Lay the Mountains Low (33 page)

T
HE LOUD REPORT OF THAT SINGLE GUNSHOT SNAPPED
Lew Wilmot awake.

“Shit,” someone nearby whimpered in the dark. “I-I didn't mean to—”

In a blur, McConville loomed over John Atkinson, wrenching the volunteer's .50-caliber Springfield rifle from his hands. “Keep your eyes open now, boys,” the leader growled. “I expect some company to show up real soon.”

Wilmot swallowed hard as he swiveled the lever down and opened the action on his big needle-gun. He had a reputation as being the best shot on the Camas Prairie. And now that this poor daisy from Hunter's bunch had just announced to the whole canyon that they were there … Lew Wilmot was going to have to prove just how good a shot he was, all over again.

By midday on the eighth, McConville's seventy-five volunteers had crossed the open, rolling land to reach the canyon of the Cottonwood, following the creek until dark, when they decided they could go no farther and went into a cold camp. McConville's subordinate “Captain” Benjamin F. Morris divided the men into two watches, then put out the first round of pickets while the others tried to catch a little sleep right where they had landed when they came out of the saddles. Lew tried but could not do anything but listen to the sounds of the night, thinking about his three daughters and that brand-new baby boy.

Them and poor George Hunter—who lay back in Loyal P. Brown's hotel turned hospital after he had been shot in
the shoulder by another volunteer from Dayton in Washington Territory, Eugene Talmadge Wilson, climaxing a quick, hot argument reaching the boiling point after a long-simmering feud the two had carried with them into the Nez Perce War. Wilson was under arrest back in Mount Idaho.

Wilmot wondered why a man like Wilson had failed to realize there were more than enough warriors to go around when he got mad enough he had to shoot George Hunter. A few of Hunter's friends had been understandably edgy as they lit out on their scout, and Wilson's friends were even standoffish by the time they made camp night before last.

Just as Wilmot was dozing off in the dark, one of the pickets from the first watch clambered back into camp to announce that he had discovered that they were less than a mile from the Nez Perce village located at the mouth of the Cottonwood. McConville picked John McPherson to carry word back to Howard that night, since the general was expected in Grangeville before morning.

“You might figger to send another rider or two off with the same news,” Lew suggested in the dark as the anxious men settled down to await the dawn.

“Think McPherson might get jumped?”

Wilmot nodded in the starshine. “They're bound to have scouts and outriders sniffing around.”

“Then why the hell haven't they found us?” James Cearly goaded in a whisper.

Before Wilmot could snap, McConville said, “Unless you two figger out a way to get along, I'm gonna order you both back to Mount Idaho.”

Wilmot was just waiting for McConville to take a breath. “Colonel—”

“Your arguing likely gonna cost the lives of some of these men,” McConville interrupted. “Either you get along, or you get out.”

Lew looked at Cearly's face, waiting for the other man to make the first move … then said, “All right, Colonel. I can get along with any man if I'm given half a chance.”

“Me, too,” Cearly replied, holding his hand out. “Besides, we're gonna need to have the best shot on Camas Prairie with us if we run into trouble tomorrow.”

“All right,” McConville said as he settled on his haunches. “I'm gonna send out two more men with orders to get word to Howard.”

After George Riggins and P. C. Malin were on their way, each taking a different route back to Mount Idaho, McConville dispatched E. J. Bunker and nine other men toward a high hill figured to be halfway between their bivouac and the enemy camp.

“Bunker, you and your men are under orders to hold that hill at all hazards. Be sure you give the alarm at the first approach of Indians.”

Hours later; McConville crawled back to where Wilmot was resting, propped against a tree. He signaled Lew to follow him and together they crabbed over to where James Cearly was dozing.

“We got about an hour or so left till first light,” McConville whispered. “I want the both of you to have a look at that camp. Close as you can. Count the lodges; see the strength of those Injuns. Then get back here afore sunup.”

The two of them had gotten well within a half-mile of the village before they decided they had little time to beat a retreat back to the bivouac.

Wilmot had reported upon their return, “We counted seventy-two tepees, Colonel. From what we could see in the dark, we counted more than one hundred and fifty of their ponies staked right in camp.”

“It look to you that all the bands were there?”

Cearly nodded. “We waited till the first light started to show across the Clearwater—just to be sure we had counted everything we could see.”

“We headed back when the herder boys crossed the river toward a few other lodges and their ponies,” Lew explained.

McConville called the rest of the men together that dawn, and they discussed their options. Couriers were already on their way to the soldiers, although a significant
number of the volunteers doubted Howard and Perry would ever have the will to prosecute this war the way it should have been fought from the very beginning. In fact, many of the volunteers from Mount Idaho even feared the murdering redskins would either get away with their crimes completely or come slinking back to Howard for a compromise and protection from the outraged citizens. To their way of thinking, General O. O. Howard had proven he would make a better missionary than an Indian fighter. At the end of their long, angry discussions, however, they decided to wait and see what the soldiers would do, what word might come back from Howard.

“We'll wait out the day right here,” their leader told them. “If we haven't heard from the general by nightfall, I'll send out another dispatch with news on the strength of the camp. When Howard gets here, we'll join in the attack.”

They had waited out the morning, then midday as the sun rose higher and hotter, making Lew all the sleepier as the insects buzzed and droned around their faces. He had just been drifting off when that gun belonging to one of Hunter's men tumbled from its stand against a tree and discharged.

They were in the soup now!

“Bring the water!” Wilmot was yelling as he clambered to his feet.

“Where we going?” one of the Dayton volunteers demanded.

Lew pointed at the hill.
^*
“There—where the colonel sent Bunker and his men.”

“T-that's
toward
the Injuns!” another Dayton man whined.

