by Vella Munn
"What things? Where?"
Jed stabbed a potato chunk and popped it into his mouth. The indistinguishable meat had already begun to congeal, the fat as pale as the potatoes. What, if anything, was she eating tonight? "The lake."
"Clear around by the lava beds. That's what you're saying, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"Are you looking to get yourself killed?" Wilfred asked heatedly. He leaned back as the wind swirled smoke around him. "Or if not that, busted? I don't suppose you told Jackson where you were going."
"No need. If I see him before I take off tomorrow, I'll give him my impressions."
"Sure you will; you and Captain Jackson are that thick." Wilfred snorted. "Especially after you called him out. You and he nearly came to blows during the attack, unless you've forgotten."
"I haven't."
Wilfred snorted again; it turned into a brief coughing spell. "Then you tell Lieutenant Wheaton he's a fool for spending so much time with those damnable reporters and he starts muttering he wishes you'd never been sent here. Now you're riding out alone like you're asking the savages to take a shot at you. What is it? You think you've been alive too long?"
"Look, my ultimate responsibility is to General Canby. He can't be here right now. He's depending on me to keep him informed. That includes letting him know what I think of what his officers are doing, or not doing."
"Even if that means alienating Jackson and Wheaton and a half dozen others?"
"Maybe so." Jed stared at the other man. "What do you care? You're not my father."
Wilfred swatted at the smoke still circling him. "Thank God. And even if I did have kids, they wouldn't be as old and ugly as you."
Jed ignored that. "Any update on when the howitzers might arrive?"
"What do you think? I've gotten so tired of hearing different answers that I've stopped asking." He coughed again and stood up. "My opinion? No one knows. But when and if the guns do get here—"
"It isn't going to make a lick of difference."
Wilfred glanced around as if making sure no one overheard, then sat down as the smoke spiraled upward. "What makes you say that?"
"The land; look at it. It's too rough and rugged. We'll never get the cannons close enough to where the Modocs are holed up to do any good."
"You tell Wheaton that. I'm sure as hell not going to."
"He won't listen. I've already tried," Jed said, as what he'd told Luash about the big guns settled inside him. She hadn't been afraid of howitzers. When he tried to impress her with talk of their power, she'd said exactly what he just had.
But then, nothing seemed to frighten her.
For several minutes Wilfred sat beside him while firelight painted his friend's features, his attention seemingly on the nearest campfire, where a number of enlisted men sat huddled close to what heat they could get, but Jed knew what was coming.
"I thought you might have asked me along," Wilfred muttered. "We practically go back to the beginning of time, you know. Or maybe you think you're invincible now that you're a hot shot advisor riding on Custer's coattails. A twenty-three-year-old first lieutenant. Next thing, they'll make you general."
Jed ignored that. Although their individual assignments often separated them, the friendship that had begun six years ago—when Wilfred had kept him from bleeding to death after the Fort Kearny massacre—still held strong and had resumed quickly when the two of them wound up at Fort Klamath. Jed knew Wilfred continued to mourn his bride, who'd been dead for almost ten years, and would go to his grave regretting that they hadn't had time to become parents.
Wilfred, who'd been with the troops who'd found Jed and his dead companions, had done more than bind his wounds. He'd held Jed for nights afterward when the younger man's nightmares threatened to tear him apart. Neither spoke about the past, but they were bonded in ways no one else would ever understand. Having a friend here felt good.
Jed grunted and shifted his weight in an attempt to find a more comfortable position and watched, bemused, as a surprisingly well fed looking dog wandered close, sniffed in the direction of his plate, then turned away. He'd seen the lop-eared mutt before and knew it belonged to the Crawleys. Obviously one member of the Crawley family didn't mind having his land overrun by strangers.
