Outside the smoky café window where Donegan sat watching that late afternoon, officials an entire continent away in Washington had already set in motion the gears of a small, yet immensely tragic piece of history that was about to be played out along the Oregon-California boundary. Gears that no man at this point would be able to stop until they had run themselves dry of blood.
In a letter recently telegraphed to Superintendent T. B. Odeneal, the Indian Department passed on explicit instructions regarding the immediate removal of the Modocs to their Yainax Reservation: “… peaceably if you can, forcibly if you must.”
From Linkville, Odeneal had promptly informed the military commander of the department, General Edward R.S. Canby, who in turn had informed Major John “Uncle Johnny” Green, commanding officer of the First Cavalry at the nearby Fort Klamath, that soldiers were in all likelihood going to be required for that peaceful removal.
As only a footnote at the time, Canby had cautioned his subordinates that if troops were to be used in the removal, then “the force employed should be so large as to secure the result at once and beyond peradventure.”
In the meantime, from the safety of Linkville, Odeneal had sent Klamath agent Ivan Applegate to visit Captain Jack in his camp on Lost River. Applegate returned the next day muttering about his trip being an abominable waste of time. Jack, Applegate announced, was not about to meet with any white man who talked about moving his people, nor were his people going peacefully back to Yainax to live under Old Schonchin.
Yet what Applegate had most heatedly reported upon his return was that while he had been a guest in the Modoc camp, many of Jack’s young warriors had clamored for killing him and his interpreter—if only to precipitate a war with the white man.
The Modocs’ shaman, Curly Headed Doctor, had the hotbloods all fired up with war-talk … convincing the warriors that their powerful spirits would protect them and defeat all white men who marched against them.
Captain Jack and a few others had stood against the talk of murder—and in the end the chief’s words had kept Applegate alive while he slipped away from the Modoc camp.
When Applegate relayed the critical situation to Odeneal, the nervous superintendent immediately dispatched his agent to see Major Green up at Fort Klamath, requesting the army to immediately “furnish a sufficient force to compel said Indians to go to Camp Yainax, on said reservation, where I have made provision for their subsistence.”
At five o’clock that morning Applegate had stood before Green, delivering the superintendent’s urgent message. For some reason not waiting to communicate with either his superior, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Wheaton of the Twenty-first Infantry, or Wheaton’s superior, General Canby, the major had by eight that morning dispatched a seasoned officer, Captain James Jackson of Company B, First Cavalry, to lead Lieutenant Frazier A. Boutelle and thirty-eight troopers to assist Applegate’s removal of the Modocs. Assistant Surgeon Henry McElderry would ride behind the troops with a small pack-train carrying three days rations for the soldiers.
“With all due respect, sir,” Lieutenant Boutelle said haltingly to Major Green in private after Applegate had stepped from the major’s office, “as I understood General Canby’s orders, no direct action is to be taken against the Modocs until a force large enough can be sent against them.”
Green was clearly perturbed with his Officer of the Day. “What do you think will be a sufficient number, Mr. Boutelle? A hundred? Two hundred?”
“All due, sir—Captain Jackson’s company is not enough, Major. I figure we’ll be only enough to provoke a fight with them.”
Green whirled on the lieutenant, cheeks flaring. “Goddammit! If I don’t send you troops down there—the whining, carping civilians in this region will think we’re all afraid of those bloody Modocs!” He looked down at his desk and sighed. Then swept up the sheet of paper and handed it to Boutelle.
“Lieutenant, here are my orders.”
Boutelle scanned them quickly.
Orders No. 93:
In compliance with the request of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Oregon … Captain James Jackson 1 Cav. with all the available men of his troop, will proceed at once … to Capt. Jack’s camp … endeavoring to get there before tomorrow morning, and if any opposition is offered … he will arrest if possible Capt. Jack, Black Jim, and Scarfaced Charley.
Beyond the peaks to the west, the sun was setting as Seamus emptied the burnt dollop from his stub of a pipe and refilled the bowl. Smoke wreathed his face as he peered from the window, watching the last of Captain Jackson’s soldiers disappear down the street, toward the livery corral where he imagined the troopers would be quartering their horses for the night.
