Cries from the Earth (31 page)

General Howard sent at once for four companies more to move up here and has sent off for hard bread and all such things that troops on a scout need. Things look exciting.

The story of the Indians is corroborated by a letter sent to the General from some settler up in the region asking for help and stating that the Indians were making trouble already and saying, “For God's sake, send plenty of troops. Don't handle them with gloves on.” I have heard officers discussing it, and the general impression is that if the Indians have begun, the troops are in for a summer campaign. General Howard said, “I wish the Doctor was here, but I will dispatch at once for Dr. Alexander, who is at Wallula, and he can join us at once.” My first thought was that I was glad John wasn't here, but I know he would feel that his place was with the troops from the post he belongs to. If there is trouble, he will have to go anyway, as soon as he gets back. So I expect that all my delight in getting him back will be spoiled by knowing he will have to leave me again at once. We here will feel perfectly safe. The post will not be left without a good garrison. Two companies of infantry, at least, will be left here. But how anxious we will be about the little party out after the Indians. It is all horrible!

Mrs. Boyle just ran down the back way for a minute to discuss the matter for a little. She says it makes her feel sick. It is dreadful to think what might happen, but I can't think these Indians, those we have seen so often, are going to fight the troops. General Howard, the inspector, the Agent, and Colonel Perry and the aides are all just now counciling together as to the country and best plan of action. I wish John was home, and I wish the Indians were at the bottom of the Red Sea. I don't feel as if any other matter deserved consideration this morning.

… I do wish Doctor would come home. I feel as if the bottom was knocked out of everything.

Emily looked down and saw how her pen was trembling so. It was almost as if she were holding her breath and she couldn't take another until he got back to her. How she wished he was there to put his arms around her.

*   *   *

Oliver Otis Howard stirred from his chair at the sudden hubbub out on the parade and stepped from Captain Perry's quarters onto the porch and into the early-afternoon light to watch the five riders hurriedly dismount from their lathered ponies in front of the quartermaster's office at the south end of the post grounds.

They appeared to be those same two soldiers and that half-breed interpreter—the three men Perry had dispatched early that morning to make the long journey to Mount Idaho in hopes of determining why the settlers in that area were so alarmed at the Non-Treaty bands presently on their way in to the Lapwai Reservation.

But with them were two more riders: Indians.

Howard stepped off the porch and started across that end of the parade for those five riders who stopped among a gaggle of soldiers and officers in front of the commissary. He realized he was already distressed that the three had returned after no more than a matter of hours—on lathered, done-in army mounts.

“Get them inside, Colonel!” Howard barked at Perry. “This is not meant for general gossip!”

The curious soldiers and anxious officers turned, finding the general approaching. They self-consciously began to back away from the five new arrivals. Perry quickly ushered Corporal Lytte and Private Schoor, along with Rabusco and those two Nez Perce, into the office and closed the door as soon as Howard shoved his way past the muttering crowd beginning to grow outside.

Otis slammed the door behind him. “What's going on, Colonel?”

Perry wagged his head, saying, “Just what we were trying to find out, General. I've sent for Whitman to help Joe translate.” The post commander immediately whirled on Rabusco. “Tell it to me again: what did these two say to you that made you turn around?”

“Them two, Nat Webb and Putonahloo, not silly young men,” Rabusco answered gravely. “Them two say they're killing white men.”

“Who's killing white men?” Howard demanded, a cold knot tightening in his belly. Just when everything had seemed to be in place for making a success of his Nez Perce policy, enough of a triumph to wash away the stain of that debacle over the Freedmen's Bureau … now some of the young bucks in the throes of their Dreamer religion had gone off and pulled the rug out from under him.

“Non-Treaty,” Corporal Joseph Lytte explained.

“White Bird's warriors,” Rabusco clarified.

“When? And how did this happen?” Howard demanded.

