Cries from the Earth: The Outbreak Of the Nez Perce War and the Battle of White Bird Canyon June 17, 1877 (The Plainsmen Series)

by Terry C. Johnston

  While everyone else turned away and would not even give the Shadow the courtesy of an answer, Eagle Robe had instead stayed behind while the others walked off just as the sun broke through the high, blue-tinged clouds pregnant with the promise of a heavy spring thunderstorm.

  “You know me. I claim a little land right next to the pasture you already are using,” Eagle Robe had told the white man and his interpreter, even though the translator did not speak very good Nez Perce at all. “In a few days I am leaving this place for several moons.”

  “Leaving?” the interpreter had repeated. “Where are you going?”

  “I will be among the first of our people who are traveling across the mountains to the buffalo country this season.”

  The interpreter nodded and grumbled something to the settler next to him. They spoke a moment before Eagle Robe continued.

  “Tell this man who comes asking for a little more land to use for his cattle that since my land already lies right against what he has been using, I can let him use my ground for the rest of the spring and summer while the grass grows its tallest.”

  Both of the Shadows bobbed their heads with eager smiles on their faces.

  “My friend says that is a good offer,” the interpreter explained, using his hands now and then to make sign for a word. “Are you coming back from the buffalo country at the end of the summer?”

  “If the hunting is not so good, we will be back before the last of the hot days,” Eagle Robe had told them. “But if the hunting is good, why should I hurry back?”

  All three of them chuckled, and both Shadows were grinning constantly now. Eagle Robe found himself very gratified that he had made them happy. This is the way it must be, he recalled thinking at that moment. Our peoples are thrown together and we should find a way to help one another. It had been that way since the first white men had come among the Nee-Me-Poo while on their journey to the great western ocean back in the long-ago time of Eagle Robe’s great-grandfather.

  “If the buffalo want me to keep shooting them,” he had gone on to explain to the Shadows, “I may not return until the first frosts brown the grasses of both trails leading over the mountains.”

  “Autumn.” The interpreter had wanted confirmation.

  “Yes,” Eagle Robe said. “This man, my new friend, can graze his cattle and horses on my little piece of ground until I return. But do not worry; when I come back, he will not have to rush out of here. I will give him a few days to gather up his belongings, pack them onto his wagons, and herd his cattle to another place before I bring back my horses to that pasture.”

  “Will you show us this ground of yours that lies next to Larry Ott’s?”

  “Come now,” Eagle Robe had said, shaking the hand that smiling white settler held out to him. “I will take you to the ground where this man can graze his cattle and horses until I return from the buffalo country.”

  At that time last spring he had expected the Shadow might erect a crude lean-to with its supports cut from forest saplings, maybe covering it with a large sheet of oiled canvas to make himself some shelter for the grazing seasons, perhaps even improving upon that crude, temporary shelter by raising a wall-tent. But Eagle Robe had not expected to find that the settler had erected not just one of his log lodges, but two! And around them both stood a network of pole fences. Clearly this Shadow had worked hard since Eagle Robe and many others departed for the long journey over the mountains. Why, when he would now have to leave all that hard work behind as he went in search of another place to fatten his cattle?

  The first drops began to pelt Eagle Robe as he brought his pony to a halt between the two wooden buildings, sighed, and stared around him at the place that reminded Eagle Robe of when the Shadows’ settlement began at Lewiston, or those agency and army buildings at Fort Lapwai up near the Clearwater River.

  This wasn’t like the Nee-Me-Poo, who carried their shelters along with them, the squat lodges made from the hides of those buffalo harvested during their annual treks to the far plains. No, Eagle Robe’s people moved their shelters from place to place across their ancient home ground, migrating from season to season as they ranged across a great piece of territory that all the bands had long considered their home in its entirety. But, from what he himself had witnessed over the past thirty-some winters, the Shadows did not live for a time in a pretty spot, then pick up and move on. Instead, when a white man put this much sweat into building a shelter against the rains of spring and summer, against the frosts of an autumn night, then it meant the pale one had every intention of staying put.

