Realizing, too, he had no worry about smothering here at the bottom of the creek as the gentle current nudged him slowly around, easing his body downstream. A body that no longer ached.
Natalekin realized he had already begun the journey of death.
FIRST Lieutenant James H. Bradley had brought his left wing of the attack into these tall willows at the bottom of the hill. He commanded no company of his own here; instead, he was the only officer leading both the cavalrymen and Catlin’s thirty-four volunteers from the Bitterroot valley. Stepping off the low cutbank, he had quietly plunged into the frigid water that nearly rose to his crotch, so shockingly cold it robbed him of breath for a moment.
The rest came off the bank behind him, stretched out to right and left.
Since witnessing the Custer dead last summer, the lieutenant had been compiling his memoirs of that Great Sioux War. In fact, the day before departing Fort Shaw for the Bitterroot valley, he had completed his remembrances of 26 June 1876—the day before that terrible Tuesday when he had been the first to discover that gruesome field of death.*
But what jarred him now was that he had intended to write another letter to his sweet Miss Mary waiting back at Fort Shaw, some word before he found himself caught up in finding this village. The last he had sent her was written at twilight back on the third of August, from Missoula City before Gibbon decided to march after the Nez Perce with an undermanned force.
It has not yet transpired what we are to do, but it is probable we will remain inactive for a few days till Howard comes up from the west side of the mountains and the 2nd Cavalry battalion from the Yellowstone, and then we will push for the Indians.
Events had a way of catching up a man and hurtling him along with them. Maybe Gibbon was smarting at all the criticism Rawn was taking for his lack of action up the Lolo. That reflected on the Seventh Infantry. Or maybe the colonel was simply tired of all the rumors of his overcaution during the campaign of 1876. For the last year that had reflected on John Gibbon himself.
Bradley was a soldier. A good soldier. Yet the husband and father in him now made him regret not sending a letter back from Stevensville or Corvallis, some word sent with a civilian courier, just a note to tell her where they were going and what they were about.
As James Bradley stepped off the edge of the bank into the cold water, he had a remembrance of how he had ended that letter already on its way to his Miss Mary.
Kisses for the babies and love for yourself
Most of Catlin’s civilians were gathered right behind him at his elbow as they slowly waded toward that last stand of willow shielding them from a certain view of the lodges. Across no more than a half-dozen steps, the water slowly rose past his waist, deeper, too, eventually drenching some of the shorter men clear up to their armpits. They slogged forward at an uneven gait, boots frequently slipping on the uneven creek bottom, shuddering with their cold soaking, parting the stringy mist with each step.
“Hold up!” one of the civilians whispered harshly, and a little too loudly, too, down to his right.
Everyone froze.
“One of ’em comin’!” another voice announced.
“How many?”
“See only one,” a different voice asserted. “On a horse.”
Of a sudden, there he was, taking form behind the gauzy fog. The warrior’s pony eased off the far bank into the creek, gingerly picking its way across the rocky bottom, slowly, slowly without the clatter of iron horseshoes. The figure and his horse were swallowed by the dancing mist, then reemerged once more, a few yards closer.
Bradley heard low whispers murmured to his right among the civilians and wanted desperately to call out to them, to order silence. Nothing must spoil their surprise. Catlin’s men must goddamn well wait until they heard Gibbon fire that shot announcing their charge into the enemy camp.
Maybe the lone warrior would somehow manage to pass on by them, if the civilians just stayed quiet enough, hunkered down in the willows—let that horseman ease past on his way to the pony herd on the slopes behind them. Then Bradley saw the rider wasn’t going to bypass them unawares. The warrior stopped, cocking his head this way, then that.
He’d heard those goddamned volunteers whispering!
Leaning forward, Bradley looked harder than ever, studying the horseman—figuring he really wasn’t a warrior at all. Not sitting his pony lithe and agile. It was an old man, nearly white-headed, wrapped in a blanket, maybe a blanket coat.
It surprised the lieutenant when the figure drew one of his legs up, bracing the knee atop the pony’s spine, rising and rocking forward as if to have himself a better look at something. Something? Hell, the old bugger was trying to get a good look at their line! How could he disable the old man without firing a gun—
Suddenly the old man spoke a sharp question, deciding it.
His words were instantly answered, without orders, from the right side of that line Bradley had been leading toward the north end of the village.
Four, five, maybe more guns rattled in volley—their low boom muffled slightly by the sodden air. More than one bullet caught the old man, driving him off his horse as it reared slightly—probably hit by bullets, too. The rider sank beneath the surface of the water as the pony wheeled about in fright, scrambling back for the creek bank.
On down to their right, the other units opened up: Logan, Browning, Comba, Sanno. Damn, that old man had robbed Colonel Gibbon of his chance to make the first shot!
“Forrad!” Bradley bellowed to the ranks.
Remembering how the colonel himself had quietly admonished him in the dark that morning, warning him to use great caution going into the tall brush on this far left flank of the line. “Stay with the riverbank as much as possible—where they can’t see you so well,” Gibbon had asked of him.
