Lay the Mountains Low (55 page)

“We're ready to ride, Captain.”

Rawn sighed. “It shouldn't be hard to find Lieutenant Woodbridge … if his men stayed on the trail. I've never been over it myself, but from what these settlers in the valley tell me, it's hard as hell to make a mistake and get off the Lolo.”

“We'll find them for you, Captain,” promised First Lieutenant Charles A. Coolidge, jabbing his thumb at that small band of civilians who had volunteered to guide the two soldiers up the mountain trail. “We have rations for three days, just as you ordered.”

“Scout the trail as far as is prudent. I want you back here by the twenty-fourth, if you've found Woodbridge's party or not. Between his group and yours being gone from the post, I'm feeling a little whittled down—should any of those Nez Perces pop up nearby.”

“From everything these civilians have told me about that trail, sir,” Coolidge declared, “Joseph's Injuns are going to take a long time getting over the mountains on the Lolo—what with all their women, children, baggage, not to mention that pony herd, too. They aren't going to be making good time up there in those mountains.”

Taking a step back, Rawn saluted the lieutenant. “Let's pray those warriors are crawling over the pass real slow. And while we're at it, maybe we should pray young Woodbridge hasn't stumbled into any of them, too.”

BY TELEGRAPH

—

The Railway Strike Spreading Over the Country.

—

Trains Moving Under Military Protection.

—

Great Activity of Black Hills Road Agents.

—

Late War News and General Intelligence.

—

CHEYENNE.

—

The Ready Road-Agents Robbing Left and Right.

CHEYENNE, July 19.—The coach from Deadwood was stopped, last night, near Cheyenne river, by road agents, who robbed the passengers of about $50. Twelve miles further they were stopped again by four robbers, who took the passengers' arms and part of their blankets. The treasure box was opened but contained no valuables …

While Cut-Off Arm attempted to sneak off downriver from the Kamiah crossing so he could slip up behind them, the
Nee-Me-Poo
had decided to follow Looking Glass toward
Moosmoos Illahe,
the buffalo country. For fighting men like Shore Crossing, it was less a matter of possessing any real enthusiasm for this flight over the mountains than it was a matter of there simply being nothing better to do … at least for the present.

Indeed, there were many more who felt the frustration he did: warriors who believed that those who wanted to fight the
suapies
should be allowed to stay behind in their own country, there to attack and harass the small groups of soldiers, there to run off horses, mules, and cattle belonging to the Christian Indians at Lapwai and Kamiah, staying behind to slow the army's pursuit to a standstill.

As fierce a fighter as
Ollokot
had been in those early days of the war, at the councils held on the
Weippe
Prairie he had nonetheless joined his older brother, Joseph, in arguing that once the bands had crossed the Lolo and headed south, up the Bitterroot valley, they should recross the
mountains into Idaho, circling back to their beloved Salmon and Snake River country.
*
With every day now, the Frog was sounding more and more like his non-fighting brother, chief of the
Wallowa.

Since their battle against Cut-Off Arm on the Clearwater, White Bird had begun to advance the possibility of turning north once they had reached the end of the Lolo Trail. There the bands could pass through the country of the friendly Flathead and march for the Old Woman's Country, perhaps even rendezvous with the Lakota expatriates of Chief Buffalo Bull Who Rests on the Ground.
**

But in the end, Looking Glass was more persuasive than the others. Why go north when they had friends in the buffalo country, land where they had hunted for many generations with their longtime friends the
E-sue-gha
? Hadn't several of the leading men—like Looking Glass, Rainbow, and Five Wounds—fought against the Lakota time and again? In fact, at this present time weren't a few of their own young men gone east to the buffalo plains to help the army round up the Lakota?

No, Looking Glass orated, the Old Woman's Country was strange to them; no one he knew had ever been there. Besides, once they had put the Idaho country at their backs, put its soldiers and Shadows behind them, there would be no need to run away to join the Lakota north of the Medicine Line. The
Nee-Me-Poo
would be leaving their war far behind, back there beyond the Bitterroot.

