The Dying Grass, page 41
and his stare burning deeper as he invades my eyes while denying me his,
why does he glare so brazenly at me?
(big round eyes in a little round face—O yes, he’s just a little fellow—prettied up with a feather headdress, white shell earrings, a gorget of long white bone-beads, and then many, many necklace-loops spilling down his chest, some of them pendanted with shell-beads
and that feathered whistle round his neck: does Jim know what that means?)
yes, him on his fine yellow horse—
he’d better not reach for anything or I’ll
Captain, this one’s a good Indian for sure.
That’s fine, Jim. Lieutenant, tell the men to unhorse and fan out across the hilltop.
Yes, sir.
Jim, tell your friend Peo Peo that he’s got to bring Looking-Glass over here, and that’s how it is.
He says, he rides now to Looking-Glass.
Jim, here’s my field-glass. Watch where he goes. I’m counting on you to discover which tipi Looking-Glass is in.
I’ll try my best, captain.
They wait, Whipple slowly wiping his palms on the hem of his filthy canvas frock, and down across the river are only cows and horses now, and that Nez Perce warrior (whom he must certainly have spied last winter) slowly fording the brown river, which is dark and white between the grassed hills which dwindle to the east. To the west, the river seems blue with leaping lines of light.
D——n me if he doesn’t take his time! I’d like to send a lead reminder up his ass.
If he rides quick, we might say he’s afraid. That’s the reason, captain.
Shut up unless I ask you something, Jim. Did you hear?
Sure, captain.
Lieutenant, you stay here with Jim while I see how the men are doing. As soon as that Indian comes back, you let me know.
I sure will, sir. Jim, don’t mind what the captain said to you just now. He’s always edgy before a battle.
Don’t worry, lieutenant, I didn’t pay it no mind,
watching the brown river,
closed-up tipis
and a brass kettle boiling in deserted ashes
(Jim touching his weasel-skin bracelet),
golden grass going greyish-white in the rising sun,
as a horse gnaws at his hobble
and
Here they come, lieutenant. Two reds.
Sergeant, go tell the captain.
Yes, sir.
Who’s that with him? Is that Looking-Glass?
(—as slow as the schoolhouse clock on a summer day—)
I don’t believe so, lieutenant. That other man holds a white pole. Looking-Glass wouldn’t do that himself.
Well, boys, looks like he’s in the bag!
Yes, sir, but Jim believes it’s not Looking-Glass.
Lieutenant Shelton, Jim, mount your horses. Lieutenant Rains, assume command. Keep the men ready. If we cross the river, wait thirty minutes. If there’s no signal from us by that time, commence the attack.
Yes, sir.
Synchronize watches. I don’t want you shooting us in fifteen minutes.
Seven-forty.
Seven-forty.
Good luck, lieutenant. Lieutenant Shelton, let’s go. Just down into the swale. This is far enough. Let them come the rest of the way to us. Who’s that other Indian, Jim?
Don’t know, sir.
Is he an important chief, at least?
Nope.
Ask him why he didn’t bring Looking-Glass.
Peopeo Tholekt says, Looking-Glass is my chief! I bear you his words. He comes here to escape the war. Do not cross to our side of the river. We want no trouble with you at all. Peopeo Tholekt says—
Cut it short, you villain. Jim, tell him to take us to Looking-Glass
and the wet green leaves
and our horses mincing across the shallow cool water
(Umatilla Jim’s horse wants to drink, but he reins up its head),
the tipis enlarging,
Nez Perces emerging,
unsmiling,
and the sun hot on our necks
and
a shot (whose echoes resemble ripples):
Pim,
pimpimpim,
cunning, well aimed, premeditated, hence almost certainly from one of the Mount Idaho volunteers, takes off an old woman’s head: lightning-flash of skull as white as the waterline of the Snake River, then currants crushed in an invisible hand—
GODd——nit! Back across the creek! Ride, ride; gallop like the DEVIL!
. . . women screaming (the braver squaws now running for the horses)
and the first return shot,
which brings about the chittering of the Gatlings down through the tipis
and the Indians running into the trees:
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!
I couldn’t control them, captain—
So I see. Cease firing! Cease firing! Company “L,” you shitheads, if Looking-Glass gets away, you’re for it. And you GODd——d motherfucking mulesucking volunteer assholes! Lieutenant Rains, I’m disappointed. And Captain Randall, you lousy niggerbrained excuse for an ape, I’m reporting you to the general. No, shut the fuck up. Men, form up, form up! Skirmish foundation. Prepare to follow up the attack. Lieutenant Shelton, lead the volunteers to that high hill over there. The rest of you follow me. Sound bugle.
Forward!
Forward!
toward the woman wrapped in a wolfskin who runs at them and then away
and the woman with the baby on her back, riding desperately into the Clearwater on a stumbling horse:
Pim!
(drowned)
and Indians rushing into the trees.
All right. Lieutenant Forse, Lieutenant Shelton, pick twenty men and drive in all the Indians’ horses.
Yes, sir. Boys, we’ll have to run the Indians off those rocks. Then let’s circle in over there . . .
