“Did—did these two stay till the end?”
Whitman turned back to Howard with the translation. “No. They admit they were some of the first out of the valley of White Bird Creek when the fighting started. But before they reached the top of the canyon, they could look back down upon the soldiers and see that your men were surrounded by warriors on horseback and under fierce pressure. I suppose any man might hope for the best … but the story these two tell doesn’t give me much reason to believe that any of Colonel Perry’s men made it—”
Sudden shouts and cries from the far side of the parade interrupted them all. Into view came two mounted soldiers, their horses so lathered and done in the animals were barely plodding along. Howard joined the others who rushed to the scene where the pair of cavalrymen halted and slid out of the saddle.
“General, sir,” said Corporal Charles W. Fuller. “Company F. Both of us.”
“We was wiped out, General,” confessed the second man, Private John White.
“When was this?” Howard asked, his gall rising.
“Th-this morning,” Fuller gulped. “At dawn, sir.”
“All of Perry’s men?” asked Captain William Boyle.
Fuller’s eyes darted to those who pressed in upon him, eager for any shred of news. “N-no. Not all of them. Just F Company.”
“You’re the only two who got out alive?” Howard demanded.
“Only reason we got out was we run like hell soon as the trap was closing on us,” White admitted.
Howard echoed, “A t-trap?”
The hair instantly stood on the back of the general’s neck as he suddenly remembered the night of 16 June, when those two Nez Perce women showed up to noisily announce that Perry’s command had been lured into a trap and all had been wiped out. How could she have known of disaster before the battle? How could that woman have foretold of a trap that would consume all of F Company?
“Are there others alive?” asked Lieutenant Peter Bomus.
Fuller shrugged. “Don’t know, sir. We got out by the skin of our teeth and kept on a’coming.”
“We figgered there was nothing gonna stop them savages,” White asserted. “I decided the two of us owed it to everyone at the post to carry the news here so you could prepare your defenses, General.”
“Prepare for attack!” arose the deafening cry as panic seized the bystanders.
Every man and what few women remained at the post huddled close around Howard and those two soldiers—murmuring, cursing, wailing in fear of the attack they were sure was to come.
“All right, let’s get ourselves under control here! You listen to me and we’ll be ready if we’re attacked,” Howard silenced their anxious voices. “Lieutenant Bomus, form a detail to stack cordwood around the Perry and FitzGerald house.”
“Yes, General,” the quartermaster replied, turning away.
Then Howard continued, “Now, quickly spread the word to all the rest here at the post: we’ll use my headquarters in the Perry house as the rallying point when the Nez Perce decide to throw themselves against us.”
* * *
Just past midday, Yellow Wolf was returning to the camp after watering his two ponies when he heard joyous voices crying out from the far end of the village. He trotted toward the clamor—a sliver of him fearing that while he had been away the chiefs had already decided the fate of their three captives.
So how his heart soared when he recognized some of those mounted warriors slowly winding their way into the middle of camp, where they halted their long string of packhorses laden with buffalo hides.
“Rainbow!” he shouted above the tumult of the crowd.
“Yellow Wolf! Is that really you?” the one named Wahchumyus, Rainbow, asked as Yellow Wolf squeezed through the throng.
“Do you see how he has grown while we’ve been gone?” cried Pahkatos Owyeen, the one known as Five Wounds.
Reaching out his arm, Yellow Wolf grasped Rainbow’s wrist. Behind him Five Wounds slid to the ground as the cheering continued. There was much happy pounding on one another’s backs!
“What of this fighting?” Rainbow asked those around him.
“So much killing since you left for the buffalo country,” Wounded Head explained.
“Three young men started by shedding white blood here on the Salmon,” Two Moons related gravely as the crowd grew quiet.
So quickly was the joy of the hunters’ homecoming gone, disappearing like a winter’s breathsmoke. Over was this celebration for the return of those seven riders from the land of the buffalo far to the east.
“So now the soldiers have come?” Five Wounds inquired.
“Before breakfast this morning!” Yellow Wolf hollered. “But we killed many of the enemy and drove off the rest.”
