Cries from the Earth (61 page)

His throat was hoarse with disuse when he called out to them, lunging their way in those ungainly rubber boots, bursting from the timber as the two horsemen reined up in the yard. Instantly they both pointed their weapons at him. McCarthy started to laugh. Crazy, gut-busting, tear-rolling laughter.

“I ain't no god-blasted Injun!” he roared at them, sensing the relief wash over him like a warm flood as he lumbered toward the house where the two had stopped.

“By Christ!” one of the pair exclaimed. “It is a soldier.”

“Y-you seen any more soldiers?” McCarthy asked as he lunged to a halt and squinted up at the two astonished horsemen.

Nodding, the second man said, “Yep—them what made it out of the fight.”

Then the first man explained, “They're hunkered down over at Grangeville.”

“C-can you get me there?” McCarthy begged, dragging the back of his muddy hand across his mouth.

“Sure, we can get you there,” the second man declared. “Doubt the Injuns left a horse here, though—so you're gonna have to ride double with us.”

“C'mon,” the first civilian instructed, offering his hand and an empty stirrup. “You start the ride up here with me.”

McCarthy stepped around the rear of the settler's big horse, reaching the back of the saddle, where he peered at the saddle pocket the instant the thought struck him just behind his belt buckle. “B-by the way, mister … you got any rations in there? Anything to eat?”

Then the pair dug out a half-loaf of bread and a handful of dried bacon, watching in amazement how the sergeant wolfed it all down greedily in less time than it took to drag those vittles out of their saddlebags.

“You ain't got no more, do you?” he begged, swiping the back of his hand across the lower half of his hairy face.

The first man shrugged. “You just ate all we brung out for the whole damned day, soldier.”

McCarthy grinned lopsidedly and held up his hand, jabbing his foot into the offered stirrup. “All right then. If you ain't got no more food … I s'pose it's 'bout time to take me on in to them soldiers at Grangeville.”

*   *   *

This was their country.

From birth the
Nee-Me-Poo
knew all the rivers and streams, knew where to ford at what seasons. So it was that the leaders chose to cross to the south side of the Salmon at Horseshoe Bend, where the swollen waters slowed as the river curved around a jutting thumb of land. It was here to the south of White Bird Creek they migrated the day after driving off the army. Then, just after sunrise the next morning, the women began to gather their children, the old ones, and all their possessions on the north bank.

Since the Non-Treaty bands were able to locate only one of the white man's canoes, the women and some of the older men had constructed rafts and bullboats for their perilous journey across the river. For much of the previous day they were busy chopping sturdy lengths of green willow, while others laid out their buffalo hides, hair side up, on the grassy bank. They crisscrossed the limber poles over the hides, then drew poles and hide up together to form a bowl-shaped vessel. Two more willow saplings were then lashed completely around the outside of the bullboat to form the lip of the bowl that would hold all the inside supports in place.

By the time the sun was making its appearance over the heights to the east, the first of these floating bowls were being led into the current by a few of the young men riding the strongest of the war ponies. In addition, two strong swimmers accompanied each boat for its dangerous journey, then were ferried back to the north shore by those on horseback. Inside the vessels the women had placed their lodge covers, kitchen kettles, and the rest of their family possessions. Atop some of the heaping piles of baggage rode the small children in their woven basket hats, even the very old who were too weak to sit astride the horses that would be driven into the river only when everyone else had completed the crossing.

Man, woman, and child went about their duties, knowing what was now at stake. The chiefs had not elected to escape far to the west for the Imnaha. Nor had they decided to go to the land of Joseph's Wallowa band. Instead, the chiefs merely wanted to put the river between them and the soldiers they knew would come again, making another try at driving the
Nee-Me-Poo
onto the reservation where no free man should be forced to live.

It was decided that when the soldiers came—and everyone knew they would—the bands would simply re-cross the Salmon and make for the Clearwater to the northeast. So all their efforts that morning would serve only as a delaying tactic by these People of the Coyote. From the youngest who could understand to those few ancient ones so frail they had to be carried in another's arms and laid in the bullboats, every person realized that back there at the
Lahmotta
camp on White Bird Creek their lives had irrevocably changed for all time to come.

