Lay the Mountains Low (65 page)

“I am, Reverend.”

Stomping right down the middle of the street, the six of them crammed through Jerry Fahy's open doorway and demanded his whiskey barrel be turned over to them. Inches away, more than a dozen warriors stood in line clutching newly purchased pint tin cups, impatiently waiting their turn at the spigot.

“Why you want my whiskey?” Fahy demanded from behind the counter where he was dispensing the potent amber liquid.

“We're acting before any of these Injuns gets drunk and ready to raise some hair!” the gray-headed minister thundered, sweeping back the long tails of his black wool morning coat.

“You ain't got a leg to stand on, Reverend,” the merchant chimed back with a gritty smile. “Begging God's pardon, but I'm just a shopkeeper doing an honest day's business, and I ain't breaking no Sabbath…. So I don't reckon it's a damn lick of your business.”

“For sure it's my business, too,” added one of the other merchants.

Fahy snorted, “By what authority do you fellas think you can come an' take my whiskey?”

Quick as a blink, Preacher Flowers yanked out a single-action army Colt .45-caliber revolver and immediately dragged back the hammer with a click made loud in the sudden silence of that room. Without the slightest hesitation, he shoved the muzzle against the whiskey seller's forehead,
pressing it to that spot just above and between the eyes.

The right reverend announced gravely, “By
this
authority!”

“W-what you gonna do with my whiskey, if I give it to you?” Fahy asked, his eyes crossing each time he stared up at the long barrel. “You gonna pay me for it?”

“Not on your life,” Flowers sneered. “We're gonna take your keg of evil concoction to Fort Owen for safekeeping until these Indians have departed from our valley.”

“You're stealing my business from me!” Fahy squawked.

That's when an emboldened Henry Buck spoke up: “We could just knock a hole in that keg right here, 'stead of keeping it safe for you out at the fort.”

“Take it, goddammit!” the merchant spit, unrepentant and taking the Lord's name in vain even before the fire-and-brimstone preacher. “Maybe one of these days the Nez Perce will come to pay a call on you and take what they want without payin'!”

“We're not stealing your whiskey,” Henry said as the resealed keg was rolled out the door to a waiting wagon. “We're just borrowing it until this trouble all blows over.”

When one of the concerned merchants and the reverend were on their way out to the fort with the trader's keg in the rear of a prairie wagon, Henry started back for the Buck Brothers' Store-—only to find even more of the drunken warriors congregating in the street, their voices growing loud enough to wake up the dead. He had to zigzag to make his way across the rutted street, then shove past several inebriated Nez Perce clustered just outside the store's open doors. Henry stepped inside just as his two older brothers reached out from either side of the door and hoisted him toward a rack of hemp rope.

“Get in here so we can lock up!” Amos ordered.

“We're closing?” Henry asked his brothers.

“You see'd it yourself out there,” Fred, the eldest, explained. “Better off not dealing with 'em while so many's got a snootful of that whiskey.”

Henry proposed, “Maybe we'll wait till the whiskey wears off, then we can open up again—”

His voice dropped off just as he caught a flash of motion out the front window. One of the belligerent warriors he had pushed past at the doorway was dragging his wobbly rifle up, pointing it right through the large plate-glass window at Henry, beginning to clumsily drag back the hammer on his weapon.

In a blur of color, one of the Flathead suddenly rushed in from the right, his arm sweeping up, shoving the rifle away from its mark, wrenching the weapon from the Nez Perce.

At least ten of the warrior's friends immediately descended on the scene, along with a half-dozen of Chariot's Flathead. All appeared destined to die in a hail of angry gunfire … when White Bird appeared out of nowhere, still mounted on his pony, swinging his elkhorn quirt. Whipping his tribesmen with the long knotted rawhide straps, the chief drove his warriors back.

In a heartbeat the old chief dropped to the street, lunging at the youngster who had prepared to fire at Henry Buck. White Bird cocked his arm into the air. Eight, nine, ten times he savagely lashed the quirt across the offender's face and shoulders, back and arms, raising angry red welts wherever it landed, while the warrior pitifully cried out for his friends to pull the old man off.

When the youngster finally collapsed against the storefront, shielding his face behind a pair of bleeding forearms, White Bird ceased his furious attack, took a step back, and dropped his arm to his side. Then he called out in a loud, sure voice.

Two of the older men pushed their way through the cordon of young warriors, grabbed the offender by his wounded arms, and heaved him onto a nearby pony. Bellowing like a bull, White Bird motioned them in the direction of their camp.

Once the two guards were on the way with their young prisoner, the old chief turned to the rest of the drunken crowd, berating them, waving his quirt in the air threateningly.

As his brothers shoved the bolt through its lock on the double doors, Henry watched the old chief disperse the drunken rowdies and young troublemakers, driving them off toward their ponies.

Only as the noise died down and the hard-eyed, sullen young men drifted away from the front of the store and out of town
*
did Henry realize he was trembling like a leaf in a spring gale. Listening to his heart pound in his ears. Remembering how that whiskeyed-up warrior had pointed his rifle at him through the window.

Henry never wanted to be that close to death again, not for a long, long time.

 

*
Partly reconstructed, between Highway 93 and the present-day community of Stevensville in Ravalli County, twenty-seven miles south of Missoula, Montana. John Owen arrived in the valley in 1850, later buying the place from some Jesuit priests who were giving up their missionary work after witnessing nine years of constant warfare between the Flathead and Blackfeet. By the time of the Nez Perce War, Owen had lost his Shoshone wife, Nancy, drunken himself into madness, and been sent back to his family in Pennsylvania, where he slipped into obscurity.

