Lay the Mountains Low (29 page)

Of a sudden, the hiss of one last bullet from the Nez Perce quickly reminded Lew Wilmot that the enemy still had them all but encircled. But as he turtled his head into his shoulders and peered around at the naked horsemen, he found the warriors drawing back. While the skirmishers plodded on at an angle that would eventually put them in the Indians' front some distance from the knoll, the larger unit of foot soldiers and those eighteen horse soldiers kept on for the besieged civilians.

In the mid-distance Wilmot could make out a few shouts and screams from the hostiles as they pranced about, shaking
their bows and carbines at the soldiers. But the fighting was over.

“What you figger they're telling us?” Henry Johnson asked.

Lew sighed. “Saying there's gonna be another day, another fight, and a lot more killing before this war's ever settled.”

“Lew!”

Wilmot whirled at the cry of his name. “George!” he cried, his throat sore and raspy from overuse. “By damn—you hurried them Yankee soldiers, you ol' Reb you!”

Shading his eyes in the bright afternoon sun as he peered up at Shearer as the man came skidding to a halt again on the sweeping slope of their knoll, Lew suddenly realized just how many hours they had managed to hold off those one hundred fifty warriors. “Get down off that horse!” he yelled at Shearer, starting toward his friend, his thoughts thickened with hope—

He was surprised when he heard a rifleshot from close by, watched the bullet wing Shearer's horse across the withers. The animal began to buck and dance as the civilian struggled to bring the mount under control. Blood seeped down its neck.

“George, by God—get down outta that saddle!”

Vaulting from the back of the wounded horse, Shearer lunged toward Wilmot as a squad of soldiers started loping for the Indian sniper's position. The two friends shook and pounded backs; then Shearer stepped back as a few of the other survivors stomped up at the same moment the first of the cavalry were reaching the hilltop.

His eyes darting about, Shearer asked, “Where's D. B.?”

Wilmot turned on his heel. Pointing, he exclaimed, “Randall was down there, last I saw of him. There! That's his horse on the ground!”

The two were off in a sprint, down the slope to the grassy swale where Lew had watched D. B. Randall's horse crumple to the ground early in the seige. As he raced closer and closer, Wilmot spotted the back of Randall's
head resting against the animal's motionless front flank. D. B. was reclining back in the tangle of the horse's legs as Wilmot leaped around the rear hooves and slid to a stop. His breath caught when he saw the dark, shiny smear that covered the whole of his friend's chest, like he'd spilled an entire bowl of blackberry preserves on himself at breakfast that morning—

“D.B.!”

The eyes fluttered slightly, eventually opening halfway. “That you? That Lew Wilmot?”

He held his face down close. “It's over, D. B. Gonna get you to some help now.” And laid his palm against the wet, sticky, black stain on that shirt.

“I'm mortal hurt, Lew”—then he coughed, wet and long. “I ain't goin' nowhere now. This gonna be where I die.” The eyes seemed to widen perceptibly as Lew moved over Randall, making some shade for the wounded man's face. “Got any water?”

He quickly glanced up at Shearer. “George? You get a canteen for D. B.?”

When the water came, Randall drank a little, then coughed some more, bringing up gouts of blood, almost like he was heaving from a terrible stomach wound as well. When he finally caught his breath and had licked some blood from his bottom lip, D. B. Randall looked up at the two civilians.

His eyes fluttered as he asked, “Tell … tell my wife—”

Then the eyelids didn't tremble anymore. They simply stopped moving. For a long time Wilmot and Shearer squatted there by their forty-four-year-old friend. Probably to be sure before Wilmot gently eased the eyelids back down and rose to his feet, watching the approach of an empty lumber wagon rattling toward the bottom of the slope.

James Cearly came up. “D. B.?”

Lew nodded. “He's dead.”

“Ben, too.”

“Where?” Shearer asked.

Cearly pointed. “No more'n three other boys wounded.”
^*

“That's all?” George Shearer asked, his voice rising a pitch in amazement.

Wilmot looked around them, counting five dead horses, their big carcasses scattered from the long depression to the top of the low rise where he had started their stand.

