themselves was cluttered with little more than a few sagebrush, here above the confluence of two creeks.

  “We’re very close, Colonel,” Bradley whispered, then pointed ahead to the left. “Around the brow of the hill. That’s where you should get your first look at the enemy camp.”

  “You have a staging area in mind, Lieutenant?”

  Bradley nodded. “From there we can watch the whole village until it’s time to move into position for the attack.”

  “Show me.”

  The lieutenant and Fort Shaw post guide H. S. Bostwick led off now, angling left, heading northeast around the sweeping brow of the hill, at the base of which the stream they had just descended joined with Ruby Creek to form the North Fork of the Big Hole. It wasn’t but minutes before Bradley and Bostwick suddenly stopped in their tracks.

  In a whisper, the lieutenant said, “There they are, sir—look!”

  The breath caught in the back of Gibbon’s throat as he got his first glimpse of the Nez Perce camp in the valley below: Some of the lodges glowed faintly from within, even more the dull-red reflection of the embers in those abandoned fires still flickering in the open spaces among the lodges.

  Gibbon swallowed. “How many are there, Lieutenant?”

  Bostwick wagged his head as a dog yapped its warning below. “We never got close enough to count the tepees, Colonel.”

  Another dog bayed this time, and the faint wail of an infant drifted up the barren hillside to the expectant soldiers.

  “Is your staging area close, Lieutenant?” Gibbon asked Bradley.

  “On past that point of timber that extends almost down to the edge of the water, Colonel,” Bradley explained, pointing.

  Gibbon nodded with approval. That dark patch of hogback timber narrowed from a wide V to a point just above the creek. It could well cover most any approach to the village. “What’s on the other side of the timber?”

  Bostwick said, “If my guess is right, it’ll be the ponies.”

  With a smile, the colonel whispered, “Let’s find out if your hunch is good.”

  Minutes later as they stepped out of the dimly lit timber, Gibbon was startled by the movement of forms on the starlit hillside at their front—fearing they were enemy warriors. After some anxious heartbeats while he sorted out what to do, the colonel realized they had bumped into the Nez Perce herd, right where Lieutenant Bradley had stated it would be.

  Which meant that now Gibbon had a new worry, alarmed that the horses would make a great racket, maybe even bolt and stampede, before his men had a chance to direct their movement. But, to his utter surprise, the Nez Perce animals did little more than quietly snuffle and mill about when they winded the approaching white men. Meanwhile, down at the base of the hill, a few of the dogs in camp seemed to understand that warning inherent in the muted whinny of those ponies … but while Gibbon and his men held their breath—awaiting some shrill alarm from a camp guard—the dogs below quit barking and the nervous horses shuffled up the hillside, away from the soldiers.

  “Bostwick!” he whispered for his post guide, a half-blood Montana Scotsman.

  “Colonel?”

  “Pick three or four of the citizens, men you can trust,” Gibbon ordered. “Start driving this herd back on our trail toward the wagons. I want you to get the ponies out of here before—”

  “Not a good idea, sir,” Bostwick interrupted grimly, shaking his head in the starlight. “Could be, your surprise will be ruined.”

  “How?”

  “These Nez Perce, they surely got ’em some guards on this hillside,” Bostwick explained, “if they don’t have guards down watchin’ the camp. We go driving off the ponies—we’ll be discovered and there’ll be trouble, shots fired.”

  “Which will bring out the whole camp,” Gibbon concluded, realizing the man’s intuition had to be right. After all, Bostwick had spent his entire life in Indian country.

  “Time come soon enough,” Bostwick whispered. “We’ll have them horses run off for you. But this close to having that camp in your hand, Colonel—you don’t want to be discovered now.”

  “No,” and Gibbon wagged his head. “We’ll wait out the dawn right here.”

  “For a man to go on foot is one thing, General,” Bostwick whispered. “But you lend me your big gray saddler there, I’ll ride down, have a look at the camp.”

  Gibbon was dubious. “But you just said they’d have camp guards about.”

  “I’ll wrap myself in a blanket,” Bostwick explained. “If there’s a picket about they won’t think nothing of a horseman. A man on foot makes a noise that draws attention—but not a man riding a horse.”

  “All right,” and the colonel passed his post guide the reins to his iron-gray gelding. And watched Bostwick disappear into the dim light.

  So it was on that grassy sage-covered hillside that Gibbon would halt and hold his men in the dark and the cold.

  “Canteens stacked by company,” he told his officers.

  They would have the tendency to bang and clank against rifle and belt pouch. No worry leaving them here: Soon enough, his men would be in control of that village nestled by a cold, clear gurgling stream.

