After two days, when it appeared that Broken Wing’s patient was not going to make it, Rain Song suddenly began to recover from the severe wound in her side. On the third day, her fever cooled, and she was able to take some nourishment in the form of a thin soup made from prairie turnips and seasoned with some bits of rabbit meat. Although her first three days in the Nez Perce camp were a blur in her mind, she came to recognize the smiling face of Broken Wing, and was conscious of the occasional stern countenance of Two Horses peering down at her.
Broken Wing had done her work well, and before a week had passed, Rain Song was able to sit up by the fire outside the lodge. Her benefactors questioned her extensively, curious about her people and how she happened to be so far from the land of her tribe. Rain Song, reluctant at first to talk of her husband, was eventually worn down by Broken Wing’s insistent questioning, and the Nez Perce woman soon came to know Rain Song’s story. Still burdened with the grief of Little Wolf’s reported death, she held no desire to live without him at her side. But her natural sense of survival dictated a fight for her life as long as Yellow Hand was absent. Broken Wing said nothing to her about her husband’s fearsome nephew, but she overheard Two Horses telling his wife that the girl was Yellow Hand’s property and there was nothing he could do to change that.
As yet another day passed with no sign of the feared Nez Perce scout, Rain Song and Broken Wing began to talk more and more. Two Horses’s wife soon developed a genuine feeling of compassion for the wounded girl, especially when she learned exactly how Rain Song had come to be stabbed. As she felt herself growing stronger each day, Rain Song decided she must escape before Yellow Hand returned to get her. She had no notion as to where she could run. She only knew that she must flee from the reservation village. In her desperation, she also knew that she had to confide in someone, and she sensed that she could trust Broken Wing. It was obvious that Yellow Hand was not held in high regard by Two Horses and Broken Wing. And, while Two Horses hesitated to risk Yellow Hand’s anger, Broken Wing did not. Counting on this, Rain Song told Broken Wing of her plans to escape.
“He will surely come after you,” Broken Wing warned.
“I know, but I will die before I go with him. My only chance is to run.”
Broken Wing studied the young girl’s face for a moment, thinking hard on what she was about to say. “Very well. If you are sure. I will help you. I know of someone who may help you escape, but I will have to go to talk to them first.” She got up to leave. “Say nothing of this to my husband. He is a good man, but he fears Yellow Hand.”
Broken Wing was gone for almost an hour. When she returned, she met Rain Song’s anxious stare with a smile. “They will help you. There is a man here, Wounded Bear. He and his sons have decided to leave the reservation and make their way to King George’s land to the north. With their women and children, there will be this many.” She held up all ten fingers twice. “They say you are welcome to join them.”
Rain Song’s spirits soared. It was the first sign of cheer Broken Wing had seen in her new friend. The Cheyenne girl took Broken Wing’s hands in hers and spoke, almost in a whisper. “Why don’t you and Two Horses come too? This is no place to live.”
Broken Wing smiled but shook her head sadly. “Two Horses would not go. He did not choose to go with Chief Joseph and the rest of our people when they made their brave march to the buffalo country. He says it is useless to resist the white soldiers. They are too many. I miss the old ways, but I must stay with my husband.”
Rain Song was disappointed that Broken Wing would stay, but her heart was light with anticipation of her escape. However, her elation was shattered later that afternoon when Yellow Hand’s surly cousin Hump rode into the circle of tipis. Rain Song and Broken Wing quickly slipped into the tipi to avoid catching the brute’s eye. Sighting Two Horses talking in a group of men, Hump rode directly toward him and dismounted. A few minutes after, Two Horses came to the tipi to tell the women the news.
“Yellow Hand is dead!” He paused a moment for the news to fully register. “The white Cheyenne killed him.” He looked into Rain Song’s eyes, which were wide open in disbelief.
“Little Wolf?” Rain Song gasped. Her eyes even wider, she looked at Broken Wing and then back at Two Horses. “Little Wolf killed him? Then…” She could not finish. Her throat choked with emotion, she simply stared at Broken Wing for a long moment. Finally, when her emotions were under control again, she said, “They told me he was dead!”
Two Horses shook his head. “He is not dead. The soldiers still search for him, and they have sent for a special tracker to hunt him down.”
Before Rain Song could speak again, the flap of the tipi was suddenly thrown aside and Hump pushed into the lodge, startling everyone. He stood in the center of the lodge, staring down at Rain Song, a triumphant sneer etched into the usually thoughtless countenance. “You are my woman now. Get on your feet!”
