“Our two old horses are very tired,” Shore Crossing observed as he nudged his heels into the weary pony and patted the carbine’s gleaming barrel in the moonlight. “I think we should get us some new horses now.”
Chapter 8
June 14, 1877
BY TELEGRAPH
WYOMING.
An Indian Canard Contradicted.
CHICAGO, May 31.—A dispatch received this morning at General Sheridan’s headquarters from Lieutenant Clark, dated Red Cloud agency, May 29, states that after a careful investigation he considers the part of the Cheyennes’ story, relating to Sitting Bull, absolutely false, this chief being north of the Yellowstone and probably north of the Missouri. The rest of the Cheyennes’ report appears to be founded on fact, though there is no certainty about it. Probably Lame Deer’s village was captured and the version of the affair given correct.
After failing at two careers already, he had come to the new world from Hanover, Germany, eighteen years ago. From the moment Jurden Henry Elfers reached Idaho in 1861, life had begun to turn around for him.
At first Elfers had worked hard for others, trying his hand at the sluice boxes up near the mining town of Lewiston, then grunting and sweating as he plowed fields owned by others. But by the latter part of 1862 he had joined in partnership with Harry Mason and John Wessell, staking out his own claim on John Day Creek.
He paused a moment this cool morning to gaze back at the buildings he had raised with his own hands. Sighing with contentment, Elfers continued toward the high pasture he intended to have mowed before noon. Henry believed his good fortune had really begun the day he met Catherine back in the spring of ’71. She was German too, come to America with her parents. Catherine and Henry were married by October that year. And by the next summer Elfers felt confident enough to buy out his two partners.
Henry and Catherine owned the whole place, a good thing when they started having children. In addition to the horses they bred, the Elfers raised milk cows for their dairy business, as well as renting out some tiny rooms nailed against the side of their house to travelers along the Salmon River Road. That, along with the general store Catherine ran and Henry’s part-time prospecting, the two of them counted up a handful of blessings here in this young country barely a hundred years old.
It appeared as if their life was destined to get better and better, especially now that the army was herding the Non-Treaty bands onto the reservation and quieting things down. It wasn’t as if Henry had ever done a thing to harm any of the Nez Perce. Although he could be a hard-headed businessman, Elfers had never hurt a soul. Only that time last year when he came back to the house to find the dogs barking and Catherine confronted with at least a half-dozen warriors who had come boldly into the yard. Holding no weapon in his hands, Elfers had yelled at the Nez Perce to leave—wishing the hired men weren’t so far away in the hay field.
But when those young warriors got haughty and two of them started toward Catherine and the house, Henry got angry enough to step over to the gate and fling it open, freeing his hounds. Out raced the four dogs, snarling and yapping, compelling the two warriors to remount and gallop from the yard. For the rest of that day he and Catherine kept a careful eye trained for any strangers, fearing that the warriors would return—if for nothing else than to kill the dogs.
Weeks and months passed, until Elfers figured all the hard feelings had healed. He eventually felt at ease when this past spring the Non-Treaty Nez Perce permitted Henry to sit on the council of arbitration convened to look into the matter of that whipping Harry Mason gave a couple of warriors at his store. The Indians certainly knew that he and Harry had been partners years ago, so Elfers figured it spoke well of his relations with the tribe that they allowed him to sit in judgment of Mason despite their past business dealings.
Especially since there had never been a peep out of any of the Nez Perce after that council decided Harry Mason was justified in using martial force to drive the unruly warriors from his store. If the tribe was sore about Henry’s role in that judgment, then the wounds must surely have healed. Besides, each day could only find things getting better and better now that the Non-Treaty bands were within a few days and miles of settling upon the reservation.
Here at forty-two, Jurden Henry Elfers had fathered three offspring over the last five years, and Catherine was heavy with child again. He stopped on the hillside trail and breathed deep of the cool air pregnant with the damp, heady aromas of fertile earth and those piles of cow dung dotting this narrow path leading to the far pasture that lay on an elevated plateau behind the ranch.
