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

  We have been fighting and riding without sleep since leaving Lapwai. We saw about 125 Indians today and they are well armed, a great many of our guns and much ammunition must have fallen into their hands. I think it will require at least 500 men to whip them. All of my friendly Indians left for Lapwai before I got in and in consequence I have been much troubled to procure a messenger. I have promised him a fresh horse from Lapwai to Lewiston. Please see that he gets it. The messenger will return immediately if desired. Please send word to Mrs. Perry that I am safe. Am too tired to write.

  Joe Rabusco can be of no further use to me. Please have him discharged. If the Indians emboldened by success return to Camas Prairie it would not be prudent to send the Pack Train. Neither should I like to escort it, [because I only have] the remnant of my two Companies.

  The only thing I really need is ammunition as I can with your sanction purchase subsistence stores here. Please break the news of her husband’s death to Mrs. Theller.

  David Perry, Captain commanding

  Fort Lapwai

  Howard looked up at those waiting breathlessly around him, their faces all masks of apprehension.

  “Mrs. Theller,” he said quietly as the gravity of his next mission pierced him to the marrow. “Yes. I must tell her.”

  Standing, he passed Perry’s letter to William Boyle. “See that you place that on my desk I’m using inside the colonel’s home, Captain. Seems that Perry’s suffered a terrible, terrible defeat,” he announced to the group around him, all of them stunned into utter silence.

  “General Howard,” Boyle said, holding the letter. “Should I see what I can do to get word over to Walla Walla and hurry those reinforcements—”

  But he interrupted the officer with a wave of his hand. “We’ll see to that in due time, Captain. But right now, I’m going to pay a call on an officer’s widow.”

  Howard tugged at the bottom of his dress tunic, smoothing out those wrinkles that had formed as he sat on the steps, reading that devastating news. She was the only officer’s wife at the post right then. The only one who had seen her husband off in the dark two nights ago.

  Dear God, how he found this the worst part of leadership. Starting away across the parade for the Theller house, his mind turned on his own Lizzie Ann, on just who would tell her or how she would learn that news a soldier’s wife dreaded every time her husband was out of sight and off on campaign.

  The sun was shining brightly, the air still so warm this late afternoon. Damned unfair, he thought. Damned bloody unfair.

  His eyes spotted her stepping into the open doorway of their tiny house, which stood across the parade from the post commander’s quarters. Her fingers tightly knotted themselves around a clump of that shawl she clutched about her shoulders despite the extreme warmth of this day.

  Then Otis realized he had slowed his pace, starting to drag his feet, not eager in the slightest to perform this vital function of leadership. Then all that remained was but one step that took a person up to the low porch of the small house. Howard stopped there before mounting that last obstacle, removed his black slouch hat with his good arm, and stuffed it beneath what was left of his right. He reminded himself to stand ramrod straight.

  “Mrs. Theller.”

  “General, g-good afternoon. To what do I owe the pleasure of this call—”

  “May I come in, Mrs. Theller?”

  She looked beyond him of that moment, casting her eyes over his shoulder, perhaps scanning all the others who must still be gathered across the parade—that small crowd watching them both. Because of them and the gray of his face, she had to know now—what with the courier arriving, her watching him read Perry’s letter there at the barricaded porch.

  An officer’s wife had to know.

  Her eyes started to brim as she returned them to the general. Delia Theller suddenly lost her steely, army-stoic composure, her shoulders sagging the instant she began to sob, her knees starting to buckle when she shrieked, “Oh, my husband! My dear husband!”

  Chapter 47

  June 18, 1877

  Isabella Benedict’s heart hammered so loud, it was difficult for her to recognize that it wasn’t the blood pounding in her ears but the distant thump of hoofbeats coming her way.

  One horse. Only one. But it wasn’t galloping, running her down as if the red bastard had spotted her. But then again … that horse wasn’t walking slowly, carefully, quietly.

  Her heart sailed into her throat as she remembered how she had heard hoofbeats coming while crawling up that trail out of the valley, when she clambered to her feet and turned, hoping she could convince another soldier to halt so she could climb up behind him—now that her children had been rescued—only to discover that the horses coming toward her carried warriors: their faces like a terrible nightmare of shrieking, grimacing fury. They had to know she was Sam’s wife, had to know what Sam had done to those devil’s whelps who had tried to steal from the store.

  “Oh, Sam!” she wanted to whimper. “Where are you now?”

  She cowered back in the brush and waist-high grass that covered the bottom of the slope at the edge of the trail descending the back side of the White Bird Divide. From here the wagon road led around the heights to Mount Idaho. Isabella’s white-blond hair was clumped with mud, her sunburned face smeared with more mud and streaks of blood, tracked with furrows from her tears. It had been some time since she had cried. No tears left.

  Making herself as small as she could back in the brush, Isabella reminded herself to keep thinking of Sam in the present. Don’t think of him as gone. She had only seen the blood on that windowsill. Didn’t ever come across his body. So he had to be alive. No matter all the Indians combing the country around their place when he disappeared … Sam just had to be alive.

