Lay the Mountains Low (12 page)

M
ERCIFULLY, OVERNIGHT THE SOAKING RAIN HAD CLEANSED
much of the stench from the air in that valley of death by the time Howard's troops returned early the next morning.

Second Lieutenant Sevier McClellan Rains had never been so happy to ride out of any place the way he had been happy to ride out of White Bird Canyon as the sun began to set yesterday. After a second night's bivouac at Johnson's ranch, the commanding general had everything packed up and ready to depart by 7:00
A.M.
on the morning of the twenty-seventh. It continued to rain past dawn, a slow, steady weeping from a low gray sky. The young lieutenant dreaded ever returning to this valley of such unspeakable death.

As they had on Tuesday, the various cavalry and infantry companies again worked over the battlefield in platoons, searching the ravines and the thickets for the remains of fallen soldiers. While the rain kept down the revolting stench, the unrelenting showers soon soaked every man through to the skin, making them all as miserable as could be. So it was with no little eagerness that Rains looked forward to taking his nine men for a ride back up a sidewall of the canyon to search a narrow ravine for any of Perry's soldiers who might have fallen during their mad retreat back
up White Bird Hill.

Born in Michigan, this young officer had graduated from West Point only the year before, a mere ten days before the Custer massacre in June of '76. Prior to graduation, Rains had applied for an appointment to the Fourth Cavalry, a move endorsed by the regimental commander, Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie. Instead, Rains was assigned to the First Cavalry, disappointed that he would have to serve in the Northwest instead of on the Great Plains fighting the Sioux and Cheyenne. A cavalry officer by schooling, who now found himself thrust into a dirty little Indian war out here in Nez Perce country, vigorous and energetic, Rains was itching to show his superiors just what he was made of—

His horse snorted. Almost immediately his nose had found them. Even before any of the men spotted the bodies.

“How many of 'em are there?” one of the soldiers asked the other enlisted men arrayed behind Rains as they all scratched into their pockets for bandannas and handkerchiefs.

“I count eight, soldier” the lieutenant answered. “Eight of them.”

The bloated corpses were strewn at the head of a short dead-end ravine. Six of them clustered together in a bunch. One of them lay by itself out by the mouth of the ravine. And the last man sat up alone against the end of the ravine, propped with his back to the grassy wall. The end of the line.

“Look there, sir!” exclaimed Private Franklin Moody, a member of Rains's own L Company, First U. S. Cavalry. “He's a lieutenant. Just like you.”

“Hard to tell, but that's Theller, soldier,” Rains replied quietly, looking down on his fellow officer, staring transfixed at the bullet hole between the eyes. “Lieutenant Edward R. Theller.”

“I don't 'member him, sir. He First Cavalry, was he?” asked Private David Carroll as he inched up to stop at Rains's elbow.

“No, soldier. Theller was detached from the Twenty-first Infantry to go along with Colonel Perry's battalion when it marched away from Fort Lapwai.”

Nearby, Private Otto H. Richter whistled in amazement.
“Mein Herr
—lookit the cawtridges.”

“Das right, Otto. Dese fellas dun't give up easy,” said Private George H. Dinteman in his stilted English. “Did dey, sir?”

Rains shook his head, continuing to stare at Theller's face, then at those copper cases scattered around him and the others, but always, always returning to that bullet hole in the middle of the lieutenant's forehead where the flies had busily laid their eggs. Another day, two at the most, these bodies would be crawling with wormy maggots. Again, as always, he came back to staring at that single bullet hole.

“We bury dem hare, zir?” asked Private Frederick Meyer in troubled English dripping with a thick German accent.

The steady rain overnight had made the ground soft. Rains tore his eyes from that bullet hole for a moment while he screwed his boot heel into the soil. “Yes,” the young lieutenant told them. “Maybe one common grave is the best idea. Let's do that—over there at the mouth of the ravine. Those two with their fatigue britches still on—check their pockets for personal effects that the surviving families might wish to receive from Colonel Perry. We'll work in squads of three, spell each other like yesterday.”

He went on to have the three Germans start: Richter, Dinteman, and Meyer. Good, solid men. Not particularly fast with any mental wizardry, but good, dependable soldiers. Not given to any complaining about this nasty work with the decomposing, stinking bodies. Once the three had started work on the mass grave for all eight men and the rest either started digging through the pockets of those two who still had some clothing on their bodies or simply plopped down in the wet grass to wait their turn at the trowel bayonets, the young lieutenant turned around once again to stare at the face of that other young lieutenant in
this narrow ravine.

And that single bullet hole between the eyes.

Yes, indeed, soldiers,
he thought in silence.
Look at all those cartridge cases around them. These eight men sold their lives dearly that bloody Sunday morning. Retreating from the battlefield, they must have ducked up this short, narrow ravine to take some cover from the bare naked hillside
—
only to discover they were trapped in a box.

“Private Carroll!” he called out, turning to speak over his shoulder. “I want you and Moody to begin gathering some stones.”

“Stones, Lieutenant?” Franklin Moody asked.

“Rocks. Anything small enough for you to pull out of the ground and carry over here.”

David Carroll asked, “You gonna lay 'em on the grave, sir?”