Broken Wing quickly stepped between him and Rain Song. “She cannot go with you. She is not well yet.” Taking her cue from her friend, Rain Song sank back upon the buffalo robe she was seated on. “She will not be strong enough for several days.”
Hump was undecided. He looked at his uncle, only to meet a blank stare. He returned his gaze to the Cheyenne woman. “She looks well enough to me. I will take her now.”
Broken Wing was adamant. “No. She is too weak to go with you. She cannot cook or work. Wait a few days and she will be strong enough.”
Confusion was written on Hump’s face. He wanted the woman now, but he didn’t relish the thought that he might have to care for her until she was well enough to do his bidding. He stood there saying nothing for what seemed an eternity to Rain Song. Finally he turned back to Broken Wing. “Make her well. I must return to the soldier fort now, but I will be back for her in three days’ time. She is my woman now.” Turning his attention back to Rain Song, he glared down at her. “You are my woman!” He made a gesture to reach for her but Broken Wing intercepted his arm and turned him toward the entrance.
“You go now. She must rest.” The simple brute allowed her to lead him outside. “You must be hungry. Sit down here by the fire and I will get you some food before you go.”
Inside the tipi, Rain Song sat terrified. Moments earlier, she had been elated to hear that her husband was not dead, only to have her hopes dashed to the depths of despair by the ugly savage, Hump. She lay down on the robe, pulling it up around her, afraid to move while Broken Wing and Two Horses played host to their unwelcome guest outside. When he stuck his head inside the entrance for one more look at his prize before leaving, she pretended to be asleep, not moving until Broken Wing came in to tell her he was gone.
Rain Song was immediately up on her feet. “Little Wolf is not dead!” she exclaimed, walking frantically back and forth, oblivious now to the soreness in her side. “Why does he not come for me?”
Broken Wing put her arm around Rain Song’s shoulders, seeking to calm her. “He thinks you are dead. That’s why he doesn’t come for you. Hump said the soldiers think Yellow Hand killed you. That’s the reason he brought you here, to hide you from the soldiers. Yellow Hand was afraid the soldiers would make him give you to them.”
“I must find Little Wolf! He thinks I am dead! Little Wolf…” The words trailed off as a picture formed in her mind of her husband, hunted by the soldiers and thinking her dead, disappearing into the mountains where she could never find him. She could not bear the thought. “I must get away from here!” Frantic, she realized, “I don’t know where to look for him!”
Broken Wing did her best to calm the stricken girl. “The soldiers think he is heading for King George’s country. Wounded Bear is going there with four lodges of his family. You can still travel with them, and maybe Little Wolf will be there.”
Rain Song struggled with her dilemma. She didn’t know what she should do. She was sure that if Little Wolf was truly alive, he must surely think she was dead. Otherwise he would have come for her already. She could not stay in the village, hoping he would come. Hump would be back for her in a few days. There was little choice, she decided. She must leave here with Wounded Bear and hope to find her husband in the land to the north.
* * *
“You sent for me, Sir?”
Brice Paxton put aside the army Colt he had been cleaning. “Yeah, Baskin.” It registered in his mind that the sergeant did not salute when he reported. Not that Brice cared—Baskin never saluted unless reporting to the colonel. Brice supposed Baskin figured his years of service added up to equal status with any lieutenant. It rankled Paul Simmons a little, but Brice laughed about it. “Get the troop ready to ride on an extended detail. Draw rations and grain for twenty days.”
“What’s up?”
“A band of about twenty or so left the reservation. The agent thinks they’re trying to head to Canada. We’ve got to go after them and bring ’em back.”
“Who are they? I mean, men, women, who?”
“The colonel said it was ol’ Wounded Bear and most of his family. Probably only about six or seven men. The rest are women and children.”
Baskin scratched his chin whiskers. “That don’t sound like it oughta take twenty days.”
“I hope it doesn’t. But they’ve got a full day’s start on us. We didn’t find out about it until today and the agent said he figures they’ve been gone since sometime yesterday.”
“Light marching orders?”
Brice paused to consider. “Yeah, except they can carry cooking utensils. One blanket and a hundred rounds of ammunition per man. No tents: Hell, the weather is warm enough to sleep outside.”
Baskin nodded after each item called out. “How many Injun scouts we taking?”
