Lay the Mountains Low (8 page)

F
ROM THE EDGE OF THE TREE LINE, FIRST SERGEANT
Michael McCarthy turned in his saddle and looked back at the Camas Prairie laid out behind them like a soggy, rumpled bedcloth. Their bivouac on Cottonwood Creek was back there some fourteen miles or so through the sheets of sleety rain and wet snow.

H Company had followed Captain Joel G. Trimble and a Nez Perce tracker away from the Nortons' road ranch an hour after sunrise that morning, the twenty-fifth of June. While the general himself would be coming along at a much slower pace this Monday, Howard had ordered Trimble and his men to make a reconnaissance in force toward Slate Creek and relieve the citizens under seige at the settlement. In addition, Company H should be prepared to turn the Nez Perce when Howard's column flushed the enemy from their Salmon River hiding places.

With that last look over his shoulder, McCarthy still couldn't spot any signs of the general's column moving away from Cottonwood in the dance of those intermittent but heavy and wet snowflakes. Plans were that the rest of
Howard's men would march for Grangeville and Mount Idaho, halting briefly to reassure the frightened settlers taking refuge there. Then the column would push on over the divide for Perry's battlefield, where they would bury the dead before pursuing the Non-Treaty bands up the Salmon. That should give Trimble's H enough time to be in position at the Slate Creek barricades, where they could stem the red tide Howard's column was sure to stir into motion.

“Sounds to me we got the darty duty again, Major,” McCarthy had growled to Second Lieutenant William R. Parnell earlier that morning as they were forming up their company, using the officer's brevet rank.

The tall and fleshy fellow Irishman's eyes darted over the ten new men who had arrived at Cottonwood two days before behind Second Lieutenant Thomas T. Knox, on detached duty from Fort Walla Walla. “Not all the luftenant's men are proper sojers, Sergeant dear,” he replied guardedly.

“Must've picked up them recruits down at Walla Walla,” McCarthy assessed the newcomers. “Them weeds look green as grass.”

Parnell nodded. “But we'll take them shavetail boyos because you and me need 'em so bad. Ain't that right, Sergeant?”

True enough: Lieutenant Knox and his ten recruits bolstered the company roster at a most crucial time. Eleven men would go far to replacing the thirteen dead and one wounded ripped from the rolls of H Company on the seventeenth of June at White Bird. Their recent arrival brought Trimble's command up to some thirty men. Not a full company, but a damn sight better than a puny scouting patrol now that they were riding off against the red hellions who had butchered so many of McCarthy's friends eight days before.

Still, to get to Slate Creek, Trimble's men had to make sure they avoided any roving war parties and gave the Non-Treaty bands a wide berth. To accomplish that, H Company would take a circuitous route, following an abandoned and little-used trail through the high country to reach the mining
camp of Florence. From there they would double back several miles, staying behind the ridges, angling down to reach the civilians who had gathered behind their barricades on the east side of the Salmon, at the mouth of Slate Creek.

There … in the distance, for a brief moment before he could no longer see the Camas Prairie laid out beneath the low-slung clouds, Sergeant McCarthy thought he saw the first dark figures snaking onto the grassy, rolling plains. Emerging from Cottonwood Station, as the locals called Norton's road ranch.

He turned around and settled himself miserably into that damp McClellan saddle again. It made him feel a little better diving into these forested hills and the unknown, realizing that Howard's column actually would be somewhere at their rear.

It was for sure that Colonel Perry was no fighting man. By the same token, neither was McCarthy's own company commander, Captain Trimble. He, even before the colonel, had turned tail and scampered away when things got warm. So it sure as hell didn't give a man a secure feeling to go traipsing off behind a man who had shown the white feather to those red heathens.

McCarthy quickly shot another glance at Knox's ten new recruits up from Walla Walla. Then his eyes continued down the column to those battle-weary survivors of the White Bird fray. And finally to the broad back of that fleshy Irishman, Parnell.

If the red buggers jumped H Company somewhere in these hills, at least the two of them would manage to hurl profane Irish curses at the red buggers until they got down to their last bullet. The one a man always saved for himself.

