Cries from the Earth (39 page)

In a dirty little war like this, Chapman realized, travail and gnashing of teeth always visited itself upon the guilty and the innocent alike.

Having been awake most of the night, Ad was aware when the overcast sky turned gray. Plain that the sun would refuse to shine this Saturday morning, the sixteenth. The blackening horizon promised a day of rain. All they could do now was wait, and wonder if the couriers got through to Lapwai.

Then wait some more.

By midafternoon, Ad Chapman grew tired of waiting. He asked for volunteers to join him on a scout up the road to Cottonwood House. Eighteen men mounted up, heavily armed, and followed him out of Mount Idaho for Grangeville. They found that settlement battened down and prepared for the siege those townsfolk expected at any moment; then Chapman's militia pushed north onto the Camas Prairie.

Just past four o'clock Ad figured they had to be getting close to Norton's place, what with Cottonwood Butte looming on the left. Up ahead at the bottom of a swale lay the spot where Wilmot and Ready had abandoned their wagons with all that liquor aboard—

Suddenly, no more than a mile away up the road, he spotted horsemen, a damn lot of horsemen, coming on at a good clip, a double handful of Indians out front.

But just as the other civilians were about ready to piss in their britches, Chapman saw those telltale guidons snapping in the cold breeze.

“Hold on, there—that's cavalry, fellas!” Chapman announced, hearing the audible sigh shudder through the eighteen men around him. “If I know anything, it's horse soldiers.”

The others were starting to whoop and holler as Ad Chapman put heels to his horse. He didn't know who had gotten through to Lapwai—the half-breed or Looking Glass's brother—and it really didn't matter much right then.

All that was important now was that the army had come and they were about to give back hurt for hurt and put down this short-lived uprising. If nothing else, it was time to teach them murdering bucks a lesson, but good.

*   *   *

“Any of you in command here?” Captain David Perry asked the twenty-some civilians who had halted in the middle of the rain-soaked road, squarely in front of his cavalry, no more than a handful of miles north of Grangeville.

After that three-hour stop to eat breakfast and recoup their horses, Perry had gotten them under way again by noon. They hadn't come all that far from Norton's place when the soldiers started running across dead horses on the road, an abandoned wagon here and there, and the tall, wispy columns of smoke in the distance that signaled another ranch had been put to the torch.

By midafternoon they ran onto the two wagons positioned across the road, hundreds of cigars littering the ground, other trade goods strewn everywhere. Near the wheel of one wagon lay an empty whiskey keg. Perry's column had just left the scene of that rampage behind when the skirmishers up front announced the approach of horsemen. The strangers turned out to be a band of white men.

“The men elected me their captain,” replied a lanky sort who urged his horse away from the group and stopped by Perry.

The officer studied the age beginning to show on the younger man's weathered face: those chiseled features, that huge, unkempt walrus mustache, but mostly those dark eyes rimmed with fatigue where a strange light nonetheless glimmered. Something in those eyes instantly made him wary as he shook hands with the rawboned civilian.

“Ad Chapman's the name.”

Perry introduced his officers, then asked, “What's the situation at Grangeville and Mount Idaho?”

He was relieved when Chapman declared neither of the communities had been attacked. As more of the civilians moseyed up to get in on that conversation held at the middle of the road, it became apparent there were roaming bands of bandits, looters, and murderers who dared not attempt the strength of the towns where the settlers had gathered as the alarm spread.

“The Injuns crossed the Camas about noon today, Captain,” Chapman explained.

“What direction?”

“Toward the Salmon River.” Chapman pointed to the White Bird Divide, then crossed his wrists atop his saddle horn.

Perry wagged his head, feeling the deep fatigue in his bones. Sixty miles, in just shy of a twenty-four-hour march. “My men have been on the march since last night.”

“It's for damn sure them Nepercy know all about your bunch of soldiers,” Frank Fenn spoke up.

“Yep,” George Shearer said with a hint of a Southern drawl as he shifted a carbine across the crook of his left arm. “That's why they're skeedaddling to the Salmon now, Cap'n.”