He could clearly see how agitated the two Nez Perce became as they began to repeat their story for the interpreter. Rabusco had to stop them constantly, waving his hands for quiet that would allow him to make some sort of translation here and there throughout their tidal wave of information. The whole lurid tale of it came out in a hodgepodge of warrior names, places, and incidents. Disjointed as it was, the story nonetheless spelled out that at least two, perhaps as many as four, warriors had taken off from the village gathering at the head of Rocky Canyon to exact some sort of revenge against a white man who had killed the father of one of those avenging warriors.

By the time that Perrin Whitman and agent John Monteith arrived in a sweat from their sprint across the parade to confirm Rabusco's terrifying translation, Howard was working hard at convincing himself this would prove to be only an isolated incident.

The general sighed and told them, “I have heard nothing that convinces me this is anything more than one young buck getting in a last, bloody lick against this fellow Ott who was absolved of murdering the man's father.”

“But, General,” Whitman began, “it wasn't Ott the warriors ended up killing. They murdered another man—Devine. A Salmon River settler who also harbored no kindness for the Nez Perce.”

“This isn't good,” Perry intoned, wagging his head.

“We'll surely keep an eye on things,” Howard observed, intent on not letting the somber mood get out of hand. “The bands are on their way in, just as planned.”

“But, General—this doesn't bode well for getting the Non-Treaties onto the reservation,” Perry argued. “I suggest that we send some emissaries from the agency right to their camp on Camas Prairie, see if they can settle things down and convince the chiefs to get their people to Lapwai before any more incidents stir up the white settlers to retaliate against the Nez Perce.”

“Yes,” Howard ruminated, combing fingers through his graying beard. “If the settlers start taking revenge for that murder, then the Non-Treaty bands will take their revenge … and we'll soon have a general war on our hands.”

Perry turned to Whitman. “Perrin, I want you and Agent Monteith to convince Chief Jonah to go talk to the Non-Treaty chiefs—convince them to get on their way here and do all they can to quiet things down right away.”

“I'll send Jonah along with another,” Monteith suggested. “A good man for this job would be James Reuben.”

“The one who helped translate when Joseph and the chiefs were here?” Howard asked.

Turning to the general, Monteith said, “He's Joseph's nephew. A treaty Indian, like Joseph's father-in-law.”

“Very good,” Howard replied hopefully. “I'm sure these two emissaries of yours will find that the murders are the handiwork of a few rebellious young bucks who have merely stepped out from the control of their chiefs.”

Chapter 24

June 15, 1877

After trudging a few miles up the Salmon from her brother's place while the shadows lengthened, Helen Walsh led the others out of the timber, hurrying them across the open ground and in the back door of the Titman place. The warriors had been here, breaking everything they did not take with them as they scrounged about for weapons and whiskey.

Her gut flamed once more with the nightmarish memory of their repeated assaults, smelling again the stench of their stale, whiskey-sodden breath, feeling them rip her apart inside as each one in turn grunted over her. Just that remembrance made Helen start to retch, but she caught herself and swallowed down what little bile there was left in her stomach.

Watching her wipe her mouth, Elizabeth Osborn and the children stood quietly in the utter silence of the place.

Turning to them all as she dropped the two sacks she was carrying, Helen said, “I want all of you to look around for anything to eat. Anything. Bring it here so you can share it with everyone else. And, Masi—I want you and Annie to go out to the barn and see what you can find out there to eat.”

As the children scattered to search under every overturned table and tick, to search in every drawer and on every shelf still nailed to a wall, Helen glanced at Elizabeth and wondered if her friend was feeling the sort of numbing shame she herself was suffering.

Perhaps that was why Elizabeth hadn't spoken to her much after they lit out from the Mason place, hadn't said a thing at all about what the warriors had done to the two of them.

It wasn't long before her daughter Masi and Elizabeth's girl, Annie, were back from the barn. Masi proudly carried a large pail she set at her mother's feet.

“You found that? Wonderful,” Helen enthused as she hugged both of the girls. “Milk is just the thing to have with our supper.”

