Cries from the Earth (56 page)

“Indeed they are!” And he licked his dry lips, wishing for a drink of water.

Perry glanced behind them a moment, then said, “Might as well await them here. Better terrain than the ground ahead of us.”

“We'll make our stand here?” Parnell asked, his deep voice rising an octave. Feeling as if he had just escaped the frying pan only to fall right into the fire.

“Exactly.” Then Perry pointed with a sweeping gesture. “Organize what men we have. Divide them by companies and put your men out as skirmishers.”

Gulping with the realization of the danger his squad would face once more, Parnell asked, “You will remain in support of us with F Company?”

“I will,” Perry promised. “No more than one hundred yards to your rear so I can come up as a reserve when things get hot.”

“One—one hundred yards,” Parnell repeated grimly, wanting so to express his misgivings. “Y-yes, sir.”

In the end, the veteran did as he was ordered, deploying his men across an unusually broad front, explaining best he could to his dozen soldiers why he was spreading them so far apart: hoping to prevent the Nez Perce from flanking them on either end of their critically thin line again that day.

“The red bastards won't do it to us again, my boys!” he roared at them. “Hold the flanks. If you do anything else this day to save your hides … just don't fold on those bloody flanks!”

Then Parnell took his station at the center of that line, watching the Nez Perce approach across the prairie, noisy with the clatter of their hoofbeats, their shouts and war cries, their boastful cheers now that they had their outnumbered prey in the open. He knew the warriors had to be all the more arrogant and bursting with confidence after what bloody work they had accomplished in the creek bottom.

“Keep them off the ends of our line! Don't let them roll up our flanks!” he cautioned his men, shouting commands left, then right. “Aim low and hold your fire until I give the order!”

When the warriors were a hundred yards from the soldier line, they kicked their ponies into a hard gallop and fired their first shots from those captured soldier carbines.

“Fire by volley on my command!” Parnell roared. “Hold … hold … NOW!”

That first concerted explosion ripped through the onrushing warriors, knocking at least a half-dozen from their ponies. Horses reared and wheeled, pitching their riders into the air. Two of the animals hurtled to the ground, their legs thrashing.

“That's good!” Parnell cried, his voice crackling with joy. “Shoot low! Shoot low for their goddamned horses!”

“Lookit 'em, Lieutenant!” a man shouted on the right.

And then another soldier called out, “They're running away!”

“By damned, you turned 'em, boyos!” Parnell bellowed.

He waited a few more heartbeats to be sure that the warriors were indeed picking up their wounded and retreating out of rifle range before he gave the crucial order.

“A wright, you ugly buggers! Hear me to the right? Hear me on the left? Advance to the rear: slow, SLOW this time, goddammit! Rejoin in fours! In fours on the right! Let's do it pretty as can be, you bloody horse soldiers!”

They had started toward Perry, with Parnell and a couple of his old files keeping watch over their soldiers at the rear of the retreat, when the lieutenant saw the Nez Perce had regrouped and were advancing again.

“Here they come!” he shouted. “Right flank, by fours! Deploy on skirmish line! Play out! Play out!”

It was a pretty thing, he thought as those six men paraded out of that retreat column like they were a whole goddammed company on their own, prancing smartly across some grassy parade in dress uniform, all starched and puckered, sitting ramrod straight in front of high-ranking officers and ladies fair.

“Left flank! Spread out—spread out and make it wide!” he commanded. “Shoot low again, you buggers. What bullets you got left, you better kill one of those bastards with every cartridge!”

His twelve got spread out on both sides of him just as the full party of the Nez Perce came into view, arrayed in a wide formation.

“Hold your fire, boys. Just like we done before: hold your fire till my order!”

The enemy came on, riding as one, screaming and yelling—but not near as many as there had been in that last rush.

“Hold …
hold
 … HOLD,” he reminded his men, his own heart climbing to his throat so that he wondered if he was going to get that crucial word out when the moment arrived—

“FIRE!”

