They couldn’t stand to lose a one of their mounts. Damn good thing Shearer’s volunteers were maintaining a toehold on that flank for them all.
Glancing a moment to find Theller wheel his horse and start back up the slope, lunging toward Perry, the captain surveyed the battlefield and decided he now really had no other choice but to hold this ground and prevent the warriors from flanking them on the right—where the enemy would also be in a position to run off their horses. If that occurred, this defensible high ground he had been thinking could be his career’s Olympus … would quickly become the scene of his bloody Waterloo.
“Trumpeter!”
Daly lunged up on foot, dragging his frightened mount behind him, fighting it when the animal threatened to rear and bolt away. The soldier’s once-white face flushed with excitement. “C-colonel?”
“Without your bugle, I need you to ride to the right. Major Trimble,” and he pointed off to the west in the direction of the ravine. “Tell him he must hold that ground on top of the ridge. Hold everything between the right flank of F Company and that ravine. Understand?”
“Yessircolonel!” And the short, whipcord-lean Daly flung himself onto the back of his mount without using the stirrup, laying himself low along the withers as he raced away.
“Colonel!” Theller shouted as he reined up.
Perry gestured quickly across the men who had formed a broad skirmish line just below the two mounted officers. “I am turning over command of F Company to you, Mr. Theller. Take control of this line while I reconnoiter our situation.”
The lieutenant saluted smartly, relief easy to read on his face now that he and his advance had been reinforced, their fat pulled out of the fire. “By your order, Colonel!”
Peering all the way down the left flank where the volunteers protected the end of their line, the captain felt assured they would hold while he took a few minutes to follow Trimble’s men into position on the right.
H Company had been more than 150 yards behind F Company when Perry started his men toward the hill, so Daly was just now getting back to Trimble with the captain’s orders. As Perry started for them at an angle across the crown of the hill, Trimble swung H Company left front into line and came about to the right very smartly, setting off up the slope toward the crest of the knoll overlooking that brushy ravine to be feared so.
By the time Perry reached H Company, Trimble already had his men halted and was deploying them from the edge of that ravine across to the right end of Theller’s line as ordered. Despite how thin the captain had his forces spread, not one man would be held in reserve this day.
“Every five yards! Five yards and no more!” shouted Joel Trimble.
“The men are in position, sir!” growled William R. Parnell as he loped to a halt near Trimble. “Order the dismount?”
“No, Lieutenant,” Trimble said, vigorously shaking his head. “For the time being, we won’t dismount. I want you to see to it yourself our left has attached to Theller’s right.”
Parnell saluted and jabbed his brass spurs into his horse’s flanks, reining sharply down the left side of the line formed by H Company’s still-mounted troopers.
A sudden flurry of war cries bursting from red throats and boisterous cursing from his soldiers caused Perry and Trimble to wheel about and study the west side of their front. Fifteen to twenty of the enemy horsemen had broken away from the rest and were racing wide to the soldiers’ right without even pretending to draw the white man’s fire. Instead, they were plainly intending to sweep around the right end of the line, thereby seizing that far western slope of White Bird Hill that stood directly across the deep ravine from Trimble’s exposed flank.
Alarm in his voice, Trimble hollered, “They’re coming to stampede our mounts, Colonel!”
“Pay them no mind, Major,” Perry advised, pointing at the racing ponies. “For a moment there myself I thought they were warriors enfilading our line. But see? Those horses don’t have any riders on them. Just loose animals that pose no threat to us. Besides, the ravine separates those wild horses from your flank.”
But just as Perry was getting that said, the last dozen men at the far right end of H Company bolted from their exposed position, scampering left to bunch with other men near the center of their line, even though it was plain to see those riderless horses thundered by no closer than a hundred yards from the frightened cavalrymen.
“These men are untested, Colonel!” Trimble apologized angrily as he saluted and started to rein away, intending to correct the problem. “I’ll see they are repositioned!”