“We held 'em off, by Jupiter!” Cash Day exclaimed. “Can't believe it's over.”

“It ain't over for none of us,” Lew declared sourly. “This is far from over—”

“You civilians get your dead and wounded loaded up in that wagon!” announced one of the mounted soldiers Wilmot recognized as the officer called Winters. “I'm moving my forces back to Camp Rains.”

“Camp Rains?” Lew repeated, looking at Shearer.

The civilian nodded. “They named their bivouac at Norton's place after the dead officer what led his scouting party into an ambush couple days back. Ain't that just like a Yankee soldier's way of things? Givin' honor to that dead Lieutenant Rains who got hisself killed and ever'body else with him?”

D
URING
all that fighting, Yellow Wolf wondered why the soldiers refused to budge from their squirrel holes they had dug. Instead of coming out to save all the Shadows, for the longest time they instead chose to merely watch the skirmishing from long distance. No matter; it was a glorious fight while it lasted. Lots of riding past the Shadow guns at a gallop, some of the men crawling on their bellies through the tall grass to get close enough to the white men to see faces clearly.

That's when Yellow Wolf and his friend
Wemastahtus
recognized one of the young Shadows.

“He is Charley Crooks?” asked
Wemastahtus
in a whisper after they had all stared in amazement.

“No,” Yellow Wolf replied. “That Charley was at the fight in
Lahmotta.
This is another Charley, son of a settler who raises his horses at the bottom of the hills, this side of the White Bird Hill.”

“John-son?”
Wemastahtus
asked.

With a nod, Yellow Wolf said, “I think it is John-son's boy, the one called Charley.” He held his head up slightly and yelled at the others his announcement: “John-son's boy, Charley … he is here with the other Shadows. He's a friend, so do not hurt him! We should do him no harm!”

“Who is this?” shouted
Weesculatat,
that older warrior who had urged Yellow Wolf to come along for the fight. His pony pranced up, boldly making a target of its rider.

“A Shadow friend of ours!” Yellow Wolf shouted, waving his arm emphatically for
Weesculatat
to dismount. “Get down! This Shadow who was a friend is shooting right at us!”

A bullet suddenly sang through the grass between the pair hiding in the grass, a bullet from John-son's location.
Weesculatat
dropped to the ground, kneeling as he held onto the long single rein knotted around his pony's lower jaw.

“See,
Weesculatat
? This Charley John-son is shooting at us now!”
Wemastahtus
cried.

“I cannot see this friend of yours,”
Weesculatat
said as he turned, studying the white men scattered across the slope. “Which one is he?”

A bullet from one of the white man guns struck the older man's horse, causing the frightened animal to rear and hop in pain and fear.
Weesculatat
bolted to his feet, yanking on the long rein, doing what he could to gain control of the frightened animal as Shadow bullets snarled around them.

“Get down!” Yellow Wolf shouted as he started to reach up an arm to pull
Weesculatat
down.

But the older warrior was twisted away by the spooked pony—

Yellow Wolf flinched the instant he heard the slap of lead against flesh.
Weesculatat
let out a little groan as he collapsed forward into the grass, clutching at his knee. Blood was seeping between the fingers of both hands, but he was an older man, a proven warrior who had control of his voice, so he did not cry out when he was hit by Charley John-son's bullet.

Instead, he looked up at the other two and said, “Time for us to go from here.”

“I can help you,” Yellow Wolf offered.

“I think I can make it on my own, brother,”
Weesculatat
explained, using that familial term to honor a friend.

The moment Yellow Wolf turned his head to look back at the young white man who was shooting at them, the older warrior pushed himself up from the grass. A puff of smoke immediately spurted from the muzzle of John-son's gun and another bullet hit
Weesculatat,
this time in the back, throwing him face-down into the grass but not blowing out a hole in his bare chest.

“This Charley John-son,” Yellow Wolf yelped in confusion. “I thought he and his father were our friends!”

As
Wemastahtus
started to crawl toward
Weesculatat,
more bullets snarled into the grass and he stopped where he lay. He and Yellow Wolf could both hear the older man's loud breathing, coming hard and wet.

