by Peter Bowen
I stood up and whistled for my horse. Buffalo Horn sat on his mount and grinned like a shit-eating dog. He was a Bannock, from across the Rockies. He wore the Bannock hat, a circular arrangement of otter fur with buffalo horn tips for decoration.
“Good meat,” says Buffalo Horn, holding up a mesh bag full of tins.
We ate anchovies, liver paté, canned tomatoes and peaches, and had evaporated milk for our coffee.
5
BUFFALO HORN AND ME took off after a few hours sleep, following the Nez Perces’ trail. It went as straight as the country would allow—north. We come upon a grave that they had made. A small one. A child must have died. I couldn’t help but think that this was a rotten war, and then I couldn’t think of a good war. I had nothing against the Nez Perces.
At dawn we found the tracks of Miles’s Crow scouts. They had cut across and were up ahead, harassing the fleeing Nez Perces. They had strict orders not to engage the Nez Perces, which orders would probably hold about the same amount of time your orders do when you tell your dog to stay the hell off the couch. As long as Miles’s eye was on ’em he could expect to be obeyed.
We had come maybe forty miles by noon. We stopped to let our ponies water and cool themselves and chew a bit of the sweet buffalo grass. The wind quartered for a moment, and we smelled the sweet fishy smell of death. There were three bodies beside the trail, tumbled off into a little wash. They were Crows, and each of them had been killed by a shot to the head. Most Horse Indians can’t shoot for sour owlshit—it’s the boom that matters—while most Corn Indians are pretty good with a rifle. But the Corn Indians don’t fight much, and the Horse Indians do. I suppose the Corn Indians are good shots because they have to trim back the gopher population.
“Wal,” I says, pointing to the three bloated corpses in the bed of the wash, “looks like them Nez Perces can shoot, anyway.”
Buffalo Horn laughed. We both heard the horses at the same moment and were both behind the same log an eyeblink later. We was scanning the ground and ready to toss off a shot at the first topknot to show itself.
Someone halloed. The party clattered up the wash bed, the horseshoes clanging on the stones.
“Shit,” I said. It was the word come first to mind. There was this young soldier, and behind him the man I hated most in all of the world. You know someone who does something that you do and twists it and makes it a vile thing? Something that you do that you love?
Red Mike was about the vilest critter I had ever met, and Miles, the bastard, had sent him along after me. Clever fellow, our Colonel. Send two men who hate each other’s guts to do the same job and they will likely bust ass to prove each other a worse case. And if one should come back with some tale of woe befallen the other, there is always the entertainment of a good court martial and hanging.
I smiled nice and thought, by god, I am going to figure out a way to kill you, you bastard.
“Howdy, Kelly,” says Red Mike, grinning and showing his big gapped teeth. “What a sartain pleasure to work with you once again.”
Mike was such a gentleman he preferred to scalp squaws’ lower pelts, if you gather what I mean. It’s hard to think of company that would find that polite conversation, but there you are.
The soldier rode his mount between us and reached a hand down.
“Pleased to meet you,” he says, his eyes never leaving the ridges. “Name’s Haddo. Corporal, Fifth Cavalry.”
He was an open-faced young feller in his middle thirties, trim and small, and as graceful as a cat. He slid from his saddle and loosened the cinches, took off the saddle and the sweaty blanket. The horse rippled its hide, glad to be free of the hot load on its back. Haddo tore a clump of grass from the earth and began to rub his horse down. The pony closed his eyes halfway and stood stock still, except for an occasional flick of his tail to disturb the flies.
“Which way you figure them Nezzz Percies gone?” says Red Mike. His horse was bloody on his flanks from Mike’s spurs, and his lips were torn from the war bit Mike had put on him. What I liked least about Mike was that he was a fool. That horse could mean the difference that would save Mike his life, and here he was, through simple cruelty, wrecking the animal that might save his hair. Just for the joy of causing the horse misery. Stupid bastard.
“Straight up in the goddamn air,” I says, “and if you care to follow me I will do my best to see you get your filthy stupid ass shot off.”