His twenty-one-year-old nephew, “Harry” Burn Beckrodge, had gone ahead with more than a half-dozen cows and their young calves from that spring’s drop, driving them up the brushy hillside to spend the day in the high pasture. Hired man Robert Bland was the next to leave the barn, following a half-mile or more behind Beckrodge with the rest of the barren milkers.
Elfers was at least a half-hour behind the two of them, most of that time consumed with pulling his new mowing machine from the barn, laying out the newly oiled harness, and backing the two draft horses into their traces. Now the mower clattered beneath him as the big, powerful haunches of those Belgians dragged the mower up the last steep part of the climb and topped out on the plateau just east of the homestead.
Something caught his attention less than a hundred yards ahead. Something out of place among the trees fully leafed with the green of early summer. Then the Belgians caught wind of the two horses. A pair of them, poor and ill-kept: an easy thing for a sharp-eyed horse breeder like Elfers to tell even at this distance. But they hadn’t wandered here, for it appeared they were ground-staked at the side of the trail skirting the edge of Henry’s upper pasture, grazing there in that patch of wild oats. Gott-damn, if someone had planted their horses in the good feed, for free!
It made Henry’s neck burn that anyone would try to steal when all he had come by he had been earned with the sweat of his brow and the muscles in his back. Besides, if someone wanted a little feed for their horses, all he had to do was ask.
Slapping the four long, thick straps down on the backs and yard-wide haunches of the matched Belgians, Elfers picked up their pace a little, finding himself irritated at the freeloaders, especially nettled that neither his nephew nor the hired man had done a thing to run off the impudent squatters.
In a matter of seconds and a few more yards Elfers spotted something else out of place. For the life of him, it looked like a man’s knee sticking up above the short grass some twenty-five yards from the two poorly kept horses. A man’s knee poking up, just the way a fellow would if he was lying down in the grass, taking himself a nap.
Perhaps this was one of the freeloaders, Henry decided. And it made him all the more angry. He’d wake that fellow up but good and give him a good chunk of his mind.
The off-hand Belgian whickered and tossed its massive head as the freeloader’s body came in sight the moment Henry reined the draft horses off the trail at the edge of the high pasture.
“Gott-damn!” he growled as he hauled back on the reins with all his might the instant he realized it was the hired man.
A shiny smear blackened Bland’s upper chest as if the man had spilled Catherine’s molasses syrup all over himself at breakfast.
“Robert! Get up—no time to take a nap, Gott-dammit!”
From the corner of his eye Elfers spotted the figure stepping away from the brush, a heartbeat later realizing the man was leveling a rifle at him.
Starting to dive, he felt his boot get entangled in the mower’s footboard.
The bullet caught him high in the arm, continuing on to pierce his chest. With a grunt, Elfers pitched headlong off the mower, dragging his foot from that boot still wedged between the newly varnished boards. With but one good arm now, he couldn’t drag himself very well, nor very far, before he felt all his strength was drained from him. Perhaps with every beat of his heart, the way all that blood had see
ped from him into this ground he had plowed the last few seasons.
He lay there, trying to catch his breath, deciding at last to look down at the wound. Surprised to find that there was little blood on his upper arm, Henry realized he was bleeding out inside and unless he got help quick—
A moccasin jammed down on the wounded shoulder and shoved Jurden Henry Elfers against the ground with a roaring flame that shot through his whole body.
He blinked through the tears of pain, trying to focus on the figure that stepped over him. His eyes cleared and he saw two of them. His ears heard the clack-clack of a carbine’s lever and receiver as he glanced at the repeater one of the Indians held against his hip.
Then Henry looked up at the warrior’s face, recognizing the young man who had come looking for stray horses yesterday. He and the other one were grinning down at Henry apishly.
Elfers slowly closed his eyes and said good-bye to each of his three children. Struggling to take a breath, Henry uttered one last word as he heard that carbine bark, as he heard his head explode.
