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Excerpts

As the sun glowed red across the grasslands, a group of children headed away from the village, through the willow trees, to squeeze a few more games from the fading daylight. The boys, mimicking their fathers, played with sticks and bones along the banks of the winding creek, their shrieks fading into the great expanse of the valley -- until a chill cut through the air, and it was time to light a fire. The gang gathered wood and huddled close to the flames. Then as an unfamiliar presence entered the circle of light, they fell to frozen silence. "Two men came there wrapped in gray blankets. They stood close, and we saw they were white men."

The youngsters bolted toward the village in a panic, but when they looked back, the men in the gray blankets had disappeared -- and they were soon forgotten as the games began again. Bedtime came, and the children lay down without sharing this unsettling sight with their elders.

That night, the village held a celebration, to mark a day of rest and calm, and good hunting among the dense herds of the grasslands. The seven hundred Nez Perce were many miles from home, they'd been traveling for almost two months to reach this riverbank, and they had still farther yet to travel -- but today, at least, they were at peace, and for that they gave thanks. The warriors paraded through the encampment, singing and drumming in the firelight, their blustering leader encouraging all to relax and enjoy the respite. Elsewhere a younger chief tended to his own responsibilities, for the young and the old of the camp, the frail and the enfeebled. It was past midnight when the carousing ended and the valley fell silent.

One hundred and eighty-three United States infantrymen crouched in the darkness and waited. The sleeping village was but a few hundred yards away, the embers of its fires still glowing, while the army shivered on the sloping meadow above, its discipline holding in the bleak, thin night: no cigarettes lit, no rifles dropped, not a sound. Hours passed. The dew soaked easily through the troopers' threadbare uniforms, tightening the vice of cold. One man struck a match and was slapped and shushed back into the darkness by the soldiers around him.

The sounds of dogs barking and babies crying drifted over the willows and rushes from the dozing village. Just before dawn, a few women emerged from their teepees to refuel the campfires, enjoy a brief gossip, and head back to their warm beds. And still the soldiers watched and waited.

At the very first graying of the sky, the troops began to move through the scrubland that lay between the high meadow and the riverbank, crouching and crawling forward, hiding behind the shallow rolls in the earth. A single line of men crept over the sodden ground -- then stopped dead. Across the creek, an elderly man had emerged yawning from his lodge, cheerfully accepting that his sleep was complete. Mounting his waiting horse, the elder set off slowly toward the sloping meadow, to check on the village's grazing herd. His eyes were beginning to wear with time, and he peered into the half-light as his horse forded the creek and strolled through the morning mist -- heading straight toward the waiting army.

Fear coursed through the troops as the lone rider wandered closer to their ranks, a hundred yards distance shading to fifty, then thirty, twenty -- and still the old man, blessed with a morning to himself, saw no sign of the long thin line of rifles trained upon him. Ahead, lost in the mist, hearts raced and nerves strained. A cluster of untrained men, callow volunteers, were wound tightest of all: The old man was riding straight for the cleft in the earth where the five lay. He was just ten yards away now. Still he rode on, humming into the lifting gloom. Huddled against the soil, the volunteers heard each footstep approach, battling to summon their courage and keep their senses. The gap closed, and closed, barely five yards now.

The young men, breathless with panic, snapped. Leaping to their feet, they raised their rifles. Across the glistening valley, the deer and the antelope, the buffalo and the coyotes scattered into the distance, away from the echoing crack of gunfire.