Devil's Backbone: The Modoc War, 1872-3

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Well done, Mr. Kyle,” Perry said quietly as he helped drag the lieutenant back to safety.

  “Well done, hell,” Kyle growled. “I didn’t get any water—”

  “Leave that to me,” Perry said as he began pulling the canteen straps from Kyle’s shoulders.

  “They’ll get you too.”

  “Maybe not,” Perry replied.

  “Chances are good they will,” Ian O’Roarke said quietly as he knelt beside Kyle, pulling off the last of the canteens from the lieutenant’s body. “I’ll try to cover you best I can.”

  Perry tore his eyes from O’Roarke to stare out from the boulders across that last ten yards of bare shore, measuring something unseen. His eyes came to rest on the civilian once more. “Might work, mister.”

  Ian patted two more canteens he already carried for the other Californians. “If it doesn’t, Captain—I don’t want you blaming me for trying.”

  Perry smiled wryly. “Never hold a fool accountable for his acts, mister.” He held out his hand.

  “O’Roarke.”

  “Let’s crawl, Mr. O’Roarke.”

  Together they went to their bellies, pushing with their legs and pulling with their hands dug into the surface of black pebbles. The empty tin canteens clattered softly beneath each arm as they inched from the rocks. Slowly at first—then more quickly, perhaps frantically, as they moved each successive yard, nearing the beckoning water that lapped lazily against a slick of opaque ice that coated the black shoreline.

  The first shot noisily struck a canteen O’Roarke dragged beside him.

  A second shot caused a short spout of earth to erupt between the two men already scrambling apart and turning about. O’Roarke rolled onto his back, pulling up his Spencer repeater and snapping off two shots of his own. From the corner of his eye Ian watched the captain cover the last few yards on his hands and knees, fall to his belly at the water, where he plunged two of the canteens beneath the cold surface at once.

  Ian fired a third round at the tall, black monoliths where the Modoc marskmen hid. Just above those rocks the white fog hung suspended, blotting out the falling sun overhead. More Indian fire rattled from the loopholes above the white men.

  “Arrrghgh!”

  Ian fired once more, then twisted his head to find Perry grasping his upper arm. Dark, bright blood filled the spaces between his pale fingers, oozing over them, staining his tunic and blotting on the black sand below.

  “Goddamn, that hurts!” Perry hollered again.

  Derisive laughter rang from the rocks above them. Then, “I’m shot!” shouted in a high, mocking voice.

  “Oh, I’m shot!” another voice jeered.

  “Lemme get us out of here,” O’Roarke whispered, firing his rifle toward the rocks. “Can you do it yourself?”

  Perry nodded.

  “You come here to fight Indians,” a squaw’s voice hurled itself down at the two at the shore, “and you make a noise like that when a bullet hits you?”

  Modoc warriors laughed with her.

  “You are no man, soldier,” the woman’s voice continued mocking him. “You a squaw instead!”

  With every bullet that kicked up a spout of dirt around them, O’Roarke and Perry crawled that much faster back to the boulders.

  Perry collapsed, breathing hard behind the rocks as a soldier wrapped the wounded arm with a strip of dull bandage. By now the captain had three dead and several wounded.

  “How long you figure we can sit here?” Perry asked those gathered around him.

  “I don’t figure we can afford to stay here much longer,” Kyle replied, bobbing his head back up the trail at the sound of footsteps.

  Perry and the rest turned to find Major Green and some of his staff shuffling their way in a hurry.

  “What’s the hold-up, Captain?” asked the commander as he brought his eyes from Perry’s wound to the captain’s face.

  “We can’t get down to the lakeshore without suffering heavily, Major.”

  Green yanked one of his woolen gloves from his right hand. “By damned, we have to. We have to.”

  “We’ve taken heavy casualties, Major—”

  “I damn well never thought it would be easy once we started this morning, Captain!”

  Green got to his feet, standing above the rest of the soldiers who hunkered down among the rocks.

  “Major! Get down!” Kyle shouted.

  “Get down!” other voices rose here and there.