“Your name was Donegan, right?”
Seamus turned, peering over his shoulder at the settler he had met two days before, upon his arrival in Linkville.
“Yes,” he replied, coming ’round in his chair and starting to rise, his hand extended. “You’re John Fairchild—”
But he stopped dead in the middle of climbing to his feet, slowing, that big hand still hung out before him like a clumsy prop now. Over Fairchild’s shoulder he caught the eye of the other settler, a man named Dorris. Yet beside him—the ghost of an uncle, stepping now out of the late afternoon gloom of the tiny, smoky café.
“Seamus Donegan, is it?” the tall rail of a ghost asked sternly; dark eyes glowering, having taken two menacing steps closer. “Of County Kilkenny?”
“Ian … Uncle Ian O’Roarke.” The words spilled like iron filings from a blacksmith’s rasp. He stood there a moment longer, not knowing what to do first—after all these miles and so many years.
Then Ian moved first. Initially it was his face that softened, the sharply-cut eyes widening and the chiseled corner of the mouth coming up like the soft curve of a butt stock. O’Roarke’s arms came up, widening in warmth and welcome as he moved forward at a rush.
They met in the middle of the floor, knocking aside two armless chairs with a clatter as they embraced.
“You … you were so small when we left, Seamus,” Ian said quietly, his words all but lost against his nephew’s bulky shoulder.
“I haven’t missed many meals, Uncle,” Donegan replied, squeezing the shorter, thin man all the tighter, still unable to believe it was Ian O’Roarke. He had remembered his uncle being so much taller, of a much more massive frame as he carried a young nephew around from place to place on his own shoulder.
Instead, as Seamus drew back to arm’s length to look into the older man’s eyes, he was astonished to realize Ian was actually smaller than Liam had been. Every bit as tall perhaps, but nowhere as big. The cruel tricks that time and solitude of thought play with the mind.
“Where—” he started to ask his uncle.
“We can save that for later, Seamus,” Ian replied, slapping his callused, farm-worn hand on the back of the young man’s neck and pulling him close once more. He kissed his nephew on both cheeks, only then realizing Seamus was crying too.
His uncle smelled as he always had: of animals and sweat, of hard work and the land, so rich and dark and alive. “I’ve been looking—”
“I know you have, nephew. I—I only wanted to disappear. Didn’t know anyone’d come looking for me, or that it’d be you who did. Most of all, never knew when I would have to come back up for air. Now’s as good a time as any. By the Virgin Mary—how you’ve grown!” He snorted back some dribble at the end of his nose. “How old are you now, let’s see…” He bit his lower lip in contemplation.
Seamus could see that his uncle was only keeping the lip from quivering. “Thirty-two winters come and gone now, Uncle.”
The dark eyes gazed up into his, moistening anew. “You make an old man feel older still, lad.”
He flung a fist at his uncle’s midsection very much as he had done as a youngster. Seamus marveled at the taut washboard of a belly on Ian O’Roarke. “That’s not the belly of an old man.”
“Fifty-eight
I am—but the plow and animals keep a man younger than I’d ever be, wading ice-water sluice boxes, hungering for yellow dust.”
Of a sudden, Seamus wanted nothing more than a drink of something hard, strong and potent to settle what had unnerved him. His heart awash with so much.
“A drink we should have, Uncle,” Seamus proposed, his eyes going to the other two men as well. “To celebrate—”
“There’s not time, nephew,” Ian explained, smiling gently behind that dark, full beard that encased his sharp jawline.
“If it’s home you must return to—I’ll come along … you let me invite meself—”
“It’s not home we’re going to,” Ian interrupted, wagging his head and tossing a thumb over his shoulder at Fairchild and Dorris. “There’s bloody business afoot and we’ve got to be sure the hand of it is played square, Seamus.”
This time Donegan wagged his head. “I—I don’t understand.”