“The fools will know not to come against us again,” growled the old Toohoolhoolzote.
Yellow Wolf watched the way Rainbow and Five Wounds turned to stare at the old chief. All seven of these hunters who had just returned to the land of the Nee-Me-Poo were veteran warriors. Their bravery and courage in the battle were unquestioned. They were not foolish, impulsive young men like Red Moccasin Tops and Shore Crossing. These were the finest warriors of the Wallowa band. And now they were home to fight in this first-time war against the Shadows.
“Do not be so quick to convince yourself you know what the white man will do,” Rainbow warned the old chief.
“We did not need any of you in our fight this morning,” Toohoolhoolzote sneered at the renowned warriors. “We took good care of the soldiers ourselves. And we will finish off the rest of them if they come back to attack us again.”
“One thing is for sure,” Five Wounds declared solemnly. “The soldiers will not stop now.”
Yellow Wolf grabbed Two Moons’s wrist and asked in a whisper, “What of the prisoners? Have the chiefs decided?”
“Prisoners?” Rainbow echoed, having overheard. “You captured some of the soldiers?”
“No, we killed all the soldiers who were left behind on the battlefield,” Two Moons explained. “The prisoners are three men from the reservation.”
“Treaty men?”
“Yes,” Yellow Wolf said. “They brought the soldiers to find us.”
“I must see them,” Five Wounds said to the crowd.
The seven who had just returned from buffalo country soon joined the chiefs and headmen in the debate over the fate of those three turncoats. It took the rest of that afternoon, but the council finally reached an agreement: they would free the trio.
“But if you ever help the soldiers attack our camp,” Two Moons warned, “then we will catch you again, and whip you with hazel switches.”
Yellow Wolf was relieved, having believed the three would be tortured unto death. In fact, when Yuwishakaikt asked for an old horse so he could leave the camp, Yellow Wolf gave him one of his to ride on the trip back to the reservation. A woman gave one of her old travois horses to Joe Albert, and the two Treaty men hurried away for Lapwai, although they both had relations among the Non-Treaty peoples.
But the third, Robinson Minthon, declared he wanted to stay with White Bird’s band.
With the fate of those prisoners decided, the council1 turned to deliberating their next steps. Late that afternoon the headmen admitted that the odds were very good that the soldiers would return as soon as they had regrouped.
“But we do not have to fight them unless it is absolutely necessary.” Chief White Bird spoke for many who were counseling avoidance.
“Yes, we must do all that is possible to avoid killing.” Joseph spoke up for the first time after so many days of self-imposed silence.
“Then I propose that we cross the people to the far side of the Salmon,” Rainbow declared.
“The women and children can find good shelter from the soldiers in the mountains,” Five Wounds agreed.
Rainbow explained, “If the soldiers follow us across the Salmon, then we will double back at any one of four or five places and kee
p the river between us and the army.”
“Yes!” Two Moons laughed heartily. “Everyone knows how hard it is on the soldiers to cross a river! Ho, they will fall farther and farther behind!”
“This is a good plan!” Toohoolhoolzote admitted. “We will lead Cut-Off Arm on a splendid chase!”
“And when it comes time that we must fight,” Rainbow vowed solemnly, “we will choose our place … choose our time. And finish the job you began this morning.”
Chapter 46
June 18, 1877
BY TELEGRAPH
Bad Indians Again Raiding in The Hills.
DAKOTA.
Bad Indians in the Hills.
DEADWOOD, June 18.—On Friday last a small party of Indians made a dash on Montana ranch, nine miles from this city, and succeeded in running off considerable stock. A party of twenty miners bound for Big Horn from this point were fired upon by Indians about sixty miles out. One of the miners was wounded.
“Wood!” cried William Watson from the top of the stockade pickets they had buried in a trench surrounding the tiny cluster of buildings at Slate Creek. “John Wood! Get over here on the double!”