No more would they be left in peace to wander their long-held homelands in that ages-old circle of the seasons. By the same token, they would not be forced to live as paupers and farmers on the reservation with the Treaty bands. The
Nee-Me-Poo
were going to have to forge a new life for themselves now—if not in their homeland … then they would seek out a new country.

“Teeweawea,”
Ollokot called out to that trusted older warrior when the last bullboat was on its way across the roiling surface of the Salmon.

Yellow Wolf joined the many warriors, fighting men both young and old, all of them moving over to listen in on the conversation.

Laying his hand upon
Teeweawea
's shoulder, Ollokot told that veteran of the buffalo country, “I want you to pick from among our men to go with you: choose three-times-ten.”

“What do you wish us to do? Take the horses and cattle across the river?”

“No,” Ollokot replied. “The rest of us will do that and protect the camp. Instead, I want you and your party to do something very crucial for our survival—you must stay back and watch for soldiers.”

The veteran warrior nodded with a grin. “We'll ride back to
Tepahlewam
and keep watch for soldiers coming across the Camas Prairie in pursuit of our village.”

“Send a runner with any news,” Ollokot suggested. “And we will let your courier know where our camp is moving.”

Teeweawea
turned, regarding the crowd of eager warriors elbowing one another there in the first ranks—mostly young men who no longer lived with their families in lodges, men who slept beneath blanket bowers with other young fighters. Yellow Wolf stared intently at
Teeweawea,
praying the older man would sense the intensity of his gaze, desperately willing the veteran to choose him for this vital mission.

Slowly, one by one, the first ten were chosen from those close around Yellow Wolf. Then
Teeweawea
turned away slightly as he stepped on around the circle, continuing to choose those who would ride with him on this scout. When the veteran passed right by Yellow Wolf, the young warrior's heart sank to the ground and turned hollow with growing despair. The leader went on to choose three more from the crowd of expectant men.

Then
Teeweawea
surprised them all by suddenly wheeling around, a big smile across his face. The instant his eyes landed on the young man, the veteran announced, “Yellow Wolf—you will ride with us too!”

His heart soared! His blood surged, pounding loudly in his ears! How he wanted to shriek with joy, now that he had truly been accepted as a warrior of his people!

Before long the thirty followed their leader away from the Salmon. Like Yellow Wolf, most every one of these scouts gazed back over his shoulder at those families and friends who were already across the river, their village slowly moving west into the heights, marching away from the army. As he watched, those men left behind were beginning to drive their great herds
1
into the water.

How it made Yellow Wolf's breast swell, knowing that he was one of the few who now stood between the
Nee-Me-Poo,
a free people … and those soldiers who would be coming to snuff out the last vestiges of their liberty.

These men loping north across the White Bird battleground, climbing into the canyon, and making for the Camas Prairie were prepared to lay down their lives when the Shadows came to avenge their disastrous defeat on this bloody ground. For it would never be a question of
if
the soldiers would come.

Only a matter of when.

*   *   *

Last evening when Patrick Brice was first surrounded and welcomed by those citizens who had already streamed to the safety of Mount Idaho, he was surprised to find that George Popham wasn't there among the crowd who clamored to hear his story.

Throughout that night and into the next day, the Irish miner brooded on what was to become of all this, just what was to happen now to the mines and to the farms, what was to become of these tiny settlements under seige now that the Indians had gone wild and back to the blanket. And he feared most for the old man.

But by the next afternoon Popham finally emerged from the timber at the edge of the settlement and hailed the citizens who stood watch at the Mount Idaho barricades.

“I gave you up for dead, old man!” Brice hollered above the pandemonium that erupted now, just as it had each time someone who had been assumed a casualty walked in big as life.

“Never thought I'd see you alive neither!” Popham cheered as they hammered each other on the back, both men reveling in their desperate relief and this joyous reunion.

“I brought Maggie in yestiddy,” Patrick confided.

The old man's eyes grew moist; then he asked, “Jennet and the baby—they was already here when you come in?”

