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

by Terry C. Johnston

  The Modocs at the council ring stood, backing slightly.

  Meacham realized the moment was at hand. He lunged for Captain Jack as the chief made a beeline for Canby.

  “Jack, what is the meaning of this?” he hollered above the growing clamor.

  His face suddenly pinched with horror, the Modoc chief shouted, “Ot-we-kau-tux!”

  Riddle understood. So did Toby. Her uncle had announced, “All is ready!”

  Flinging his coat flap aside, Jack yanked out a revolver he had stuffed in the waist of his britches. At point-blank range he aimed it at Canby’s face.

  Meacham stood transfixed for the next few seconds, unable to lunge to help the soldier. Watching Canby stare transfixed at the gaping muzzle of that pistol held only inches from his face.

  Jack pulled the trigger, but the weapon misfired with a loud click—the cap useless.

  Canby sat motionless, disbelieving perhaps, paralyzed in the sudden terror of those seconds while Jack muttered over the pistol, recocked the hammer and brought it back to the white soldier’s face.

  This time when he pulled the trigger, the bullet smashed into the general’s head, just below the left eye, coursing downward and exiting from the back of the soldier’s neck.

  Canby’s head was driven back violently, shattering his jaw as he landed on some rocks. His body plopped in the grass for but a moment as Canby groaned. Rolling onto his hands and knees out of some reservoir of inner strength, the soldier somehow clambered to his feet, weaving, and lurched into a lumbering run away from the tent. Perhaps by some primitive instinct heading back to Gillem’s camp.

  The bleeding, heaving general had covered just over forty yards when, blinded by his own blood, he tripped, sprawling in the grass and dust.

  By this moment Ellen’s Man had swept up one of the rifles brought into the meadow by Barncho and Sloluck and was dashing after his wounded prey. As Canby lay choking on his own blood, clawing fingers into the damp soil, attempting to rise, the warrior stood over his quarry and fired a bullet into the soldier’s head.

  Jack was on the quivering body in that next instant, stabbing Canby in the throat to bleed his victim. Grunting to one another, he and Ellen’s Man rolled the still-warm carcass over and roughly yanked the blue army tunic from the body. Jack stood proudly with it as Ellen’s Man spotted Canby’s watch tearing it from the dead man’s vest pocket.

  Both turned to gaze with satisfaction across the meadow at the other murderers.

  At the moment Jack’s pistol misfired its first shot, Reverend Thomas bolted to his feet in horror, still clutching his Bible, his knees still damp and dirty from his prayerful position in the grass.

  Boston Charley brought up the rifle he had carried to and from the soldier camp, jerking back on the trigger as Thomas’s eyes grew wide and he started to run. The bullet hit the minister squarely in the chest, knocking him backward over the stump where he had been sitting.

  Clutching his wound, watching the blood seep between his white fingers, Thomas whimpered as he struggled onto his knees and one hand. With the bloodied hand outstretched and imploring at his attacker, Thomas moaned.

  “Don’t shoot me again, Boston—I’m going to die anyway…”

  The Modoc stepped over his victim’s legs, ramming home another cartridge into the breech of his rifle. He stood over Thomas, a sneer on his face. “Why you no turn bullets, Sunday Doctor? Your spirit medicine not strong as mine, eh?”

  Whimpering more loudly now, at times calling upon his God to help him, Thomas struggled to his feet, still clawing feebly at his bleeding wound. He made two, then three steps before Boston tripped him, sending him facedown into the grass.

  “Goddamn you, Sunday Doctor! Maybe you should believe what squaw tell you next time.”

  Boston brutally swung the butt of his rifle, crushing the side of the reverend’s jaw. Thomas sprawled for a moment, gurgling in blood, yet somehow struggled to rise once more.

  “Our Father … who art in heaven…”

  Bogus Charley shoved Boston aside, raising his rifle. As Thomas watched, Bogus placed the muzzle against the side of the white man’s head …

  “… Hallowed be Thy name—”

  Bogus pulled the trigger. The grass below the preacher was of a sudden littered with blood and bone and gore.

  As the body convulsed on the grass, its bowels voided, adding a sudden stench to the clean, spring air.

