Cries from the Earth (30 page)

But he couldn't even pick it up with the weakened left arm, much less the shattered right arm. Instead, he sprawled onto the floor and began pumping his legs, shoving himself across the floor toward the others when Helen started shrieking in horror. Twisting about was agony, but Mason looked back over his shoulder, finding a bare bronze arm at the broken window, one of the bastards swinging a burning bundle of smoky rags onto the cabin's puncheon floor, where it smoked and raised a horrible stench.

Harry crawled all the faster as the children set up a deafening caterwaul, what with the stifling smoke filling the room. Just as he reached the mattress where his sister Helen was waving him in, Mason turned back to look at the door where the sons of bitches were slamming themselves against the weight of those crates and sacks. At the window he spotted a warrior standing boldly in relief as he hurled a second bundle of coal-oil-soaked rags into the cabin.

Dragging himself across the last yard of bare floor, Mason slid beneath the bed where Helen held a corner of the tick up for him. Elizabeth Osborn had the last of her children scampering beneath the other bed as more of the warriors joined in to heave their shoulders against the door, gradually shoving the massive wooden crates and hundredweight sacks of beans back so they could leap inside after their quarry.

With no more gunfire coming from the house,
Mason brooded,
the bastards know we're good as soup. They won't have to burn us out now—

“Kill 'em, Harry!” Helen Walsh growled as she shoved her revolver into his bloody left hand. “Kill as many as you can!”

But he didn't have the strength.

Staring down at his lap where she'd laid the pistol, he couldn't get the hand to grip that weapon, much less raise it and fire at the warriors who were storming in around the barricade of boxes and bags, all of them shrieking in victory.

He felt so helpless: “If … I could only shoot—”

Suddenly the thin tick was yanked back and there stood three warriors staring down at him. Sick grins crossed the red bastards' faces as they shouted and pointed to the other bed. Then, as Mason watched, two warriors leaped onto the other mattress and began to jump up and down, laughing and screeching in evil joy until they flushed the children and Elizabeth out of hiding.

From out of nowhere one of the warriors kicked him. Harry cried out and tried to raise his left arm to protect himself as the son of a bitch kicked him again. Then another warrior seized Mason's right wrist, yanking on the shattered arm.

A hot, blinding pain shot straight up his arm, through his shoulder, and right into the back of his head as the warrior dragged Mason from behind the tick and into the middle of the floor while the white man screamed nonstop in utter agony.

Foot by foot, the Nez Perce warrior repeatedly lunged with Mason again and again across the floor. The others kicked at him, stomped on his head, and spit at him drunkenly.

It became more than he could stand, reckoning how they were going to drag out this torture for as long as they could … make it last for their own goddamned enjoyment.

The drunken bastards. Red niggers never could handle their goddamned whiskey.

Harry struggled to twist his whole body about even though he felt his right arm was about to tear itself loose at the elbow. Gasping with the blinding pain, he gazed through squinted eyes at his sister, at Elizabeth Osborn too—watching as both women were dragged up by the hair, one of the dirt-crusted hands suddenly ripping Helen's dress down to her bodice.

Mason groaned, clenching his eyes, not daring to witness any more, not wanting to live any longer.

His eyes snapped wide open, clear and steady of a sudden as he stared up at the red son of a bitch who was twisting his arm off. Harry growled, “Oh, go ahead and shoot me!”

Still clutching the wounded man's bloody right arm suspended between them, the warrior yanked a pistol from his belt, placed the muzzle between Harry Mason's open, angry eyes … and laughed as he blew the white man into oblivion.

*   *   *

Frank Fenn's companions helped him pick Jennie Norton up from the ground and carry her to the back of the wagon, where they settled her near the tailgate. Then they brought Lew Day and Joe Moore to join her in the wagon box before the rescue party began struggling to remove the harness from John Chamberlin's dead horses.

That's when the others decided one of their number, James Adkison, should race back to Grangeville and bring out more volunteers to escort the wounded into the settlement.