O
LIVER
Otis Howard was more than startled.

He had been shaken to his core to look over the men of Perry's command who had remained behind at the settlements while the captain rode to meet Howard at Cottonwood.

How different they are in numbers, different in their appearance,
not the brisk and hearty troopers that left Fort Lapwai the week previous,
he thought as his horse slowly moved toward the barricades.

Now the look on their faces, the studied horror in their eyes, reminded him of the war-weary, frightened soldiers he had seen every day, every campaign, in their war against the rebellious Southern states. Although those survivors of the White Bird fight cheered the general's arrival with the rest of the cavalry now placed under Perry's command, Howard realized those survivors had nonetheless been changed for all time.

At a parting of the roads on the outskirts of Grangeville, Howard had sent his infantry—B, D, E, H, and I Companies of the Twenty-first, as well as E Company of the Fourth Artillery—on ahead, with orders to make camp at Johnson's ranch near the base of the White Bird divide. The general would continue on with Captain David Perry, who was now leading a new battalion of horse soldiers: E and L Companies of the First U. S. Cavalry companies.

After an hour's layover in tiny Grangeville, during which time he gathered intelligence on the Non-Treaty bands from the locals and inspected those supplies, J. W. “John” Crooks was making available to the column, Howard resumed his march for Mount Idaho. With cheering, exuberant citizens swarming around him in that neighboring community, the general examined the hastily built fortress with former British officer H. W. Croasdaile before he walked down the main street to reach Loyal P. Brown's Mount Idaho House.

“Quiet! Quiet!” Brown shouted above the noisy throng of more than 250 settlers, ranchers, and soldiers, too. “I've prevailed upon General Howard to say a few words before he rejoins his column at Johnson's ranch. Ladies and gentlemen—I give you the man who will right the wrongs done us. The man who will recapture our stock and property from the red thieves. The man who will quickly put down this uprising and punish the Nez Perce. … I give you General Howard!”

He couldn't remember when he had been given such a splendid ovation. Surely not since those days of the Freedmen's Bureau, before the scandals, before he was forever tainted with the vicious slander that had almost ruined his career, almost ruined the work of a lifetime. How that raucous applause and hearty huzzahs thundered in his ears and refreshed his flagging spirit here as he set about snuffing out the first flames of a territory-wide war.

But as he self-consciously cleared his throat, Otis promised himself he would make it a short speech. Just the way he was going to make this a short war. “Ladies and gentlemen. Friends, and fellow countrymen. We have now taken the field in good earnest. More troops are on the way to join us.”

That declaration elicited another noisy round of applause before he was allowed to continue.

“I propose to take prompt measures for the pursuit and punishment of the hostile Indians, and wish you—each and every one of you—to help me in that endeavor. Help me in the way of information and supplies, as much does lie in your power.”

A quiet smattering of applause began what quickly exploded into a noisy response from the approving throng, more than two hundred heads bobbing in agreement with his proposal. Otis stood there, letting the praise wash over him a moment, sensing the strength it gave him, how it seeped into every muscle to give might to his own efforts in the coming struggle.

When the crowd settled, he said in a quieter tone, “I sympathize deeply with you in the loss of life, and in the outrages to which your families have been subjected. Rest assured that no stone will be left unturned to give you redress, to give you protection in the future.”

An instant applause erupted again, and Otis stepped back, gesturing to L. P. Brown. The hotel owner came forward and said a few final words before the two of them turned to join Sarah Brown at the open doorway. As the general's party stopped just inside the Browns' hotel, a
young man in his late twenties hurried forward, rolling a sleeve down over his bare forearm.

“General Howard,” Brown began, “I'd like you to meet Dr. John Morris. Mount Idaho's physician.”

They clumsily shook left hands and Otis said, “You're caring for the wounded, Doctor?”

The Missouri-born Morris nodded. “I was visiting Portland when news of the outbreak reached us. Boarded the next steamer for Lewiston and made my way over from there.”

“How long have you been practicing in this area?”

“Came to Mount Idaho in seventy-five,” the doctor explained. “Not long after I earned my license to practice from St. Louis Medical College.”