“Take Charlie Rain Cloud. Let him pick two others.” Brice started to leave but Brice stopped him. “Tell him I don’t want that damn Hump. I can’t depend on that moody brute. He’s dumber ‘n a stump.”
Baskin nodded and said, “I don’t think he’s in camp anyway. I saw him riding out earlier this morning.”
* * *
It was a little past noon when the column of twenty-eight regulars, headed by Brice Paxton, filed out of the fenced area of Fort Lapwai and struck out for the Nez Perce reservation. Brice planned to bivouac near the village that night and start early the next morning on Wounded Bear’s trail.
There had been no rain for a week, so it was a dry and dusty column of troopers that made camp that night across the shallow creek from the gathering of Indian lodges. It was still light enough to see, so Brice and Sergeant Baskin, along with Charlie Rain Cloud, rode over to the circle of tipis to question the Indians. Two Horses and Broken Wing were among a small gathering that stood silently watching the soldiers approach. Brice noticed that Broken Wing’s lip was bruised and swollen. Upon coming closer, he could see that it also had been bleeding. He knew Two Horses to be a kind man and didn’t think him likely to be a wife beater. Aside from that, he knew Broken Wing too and, if Two Horses beat her, she would probably have shoved a knife between his ribs. He raised his hand in greeting. Two Horses nodded in recognition. Broken Wing made no reply.
“What happened to you?” Brice asked in sign and laid his finger on his lip.
Broken Wing flushed, embarrassed. Then, with the hint of a spark in her tone, she answered, “Hump.”
“Hump?” He looked quickly beyond the group of Indians, half expecting to spot the surly Nez Perce scout. But he was nowhere to be seen. He told Charlie Rain Cloud to ask Two Horses what happened. While Charlie talked to Two Horses and his wife, Brice walked over to where Baskin was standing, looking at a wide open space in the line of tipis. There were four worn-out circles where Wounded Bear’s lodges had stood. As they were speculating on how long it had been since the lodges were taken down, Charlie rejoined them.
“Hump was here today but he’s gone after Wounded Bear already.”
Brice was startled by this bit of information. “Gone after him? You mean he’s running too?”
Charlie went on to explain that the Cheyenne woman had been in the camp, recovering from a severe wound. It was Yellow Hand’s doing but, with Yellow Hand’s death, Hump figured the woman belonged to him. He had gone to overtake them and get the woman back.
“That lying son of a bitch,” Brice said, thinking of Yellow Hand. “He snatched the woman and hid her out here somewhere after all.” He pictured the frightened little Cheyenne woman as he had last seen her, locked in the room behind the hospital, her only crime the fact that she was an Indian. And now these two Indian scouts were passing her around like she was a piece of property. She deserved better than that—any woman did. Brice shook his head slowly as if to clear the picture from his mind, turned to Sergeant Baskin, and said, “Too late to do anything else tonight. We’ll pull out at sunup.”
Approximately twenty miles north of the cavalry bivouac, Wounded Bear had made camp near the banks of a deep stream still swollen with runoff from the mountains above. The valley they were passing through was split at the north end by a river that forked a few hundred yards above his chosen campsite. Wounded Bear saw to his horses while the women started their cookfires. He turned to see his eldest daughter’s husband approaching, a short, blocky man named Blue Otter.
“We have not gotten far since leaving the reservation,” Blue Otter started. “If we don’t make better time, the soldiers will be after us before we get to the land of the Salish.”
Wounded Bear nodded solemnly to the younger man. “I know. But we don’t have horses for everyone so we must do the best we can. I think it will be several days before the soldiers know we are gone. If the spirits are with us, we may cross over the mountains before they catch us.”
Blue Otter did not always agree with his father-in-law on matters pertaining to their escape to Canada. “I know you have said we will hold to the western fork of the river and find a new way through the mountains, and that is a good plan. But I wonder if it wouldn’t be quicker to take the east fork and strike the old trail to the buffalo country.”
Wounded Bear patiently reiterated his reasoning to his young son-in-law. “I think what you say is true. That way might be quicker. But it would be quicker for the soldiers too. That way is an old trail, and they would expect us to go the way hunters have always gone. If we take the west fork, we may be able to lose them in the mountains.”
Blue Otter nodded his head in understanding. “You are probably right.”
Blue Otter said nothing more, but Wounded Bear knew the brash young warrior still questioned the wisdom of the older man’s decision. Like most young men, Blue Otter was in favor of taking the quickest route, no matter the dangers. As it turned out, the decision would be made for them.
