“The pickets tell me they’ve spotted the Indians on the scene—and none are seen among the rocks or timber nearby. I see no reason not to trust in the Modocs’ word.”
“They’ve kept us off-balance all spring, General,” Meacham said, grinding his coattail in one hand. “Why the devil should they suddenly start telling us the truth now?”
“So why must we be dishonest ourselves at this point?”
“Perhaps only to save our lives. Nothing more dramatic than that.”
“Are you suggesting we lie to the Modocs, Mr. Meacham?” Thomas asked.
He nodded. “Yes. If it becomes clear there is treachery afoot … if something doesn’t fit right—by damned, let’s agree to anything the Modocs want then get the hell out of there.”
“God, no!” Thomas shrieked, a hand rubbing across his ample belly. “I can’t be party to falsehood in the name of making peace. I’ll trust to God and leave everything in His hands.”
“Nor can I be a party to betraying the Indians when my whole career I have been steadfast in maintaining my honor with them, Mr. Meacham,” Canby replied. “We have promised to go to this council unarmed. I will honor that pledge.”
“I will go armed,” Meacham said. “Having your soldiers back here will not protect us. I’ll carry a weapon.”
“And I will as well,” Dyar added.
“No, no!” Thomas said, growing excited. “We made an agreement not to carry arms. If they suspect we have been unfaithful—it will ruin all the inroads we’ve made with them to get this far.”
“Reverend Thomas is absolutely right,” Canby agreed. “The importance of making peace at this point fully justifies us taking a moderate personal risk.”
Behind them Frank Riddle threw up his hands, shrugging his way toward the flaps. He stopped and turned. “If you men want to go to your deaths—that’s your business. I told you what the Modocs were planning. It’s no more of my responsibility now.”
“Are you still going along to interpret, Frank?” Meacham asked, his voice showing a hint of desperation.
Riddle nodded reluctantly. “I’m going. And so is Toby. I’ve been with that woman for twelve years—and never once has she deceived me. I know in my gut that those butchers out there are going to murder you today.”
“Thank you for your concern, Mr. Riddle. But you do the translating—only what you’re paid for,” replied Canby. “And the rest of us will make this peace with the Modocs.”
Riddle left the tent. Seamus pushed past the flaps and joined him, standing in silence as the voices rumbled low and indistinct within the tent for a few more minutes until Meacham and Dyar appeared.
“We have a few minutes left before we depart,” Meacham stated, stuffing his pocket watch back into his vest.
Thomas came out of Gillem’s tent with Canby. The general strode off, followed by his staff.
“I’m off to pay off my tab with the sutler,” the preacher explained. “Those clothes and other things I bought Boston and Bogus yesterday.” For the first time in days his face clouded over. “I’m not certain I’ll return. But I mean to perform my duty faithfully and continue my trust in God to bring it out all right I place myself in the hands of God. If He requires my life, I am ready for the sacrifice.”
Every bit as stunned at the preacher’s sudden admission as the others, Donegan watched the minister disappear through the gathering of trees and tents. Riddle left for his tent without another word. Dyar promised to be over in a matter of minutes. Then Seamus followed Meacham back to the commissioner’s tent. Fairchild, Dorris and O’Roarke sat at the fire, watching Meacham come up.
“If you gentlemen will allow me a few moments of privacy, I have a letter to write to my wife.”
Seamus watched Meacham disappear. Then he finally spoke low to the three civilians gathered around the coals of their morning fire.
“I think Meacham knows.’
“That the Modocs plan treachery?” Dorris asked.
He shook his head. “No—that he’s going to die.”
A handful of minutes passed. The four watched from afar as Thomas and a very military General Canby, dressed in shiny brass buttons and glittering braid, strode from the outskirts of camp on foot. The pair moved off alone. Heading down the footpath toward the meadow where the Modocs awaited them.
Only ten minutes later Meacham reappeared from his tent, his suit coat draped over one arm. Standing still, drinking deep of the cool air, he seemed to search for something to say. “Have the others shown up yet?”