The paunch-bellied civilian came trotting up to the foot of the logs erected as a fortress against possible attack by the Nez Perce. In the midmorning light, this middle-aged storekeeper who had sought shelter with so many other Salmon River settlers stared up at Watson standing at the center of some ten other men who were perched atop the wall. “What you want, Bill?”
“You got some fellas out here asking for you, John.”
“Fellas? Who the hell’s gonna be asking for—”
“Injuns,” the old Confederate interrupted. When Watson saw he had struck the storekeeper dumb, he continued. “They knowed your name; said it pretty good too. Asked for John Wood.”
“Likely wanna scalp you, Johnny!” sniped one of the others at the top of the wall. “Like they done to Benedict and Mason!”
“Hog droppings!” John Wood snorted. “That don’t make a bit of sense. I ain’t at all like Benedict or Mason. Always done right by them people.”
One of those civilians standing beside Watson at the top of the wall said, “We can scare ’em, run ’em off, you want us to. Maybe even kill a few—you just go and say the word, Bill.”
“No,” Watson drawled thoughtfully, gazing down at the half-dozen warriors who had emerged from the timber below a flag of truce tied to a short stick, daring to cross the bare no-man’s-land where they stopped near the foot of the new stockade Watson and the others had raised around this small settlement. “I figger if the Injuns was meaning to attack us, they’d done it already. There’s gotta be a good reason this bunch is calling you out, John Wood.”
The storekeeper nodded and went to the timbers at the middle of the wall, where the men could easily muscle a few heavy logs out of the way that would allow a man to pass out or a horse to be led in. With the help of another civilian, Wood shouldered one of the timbers aside and cautiously peered out at the six horsemen.
“I’m John Wood.”
“John Wood,” one of the warriors repeated with a thick pidgin accent as he inched his horse forward and stopped at the wall. “Owe you.”
“You owe me?”
“Money,” the Nez Perce explained without rancor, his accent heavy, yet every one of his words understandable to all those who held their breath, witnessing this strange meeting between enemies. “Owe you money, John Wood. Pay you money. Things get bad now. Pay you … then we go far from here.”
“Y-you gonna pay me what you owe me?” Wood stammered, shaking his head in disbelief.
“If that don’t beat all, John,” Watson observed from the top of the wall while a Nez Perce woman came running up to stand beside Wood, peering from the slot between the timbers.
It was Tolo1, the Nez Perce woman who days ago had come on foot from the Tepahlewam encampment, after first racing to the mountain mining settlements to warn her white friends of the coming trouble.
Struggling to see out, she nudged Wood aside and poked her head through the opening in the timbers. “You bad, bad men!” she shouted in pidgin English.
The five horsemen behind the nearest rider inched closer, growling back at the woman in their native tongue.
“Bad men, kill my friends!” Tolo shrieked at them.
“You come back to your people,” asked the lone horseman nearest the wall, speaking in English.
“No! I stay with my new friends. Not go with bad men kill my friends!”
“We not mean to kill the woman,” apologized the lone horseman who peered down at Tolo’s upturned face glaring at him there in the wall.
That seemed to baffle her. “Woman?”
“Man-well woman,” the horseman admitted. “Warrior get drunk on whiskey. He kill her at the Man-well house. I sorry and sad he get drunk on whiskey—he kill her then.”
“You killed Man-well woman?” Tolo sobbed as the horror of it struck her.
“Not me. Other warrior. Too much bad whiskey,” the warrior repeated, wagging his head regretfully. “Good warrior no kill woman. Only whiskey kill woman.” Then he called to the shopkeeper who stood behind Tolo in the crack between the logs, “How much, John Wood?”
“You’re the one called Stone,2 ain’cha?”
The horseman nodded, holding out a small skin pouch. “Me. Stone, yes.”
The shopkeeper wagged his head once as if trying to make sense of the incongruity of it all. “I don’t rightly know how much. Suppose we say you owe me twenty dollars for ever’thing. How’s that set with—”
“Twenty dollar,” the warrior agreed and poured some coin into an empty palm he then held down to the crack in the stockade wall. “You take. Twenty dollar pay John Wood.”
