Cries from the Earth (40 page)

Perry felt the surge of that old excitement electrify his very sinew. “Damn right, gentlemen. Inform your commands we are moving out in thirty minutes.”

After leaving three men from among both companies to stay behind, posted to guard the battalion's excess equipage, Perry sent his Nez Perce trackers forward, threw out both skirmishers and flankers, then started those one-hundred-some cavalrymen for the canyon of White Bird Creek.

When it came time to march against the enemy, the two dozen or more civilians Ad Chapman boasted would be coming along failed to show up. The citizen militia numbered no more than eleven, including Chapman, when they loped up to join the column setting out to prevent the Indian village from crossing the Salmon.

It was 9:30
P.M.
, Saturday, the sixteenth of June.

*   *   *

Those ninety-nine weary enlisted men, four officers, and their dozen Nez Perce trackers had climbed out of their saddles upon reaching Grangeville at sunset. They found fewer than forty men, women, and children huddled behind an upright stockade they had erected around Grange Hall.

Minutes later First Sergeant Michael McCarthy watched about half of the fifty-two men from his H Company straggle back from the tall grass where they had picketed their horses as the shadows grew long. The rest had already kindled fires and put beans on to boil.

“Get them white dodgers cooking, boys,” he ordered them as he moved among the dozen or so fires the hungry troopers surrounded. “You'll damn well want something in your bellies afore the cap'n comes whistling up his night guard.”

“So we gonna bunk in here for the night, Sarge?” asked Corporal Roman D. Lee.

“You better pray we do, Cawpril,” McCarthy said, his voice still laden with much of that Newfoundland Irish heritage of his. “We been in the saddle for something shy of twenty-four hours now, so if you boys don't need a rest, then those poor mother-loving horses you rode here sure do.”

The beans smelled bloody good. Their fragrance was suddenly reminding his stomach of just how long it had been since last he had swallowed anything of substance.

McCarthy had wandered south from Canada as soon as he was old enough to leave home. After a short time in Vermont he had ended up migrating to Boston—good Irish town that it was. There he had knocked around until he landed something solid as a printer's devil. Seeing how he was only fifteen when the Civil War broke out, the most an eager young lad like himself could do was follow the war with every edition and extra of the newspaper.

By the time the Southern states had been defeated and brought back into the fold, McCarthy had tired of the smell of printer's ink and signed up for a five-year enlistment in the army. Sent west to Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis, where the army trained him to be a horseman, McCarthy was promptly shipped off to a First Cavalry outfit to fight Apaches down near the Mexican border. Wasn't long before they moved McCarthy, now wearing corporal's stripes, and some of his mates north to Oregon country, where they ended up chasing half a hundred poor Modocs around the Lava Beds for the better part of a year.

In fact, he had been in on the chase and capture of Captain Jack himself. A downright sad thing that was, McCarthy often thought, how the chief's friends and headmen had turned on him. Sad that most of those traitors went free and Jack hung at the end of a rope.

McCarthy pushed an unruly lock of his auburn hair out of his eyes in that glow of the firelight and continued oiling his Colt's .45-caliber service revolver. He knew that should he ever pick up four out of every five of this company's carbines, he would find them rusty, fouled, and unfit for service in an Indian fight. Joseph and Mary, he'd tried! At least he'd keep his own weapons ready, waiting for those beans to boil, when the trumpet suddenly blared—

“Joseph and Mary!” he grumbled, completely caught by surprise when Trumpeter Frank A. Marshall blew the stirring notes to “Boots and Saddles” as the last shreds of twilight faded and night was dripping down around them. It was nudging nine o'clock.

Lumbering to his feet, McCarthy poked the oiling rag into the back pocket of his light-blue wool britches, then stuffed the cuffs with their wide yellow outer stripe into the tops of his dusty, scuffed black boots. A few of the closest horses whinnied, as if the beasts had already learned some of the goddamned bugle calls themselves.

Of a sudden, the bivouac came alive. Sergeant Isador Schneider came trotting up. The man skidded to a halt, slapped heels together, and saluted, “First Sergeant! Compliments of the major—prepare to march!”