The corralled horses were moving restlessly about and their collective breath made the air around them look like a low hanging cloud. Jed took it as proof that they hadn't been fed, yet another sign that the whole operation was disorganized. If he knew General Canby as well as he thought he did, the Civil War veteran would insist on returning from Yreka with him so he could oversee the operation. "I didn't tell you where I was going because I needed to concentrate on this miserable stretch of nothing. I wanted to try to figure out why anyone, Indian or white, ever laid claim to it. If you'd been along, I'd have had to listen to you yap about nothing."
"Nothing? If it wasn't for me, boy, you wouldn't know enough to stay alive. You're crazy. Poking around looking to see if you could get an arrow in your back."
"Not likely an arrow. I'm guessing every one of those braves has a rifle."
"Probably." Wilfred dug at the frozen earth with his cracked and worn boot. "So, what did you see?"
"Nothing."
"You were out there all day looking at nothing?"
So he hadn't fooled Wilfred. It wouldn't be the first time. "Actually, I found a rich plantation tucked away in those miserable rocks. Hot, humid air, a rich cotton crop. Fine ladies in hoop skirts and parasols."
"Will you shut up!" Wilfred picked up a log and tossed it onto the fire. Sparks spat in all directions. "It's bad enough being stuck here without having you going on about God's country. Nothing, you say. What were you doing all those hours then, looking for a send-off to the happy hunting ground? Disappointed because no one accommodated you?"
Wilfred knew the answer to that, better than Jed wished he did. Although Jed didn't go out of his way to court death, neither was he like a lot of the men around them, shaking in their tents, if they were lucky enough to have one, scared sick they'd wind up scalped. When men asked—when they stared at the scar that angled up into his hairline and figured out how it got there—he. told them scalping wasn't the worst thing that could happen to a body, but they didn't believe him. Most times they said the Sioux had lifted his brains along with his hair.
Maybe they had.
"You know what it's like near the lake," he said. "Flat and treeless. I'd have to be blind not to see an Indian approaching."
"There's blind and then there's just plain stupid." Wilfred eyed Jed's plate, then grabbed a piece of fat laden meat between thumb and forefinger and jammed it into his mouth. He chewed for the better part of a minute before swallowing with a grimace. "We've got three so-called cooks now, not a one of them worth a lick. Did you see anyone?"
"A woman."
Wilfred whistled, then, slowly, his expression turned to one of disbelief. "What woman's going to be wandering out there where the Modocs could grab her? Even a whore's got more sense than that. You've been drinking too much of that week-old whiskey." He indicated a knot of men who were passing around a jug with no concern for whether an officer saw or not.
"A Modoc woman."
That, finally, put Wilfred at a loss for words. Jed stared at the firelight until his vision blurred and he couldn't remember the color of anything except red. "And she wasn't alone."
"Her brave was with her?"
"No. An eagle."
"An eagle? What the hell are you talking about?"
I don't know. "I'm just telling you what I saw." Maybe that way it'll start to make some kind of sense. He ate, no longer tasting.
"Are you going to tell me the rest?"
"There is no rest. While she was standing there, this eagle flew over her."
"The hell you say."
"Then it came back, so close she was able to touch it."
"The hell you say."
"She talked to it, laughed with it. As
long as she wanted it there, it stayed around."
"The hell you say."
Jed glanced at what was left of his meal—if it could be called that—put down the plate, then went back to staring into the fire. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a hay wagon being pulled into place near the corral. The horses' restless movements became almost frenzied. "Believe me or not. I don't give a damn."
Wilfred didn't say anything. Jed could hear him breathing, but the sound wasn't loud enough to distract him from his thoughts.
She was beautiful, more wild looking than any Modoc he'd seen in his short time here. While most of them dressed partly or completely in what they'd bought or stolen from whites, what she wore had been fashioned from natural fibers, her shoes made from tule reeds and then stuffed with fur to keep her feet warm. Her hair was so long and glossy he couldn't help but wonder what it felt like. The white strand in it had held his attention for a long time, then he'd gone back to looking at the rest of her.