But suddenly those loose horses Perry thought did not carry any riders instantly sprouted warriors dragging themselves onto the backs of their onrushing ponies. They had been hanging out of sight! Among the riders a few even wore bright crimson blankets tied at their necks, billowing like cloaks as the horsemen galloped past the soldier guns.
A few of the warriors fired a carbine or a pistol before they came upright, and some launched an arrow or two—their deadly work being done beneath the ponies’ necks as they hurtled up the gentle west slope of White Bird Hill, then arched back around to their left, where they would reload or nock another arrow in a bowstring before sprinting across the bottomground where the first of those daring riders were just then curving around to begin their second charge on the end of Trimble’s line.
Perry turned when he heard several of Trimble’s men were shouting with alarm, two of their number leaping off their horses and running toward a third man in his mid-twenties, a fellow soldier whom they reached up to pull out of the saddle where he sat clutching his groin, the pale blue of his cavalry breeches blackening with blood.1 “By God’s teeth! So this is how they’re going to fight us!” Perry shouted at no one in particular now that Trimble had loped away to steady his frightened soldiers.
“S-s-sir? What’d you say?” asked a white-faced private right at the captain’s left elbow.
“Damn the bastards!” Perry roared. “These savages won’t stand and fight us like men!”
Chapter 36
Season of Hillal
1877
Looking back over his left shoulder as he pulled himself upright atop his lunging pony, Shore Crossing felt certain the bullet from his carbine had struck that mounted soldier. Already the white man was weaving in his saddle while two other Shadows rushed to his side, dragging the soldier off his horse.
Shore Crossing coyote-yelped joyfully at the accuracy of his aim.
“That soldier is only the first of many who will fall!” Red Moccasin Tops screamed as he raced up beside Shore Crossing’s pony.
As they reached the top of the knoll split by a deep ravine and passed the soldiers, the trio of warriors popped up on the backs of their ponies, one at a time, suddenly sitting in plain sight now—each one of them wearing his bright red blanket pinned around his neck as he slowed his pony and started down the gentle slope in a graceful arc that would take them back around into the creek bottom, where they could once again kick their animals into a gallop, slipping off the far sides of their heaving horses as they closed on the soldier guns.
“Many more will die before the sun is high!” Shore Crossing vowed in a bellow as he levered another cartridge into the carbine’s breech.
His head no longer thundered with pain the way it had when No Feet came tearing into camp, announcing the army’s approach. For days now Shore Crossing and many of the other young warriors had remained extremely buoyant with a constant supply of the white man’s whiskey. Unlike the many others who were sleeping off the head-thumping effects of the liquor until midday, Shore Crossing had heeded the chiefs’ warning call for warriors to ride out to challenge the oncoming soldiers.
He and his most trusted friends, Red Moccasin Tops and Strong Eagle, had been among only half of all fighting men who responded. The rest simply failed to awaken when they were whipped by the chiefs. Perhaps they could not move, their minds still too foolish and their limbs far too numb from the
punishing whiskey. But now that Shore Crossing and his companions were starting their second bravery run past the end of the soldier line where the deep, brushy ravine prevented the warriors from riding any closer to the Shadows, Shore Crossing felt completely revived, his spirit renewed by the fighting, emboldened by drawing soldier blood and causing the white men to shrink back with fear as his fellow horsemen tore past.
Out of the creek bottom he started up the slope, shoving aside the tail of his flapping red blanket, looping his right wrist into that noose he had braided in the pony’s mane, then sliding off the animal’s backbone to lie along its heaving ribs.
He and his two friends had decided to wear these red blankets before they rode away from camp behind Ollokot that morning. Bright red targets they would make of themselves—a show of contempt for these foolish soldiers so boldly come to attack their village.
Oh, how the Shadows were scattering, like sage hens, as the three “Red Coats” shot past on their bravery runs, spitting bullets and lobbing arrows among the soldiers.