  Holding their breath, the two Charleys quickly stripped their victim of the gray tweed suit, laughing that they had eaten from the Sunday Doctor’s plate and drank from his coffee cup that same morning.

  “Give me that!” ordered Steamboat Frank.

  “Where you come from?” Bogus asked, yanking back on the minister’s coat. He was not about to give it up so easily.

  “I watch from the rock,” Frank said, adding another yank to the coat. He stood a full head taller than either of the Charleys.

  “You take the coat and go away,” Boston Charley said, handing the dead man’s garment to the newcomer to the meadow.

  When Canby was shot and Thomas chased down for the fatal shot to the head, Alfred B. Meacham was already on his feet, trying to run backward up the slope toward the soldier camp. He took very few steps, fighting to get the derringer out of his pocket while Schonchin John brought out from under his coat both a knife and a pistol, steadily stalking his quarry with a wide smile slashed across his face, swinging the knife in a wide arc.

  Yanking the derringer from his coat, Meacham brought it up at arm’s length and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened—he had failed to cock the hammer. Yet the mere sight of the muzzles of the tiny gun stopped Schonchin dead in his tracks.

  That heartbeat gave Meacham a chance to see why the pistol had not fired. He backed away again, faster this time, cocking the hammer. Stumbling in panic, Meacham passed by the body of the preacher, then the soldier’s body, before Schonchin regained his courage and fired his own pistol at the fleeing white man.

  The bullet whined past Meacham, barely nicking the whiskers beneath his chin. The blood seeping from the grazing scratch felt both hot and cold at the same time as a gust of spring wind wafted into the bloody meadow.

  Meacham pounded his breast, and, in a loud voice, called out, “Shoot me here, you devils!”

  Meacham had little time for thought—only action. Shacknasty Jim, Sloluck and Barncho all had rifles to their shoulders now, aiming them at the fleeing white man. Bullets whistled like angry hornets all around him. One found the top of an ear. He felt the warm blood seeping down his neck as he stumbled up the slope backward, the derringer still held out at the end of his arm in utter panic. Another shot grazed his shoulder, causing him to wince in pain.

  He fell over a boulder suddenly, pitching backward, driving the breath from his aching lungs. Meacham heard them coming—perhaps sensed them running. Their shouts of bloodlust, their war-cries—that wild laughter that comes of sudden but long-awaited victory. His hand beat the grass beside him, desperate … then finding the derringer.

  Meacham brought the weapon up as he peered around the boulder he had fallen over. The three warriors were loping toward him. On instinct the commissioner pulled the derringer trigger as the same moment Shacknasty Jim fired another shot from his rifle.

  The Modoc’s bullet struck the rock, a fragment of lead splintering off to strike Meacham across the forehead—knocking him back, dazed and semiconscious.

  Shacknasty was on his victim like a mountain panther, tugging, pulling, tearing and yanking to remove the white man’s boots and clothing.

  The dull-witted Sloluck came up to watch with that smile of his. Then brought his rifle up and laid it against Meacham’s temple.

  With a growl, Jim shoved the rifle away. “You need not shoot no more. This one is dead already.”

  Cowed, Sloluck just bobbed his head eagerly in agreement. “Don’t get the clothes bloody, Jim. No bloody clothes, right?”

  Jim muttered something a
s he yanked on Meacham’s belt, tearing at the buttons on the fly. Boston Charley trotted up, finished with Thomas. He knelt at Meacham’s head, slipping his skinning knife from his belt.

  “I take old man Mee-Cham’s scalp.”

  Jim looked at him a moment as he yanked down the britches. “What for you want it?”

  “Old man’s hide is tough. Make a good shot pouch for me, Jim.”

  Shacknasty grunted his approval. Charley pressed the blade down on the white man’s brow, close to the hairline, and dragged the dull blade around the side of the skull toward and down behind the ear. Impatient and unfinished, he was nonetheless yanking on Meacham’s hair when Hooker Jim strode up and laughed.

  “If that old man Mee-Cham’s bald head makes a good scalp for a warrior—you’re welcome to it, Boston!”

  There was a little bitter laughter among them when Winema ran up, screeching in horror as Boston tried ripping the ear and all from the balding man’s head.

