Lay the Mountains Low (75 page)

He had graduated from West Point in 1847, a year after the war with Mexico had made heroes of, and bright futures for, the many. Instead, Gibbon tromped off to fight the Seminoles in Florida before he was selected as an instructor of artillery tactics at the military academy. In fact, he had authored the school's new
Artillerist's Manual,
which was finally published in 1863, about the time he was getting himself wounded at Gettysburg—his second of four wounds for that war.

Leaving orders with First Lieutenant Charles A. Woodruff to awaken him at 10:30
P.M.,
the colonel laid his cheek upon an elbow and for some reason thought back to
the final miles on that journey from Fort Shaw to Missoula City. The Nez Perce had gotten around Rawn; Governor Potts was headed home saying the soldiers may no longer be needed; it appeared the crisis in the Bitterroot was over.

That's when the starch had seemed to go out of his men. They had endured a long, hot campaign the previous summer and ended the Great Sioux War a bridesmaid—without firing a shot at the enemy! Ever since they had received word they were moving out, Gibbon's men had known they were going to get in their licks against the Nez Perce. But over the past five days the colonel had kept their minds on the pursuit, put their vision on the horizon—and convinced them the enemy was within reach.

Pretty soon, it reminded him of a pack of hunting dogs howling down a hot trail the way his men were showing their eagerness for this fight.

By blazes—the Seventh wasn't going to be denied
this
fight!

Gibbon was snoring within minutes of closing his eyes.

A
RISING
in the dark, Gibbon gave the command to awaken the men and distribute ninety rounds of ammunition to each soldier for his Long-Tom Springfield rifle—fifty rounds stuffed into the loops of their prairie belts and twenty each in their two leather belt pouches, ofttimes called sewing kits.

“Bring the howitzer and fifteen shots forward at dawn,” Gibbon gave the order to the gun crew under sergeants Patrick C. Daly and John W. H. Frederick. “Along with a pack mule carrying those two thousand rounds of extra ammunition for the men.”

Everything else—rations, blankets, shelter halves, and more cartridges—would remain behind with Kirkendall's wagons.

Except for the horses of Gibbon and three other men, the animals were left behind with the wagon master, placed in a rope corral beside Placer Creek, a small guard to watch over them until the column's return or Gibbon ordered them
forward. When all was in readiness, the colonel gave the command for the heavy wool greatcoats to be left behind at the corral; they would impede a man's movement not only on the nighttime trail ahead but also in the coming battle.

The civilians and those foot soldiers of the Seventh U. S. Infantry stood shivering slightly with the cold in that hour before midnight, 8 August, 18 and 77.

“Lieutenant Bradley,” Gibbon said as those around them fell to a hushed silence beneath that starry sky and the nervous soldiers shuffled from foot to foot, “take us to the enemy's doorstep.”

They moved out on foot, single-file behind Bradley, Blodgett, Bostwick, and Catlin's thirty-four civilian volunteers from the Bitterroot valley. A total of seventeen officers and 132 enlisted bringing up the rear.

Over the next three miles of sharp-sided ravines and washouts, swampy marshlands of saw grass—where they sank up to their ankles in cold mud and muck—alternating with thick stands of timber, where they stumbled and tripped over fallen and uprooted trees in the dark, broken up by patches of rocky ground strewn with sharp-edged boulders, Gibbon grew more and more anxious. Initially certain the Nez Perce would have sentries posted along their back trail, as his men marched farther without encountering any sign of guards, he became more and more convinced that he was being lured right into a trap.

His eyes straining into the moonless night, ears attuned for any sound that would mean they had been discovered, they crept toward the sleeping camp. On two occasions some of the men at the rear of the column got separated in the dark and mazelike forest, requiring the rest of Gibbon's men to stop and wait for the lost and the laggards to catch up before pressing ahead once more.

Of a sudden the whole sky seemed to open up to them as they emerged from the thick evergreen canopy, finding themselves on a gentle slope overgrown with sage, jack pine, and a fragrant mountain laurel. The heavens ablaze with stars, it was easy for a man to gaze across the full extent
of the Big Hole and recognize where the distant, seamless mountains raised their black bulk against the paling horizon.