I took off on that cheery note, hoping Red Mike’s horse would founder and I’d be rid of the sonofabitch. He was dumb enough he might have followed, but I’d forgotten Haddo. The soldier just waved and walked his horse around, and when Mike began to curse at him and make gestures toward Buffalo Horn and me, Haddo just laughed and went on walking his horse in a circle, his white teeth bright against the dark beard on his face. It was a killer’s smile that said, “Not now. Now is not the time. Later.”
I looked back from the crest of the hills, and I could see the two of them below, Haddo still walking his horse in a circle, Red Mike waving his fists, while his horse was beginning to show that droop at the haunches that is the sign of being windblown. They would follow later, god dammit.
Buffalo Horn and me made a dry camp just north of the Cow Creek Divide, and were well on our way before daybreak. It was only about twenty miles to the Bear Paws, a small range of mountains dropped out in the high prairie, I think by mistake.
Me and Buffalo Horn split up at dawn. I went east, looking for a good look-see place, and came atop a butte by a back trail. I looked through my binoculars and spied the Nez Perce camp. I could see men digging trenches and breastworks in a businesslike manner. This was going to be bloody work. They had corraled their pony herd in a shallow depression. The herd seemed smaller than I had calculated, so the Crows had stolen many horses. I went down the trail and rode off to find Miles. It took me until ten in the evening. He had driven his troopers himself, and the infantry was forced-marching all through the night.
Miles heard my report and pulled at his moustache. The Nez Perces had cut up Gibbon and his men in the Big Hole. They were the most soldierly Indians ever.
“I’ll be going,” I said to Miles. And I rode back the way I had come.
6
THE DAWN SPREAD LIKE a gray stain, washing over me and reaching toward the sun that had been glittering on the fresh snow atop the Bear Paw peaks. When the light met the stain I saw some movement at the foot of the mountains, where the Nez Perces were. They were still digging trenches, and if Miles decided on a frontal assault—which he probably would, since his big fear was Terry showing up, and pulling his rank—a lot of soldiers was going to die for nothing.
Canada was only thirty miles away. I watched men and women and children move the bitter earth. There were occasional puffs of smoke from the rifles as the Crows and the Nez Perces pestered each other over the horses. They were mostly Appaloosas, which the Nez Perces invented.
Miles wouldn’t be long, so I got a little sleep. My horse was trained to make a noise if he heard anything, and when he snorted I came awake, Colt in hand. It was Buffalo Horn. We had been saying for some years that, heh-heh-heh, we might one of us kill the other by mistake and how awful that would be. Both of us knew better—for one thing we worked as partners, which is a rare thing in the scouting trade. We was both too old to waste time training some young pup—hell, I was already twenty-six and Buffalo Horn had been birthed or found under a wet rock nearly thirty years ago. He was ever reminding me that he was ancient and full of the ague.
Miles would be along sometime today, I figured, and when he came he would have at least two light mountain howitzers. If he was smart, he would just keep lobbing shells over at the Nez Perces until they gave up from lack of sleep or boredom. Then I remembered that General Howard was likely near. If I wasn’t required as a scout—which legally I wasn’t—to participate in a frontal assault against well fortified marksmen, I would consider offering advice or tearing bandages or something.
/> “Horn,” I says, “we have a problem. Or rather, I do. Miles ain’t seen you but a couple of times. Me, I’m thinking we should reconnoiter over yonder, and bravely blockade the route the Nez Perces will take when they retire to Canada.”
Horn looked at me, and me, I looked at him, and we headed on a breakneck speed (a-circle so as not to overly amuse some Nez Perce marksman) to find some place to lie low so as we could thunder bravely back and offer our gallant aid—alas, a moment too late—and not get our arses shot off.
We selected a spot with fine cover well away from any path that might interest anyone, and I carefully put the sun covers on my binoculars, and then we ate and drank as much as we could hold knowing mealtime was likely to be irregular here for a few whiles.