Goddammit, he liked this German, he did. No matter that it was hard for McCarthy to understand him at times, Schneider always managed to say enough, always spoke most of it clear enough that McCarthy understood the transfer of orders from that fleshy Irishman Lieutenant Parnell, or this command come directly from Captain Trimble.

“Cawprils!” McCarthy bawled like a wounded calf. “You heard our orders!”

“But, Sarge!” whined Farrier John Drugan with a hint of Boston Irish in his voice. “We ain't got our supper boiled!”

“Eat them god-blessed beans if you want,” McCarthy growled, waving off the complaint. “Or dump 'em when you put out your fires. Just make sure you're in the saddle when that trumpet blows. This army's going on the march!”

The corporals had half the grumbling men moving away into the dark, carrying the throat latches they would use to bring in the horses by rotation as the men began to throw the still-damp saddle blankets across the broad backs and cinch down those god-awful, ass-numbing McClellan saddles. In a matter of minutes their camp was alive with the bustle of soldiers given very little time to move out. Some of H Company chose to drag their kettles off the flames, where they started scooping the half-cooked white beans into their mouths, while others were content to soak their hard bread in the hot bean water or in their coffee before chewing it down. But the first sergeant got every man jack of them off his arse and moving when his horse was brought into bivouac.

If Michael McCarthy had anything to say about it, H Company was not going to be bringing up the rear on tonight's march because his men were the last who were ready to ride. No, sir—when Colonel Perry gave the order to “march,” H Company, First U.S. Cav, was gonna be there right at the front of the column, leading the way. If they were going to be fighting Injuns by sunup, then First Sergeant McCarthy was damn well gonna see that his men wouldn't have to eat any other company's dust on their ride into that battle.

Joseph and Mary, but these weeds were no get-up-and-move-out bunch of soldiers! A matter of months ago many of McCarthy's men had been signed up during recruiting sweeps through cities back east. Since shipping out from Jefferson Barracks, these “Custer's Avengers” hadn't drilled enough to make them marksmen with their carbines or confident in the saddle. But Sergeant McCarthy's headaches weren't limited to his green-broke shavetails. Even those soldiers who had been on duty for some time out here in Nez Perce country ended up spending most of their days acting as clerks, blacksmiths, carpenters, and tinkers. A few served their officers as dog-robbers.

Even if the troops had been given ample time for target practice, a penny-pinching army never provided enough expendable ammunition. And if the troops were kept too busy with other mundane duties, it meant their horses suffered a lack of training, most tending to shy at the unexpected and loud noises that would come with battle.

“Get up, god-blame-it!” McCarthy growled as he plodded around the fires, intimidating his men away from those kettles of half-hard beans and barely boiled coffee. “That gun cleaned?”

“Y-yessirsergeant!”

“Where's your blanket?” he shouted to another, then kept on stomping through the bivouac, goading each reluctant, weary soldier into action.

“Got your extra cawtridges?” McCarthy demanded of another who clumsily kicked over a kettle of half-cooked supper when he stood to salute too suddenly. “You'll be begging for want of bullets 'stead of beans by morning, soldier!”

McCarthy brushed the droopy ends of his shaggy reddish-brown mustache away from the corners of his lips while he kept probing through H Company's bivouac—prodding, cajoling, wheedling, jabbing men into motion as Perry's battalion prepared to march away into who the hell knew what.

Even a few bloody rumors were flying faster than any of these men were moving, goddammit. Word from those civilians cozied up with Colonel Perry said that the soldiers could creep right up on that Injun village while it was still dark … and wait for first light to sink their teeth into the camp.

Joseph and Mary! If that tale be true … then these poor mothers' sons would be crying for a shitload of bullets by morning, and all the beans in Idaho be damned!

*   *   *

By gor, if these men of his Company H weren't about as frayed as an old rope!

Lieutenant William Russell Parnell couldn't blame any of them for drifting off to sleep, even though they'd been ordered to stay awake now that Colonel Perry had called a halt for the battalion, here at 1:00
A.M.
among the skimpy timber at the head of the canyon, after marching some ten miles from Mount Idaho in the dark. The slopes below them descended some twenty-six-hundred feet in a precipitous three-mile drop to White Bird Creek itself. Somewhere between there and the Salmon River a few miles farther down the valley was where Perry figured they would find the village.