The men were starting to talk now, the way a man always would to work himself into the fighting lather.
“Remember your orders!”
They stepped on out of the thick willows, onto some spongy ground there in the slough, seeing how fires instantly brightened in a few of the lodges, shrill voices calling wildly from beyond the gray, swirling mist.
“Hold for my command!”
Another volley roared to their right, from those units positioned farther south along the line of attack.
Screams from the village now. Women’s and children’s voices—
Quickly interrupted by the ordered third volley from the other companies.
“That’s our cue, men!” Bradley bellowed. “Charge!”
With that third wave of rifle fire fading from his ears, Bradley turned to his left slightly as a half-dozen naked figures flitted between the northernmost lodges and those bare skeletons of poles erected on the bank ahead. He raised his right arm, waving to all those around him as their wide front burst from a thick pocket of fog.
“Shoot low!” he hollered a reminder at them as he poked the muzzle of his rifle into some tall brush, taking his first step through the patch of willow. “Shoot low and pay heed to women and children!”
“Hold on, sir!” a voice cried behind him. “Don’t go in there—it’s sure death!”
The muzzles of those weapons in the village jetted bright flame—
Bradley instantly sensed it like a steam piston slamming into the left side of his chest. No wonder. Here in this brush he was so close to the bank he could make out the fury in the eye of the man who had shot him.
Sitting down in the water as the strength went out of his legs like the gush of a river over a busted dam, the lieutenant found it none too cold now. The creek lapped around his chest, swirled under his armpits, as he sat there, weaving slightly and wondering what had happened to his Springfield. Did he forget it back …
He blinked, staring now at the surface of the stream, not sure if the water around him was turning a different color here just before the coming of the sun. Maybe even warming slightly with his flowing blood. But his chest was becoming so heavy he wa
nted to lie back and sleep. Even right here in the water. After all, it wasn’t cold anymore.
The water sucked at him, drawing him back, back so he could sleep just a little.
Eyes closing, he suddenly recognized the top of the timbered hill from his boyhood in Ohio. A few more desperate steps and he found himself on its crest, looking down into a beautiful valley, a wide, beckoning meadow ringed with green, leafy trees barely rustling at the tug of a warm breeze.
The water surrounding him like summer air was cold no longer.
And he heard voices, the chatter of men who hadn’t been able to speak for more than a year now. He recognized faces, even though he had never served with any of them. Cavalrymen all. Off to the side somewhere, his ears brought him the music of a fiddle. Some man playing a mighty fine fiddle.
He started to turn that way—then Bradley realized why he heard such music. Knew why he recognized these faces … they were Custer’s dead, one soldier after another.
The very first time, and the very last, too, he had seen these men, they had been lying upon a bare, stark field of death—bodies stripped of clothing, heads completely scalped, nearly every one of the horse soldiers mutilated: hands, feet, arms, privates hacked off, heads smashed to jelly.
No matter how much he stared at the soldiers now, Bradley could see no signs of mutilation as they turned in his direction and started walking toward him; the first of those two hundred called out to Bradley, welcoming him to Fiddler’s Green.
He had made it. Thank God he had made it.
So this was how it was for a soldier to die, he remembered thinking as the first of these heroes came up and put their arms around his shoulders, others pounded him on the back—bringing him along to that green and leafy meadow.
So this … is how it feels for a good, good soldier to die.
*Lieutenant James H. Bradley would not live to complete this vivid chronicle of that war on the northern plains. Ever since, Custer scholars have regretted not having his recollections of the twenty-seventh and the subsequent days of burials, along with the discoveries his advance detail made in the Cheyenne-Sioux village.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
WA-WA-MAI-KHAL, 1877
SHE WAS THE WIFE OF A GREAT WARRIOR, WAHLITITS. THE one called Shore Crossing.
After enduring many winters of ridicule and sniping, he had started this war to wash himself clean of the shame of that vow he had made to his father not to take vengeance upon the Shadows. After all the Nee-me-poo had endured over the years … not to take vengeance?
For some time now she had struggled to understand what made him flirt with other, younger women. Perhaps it was only the pain he tried so hard to hide from everyone but her. Seeking the approval of the younger women to somehow make up for the lack of respect from the older men—warriors they were.
With Red Moccasin Tops her husband had started this war. Swan Necklace came along as their horse holder. Every war party needed at least one horse holder. And when the trio returned to the traditional camp at Tepahlewam, they were instantly covered in glory. Shore Crossing was a changed man. No longer did he make courting eyes at the women younger, prettier, than she. Women who still had their flat bellies while hers had begun to swell big and round with Shore Crossing’s child.
She had long prayed it would be a son. Not just for her husband, the child’s father … but for all Nee-Me-Poo people. To carry on the bloodline of a great warrior of the People.
From that season of Hillal, when Shore Crossing had started the war that would finally throw off that yoke the white man had put upon the Nee-Me-Poo, down through Khoy-Tsahl and now into the time of Wa-Wa-Mai-Khal, these three summer seasons, at long last the People had risen up against an enemy much stronger, far more numerous. Yet their warriors had been victorious in one fight after another against greater foes.