  A shot rang out, kicking up some black dust from a boulder behind Green.

  “Damn you, heathens!” the major hollered, turning toward the Modoc position, flailing an arm in indignation.

  “And damn you—all of you soldier mans!” Charley hurled his oath at the white men refusing to budge from their rocks. “You all die in hell you don’t stand and fight like mens!”

  “Major—we can’t expect—”

  “I damn well do expect … and order every last one of you on your feet You sonsabitches better get moving, on my command—and join up with Bernard. We have our orders. Are any of you men prepared to suffer courts-martial for cowardice?”

  There arose a smattering of angry muttering from the group scattered among the rocks. Three more shots came whining past Green as he stood there, alone and unmoving, making himself a dandy target.

  “Get down!” more men shouted.

  “Get up and fight like soldiers, you yellow-bellied dogs! Get up, dammit!”

  Ian reached over and tapped Fairchild on the arm. “You and Dorris ready to show ’em how?”

  “What you got in mind, Irishman?”

  “I say enough of us give these soldiers some covering fire—they can make that crossing of the open ground without too many getting hit.”

  The pair nodded and led the rest of the Californians to their feet.

  “C’mon, boys,” O’Roarke announced to the knots of soldiers hiding in the boulders. “We’ve got business to attend to on the other side of them rocks off yonder.”

  “You figure to find your nephew with Bernard’s men?”

  He nodded at Pressley Dorris. “I pray I do find him, friends. Pray I do.”

  Spurred by the courage of the Californians who took possession of some rocks and began delivering a hot fire back at the Modocs, Green got Perry’s and Mason’s men moving as bullets angrily slapped the rocks around them. Every man capable made that trip past the exposed lakeshore, not tarrying in the least where so many had been wounded. Cavalry and infantry both followed the settlers’ example: while a few of the soldiers hurried east past the boulders into the naked no-man’s land, the rest laid down a hot riflefire to cover those crossing to the far side.

  This maneuver dragged on and on for the longest time under a deadly hail of Indian bullets. Many of the Californians and soldiers prayed for darkness to come. Only then would they be able to drag their dead and wounded from the rocks and join Bernard’s troops.

  As a shimmering, hazy sun shrank behind Mount Shasta near five o’clock, the last of Green’s men collapsed among the rocks on the far side of the Stronghold, near the shore where they effected their reunion with Bernard’s troops safely ensconced behind big boulders. In the growing twilight the Californians were the last to scurry to safety, having covered every soldier who dared make the crossing.

  Darkness was sinking over the land as the wind shifted once more out of the north, bringing with it a cold, icy spray off the lake.

  Among the rocks, only a hundred yards away, the wounded who had been abandoned began to howl in distress as the black of night swallowed the land.

  “Don’t leave me here for them Modocs!”

  “For God’s sake—come drag me outta here!”

  They moaned pitiably and cried out for help.

  His gut twisted in remorse, Ian tried to shut his ears to those cries of pain and anguish as night came down around them all. When he could no longer take it, he turned to Fairchild.

  “I need your help,” he whispered.
“Can’t go in there all by myself.”

  “I’m in with you,” Dorris agreed.

  Crawling back into the lengthening shadows cast across the lakeshore by the lava boulders, the trio moved out followed by more volunteers.

  Five yards, ten then twenty—and the deepening gloom of twilight opened up with spurts of yellow fire. Modoc bullets sought out first one, then a second of the volunteers. Ian turned to find all but Dorris and Fairchild had abandoned the search for the wounded.

  “We don’t have a chance, Ian,” Fairchild whispered.

  A bullet ricocheted from a rock nearby.

  “They’re aiming at sound now,” Dorris hissed, inching backward toward safety, disappearing into the gloom.

  “Give it up, O’Roarke,” Fairchild said, tugging at his friend’s leg.

  Reluctantly, the Irish settler swallowed down the bile at the back of his tongue.

  And like the rest, abandoned the wounded.