We’re on the job, lieutenant.
Jim, do you see Looking-Glass?
Afraid not, captain. But I sure do see some volunteers down there. They must have set the tipis on fire—
the burning falling lodgepoles for an instant as lovely as the maze of nesting black and white stripes on an Indian basket
and
a broken string of elk teeth, scattered in the grass like cloves of garlic.
Captain, sir, reporting for the volunteers, sir! We did our best to catch Looking-Glass, but he—
Shut the fuck up, shit-heel! Lieutenant Rains, how many enemy dead?
Three, sir. Several wounded.
Any sign of Looking-Glass?
Guess he went running off to Joseph.
And I winged that Injun on the yellow horse—
Nice country down here. Good for a horse ranch.
And I got me this genuine silk buffalo hide.
They raped Helen Walsh. Every time she hears the word Indian she gets to weeping—
Hey, John, what did you find in that buckskin bag?
How many casualties on our side?
John, give me some of those.
No sign of him, sir.
Don’t make that face, John.
Sir, the volunteers have organized a foraging party. Looks like we’re all going to have some fresh beef!
2
Captain Whipple, report.
Well, general, we gave Looking-Glass an opportunity to surrender, but he wouldn’t have any of it. The result was that a couple of Indians got killed. We destroyed the camp and most of their supplies.
What about their horses?
We caught seven hundred and twenty-five ponies, sir, and drove them all to Mount Idaho, just as you ordered.
Good work, captain, but what about Looking-Glass?
He and his confederates escaped, sir. Probably went straight to Joseph, just like that Umatilla Jim warned us—
I’m sorry you failed to capture the band. Why did you delay your operation until after dawn?
The volunteers led us out of our way, sir, so we arrived late—
Perhaps I expected too much of your tired horses . . .
3
And that evening, looking across the whitestone beach at their ruined camp, they decide to be enemies with Cut Arm’s people forever. Now we shall all be hunting Bostons side by side
(our men striping their faces with widespread warpainted fingers, our women wailing):
Far Mountain and her baby have drowned;
Black Raven bleeds from three bullet wounds;
Big Old Woman is dead,
as a fish splashes: mokh!
Cut Arm is crooked indeed;
he has become one who loves the smell of blood.
He has stolen twelve hundred horses!
Until now Looking-Glass,
he whose Grandfather Looking-Glass, sometimes called Bighorn because that is what he wore lashed to his left arm, became brothers with the first Bostons who ever came to us,
and whose father, Old Looking-Glass, signed the first treaty with the Bostons, giving away most of our country, for which we were never paid
(twenty-two snows ago, he rode onto the treaty ground, with a Shinbone’s scalp hanging from his saddle, to warn us against trusting the Bostons, who wished to make him a war-chief next to Lawyer),
has always obeyed Cut Arm and this thief treaty;
indeed, Looking-Glass,
whose heart assures him that he has unfailingly valued the Bostons’ friendship at its actual questionable worth,
has been nearly as successful as SOMEONE who can turn into a raven. Even now (being unable to change himself like the golden grass that bows in the wind), he cannot close his heart against astonishment: why have the Bostons behaved in this way?
I rode to Tsépmin with my brother and warned him! Surely it was not he who told the Bluecoats to break our friendship with the Bostons. Or is it now true what White Bird’s young men have said, that Tsépmin is a Boston and therefore a liar?
Or is Cut Arm the liar? Or has he no power over these Bluecoats who perhaps rode here just to steal our horses?
Who are these Bostons?
Since Cut Arm has now stolen his white horse, Looking-Glass sits on his favorite black one, with his tall beaded hat pulled down almost to his eyes, while his wives keen over their bayonet-pierced kettles.
The Bluecoats have urinated on the place where we held our WYAKIN dances.
Looking-Glass says bitterly: Hasten; evening shadows be!
Swan Woman, White Thunder’s mother, waves her son’s rifle, cursing the Bostons—how she longs to shoot their faces!
Peopeo Tholekt rides wounded; some Boston has shot him in the leg;
Cut Arm is crooked; but his own chief, Looking-Glass, has scarcely acted a man’s part, to send him twice to meet those Bostons.
Sliding painfully off his yellow stallion, limping across the grass, he digs in the smoldering hole where his lodge used to be. Although the Bluecoats have taken everything, even the bag of vermilion pigment, he has kept with him his MEDICINE bag
with the half-mummified woodpecker head
and the bird-bone whistle which can save him from bullets.
Wottolen says: Hear me, all of you People! Now I begin to understand that White Bird’s young men have acted in the straight way, I am telling you three times!
Looking-Glass then says: My People, I shall never make peace with the Bostons. My People, so long as I live I shall fight them, these treacherous Americans.
Wrapping Big Old Woman, Far Mountain and the baby in blankets, since all the buffalo robes have been stolen and burned, they bury them within the riverbank, ringing the small bell while the warriors keep watch. Far Mountain’s husband is named Rifle; he has seen but does not yet understand.
The best men decide that we shall go to Red Owl’s country.