Although the People had been compelled to leave their traditional homelands in Idaho country, she knew they could make a new home with their allies the E-sue-gha in the buffalo country. While it would not be the high, green hills she had known since her birth, that new land was where their son would be born in freedom. Perhaps she would name him Buffalo Calf, or Little Buffalo, or something of that sort, to commemorate their coming to the land of the buffalo to escape the war and white men of Idaho country.
The people of Montana country were not angry with them. They had allowed the Nee-Me-Poo passage through the Bitterroot valley and over the mountain pass without trouble, once the village had skirted around the small band of soldiers hiding behind their log barricades.
But that next night, Shore Crossing awoke her for the first time with his disturbing dream, seeing himself killed by a soldier’s bullet. He was unable to sleep for the rest of the night and told no one else of his frightening vision the next day.
When he finally fell into a troubled sleep the following night, his terrible dream returned. And for every one of the last few nights as the village slowly made its way up the Bitterroot River and down to this Place of the Ground Squirrels.
Here, for the first time in many nights, Wahlitits wasn’t troubled by the nightmare! Instead, they celebrated with the others their arrival in this country where they could take the time to cut, peel, and cure lodgepoles in the timber above their camp. Last night there had been a lot of gambling by stick or bone around the fires. Dancing, singing, drumming, and laughter. Much, much laughter. They had left the war behind.
Even more important to her, Shore Crossing had finally left his terrifying dream behind. No more would he jerk awake with that vision of a soldier aiming his rifle at him, a powerful bullet taking his life—
That first quick burst of shots awoke her with a start.
She quickly turned to him beneath the buffalo robe beside her. Shore Crossing lay on his back, eyes open and unblinking, staring at the place where the lodgepoles were lashed together with loops of thick rope. She knew he had heard those gunshots, too.
Deliberate in his actions, Wahlitits threw back the robe, exposing her, as he reached for his breechclout and leggings.
“No!” she wailed.
He flung her hand off his arm without a word and belted on the breechclout.
Gritting her teeth stoically, she sat up. Over the past few weeks of travel from camp to camp, her once-small breasts had grown heavy atop the swelling mound of her belly. She reached up on the liner rope and took down the cloth skirt and overshirt, quickly pulling them on as Shore Crossing finished tying his leggings to his belt, then quickly knelt to pick up his cartridge belt. Looping it over his forearm, he grabbed his moccasins in hand and took up the carbine he had stolen from the first Shadow he had killed.*
“I want to go with you, Wahlitits.”
“Yes,” he said softly after pausing a moment for reflection at the doorway in the gray light of predawn spreading upon the valley. More gunfire crackled outside, loud, booming volleys of soldier guns. “I want you to come watch a brave man die this morning.”
She stifled a wounded cry that fought to free itself from her throat.
He buckled the cartridge belt around his waist, then chambered a cartridge with the gun’s lever and quickly ducked from the door.
The instant she followed on his heels, she realized there weren’t many husbands and fathers stepping forward to meet the attack. Downstream and up, she heard the soldiers, saw so many of them—more than Shore Crossing could ever stop by himself.
But she knew he had to do what he could.
At the first crackle of gunfire off to their right, her husband seemed to come alive, animated now of a sudden, hearing some other man, another warrior, young or old, crying out his war song, making his stand against the first of those suapies in blue slipping out of the whitish mist so cottony it clung to the twisting stream. A lot more soldiers emerged from the brush and willows to their left, wading waist-deep in places as they splashed toward the nearby bank.
“Go with the people to hiding!” he ordered.
“No
!” she shrieked, her sob lost in the terrifying racket falling around them.
Bullets began to slap against the new lodgepoles, to thunk through the thick, dampened buffalo hides stretched upon some of the hourglass cones. Lead ricocheted, clanging off iron skillets and brass pots. Favorite war ponies whinnied and cried out humanlike as the bullets struck them, become as thick as wasps on a late-summer day.
“Woman!” Shore Crossing cried out, ripping her attention from the rest of camp and riveting it to him. “See how a brave man dies!”
He fired the carbine at those soldiers no more than twenty feet away now. Striking one of them, driving the white man back into the water.
Quickly levering, Shore Crossing aimed again, fired a second time, and hit another suapie.
“Make yourself smaller!” she begged him from the doorway of their lodge.
Ejecting a hot copper cartridge, Shore Crossing did not answer but continued to stand at his full height, turning slightly as he selected another target—
She watched the bullet slam under his chin, driving him off his feet, but as quickly she twisted aside to locate the soldier who had shot him. Wanting so badly to be able to tell her husband who needed killing next.
But when she turned back to her husband, Wahlitits was flat on his back, sprawled there near the log he could have taken cover behind, right in front of their lodge.*
Her heart froze a moment as she gazed down at him—struck with the fact that he looked so much the way she had seen him just moments ago: lying so still and unmoving on his back, eyes wide open and staring right up at the sky….
Lay the Mountains Low Page 55