Brown stepped up. “Dr. Morris returned home three days ago, the twenty-second. Poor fella hasn't had much sleep since.”

“I catch' a nap when and where I can, General,” Morris explained.

Howard looked into the young man's warm eyes. “May I see, may I talk to the people, the civilians you are caring for?”

“Of course. By all means,” Morris replied and started away.

In several of the small rooms on that floor, and on the second story as well, Morris led Howard and Brown to the bedside of every victim of the Nez Perce terror. Many sobbed quietly as the old one-armed soldier moved among their beds, cots, or simple pallets spread upon the floor.

Howard turned to the hotel owner. “Mr. Brown, what about the man you started for Fort Lapwai with news of the murders?”

Brown shook his head. “Lew Day? He isn't here anymore.”

Howard turned to the physician, asking, “No longer under your care, Dr. Morris?”

“By the time I arrived here from Portland, his leg wound was in a dreadful condition,” Morris declared. “I explained
to Lew that it was his leg or his life. He agreed to the amputation.” Then the physician sighed. “But I think he was so drained of all strength that he simply didn't survive for long after I took his leg.”

“He died?”

Brown said, “We buried Lew Day up in the Masonic cemetery.”

“Please, take me to the others,” Howard stated, gesturing with his left arm. “I want to see all the others who suffered these attacks and outrages.”

Joe Moore was barely able to speak, weakened so from a great loss of blood, critically wounded in the attack on the Norton wagon on the Camas Prairie.
^*

Both Herman Faxon and Theodore Swarts were still recovering from their terrible wounds suffered in the battle in White Bird Canyon. Jennie Norton lay in a small room, watched over and cared for by her son, Hill, and her younger sister, Lynn Bowers.

Next door lay the wounded Mrs. Chamberlin, who had watched the Nez Perce butcher her husband, murder one of her daughters, then suffered repeated assault by the members of the war party who had jumped the Norton party on the Camas Prairie road.

“She's suffered … unspeakable horror,” Dr. Morris explained in a whisper at Howard's ear as the general stood gazing at the woman. “Every outrage they could have committed, the Indians perpetrated on her. Took her husband, one of her children, too. Then they repeatedly shamed her.”

Howard's eyes drifted now to the youngster playing quietly on the floor with a tiny wooden horse, perfectly content near the end of the bed. “Whose child?”

“Mrs. Chamberlin's,” Sarah Brown declared. “Unable to speak. The savages cut its poor tongue off.”

“Never talk again?” Howard asked in a whisper as he started toward the side of the bed. There he bent slightly,
laid his hand on Mrs. Chamberlin's, and closed his eyes in silent prayer.

When he concluded, Howard straightened and stared down a moment into the toddler's big brown eyes before he turned away with the doctor.

Besides Williams George, H. C. “Hurdy Gurdy” Brown, and Albert Benson, Morris was also tending the wounds of little Maggie Manuel.

“She tells us Joseph killed her mother and baby brother,” L. P. Brown declared in a soft voice at the doorway to another room as Howard looked in on the child sleeping upon a pallet made of blankets folded upon the floor.

“How does she know it was Joseph?” Howard asked.

Brown shrugged. “Says she's seen him before.”

“But Maggie's grandfather and an Irish miner never found the bodies, General,” Morris asserted.

Howard asked, “She broke her arm?”

“The Irishman I mentioned—he set her arm before beginning their journey here,” Morris said. “A good job of it, too. Didn't have to rebreak it at all. Farther up that same arm, she had suffered a penetrating injury—an arrow the miner managed to remove. We're watching that closely for infection. Keeping the wound open and treated with sulphur. She's been brave through it all—knowing as she does that she's lost both her parents to the Indians.”

“Merciful God in Heaven,” Howard whispered as he turned away, unable to look upon the child anymore. Feeling as if he could never gaze upon another wounded youngster as long as he lived. Beneath his full beard, the general felt the blood drain from his skin, his face blanch.

War was for men. Not for these women and their babies. War was a profession to be practiced by men, practiced on other men. Not on these innocent victims of such barbaric cruelty.