“The preacher and the general already set off for the tent,” Fairchild replied.
Meacham sighed, then nodded slightly. He walked straight up to Fairchild and handed him a slip of paper folded once.
“Read this, John. Aloud.”
As Fairchild began reading, Meacham shivered then pulled on his coat.
“Lava Beds, April 11, 1873
My dear wife:
You may be a widow tonight; you shall not be a coward’s wife. I go to save my honor. John A. Fairchild will forward my valise and valuables. The chances are all against us.”
Fairchild’s eyes climbed from the page that trembled between his fingers. Those eyes were filled with a mist he attempted to blink away.
“Read the rest of it, John. So you are sure of what is expected of you … in the event of my death.”
Fairchild cleared his throat, wincing.
“The chances are all against us. I have done my best to prevent this meeting. I am in nowise to blame. Yours … yours to the end.
Alfred.
P.S. I gave Fairchild six hundred and fifty dollars, currency for you.
A.B.M.”
“Here it is, John,” Meacham said quietly, stuffing an envelope into the civilian’s hand. “You’ll see that both the letter and the money reach my wife.”
Fairchild held out his empty right hand, dragging Meacham’s into his. “I’ll go with you—”
“No. This is something I have promised I would do on my own. Promised myself. Now you must make a vow to me.”
“Anything,” Fairchild said.
“Swear to me on all that is holy that if … if my body is found butchered in any way … that you will bury me yourself—right here—on this spot … so that my family will not have to see me. To be haunted by the memory of—”
“I promise, Alfred. On the grave of my mother, I swear that to you.”
“No man would think you a coward,” Seamus said, beginning to pull his pistol from its holster.
Meacham tried a smile as he reached out to shake hands with the Irishman, with his other hand pushing the pistol back into the holster. “Thank you, Mr. Donegan. I do not need to be remembered as a hero. But … I don’t want to be remembered as a coward who ran—or a man who provoked violence when I was called on to work for peace.”
“We’ll come with you partway then,” Pressley Dorris offered, patting his own pistol.
Meacham shook his head as they finished shaking hands. “No. I see Mr. Dyar and the Riddles coming now. We will go together as planned—with our interpreters.”
Dyar came up first, his eyes moving across the civilians. “Mr. Fairchild—please deliver this money and letter to my wife at the Klamath Agency. Tell her … just tell her I love her. And always will.”
Fairchild took the flat parcel from Dyar and turned away without a word, stomping off angrily into the trees.
Seamus felt the sour taste of tears spoil at the back of his throat, knowing that Fairchild had retreated before he himself broke down.
Dyar licked his dry lips, handing the reins of a horse to Meacham.
“Why are you going,” Meacham inquired, not yet rising to the saddle, “if you too are convinced we are riding to our deaths?”
Dyar thought a moment, as if searching for words to explain. “If you go—I will go with you. I’m not going to stay if all the rest go. It would be nothing short of cowardice. We are in this together.”
Meac
ham nodded as he watched Oliver Applegate hurrying up to the scene. “I understand. You are a good man, L.S.”
“You have always been a friend to me, Alfred.”
They touched hands then turned to their horses. Applegate brushed by Dyar clumsily, not succeeding in hiding the fact that he slipped a derringer pistol into the subagent’s coat pocket.
“It is not a cowardly thing to protect yourself,” Applegate whispered at Dyar’s ear.
Dyar rose to the saddle, his eyes meeting Meacham’s. O’Roarke once more presented his hand to the head commissioner, as if to shake. They clasped hands. Seamus watched a look of surprise come over Meacham’s face as his hand came away from O’Roarke’s.
“Protect yourself, my friend,” Ian said in low tones.
Meacham cupped the tiny derringer in his palm and buried it in a coat pocket. “I will not die in dishonor—the Lord willing.”
Bogus Charley sat on a nearby stump, watching the proceedings as if he were heedless of them. “You go now,” he said in his poor English, dragging the blade of his belt knife along a twig, peeling back the bark. “Jack tired waiting for you. Go now.”