  If this horseman wasn’t the one who had captured her on the other side of the divide, then let her go, Isabella was positive it had to be another warrior who would not be so kind. Chances were it was one of the most savage come searching for any survivors of the fight whom he could catch struggling back toward the settlements. This country had been swarming with the redskins across the last day and a half—ever since they had routed the soldiers, just as she had warned those officers.

  The warriors had to be searching under every thicket, behind every rock, looking for survivors who were trying their best to catch up to the retreating army, heathens finishing off those they found one by one before moving on. Combing the canyon, sweeping over the heights, then spreading out across the Camas Prairie, the horsemen would eventually run across everyone who hadn’t made it in to Grangeville or Mount Idaho by now.

  “Thank God the girls are safe,” she whispered under her breath as her chest went tight.

  Clutching her long, mud-crusted dress tightly around her legs so that it would not get caught on the branches and briars, Isabella scooted on her belly, penetrating the thicket even deeper. She prayed the horseman would not find her—not now, after Sam had disappeared and she had seen her daughters to safety with the soldiers … now that she had climbed out of the White Bird Canyon all night long in the dark, inching from rock to tree, to clump of brush, on and on with nothing more than starshine and a tenuous thread of hope to guide her.

  Not now! Don’t get captured now!

  It was so hard to hold her breath, but Isabella did just that, struggling not to make the tiniest sound as the horse came to a halt close by. From where she cowered inside the leafy brush she could see the animal’s hooves, part of the front legs. Though she tried, she could see nothing of the rider. But, she reminded her racing heart, this did not look to be the same horse that the warrior rode when he captured her.

  “Damn you!” a male voice swore right over her.

  Frightened out of her wits, Isabella looped her arms over the back of her head and pressed her face against the ground, doing everything she could to make herself smaller and unseen.

  “Get out here, you son of a bitch! I said NOW!”

&nb
sp; She couldn’t breathe then. Some of the savages knew a little of the white man’s cursing—so maybe they were trying to trick her.… Still, that didn’t have the ring of an Indian mimicking the white man’s speech.

  “You heard me, redskin!” the voice growled. “Get out here before I put a bullet in you!”

  “P-p-please,” she whimpered, slowly dragging her arms off her head and rising to her knees. Isabella felt her face blanch to white with terror, knowing she had already used up about all the chances anyone could ask in making her dash to sanctuary.

  As she slowly parted the branches of the thick brush encasing her, she suddenly saw the rider was a white man. His muddy, scuffed boots and those grease-stained canvas britches.

  “C’mon, I tell you!”

  “I-I am.”

  The horseman jerked his horse backward in surprise, training his rifle squarely on that figure slowly emerging from the trailside brush when he suddenly exclaimed, “Jesus!”

  “Dear God, you’re a w-white man!” she gushed with relief as she fell on her knees, collapsing completely there on the grass, rolling onto her belly while weeping tears of deliverance.

  “Mrs. Benedict?” the rider asked as he eased down the hammer of his carbine and flung himself out of the saddle. When he knelt beside her, propping the gun across one leg, and reached out with both hands to grip her shoulders and raise her off the ground, the man asked, “It really you, Isabella Benedict?”

  She choked off a sob, gazing up into his face, reading something familiar in the eyes, something soft and reassuring. Realizing for sure this was not some warrior dressed in a dead man’s clothing. This was one of her own. For a moment more Isabella tried to utter something to him, her lips moving, but unable to make a sound.

  “D-don’t you know me, Mrs. Benedict?”

  She did—honestly she did—but her tortured mind could not remember his name, where she had known him to be from, so all she could do for the moment was wail in complete and utter relief and let the tears gush while she dragged her legs under her and let him help her to her feet. He tenderly held her quaking shoulders there by the brush, staring intently into Isabella’s face as the new tears made tiny furrows down the mud and blood crusted on her cheeks.

  “My name’s Robie, Mrs. Benedict,” he reminded her in a whisper as quiet as could be, holding her face with both hands so close to his that she had to gaze right into his eyes. “You ’member me, don’t you? Joe Robie, ma’am.”

  “Joe … Joe Robie,” Isabella echoed. “Whatever are you doing out here?”

  “When them soldiers come in to Mount Idaho,” he explained gently as she pressed her cheek against his shoulder, trembling, “I heard a few of ’em saying they had to leave you behin’t in the retreat. So I come looking for you.”

  “Why, why come for me?”

  He cleared his throat self-consciously as he embraced her there in the shelter of his strong arms. And when he could finally speak, he confessed, “I-I long admired you, Mrs. Benedict. Wanted to make sure no harm come to you.”

  Then she suddenly remembered and started to pull away, embarrassed to be held by him. “My Sam? Anyone seen my Samuel?”

  He twitched a little with the sudden sound of her husband’s name. “No, no, ma’am. Not anyone I know of seen him come in. But I’m sure we’ll find him.”

  Robie let her push herself away from him; then he slowly dropped the arms that had sheltered her. “For now, you come with me back to Mount Idaho. You’ll ride behin’t me.”

  Robie quickly settled himself in the saddle, then pushed out the empty stirrup with his left boot while reaching down with his left arm. “Here, Mrs. Benedict. C’mon up behin’t me.”