Another white man collapsed as Shore Crossing was aiming his bobbing carbine under the pony’s heaving neck. Up and down and squeeze, he reminded himself. Up and down with the rhythm of the animal as it pounded up the slope toward the enemies. Find a target and slowly squeeze as the sights bobbed up and down.
Feeling the carbine buck against his shoulder, Shore Crossing pulled himself up using his right heel hooked along the end of the horse’s spine, dragging himself back atop the pony’s backbone with the death grip he held in that loop of braided mane.
If that second bullet hadn’t hit another soldier, then surely it struck the Shadow’s horse.
As he peered over his shoulder beyond the warriors who followed him, Shore Crossing watched the frightened soldiers bunching closer and closer together, many of them dropping from their horses as they continued to back even farther away from the edge of the ravine.
He and the others wouldn’t have to keep at this too much longer, Shore Crossing figured; not too many more bravery runs like these and they would have the soldiers rolling back over themselves in confusion and fear.
And with that done … they could rush in and finish off every last one of these Shadows.
* * *
First Sergeant Michael McCarthy watched a pair of his steadiest hands pull Corporal Lee down from his horse, the badly wounded soldier groaning as he hit the ground, steadied on his feet between the two smaller men. McCarthy gasped when he saw how the front of Lee’s wool britches was awash in blood.
“Joseph and Mary,” he murmured a prayer. “A good man gonna die slow and hard.”
“McCarthy!” Captain Trimble cried. “On the double!”
The Newfoundland-born immigrant reined his nervous horse to a stop before his company commander and saluted. “What you have for me to do this fine morning, sir?”
“Pick a squad, McCarthy,” Trimble said in a clipped manner, in no humor for his sergeant’s attempt at raising spirits. “The best we have. Five or six ought to do it.”
“Do what, sir?”
Pointing up the steep slope at the far edge of the ravine more than thirty yards away, the lieutenant explained, “Those rocks up there should make an acceptable barricade. Your squad will see to it that you keep the pressure off the end of our line.”
“Understood, Cap’m,” McCarthy said, just loud enough to be heard above the pounding of his heart. “With us hanging our arses out in the air the way we’ll be up there … you givin’ me permission to grab ourselves some extra cawtridges?”
Trimble pursed his lips, then shook his head. “Afraid there isn’t anything I’d call extra today, Sergeant. Just see to it your men make every shot count.”
Slapping his muddy hand to his brow, McCarthy stoically saluted. “As ordered, Cap’m. Keep the heat off the end of your line!”
Then he was whirling his horse around in a tight half-circle and racing past Trimble, calling out a name here and there: hand-picking the poor weeds who would join him in only-Christ-knows-what-kind-of-limbo, where they had a damn good chance of knocking some of the red h’athens off their ponies … or a bloody good chance of never rejoining their mates again; not in this lifetime they wouldn’t. Not till they all reached Fiddler’s Green together.
The last thing McCarthy saw when he had his six steady hands gathered and climbing for the rocky outcrop was Corporal Lee standing alone.
Riding in the midst of his half-dozen, the sergeant became mesmerized at the sight of the mortally wounded man, watching as Lee wobbled away on foot among the bewildering pandemonium, setting off alone on a slow, lumbering descent of the grassy slope … heading for the enemy. Walking like a man possessed through the ranks of his fellow soldiers, plodding down, down toward the naked horsemen as if Lee didn’t realize the Nez Perce were swarming over the hillside just below him.
“Joseph and Mary,” McCarthy prayed again, suddenly remembering the look of peace on the face of that statue of the Virgin back in St. John’s, Newfoundland. “Scoop that poor soul into the palm of Your hand now, Almighty God. And for his sake, do it quick.”
“Get your men to those rocks, McCarthy!”
Spinning in the saddle, the thirty-two-year-old first sergeant put his back to Lee once more, spurring his mount anew, goaded by Trimble’s frantic cry, leading his hand-picked half-dozen for that low horseshoe of red and black stone.