A lot of the reservation Modocs and Klamaths lived on little more than bread and tobacco and looked rather sickly, but if her healthy skin was any indication, her diet was gleaned from the land. She carried herself as if she took pride in her body, and although he didn't want to be thinking this way, he ached to feel her against him.
She wouldn't be feeling the same about him.
"The two of you talked?" Wilfred prompted.
Jed nodded, still trapped by memories. He cleared his throat and tried again. "She wasn't afraid of me. I asked her how come. She said something about her spirit."
"And that's when you told her there's no such thing, just as there's no God."
Wilfred knew him too well. "Something like that."
"What'd she say to that? Wait a minute. You don't understand Modoc."
"No, I don't," he said as several of the closest enlisted men glanced his way. One came close to smiling. The others nodded.
"So she knows English. Where'd she pick that up?"
"We didn't get around to that. It's—it was unbelievable. Maybe she was waiting for me all along, waiting until I was there to see. I don't understand it, not at all. It was so cold I could hardly think, but that didn't seem to bother her. There she was, alone. Hating me and yet... I know she hated me. And yet—why the hell did she let me see what I saw? What did I see? Damnit, what..."
He shouldn't have said a word. If he hadn't, he wouldn't be remembering the way she looked, sounded, the easy, competent way she handled her slight yet strong body. He'd begun casting around for a way of changing the conversation when the men who'd been watching him stood and started his way. He didn't recognize any of them, but that didn't surprise him. He'd never looked that young or inexperienced.
"Lieutenant Britton?" the tallest asked. He glanced down at his chapped hand but didn't offer it, and Jed sensed they were green recruits who didn't know how they were supposed to approach an officer. "We was talking, trying to figure out what's gonna happen or if anything's ever gonna happen. Someone said you've been fighting Injins fur a long time."
"Years," Wilfred answered for him. "Twenty or thirty, ever since he got too old for farming and his teeth fell out. The lieutenant here's the only man Sitting Bull's scared of."
Jed glared at Wilfred, but it was too late. Although none of the men had ever been to the Black Hills, they'd obviously heard of the fierce Sioux war chief and were suitably impressed. "I've never been face to face with Sitting Bull," he corrected. "Not many men who are still alive have. But I've seen what he's capable of."
A couple of the men stared at him, but none asked for an explanation; he figured they didn't want to know the details. "What we was wondering," the tall man continued, "was what you think's going to happen. Or if anything's ever going to happen. This waiting is 'bout to drive us crazy. Those savages snuck up on Godfearing white women and children and slaughtered them in their sleep. They've got to—"
"No one was asleep and there weren't any women killed. No children either, least wise not little ones." If there was one thing Jed hated, it was gossip run amuck.
The men glanced at each other as if not sure whether to believe him. "The army's got to assume responsibility for some of what happened after we tried to take them at Lost Creek," he continued. "Burning their village—letting them get away because we didn't have enough troops or know what we were doing—a man would have to be a fool not to figure there'd be trouble."
"Murdering and mutilating innocent ranchers was wrong."
"Yeah. It was. And the army can't let that go unpunished."
"That's why we're here. We know that. But, well, what we're asking is, are we in danger of being scalped? None of us have ever fought an Indian, never thought we'd have to. It's hard sleeping for thinking about what they might do."
Jed sighed. He didn't want to feel responsible for these wet-behind-the-ears kids who were probably only a couple of years younger than him, but he did. "Look around," he said. "If you were an Indian, would you walk in here?"
"Maybe not right here, although they've come pretty close—but what if we're out on patrol?"
If they were on patrol, they'd better keep their eyes and ears open the way he'd done today. "What do you want me to say? That you've got nothing to worry about?"
"What we want is the truth. The other officers, they keep saying there's no way less than a hundred Indians, half of them women and children, can hold out against all these soldiers, but we've been here for weeks now, and we aren't hunting them down. Is that because—" the young soldier glanced around as if reassuring himself that no one else was listening "—because Lieutenant Colonel Wheaton's afraid of what's going to happen?"