“Catherine—”
* * *
Shore Crossing had led them up the ridge in the pre-dawn darkness, circling far around the homestead and the buildings, far from the outbuildings and the corral, to eventually reach this overlook where they could gaze down on the ranch as the sky grew pale in the east.
It wasn’t long after it got light enough for objects to cast a dim shadow that the first of the white men emerged from the large building, hitching up his suspenders. A second went directly to a tiny board house nearby as he pulled down his suspenders and worked at the flaps on the front of his britches.
The first, a young Shadow who Shore Crossing thought could be no older than he himself, emerged from a far building a little while later leading a saddled horse. He began to drive some cows and calves from the corral, keeping them in front of his horse with a long willow switch. That white man was putting those animals on a hillside trail Shore Crossing could see would take them up the side of this plateau to where the three young warriors lay watching.
“That is a nice horse,” Red Moccasin Tops observed. “Better than mine.”
“You can have it,” Shore Crossing said. “Come; we’ll stake out the horses.”
Red Moccasin Tops’s eyes narrowed with a glint of mischief. “Set a trap?”
He nodded, seeing Swan Necklace nervously lick his dry lips. “These Shadows are a curious sort. Our horses will draw them to their death.”
By the time that first white man was halfway up the plateau trail, Swan Necklace came sprinting over to the patch of wild oats where Shore Crossing and Red Moccasin Tops were setting out the old ponies, announcing that a second Shadow had emerged from the tiny house and was now driving some more cows up the same trail.
“And a third one is busy outside in the corral,” Swan Necklace said breathlessly, “hitching up two giant horses to a funny wagon.”
Shore Crossing smiled, his eyes gleaming. “Not just one. But we can kill all three.”
The young Shadow was first. Shore Crossing knocked him from the saddle with a bullet as the curious white man brought his horse to a halt near the two Nez Perce ponies. Their trap was a good one.
And the older Shadow was next. Evidently he heard the crack of the carbine when Shore Crossing dropped the first man and came hurrying up the last switchback to the top of the plateau, scattering the lumbering cows with their distended udders swaying between their hind legs as the herd reached the grassy pasture. This second Shadow began hollering for the first man in a frantic call.
Shore Crossing stepped out of the brush and shot him from behind with a bullet to the head. The bright red halo exploded in the new day’s sunlight as the Shadow pitched onto the ground and his horse took off at a run.
“We’ll catch it later,” Shore Crossing told Red Moccasin Tops.
The cousin nodded. “I hear the other one coming.”
It was good, all that noise from the white man’s strange two-wheeled wagon. Clack-clack. Clack-clack. Clack-clack … probably what kept the wagon man from hearing the gunshots.
But the Shadow spotted him stepping boldly from the brush to fire the stolen rifle. Chiding himself for his brashness after that missed shot, Shore Crossing started toward the spot where the white man fell off the two-wheeled wagon the big horses slowly dragged it away, clack-clack, clack-clack; then they came to a stop and started eating in that same patch of wild oats with the two camp ponies.
“It’s the same Boston Man who said the store man had a right to whip our friends,” Red Moccasin Tops declared as they walked up to the wounded Shadow.
Shore Crossing didn’t say anything as he shoved the white man onto his back with the heel of his moccasin. The Shadow gazed up at him and began speaking in that strange Boston Man accent of his. All that clack-clack talk like his noisy two-wheeled wagon really irritated Shore Crossing, so he levered another cartridge into the chamber.
This is for all the whippings gone unpunished, he thought as he pulled the trigger, the crack of the carbine blotting out the Shadow’s last word the moment the back of his head exploded against the ground.
Swan Necklace was already digging through the pockets of one of the other men, and Red Moccasin Tops claimed what he could find on the second Shadow. So Shore Crossing knelt beside the quivering body and stuffed his hands into the pockets, feeling for anything of curiosity, if not of value. All he found was a folding knife, which he dropped into the pouch under his left arm where he carried a fire steel, along with his vials of grease and paint.