He was the first to slide his mount to a halt at the back of the quarter-circle opening in the rocks, dismounting and dragging his horse against the side of the outcrop where the rocks stood their tallest, where they might stand a chance protecting these horses from Indian bullets. After all, these animals might well be their only way out.…
He was the first to land on his knees at the front of the natural breastworks where he and the others would be protected as they faced the oncoming horsemen streaming up the hillside for a fifth run at the right flank as the Nez Perce continued to enfilade Trimble’s entire line.
“Don’t wait for me, you weeds!” McCarthy bellowed while he jammed the Springfield carbine into the crook of his shoulder and thumbed back the hammer with a grimy hand, hearing the others who were dropping here and there around him in that cozy horseshoe of rocks. “Fire when you got something to kill … but don’t let me catch none of you shooting less’n you drop a horse or spill one of them bastards in the grass.”
“Ever’ living bullet’s gotta count—eh, Sarge?” asked Corporal Michael Curran, crouching on McCarthy’s left.
“That’s why I picked you six god-blaméd sorry weeds,” McCarthy groused with a smile the moment after his Springfield bucked and a pony went spilling. “If’n I’d wanted some boyos to have themselves a wee bit of target practice, I’d a’brung some of them other sad-sack ladies we left back down there, you bloody arsehole!”
“Always glad to please me first sergeant!” cried Blacksmith Albert Myers, grinning every bit as big as McCarthy was in his unkempt, fire-colored mustache that completely hid his mouth. “You heard ’im, boys! Let’s make us some meat outta these red-bellies!”
* * *
Ad Chapman and the rest of the volunteers had covered no more than twenty-some yards in their frantic retreat before the left of Theller’s line began to roll up and turn back on itself too, slowly withdrawing up the slope right in front of the civilians racing headlong for their protection. F Company had had themselves enough of the unremitting pressure from the warriors well concealed in the brush along the creek bank.
With the precipitous withdrawal of Shearer’s volunteers, along with Theller’s soldiers turning away and no longer keeping any pressure to hold the enemy back, the Nez Perce burst from the trees and willows to brazenly start dogging the retreat.
Like a nest of hornets Chapman would disturb beneath the eaves of his house, more than a half-dozen warriors sprinted right into the midst of Shearer’s civilians as they mounted up and scrambled off in panic. They had no more than started away when Theodor
e Swarts was hit and, a heartbeat later, his horse was struck—a smack as loud as a bare hand on wet window putty.
Chapman looked back over his shoulder to see the horse lunge sideways, almost going down before it got its legs back under it. Ad didn’t know how, but somehow Theodore Swarts hung on, his arms locked around the animal’s neck as the handful of screaming warriors closed in. One of the Indians suddenly lunged up right in front of the civilian as Swarts continued to close on him. The Nez Perce had no more than raised his rifle when the frightened white man jabbed his boots into this horse and it leaped at the warrior.
Ducking aside and dropping to his knees, the Indian lost hold of his rifle as Swarts’s horse sailed over the warrior. In an instant, the wounded volunteer was in the clear, racing right past Chapman and Faxon riding double on that last horse out of certain disaster.
“Damn,” Chapman whispered when he reached the end of Theller’s F Company with the wounded civilian barely clinging to him. “If we wasn’t just ’bout boiled in the soup there.”
* * *
He was helpless without a trumpet.
David Perry angrily slammed a fist into the other palm, struggling for an answer as he brooded: a cavalry command without a trumpet on a battlefield was like a ship without a helm!
With all the gunsmoke hanging in the damp air, his company commanders would never be able to see him if he attempted to signal them with his arms. And with all the incessant noise of gunfire and the cries of men in battle, no one but the man next to him would ever hear his orders. Cavalry needed to maneuver. Infantry could entrench and hold out. But horse soldiers were meant to be mobile, even as dismounted skirmishers.
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 35