At that admonition, Toby could no longer hold back her sobbing. On her knees to clutch her small son to her breast, the woman’s cries of distress grew louder now as Meacham mounted his horse. “Do not go—you be killed!” she screeched.
“We must,” Meacham replied, watching as she rubbed her face against her son’s in parting. Toby finally rose to her saddle beside Frank.
Meacham urged his horse out of the gathering of spectators, followed by Dyar. The Riddles brought up the rear as they moved onto the footpath that would take them along the shore of Tule Lake to the council meadow.
“Godspeed,” Seamus whispered.
The Irishman finally turned away, a sour ball in his belly, to find his uncle staring at Bogus Charley. The Modoc still sat on that stump nearby, whittling and humming a happy tune. Joining Fairchild and his uncle, Donegan strode over to the warrior.
“You’re staying here to be sure no soldiers follow them—aren’t you?” Fairchild demanded in Modoc.
Charley looked up, wide-eyed. Then he smiled. “Nothing will happen to them.” He went back to whittling shavings off a green twig.
“Your friends going to kill them, Charley?”
“Nothing is wrong, Fairchild.”
“You kill them—we kill you, Charley,” O’Roarke vowed with a hiss.
Charley dropped the twig and slowly slipped the knife back in his belt. Rising, he dusted shavings from his new pants.
“Best you remember the man who bought those new britches for you,” Fairchild reminded.
Charley tried a smile, but it turned into something painful. Without excuse, he turned and began walking east. Then he started to trot. At the edge of camp he was already running. Not staying on the footpath, but heading directly through the rocks.
“He’s making a beeline to Jack before the commissioners get there.”
“You think he’ll try to stop things now?” Donegan asked.
Fairchild glanced at O’Roarke, then shook his head. “No. That bastard’s hurrying to tell the rest of ’em that there’s no soldiers coming to spoil their plans.”
Chapter 21
Shining Leaf Moon
Captain Jack waited impatiently with four others at the white man’s tent in the meadow. Boston Charley trotted up.
“They’re coming!” he said breathlessly, pointing back up the trail.
Jack turned casually and bent over to retie his cracked boots. That was the signal he had given to the two warriors hiding in the brush less than a hundred feet away, telling them all was going according to plan and the white men were approaching.
Sloluck grinned at Barncho. They had come here in the cold darkness before dawn to get into position, each with an armload of rifles, before the soldiers in the lookout tower could see movement come first light. Here the pair had shivered through the entire morning, waiting. Barncho grinned his slow-witted grin. Soon enough the shooting would start.
Jack straightened. He glanced over the rest. There was one killer assigned to each of the peace talkers. And each killer would have a backup to help finish off the victim.
“I will kill the soldier chief,” Ellen’s Man George said at Jack’s ear. “You do not want him—but I do want his scalp.”
“No,” Jack said, raspy. “I am chief. I will kill the soldier tyee.”
“I remember you wanted us to take this vow from you—”
Jack whirled on him, snagging his shirt. Ellen’s Man almost fell backward, so surprised was he with the chief’s assault.
“I told you—the soldier chief is mine.”
Ellen’s Man George would help Jack kill the soldier tyee.
Boston Charley and Bogus Charley had the honor of killing the “Sunday Doctor” who carried his good book wherever he went.
Schonchin John and Shacknasty Jim would see that old man Mee-Cham would not leave this meadow alive.
Dyar was to be killed by Hooker Jim, backed up by Black Jim.
Yet even Jack did not know that Scar-Faced Charley had crept through the sagebrush and lava rock to find his own hiding place. He was not here to assist in the killings. Instead, Charley had come here to keep his vow to kill any Modoc who raised a hand against Winema Riddle.
At that moment, Jack’s attention was snagged by the pounding footsteps and rustling brush. Bogus Charley burst into the meadow, a wide grin wolf-slashed across his face. “They’re here!” He ground to a chest-heaving halt before the others.
“Did they bring guns?” Hooker Jim asked impatiently.
He shook his head. “No guns. No soldiers!” He laughed. “We kill them all like squashing ticks!”