Along about two in the afternoon we saw Miles at the head of his column gallop up to the Nez Perce trenchworks, and when he saw them he flung up his arm to halt the column. I knew he was bawling orders and I watched the troopers form ranks right and left, drop their dunnage, and check their sidearms.
“I bet you ten plews that they get fifteen,” says Buffalo Horn. Indians got the same vices as us, but less practice.
“Ten on twenty,” I says. “Middles split the difference.”
What that means is I was betting on eighteen and above, and Horn on seventeen and below. I was watching Miles with the glasses, hoping to see a few newspaper reporters riding near him so he could perish nobly—heroically—but no. Not a civilian in sight.
Miles and his staff found a nice seat and the troopers started out. They was maybe three hundred yards from the Nez Perces when they started, and the Nez Perces didn’t open fire until the troopers was halfway there. One man made it to the seventy-yard mark before pitching into the dust. The charge had degenerated and like all them close encounters the dust was obscuring everything.
Me and Horn sat up there waiting for the breeze to clear the dust and reveal the daily bag. We had a nice sociable chaw of Burley tobacco and reminisced about this and that and the breeze cleaned the dust away, and I counted eighteen blue forms on the ground and one horse. Horn rattled off an impressive string of Bannock cuss words and stopped midway through the last one.
“One man is crawling away,” he said.
“B ... gimme those,” I snarled. I followed his pointing finger and sure enough one man was crawling at a right sprightly pace.
I watched as the trooper elbowed his way to some boulders which kept him out of sight until he was too far away from the Nez Perces for them to spot him.
We lathered our horses up some and swept up looking disappointed as could be that we were too late to get killed because of some god damned officer’s vision of another glob of gold on his rank patches. I figure it’s a man thrown away, in any rank over major, for each and every little gold thread.
Miles was bellowing orders and his staff was bellowing orders—the senior staff sounded like a bunch of Delmonico’s waiters screaming at the kitchen help when the stock market has a good day. Pretty soon the sergeants got everything under control. The troopers off-mounted, and many of them couldn’t stand and sat down hard on the ground. A lot of them were crying. A lot of them had lost weapons. Oh, Kelly, I thinks, this is going to be just a great and entertaining evening, with our troopers out there trying to bring in wounded, and the Nez Perces out there trying to get weapons.
Miles saved me from outright mutiny by bellowing, “Kelly, go find those damn artillerymen!” Three of the four available directions to go were highly desirable, the fourth not. Back to find his overgrowed popguns was a desirable compass heading, so I took off at a fast clip, before Miles got enough sense back to think of the fact that any green trooper could have done the same.
I thought of the carefully cached goods back at Cow Island, and then it struck me why the Nez Perces had built a fort.
They must believe that they are in Canada, I said to myself. Oh god, those poor folks.
I found the artillerymen flogging the fieldpiece teams and caissons of ammunition moving at a satisfyingly slow pace sufficient distance from that imbecile mess up there to ensure that they would arrive after dark. I aimed to please.
“I’ve been sent to guide you,” I said to Lieutenant Keegan—a good man, and no fool.
“Jaysus, Kelly,” he laughed, “it looks like a herd of buffalo a million strong came through here.”
“No it don’t, Keegan,” I says. “A buffalo trail goes zig-zag like. Their eyes is set on the sides of their heads and they can’t see front ahead straight at all. So they amble a hundred yards, turn, amble sixty, so forth and so on.”
“How bad was it?” says Keegan.
“Pretty bad. Seventeen down—don’t know who’s dead and who’s just wounded light enough to make it.”
Keegan looked straight ahead.
We come to the main camp an hour after dark.
The lamp was lit in Miles’s tent, so I stopped in. Haddo and Red Mike were there. Mike looked like a rabbit when it first sights a weasel close enough to strike. It seemed that Red Mike’s horse had foundered, and Haddo had to shoot it. Haddo’s horse was too tired to carry them both, so they put Red Mike’s saddle and tack on top of Haddo’s and were walking.
They heard a horse whicker, and riding down the trail toward them was a very old Indian woman on a very old horse. Red Mike shot her before Haddo could think he might do any such thing. Haddo was shaking with rage.