Rain Song, strong enough now to help Wounded Bear’s wife prepare the food, was busily making a corn paste to fry over the fire when Wounded Bear returned from the horses. She waited for the old man to situate himself before the fire before she spoke.
“I am much stronger today. I think tomorrow I will be able to walk with the other women.” Rain Song knew the horse she doubled on with Wounded Bear’s wife was poor and almost broken down. If she continued to ride, the animal would not make it through the mountains with the two of them.
By his expression, she could tell her words were good news to the old chief. But he only nodded and said, “We shall see what the new day brings.” Hers was not the only horse that was in bad shape. It had been a hard winter. The grass was lush now in the early days of summer, but the horses had not had time to fatten up from winter because of the poor quality of the grass on the reservation. Wounded Bear knew they were not in any condition to make a run for it and that was another reason for not choosing to take a trail familiar to the soldiers. He needed time to rest the horses. He might have chosen to wait until later in the summer to make their escape, but all the people at the reservation were ready to leave then. For that reason, the soldiers were much more alert to the possibility of their flight.
The old man’s thoughts were interrupted by a shout from one of the warriors. Someone was coming. He immediately got to his feet and looked around to see where he had laid his old Henry rifle. Finding it propped up against a willow, he grabbed it and ran to the edge of the stream. In the fading light, he could just make out a single rider, approaching at a gallop across the grassy floor of the valley. Upon seeing the people gathering at the streambank, the rider called out when still a hundred yards away, and they recognized the greeting as Nez Perce. It was not until the rider splashed through the stream and bounded up the bank that Wounded Bear recognized Hump.
He was immediately alarmed. The presence of Hump could only mean bad news of one kind or another. Hump was on the payroll of the army as a scout. Was a column of soldiers close behind? Or was he here because of the Cheyenne woman? Hump did not make him wait long before declaring the purpose of his visit.
“Where is the woman?” he demanded, stepping down from the saddle even before his horse had fully halted. When no one spoke, he lashed out at a young man standing closest to him with his whip, laying a raw welt across the unfortunate man’s neck. The young man recoiled from the stinging blow and gathered himself to retaliate. Hump quickly leveled his rifle at the young man’s stomach and gestured for the man to come at him.
“No!” Wounded Bear shouted and stepped between the two. He knew the savage Hump would not hesitate to kill the young man, and Wounded Bear needed every man he had. With anger blazing in his eyes, he turned to his nephew. “Why do you come here, making war on your own people? Have you no honor? Have the soldiers made you their camp dog, as they did Yellow Hand?”
Hump ignored his chastising. “Where is the woman? She belongs to me.” A movement beyond the campfire caught his eye and he turned in time to see a woman disappear into the darkness, running toward the horses grazing close by. Without hesitation, he leaped on his horse and charged after her.
Rain Song ran for her life. Her only chance was to reach the horses and escape in the dark. Ignoring the sharp pain that stabbed her side with each step she took, she strained as hard as her body would permit. Almost immediately, she heard the thunder of hooves bearing down upon her, louder and louder until they seemed to be almost on top of her. The closest horse in the grazing herd was still a long twenty yards away. She felt the impact of Hump’s horse as he slammed into her. Like a boulder, the solid blow from the horse’s chest sent her rolling head over heels in the knee-high grass. Before she could recover her senses, Hump dismounted and was on top of her.
“You are my woman,” he hissed and laid his whip upon her bare legs a dozen times, leaving bloody welts each time it kissed her flesh. Subdued, and too hurt and frightened to fight back, she tried to cover her head with her arms and submitted to the beating.
When he had exhausted some of his anger, he reached down and grabbed a handful of her dress and pulled her up on her feet. He pulled a length of rawhide rope from his saddle pack and bound her hands together. Then he threw her up on his horse as easily as lifting a sack of flour, and led the animal back through the silent gathering of people. The thought of putting a bullet into the brutish scout entered the minds of more than one of the braves there, but none dared. Hump was feared as much as Yellow Hand had been. Of the handful of men there, only old Wounded Bear dared to speak out against him.
“Why don’t you leave her alone? The woman does not want to go with you.” Hump turned to face him, an angry scowl on his face. Wounded Bear was not intimidated. “She already has a husband. Leave her with us and go back to your soldier friends.”