The grassy hillside where they found themselves was cluttered with little more than a few sagebrush, here above the confluence of two creeks.

“We're very close, Colonel,” Bradley whispered, then pointed ahead to the left. “Around the brow of the hill. That's where you should get your first look at the enemy camp.”

“You have a staging area in mind, Lieutenant?”

Bradley nodded. “From there we can watch the whole village until it's time to move into position for the attack.”

“Show me.”

The lieutenant and Fort Shaw post guide H. S. Bostwick led off now, angling left, heading northeast around the sweeping brow of the hill, at the base of which the stream they had just descended joined with Ruby Creek to form the North Fork of the Big Hole. It wasn't but minutes before Bradley and Bostwick suddenly stopped in their tracks.

In a whisper, the lieutenant said, “There they are, sir—look!”

The breath caught in the back of Gibbon's throat as he got his first glimpse of the Nez Perce camp in the valley below: Some of the lodges glowed faintly from within, even more the dull-red reflection of the embers in those abandoned fires still flickering in the open spaces among the lodges.

Gibbon swallowed. “How many are there, Lieutenant?”

Bostwick wagged his head as a dog yapped its warning below. “We never got close enough to count the tepees, Colonel.”

Another dog bayed this time, and the faint wail of an infant drifted up the barren hillside to the expectant soldiers.

“Is your staging area close, Lieutenant?” Gibbon asked Bradley.

“On past that point of timber that extends almost down
to the edge of the water, Colonel,” Bradley explained, pointing.

Gibbon nodded with approval. That dark patch of hogback timber narrowed from a wide V to a point just above the creek. It could well cover most any approach to the village. “What's on the other side of the timber?”

Bostwick said, “If my guess is right, it'll be the ponies.”

With a smile, the colonel whispered, “Let's find out if your hunch is good.”

Minutes later as they stepped out of the dimly lit timber, Gibbon was startled by the movement of forms on the starlit hillside at their front—fearing they were enemy warriors. After some anxious heartbeats while he sorted out what to do, the colonel realized they had bumped into the Nez Perce herd, right where Lieutenant Bradley had stated it would be.

Which meant that now Gibbon had a new worry, alarmed that the horses would make a great racket, maybe even bolt and stampede, before his men had a chance to direct their movement. But, to his utter surprise, the Nez Perce animals did little more than quietly snuffle and mill about when they winded the approaching white men. Meanwhile, down at the base of the hill, a few of the dogs in camp seemed to understand that warning inherent in the muted whinny of those ponies … but while Gibbon and his men held their breath—awaiting some shrill alarm from a camp guard—the dogs below quit barking and the nervous horses shuffled up the hillside, away from the soldiers.

“Bostwick!” he whispered for his post guide, a half-blood Montana Scotsman.

“Colonel?”

“Pick three or four of the citizens, men you can trust,” Gibbon ordered. “Start driving this herd back on our trail toward the wagons. I want you to get the ponies out of here before—”

“Not a good idea, sir,” Bostwick interrupted grimly, shaking his head in the starlight. “Could be, your surprise will be ruined.”

“How?”

“These Nez Perce, they surely got 'em some guards on this hillside,” Bostwick explained, “if they don't have guards down watchin' the camp. We go driving off the ponies—we'll be discovered and there'll be trouble, shots fired.”

“Which will bring out the whole camp,” Gibbon concluded, realizing the man's intuition had to be right. After all, Bostwick had spent his entire life in Indian country.

“Time come soon enough,” Bostwick whispered. “We'll have them horses run off for you. But this close to having that camp in your hand, Colonel—you don't want to be discovered now.”

“No,” and Gibbon wagged his head. “We'll wait out the dawn right here.”

“For a man to go on foot is one thing, General,” Bostwick whispered. “But you lend me your big gray saddler there, I'll ride down, have a look at the camp.”

Gibbon was dubious. “But you just said they'd have camp guards about.”

