Thunder Rolling in the Mountains

  Nine

  WITHOUT FEAR we followed the creek into Bitterroot Valley. Our march slowed. The scouts no longer searched the trail for signs of Blue Coats. We moved through the valley, trading gold dust and horses for supplies. The settlers seemed friendly. The shopkeepers opened their stores and sold us flour and coffee, sugar and tobacco. They sold us heavy cloth to make tipis, for some of our people had left their buffalo robes on the other side of the mountains. We saw no soldiers. As we rode along, settlers waved at us and wished us well.

  Yet my father's heart seemed to grow heavier with each step of his horse's hoofs. We were moving farther and farther from the Land of the Wandering Waters.

  Digging my heels into the sides of my spotted pony, I rode to his side. His eyes looked at the line of trees where the sky met the earth, but he did not see them. There was pain in his gaze.

  "Are we safe, Father?" I asked.

  "Safe for now," he answered without turning his head. "We have left the war behind us in Montana with our enemies. But we will never see our home again. My heart is sick, and I fear to die in a strange land, far from the bones of my father and mother."

  "We can still fight," I said. "The blood of our people has been shed, and the young men are ready to die in battle."

  My words made him look at me. "Do not talk like that," he said. "The white settlers are like the sands of the river. No matter how many we kill, more come. Our warriors would die and so would many of those who do not fight. And who would care for our women and children when the warriors are dead? They would still be far from home. We must protect our women and children, even if it means we are strangers in the land."

  His mouth made a straight line. His words came like a sigh. "We will go on to the land of the Crows," he said. "There we can hunt buffalo and replenish our herds. The Blue Coats do not bother the Crow."

  At first I was sad. Then like a ray of sunlight, a thought came into my head. If the war was really over, Two Moons would let the marriage go forward. I began to feel happy. When we reached the Crows, Swan Necklace could find colored earths and paint our marriage blanket. Then we could have our own dpi. When my father felt better, I would speak to him about it.

  I dropped back to ride with the children. I showed them the squirrels scampering up the trees and leaping from limb to limb. I pointed out the hawks that hung high in the sky and the woodchucks sitting beside their holes. I called out when we passed patches of ripening blackberries. I told them about the wire strung on poles beside the trail.

  "See the silver wire," I said. "It talks all day and night. It sings like a lark, sending the settlers' words from one town to the next."

  The children's laughter rang out for the first time since we left Salmon Creek. They did not believe that a wire could send talk across the miles. I found it hard to believe myself, but my father had told me about the click-clack. He said that the clicks ran through the wire like evil spirits, telling the one-armed general which trails we took and where we camped each night.

  Swan Necklace joined us. We rode side by side, our legs touching. I looked at Swan Necklace and thought about our marriage and my cheeks turned scarlet.

  To hide my embarrassment, I told the children stories about Coyote, the trickster with magic powers. One of their favorite stories was about the time Coyote created the tribes. One summer in the days before there were people, Coyote learned that a fearsome monster was eating all the animals. Coyote went to the river where the monster lived and let the terrible creature eat him, too. Once Coyote was inside the monster's belly, he started a fire. With a stone knife, he cut the monster's heart from its body. As the monster lay dying, Coyote slashed open its belly and freed all the animals.

  Coyote cut the monster's body into pieces and flung them across the land. Each piece of bloody flesh became a tribe. One piece became Flathead. Another became Crow. Another, Sioux. Another, Assiniboin. Another, Blackfoot. Another, Kutenai. Another, Bannock. Another, Cayuse. Another, Paiute.

  All the pieces were gone when Fox told Coyote that he had forgotten to throw a piece of the monster in the land beside the river where he had killed it. Coyote picked up the monster's heart and sprinkled the land with its rich blood. The drops of blood became Ne-mee-poo, the real people. Coyote never threw away the monster's heart and liver. To this day, you can see them, two huge stone mounds, in the center of our country.