Eventually the rest muscled the wagon clear of the carcasses and backed a pair of their riding horses on either side of the singletree. Two of the rescuers, brothers John and Doug Adkison, chose to ride atop their horses they had just hitched to the wagon. Electing to bring up the rear, Fenn joined George Hashagen and Charles Rice when they stepped over to untie their horses from the nearby brush.

With the shrieks of immortal banshees riding out of the maw of hell, the peaceful dawn erupted in war cries and gunshots as a war party appeared at the top of a nearby hill.

Suddenly Fenn and the others were bellowing as they clumsily leaped into the saddles atop their frightened mounts. Already the Adkison brothers were kicking and yelling at their horses, bolting the wagon into motion. Doug Adkison cried for the wounded Day and Moore to stay low and hang on as the wagon careened away from the ditch at the side of the road.

“No!” Jennie Norton screamed, flailing helplessly between Moore and Day. “They didn't get Benjamin in the wagon yet!”

Joe Moore lunged out for her. “Mrs. Norton, get down!” He grabbed Jennie at the last moment, preventing her from pitching over the tailgate as the wagon weaved onto the road.

The Adkison brothers steered their team of saddle horses around the two dead animals.

A bullet whistled past their heads. “D-don't leave my Benjamin!” she whimpered, watching their backtrail as the wagon lumbered away from her husband's body lying by the side of the road, stretched out in the tall grass.

“We can't!” groaned Lew Day as Fenn, Rice, and Hashagen twisted about to fire random shots over their shoulders, each of them galloping right behind the wagon, courageously forming a rear guard. “They'll skin us all alive if we take time to fetch up his body.”

Joe Moore nodded, his grimy, powder-blackened face grim. “They can't do no more to hurt your mister now, Mrs. Norton.”

Jennie cursed herself for not pleading with them to put Benjamin in the wagon bed even before they hoisted her over the tailgate. Now she was abandoning him in death, something she had never once done in life.

Side to side the frightened, untrained saddle horses whipped the wagon along that muddy, rutted road, racing into the new day's light as Jennie watched the war party gaining, slowly gaining, on Fenn, Rice, and Hashagen. She saw how tight their faces were with fear—figuring they realized that within moments they might well be joining Benjamin Norton in death.

“It's … it's help comin'!”

At Joe Moore's exuberant cheer, Jennie turned about painfully, peering up the road as the wagon took a wild bounce. Galloping off the spur that led to the Crook place and onto the Mount Idaho Road were at least eight to ten riders.

John Adkison twisted about on his horse's back, his unkempt hair whipped by the wind as he shouted back to those in the wagon, “It's my brother Jimmy, by damn! He got through to fetch more men! Whoooeee!”

“The red-bellies are laying off!” Lew Day announced, then groaned loudly as the springless wagon bounced over a rock in the road, one wheel spinning free in the air until it came back down with a teeth-jarring jolt.

Twisting around again, Jennie peered beyond the three rescuers on horseback, finding that the war party was indeed slowly reining up.

“They spotted them others coming out for us!” Moore shouted lustily. Then the hired man reached out and gripped the back of her blood-crusted hand. “We're saved, Mrs. Norton. Don't you see? We're saved—”

“But not my Benjamin,” she sobbed, hiding her face in her hands as her head sank to her lap.

“They cain't hurt him no more, ma'am,” Moore cooed. “We'll go back and get him—that's a promise. But, till then, the bastards can't hurt your husband no more.”

Chapter 23

June 15, 1877

Helen Walsh shrieked as she had never screamed before the instant her brother's head snapped violently and the back of his skull blew off in a red splatter.

In the next moment, the Indians surrounding her were howling as they clawed at her clothing. Cowering in a corner, the children were screeching even louder as Elizabeth was yanked to her feet by her hair. In a matter of heartbeats the warriors stripped both women naked to their stockings and boots, knocking Helen down and throwing Elizabeth Osborn back onto the mattresses as their young children scampered aside like a brood of chicks a fox had flushed from the henhouse.