  Just like those white gold-seekers who had flocked to the mining camps, or those cattle-tenders who had gradually closed a noose around the peaceable bands who had foolishly signed one treaty after another with the Shadows’ government.

  Eagle Robe discovered he was scared and angry all at the same time, and that bewildering mix of feelings made him all the more scared and a great deal more angry too.

  Stay calm, Tipyahlanah Siskon, Eagle Robe reminded himself as the rain began to fall a little harder. Sensing the big, cold drops spilling down his back, he pulled up the wide collar on his thick blanket coat, pushing aside one of his thick braids dusted with the iron of his many winters. He knew he had to have a calm heart and steady hands when he talked to this Shadow. So he took a deep breath and started to swing his leg off the pony.

  “Stop right where you are, Injun!”

  The strident voice caught him even before his feet were striking the ground. Eagle Robe slowly turned toward its chilling sound, finding the hairy-faced settler emerging from the wide, ill-hung doors of that bigger of the two wooden buildings. The Shadow rested his hand on the butt of the pistol stuffed in the front of his belt.

  Eagle Robe wasn’t sure, but this Larry Ott’s face appeared very different than it had that day back in the spring when the Nee-Me-Poo were headed for buffalo country and Eagle Robe had come by to give his farewell to the cattle-tender at the Shadows’ camp. Below the misshapen brim of the man’s felt hat, the Shadow’s eyes glared with a cold fire that caused Eagle Robe to shudder.

  “W-what this?” he stammered in the settler’s tongue.

  Of a sudden Eagle Robe realized now that he had come to talk to a man who knew practically nothing of the Nee-Me-Poo language—even worse, that he himself knew so little of the Shadow’s tongue. They were bound to have trouble understanding each other if the words flew fast, now that angry fury had gripped the settler. Eagle Robe reminded himself to breathe slow, stay calm. There had to be a good reason why this Larry Ott had decided to raise his permanent lodges here instead of preparing to move on when Eagle Robe returned from the season’s hunt.

  “What’s this?” the Shadow repeated those white man’s words. He kept that right hand on the pistol butt as he swung his left arm in an expressive quarter-circle. “This is my home now; cain’t you see that?”

  “My home,” Eagle Robe repeated the words crudely, confused at first.… Then suddenly they made sense. He nodded agreeably. “Yes. My home—”

  “Mine now,” the settler interrupted, as he took another three steps toward the Indian, his left arm waving at Eagle Robe as if he wanted to shoo the warrior away. “Time you got off my land.”

  “My land. My home. I home,” he struggled for the words, watching those dark eyes beneath the hat brim, feeling the rain frighteningly cold as it sluiced down his backbone like March thaw, sensing the awakening of a desperation that he had not come here with any weapon, even a belt gun like the one the settler gripped.

  “Git!” the white man shouted. “This here’s my place now. You run off and left it, Injun. By rights it’s mine now, done proper.”

  “Run off?”

  “You gone to buffler country, didn’t you? Now this place is mine. G’won and get up the valley away from here. Just don’t ever get nowhere near none of my stock.”

  Eagle Robe gazed around him a long moment, looking at the smaller building. Then at the doorway of th
e larger building where the settler had emerged. Better to talk about this right now and get things settled, he decided. Another man might ride away, planning to come back with a few of his tillicums, friends who would bring their guns, and then there would be trouble. There always was trouble when you mixed guns and white men. Never failed: the Nee-Me-Poo always ended up on the poor end of the bargain when it came to how the Shadows abused the Nee-Me-Poo women or what they did to steal the land they wanted.

  So riding off, then returning to throw the settler off by force would only make things more ticklish. Instead, Eagle Robe decided, he should just get things straightened out here and now.

  The warrior turned to his left, stepping across the sodden ground toward the rail fence that cut right through the middle of the garden Eagle Robe had cultivated for many years. The Shadow had turned it into a pasture for his cattle. And the animals had trampled everything they hadn’t eaten.