“But it's the highest hill we can reach in this country before the Injuns get to us,” McConville snarled. “Now do what Wilmot told you: get your canteens filled at the creek and push on for that hill—on the double!”

Those who had brass kettles along filled them with water, making the sprint for that hill an interesting one as they attempted to keep as much water from sloshing out of the vessels as possible as they covered that broken ground and deadfall. By the time the first of them reached Bunker's position, they found those ten guards already prying stones out of the ground with their belt knives and dragging up downed trees to throw up some sort of breastworks.

Lew nodded as he rode up and spun to the ground, pitching his two canteens into the pile McConville was supervising at the center of the scene. It was a good spot; that much was for sure. Nearly flat on top, the crest was as good as anyplace to make a last stand.

“A damn sight better'n that grassy rise on the Camas Prairie,” Lew muttered under his breath as he turned his horse among the others and started toward the breastworks, where all of McConville's volunteers were feverishly scratching at the ground, digging rifle pits with their belt knives or tin cups. Anything that could move some dirt.

It wasn't many minutes before some two dozen horsemen appeared, the first to come investigate. Lew had to give the Nez Perce credit for being smart bastards. They could see the white men had a decided advantage on top of their hill. The warriors didn't make a charge or press an attack. Instead, they seemed content with surrounding the knoll with more than a hundred fighting men, occasionally firing an ill-placed shot and constantly hurling oaths at the volunteers. Into that long, hot afternoon and evening, it was a long-distance scrap, if anything.

Then darkness fell and they were all reminded to be extra cautious about making any noise. Their ears were going to have to warn them if any warriors were sneaking up on their fortifications. Besides, there weren't many of them even trying at some sleep, not the way the volunteers shivered with the cold in their sweat-dampened clothes, none of them having blankets along.

A little after 11:00
P.M.
, while the second watch was on
duty, the hillside below them fell quiet for the longest time … until the clatter of hooves shattered the starlight.

“They charging?” some man shrieked in terror.

“No, goddammit!” came a growl from the other side of the hilltop as the hammer of hoofbeats faded. “The red pricks just run off our horses!”

“We're staying put for sure now!” Cearly grumbled.

Wilmot nodded, “I wasn't planning on going nowhere anyway.”

Not long after midnight the warriors burst forth with a litany of unearthly war cries and screeches, accompanied by the calls of wild birds, the howl of a prairie wolf, and the scream of the mountain panther. It had lasted for the better part of an hour when, from all sides, the warriors opened up a sudden and frightening gunfire. Tongues of yellow and red jetted from the muzzles of their rifles, many of which had been stolen from the dead in White Bird Canyon.

“Just stay down!” McConville hollered.

“You heard the colonel!” Wilmot shouted. “Keep your heads down and they won't have nothing to hit!”

After listening to some steady, sustained fire coming from one of the rifle pits, Wilmot crawled over to find a volunteer firing into the black of night.

“Elias,” Lew whispered, “just what the blazes you shooting at?”

Nonplussed, Elias Darr looked over his shoulder and replied, “I-I don't know, Lew. It's so goddamned dark I can't see a blamed thing … but I thought it was a good idea to keep the ark a-moving.”

With a smile, Wilmot put his hand on his friend's shoulder. “Elias, I figger an even better idea is to save your ammunition for morning, when we might need to move the ark even more.”

Some sporadic harassing fire from the enemy was kept up on into the blackening of night as the moon fell. Then as first light started to bloom, the firing died away and the hillside
fell quiet again. Afraid of drawing a bullet, the volunteers maintained an uneasy silence.

“Hey, you fellas!” a voice cried from down the hillside, heavy with Nez Perce accent.

The volunteers fell silent, watchful and wary of some trick.

Finally one of them hollered, “What you want, you red nigger?”

“We going to breakfast allee same Hotel de France!” the voice called out, referring to one of the best hotels in Lewiston. “You fellas come over and eat with us!”

Wilmot couldn't help it. He started snorting with laughter at the image that created in his head—this band of grubby civilian horsemen setting down for breakfast in the dining room of that fancy hotel with some painted, half-naked Non-Treaty savages.

As a lark, Lew sang out, “No—I got a better idea, fellas. You boys come on in here and have breakfast with us! C'mon now.”

For a moment it was deathly quiet; then the voice came again from the timber, “I no think so, fellas. You ain't got nothing to eat much!”

McConville chuckled, grinning at Wilmot. “Leastways they got that right, Lew. We don't have much at all in the way of hold-out food!”

An hour later, as his pocket watch was nearing 7:00
A.M.
, several of the men on the other side of the breastworks called out a warning.

“They're coming at us now, for God's sake!”

Bunker was pointing as Wilmot came loping over. Down near the base of the hill in the summer sunlight they could see at least a hundred of the warriors lining up in a broad front, as if preparing to make a massed charge on foot.

“Hold your fire until you see the color of the paint on their faces!” Wilmot ordered.

“That's right,” McConville agreed. “Make every bullet count!”

Then as the volunteers were hunkering down behind the
rocks and deadfall, preparing to sell their lives dearly in those shallow rifle pits, a pair of Nez Perce rode up to the warrior lines, waving and gesturing. In seconds that line of chargers dispersed, turning away to fetch up their ponies lazily grazing in the grassy swales below the hill. One by one and in pairs the warriors mounted up and started away, heading back in the direction of their camp.

Finally, McConville asked, “Hey, Lew—you think they pulled off for good? Or is this a trick?”

He wagged his head. “I dunno, Colonel. Just when a fella thinks he's got these Nez Perce figgered out, that's when they'll up and surprise him—catch 'im in a trap … and kill 'im.”

 

*
“Misery Hill” (sometimes called Camp Misery) is located on present-day Doty Ridge.