  She grabbed for his wrist with one hand, seized the cantle in her right, then stuffed her left boot into the stirrup and hoisted herself behind the saddle, stuffing the torn dress and muddy petticoats beneath her across the horse’s rump.

  “Hold onto me,” he instructed, wrapping one of her arms around his waist as he took up the reins in the other hand. “If’n we run across any of the sonsabitches, you hol’t on, ma’am.”

  She laid her cheek against Joe Robie’s back as he put the horse into a lope. Sensing his warmth after such cold, such loneliness and cold. How she wanted to hold Sam again, to feel safe in his arms, to feel his warmth the way she could sense this man’s animal warmth coming through his canvas coat.

  “Hold on,” he had told her. And hold on she would—even though she had seen the blood where her Samuel had crawled out of the window and knew he wouldn’t stand a chance out there in the woods against all of them.

  So Isabella did hold on tight to Joe Robie … even as she felt herself letting go of the last remnant of hope that she would ever again see her Samuel alive.

  * * *

  Patrick Brice started his journey with little Maggie Manuel, heading across the battlefield and into White Bird Canyon, not knowing when they might stumble into more of the Nez Perce warriors. It wasn’t a question of if. No, more a question of when.

  After all their days without food, lying in hiding, compelled by terror to ignore the hunger pangs in his belly, the Irishman gazed up the grassy slopes to the top of the far ridge, his heart sinking. He knew the chances were slim that he would ever have enough strength to make that climb, to carry little Maggie out of harm’s way and back to the safety of the settlements.

  After hurrying away from those warriors at the Manuel ranch, Brice found his strength flagging faster and faster after each frequent stop to catch his breath. At first he was halting every half-mile or so, setting Maggie down while he lay back, listening intently for danger as she huddled against him. Then the distance he could force out of his legs began to shrink to something less than a quarter-mile between stops.

  That trip crossing the broken ground where the soldiers and the Indians had fought was especially grueling, not only in terms of what it took out of them physically but more so in terms of what they endured emotionally.

  “Look there, Mr. Brice,” Maggie announced at his ear, where he held her piggyback.

  He followed the direction her little splinted arm pointed and saw the contorted body of a soldier, his outstretched arms and legs raised, frozen in death as if he were imploring the sky. Maybe begging God to take him far, far from here.

  The Almighty had done just that, Patrick reflected.

  “There’s another one too,” Maggie said, pointing to the other side a few moments later. “See? There’s lots of ’em now.”

  That much was the Lord’s truth. They were trudging through a garden of the dead scattered across the blood-drenched grass.

  “We ain’t in trouble no more now, Mr. Brice,” she said once as they neared the foot of a tall, rounded knoll.

  “How you figure that, Maggie dear?” he asked as he set her down and they made themselves small against some low brush, so as to be out of sight should any warriors make an appearance.

  “The Injuns are gone now. They left the dead soldiers be. Them Injuns ain’t coming back now,” she explained in her quiet, tiny voice how it made perfect sense to her. “We’re safe now.”

  Oh, to have the innocence of this sweet, little child, he thought. To believe in the simplicity of events rather than the complexity and downright messiness of life.

  Later, as they were approaching a figure dressed in soldier blue, a man standing beside a huge bush at the edge of a copse of black cottonwood saplings, Maggie said, “Maybe he can tell us the easiest way to get out of the canyon.”

  Brice’s heart leaped: to think that this soldier might help give them direction, if not be a companion to help carry Maggie up to the Camas Prairie.

  But as they got closer, he could see that the figure was not standing straight up as a man would if that soldier realized they were coming. Instead, the figure was bent slightly over the bushes. And when they stopped within a few yards, Patrick saw how the sharp brambles snagged in the man’s tunic and britches to hold the soldier upri
ght. He was as dead as last winter’s potatoes. Eyes wide open as if having just witnessed something of such horror, eyes possessed of that dull glaze of long-ago death.

  “He’s dead too,” Maggie said so matter-of-factly that it yanked Brice right out of his reverie.

  He lunged ahead, his legs weary and in need of another stop, but he dared not. At least not anywhere near that dead man who was all but standing there, arms wrapped around that bramble bush, waiting for someone to come along and save him.

  Too late now.

  When Patrick set her down at last, his legs shuddered from fatigue and he collapsed back against the ground. He laid his arm over his eyes, thinking he would steal a few minutes of sleep and feel brand-new as they started off the battlefield and into the canyon itself.

  “Mr. Brice,” she called, shaking him gently with her good hand.

  He woke up, looked at her face, then down at the hand, and finally up that arm at the bloodstains on her sleeve where the arrow had pinned her.

  “Maggie dear,” he said apologetically, knowing he had fallen asleep.

  “There’s another one right over there.” She pointed in the direction they were heading.

  “Dead one?”

  Nodding, Maggie said, “I ain’t ever seen a man without the top of his head.”

  Swallowing with apprehension, he clambered to his feet and held out his hand, hoping she would walk beside him for a while. Angling off, Brice didn’t want to take her close to the body that sat partly propped up against a boulder. Only close enough for him to see that she was right. Maggie must have gone over to investigate while he was asleep, Brice decided.