After calling the rest of the children over and having them sit in a small circle at the middle of the floor in the ransacked front room, Helen and Elizabeth distributed some of that food the three men had stuffed inside those mill sacks. They located two tin cups, dipping them into what little milk the Titmans had urged from their cows before they up and abandoned the place. But there was enough that the children could wash down their bread, the butter cake, and a little cold meat for each of them.

“Ain'cha gonna eat, Mamma?” Masi asked innocently, licking at the filmy mustache across her upper lip.

“I'm not hungry, children,” Helen lied, sensing the pangs stab through her like a twisting butcher knife she wished the savages had used on her instead of their … their … but she squeezed away that thought. Although she hadn't eaten for more than twenty-four hours, Helen Walsh had no appetite and couldn't bear the thought of trying to swallow any food. She knew it would likely come right back up. Better that the children were fed—

Suddenly a face appeared at the front window, like an odd, out-of-place portrait surrounded by the broken panes of glass the warriors had shattered. Two of the children shrieked. Helen and Elizabeth each grabbed for a child, at the same time searching for some object lying on the floor they could use as a club. Then Helen recognized the face.

“Mr.… Mr. Shoemaker,” she gasped with no small relief, her heart pounding. “You startled us.”

“I been comin' on your backtrail,” he admitted as he stepped into the open doorway from the narrow porch, his soppy boots still soggy on the timbers, his clothes damp and clinging to his skin. “After I got them calves out on their pasture, figgered I'd just as well light out to see you got in to Slate Creek awright, ma'am.”

Helen watched his weepy eyes dart over the children as if he was weighing what he could say. With his next words, Shoemaker's voice dropped into a husky whisper. “By the time I was coming in from the pasture, I see'd the Injun ponies out front of the house, ma'am. When the shooting started I took off back of the barn. Climbed down into the crick under the brush and stayed up to my neck in the water, hoping like hell them bastards didn't come find me. Stayed there a long time after it got quiet in the house. Later on, I come up to the window and found wasn't nobody left in the place. So I reckoned I'd come after you and the children.”

“We're glad you're with us now,” Helen admitted, but doubted that the old man could offer them any protection if the warriors decided to return for more of their abuse or to simply kill them all.

“I figger to catch my breath here, Mrs. Walsh,” Shoemaker explained as he sat and started to untie one of his soggy broghams. “Dry my stockings a bit, then I'll push on down to Slate Creek.”

Thankful for his company, she said, “We'll be ready to go when you are, Mr. Shoemaker.”

“Oh, no, ma'am,” the old fellow retorted quickly as he dragged the first shoe off, and the stocking with it. “I don't think you and the young'uns should go on with me.”

Elizabeth Osborn got to her feet to stand beside Helen. She asked, “You're talking about going alone, yourself?”

“I think it's best I leave you and the children here,” he explained as he wrung out that first stocking on the bare floor.

“You wouldn't leave us here alone, Mr. Shoemaker!” cried young Annie Osborn as she leaped to her feet and rushed over to clamp her arms around the old man's neck.

Helen watched as the hardened, resolute look on Shoemaker's face suddenly softened.

He gently wrapped his arms around the child and brought her into his lap, his weary, bloodshot eyes misting. “Y-you wanna go with me, Annie?”

“Take me when you go, please,” she begged.

Peering up at Elizabeth, Shoemaker said, “If your mamma says you can come with me.”

Elizabeth glanced uncertainly at Helen for a moment, then said to the old man, “Yes. You can go, Annie. But you do what Mr. Shoemaker says. When he tells you to hush, you be quiet as a field mouse.”

Annie got to her feet and lunged against her mother. “I know, Mamma. I won't say a thing because the Injuns gonna hear me. I won't make no trouble for Mr. Shoemaker.”

He pulled off his second sock and was wringing it as he said, “We'll go through to Slate Creek by way of the timber. Get some help, then c'mon back to fetch the rest of you.”

Helen nodded. “We'll find a place to hide till you do.”

After knotting his broghams once more, Shoemaker stood and gazed at the two women. “I'll be back for the rest of you. Don't neither of you ladies worry ‘bout that.”