“I will come get you!” Yellow Wolf said. “Wait for me to come!”

“N-no,”
Weesculatat
replied, his voice no longer strong as it had been only moments ago. “I can still get away on my own. The bullet did not come out …”

Weesculatat
slowly rose to his hands and knees in the grass, his head slung loosely between his shoulders like that of a weary dog as he wobbled, eventually pulling himself up to a squatting position, where he looked down at his chest again.

Then he turned to peer back at the two warriors nearby. “See, the bullet that hit me in the back did not come out—”

Another shot from John-son's gun slammed into
Weesculatat
from the side, driving him off his knees, where he skidded in the grass a foot, then lay still, gasping louder and louder, his fingers clawing up a handful of the green shafts.

He was barely breathing when Yellow Wolf reached him. Three bullets. The first would have made him lame, if only he had stayed low. It made Yellow Wolf angry in his belly, very mad to think that an old friend of theirs had done this to
Weesculatat.
Yellow Wolf knew most of the other young men had refrained from shooting at this Charley John-son because his family were old friends of the Non-Treaty bands. But—hard as it was for Yellow Wolf to consider—maybe no white man would ever be a friend to the
Nee-Me-Poo
again.

Not long after Yellow Wolf reached the older warrior, many of Two Moons's warriors started to drift back toward their herd and migrating village, breaking off the surround in favor of putting themselves between the white men and their families once more. He could not blame the others—none of them had any idea when the soldiers would emerge from their hollows or what they would do when they got brave enough to make a fight of it while the camp was in the open and vulnerable.

The other warriors under
Ollokot
did what they could to keep lots of pressure on the outnumbered Shadows with their loud guns—repeating weapons the warriors respected, like the rifle Yellow Wolf himself owned, a lever-action carbine his mother held in safekeeping for him back in Looking Glass's village. More than the single-shot soldier guns, these warriors had a healthy respect for the Shadows' rapid-firing repeaters.

Into the afternoon
Ollokot'
s men wondered if the
suapies
would ever emerge from their hollows. That did not happen until the sun was halfway down in the sky toward its evening set. And then they came out in that opening made when Two Moon's fighters drifted away, soldiers advancing with a big, many-noises gun that rumbled right in the front of some walking soldiers.

“Let us quit for a while!”
Ollokot
shouted as he raced
past on his horse, the fringes sewn at the heels of his moccasins flying in the hot breeze like the mane and tail of his pony.

His first horse had been shot out from under him in the early stages of the fight, but his youngest wife, known as
Aihits Palojami,
known as Fair Land, had been watching from a nearby hilltop and quickly brought him another good fighting horse as the bullets landed around them both.

Two others came to join Yellow Wolf and
Wemastahtus,
helping to drag
Weesculatat
back from danger. In a grassy depression they laid the older man over the back of a horse and started with him to the village that would be making camp this afternoon in the canyon of the Cottonwood at
Piswah Ilppilp Pah,
the Place of Red Rocks. Another man had been wounded, but not nearly as bad.
Sewattis Hihhih,
the warrior known as White Cloud, was a half brother of Two Moons. A man of short stature, White Cloud was nonetheless a very brave fighter, shot from his pony during a daring charge on the Shadows.

Despite the rescue of those white men by the
suapies,
the fighting chiefs had accomplished what they had set out to do. If that small war party of Shadows had reached the soldier camp that afternoon, the chances were good the white men would have believed themselves strong enough to leave their camp and venture onto the prairie, where they would have attacked the village then migrating to Cottonwood Creek. The women and children would have been threatened, havoc caused by the Shadows.

As it was, the young men had prevented any interruption in the camp's march. The white survivors of the fight limped back with the soldiers to their hollows, and the village was able to reach
Piswah Ilppilp Pah
without any trouble. Now the mouth of the Cottonwood at the Clearwater was no more than a matter of two marches, three at the most, away. They were not running. No, they were in full control now. Cut-Off Arm and his big army were many days and far, far away across a turbulent river. The warriors had
neutralized the only possible threat from the burrow soldiers and now were in the clear.