When Shore Crossing stood, he moved over to the giant horses. They were too big. So he decided to leave them here and instead yelled for his companions to bring over the pair of white man horses. He took the one from Swan Necklace, then instructed his nephew to pick which of the old Nee-Me-Poo ponies the youngster wanted.
“But I wanted this one,” Swan Necklace said with a downcast turn to his lips, patting one of the white man’s horses. It was a pretty roan, a glowing reddish-brown with spots of gray across its front shoulders.
“All right, you can have it,” Shore Crossing relented. “Besides, I think this Boston Man has far better horses down there.”
At the corral, he and Red Moccasin Tops ducked between the fenceposts and moved among the restive horses, choosing at least ten they wanted to take back to Tepahlewam as the spoils of their revenge raid.
“Before we go, we should see if the Shadow woman is in there,” Shore Crossing suggested.
Red Moccasin Tops dragged the back of his bloodied hand across his lips. “You want her?”
He shook his head. “No. She is too fat for my taste. But I think we should look inside to find guns and bullets.”
With a yelp of joy, Red Moccasin Tops clapped in glee. “Now I can have a gun of my own!”
Inside the big wooden house they called out, but no one heeded their calls. The place was empty. Swan Necklace was busy looking at everything, picking up objects, turning them over, then dropping them on the floor. Some broke with a crash; others merely clattered and rolled underfoot. But they discovered a rifle standing near the door. And on a small table nearby Red Moccasin Tops spotted a handful of cartridges.
Stepping back outside, Shore Crossing started toward the corral and the horses. He leaped atop the one he wanted most of all, grabbed its halter, and reined it over close to the gate, where he pulled the pole aside so they could drive the rest of the horses out of the corral.
With Swan Necklace on his own Shadow horse now, the three of them flushed the horses into the yard, whooping with glee.
“Yi-hell-lis!”1 Shore Crossing screamed, his whole body atingle. “None of those sour-talkers in camp will call me a coward now!”
Chapter 9
June 14, 1877
BY TELEGRAPH
WYOMING.
Starvation Among the Indians.
OMAHA, June 5.—A private telegram from Atlantic City, Wyoming, states that the
Shoshone Indians are in almost a starving condition. Their supplies are lying at Green river and Bryan stations by some irresponsible delay. Some fears are entertained by settlers that the Indians will be driven to commit depredations to keep from starvation.
Whitfield listened again as the rifle shot faded just beyond the far hill.
He figured someone else must be out hunting early this morning, same as he was.
It grew quiet for a long time after the echo died, so maybe the hunter had dropped his game. Whitfield started down the long slope toward the bottom where he would have to begin the hard climb up that plateau where the shot had echoed. But if the other hunter hadn’t been lucky enough to drop his target, then Whitfield figured the odds were damned good the animal would soon be heading his way.
If he kept his eyes open, chances were good he would be seeing some deer come busting off that brushy hillside in no time.
Whitfield hadn’t yet reached the bottom when he heard another crack of the rifle. Certain now that the hunter had been trailing a wounded animal, he stopped among some clumps of brush and waited a few moments—listening, his eyes raking the far hillside that would lead him to the top of the plateau. He was fully expecting to see something moving down his way, some creature driven over the edge toward the brushy bottom where the deer loved to conceal themselves once they had watered of a morning and were heading back to their feeding grounds before the heat of the day.
Early morning like this was the time to be out hunting, because the deer were up and moving from their beds to water—
By damn, a third shot.
Was that fella a poor marksman or just down on his luck this time out?
Leaping across the narrow rushing stream that circled the base of the plateau on its way to the Salmon just past the Elfers place, Whitfield started trudging up the hill, doing his best to keep his eyes moving across the slope above him for anything that might bust on over. But nothing so much as moved on that hillside during his laborious climb, zigzagging his way up to the top, where he finally stopped, collapsed to one knee, and sucked wind like a swaybacked plow horse.
Cries from the Earth: The Outbreak Of the Nez Perce War and the Battle of White Bird Canyon June 17, 1877 (The Plainsmen Series) Page 10