Devil's Backbone: The Modoc War, 1872-3
Page 15
The rest of the white men appeared hopeful, if not ready to believe in the friendly gestures and words coming from the Indians.
“My good friends gathered here know I speak with straight words,” Jack said, nearing the end of his opening remarks. “You white men know my heart. It is not white. My heart is Modoc. But—a war can only mean disaster for my people. While I cannot stand by and see my people slaughtered by the Ben Wrights among the white men moving into our Lost River country—so too I cannot stand by and see my people kill themselves in a foolish war.”
For a few moments the chief stopped near H. Wallace Atwell, watching in silence as the reporter scribbled across his notebook while Frank and Toby Riddle interpreted Jack’s words for the white ears.
“We are for peace—but we will not be treated like dogs. We can live in peace on Lost River. You must tell the army they cannot push us onto Klamath ground again.”
When Jack had taken his seat, Steele rose to address the assembly.
“There are many among the white men who are for peace, my friends. I would hope that among the Modoc—there will be more who stand for peace than clamor for war against the soldiers.”
The Yreka lawyer made his meaning plain as his eyes landed on Curly Headed Doctor, and stayed riveted there for the longest time before he continued. “I come to you today with the assurance of the chief of the peace commission—a man you remember named Meacham, who once served as chief for the Indian Bureau in all of Oregon country.”
“Meacham?” Jack asked.
Several of the other warriors echoed the name as Riddle pronounced it.
“Yes, Meacham,” Steele replied. “He has given me authority to tell you that he can grant amnesty for all who have committed any crimes, committed any killing since the twenty-ninth of November—under a state of war with the soldiers.”
“What is this amnesty?” asked the chief.
Steele considered a moment, tapping his lower lip with a fingertip, walking slowing in front of the Modoc head men. “It means that your warriors will not be held guilty for the killing they did in fighting the soldiers.”
Jack turned to his people, the smile broad across his flat face. “You see—we can win with the white man! He will not force us into turning over the guilty warriors to be hanged!”
There were hoots and hollers of agreement, which fell silent when Steele held his hands up.
“Jack, your people must understand that this amnesty is given your warriors only if you agree to removing your people to a reservation—but a reservation of your choice.”
Jack came back to Steele quickly. “On our land beside Lost River.”
Steele finally shook his head. “No, Jack. Almost anywhere but there.”
“It is our ancient land.”
“I know. Believe me, I know it is.” Steele wrung his hands in desperation, sensing the momentous turn of things—if only it were still in his grasp. “You must do this, Jack. For your people. Take the reservation offered. Choose a beautiful place for your people to live out all their days. And—it will be all your people, as I said. No man will be hanged if you go to the reservation now. You have my word on it.”
“You speak this truly?”
“I have never lied to you, Jack.”
“No, my friend Steele has never lied to me,” the chief replied, then turned to his people. “We will sleep on these words tonight—and talk more tomorrow before the white men return to the camp of the soldiers.”
Later that evening after some Modoc women had served supper to the delegation gathered at a small fire of their own, Steele and Atwell fairly bubbled over with the prospects of peace.
“Why the devil is it you don’t agree with me, fellas?” the lawyer asked the others.
O’Roarke looked at Fairchild. Then Fairchild looked at Riddle before answering. “Elisha, I’m sorry—but I don’t think we’ve made a damn bit of headway.”
Atwell wiped the back of his hand across his greasy lips and shook his iron fork at the settler. “But I saw Jack’s face myself—and if I know anything, Mr. Fairchild, I know people. I heard the chief’s words myself—and sensed no double-dealing there.”
“You’re right, Mr. Atwell,” Ian O’Roarke burst in “Jack plays every card as it lands—fair as the day is long. But Fairchild here isn’t talking about Jack.”
“What the devil are you two talking of then?” Steele inquired.
“Jack doesn’t control the whole band anymore.”
“He’s their chief.”
“And fellas like you make that same mistake all the time,” Seamus Donegan broke in.
“I’d expect a comment like that from someone who had a little experience with Indians on the high plains—but these Oregon tribes are as different from those as night and day.”
“Are they, Elisha?” Fairchild asked. “There’s more at work here to keep things stirred up than meets the eye.”
“I believe you fellas will be proved wrong come tomorrow.”
“Pray that we are,” O’Roarke said, then blew steam off his coffee. “Pray that we are wrong.”
The following morning more speeches were made—grand orations about how the Modocs would be cared for with annuities of clothing and food, education for their children and medical care for the infirm and aged. If Steele felt buoyed the night before, he was ecstatic about the mood he felt among the Modocs by the time his delegation pulled away from the Lava Bed Stronghold.
So eager was he to spread his happy news that in nearing the army camp, Elisha Steele spurred on ahead of the other delegates, urging a handful of Modoc escorts to accompany him at a gallop.
Into the clusters of tents and smoky mess-fires he tore, standing in the stirrups, hat at the end of his arm, waving from side to side. “The Modocs are for peace! They’re ready to make peace!”
Meacham and the Applegates immediately burst from their tents in the late afternoon light. From a breathless Steele they heard all the happy details as the Yreka lawyer time and again pointed at the Modoc warriors who had come along to the soldier camp to reinforce the hopes for peace.