“I'll wrap myself in a blanket,” Bostwick explained. “If there's a picket about they won't think nothing of a horseman. A man on foot makes a noise that draws attention—but not a man riding a horse.”

“All right,” and the colonel passed his post guide the reins to his iron-gray gelding. And watched Bostwick disappear into the dim light.

So it was on that grassy sage-covered hillside that Gibbon would halt and hold his men in the dark and the cold.

“Canteens stacked by company,” he told his officers.

They would have the tendency to bang and clank against rifle and belt pouch. No worry leaving them here: Soon enough, his men would be in control of that village nestled by a cold, clear gurgling stream.

With this task done, the colonel had his men settle on the cold ground no more than thirty yards directly above the sluggish twisting creek bordered by bristling stands of willow. As the shivering men collapsed around him on the hillside
to await the coming of predawn light, the colonel dragged out his big turnip watch from a pocket, remembering he hadn't wound it since the previous morning when they started the wagons up those last two miles to the pass. Turning it just so in the faint starlight, he read that it was a little past 2:00
A.M.
Here in this startling quiet, the softest of sounds emerged from the camp below: a horse's snuffle, a babe's cry quickly silenced by a mother's breast, the growl of a dog answering the howl of a coyote somewhere on the mountainside.

In minutes he had his officers together, issuing their orders. Bradley would take Catlin and the volunteers to the extreme left. Logan and Browning positioned on the extreme right flank. With Williams and Rawn serving as reserves right behind them, Captain Richard Comba and Captain Sanno would be in the middle, spearheading the dawn attack.

Once he issued the command to move out, the company commanders would spread their formation roughly as wide as the village itself—which appeared to be a distance of some twelve hundred yards. With his men deployed, the front ranks would ease down to water's edge. The signal to attack would be a single rifleshot, whereupon the men would quickly advance, fire three volleys into the camp, then immediately charge their entire line across the shallow river, certain to enter the village uncontested.

At that moment Gibbon's attention was drawn again to the horse herd. It had been of crucial importance to his plan all along to capture the ponies … but—it might be a stupid blunder to awaken the guards who surely must be watching over the horses. Better that they await the moment of attack before moving on the herd, he decided. Then he could seize the ponies at the same time he launched into the village—

“Put out that light!” a voice snapped sharply.

Gibbon wasn't sure who was involved, but there was a scuffle to his left as a few of the shadows quickly lunged toward the man who had just illuminated his face with the flare of a sulphur-headed match. One of the noncoms
swung with the back of his hand, knocking both match and the stub of a pipe from the thoughtless soldier's mouth,

As the infantryman shrank back, holding up both hands before him protectively, he muttered, “I fergot, just fergot.”

“Just like one of them blokes with Colonel Perry forgot when them horse soldiers was marchin' down White Bird Canyon,” the gruff voice of a sergeant growled as he leaned right over the offending soldier, finger jabbing, those gold chevrons shimmering on his arm in the starshine.

“Lemme get my pipe, Sarge,” the infantryman begged. “I'll put it in me haversack, straightaway.”

“Just be glad I don't tuck you away in me own haversack,” the sergeant grumbled. “One li'l slip now—an' our attack won't be no secret no longer.”

As the line quieted once more and the forest resumed its night sounds, Gibbon sighed, damp, chill breath smoke slipping from his mouth. Across a deep and willow-choked slough where the meandering creek was backed up, the lodges were arrayed on a line running roughly southwest to northeast. The greater number of the poles were standing near the western end of the camp, off to Gibbon's right. The sky was starting to lighten as post guide Bostwick slid up beside Gibbon and settled to his haunches, beside the colonel.

“Won't be long now and you'll see those tepees start to glow like Fourth of July lanterns,” Bostwick explained. “That means them squaws are laying firewood on the fires.”

“Why is that important to us?” Gibbon asked.

“It means the women are starting to build their breakfast fires, General. Which tells me we ain't been discovered.”

“So when the fires flare up, that's a good sign.”

Bostwick turned away to gaze into the valley. “It means that village down there will be yours.”

A man snored nearby.