  Another time Coyote and Black Bear got into a ferocious argument. Coyote was busy fishing when the argument started. He became so angry that he marched out of the river and threw his fishnet way up the hill. Then he grabbed Black Bear by the scruff of the neck and shook him hard, saying he'd teach the bear not to bother him while he was fishing. He picked up Black Bear and threw him against the hill on the other side of the river, using his magic powers to turn the bear into stone. And there they remain to this day, high above the Clearwater, the net on one bank of the river and the bear on the other.

  I told stories until the shadows fell and we came to a halt. We had been in the valley for ten suns.

  Ten

  WE HAD COME to a second vast valley of brush and willows and tall white trees. A clear stream ran silently from one far shore to another, a day's slow journey on horseback. Blossoms were scattered through the tall grass waving beside the water. We were tired from our long travels and the old people stumbled at every step they took. But the Red Coats strode through the camp with their chests out and their red jackets taunting those who would dare to stop them.

  Looking Glass said we would stay at this place for three suns. Here we would cut tipi poles and let them dry. Birch trees with tall, smooth trunks grew everywhere along the shores. They were the best trees for tipi poles. Our women cut down stacks of the saplings, peeled them clean, and set them out to dry in the sun. Without them we would have had to sleep beneath the stars. We would need the poles during the rest of our flight.

  We gathered food to eat along the way. The warriors hunted antelope and black-tailed deer, and the old men caught fish. The women dug roots. No one thought of the white soldiers we had left behind in Montana. No one except Lone Bird, one of our brave warriors.

  He rode through the camp, telling the chiefs that we must stay on the trail. "I do not trust the Blue Coats," he said. "Maybe they are close behind us. Keep going. Move fast. Death may be following on our trail."

  Wah-lit-its agreed. He told of his dream. "Last night I saw myself killed. I do not turn back from death, but first I will kill some soldiers. My brothers, my sisters, I am telling you, we are all going to die."

  He offered to take the Red Coats and scout back along the trail.

  White Bird said that was good, but Looking Glass told Wah-lit-its to hunt antelope instead. "The Blue Coats are far away across the mountains," he said. "Our horses are weary and need rest. This is a peaceful place, and here we are safe. Your dream was idle fancy, no more."

  We forgot Lone Bird's warning and Wah-lit-its's dream. When the hunters came back, it was a happy night. For supper we ate speckled trout and camas roots baked in ashes and the last of the huckleberries we had picked along the way.

  Swan Necklace polished his boots and put bear grease on his hair. He fairly glistened. He said kind words about my eagle-feather and goose-quill jacket and the blue-beaded band I wore around my forehead. But he was so full of his part in battle that he could talk of little else.

  I was proud of him. To please him I said, "You'll be a chieftain after just one more battle with the Blue Coats."

  "They'll come sneaking along again in a few days and I'll kill some more."

  Children made ugly masks of the dead soldiers with eyes hanging down on their cheeks and pieces of ear cut off. They dug holes and buried the masks deep and laughed and hummed secret songs that they made up.

  Our ponies and mules were tethered above the stream, where they could be watched during the night. Sentries were placed on the crests of the valley but not enough of them. The camp slept well. In the willows frogs croak
ed their night song. A child screamed and dogs barked. A woman who had been wounded at White Bird moaned. Those were all the sounds I heard before daybreak.

  The sky was cold gray when I woke from a troubled sleep and crawled out of the tipi. I had picked up a pot to fill with water for the morning meal when the first shot crossed the stream. It came from a tree close behind me.

  Wah-lit-its, wrapped in his long red coat, had gone out to see that the herd was still safely tied up. He marched along the shore with a warrior's step. A second bullet struck him in the back and knocked him down. He was the one who had killed Richard Devine and started the war, and the enemy knew it.

  Wah-lit-its crawled to the stream. He was falling in the water when his wife came out of their dpi. She was heavy with the child she would bear him and walked slowly. She caught him in her arms and held him until he gave one long gasp and was dead.

  The man who had killed Wah-lit-its stood over her, saying something I could not hear, putting bullets in his smoking gun. The next bullet struck her in the chest. She staggered but made no sound. Somehow she got the gun from him and took careful aim and shot him in the face. Then she sank to the ground and died.