  “Whatcha doing, Injun?” the settler demanded sharply.

  Eagle Robe laid the pony’s rein over the top rail of the fence and loosely looped it once. Then turned back to face the settler. Eagle Robe wanted to show him he didn’t have a weapon—so he held up both hands, then slowly began to work at the knot in the sash wrapped around his blanket coat.

  Larry Ott angrily shouted something at him, and Eagle Robe froze the moment that pistol came partway out of the man’s belt.

  “I am not armed,” he said in his language, frustrated that he did not remember the Shadow word for weapon, pistol, firearm—so many words for the same thing.

  Again Larry Ott shouted.

  But Eagle Robe shook his head and started forward to show him he did not carry a weapon. But he stopped midstep when the settler shook his head violently, waved his left arm in that manner of someone in great fear, then nonetheless advanced another two steps, hunching his shoulders forward provocatively. Still shouting, louder still. The way a frightened animal blusters when it feels cornered.

  “Git——!”

  And that one word was all Eagle Robe understood of so much shouted at him, except for that word land Larry Ott kept repeating.

  Then Eagle Robe pointed at the buildings, starting to wag his head in befuddlement, ashamed that he had been made a fool by this Shadow. Growing all the more angry that he had been duped, he began to yell back at the settler.

  By then the two of them were bellowing at each other, shouting at the same time, their voices rising, each one straining to be heard over the rising wind that whipped Eagle Robe’s braids across his cheeks like the lash of a bone-handled quirt. The settler took a step closer and stopped again as Eagle Robe continued to point and shake his arm at the two log buildings, those cattle in the field, that nearby corral, and then Eagle Robe suddenly turned to the settler, balling up his fist.

  Slowly, slowly, Eagle Robe raised that brown fist over his head like a club, his arm trembling in anger when the Shadow’s sneer turned into a snarling growl.

  “You go now! Not me!” Eagle Robe hollered at the settler. “Come back later for your belongings, for your cattle and horses. Go now!”

  “Go to hell with you, goddammit!”

  Eagle Robe understood those words. He fixed on the settler’s eyes at that moment, the very instant a flash of lightning lit up the whole valley like the heart of the day in the hottest of the summer moons. The shocking white light made the hairs on his arms crawl, prickled the hair at the back of his neck as it stood on end.

  The moment the very air around him seemed to crackle with that celestial explosion, Eagle Robe yelled, “Go now—”

  He didn’t get to finish because with that next heartbeat a horrific clap of thunder slapped its paw down on them both.

  Snarling something unintelligible as the thunder’s reverberation faded, trailing off down the valley, the settler turned his back on the warrior and started to slog away as the wind whipped itself into a fury.

  That Larry Ott should turn his back on him and stomp away infuriated Eagle Robe. Looking about at the ground, he bent and scooped up a stone that he nestled into the palm of his hand. Crooking his arm, he flung the rock at the impudent Shadow’s back. The rock smacked the settler high between the shoulder blades.

  Instantly the white man wheeled as the sky about them both turned white-hot with the sizzle of another lightning bolt.

  Eagle Robe’s eyes widened as he saw the muzzle of the settler’s pistol come out of his belt—spewing a tongue of fire like the very lightning that had just brightened the valley with such momentary brilliance, then pitched them into an inky, sodden darkness once more—

  He felt a fist slam his chest, hurtling him backward against the rail. Collapsing across the muddy ground, Eagle Robe spilled among his pony’s legs.

  The pressure inside him grew as he struggled to breathe, the very center of him growing a little colder each time his heart pounded in his ears.

  And now his hat was gone. Eagle Robe realized that it had fallen off his head as he blinked his eyes against the pounding rain. Suddenly it was pouring even harder, his face so wet with the drenching it was as if he were standing under a waterfall. He blinked and blinked, trying to clear his eyes, then realized the Shadow was standing directly over him.