Ian gently nudged his nephew back to the smoky window. The sun had disappeared, but enough light still spilled across the icy puddles gathered in every rut and bootprint to give the street a metallic, orange luster.
“You saw the soldiers come this afternoon?”
He nodded. “Aye.”
Ian turned to his nephew. “We—the three of us—have long had good relations with these Modocs. And those soldiers out there don’t know it—but they are about to bring some evil matters to a head, Seamus.”
“Modocs?”
“Indians in these parts. John and Press here are among the few who got along with Captain Jack’s people the last few years his band’s been out on Lost River.”
Fairchild came up. “The soldiers are leaving tonight—to be at the Modoc camp by dawn.”
“Trouble?” Donegan asked, sensing the inevitable of it already.
“These soldiers don’t know what they’re starting,” Ian replied. “When Press and John come by the other day to tell me a stranger’d come to town, asking about me … it sounded like my own nephew had dogged the trail long enough.”
“You came to see for yourself?”
He nodded, laying a hand on Donegan’s forearm. “Nephew—before things get bloody, I wanted to see you face to face. To send you out to my place.”
“Your family—they’ll be safe?”
Ian nodded quickly, but seriousness clung to his eyes. “You can wait for me there.”
Seamus clutched his uncle’s arm. “By the saints—I’m not letting you go now, Ian. After looking for you all this time, I’ll be damned if you walk out of here and into some trouble without me.”
“This is none of yours—”
“Bleeming well it is. Time and again you picked me up off the ground and wiped the blood off me. Where you’re bound this night—I’m bound there as well.”
Ian O’Roarke glanced at the other two. They nodded quickly. He himself measured his young nephew. “You know how to handle that hog-leg you’ve got weighing you down?”
“If I need to.”
“The war in the south we heard so much about years ago?”
“All four years, Uncle. Cavalry.”
O’Roarke looked at his friends, a sad smile cutting his beard. “Looks like the blood’s held true, boys.” He pulled Seamus aside to whisper out of the hearing of the rest of the patrons in the café. “There’s much to talk of, Seamus. So be it. You want to ride with me, you can come.”
“Where is it we’re going in the dark, with a chance of snow smelling strong in the air?”
Ian O’Roarke snorted softly as Press Dorris and John Fairchild seemed anxious to be on their way, inching toward the door. “Come along then, nephew. We’re going to try to keep the army from stirring up more than they can handle with the Modocs.”
Outside, a freezing rain had settled hard over the land.
* * *
Never before had Ian O’Roarke seen the little settlement of Linkville so alive with commotion and hubbub.
For months now the antagonized citizens of the surrounding countryside had goaded the army and government to make a move against the Modocs or, the settlers threatened, they would themselves raise a volunteer militia to do what the army was incapable of doing.
When Ian and Seamus, along with Pressley Dorris and John Fairchild, marched through the icy sleet to the edge of town, they found Captain James Jackson’s forty cold soldiers hugging the trees at the edge of the nearby corral. Puffs of gauzy vapor betrayed every man in that gloomy darkness as the civilians approached a small, animated circle of men arguing in hushed tones. Jackson and his Lieutenant Boutelle stood quietly aside as Superintendent Odeneal reimpressed his agent, Oliver Applegate, with the seriousness of what was about to take place. Applegate was unsure of moving too hastily.
“I think it better to wait for more soldiers to come—”
“Dammit,” Odeneal growled, freezing rain crackling along the arm he used for gesture, “we don’t have the time—and we don’t have the need. The Modocs will move peacefully … or the captain here will herd them up to Yainax.”
“I don’t figure Captain Jack and his bunch will do anything peacefully, once you send the soldiers in there after him.”
Odeneal rocked back on his heels, smiling. “Chances are good you’ll be proved right, Mr. Applegate. But, after all, we’d better give those Indians the chance to come in peacefully before we start shooting, don’t you see?”
Applegate bit his lip, clearly worried. “There’s a couple Yainax men in Jack’s bunch.”
Odeneal ground his jaws angrily. “What the hell are they doing in that camp?”