The muscles in Hump’s arm tensed. He thought about giving Wounded Bear a taste of his whip, but he restrained himself. “This is none of your affair,” he said, his voice threatening. “She is a Cheyenne, a slave. She belongs to me. I will kill any man who stands in my way.” His rifle in one hand, he pulled himself up behind Rain Song and kicked his horse hard, disappearing into the night.
Wounded Bear was truly sorry to see the Cheyenne woman carried off by this savage bully. Had he been younger, he might have defied Hump, but he didn’t blame the young men in his band for not resisting. After all, Rain Song was a captured Cheyenne. Maybe Hump did have some justification in his claim of ownership. Anyway, it was over and done. The brute had what he wanted. Wounded Bear had more important things to occupy his mind at the moment. Blue Otter was right—it was imperative that they make better time on the trail tomorrow.
* * *
Brice had his men in the saddle before sunup. There was a great deal of grumbling among the troopers, but Brice intended to overtake the runaways before they had an opportunity to cross the mountains into the Flathead Valley. He drove the men hard, keeping them in the saddle all day, stopping only at dark to rest the horses. The trail was easy enough to follow so they were able to make forty miles that day. When camp was made that night on the west fork of the river, he sent Charlie Rain Cloud on ahead to scout the next morning’s trail for a few miles. When Charlie returned, he reported that he had seen cookfires in the bluffs, no more than four or five miles ahead.
“We caught ’em,” Sergeant Baskin announced, upon hearing Charlie’s report. “I didn’t figure we’d need twenty days’ rations to catch up with this bunch.”
“We haven’t got ’em back to the reservation yet,” Brice responded. “What does the trail look like up ahead, Charlie?”
The scout shrugged his shoulders. “Not bad. They follow river pretty close.”
Already knowing what his lieutenant was considering, Baskin said, “There’s gonna be a moon tonight, almost a full moon.”
Brice nodded. “Looks like a perfect evening for a night march. Sergeant, let the men have fires tonight but keep ’em small. After the horses are rested for a few hours, we’ll move up to within a mile or two of their camp and hit ’em in the morning.”
* * *
A light mist rose from the river and Quill shivered in the chilly morning air that settled in the narrow valley. She tapped her fingers impatiently while she waited for the water bag to fill. Looking back at the camp, she realized that she was the first to rise. This pleased her. She liked to be awake and cooking Blue Otter’s breakfast before the other women crawled out from their warm blankets. Blue Otter would brag about his hardworking wife.
Her water bag filled, she climbed up the steep bank and started toward her cookfire, which was already blazing with the limbs she placed on the coals only minutes before. She paused to listen. A soft thundering sound came to her from across the river. The horses are running, she thought, someone is stealing the horses! She ran to the edge of the bluff and looked beyond to the grassy meadow. The horses were not running—they were still there where the men had left them to graze the night before. As she looked at them, first one and then another, they pitched their heads up and whinnied, aware of the presence of strange horses.
Quill dropped her water bag and screamed out in alarm, for she realized then what the thundering hoofs were. At almost the same moment she screamed, the first shots rang out. As she ran to alert the others, she saw the first line of cavalry plunging across the river, their horses struggling to climb the steep bank.
Brice, at the head of his charging troopers, had given the order to shoot for effect only. His intention was to surprise the Indians and demoralize them with a sudden show of force, without killing anyone if possible. His job was to bring them back to the reservation, and his plan might have been successful but for the unforeseen steepness of the river banks. As his horse struggled and pawed to gain the top of the bank, he saw other horses sliding backward and falling on both sides of him, dumping their riders into the chilly water. The troopers behind, seeing their comrades tumbling, thought their horses were brought down by rifle fire from the Indian camp. Consequently, they returned fire, no longer shooting into the air but aiming at the fleeing figures now running to the safety of the bluffs behind them.
Brice, fighting hard to keep his horse from sliding into the water, managed to gain the far bank along with a handful of his men. He was forced to lose valuable time and waste the element of surprise while he waited for the rest of the column to ford the river. During that period of perhaps ten minutes, not one shot was fired by the Indian camp as they ran for cover. By the time at least half of Brice’s patrol had regrouped, the Nez Perces were safely positioned in the gullies and cuts in the bluffs, and were now returning fire.
Sergeant Baskin pulled up beside Brice. He was soaked to the skin from a dunking in the river. “You want to charge and run ’em out of there?” The sergeant had let his anger override his common sense.
“Shit no,” Brice responded, “I don’t need to lose half the men charging those bluffs.” It was bad enough that his original plan had been bungled. Now he was in a skirmish.