“Yes—we kill them, and the rest of the soldiers will run away. Just like the Doctor told us,” Hooker Jim reminded them.
“There!” Ellen’s Man shouted, pointing up the trail across the meadow.
Thomas and Canby appeared out of the trees, coming forward on foot at a brisk clip. The “Sunday Doctor” carried his Bible under one arm, dressed in a freshly pressed light-gray tweed suit. Canby was resplendent in his glittering buttons and braid and medals that caught the sunshine still draping the meadow in light despite the gathering clouds.
Jack wanted that coat. Perhaps more than anything he had wanted in a long, long time—he wanted the soldier chief’s coat.
The Modocs surged forward, meeting the two white men far beyond the council tent. They talked loudly, excitedly, to the two commissioners, shaking hands, bounding up and down like schoolboys at play, pointing the way toward the tent in the front of which they had built a fire and dragged up some deadfall for seats.
Canby sighed when he reached the tent, glanced at Thomas then let his eyes slowly pan over the surrounding brush and rocks for any signs of movement. Jack watched the soldier chief’s eyes every minute, hoping his two warriors would not become so anxious that they betrayed their positions.
For a tense moment the soldier chief eyed both Bogus and Boston Charley. They carried rifles they had with them while in the soldier camp earlier that morning. Jack saw the soldier chief about to say something to the pair.
He pushed forward, tapping the box beneath the soldier chief’s arm. “What this?” he asked in hi roughened English.
Canby stopped, diverted from confronting the warriors carrying rifles. “Ah, yes. Here,” he said, dragging a box of cigars from under his arm. “I did not have a pipe to smoke with you, Jack.” He pronounced each word slowly, deliberately, conscious of being without an interpreter for the moment. “These are good to smoke—good smoke. I got them from the camp sutler.”
Jack was the first to step up and take one, then a second that he put in his pocket. He stood there a moment, gazing at the tall soldier in his blue coat with the long rows of shiny buttons with eagles on each one. Shoulders draped with gold panels, and the cuffs of each sleeve dripping with glimmering braid.
Oh, how he wanted that coat.
His palms itched with sweat. Jack rubbed them on the front of his pants, ruining the leaf on one of the cigars. He lit it anyway, with a twig from the fire, when the rest lit their cigars.
“Good, here come the others,” Thomas announced.
The entire group turned to watch the final two commissioners enter the meadow on horseback, followed by the Riddles.
“Look at the clothes the old man wears,” snarled Schonchin John in Modoc with great disappointment. “Old and worn—not like the Sunday Doctor’s new suit.”
“Even Winema’s white man is wearing old clothes,” Shacknasty Jim added. “They are not worth taking from his body.”
Jack turned on Jim. “You remember the words of Scar-Faced Charley? He will kill you if you harm Winema or her husband.”
Jim laughed. “Scar-Faced Charley? Ha! He is not here to hurt me.”
“I would not be so sure,” Jack said, enjoying the way his words made the smile drain from Jim’s face.
* * *
Meacham did not like the smell of things as he rode down into that meadow, reining his horse up on the right side of the council tent.
Winema and Dyar dismounted on the left side of the tent. Frank Riddle strode to the front flaps, clearly anxious as he looked over the Modocs, then poked his head suspiciously into the tent itself.
Satisfied, he glanced at Meacham and shook his head slightly. Meacham was somewhat relieved. Still, seeing the two Charleys with rifles in plain view did nothing to make him more comfortable. He paused but a moment, looking over the warriors, wondering what weapons they carried beneath their coats.
“Weren’t we told there would be only five Modocs here?” Dyar asked.
Meacham nodded. “Looks like there were six to begin with—then Bogus and Boston came on down from our camp.”
“Eight,” Dyar said, smiling at the Modocs who were jostling for position, indicating seating positions for the white men. He accepted a cigar from Canby.
“I don’t like it any better than you do,” Meacham replied, noticing that Thomas did not take a cigar.
Devil's Backbone: The Modoc War, 1872-3 Page 21