“Gambling. Let me go in there and get them out before these soldiers of yours start shooting.”
“I can’t allow you to ruin our advantage of surprise now, Mr. Applegate.”
At this moment a pair of civilians heavily bundled in coats and mufflers crossed behind the Indian agent, leading their horses out of the corral. They climbed into the saddle and started away at a lope when Applegate noticed their departure.
“Who are they, Odeneal?” he asked, agitated, signaling Jackson closer. “Captain, perhaps we should send some soldiers to stop them?”
Odeneal shook his head. “No, Jackson. There’s no reason to stop those men.”
“Why, the devil there isn’t!” Applegate said. “They might be going off to warn the Modocs of our coming. Then your plans will be ruined.”
“Balderdash,” Odeneal sighed. “That’s merely two men who rode down here with me: a scout from Klamath named One-Arm Brown and a fella named Crawley—owns a ranch on Lost River, near the Modocs’ camp. They’ve gone ahead of us to warn the other settlers near his place of what’s afoot. We’re giving them a chance to move out before trouble starts.”
“So you are expecting trouble, Odeneal?”
“Aren’t you, Applegate?”
The agent eyed the soldiers a moment before he answered. “Yes. I suppose I am expecting trouble now.”
Chapter 4
November 29, 1872
The jolly mood that had lightened the whole affair back at Linkville had gone the way of a man’s breath smoke on the freezing wind by the time Captain Jackson’s outfit had plodded through the darkness and walls of freezing sleet for more than six hours. Agent Oliver Applegate’s brother, Ivan, a local rancher, had joined the five settlers and Ian O’Roarke’s nephew in following Jackson’s Company B south into the icy wilderness.
Tiring of the plug tucked in his cheek, Ian reached up to yank it from his mouth. His heavy canvas mackinaw crackled like splintering plaster. Just up the road, Jackson signaled a halt at the Lone Pine Ford on Lost River. None of them dismounted as the captain reined around and came back to Applegate and the civilians.
“We’re close, aren’t we?” the agent asked of Fairchild in a hushed whisper as the soldier brought his horse to a halt nearby.
Fairchild nodded. “Six, maybe seven miles now. I figure it’ll be dawn soon, when you want to move in.”
“Go
od,” Jackson replied to the rancher’s declaration, shuddering with the freezing rain that drove at them in gusts of icy torture. “It’s a little after four. I’ve determined to split up here. But we’re going to do something a bit different than what we planned with Superintendent Odeneal—” He winced, an arm clamped at his belly.
“You don’t look so good, Captain,” Applegate said.
“My belly’s giving me fits again,” Jackson replied, gritting. “Applegate, your civilians here tell me there’s another, smaller band of Modocs camped over there on the east bank of the river.”
“That’s right,” Pressley Dorris answered. “The shaman, Curly Headed Doctor, and his bunch.”
“How many?”
“The Doctor’s son-in-law, Hooker Jim, and a dozen or so warriors—their women and kids.”
Jackson swiped a glove under his nose. “At first I was planning to send Lieutenant Boutelle across to keep a lid on that bunch. But with my belly giving me trouble the way it is, Applegate—I’m going to send you and your civilians across the river instead—while I’ll take the soldiers with me into the main camp. So, just in case trouble starts…” His voice died off as he leaned forward, clutching his belly again, suffering a cramp.
“You don’t want that small bunch breaking loose across the countryside, do you, Cap’n?” Seamus inquired.
Jackson raised his eyes to peer through the gray sleet at the tall civilian. “You know something of fighting Indians, do you, mister?”
“Some. But in different country. Different Injins.”
The soldier nudged his horse up and came to a halt to have a closer look at the man in the soggy hat. “How different?”
“As different as Sioux and Cheyenne can be from these Modocs, I suppose.”
“What’s your name, mister?”
“Seamus Donegan.”
“He’s my nephew, Captain,” Ian explained, more for Applegate’s benefit than Jackson’s.
Devil's Backbone: The Modoc War, 1872-3 Page 5