  Larry Ott cocked the pistol’s hammer back again, then held the end of its muzzle inches away from a spot between Eagle Robe’s eyes for what felt like an eternity.

  Then the Shadow grumbled something low and profane, yanked the pistol aside, and with his free hand reached up for that top rail of the fence directly above Eagle Robe. Larry Ott grabbed the reins to Eagle Robe’s pony, then immediately bent to one knee in the rain-soaked grass. Then the white man shoved the braided buffalo-hair rein into the Indian’s glistening hand already smeared with his own dark blood.

  Bending low over Eagle Robe’s face, the settler hissed, “There, you red nigger. That’ll serve you. Now take your goddamned horse and get off my land while you still can.”

  Through the film of rain spilling over his face, Eagle Robe watched the Shadow stand, turn, and walk off toward the smaller log building.

  It quickly grew harder and harder to breathe. Another peal of thunder rattled the valley. He looked down at his chest, saw the red oozing from the hole piercing his deerskin shirt, watched the ooze as it was washed off, turned to a pale, translucent pink. In the pelting rain Eagle Robe was reminded of how the missionaries had tried to teach him that if he truly believed in their Book of Heaven then the Shadows’ savior would wash away their sins with his own blood.

  He shivered uncontrollably, wanting so to believe in the white man’s Akunkenekoo, his everlasting heaven.

  Eagle Robe closed his eyes, sensing the autumn rain growing very warm on his cold, cold cheek.

  * * *

  It was dark when he heard approaching footsteps. No, Eagle Robe felt them. The post against his shoulder seemed to vibrate with each step. Perhaps the Shadow had decided to return and finish him off, not give him a chance to live.

  Funny, he thought. He wasn’t going to live anyway. Just taking a long time dying … and he recalled the countless times he had tracked wounded game through the hills, following a small drop of blood here, a smear on some leaves there, the animal taking many miles and agonizing hours to die.

  Then the earth reverberated with an overwhelming sound, and Eagle Robe thought the cruel thunder had returned to awaken him.

  But he quickly recognized it was the pounding of pony hooves.

  Eagle Robe looked up, surprised to discover his own pony still standing over him. The animal stood motionless except that it turned its head to the side, its ears perked, poking its muzzle into the wind.

  “Father!”

  As Shore Crossing slammed onto the ground beside his father’s horse, the young man’s feet made a dull thud in the sodden grass. Eagle Robe’s son knelt in the mud beside his dying father.

  “Did the Shadow do this to you?” Shore Crossing asked, his words dripping with fury.

  �
�Wahlitits … you came—,” he sighed, whispering his son’s Nee-Me-Poo name.

  Then Eagle Robe knew he couldn’t talk anymore, because his chest was seized with a wet cough. No longer did he have enough breath to force out many words. He blinked his eyes and gazed up into his son’s face, realizing evening had come upon this valley, realizing that the storm was passing.

  “You should have been back long ago,” Shore Crossing explained as he squatted to cradle his father’s head in the crook of his arm, hovering over the older man in the last of the rain. “I came to see what delayed you.” Then the son looked up, gazed around at the cabin where a lamp flickered dimly behind a window curtain. “The settler decided to stay, didn’t he? He has stolen our land.”

  Eagle Robe felt the young man gently withdraw his arm, positioning his father’s upper body back against the post. He looked at Shore Crossing, watching his son pull the long knife from the scabbard at his waist.

  “I will go take his scalp for you, Father,” vowed the young man of no more than nineteen summers.

  With the last of his strength, Eagle Robe reached out and snagged his son’s wrist in one hand, stopping the young warrior. “N-no.”

  Shore Crossing’s face hovered over his father’s as he said, “What? You cannot be telling me not to kill this man who has shot you!”

  “Do not…,” and he coughed. “It must end here.”

  “NO!” Shore Crossing railed against the falling of the light. “I will kill him with my own hands if I have to!”

  “Please,” Eagle Robe begged. “Promise me … promise me you will not take vengeance—”

  “I cannot!” the young man shrieked.