*
The older men managed to evacuate Stevensville about 3:00 p.m., having spent more than three thousand dollars in gold coin, dust, and paper currency. Out at the Silverthorne camp that night, unscrupulous traders arrived with ammunition and powder to sell to the Non-Treaty bands.

W
A
-W
A
-M
AI
-K
HAL
, 1877

BY TELEGRAPH

—

ILLINOIS.

—

Remains of General Custer at Chicago—Other News Items.

CHICAGO, July 31.—The remains of General Custer arrived here to-day from Fort Lincoln, and were forwarded at 5:15 p.m. by the Michigan Southern railroad, to West Point, where they will be interred in the receiving vault until the funeral in October. The remains of Colonel Cooke, Lieutenant Reilly, and Dr. DeWolf arrived on the same train …

I
T WAS THOSE MEAN BOYS WHO WERE FOLLOWERS OF OLD
Toohoolhoolzote
—they were the troublemakers.

They were the ones lapping up a lot of the whiskey and making bold talk about what they would do if Cut-Off Arm and his soldiers ever caught up. These bad ones wanted to have another big fight with the army, even though most of the people believed the fighting was over now that they were in Montana, now that Looking Glass and White Bird had made a pact with the little chief and Shadows in Lolo Canyon, now that they were on the way to a new life in the buffalo country.

So when some hot-blooded young men got together and started talking tough with noplace to go where they could prove just how tough they were, Bird Alighting realized those bad-tempered ones were likely to cause some trouble. With no other way to get the fighting steam out of their systems, the mean boys rode away from the Non-Treaty
camp,
*
itching for something that would break the boredom of camping and marching, camping and marching a little farther each day. Bird Alighting knew that bunch was up to no good the moment they thundered out of camp, most of them red to the gills with some whiskey brought into camp on a trader's wagon come out of Stevensville.

He was certain the swaggering youngsters had let the wolf out to howl by the time they came roaring back late that afternoon, leading seven stolen horses.

“Did you kill any Shadows while you were away disobeying me?” Looking Glass shrieked at
Toohoolhoolzote
's young hotbloods the moment he had them stopped at the southern edge of the village.

“No,” one of them replied in a surly manner as their ponies pranced around the chief and some of the older men. “Everyone is gone—so we weren't lucky enough to find any Shadows we could torture and kill!”

The rest in the party laughed along with their brassy leader, then stopped abruptly when Looking Glass hauled the arrogant leader to the ground. He stood over the youth, glaring down at him, trembling as he pointed at the stolen horses.

“Where did you get these Shadow ponies?”

“How do you know they are not my horses?” retorted the leader as he slowly got to his feet, rubbing a scuffed-up shoulder.

Grabbing hold of the callow youth's elbow and wrenching him around, Looking Glass pointed a finger at the picture scar on one horse's rear flank. “Is that a Shadow brand?”

“I-I—”

“Then this is a Shadow horse you stole!” the chief snapped.

“There was no one there to watch over them,” the leader explained, turning with an impish grin to the rest of his friends, “so we took them.”

Slamming the heel of his palm against the big youngster's chest, Looking Glass knocked the horse thief backward two steps as he thundered, “You have broken my promise to the Shadows!”

“The white men have no need of knowing,”
Toohoolhoolzote
said as he stepped up beside the young man.

Looking Glass glared at them both. “It was
my
word,” he snarled. “These stupid boys have broken my word not to cause any trouble as we pass through the Bitterroot!”

Taking a meaningful step toward the top-hat chief, the shaman said, “They are only horses—”

”Toohoolhoolzote,
these are yours,” Looking Glass chided, shoving the youngster toward the squat medicine man. “If they were my people, I would lay their backs open with a whip.”

That old, square-jawed
tewat
began to speak: “But—”

“But,” Looking Glass interrupted, “they are yours to discipline. If this happens again—if any man disobeys my orders against causing trouble—then I will see that he is severely punished and left behind.”

Again the old shaman began to speak, but before he could, Looking Glass purposefully turned his back on
Toohoolhoolzote
and stuck his face right in that of the young leader.

“On second thought … I will discipline these stupid boys,” he growled.

The young horse thief's eyes quickly snapped at
Toohoolhoolzote,
then back to Looking Glass.

“I want all of you to pick out one of your own horses from those you own,” Looking Glass ordered, “and if you don't own another, then you will give me the one you are riding at this moment.”

“W-what do you want our horses for?” the leader asked.

“You will take me back to where you stole the Shadow horses,” Looking Glass declared sharply. “There you will leave your horses in place of the ones you stole.”

Bird Alighting and others rode with Looking Glass when the horse thieves led them to the white man's ranch house
and corral. The poles the young warriors had removed from a section of the corral lay scattered on the ground; the door to the cabin hung open. Inside they found how the young troublemakers had rooted through it all, breaking and destroying everything they did not want to carry away with them.
*

“Build a fire over there,” Looking Glass ordered the young thieves.

“Are you going to burn some of this?” the leader demanded, grinning, some haughtiness returning to his voice.

“No, I'm going to find this Shadow's iron marker and you are going to burn his brand into the horses you are giving him,” the chief said sourly. “Go build that fire for me, now.”

Proof of their raids back in Idaho became evident as some of the Non-Treaty warriors traded off a few horses to ranchers and merchants as they moseyed up the valley at a leisurely, unconcerned pace—animals that bore the brand scars of their Idaho owners. Here as they neared the head of the Bitterroot, Bird Alighting realized why Looking Glass was doing right by this individual settler: Maintaining the goodwill of these Montana Shadows was crucial to the success of a new life outside their ancient homeland.