  “Soldiers coming! Soldiers coming!”

  As one, their eyes glanced up in fear, wide and glassy and blooded. Like scampering children caught in the act of mischief, the warriors abandoned the commissioner’s body.

  When the shooting had started, Toby had been stretched on the ground to protect herself from flying bullets. But when the screaming and firing began, she was climbing to her feet to run when Sloluck struck her on the side of the head with a rifle butt.

  Perhaps the slow-witted warrior was only caught up in the excitement, but Black Jim and Captain Jack instantly turned on Sloluck, their pistols held ready—reminding him of Scar-Faced Charley’s vow to kill any man who harmed Winema.

  “If Scar-Faced does not kill you for hurting the woman—Jack will … here and now!”

  Sloluck grinned wickedly, laughed his dull laugh and trotted away up the hill after other prey.

  When his wife was knocked down, Frank Riddle was stopped from going to her side. He stared into the muzzles of weapons held by Shacknasty Jim, Ellen’s Man and Barncho. Without thought, but only the screams of the victims and the oaths of the murderers in his ears, Riddle sprinted across the meadow, following the fleeing Dyar. None of the three warriors followed the white interpreter, who caught a glimpse of movement as Scar-Faced Charley stood among the brush and rocks on the east side of the meadow. As he ran for his life, Riddle remembered Charley was as good a shot with a rifle as he was at keeping his promises.

  Like Riddle, L. S. Dyar had been on his feet when the shooting began. But unlike the interpreter, the subagent from the Klamath reservation had not delayed those precious seconds in starting toward Winema.

  Hooker Jim was three steps behind Dyar as the white man pulled Applegate’s derringer from his coat. Cocking it as it came out of the pocket, Dyar turned and stopped, pointing it at his pursuer.

  Skidding to a stop, Jim ducked and threw up his hands, stumbling backward as Dyar’s shot buzzed overhead. Jim turned and ran off. Dyar needed no more of an invitation to flee the scene himself. For several yards Black Jim followed the white man across the meadow, then gave up and came huffing back to join the others tearing the clothing from Meacham’s body.

  It was a few minutes past noon.

  * * *

  When Winema rushed toward the little pack hunkered over the old man’s body, shouting her warning, Jack added his own voice to the panic, believing that his niece had truly seen soldiers on their way.

  “Come! Come now! Run—all of you! Back to our fortress where we can fight them off!”

  As a group they rose and darted past their chief, tearing by the canvas tent rattling in the cool breeze. Each of them carried something away from the scene. Clothing, watches and rings. Jack himself wore the soldier chief’s hat on his head, the shiny sword slung from his own waist, rattling loudly as he turned round and round, anxiously scanning the meadow.

  “How you like the old man Mee-Cham now?” Jack shouted back at Winema. “Keep your white heart—you no longer are a Modoc!”

  Watching the murderers disappear across the slope, she came to a stop at the bloody body. In a rage, fear like acid at the back of her throat, Winema collapsed over Meacham’s stripped and battered form, sheltering it with her own.

  There she lay as all noise drained from the meadow. Overhead, the clouds roiled across the sun in ugly streaks, blotting out most of the light.

  Slowly, painfully, she laid her head over Meacham’s heart, listening for some clue. When Winema heard nothing, she held her own above the white man’s face a moment, stroking the old man’s cheeks, smearing his blood and her tears across the wrinkled flesh as she sobbed bitterly. Rivers of frustration and rage at the treachery of the people of her birth exacted against her adopted people.

  Suddenly resolved, Toby drew back, snorting and swiping at her eyes. She gently turned the body flat on its back, straightened Meacham’s legs and folded the arms over the torso in death’s repose.

  With one last glance in the direction taken by the Modocs, Toby darted past the other two bodies, to the council tent where she tore loose the rein to her horse, leaped to Frank’s saddle and pounded her heels into the animal’s flanks.

  It was eleven minutes past noon.

  There was nothing more she could do for the old man now.

  Chapter 23

  April 11, 1873

  “You still see them, don’t you?” Ian asked Seamus. “Your eyes younger, lad.”