  My father lurched from his bed and ran outside. He thrust my baby sister into my arms. The air was filled with shouts and war whoops and the cries of children, cut through by the sound of shooting. Bullets tore through the camp like hailstones. Fires burned along the shore from one tipi to another. Women with children clutching their skirts and babies on their backs ran out of the tipis screaming. My father told them to leave the stream and hide on the hillside in the brush. By this time all the tipis were burning. My mother ran out with her braided hair on fire.

  Some of the women tried to hide in the stream, but it was too shallow and their heads stuck out of the water. Soldiers shot at their heads and killed all except a child who was able to crawl along the bottom and grasp some willows along the shore.

  Our warriors drove the soldiers back across the stream and through the willows. Then Looking Glass gathered our warriors and scattered them through the bottom between the stream and the far hills. They dug pits, set up carbines, and built rock walls high enough to shoot over and not to be shot at by the soldiers.

  Their guns were not new, and their soft bullets got stuck in the barrels and the barrels exploded. They had no food and it was hard to reach the stream without being shot. Yet from the hour Looking Glass put them in the pits, they fought until the gun barrels melted.

  At nightfall Chief Joseph went to the dirt pits and counted. He found thirty-one of our people dead and twenty-six badly wounded. Most of the dead and wounded were women, old men, and children. Some had been shot as they slept, still rolled in their blankets. Some had been clubbed by the soldiers when they charged the camp at dawn. We lost twelve warriors. Red Moccasin Tops was dead, killed by a bullet that struck him in the throat. Of the Red Coats, only Swan Necklace lived.

  My father could not count the enemy soldiers who were slain and wounded in the hills, but our warriors said that the Blue Coats lay thick upon the ground. Lean Elk, who had joined us only a few suns before, fought valiantly. He led a group that seized the soldiers' cannon, broke it, and pushed it into the swamp. They captured enough bullets to fight many battles. Yet we had taken a loss we dared not suffer another day.

  Fighting stopped when the night hawks began to fly. Swan Necklace and I held hands and talked about the day we would be married and live once more in beautiful Wallowa. We watched two girls combing their wet hair. They had spent most of the day in the stream, swimming in the shallows and coming up to breathe.

  Then I went to help with the wounded. My mother had been hit as she ran for the stream, her hair in flames. We fought for her life all night there by the water. My father held her in his arms, away from the smoldering camp and the starlit sky, to the world beyond. When she died, my father said, "Will this hatred ever end? It sickens my heart. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. Yet we shoot one another down like animals."

  Eleven

  WITH SICK HEARTS, we packed in the dark to leave. Four of our best warriors lay dead. Besides Wah-lit-its and Red Moccasin Tops, we had lost Rainbow and Five Wounds. Only a few families were not mourning a lost relative. The Blue Coats were pinned in rifle pits among the trees and could not see our camp. A dozen of our warriors kept them busy fighting so we could get away.

  My father was in charge of our escape. He rounded up the horses and we got ready to go. We pulled down the tipis that had not burned and used the poles to make travois for the badly wounded. With my baby sister on my back, I helped put Fair Land, Ollokot's wife, on a travois. She was near death, but Ollokot was still fighting and could not be with her.

  Those whose wounds were not dangerous, we tied onto ponies. I helped White Feather onto her horse. She made a face from pain as I boosted her into the saddle. Early in the fighting, a bullet struck her in the shoulder. It knocked her to the ground and made her dizzy. She grabbed at something to pull herself up. It was the boot of a Blue Coat. He smashed his rifle butt into her face. The blow split her lip and broke one of her front teeth. Her lip was swollen and she was no longer pretty, but she would live.

  Before we started off, we buried many of our dead. As we wrapped them in soft buffalo robes, we wailed songs of mourning. The sounds pierced the air as our loss pierced our hearts. With each one, we buried some of that person's prized possessions—a flute, a necklace, bracelets of copper wire, an embroidered headband. When I helped bury my beautiful mother, my tears fell hot on her wrappings. With knives we dug shallow graves in little ravines along the riverbank. There we placed our dead and pulled earth over them.