This time four horses reared and flung their riders to the ground. He saw that two more of their war ponies lay thrashing on the ground, two more that would never again carry a bloody goddamned warrior against them!

But this time the Nez Perce didn't simply drop back to regroup for another assault. Those who hadn't been knocked off their ponies immediately peeled away for Parnell's left flank in a desperate attempt to drive his skirmish line, his dozen brave men, toward the confines of Rocky Canyon, less than a mile away across the prairie.

“They wanna stampede your horses, boyos!” he warned them—knowing that if the Nez Perce got his men running in retreat, they wouldn't stop, and Perry's outfit couldn't help them. No—if these survivors of that fight down in the belly of the White Bird didn't hold here, then they would be running all the way to that narrow cleft in the Camas Prairie where these soldiers would be slaughtered like fish in a rain barrel.

“Hold that left flank and don't let 'em roll you up!”

These were good men, surely the steadiest of the lot. Even more grit to them than those twelve hanging with Perry. Time and again that Sunday morning, Parnell's dozen held the end of their line against overwhelming odds. Against a fifth charge they threw back their attackers. Then Parnell gave the command for an orderly retreat once more.

“Load your carbines and move out at a walk!” he bellowed, knowing they really needed no reminding by now.

Good soldiers, these. Covering the rear, and closing the file for lesser men. Goddamn, but he was proud to lead them!

Minutes later Parnell's men entered a marshy area at the edge of the prairie where the grass and reeds grew as tall as a man's shoulders—

Lord, if he didn't spy a head bobbing along through the waving stalks! Some lone soldier caught out there between his right flank and the Nez Perce horsemen who were dogging his squad's every step, waiting for an opportunity to pick off any stragglers, constantly harassing, forcing Parnell to turn around repeatedly and prepare to fire by volley before the warriors would immediately back off.

“Corporal!” he shouted to the closest soldier. “Take three men and move to the right! There's some lone bugger about to be cut off!”

The corporal saluted and dragged away three of his men, loping to the rear and the right, slogging their way over the soggy ground, piercing the tall grass and reeds, shouting every step of the way for the lone soldier to stop.

“Halt!” Parnell ordered the moment he spotted the Nez Perce preparing to make a charge on that solitary soldier and his rescue party. “Right oblique! By fours—and prepare to fire on my command!”

They came around smartly. All eight of them … only eight. But the way they brought up those carbines and held them at the ready … the Nez Perce weren't about to trifle with this bunch of hardcases any more that morning.

The rescue party lunged back out of the soggy marsh, emerging from the waving reeds with that soldier clutching the corporal's stirrup. Soaked to his armpits, caked with mud to his groin, the man lumbered to a halt at Parnell's knee. He saluted the lieutenant breathlessly.

“Hartman?” Parnell asked.

“Yessir. Private Aman Hartman, Lieutenant.”

“Welcome back to H Company, son.”

“N-never thort I'd get outta that swamp alive,” the private admitted. “They was coming for me p-pretty hard, sir.”

“Weren't you with Sergeant McCarthy at the rocks?”

“Sure was, sir. But I lost my horse below and everybody run off on me,” Hartman gasped, still somewhat breathless. “Me an' 'nother was the only ones got out with the sarge. After I lost my mount, I come out on my own, sir.”

“No others with you?”

Hartman shook his head. “No, sir. Dunno what happened to the sergeant. I figger he didn't make it out, since I never see'd him with them others what left me behind. When I lost my horse, the whole bunch of 'em got far ahead of me. But I kept a'coming.”

“By damn if you didn't, Private.”

“I been hearing your guns for some time,” Hartman declared. “I was sore afraid—I stayed away from the gunfire till I see'd you soldiers. Then I come running through the bog. But them Injuns see'd me too.”

“Stick with our line, Private,” Parnell ordered. “We're on our way out of here.”

“You can ride behind me,” one of the corporal's rescue party offered, helping Hartman up behind him as Parnell started the bunch moving once more.

“Left by fours! In a walk: keep it slow!”