  Chapter 11

  January 17–18, 1873

  At sundown on 17 January the short but electrifying Wheaton finally moved up close enough to the Stronghold to see for himself the lack of progress made after more than twelve hours of march and skirmish.

  The thick, whitish ocean of mist lifted for the first time since sunrise. On every high point from the Lava Beds to the rough-cut rumpled bluffs themselves, the Modocs lit signal fires of greasewood. Beneath a blackening, moonless sky, no soldier seeing all those flickering fires could help but catch the “yellow flu” already running its course through the command.

  By the time Wheaton arrived on the scene, he found only a handful of Oregon volunteers and fifteen regulars left from Green’s entire command who had started out that morning assured of an easy victory.

  He waved his adjutant to his side. “Signal Captain Bernard’s command. The attack is suspended.”

  “Suspended?”

  Wheaton snapped at the lieutenant, “This battle’s over, goddammit!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The lieutenant colonel scanned the knots of men huddled behind the boulders from the cruel wind and Modoc bullets, then found the leader of the Oregon militia.

  “General Ross?”

  “Colonel.”

  “I now believe it will be impossible to carry the enemy’s position by another direct attack, unless more artillery is used.”

  “We had two howitzers at your disposal today, Colonel.”

  “And we could have damn well killed a lot of our own men in that fog too. As it is, I have seven dead regulars and nineteen seriously wounded. Have you assessed your own casualties?”

  Ross looked a little sheepish with his answer. “Only two dead, Colonel. And nine wounded. I’m afraid two of those won’t last the trip back to Van Bremmer’s ranch.” He cleared his throat, then spoke his mind. “Wheaton, my men feel that we could have wiped out that Stronghold—had you turned us loose earlier in the day—”

  “My good General!” snapped Wheaton like a broken mainspring in a pocket watch. “The problem is not with me—nor is the solution resting with your volunteers.”

  “Colonel—”

  “I’ll break one of my own hard and fast rules, Ross—speaking my mind to a civilian. Something I rarely do,” he hissed, shutting Ross up. “Today proved one thing to me if nothing else. Your volunteers learned the hard way that the Modocs will fight—that they won’t run when you or my soldiers draw near. I think these men of yours are far less eager to fight now than they were this morning.”

  Ross glanced at some of his men, including battalion commanders Applegate and Kelly. Every one of the volunteers wore a chastised look, unable to meet Wheaton’s gaze.

  “What would you suggest we do now?” Wheaton asked of Ross.

  The general wagged his head as it sank between his shoulders. “We’d better get out of here, by God!”

  Wheaton’s hands clenched into fists as he finally choked on the failure of his own soldiers and the volunteers. In the end his anger subsided just as quickly. He sighed. “General Ross, I leave this matter in your hands.”

  Both the remaining soldiers and what was left of the Oregon volunteers watched as Wheaton disappeared with a few members of his staff into the deepening twilight.

  Ross stood, stretching. “I figure it’s dark enough now to get this outfit out of here without taking any more casualties. Let’s move back up the bluff.”

  To follow Ross in pulling back were less than seventy-five men remaining on that west side of the Stronghold. The rest of the volunteers had been wounded and were already evacuated, or they had simply abandoned their positions when the shooting really heated up, many leaving behind their weapons and their rations in a frantic wholesale retreat.

  In their hurry what with full darkness descending, the hungry and the cold took only a few of their wounded with them in that retreat. They hauled the battered and bleeding over the rugged rocks in improvised stretchers made of gray army blankets. The dead and those wounded they could not safely reach were left behind among the cold, black lava flow.

  “For God’s sake—don’t leave me here for those butchers!”

  Listening to the whimpering cries from the nearby battlefield raised the hair on the back of Donegan’s neck as the night came down.

  “In the name of all that’s civilized…” another voice called pitiably, “someone shoot me, please shoot me!”

  He looked at his uncle in what moonless light the starry sky had to shed on them as they sat protected by the boulders, the humid air crackling with frost about them all.

  For better than ten hours four hundred men had hopelessly thrown themselves against a mere fifty—that fifty and the formidable fortress of the Lava Beds.