  Donegan stood, straining his eyes on the far meadow as the light faded beneath the clouds whipped off Tule Lake. “I see ’em moving around some. Not sure what—”

  “They’re firing at the peace tent!”

  In shock, Seamus looked up at the signal sergeant yelling atop the signal station erected on the bluff.

  All around the Irishman soldiers snatched up their rifles and started away without command or orders. Donegan and O’Roarke found themselves among them, skidding, sliding, careening down the bluff toward the site as the sound of distant gunfire could now be plainly made out as they clattered along.

  After covering no more than a half-mile, the soldiers in the lead spotted a man hurrying in their direction on foot.

  “Hold your fire!” someone shouted.

  “Is it a white man?” another asked.

  Seamus sprinted along the side of the crude formation. “Bloody well won’t be no damned Modoc running toward us, will it?”

  “It’s one of them peace fellas!”

  Ian huffed to Donegan’s side and stopped. “It is at that—Dyar.”

  “In God’s name help me!” Dyar screeched, tearing up the footpath. “Help them! Murdering butchers—oh, the blood! The blood!”

  O’Roarke grabbed Dyar as the agent collapsed against him. Dyar’s eyes held the frightened, cornered look of a snowshoe hare chased beyond its limits by a winter-gaunt coyote.

  A sergeant came up with several others. “Mr. Dyar—what happened?”

  “We damned well know what happened, Sergeant,” Donegan said. “Get this man back to camp and let’s go see to the rest!”

  The soldier was about to speak, his mouth hung open to protest—and instead he turned to order a squad to accompany the commissioner back to camp and a surgeon. Seamus tapped Ian on the shoulder and they were off, followed by a dozen soldiers who were leaving their sergeant behind.

  The clatter of hoofbeats grew louder. Seamus turned, flinging his arms this way then that. Some of the soldiers took the left side of the road, the rest hid on the right.

  Around the bend Toby Riddle galloped into view, laying low along the neck of her mount. Her hair streaming, her bloodstained hands gripping the reins close to the horse’s bit, she began to rein up, terror filling her eyes as Donegan stepped into the road.

  But instead of stopping, she flailed at the horse, laying on its withers again, tearing past the Irishman in a death race.

  “She looks like she’s seen the devil himself,” a soldier said, coming back onto the road.

  “Maybe she has, sojur.
Maybe she has at that.”

  Ian was beside Donegan that next moment, gripping his nephew’s arm. “I’ve got to find Frank. He was a friend of mine.”

  Seamus nodded as Ian started off again at a fast clip.

  Just over the rise the small meadow opened up before them. Down to the right of center was the off-white canvas of the wall-tent. Gray smudges of smoke still climbed ghostly from the sagebrush fire ringed with deadfall and rocks used as seats.

  Donegan had seen enough of war and death to know what the two dark forms were as he raced for the tent.

  They stopped at Canby’s body, stripped of all clothing, lying some twenty feet from the tent.

  “He’s dead,” Seamus announced quietly to the first soldiers arriving as he stood over the general’s corpse.

  He trotted over to the second body, utterly naked as well. “Got in over your head, preacher.”

  Quickly making the sign of the cross as the breeze shifted and his nose wrinkled with the stench of voided bowels, he rose and moved to the final dark form as more soldiers appeared in formation at the edge of the meadow.

  The head commissioner still had his red flannel underwear on, some of it soaked with blood turning brown. Seamus placed an ear against Meacham’s chest.

  “You got a surgeon with you?” Seamus asked the arriving soldiers.

  “I’m a surgeon. Dr. Cabaniss,” an older man in army blue announced. At the end of his arm hung a tiny bag he dropped as he knelt on the far side of the body.

  “This one still alive—for now,” Donegan said.

  After a quick examination, Cabaniss clucked. “Damned lucky to be hanging on, I’d say.”

  “Maybe not. Sometimes it’s better to get it over with quick.”

  “Perhaps,” Cabaniss replied icily, pulling a flask from his kit. “Help me get him up to drink this.”

  “Brandy?”

  Cabaniss shook his head. “That’s all gone. Straight corn whiskey.”

  “If he don’t lose it when you pour it down him, he might have a chance, surgeon.”