He wondered what time it was and gazed at the gloomy, cloudy sky. It felt as if they had been retreating for a week, crawling to the rear a hundred yards or so, then halting to form on a skirmish line. Sometimes they had to fire. But most times the Nez Perce stayed back once his men merely halted and prepared to unleash another volley.

They ground through the last of that retreat a quarter-mile by a quarter-mile, following the rear of Perry's squad across the prairie. It seemed the hours dragged by endlessly as he whipped his exhausted horse from flank to flank along their route of march, making sure his outriders kept a sharp eye peeled for any ambush the warriors might attempt.

Of a sudden, he noticed that for no apparent reason Perry's men had stopped ahead in full view, milling and jumping about.

Apprehension immediately flooded through him with a cold pain. Parnell shouted to his men, ordering them to pick up the pace, waving both sides of his skirmish line forward on the double so the flanks would not be left behind his center. Fear gripped his throat as if it were a muscular hand, scared that the Nez Perce had somehow swept around on one flank or another and gotten ahead of Perry's detachment to spring a trap on the colonel.

But when Parnell turned in the saddle, he found the warriors still behind them, coming on with deliberate speed. But … perhaps there was another jaw to the trap, these who remained behind and those who had closed the ambush in their front—

Then he heard cheering and laughter, realizing some of Perry's outfit were calling out to his soldiers as Parnell's skirmish line approached. Of a sudden, he saw that there among the blue-clad soldiers were more than twenty civilians.

“They're from Mount Idaho!” Perry was gushing when he reined his horse back to greet Parnell.

The lieutenant's heart sang as he twisted around, peering at their backtrail, finding that their pursuers were halting, turning away, disappearing at long last.

Giving up the chase after more than three hours. It was shortly before 9:00
A.M.
, and these soldiers had been gone from the settlements no more than twelve hours.

By now his men were dropping from their saddles, hopping around together like old school chums, pounding one another on the back and shouting fervent, heartfelt greetings to these civilian strangers not one of them knew. But they were friends this day!

By damn—every last one of these citizens come riding out from Mount Idaho were all good friends this terrifying, bloody day!

*   *   *

What a day it had been!

Yellow Wolf rejoiced with the others as they rode over the battlefield, yelping like coyote pups, searching for any of the enemy wounded who could not make it out of the creek bottom, looking for any firearms the Shadows had abandoned in their precipitous flight.

But they did not scalp the
sua-pies,
did not mutilate or strip the clothing from these soldiers. Those might be the custom of other tribes over east in buffalo country. But such was not a practice of the
Nee-Me-Poo.

By late morning, the captured weapons had been brought to the village: something on the order of sixty-three carbines and perhaps half that many pistols. Along with the cartridge belts they had torn off the dead soldiers—these warriors were ready if the army should want any more fighting!

Considering how many soldiers had marched against them that morning, Yellow Wolf was amazed there were not more casualties among his people. Bow and Arrow Case had been wounded in the side during the early stages of the soldier retreat. Land Above had received a painful bullet wound in the stomach, but he was nonetheless expected to live. And all that had happened to Four Blankets was a minor cut on his wrist when he fell from his horse among some rocks as they pursued the fleeing soldiers. The fourth man
1
suffered only a broken bone from a bullet that pierced his leg.

Not one
Nee-Me-Poo
warrior had been killed!

Now the chiefs had the fate of three prisoners to deliberate. Robinson Minthon and Joe Albert—whose real name was
Elaskolatat
—were both agency Indians who had taken Christian names. The third,
Yuwishakaikt,
was a member of old Lawyer's Treaty band too, but he had never been baptized with water and given a white man name. It was he who explained to their captors that the three had come along with the soldiers solely to assure that the women and children were not harmed in the attack.

Frightened for his life,
Yuwishakaikt
did his best to convince the angry Non-Treaty warriors that he had been left back with the soldier horse-holders rather than engaging in the battle himself. And when the Shadows began their retreat, he had hurried along with them until his pony gave out and he was forced to continue on foot. That's when the warriors caught up to him.