  With this task done, the colonel had his men settle on the cold ground no more than thirty yards directly above the sluggish twisting creek bordered by bristling stands of willow. As the shivering men collapsed around him on the hillside to await the coming of predawn light, the colonel dragged out his big turnip watch from a pocket, remembering he hadn’t wound it since the previous morning when they started the wagons up those last two miles to the pass. Turning it just so in the faint starlight, he read that it was a little past 2:00 A.M. Here in this startling quiet, the softest of sounds emerged from the camp below: a horse’s snuffle, a babe’s cry quickly silenced by a mother’s breast, the growl of a dog answering the howl of a coyote somewhere on the mountainside.

  In minutes he had his officers together, issuing their orders. Bradley would take Catlin and the volunteers to the extreme left. Logan and Browning positioned on the extreme right flank. With Williams and Rawn serving as reserves right behind them, Captain Richard Comba and Captain Sanno would be in the middle, spearheading the dawn attack.

  Once he issued the command to
move out, the company commanders would spread their formation roughly as wide as the village itself—which appeared to be a distance of some twelve hundred yards. With his men deployed, the front ranks would ease down to water’s edge. The signal to attack would be a single rifleshot, whereupon the men would quickly advance, fire three volleys into the camp, then immediately charge their entire line across the shallow river, certain to enter the village uncontested.

  At that moment Gibbon’s attention was drawn again to the horse herd. It had been of crucial importance to his plan all along to capture the ponies … but—it might be a stupid blunder to awaken the guards who surely must be watching over the horses. Better that they await the moment of attack before moving on the herd, he decided. Then he could seize the ponies at the same time he launched into the village—

  “Put out that light!” a voice snapped sharply.

  Gibbon wasn’t sure who was involved, but there was a scuffle to his left as a few of the shadows quickly lunged toward the man who had just illuminated his face with the flare of a sulphur-headed match. One of the noncoms swung with the back of his hand, knocking both match and the stub of a pipe from the thoughtless soldier’s mouth,

  As the infantryman shrank back, holding up both hands before him protectively, he muttered, “I fergot, just fergot.”

  “Just like one of them blokes with Colonel Perry forgot when them horse soldiers was marchin’ down White Bird Canyon,” the gruff voice of a sergeant growled as he leaned right over the offending soldier, finger jabbing, those gold chevrons shimmering on his arm in the starshine.

  “Lemme get my pipe, Sarge,” the infantryman begged. “I’ll put it in me haversack, straightaway.”

  “Just be glad I don’t tuck you away in me own haversack,” the sergeant grumbled. “One li’l slip now—an’ our attack won’t be no secret no longer.”

  As the line quieted once more and the forest resumed its night sounds, Gibbon sighed, damp, chill breath smoke slipping from his mouth. Across a deep and willow-choked slough where the meandering creek was backed up, the lodges were arrayed on a line running roughly southwest to northeast. The greater number of the poles were standing near the western end of the camp, off to Gibbon’s right. The sky was starting to lighten as post guide Bostwick slid up beside Gibbon and settled to his haunches, beside the colonel.

  “Won’t be long now and you’ll see those tepees start to glow like Fourth of July lanterns,” Bostwick explained. “That means them squaws are laying firewood on the fires.”

  “Why is that important to us?” Gibbon asked.

  “It means the women are starting to build their breakfast fires, General. Which tells me we ain’t been discovered.”

  “So when the fires flare up, that’s a good sign.”

  Bostwick turned away to gaze into the valley. “It means that village down there will be yours.”

  A man snored nearby.

  Running over the order of battle in his mind once more, Gibbon realized he had done just that hundreds of times since leaving the wagons and horses five miles behind.

  Everything was ready, he told himself. A flawless plan that would end this Nez Perce war here and now.

  All Colonel John Gibbon had to wait on now was the coming of this glorious day.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  WA-WA-MAI-KHAL, 1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  —

  Indian News—Very Serious Trouble in Texas.

  —

  THE INDIANS.

  —

  Shooting Match at Fort Hall.

  FORT HALL INDIAN AGENCY, August 2.—A band of Indians shot two teamsters at this agency this morning, one seriously and the other slightly, but neither mortally. The shooting was done under the excitement caused by a rumor that hostile Indians were approaching the agency. The shooting was an individual act and condemned by all the Indians in the agency. Agent Donaldson immediately called together the head Indians in council, who condemned the act and sent men in pursuit of the Indians who had fled. They have assured the agent that they shall be caught and brought back and they will guard against any recurrence of the kind. Everything is quiet and peaceful now.

  “BE CAREFUL, OLD MAN,” SHE WHISPERED TO HIM.

  Natalekin leaned over in the dark, his cold, stiff joints paining him, and touched her wrinkled face with his fingertips. He could not really see her for the darkness and their fire all but dead now. But he would know the feel of her face anywhere. This would be their fifty-first winter together. Although his rheumy eyes had been growing more and more dim with every summer, Natalekin had no doubt he could pick her out of a lodge filled with women.

  She patted the back of his hand as she rolled onto her side. He rocked back, slivers of ice stabbing his joints. The damp cold of this Place of the Ground Squirrels had seeped clear down to his marrow. Dragging on the worn, greasy capote, Natalekin shuffled around the firepit for that tall, graying triangle that indicated the doorway of their darkened lodge.