Soldier and civilian alike were all astir, ready for a great celebration by the time O’Roarke, Fairchild, Atwell, Donegan and the two interpreters arrived minutes later.
“I don’t figure there’s any new good news to tell, Mr. Meacham,” Fairchild said as he and O’Roarke strode up to the commissioner’s tent where Steele was reveling in telling messengers the news he wanted conveyed to Linkville and Yreka, from there on to Washington itself.
Meacham twitched, his eyes narrowing. The celebration subsided, then fell silent. “What are you saying, Mr. Fairchild?”
“The Modocs listened to Steele all right,” O’Roarke said. “But they didn’t agree to peace on our terms.”
Meacham shook his head violently. “You mean they won’t accept amnesty for their murderers in return for a reservation of their choice?”
“If that reservation is on Lost River.”
“We both know that’s out of the question.”
“Then we’re back to the word go again, Mr. Meacham.”
Steele shouldered his way up, his old and lined face etched now with worry where moments before it had been smoothed with joy. “Atwell was there. He heard the speeches from all of us. Tell them, Wallace. Read the speeches.”
When the reporter finished reading his notes to the growing throng, there was not a person there who could admit to finding among the Modoc words anything that would give them hope of making peace with Jack’s people.
“What about the Modocs who came with us?” Steele asked, his voice edged with desperation. “Riddle—you ask them if they didn’t come to show us the Modocs were ready to accept peace.”
After talking in low tones for a moment with the visitors, Riddle straightened, his own mouth puckered at the corners like shrunken rawhide. “They said they come to listen to the white man talk of making peace. Listen only—no talk of peace for the Modocs.”
“Suppose it will make for a good story—yes, I’ll go.”
“Good.” Steele turned to the Riddles. Stepping before Winema, he asked, “Toby, will you go—to interpret for me?”
After glancing at her husband. “Only me?”
“Yes. Just you, Toby.”
“I will go with you, Steele. Tomorrow. To talk to Captain Jack’s Modocs.”
* * *
By the time Jack’s friend Elisha Steele returned to the Stronghold, the mood of the Modocs had changed as quickly as the wind itself changed in the Ice Moon.
In less time than it took the winter sun to travel from horizon to horizon, Curly Headed Doctor had once again wrested emotional control of the band from Chief Kientpoos. Jack wished the two white men and his niece Winema had stayed at the soldier camp. The mood in the Stronghold had turned black and ugly, like the hard, cold and icy rocks that formed this bastion where his people hid like animals.
Unlike their last visit, this time Jack feared for their lives.
He kept his seat, watching the gray-headed Steele drop from his horse and look about him apprehensively. Knowing the white man could feel the hate in every pair of eyes on him, Jack knew his sole task would be to protect the lives of these three people—any way he could.
Slowly Steele came forward, then held out his hand, forcing a watery smile on his face.
“I come here as your friend, Jack. Are we … we still are friends?”
Jack nodded, his eyes half-lidded. “Yes, Steele. We friends long time to come.”
It made him feel a little better to watch some of the apprehension drain from the white man’s face.
“Jack, I come to see if I heard the Modoc words right when we talked of peace and a new reservation for your people.”
“We are for peace, Steele,” he said. “But when you come here to tell us we cannot have our reservation on Lost River—you do not know what pain and anger you make in the heart of Modocs.”
Steele wrung his hands before him, something that made Jack pity his white friend as Curly Headed Doctor lunged forward, sticking his face inches from the lawyer’s.
“No more talk now!” snarled the shaman. “We are all done giving in to the white man. Only lies you give us. But no more! Now we are free!”
“And we will drive the white man out of our country!” shouted Hooker Jim.
“You must remember that there are many white men like me who want to find peace—”
“Peace?” screamed the shaman. “You are here begging like a dog for peace because the Modoc is more powerful than the white man!”
Steele shook his head, eyes growing big as Winema translated the words. He glanced quickly at the reporter. Atwell was no longer hunched over, notebook pressed atop his knee—instead, he was watching the scene with growing alarm.
Steele swallowed hard before speaking. “Better that we talk tomorrow before I return to the soldier camp.”
“There is no more talk!” Curly Headed Doctor said.
“When your blood has cooled—we can talk tomorrow.”
“Yes,” Captain Jack agreed, rising. “The council is over for tonight.”
While his people slowly dispersed, the chief watched, feeling no little fear for the lives of the guests. Here and there angry knots of warriors and squaws gathered, whispering, all the time staring at the white men and Winema. Scar-Faced Charley came up beside Jack.
“We cannot let these people be killed, Kientpoos,” Charley whispered at Jack’s ear.
“We’ll take them to my own cave. Bring my sister to watch over Winema. I will guard Steele and you must guard the other white man with your life.”
Charley nodded as Jack turned back to their guests. “Come with us now,” he explained to Winema Riddle. “It is safe where I sleep.”
Jack led the three to the cave his family had been using since arriving there at the end of the previous November. There he showed the guests where they could unfurl their blankets and make their beds. Then he joined Charley and his sister, called Queen Mary because of her size, at the narrow entrance to the lava cave.