Chapman said, “They get across that river with all them horses and cattle they stole—”

“All their goddamned plunder too,” Shearer growled.

Ad Chapman nodded and went on. “Them Nepercy manage to get all that across the Salmon, why … I don't think you or nobody's cavalry gonna ever catch 'em in the mountains.”

Alarmed for the first time that his quarry might well slip from his grasp if he did not act, Perry asked, “How soon do you suppose till they make their crossing?”

The leader of the volunteers peered at the sky. Then Chapman ventured, “Sun be going down soon. I'll lay they won't cross till sunup tomorrow, so they'll have 'nough time to get all the women and animals across in daylight.”

“Tomorrow morning,” Perry repeated, deep in thought.

“Once they're on the other side of the Salmon,” Shearer warned, “they're in their mountains … and you'll never catch 'em.”

“Even with a month of Sundays, your cavalry won't never catch Nepercy once they get into those mountains across the river,” Chapman repeated ominously.

For a long moment, Perry studied the faces of his officers for some clue as to their mood; then he quickly glanced over his two companies and their limited supplies. He sighed, turning back to the civilians.

“Gentlemen, do you have any guess how many warriors we would confront?”

With a shrug, Chapman's big horseshoe of a mustache twitched as he spoke, “Don't matter how many warriors they got along, Captain. I've lived with and around these Injuns since I was a tad. If anybody knows the Nepercy, it's me. I speak their talk good as any Nepercy buck. Ain't that right, fellas?”

The other civilians either nodded or grunted their agreement.

Then Chapman continued, “So you mark my words when I tell you that these bastards are yellow-backboned scoundrels. Cowards of the first stripe, Captain. It don't matter how many men they got against your soldiers, 'cause they ain't gonna put up much of a fight once you tear into 'em.”

“These red niggers showed how they're better at ganging up on two or three white men at a time,” George Shearer snarled. “They ain't fighters. The sonsabitches is nothing more'n thieves, rapers, and back-shooting murderers.”

“They won't stand and fight you, Captain,” Chapman assured.

Perry was brooding as the militia leader went on with his explanation, for he was worrying. Should he allow the warrior bands to escape across the Salmon with all their plunder, without making any effort on his part to prevent it, then he knew he would be open to censure …

“Why, Colonel … if I had the hunnert men you got with you here and now, don't you know I could whip them Nepercy myself. If'n I only had your rifles—”

“You'll have that chance if you want it, Mr. Chapman,” Perry offered by way of interruption, measuring the civilian.

“Meaning you want us to come along with your soldiers?” asked Chapman.

“Subject to military orders, of course.”

His brown teeth gleaming beneath that bristly black mustache, Chapman grinned wolfishly at Perry, saying, “Captain, I wouldn't miss this fight for all the gold in Elk City.”

*   *   *

Oliver Otis Howard came awake with a start.

Not long after sunset he had gone to bed in the Perry residence. As dark as it was outside now, it had to be close to midnight … or later.

Stepping into his britches and pulling a tunic over his sleeping gown, the general shuffled past the table bearing those reports he was writing and immediately flung open the door. A commotion was growing outside on the darkened parade. Loud voices, and the most shrill, urgent one among them all was a woman's. A knot of people and horses was moving his way.

“What's all this, Captain?” the general demanded as he stopped at the edge of the porch.

William H. Boyle, presently in command of the post, stepped over, dragging a large Nez Perce woman by the arm. In turn, she was yanking on the reins to a jaded pony. Boyle saluted and said, “General, this here's the wife of Jonah Hayes.”

He studied her face in the dark a moment. A robust, fleshy woman. “Yes, I thought I recognized her. He's the acting chief of the Treaty bands.”

For the first time Howard noticed another Indian woman, younger, who had inched her pony up behind Hayes's squaw. She hadn't dismounted in the starshine.

Then the big woman was talking loud again, nonstop. Yet it was her manner that most alarmed the general. A tiny warning bell clanged in the back of his mind. “What's the problem?”