“Yes. Maybe they will keep the predators from digging up the remains once we're gone,” Rains explained. “Once they're left here … to lie alone for all eternity.”

The two privates shuffled off murmuring between themselves.

How would it be, Rains wondered, to have been Theller in his final moments? To find himself trapped with his small squad of men, surrounded and outnumbered, with no way out but to make the Nez Perce warriors pay dearly … pay very, very dearly for each soldier they would kill that day?

By the time the mist turned into a steady rain, falling harder, the men had begun to drag the first of the bodies into the long, shallow trench made big enough for eight bloated corpses. As all nine men in his burial detail began to quickly scoop the rich, damp soil back over the distorted remains, young Lieutenant Sevier M. Rains pulled off his soggy hat and stood above them on the side of that ravine—just over his nine muddy, soaked soldiers as they struggled with those eight dead, bloated victims—quietly murmuring his Presbyterian prayers, words he had learned by heart while still a boy in rural Michigan.

As the strong-backed Germans and the wiry Irishmen stood, one by one, stretching the kinks out of their muscles there beside the bare, muddy ground, having placed a layer of rocks over the common grave. Rains began the prayer he hoped they all would join him in reciting.

“… Forgive us of our trespasses … as we forgive those who trespass against us …”

BY TELEGRAPH

—

MONTANA.

—

Reports in Regard to the Flat Head Indians.

DEER LODGE, Montana, June 27.—To Governor Potts, Helena: I am in receipt of the following from Postmaster Dickinson, of Missoula, Montana: Monday, June 26.—Rev. John Summers and Mr. Wilkins, who have just arrived from Corvallis, report that a Nez Perces, who talks good English, came from Lewiston, and says the Indians are coming into Bitter Root, and will come into the head of the valley and clear it out, and if the Flat Heads don't join them they will clear them out too. The Flat Heads have driven all their horses out of the valley, and the squaws and children are going up Lolo fork. A Nez Perces chief told Major Whaley that the Nez Perces were going to clear out the Bitter Root valley, and that the Flat Heads would join them on the 1st, as near as I can remember …

 

*
Devil's Backbone,
vol. 5, the
Plainsmen
series.

J
UNE
27-J
ULY
1, 1877

BY TELEGRAPH

—

Daring Postoffice Robbery at Manhattan, Kansas.

—

IDAHO.

—

The Indian Situation—Telegram from Gen. Howard.

SAN FRANCISCO, June 29.—A Portland press dispatch says Colonel Wood has just received the following dispatch from General Howard, dated at the front, June 27, 8:45
A.M.:
We have overtaken Joseph, who is well posted at the mouth of White Bird creek. Chief White Bird has been in charge of the entire united bands of Joseph and is the fighting chief. The Indians are bold and waiting for us to engage them. Lieutenant Trumbull and volunteers are at Slate creek. Our headquarters tonight will be at the mouth of White Bird creek. The rains are very troublesome; roads and trails bad; troops in best of spirits and ready for decisive work.

A
FTER SPENDING THEIR SECOND DAY ON THE WHITE BIRD
battlefield, General Oliver O. Howard ordered his column on down White Bird Creek to its mouth, where they turned left and marched south, up the Salmon River, approximately two miles before finding enough open ground to bivouac the command. Late that afternoon as the first pickets were being established on his perimeter, A, D, G, and M batteries of the Fourth Artillery and C Company of the Twenty-first Infantry rumbled in to join the command.

“In memory of the slain officer, this will be recorded as
Camp Theller,” Otis told his united officer corps that evening after supper as the rain continued to pour down upon his column. “It's from here that we will begin our chase of the fleeing hostiles.”

While the constant rain continued to batter the oiled canvas awning lashed over their heads, Howard went on to explain that, come morning, he was dispatching Captain David Perry back to Fort Lapwai for more ammunition and rations.

“This has more and more the appearance of a long campaign,” he said regretfully, “longer than I would have anticipated on the day we departed Lapwai. But, with the additional reinforcements, we now have more than five hundred and thirty men, which include some sixty-five volunteers. In fact, ‘Captain' William Hunter and his band of volunteers just arrived from Dayton, in Washington Territory. Accompanying them down from Lapwai, I'm most pleased to welcome Lieutenant Wood to my staff. Lieutenant, please take a step forward so all the men can get a look at you.”

The slight, good-looking Wood eased into the center of that half-circle of cavalry and infantry officers. Nodding several times to the others, he then stepped over to stand near the commanding general.

“Mr. Wood will serve as my aide-de-camp for the remainder of the campaign.”

S
ECOND
Lieutenant Charles Erskine Scott Wood found it very difficult to sleep that night. Not that it was too cold or too damp for his tastes. Just that he constantly reminded himself to sleep light for fear of a surprise attack from the Nez Perce rumored to be right across the river from Camp Theller.

He finally gave up and crawled out of his bedroll after midnight. From the sounds of his snoring, General Howard was sleeping soundly in his tent nearby, so Wood lit a small candle and unbuckled the straps on his haversack. Reaching inside, he pulled out the spanking new leather-bound ledger
book he had recently purchased in Lewiston on his way to the front. Positioning it across his thighs, Charles pulled a long pencil from the breast pocket he had had sewn inside his field blouse, then made the first entry on that very first page of his field diary.