The sun sank rapidly that night, bringing the cold and frost much quicker than normal. Jack hungered, his belly rumbling with a dull reminder that he had not eaten since breakfast on some dried strips of cow meat. With nothing else now, Jack sipped at the cool water from the canteen he had captured on the battlefield weeks before.
Sometime long after the moon had risen, then fallen far enough to shed its western luminance into the cave, Jack turned to look over the three guests he was guarding. He found his old friend Elisha Steele up on an elbow, staring at him in the silver light. When the white man spoke, Charley and Queen Mary turned quietly.
“Jack,” Steele whispered.
“Ssshhh,” Charley warned.
“No,” Jack replied quietly. “It is all right. Speak softly, Steele.”
“I … I feel in my heart that you and your … the three of you are all that stands between me and my death right now.”
Jack squinted, hard. Sometimes that helped him better understand the white man’s words when they came too quickly to grasp in one huge bite. The squinting helped him concentrate and sort out the words. When he had enough, he stopped squinting and nodded to Steele.
“Yes, my friend. You too all stand between me and rope hanging now. I save you now. You save me soon.”
Jack watched Steele slowly sink back to his blankets, his face disappearing from the patch of silver light. Yet the white man’s eyes continued to show bright and big for the longest time in that dark, cold cave.
Watching, always watching the three who stood between the white men and the rage of Curly Headed Doctor.
Chapter 15
Late March 1873
Ian O’Roarke watched Steele, Atwell and Toby Riddle ride back into the outskirts of Gillem’s army camp. From the haggard, wind-blustered look of his friend, Ian immediately knew something had gone awry.
“Tell me, Elisha—you found out how wrong you were, didn’t you?” Ian asked, walking along at Steele’s stirrup until the Yreka attorney reined up his horse.
“Tell them, Steele,” Atwell prodded angrily.
The attorney nodded and sighed. “I had to … had to promise them that the commissioners would come to a conference…”
“Yes, so?” Ian said, watching others coming up to the three on horseback.
“I promised the commissioners would come to a meeting with the Modocs in their Stronghold … unarmed.”
“Unarmed?” O’Roarke asked, his voice rising two octaves.
“You actually promised the Doctor’s butchers that the commissioners would lay their lives down on the Modocs’ front step—unarmed?” John Fairchild asked.
“It was the only way he could get us out of that camp alive,” Atwell said, still visibly shaken.
Ian looked at Winema, her head bowed. At that moment Frank Riddle shouldered his way through the crowd. The couple spoke quietly for a moment, then he lifted her down from the horse.
“I don’t think Jack would let her be killed,” Frank said as he turned to go, Winema beneath an arm. “She’s his niece, for God’s sake.”
“Still, she might be caught in some fury provoked by the Doctor,” Fairchild said.
Riddle nodded, obviously concerned for his distraught wife, and led her away from the growing crowd.
“They’re planning nothing more than bald-face treachery,” Ian said, “demanding Steele guarantee the commissioners come to that evil den of death, unarmed.”
“You had no business making any promises on our behalf,” said Alfred B. Meacham as he came to a stop.
Steele whirled, his hands before him, imploring. “I said what I had to—just to get us out of there before—”
“You might well have hamstrung us, Steele,” M
eacham growled.
“More than that, Alfred,” O’Roarke said quietly, “you go and choose to meet with those warriors now—your life hangs by a most slender thread.”
* * *
By the first week of April an impressive array of newspapermen had gathered at Colonel Gillem’s camp, each one eager to feed his hungry readers back east with the latest morsels from what was now being headlined as the MODOC WAR IN THE LAVA BEDS. This would prove to be the first, and in many ways the only, campaign comprehensively reported on during the entire quarter-century era of the Indian Wars. And with the way things were going, it was sure to make headlines for months to come.
“A ragtag band of poorly-armed Injins holding the mighty U.S. Army at bay!” Seamus cried. “That damn sure will make news back east.”
“One of the New York papers even has a veteran of the British army reporting here for them,” Ian O’Roarke said as he stirred the coals of their evening mess-fire.
John Fairchild squatted down beside them. “Heard he was working for the New York Herald.”
“The stuff he’s writing about—and how he’s writing it—won’t do Gillem no good,” Seamus said. “Those articles get back east—all those politicians back there with their starched collars will cry even louder for the army to make peace with Captain Jack at any price.”
“Just to avoid a war. A bloody shame,” Ian growled, dragging the bubbling coffeepot from the coals.
“They haven’t been kind to the commissioners already here to make their peace with the Modocs. Not that I really care for the rest of ’em.” John Fairchild accepted a steaming cup. “But when they go sniping at Meacham—that’s when I get my hackles up.”
“What they been saying about the old man?” Seamus asked.
“Saw a soldier’s paper yesterday. One of the reporters was writing that Meacham could ‘talk the legs off a cast-iron pot in just ten minutes,’” Fairchild replied.
Seamus shrugged. “Sounds like Meacham’s the man for the job. Them Modocs been hard as cast-iron so far.”