Then they mount their horses, bluffs and cañon-walls going greenish-grey now, and to throw Cut Arm off their trail they ride awhile through the brownish-green water. They are fleeing upstream,
up the Big Water,
the yellow-green and silver-green needles of young junipers:
Looking-Glass with his wives and daughters,
and that round mirror weakly reflecting twilight in his hair;
and that brave woman Arrowhead on her white horse
(she carries the same name as Looking-Glass, but perhaps her heart has more sense, for it was she who stopped to tie up Peopeo Tholekt’s leg even as the other People galloped away in terror),
Chief Three Feathers and his People,
Chief Red Heart with his wife and children
(his eldest son, Over The Point, saying: Soon we shall revenge ourselves),
and all the other People, angry and sad,
horse-poor, robbed of winter food, hoping to eat berries from the branches as they go,
the cañon getting greener, rockier, narrower, the river twisting over sharp brown rocks;
they are riding all night,
hunting eels and creeksuckers to eat,
riding away from the place called Kamnaka
(now we have done this for the last time),
as in the darkness rises the Redfaced Talking Star.*
At Bear Claw Place, Wottolen kills a doe just before dawn comes; here they rest, the women trimming meat from the bones,
and Looking-Glass’s wives make him little balls of deer fat spiced with balsamroot seeds,
but many children are too scared to sleep.
Black Raven dies. Ringing the hand bell, they decorate him, wrap him in a buffalo robe, bury him, then depart silently. Hunts No More opens and closes his big hands.
Looking-Glass and Red Owl have decided; they explain what must now be done. Wottolen is satisfied; they will follow his counsel at last. Peopeo Tholekt begins remembering everything, in order to make pictures when the time comes. In the lowest scree the last purple flowers of the wild onion are already withering.
They ride for the country of Red Owl, who is of their People,
he whose grandfather killed a Crow warrior most bravely, in the days before we had peace with that nation
although War Singer first counted coup on the dead man, and therefore got to keep his scalp;
Red Owl, who is rich in food and horses;
there they will send word to White Bird, Toohhoolhoolsote, Heinmot Tooyalakekt and the others.
THE BLACK ARABIAN
JULY 2
1
Whipple, you’re to march to Norton’s ranch and await the arrival of Captain Perry’s company. Your objective is to keep Joseph from recrossing the Salmon and turning my communications.
Very good, sir.
I’m still disappointed that you failed to capture Looking-Glass.
I’m sorry, sir. The volunteers—
Where are the volunteers?
Captain Randall led them back to Mount Idaho, sir.
Bendire’s in position to the south. My troops will secure the front. Trimble at Slate Creek will hold the left. It’s crucial not to let Joseph pass. Will you do your best endeavor this time?
My very best, sir.
Leave no stone unturned, Captain Whipple.
Yes, sir.
I expect of the cavalry tremendous vigor and activity even if it should kill a few horses.
We’ll do our utmost, sir.
Whipple, if you get in trouble, don’t hesitate to pray. GOD always listens.
Thanks for the advice, sir,
and if you hadn’t left Colonel Sully with his thumb up his ass back at Lapwai, we might actually have killed some reds by now; two or three squaws don’t signify. Our men sleeping in the rain with no blankets because you thought to skedaddle into the field before Sherman got General Crook to replace you, and all of us cursing you, in low and secret whispers, of course, because you won’t permit cursing in your GODd——d Army of fucking penwiping Bible-kissing cock-twiddlers! To the DEVIL with you, general! And now you’ve got it in for me because Looking-Glass ran away. After marching through the night and rubbing out their shitty little village just as I was supposed to do—
That’s all. Yes, Wilkinson, what is it?
A rider just brought these despatches for you, sir.
Make sure he gets a meal.
Yessir.
Well, well. Fletch, cast your eye on this. Every white man in the country wants to tell me what to do, from the look of it.
I’ll sell them tickets, general. You and I’ll get rich—
Very funny. At least Smohallie’s quiet for the moment. No other bad news anywhere. I hear from Mr. Cornoyer that his Indians are more scared than any white man could be.
There’s Indians for you. Any trouble up there, sir?
From citizens? Not yet.
Well, general, I expect they’ll bide their time until we’ve whipped Joseph and then kill a few of Mr. Cornoyer’s Indians.
The old story. Let’s pray it goes otherwise.
Yessir.
I don’t hear any bugle calls. Go straightaway to Captain Whipple and inform him that he’d better move out within a half-hour. Then see if you can find out what’s delaying Wilkinson.
Yessir.
2
Wilkinson, what is it now?
General, that Ad Chapman approached me just now—
Well?
He feared that if he went directly to you, you wouldn’t accept, so he fetched his stablekeeper here to me, with a racing-horse for you—
No.
All right, sir. I’ll return the animal. A mighty beautiful black Arabian, and, if I may say so, better suited to a general than that gelding they gave you at Lapwai.
Wilkinson, it’s extremely bad policy to be obligated to someone like Chapman.
Yessir, but we’re clearing his property of hostile Indians, and a real charger might come in handy for operations. You know, sir, that storekeeper Mr. Rudolph outfitted Sergeant McCarthy with new boots and gloves and wouldn’t take one copper cent—