Helen bit down on her tongue as a warrior backhanded her little Edward when he tried to reach his mother. But she angrily slapped one of the Nez Perce and attempted to lunge toward her whimpering son as his older sister, Masi, pulled Edward back from the growling warriors. The girl swept her brother into her arms, then turned protectively toward the corner.

Almost as if young Masi instinctively realized what these red heathens were going to do to their mother.

Helen's head was smacked to the side with the brutal blow delivered by the warrior she had just slapped. She staggered, collapsing on her hands and one knee, seeing a warrior already climbing on top of Elizabeth, two more of them holding her arms and legs as she thrashed against the attack.

Then Helen realized she was being stretched out by some hands too, smelling their rancid grease, the firesmoke and dirt as their faces and arms and bodies loomed over her. The others pulled back slightly the moment they got her pinned on the mattress. She looked up through her puffy, swollen eyes in time to watch the Indian pull his breechclout aside just before he flung himself upon her.

She was sure he would rip her apart—
but that'll be all right,
she thought.
At least I'll be dead.

One after another the warriors took their turns at both women. Eventually, somewhere in the middle of it all, Helen lapsed into sweet, blessed unconsciousness …

Suddenly she came to, having no idea how long she had been out. Helen did her best to cover her nakedness with her arms in front of the savages as a half-dozen or more of them backed away from the mattress together, settling their clothing and laughing. That is, all but one of the heathens.

As the children continued to wail, this lone savage stood there between the two naked women and surprised them both by speaking a little English. “You go now.”

“You're … you're setting us free?” Helen asked, trembling like a leaf with shame and fear. “Letting us go?”

“You go Lewiston. You go Slate Creek. You go where you like. Go now.”

Then the warriors were gone, hurrying out the door, onto their ponies. Their hoofbeats faded in the last of that day's sunlight.

Masi came over with a thin blanket for her mother, then handed another to Elizabeth, whose dress still hung from her shoulders although it had been ripped completely down the middle.

“I … I wanna change my dress before we go,” Mrs. Osborn said with a hollow voice.

Helen wanted to give this friend a last shred of dignity, so turned away slightly when she asked, “Where do you think we should go?”

“Anywhere,” Elizabeth said, clutching the blanket around the tattered billows of her clothing.

“I figure to head out for Slate Creek,” Helen suggested, summoning up the last vestiges of her courage. “It's getting late, but we might just make it there before it gets too dark to go on.”

“Find me a dress,” Mrs. Osborn said quietly as she started to hobble away, her legs scratched and bloodied beneath the bottom of the blanket. “A bl-black dress for mourning my William.”

Helen realized she didn't have anything of the kind for herself, then thought of Edward. In a couple more days her husband would be getting back to this house from his trip and he'd find the ruin of it all, discover the three bodies, and likely go crazy wondering where she and their children had gone. Wondering if the heathens had stolen his wife and their young'uns.

Yet Helen Walsh knew she couldn't stay here. Not with the bodies of the three men lying right there in pools of blood. Not after … what the warriors had done to both women there in front of the children.

When they both had dressed, Helen and Elizabeth picked up those three burlap sacks with the bread, cake, and cold meat still inside and started the youngsters upriver. The sun was going down, and the air was growing cool. Helen brooded on how good a nice, hot bath would feel.

Then she realized that no matter how hard she might scrub, likely she would never feel clean again.

Fort Lapwai

June 15, 1877

Dear Mamma,

Well, our Indian troubles, that we thought all over, have begun again, and this time the officers here seem to think it means business. General Howard is here again, and an Indian inspector from Washington is at the Agency. The thirty days that was given the Indians to come onto the Reservation expires today, and early this morning a party was started from the post to the upper part of the Reservation to see if they were keeping their promises. The party came back an hour ago, riding like mad people, and brought with them two friendly Indians that they met on the mountains and who were bound for the post and the Agency. The Indians had been riding all night and said other Indians, not friendly, were after them. These Indians bring word that the Indians have murdered four settlers up by the mountains, and that they are holding war dances, and that White Bird is riding round his tent on horseback and making circles on the ground, which is his way of declaring that they have taken up the hatchet, etc.