In the end Looking Glass won the day. While
Wottolen
and Two Moons vigorously opposed any alliance with the
E-sue-gha
and Joseph said nothing because he favored returning his people to the
Wallowa
valley, White Bird,
Toohoolhoolzote,
and
Hahtalekin
were unanimous. “All right, Looking Glass—take us to the buffalo country.”

The morning of their second day on the Lolo, Rainbow went down their back trail, accompanied by more than three hands of warriors. They were to watch for soldiers. Five of their number had been selected by the chiefs to remain behind near the
Weippe
for three suns. Red Moccasin Tops, White Cloud, and three others were to watch for Cut-Off Arm's men coming up the trail. If, after those three days, they hadn't seen any soldiers following, they were to come on with their good news and reunite with their families. If, however, enemies were sighted, two of their number were to race up the trail with the report so the warriors would have time to prepare a fight to hold the
suapies
on the trail while the families escaped. The last three were to stay and keep watch, staying just ahead of any white or Christian scouts in the process as they fell back.

Riding off in a different direction, Shore Crossing joined Looking Glass's raiding party that swept down on the Kamiah Christians—running off their horses and cattle, burning a few small buildings, and doing their best to frighten Lawyer's Indians. The warriors were able to scatter and harry those Treaty people just they way they had driven the horses and a few head of cattle
*
back into the hills while exchanging a few long-range shots with those
suapies
left behind when Cut-Off Arm marched north for Lapwai.

By the time the raiders returned to the Lolo late that afternoon, it amazed Shore Crossing how much ground all those people, a few hundred dogs, and more than two thousand
horses had covered in a day. Forced by necessity to stretch itself out for several miles while on the march, the column inched its way deeper and deeper into the wilderness along that tenuous strand of timber-clogged trail taking them ever higher, into ever thicker, mazelike forests. How they were able to accomplish this feat mile after mile, day after day, with women and children, the old and the very young, along with their sick and wounded, too, was nothing short of miraculous to the young warrior.

These Non-Treaty bands were able to march with energy and precision through such impossibly rugged terrain and the clutter of downfall forests because they had two cultural characteristics working for them. The first was that Shore Crossing's people had, for generations beyond count, developed and refined a system of moving people and property, whereby each family unit was responsible to the band by seeing to its own organizing and packing, along with transporting its own members in harmony with the needs of the camp as a whole, day in and day out. The second feature of their success derived from decades of learning to travel through steep mountains and across barren plateaus.

What other people would dare face the terrible ordeal of this trail burdened with their wounded and sick on travois, all those women and children and belongings, not to mention all those thousands of horses? With or without an enemy snarling at your tail, this would be a feat unmatched by any other people. Only the
Nee-Me-Poo
would pit themselves against the Lolo the way they had pitted themselves against the U. S. Army.

Still, for young fighting men like Shore Crossing, the best part of each day's journey was that with Cut-Off Arm sitting on his haunches somewhere near Fort Lapwai, every march put that much more distance between the
Nee-Me-Poo
and the army Looking Glass vowed could never touch them again.

“They are so far behind,” Shore Crossing announced when the war party reunited with the village as it was going
into camp at the end of that second day on the trail, “we will never have to worry about those soldiers again!”

“Your eyes are half-closed if you think Cut-Off Arm's are the only
suapies,
Shore Crossing,” old
Toohoolhoolzote
warned. “We have seen the soldiers over in buffalo country.”

“No,” he snorted at the old
tewat,
refusing to be cowed by worry. “We won't have to worry about any of those soldiers or Shadows over there. The Montana people have known us for a long, long time.”

“J
ESUS
Christ! You fellas scared the piss out of me!” one of the pickets hollered from that dark ring of night surrounding their bivouac.

Second Lieutenant Francis Woodbridge nearly leaped out of his skin when that picket suddenly shrieked his high-pitched alarm. The other picket lunged into the dim light thrown off by the low, flickering flames, joining Woodbridge and the other two privates who were scheduled to take their second watch later that night, the twenty-second of July.