“I have an interpreter on his way, sir,” Boyle apologized. “Can't understand a thing she's saying.” Then he turned at the sound of footsteps. “Here he comes.”

Even before Alpowa Jim came to a halt among them, Howard was wringing his hands with anxiety and instructing him, “Find out what she's got to say.”

The two of them spoke for a few moments—she in her loud, passionate voice and he in hushed tones. Then the half-breed blinked like Gatling gunfire when he turned to Howard.

“General, this Hayes woman, wife of the—”

“I know who she is,” Howard interrupted, made short-tempered by the woman's agitation. “Just say why she's here and what she's so all-fired excited to tell us!”

With a gulp, the interpreter explained, “Hayes woman says the Nez Perce—them Non-Treaty bands—they fixed up a trap for your soldiers gone from here last night. Them soldiers you sent away run right into their trap. And … and—”

“And
what,
my good man?”

Alpowa Jim's eyes were blinking like volley fire again. “And … they all been … been wiped out!”

Chapter 31

June 16–17, 1877

Not long after he finished listening to all the stories, fears, and charges of those citizens huddling in Grangeville, Captain David Perry assembled that trio of his commissioned officers. Back on the road he had made sure the three were in on all that Chapman and the other civilians had to say about the strength and lack of fighting resolve in the Nez Perce warriors. Trimble, Theller, and Parnell deserved to have some voice in the steps he was about to take.

“If we allow the Non-Treaties to escape across the Salmon without making a wholesale effort to catch and punish them,” Perry summed up his feelings for the others, “then I'm assured the citizens of this territory will hold the four of us, if not the army in general, in great contempt, gentlemen.”

“These folks have been through hell,” Edward Russell Theller observed, his eyes glancing at an open patch of ground where some women and children were gathered. “They deserve our protection, Colonel.”

Perry nodded. “Many of their complaints have to do with the Nez Perce stealing stock from the local ranches—so these people are anxious to get back what belongs to them and see the thieves get punished to the fullest extent of the law.”

“We ain't constables, Colonel,” Parnell grumbled, his brogue still thick with the peat of his birthland. “All due respect, sir … we're soldiers, so we do a soldier's job. Not no sheriff's duty to chase after horse thieves.”

“Lieutenant, I was given General Howard's orders to come down here to determine how best to put this outbreak to rest and capture the guilty parties,” Perry explained, looking into the faces of the three. “But lately, I've been considering more and more about how and why the general didn't box me in with orders that were unnecessarily restrictive.”

“Please explain, Colonel?” Trimble asked.

“It's my belief that General Howard gave me enough freedom to handle the situation as I see fit, since I would be on the ground. Back at Fort Lapwai, none of us had enough information for him to give us restrictive orders when he dispatched us on this mission.”

“So you're saying we're going after the Injuns?” Parnell asked, a measure of cheer returning to his voice.

“Gentlemen, I do not believe I am overstepping my authority in the slightest if we give chase to that village we know is hiding the murderers and giving comfort to the guilty parties.”

“But our men have been in the saddle for the better part of the last twenty-four hours, sir,” Theller argued. “Which means they haven't had any decent sleep in more than thirty-six hours.”

“And the horses are weary too,” Perry agreed. “Nonetheless, I am prepared to march this command after the Non-Treaty village so we can prevent its escape across the Salmon. We must put ourselves into attack position around their camp before first light and engage the warriors at dawn.”

After waiting a moment while he studied their faces for any more misgivings, Perry continued. “I brought you here to ask for your opinions. I know it is unusual for a commanding officer to do so—but I feel as if we are confronted by unusual circumstances and I would like to proceed only if we're all riding forward together.”

Parnell glanced at Captain Trimble quickly, then spoke up. “Sir, I'm all in favor of attacking that village before it can escape.”

“The same goes for me, Colonel,” Trimble agreed.

Then the three of them turned to gaze at the last man, Edward Russell Theller.

The lieutenant cleared his throat and told Perry, “All right. It's unanimous. So we should get this battalion moving, sir.”