  Chief Joseph led the women, children, old men, and the rest of our warriors away from Big Hole. White Bird, who was too old to fight, rode with us. The other chiefs stayed to fight. We left many buffalo robes and much food. Our things were scattered on the ground.

  We traveled toward the low, rolling hills, then swung south toward the mountains. As we moved away, the sounds of battle grew faint. In the gray dawn, a broad path stretched behind us where our ponies' feet trampled the grass. The travois poles made furrows in the ground. Our warriors would find it easy to follow.

  The morning mists cleared and the summer sun beat down upon us. Clouds of dust rose around the travois. We stopped often to shade the eyes of our wounded and to wet their parched lips. After a long half-sun, we halted at a little stream shaded by willows. The sun was still in the sky, but our wounded could travel no farther.

  That night Fair Land died. My father held her hand as she died and he grieved with me. We grieved for my mother, too. As the spirit of Ollokot's wife entered the afterworld, we saw my mother die again.

  My father sighed deeply. "We never make war on women and children," he said. "But the Blue Coats kill our women and children first. That is a shameful way to fight."

  The war no longer stirred me. Before this we had beaten the Blue Coats with little trouble. Few of our people had been killed. But now we lost many. My heart was wrenched out of me. I feared for Swan Necklace and I feared for my people.

  But I could not think about my fears. Bending Willow cried for my mother and for my mother's milk. I fed her soft mush but she spat it out and cried harder. Then Deer Woman knelt by my side. Her baby had been killed by the Blue Coats. She picked up Bending Willow and held her close, letting her drink the milk that her own baby no longer needed.

  We slept little that night. There were many wounded to care for. I carried water, changed bandages, and fed camas mush to those who could eat. I comforted those who cried out in pain.

  In the morning, as we were packing the horses, the warriors rode into camp. Swan Necklace was safe.

  "Do not fear for me," he said. "Bullets cannot kill me as long as I have my war whistle."

  When he went into battle, he sounded his war whistle. It was made from the wing bone of a crane and its piercing cry called Swan Necklace's guardian spirit t
o protect him.

  "Red Moccasin Tops lies dead," I answered.

  "His guardian spirit protected him only from wounds on his body," said Swan Necklace. "He was shot in the throat."

  "And Wah-lit-its? And Rainbow? And all our other brave warriors who lie dead?"

  "Perhaps Wah-lit-its was shot before he could pick up his charm of weasel skin and raven feathers," said Swan Necklace. "Rainbow's guardian spirit protected him in battle only after sunrise. Then he could walk among his enemies. He was struck while the sky was dark."

  I wondered at his words and prayed to the Great Spirit Chief to protect him.

  We buried Fair Land with her elk-hide dress that she wore on feast days and a shell necklace from the Land of the Great Waters. We wailed songs of grief for her.

  Before we left our camp, the War Council met once more. Looking Glass was in disgrace. He had failed the people.

  "We have traveled too slowly and have been too careless," said White Bird. "We cannot fight again. If we kill one soldier, a thousand will take his place. But if we lose one warrior, there is no one to take his place."

  The council heard his words and chose a new leader. It was Lean Elk, a young warrior with a tight mouth and burning eyes. At noon he sent us south with his burning gaze.

  Twelve

  LEAN ELK kept us on the move. Warriors rode at the head of our band and in the rear. The women, children, and old men rode in the middle with our extra horses. We were on our ponies before daybreak and traveled until the sun was halfway up the sky. Then we stopped to cook a meal. The ponies grazed while we rested. Then we got back into the saddle and traveled again until long after dark. Each sun we journeyed far.

  More of our wounded died. Gray Eagle, the father of White Feather, died after three suns. One old woman who had been hit in the belly stayed behind to die alone. She said she could go no farther on a travois. I believe that she felt she slowed our march and endangered the tribe. We laid her in the shade of a willow and left food and a bottle of water beside her.