  Outside at the edge of the brush where he quickly watered the ground, he found that the mist was no longer gray beneath the cover of night. Already that dense fog rising off the creek, clinging to the tall willow, and scudding along the ground between the lodges was beginning to shine with a whitish hue, announcing the coming of first light far to the east behind that barren plateau beyond the camp.

  Natalekin heard the old pony snuffle in recognition as he approached, even before he spotted the animal tied there to the fourth stake left of the doorway or it saw him. One cold, throbbing hand followed the picket rope from its jaw down to the stake, untied it clumsily, then took a deep breath. It always hurt to climb atop this steady, old horse. He caught his breath again when he was on its back, letting the waves of cold pain wash through him and out again. A little colder every morning, this agony of growing old became like icy lances stabbing through his joints.

  Wiping the hot tears from his eyes at that diminishing pain, Natalekin pulled the single rein about and nudged the old pony into motion. He blinked to help clear his foggy eyes of everything that prevented him from seeing what little his old eyes could still see while the animal led him past an old woman trudging between the lodges with her loads of firewood. Three others were already hunched over, starting life anew in cooking pits dug outside their lodges. On down to the shallow creek his old horse led him among the buffalo-hide covers and a few of those tall, bare cones of freshly peeled lodgepoles, stacked in their timeless hourglass shape, drying for their journey to the buffalo country.

  At the creek’s edge, the horse did not falter as it stepped into the water with a shocking splash to his bare legs. Together they parted the thick, drifting fog bank that seeped along the low, cold, damp places near this north end of the camp, clinging tenaciously to the head-high willow as the pony carried him into the north end of that boggy slough tucked against the base of the nearby hillside where he would find the herd.

  Natalekin did not have to awaken so early of a morning just to bring his handful of horses down to water. Chances were they would wander down to the creek on their own, if they hadn’t already. But he was an old man and couldn’t sleep very well, or very much, anymore. Restless especially when the dark and the damp penetrated his bones with all the more bite. Better to be up and moving about, sensing a little warmth creep back into his body with his spare and economical movements—

  Dragging back on that single rein, Natalekin halted the horse, letting the quiet, cold water settle around his bare ankles as he stared into the darkness. Then rubbed his dimly seeing, watery eyes with his fingertips. How far away was that?

  He squinted, then shifted his head slowly from side to side, attempting to make out the dim forms. These were not horses he saw.

  Quickly glancing up the grassy hillside, he could make out no more than the dark squirming of the herd on the slope above. His eyes came back down to the willows ahead. Had some of the horses wandered down into the creek bottom to water or graze on the tall,
lush grasses sheltered by the thick banks of willow?

  Or was it a prowling coyote? For the past two nights they had bayed and yipped from the hillsides at the camp dogs—

  There! Now that was a sound he knew did not belong to a horse. Or a scavaging coyote, either. That breathy rasp, something just sort of a cough. These were hot horses. After rubbing his eyes again, he nudged the pony forward another few steps. Ten horse lengths away, no—less than that now. He could see the first three of them. Gradually he made out even more of them, nothing but shapes. Dim figures, mansized and -shaped, slowly taking form out of the swirling fog snagged above this boggy mire where the creek slowed down and backed itself against the side of the hill.

  Perhaps these strangers were those spies the chiefs said were keeping an eye on their camp yesterday. Shadows from the Bitterroot valley who had traded with the Non-Treaty bands, everything from whiskey to bullets. Belief was that such white men had followed the village over the mountains and down to this place—perhaps to do even more trading.

  But he did not want them bothering the horses, did not want the strangers to even make an attempt to cut out a few of the Nee-Me-Poo ponies they would take back to their towns and ranches in the Bitterroot because the Nee-Me-Poo had so many—

  Natalekin heard the low voices. Unable to understand any of the words, he could nonetheless understand the harsh tone—like a knife blade grating across a stone—and thereby understood the meaning. These were not spies. Nor were they here to strike up some trading. These Shadows had indeed come to steal.

  “Go away!” he called to them as he leaned forward on his pony.

  Fuzzy and dreamlike—how he watched the yellow tongues of fire spew from the muzzles of those guns, puffs of gray, gauzy smoke drifting up from the mouths of each one, even before his weakened, arthritic body snapped back, back … back again with the terrible impact of each lead bullet.

  His eyes were open as he spilled off the back of the pony, feeling the animal twist to the side, rising slightly on its hind legs as its rider tumbled into the waist-deep creek. Flat on his back on the stream bottom, staring up through the dark water. Eyes frozen, staring at the way the fog skimmed along the creek’s surface just above him. Hearing the hollow, muted reverberations of those many guns that quickly answered the ones that had killed him. Watching the dark, shadowy figures move past, legs lunging, the water churning with their hurried passage as they advanced on the village. But from here he could do nothing.