For the last three hours the column had stumbled through the dark, groping its way past the lake where the Nez Perce had been camped until a day or so ago, if for no other reason than to make sure the village had abandoned the area.

Parnell wasn't totally sure, but as he peered at the face of his pocket watch in the dim starshine it appeared to be just before two o'clock in the wee hours. An ungodly time for man or beast to be up and about—unless that man was with a beast of a woman!

He chuckled to himself as he strode over to his first sergeant, noticing how many of the bone-weary horses had lain down on the slope beside their riders to fall asleep.

“McCarthy,” Parnell whispered. Perry had given his officers strict orders for the utmost silence.

The sergeant turned, snapping a salute as he came round.

“I need you to keep moving 'mong the men,” the lieutenant explained. “Shake 'em, whisper in their ear, kick 'em in their arse if you have to—but help me keep these shavetails awake or it will be our hides.”

“They ain't had decent shut-eye in—”

“You have my orders, Sergeant,” Parnell interrupted. “They must stay awake so we can move out at an instant.”

McCarthy stared east. “Gonna be a while till sunup—”

“You're a damn fine sergeant, McCarthy,” Parnell interrupted, gripping hold of the slim, shorter McCarthy's tunic in his beefy hand. “I've served with many a good fighting man on the Continent and here in Amerikay, but you're one of the finest I've ever had ride into a scrap with me. Don't go mucking things up so I have to put you on report for running away with your mouth. Now be a good soldier and keep these men awake till we jump this village the trackers found up ahead.”

“Yes, sir,” McCarthy replied as Parnell freed him. The sergeant turned and started off down the ragged line where H Company had dismounted and ground-hobbled their horses to remain close at hand; then collapsed into the damp, dewy grass right where they were.

There was grumbling when the first sergeant went through the ranks—to be sure, there was some grumbling. And Parnell knew most of it came from the Irishmen among them, more so than from any of those pig-loving Germans. God knows—they had enough Germans in this man's army, and sure as hell too goddamned many of them in Parnell's H Company!

The big, fleshy lieutenant who could tax the resources of all but the sturdiest of cavalry mounts hungered to fire up his own pipe while they waited here in the dark above this cleft of a narrow canyon. But Perry had issued orders forbidding both fires to boil coffee and light their pipes.
Rightly so,
Parnell brooded. This close to the red buggers, sneaking up on their savage bums the way they had—no telling just how close the colonel's scouts had brought them to the village when the halt was ordered.

Those trackers were out now, feeling their way on down the canyon of White Bird Creek to locate the village before they would return to the battalion with their report. Stopped here in the black gut of a starless night, what troopers were still awake gazed down the steep, grassy slopes that dropped some twenty-six-hundred feet to the bottomland below. This ridge where Perry had ordered this halt until dawn stretched a little more than a mile to the west of that low mountain spur rising south of Grangeville. Nearly barren of timber, the ridge curved abruptly to the south, ending only when it reached the Salmon River. In those intervening seven miles, the undulating terrain descended more sharply at first, then gentled out near the creek bottom.

Pulling a sizable pinch of pipe tobacco from the ever-present leather tobacco pouch he kept stuffed inside his tunic, Parnell stuffed the wad inside his cheek and nestled it with the tip of his tongue. He stifled the cough that came with its bitter taste. Old goddamned shit, this army weed was. Likely been around since the bloody war—

The lieutenant hurtled into motion at that first bright flare of a sulphur-headed lucifer one of the men struck in the blackness at the head of the canyon.

“Snuff it out!”

That was McCarthy's growl Parnell heard as he raced up to the soldier who whipped his hand in the cold air to extinguish the match he had just positioned over his well-worn pipe bowl.

“Goddamn you, soldier!” the lieutenant snarled as he lunged up before the private, finding it to be one of Perry's F Company, a trumpeter who nervously shoved his trumpet and cord behind his left elbow.