Brice's heart went cold behind his breastbone. “Maggie … why, she told me the Injuns kill't her mamma and li'l brother.”

“Naw,” Popham replied gruffly, sawing his head back and forth the way a man would who refused to believe some shocking news just told him. “They cain't be dead. I know for my own self she got out alive—”

“Maggie said she saw 'em both,” Brice explained gently as he looped an arm over the grieving father's shoulder and led him away from the crowd celebrating Popham's arrival. “Saw 'em after—”

“Maggie saw 'em … dead?”

Brice nodded, sensing the muscles tense across the old man's shoulders. “Maggie hid outside when the Injuns come back around, but told me she watched Joseph hisself kill her mamma. Later on when the Injuns was gone, Maggie went back in the house, to where the bastards left the bodies … where she watched 'em kill your daughter and grandson. But Maggie said she didn't find the … didn't find neither of your kin.”

Popham dragged a grimy hand across the lower half of his face, rustling the heavy stubble of a graying beard, snorting back the dribble at the end of his nose. “Then I gotta figger there's still a chance Jennet's alive, the baby too.”

“George,” Patrick cautioned, “maybe it ain't such a good notion to count on that—”

Fiercely grabbing Brice's shirt, Popham growled, “Maggie said herself she didn't see no sign of 'em when she went back inside. You told me that. So their bodies wasn't in the house when the red bastards burned it to the ground.”

“B-burned the house?”

“Yeah. The Nez Perce torched it, every last stick of lumber.”

Bewildered, Brice declared, “B-but the house was still standing when I left with Maggie.”

“Must've happened after you took off with her,” Popham admitted. “I stayed till there was nothing left but cinders and smoke. When you and me got separated, I vowed to stay in one place. Figured I was safer that way, rather'n moving around and getting caught. But once John and Jennet's house went up in flame, I figgered there was no reason left for me to hang around—since them sonsabitches had took everything they wanted and burned down the rest. It was likely safe for me to slip away.”

“I never saw no trace of Mrs. Manuel or the baby,” Brice confessed with a wag of his head. “Not no sign when we started for here.”

“Neither did I,” Popham said grimly. “That's why I'm gonna figure Maggie got it wrong—the little dear. That's why I'm gonna believe that Jennet and the boy are still alive … out there somewhere.”

“We'll go look—you, me, and some others too—soon as we get some more soldiers brave enough to ride back over to the White Bird,” Brice vowed.

Laying his big, dirt-crusted hand on the Irishman's bony shoulder, Popham declared, “They're alive, son. I know in my gut Jennet and her boy are still alive.”

Epilogue

Fort Lapwai

June 19, 1877

Dear Mamma,

We have lived through so much since I wrote last time that it seems months. It has all been so horrible, I should like to tell you about it and not write. Doctor has not come back yet, but probably will on Thursday. You know how I mourned over his having to go, and he did not want to go at all, and now I am so thankful, I don't know what to do. He, of course, would have left here with Colonel Perry's command, had he been home on Friday night, and that poor little band we will never see alive again. I can't write you how everything is going on here. I only hope, if we all live through it, sometime to tell you, but this Indian War is many times a more extensive affair than any one imagined.

The Non-Treaty Nez Perces, to a man, joined Joseph's forces, and he is being constantly reinforced by bands from other tribes that are encouraged by the success he has already met with. Colonel Perry went to Mount Idaho to reach those settlers. More than thirty had been murdered before he started, including quite a number of children and women. When Colonel Perry's troops (not a hundred men and two officers—all that could be possibly found in reach) got there, the Indians were gone and were supposed to be retreating towards the buffalo country by a certain pass. Colonel Perry hoped to catch them while they were crossing a river. They were supposed to be about eighty under Joseph and White Bird. On Sunday, by forced marches, they came up with what they thought was a detachment of Indians, and the fight began. It was such a hot day, and we waited here for the news with heartaches. It is only about fifty miles from us. Yesterday morning, at daybreak, the news came. More than half the command is dead and missing. Poor Mr. Theller is dead. The wounded were left on the field. Colonel Perry with twenty men had gotten back to Mount Idaho.