Whether fear entered into Wheaton's thinking Jed couldn't say. What he did know was that the lieutenant was hamstrung, waiting for the necessary equipment and his final orders. Part of the trouble was, it took days to wire word from one end of the country to the other and hostilities by a handful of Indians wasn't the only thing the government had with which to concern itself. The rest of it was that General Canby outranked Wheaton, and the general didn't want anything to commence until he was here to oversee it personally—which was why he'd asked Jed to ride down and brief him while he was meeting with the business leaders of Yreka.
"I can't tell you what's going to happen," he said when the men kept studying him, their eyes wide and uneasy. "Just don't ever take anything for granted and always keep your rifles with you."
"They're savages. Murdering savages."
Savages. He'd spent the last six years of his life believing very little except that. Tonight, he wanted, needed, to hold the word in front of him so he could again stare at what drove him.
But today he'd heard a Modoc woman laugh.
Called her Luash and learned what the word meant.
Seen her touch—and be touched by—an eagle.
* * *
Morning and sunlight never reached the boulder-strewn cave's far corners. At night, when people gathered in it, their voices and occasional laughter echoed off the solid walls, but now all she heard were the gentle and not too gentle snores of those who were still asleep. Cold penetrated everything. Even if there was enough firewood for a blazing fire, the rock walls would have rejected the heat. Needing light, sound, and warmth, Luash clambered to the surface where ice encrusted sage and bunchgrass grew before turning around and looking back at where she, Kientpoos, and a half dozen others now lived.
A shadowed cavern should be nothing but shelter during a storm or a place for children to explore, not a Modoc home. Her feet weren't used to the harsh, uneven ground, the lifeless chill of rock, the unending dark that daily sent her in search of the weak winter sun that showed itself only infrequently.
But in the caves her people were safe; there were no other places left to them. Looking back only brought heartache, and she had had enough of that.
Before she was fully awake, she'd seen Kientpoos climb out of the cave. Now she spotted the short, solidly built man and se
veral other braves sitting on the large rocks that circled the newly made dance ring, their shoulders hunched against the cold. Their clothes were a mix of Modoc and white, boots and pants that had either been bought or stolen from settlers, heavy hide blankets and bead necklaces.
Already two shaman dances had been held at the dance ring, but this bitter morning Kientpoos and the others weren't watching the reservation-forbidden ceremony. Instead, they spoke quietly and seriously among themselves, barely noticing her. Cho-ocks wasn't with them. She didn't have to endure the shaman's dark, hostile stare.
Leaving the men, she wandered away so she could take care of her needs in private. When she was done, she tried to make herself walk back to the cave so she could help Whe-cha with morning meal preparations, but she'd been without sunlight for too many hours. Even if she and the men were the only ones about this early, being alone with clean, cold air in her lungs was better than inhaling dark, trapped air while she listened to children endlessly ask their parents when they could go home.
In the distance, she could see that fog still draped Modoc Lake, but it didn't reach as far as the cave, giving her a clear view of her surroundings. Even the wind hadn't yet stirred and in the awesome quiet, she was able to concentrate on the endlessness of her world. The land in all directions buckled and jutted, stark and hard, as if fashioned by an enraged shaman. Even now, with ice glimmering on everything like countless stars, the harshness remained. Still, she loved the contrast between white snow and midnight lava rocks, the few wind-buffeted trees that managed to cling to life here.
Elizabeth Campbell, the rancher's wife who'd traded beans and corn for Luash's waterbird eggs and berries and taught her English, had tried to understand why the Modocs considered this unkind land sacred, but she'd had no more success at that than Luash had had in understanding why Elizabeth wanted to return to the eastern city from which she'd come.
Luash sighed in relief as she thought of Elizabeth and her children safely back in that place called Boston, maybe unaware of what had happened between Modocs and whites. Still, although she knew Elizabeth was happier now than she'd ever been here, she missed their fragile friendship.