Baskin was still hot. He would rather have been shot than take a bath and he was eager to make someone pay for it. “Well, what the hell do you aim to do?” When Brice cocked his head around and locked a cold eye on him, he added, “Sir.”
“We don’t have much choice.” Standing up in the stirrups, he yelled, “Dismount! Send the horses back out of range along the riverbank.” He then had Baskin set up a perimeter fronting the gullies to keep the renegades pinned down in the bluffs. As the handlers collected the mounts and led them out of the line of fire, the rest of the men scurried about, finding cover anywhere they could, some scratching out hasty rifle pits in the sand. Brice deployed eight of his troopers between the hostiles and their horses.
From early morning until just before noon, the troopers kept a steady rain of gunfire on the Indian positions. Brice figured the renegades could not repel them if he ordered a charge, but he knew he would take casualties if he did. And he still wanted to avoid killing any Indians if he could. He counted on the half dozen or so rifles among the Indians running out of ammunition before long, forcing them to finally surrender. So Brice kept them pinned down and waited for the inevitable.
In the gullies, things were not going well for Wounded Bear’s band. The old chief had caught a bullet in his side during the flight into the bluffs. One of the younger men had been killed trying to get to the pony herd, leaving only five of them to defend their families. Although the wound pained him badly, Wounded Bear fired his rifle until the old Henry jammed with dirt in the magazine and he was forced to lie back and let the others shoot what little ammunition they had left.
It soon became apparent that they could hold out no longer. The sun was almost in the middle of the sky and pretty soon the soldiers would realize there had been no shots fired at them for some time. Wounded Bear counciled his young warriors to save a few bullets to use only if the soldiers charged. “We are finished. We have women and children to think about. I think we must surrender.”
Blue Otter alone protested the decision. “I will not go back to the reservation. I will die first!”
Wounded Bear understood his son-in-law’s anguish, but he had concern for his daughters and his grandson. “It is not for me to say what another man must do. If I were younger, I might feel as you do. But how will you escape? We are cut off from our horses. The soldiers will surely kill you if you try to run.”
Blue Otter had been looking for an escape route from the moment he pulled his family into the deep gully. He discovered a likely exit from the trap they found themselves in when he spotted another gully, separated from the one they were in by no more than three feet of clay bank. The second gully ran perpendicular to theirs and led down to the river. While he fired his rifle at the soldiers, Blue Otter told his son to pick away at the dirt between the two gullies with his knife.
Everything fell silent. The soldiers had stopped firing. They sensed an order was soon to come to attack the Indians’ position, since there had been no return fire from the Nez Perces for fully a half hour. Blue Otter knew there was no time left. “I speak for only myself and my family. We can crawl through this hole and follow the gully down to the river. If others want to come, I welcome them, but I and my family will certainly go.”
“How will you get to your horses? The soldiers will kill you.”
“We will go on foot. I would sooner walk to Canada than go back to that reservation of slow death.”
None among the others chose to slip out of the trap with Blue Otter. He waited as long as he thought prudent before gathering what belongings he had been able to salvage when the soldiers attacked. Wounded Bear embraced his daughters and grandson and then bid them a solemn farewell. Tears streamed down his daughters’ faces as they dutifully followed Blue Otter through the opening fashioned by his son. Wounded Bear watched them until they could no longer be seen from his place at the head of the chasm. Then he crawled back to the lower end of the gully to watch the soldiers’ position. There was no indication that the troops had seen Blue Otter escape.
Back near the banks of the river, Brice signaled for Sergeant Baskin. When Baskin made his way over to the lieutenant’s position, he dropped down on a knee, still keeping a wary eye on the bluffs. Brice looked at his watch. “It’s been over thirty minutes now with nothing from those gullies. I think we’ve waited long enough. Let’s go get ’em outta there.”
“Wait!” Baskin blurted and Brice turned back toward the bluffs to find a white cloth waving on a rifle barrel protruding from one of the gullies. “Looks like this little picnic is over.”
Once the Indian ponies were rounded up, and the wounded and dead were loaded on travois, the troop started back to Lapwai with four good hours of daylight left. Wounded Bear, mortally injured, had made his last attempt to regain the life of freedom he had been born into. The wound in his side eventually became infected and he was to die within two weeks of his return to the reservation. Back in a willow thicket by the river, Blue Otter, his wife, her sister, and his son hid until the column was out of sight. They then crossed the river and started making their way toward the mountains on foot.