“Fortunately, she was apparently and patently alone.”
“Haddo,” said Miles, “forget it. You,” he said to Red Mike, “if you ever do such a thing again I will hang you so help me god. Both of you get out.”
“Anything for me to do?” I says, putting in a tired whine indicative of exhaustion and yeoman service. Miles shook his head.
7
I AWOKE TO THE sound of the cannon. Miles was always mentioning that Napoleon had called artillery “the thunder and lightning of campaigns.” Miles talked like that a lot. One newspaperman and he’d order an arms blanche charge. I am not very pleasant when I am awakened by such noises. If they don’t run out of ammunition by tonight, I thinks, I’m going to spike the god damn things.
I breakfasted on pemmican I had pounded up in the summer—buffalo meat and berries pulverized together, and then hot buffalo fat poured into the little leather bags called parfleches. You can winter on nothing but that and live fine. The slop the Army gets is salt pork and hardtack. So everybody but the officers has dysentery all the damn time—they can afford to buy canned rations and such. You can tell a trooper who’s been out on the chase for three days or more. Worst of it is, the Cavalry gets boils on their butts and other infections which present serious distractions in what can be a very dangerous living, especially if you need all of your concentration. Take Indian fighting, say.
Miles was in his tent, slumped on the map table, a little pile of drool glistening at his open mouth. Major Baldwin, victor in the wrestling match of two nights ago, had been up all night crawling around, trying to get the wounded troopers back, carrying a knife in his teeth and his revolver in his hands. His uniform was gone half off him and his knees and elbows was scratched and full of thorns and dirt.
“Where is Howard?” Miles said suddenly, though he was still asleep. It made a purty sight, the two of them, one damn near dead from risking his life to save his troopers, and the other worrying in his sleep about some superior officer coming to steal his glory.
“Frank,” I whispered, “come on, go see the surgeon.”
“He’s working on my men,” he said.
“I got a medicine kit, Frank,” and I gestured him to follow. He got up, his face twisting in pain before he forced a smile.
I scrubbed his wounds out. The dirt would poison his blood soon. He never flinched, though I used a stiff bristle scrub brush and yellowcake soap. I salved all of the lacerated skin and bandaged him. The white bandages made him look like a clown in the circus.
“Thanks, Kelly,” he said. He struggled to
his feet and headed toward Miles’s tent.
Shots popped off over the hill as the pickets fired at the Nez Perces. The Nez Perces didn’t fire back. (I later found out that the women and children spent the night digging bullets we had fired out of the earthen walls. Someone had found a way to reload some of their spent brass.)
Baldwin and Miles came out of the tent. Miles beckoned me over.
“Baldwin wants to go down and see if he can arrange a surrender,” says Miles.
Before the Nez Perce kill us all, I thinks.
“Good idea, Frank,” I says. “I’ll walk down with you.”
We got a couple of willow poles and hung white on them. When we started down we passed Haddo. He had made himself a rifle pit. Haddo grinned and nodded and shifted his quid of tobacco.
The Nez Perces still hadn’t fired a shot this day. The bluecoats was dug in at the maximum range of a rifle, and while we had more than enough ammunition, it wasn’t likely that the Nez Perces had any to waste. When there was a flash of a head down there in the Nez Perce trenches, our troopers fired a ragged volley—and for every thousand shots, a few must strike home, just out of the law of averages.
“I need to talk to Joseph,” Baldwin bellered.
Silence. We walked on another fifty feet, and Frank bellered again. This time a head popped up.
“May I come down?” says Frank.
“Only you.” Muffled, good English.
“Luck, Frank,” I says.
“Thanks, Luther.”
I turned round and he walked on. I went at a pretty brisk clip, afraid that some fool would commence to fire. One of ours did. The Nez Perces retaliated, but not at me. I passed Haddo’s rifle pit.
“It was ...” he yelled, and then a bullet tore into him above the heart. He somehow got his pistol out and aimed and fired, but not at the Nez Perces. At Red Mike, and Haddo hit him in the forehead, and both were dead before they hit the ground.