“I'll be go to hell!” exclaimed one of those soldiers beside Woodbridge as the picket materialized out of the dark, right behind two young civilians. “They're white fellas!”

“Who the devil was you expecting to come walkin' into your camp, soldier?” one of the strangers growled, his eyes shimmery with relief. “We'd been Looking Glass's red devils sneaking down this trail, you'd never see'd us come up on you the way we done!”

The picket snapped, “I'd shot you in the gut afore you'd got ‘nother step—”

“Hold it!” Woodbridge interrupted, then waved the two strangers closer to the light. “C'mon over here and sit yourselves down. Where's your horses?”

“W-we ain't got none,” said the sullen, darker-skinned of the two.

“What's your name?”

He looked at the lieutenant, then stared down at the fire and rubbed his hands over it as he said, “Peter Matte.”
*

“And you?” Woodbridge asked the other stranger, who had been the first to speak to the picket.

“William … Bill Silverthorne.”

The second picket asked, “You fellas from the Bitterroot?”

Silverthorne flicked a glance his way, saying, “By a damned long way around.”

That sounded really odd to the suspicious lieutenant. “What are you two doing out at night on the Lolo Trail, without horses, and you're all the way up here from the Bitterroot to boot?”

“Wasn't my idea to take no trip back over the pass to Montana on foot,” Silverthorne snorted. “But we was forced to come with the Injuns.”

“Injuns!” one of the privates echoed in a high-pitched whine.

Silverthorne stood up and turned his buttocks to the low fire, rubbing them with his palms as he explained, “Nez Percey, they was. Seven days ago—no, eight days—me and Pete, we was heading to Lewiston to buy us some horses more'n a week back, when a war party of them Nez Percey bucks jumped us on the way to the Clearwater and brung us right on in to their camp. Hundreds of ‘em was up to the
Weippe
Prairie, camped there digging the roots and hunting. Didn't ever hurt us none—”

“But back at home at Stevensville in the Bitterroot, we both heard how they butchered a lot of white folks over in Idaho not long ago,” Matte said.

Woodbridge wagged his head in wonder. “So why'd they let you two go now?”

Silverthorne gazed over at the young lieutenant with undisguised disdain. “The red sonsabitches didn't let us go, for Chrissakes! We slipped away and come on down the trail, making for Missoula City fast as we could.”

“How far's we from there now?” Matte asked, the low flames flickering off his dark face.

The lieutenant figured the man for a half-breed, must have some Indian blood in him. “Twenty, maybe twenty-five miles. The pass is only thirty in all—”

“You fellas headed on up the trail tomorrow?” Silverthorne interrupted.

“No, we're on our way back to the post we're building south of Missoula City,” Woodbridge explained.

“Awright we go on in with you come morning?”

Woodbridge nodded to Silverthorne. “Sure. We'll ride double or swap off horses. See you get to town.”

“We better skeedaddle come morning” Matte said as he glanced around at the dark.

“They find we're missing,” Silverthorne said, “they'll come looking, I'll bet. ‘Sides, them reds up near the pass anyways.”

Woodbridge swallowed. They had covered a lot of ground, crossing over the pass, something on the order of sixty-five miles from Missoula City. “We hadn't seen any sign of the Indians when we stopped up at the top and looked down the west approach.”

“Didn't see all of them?” Matte cried, his voice rising two octaves in disbelief.

The lieutenant wagged his head, ready to speak, when Silverthorne blurted out, “Shit, soldier! That bunch of Nez Percey strings out on the trail for better'n two miles, likely more! And that horse herd of theirs! I'll lay a bet there's more'n two thousand, twenty-five hundred of ‘em … and you say you didn't see anything of ‘em when they had us climbing up the other side of the goddamned mountain?”

With a shrug, Woodbridge admitted, “Not a thing. So how far back from here you get away from the Nez Perce? They still on the other side of the pass?”