The civilian reached out cautiously and extracted two ten-dollar gold pieces from all those coins piled in the horseman’s hand. Then the warrior poured the rest back into his small pouch and stuffed it inside his belt.
“We even now, John Wood?”
“Y-yes, we’re even now, Stone.”
“It’s good,” the horseman said. “Big trouble now. Maybe never see you again. Good-bye, John Wood.”
And with that the warrior turned his back on the stockade and those white riflemen, rejoining the others, all six starting back for the timber.
“We can still get some of ’em, Bill!” a man hollered.
“NO!” Watson snapped sharply. “No shooting!”
He watched the bronze backs of those horsemen until they disappeared in the shadowy timber, then turned and watched John Wood shove the log back into place along the wall.
Wood gazed up at Watson, shrugging his shoulders. “Now I think I’ve see’d ever’thing, Bill. That Injun coming in here to pay me what he owes ’stead of fighting us.”
“If that don’t beat all, John,” Watson agreed in wonder, thinking how their world had been turned on its head. “If that don’t goddamned well beat all.”
* * *
“One of the interpreters has come in, General!” announced an enlisted man as Howard lumbered through the doorway, brought out of his desk chair by the clatter of hoofbeats late that Monday afternoon, the eighteenth of June.
It had been quite warm inside the Perry and FitzGerald house, so he was pulling his wool tunic over his damp dress shirt, hurriedly buttoning it as he threaded his way across the porch, sidestepping through the narrow opening the soldiers had left in the stacks of cordwood surrounding the building, and dropped down the steps to the parade as half-breed Joe Rabusco brought his horse over to Oliver Otis Howard and the three officers who hovered at his back.
“General,” Rabusco said with his thick Indian accent.
“You were with Perry?”
“Yes,” and the interpreter nodded dourly, sliding out of the saddle.
Howard wanted to seize the man by the lapels of his greasy canvas coat and immediately wring everything from him in one gush—but realized the interpreter’s Ind
ian blood made Rabusco taciturn, slow to bring to conversation.
“Did he send you to me?”
Rabusco nodded, stuffing his hand inside his shirt. From it he withdrew a crumpled packet of folded paper. “Soldier chief send me to you, carry this for Perry.”
He snatched the wrinkled paper away as if it were nothing less than manna to a starving man. While he was opening the pages, Howard suddenly stopped to ask Rabusco, “When did you start away with this? Was the fight still going on? When did Colonel Perry write this?”
“Battle over, he write,” the interpreter explained. “After dark last night.” And he gazed up at the afternoon sky. “He write, give me this before moonrise. Before he go to his blankets.”
Howard sighed, turned, and settled back on the porch steps, sitting heavily with the weight of what he knew he was about to learn. The post’s three officers stepped up close. Others were coming as word spread of the courier’s arrival from the scene of the recent fighting.
Then Otis’s eyes began to crawl across the two crumpled pages.
DEAR GENERAL HOWARD.—I made the reconnaissance foreshadowed in my last letter. I made the attack at 4 A.M. on what was supposed to be only a portion of the main camp, and for the purpose of recapturing some of the large bands of stock taken from settlers in the vicinity of this place, and the possibility of dealing the Indians a telling blow. The camp proved to be the main camp of Joseph’s and Whitebird’s bands situated on the Salmon or White-bird river at the mouth of the latter. The fight resulted most disastrously to us, in fact scarcely exceeded by the magnitude of the Custer Mas[sacre] in proportion to the numbers engaged. As soon as the Indians made their shots tell, the men were completely demoralized. It was only by the most strenuous efforts of Col Parnell and myself in organizing a party of 22 men, that a single officer or man reached camp. The casualties, as far as I heard from “F” Co. 1 commissioned officer (Lt. Theller) and 22 enlisted men killed and missing, H company 15 enlisted men killed and missing. Some of the missing will I think come in to-night probably not many. Lt. Theller was killed on the field. The Indians fought us (Parnell and myself with our squad) to within 4 miles of Mt. Idaho and gave it up, on seeing that we would not be driven any farther except at our own gait.
Cries from the Earth Page 44