  Ian O’Roarke shook his head in resignation. “I doubt that’s the first time you heard men begging for someone to kill ’em, nephew. You fought that war.”

  Seamus sighed, his head slung between his shoulders like a worn-out singletree. “That was a long time ago, Uncle. And a lot farther away. We fought white men.”

  “And you’re saying white men don’t butcher their wounded prisoners? If you are—you’re a ruddy fool. Ben Wright and his bunch come to the Modocs at Bloody Point twenty years ago, with murder in their heart, dead set on wiping every last one out: man, woman and child. Wright and his butchers are as much to blame as Captain Jack or Curly Headed Doctor for what’s happened this day.”

  For the longest time Donegan stared off to the east where Green’s troops had abandoned the wounded in their passage. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever get used to fighting Indians, let’s say. More than six years since I killed my first on a hot day near a trickle of a stream called the Crazy Woman Crossing—and I bloody well know this won’t be my last fight with the h’athens, Ian.”*

  “Heathens, you say. Ah, now—be wary you’re in the right, nephew. Whenever you’re fighting—no matter who or when—make ruddy sure you’re in the right before you go raising your fist or pointing your gun.”

  “Who’s right here?” Donegan asked quietly.

  Ian wagged his head, watching the eerie reflection on the lake’s cold and tortured surface of the huge bonfire the Modocs were building nearby to celebrate their victory. “I doubt there’ll ever be a right in this bloody little war.”

  As the white men sat brooding over their failure in the day, the Klamaths began calling out to their long-time enemies. One of the Californians translated what he could—learning that at the beginning of the battle the Klamaths had guaranteed they would not shoot at the Modocs. And now when the fighting was all over, it was plain to see written on each Klamath face the undisguised contempt they had for the white soldiers and volunteers who instead of bravely attacking the Modoc Stronghold had held back under the protection of the ever-present rocks.

  Wary of any treachery, Bernard suggested the Klamaths be ordered back to their reservation.

  Agreeing, the slightly built Lieutenant Colonel Wheaton wrote in his report, “Our enlisted Kla
math scouts have proved to be utter failures. We want Warm Springs Indians. Donald McKay, my district guide, will take charge of them.”

  Later in his dispatch to General Canby, Wheaton admitted the lack of solid accomplishment by his troops after a whole day of fighting.

  … all they did was to take about eighty [ponies] from the Indians … [my men are so near to the breaking point that] they could hear the whizzing of the balls, and the War-whoop of the Indian … besides, two-thirds of the command was so badly bruised and used up that they are limping about yet …

  Then, stretching the truth, he claimed,

  We fought the Indians through the Lava Beds to their stronghold which is the center of miles of rocky fissures, caves, crevices, gorges and ravines, some of them one hundred (100) feet deep.

  In the opinion of any experienced officer of regulars or volunteers, one thousand men would be required to dislodge [the Modocs] from their almost impregnable position, and it must be done deliberately, with a free use of mortar batteries. The Modocs were scarcely exposed at all to our persistent attacks. They left one ledge to gain another equally secure. One of our men was wounded twice during the day, but he did not see an Indian at all, tho’ we were under fire from eight A.M. until dark. No troops could have fought better than all did, in the attack advancing promptly and cheerfully against an unseen enemy over the roughest rock country imaginably. It was utterly impossible to accomplish more than to make a forced reconnaissance, developing the Modoc strength and position. It is estimated that (150) one hundred and fifty Indians opposed us.

  … Please send me three hundred foot-troops at the earliest date … Can the Governor of California send volunteers to protect this threatened portion of his state, which is open to Modoc raids?

  Having no better option with Wheaton himself retreating for the night, Green decided to take Bernard with him and withdraw to Land’s ranch. That slow, sad withdrawal of walking wounded began just past ten-thirty P.M. Forced to move carefully in the moonlit darkness through the blackened Lava Beds, stopping often to rest for the wounded and those carrying them alike, the last soldiers did not arrive until after one A.M. the next morning.