so to speak. But not Jack. You have to ride fifty miles or more down to Lost River to get to him. His range is a different world altogether. Even the river doesn’t go anywhere, just circles from one of his lakes to another, part way underground. His ancestral land. His birthplace. It’s sacred, he’ll tell you, from all his forefathers’ ashes. You can’t take a Modoc very easily from where he was born. He doesn’t think he belongs anywhere else. It’s an idea you can’t reason him out of.”
“You shouldn’t settle for that! If you do, what good is a treaty, ratified or not?” Knapp asked. “It’s worthless if you don’t enforce it. I don’t think the Lost River Modoc’s opinion makes a whole lot of difference here.”
“You’d bring them all in by force without messing with this, wouldn’t you?” Meacham asked Knapp.
“Well, at least I would try it. I would have tried it a long time ago.”
“Good luck to you then,” Ivan offered.
“See here, Ivan, you tell us what you think would work, and that’s where we’ll begin. You know these people. We don’t,” Meacham said.
“That’s right, you don’t. You haven’t even laid eyes on them. Maybe it will turn out we have to force them -- which the settlers would love to watch. But if the army won’t go pick him up, you’re going to have to approach him. He sure won’t come to you. He won’t want to hear about coming back to be by Old Schonchin either; Jack’s too much a renegade to want to be around another head chief. But that’s not even the big problem. That one’s between him and the Klamaths. If you can persuade him, though I don’t think you can, you’ll have to figure out how to keep them off him. This beef goes back further than anyone can remember. They despise each other. Modocs say the Klamaths fight like women. They speak practically the same language, but the only advantage to that, far as I could ever tell, is to let them insult the pants off each other and kick up trouble. What one doesn’t start, the other one will. You’ll soon see why we didn’t go after them. Klamaths and Modocs: they’re dogs and cats, or oil and water. You won’t be glad you mixed them.”
“Then what about the Snakes? They have to live here, too.”
“They’re not the same problem. Far as the Modocs are concerned, they’re not even worth noticing. They live on bugs and wander around through the desert. Worst thing a Modoc can say to really insult someone is to accuse him of being like a Paiute -- like a Snake.
“I admit it. None of us ever knew how to get Jack and his folks in, or even close to it. But maybe if you wait some, until the weather gets colder, maybe you’ll get them then -- if it strikes him there’s something to gain here. Maybe he’ll come in to collect from you, where they can winter better. But even then, I doubt it. You’re going to find them tough people, Mr. Meacham. They don’t think like you and I do about much of anything. They’re cruel, blood-thirsty savages, if you listen to the settlers or even neighboring tribes. Everyone will tell you there’s no one quite like them. I must say, I more than half agree with that.”
“Still I have to try. If what you say is right, I’d better back up some and ask him to come meet with me,” Meacham said.
“You can give that a shot, but don’t get insulted by his answer. And don’t kill the fatted calf before you see him coming.”
There was plenty at the reservation to fix, and he would have it done, Meacham thought. Directly. All of it, including the gathering up of Jack. The work here: it was like building a home; you raised one log at a time. No. It was more like the cleansing of a house, already built, of the demons -- so it could be inhabited again.
Chapter 4: Round-up
#15
A week before Christmas of the same year, 1869, Meacham was bundled, half-frozen, onto the back of his bay, shuffling down the defile that passed for a road, toward the so-called ‘town’ of Linkville, Oregon. Meacham told himself it already looked godforsaken, this place trader George Nurse had started a couple of years back. Yankee faith and optimism made manifest in a clapboard shack hotel, a store, scattered shanties and a saloon or two on the banks of the Link River connecting Upper and Lower Klamath Lakes. Linkville was held together with baling wire, eager for the settlers who were sure to come, the hope of the few who were already there. It was, some said, more in need of missionaries than even the Indians. This time of year the wind blew ruthlessly off the Upper Klamath Lake, down the ravine that led in from the north, from the direction of the agency.
And at home in Salem, three hundred miles away -- a lifetime away -- his wife Orpha and the children went ahead without him, preparing for the season.
The little company of soldiers he had finally managed to beg from the fort had been split in two: half in front of, half behind the string of wagons. He had bargained mightily to get them. Lieutenant Goodale had offered only six, and those grudgingly. Meacham had been forced to agree to have the soldiers’ horses shod, agree to provide his own teamsters and packers, before the number got raised to a dozen. Now the collars of their blue army duffle coats were turned up against the wind, their caps pulled low over their ears. Their pace, tediously slow a mile or two earlier, had quickened as the horses -- or more likely the riders -- sniffed relief in the poor cluster of shacks before them.
Soon the column would halt, and the troopers would be left behind until sent for, to find whatever comfort they could in the town. Judging by the steadily accelerating pace of the line, it seemed they anticipated they could locate some.
He had sent his emissaries on ahead to Lost River, two Klamath men with Modoc wives, bearing his invitation: Meet me with your sub-chiefs at Link River bridge so we talk. But the word had come back just as Ivan had promised it would.
“If this Meacham wants to see me,” Keintpoos had said, “it is he who must come to me. I am as big a man as he is.”
Now, watching the two mounted figures coming toward them from the town, Meacham groaned, reflecting that he and the rest of the party still had half-a-day’s journey ahead of them. He was so stiff that even the thought of moving pained him, insofar as he could feel anything at all. Numb feet, numb fingers and nose. But an exquisitely aching backside, he discovered. It had been much too easy, he told himself ruefully, to say “yes” to this that spring afternoon in the White House.
It had taken more than two weeks to put this party together according to Ivan’s prescription. Moving the line forward, Meacham looked back over his envoys. With the soldiers dropped off in the town until sent for and the wagons to follow the next day, the group could hardly be considered menacing. He had taken only Knapp and Ivan together with Doctor McKay, whom he appointed to serve temporarily as Acting Superintendent for Indian Affairs. There were the two Modoc women and their Klamath husbands -- intermarried couples, meant to be a proof that the Klamaths meant no ill-will to Jack’s people. They were Indians who were now resigned, if not entirely content, to accept what the reservation could offer, or who had learned how to work with the Bostons and profit from it. And here came George Nurse and Gus Horn riding up. If Ivan was right, the Modocs trusted these two white settlers. Tomorrow would come the wagons and the drivers, and with them more gifts. He hoped this little party would answer, that Jack would not fail to understand what he meant to signal. He did not want to make this trip more than once.
Only Knapp and he were newcomers. Before he could be expected to agree to return, Jack would need to meet the man who had replaced Lindsay Applegate. He would want to
