She came in as always, sure that she was where she should be, not bothering to see if she was still welcome, coming here now, just when she pleased. She came in changing things, her man Frank behind her.
“Cousin,” she said in Modoc when she saw Jack. When she came up by the fire she told him, “I’m go-between. I can speak. I know this man Meacham.”
She started talking in English to Meacham, not asking Keintpoos what should be said. Always she claimed a special place next to him. As bad as his sister, or worse. Never asking, but telling. ‘Little Woman Chief’ they called her -- sometimes behind her back. This time, though, he needed her. He kept his silence for the while. She would know what he was thinking: that it was for him to choose when to speak.
“When you’re ready, you’ll tell me,” she finally said, taking a place in the circle of men by the fire.
As he thought: She could see -- like his sister -- what was inside him.
In Modoc she said, “I’ll tell you all that he says. You must listen. I don’t know yet what it will be, but you must let him say it. This is the one who can make things right.” The other Modoc men said little, but he knew they would not like what she was counseling. Euchoaks the kiuks and John Schonchin, especially. They had long ago given up listening to the Bostons and their promises of gifts that never came or, if they did come, could not be trusted.
But she was like this. She trusted even white men. And this one especially, it seemed. She had spoken of him before, this Meacham, said he turned Riddle down a new road into a husband. But it meant nothing to Keintpoos that Riddle claimed her before the white man’s Great Spirit. Riddle was a careless man, not strong in his ideas. As easy for him to walk as to ride. Keintpoos knew that about him. Yet Toby was proud of the change. Her place was better now than it had been when she was offered around the camps to any Boston man who would pay the price for her. And now she wanted him, too, to hear this Meacham.
“You sent for me. I haven’t ridden all this way, cousin, to hear your no-saying.” She hissed it into his ear so that Euchoaks and Scarfaced Charley and John Schonchin didn’t know what she said. He didn’t doubt she meant it.
#21
Later, she told them.
“Here’s what this Meacham says:;
General Grant, President of the United States, and Eli Parker, Indian Commissioner, have given instructions to have all the Indians in the United States removed onto Reservations. The Great Soldier Chief General Sherman has proclaimed that all the Indians running at large and without passes should be looked upon as enemies…. It is the policy of the Government to send a citizen first to go and see all the Indians with peace in his mouth. I go to see all the Indians in this country. Those that open their hearts and take my advice will be well-treated.”
#22
Euchoaks arose from his place in the circle and climbed up the ladder, crossed over the bank away from the village. He gained the track and followed it up the little rise while he tried to choke back his anger. He pulled his jacket across his chest against the cold of the wind, who was blowing a cloud sky before him.
Oh! So that was what he had started feeling down there in his heart! The wagons were coming! He could hear them, could feel them just along the road there. Down from Linkville, drovers with them. He closed his eyes and saw. Many, all empty; one full.
Perhaps he had smelled them, he thought. For they did stink. The stench of surrender was in his nostrils. Surrender and betrayal. He had to leave the circle or puke on the black-coated man, this Meacham. And on Keintpoos, who should not even listen.
The Meacham could talk the Big Talk all right! He kept on saying things until the listeners couldn’t listen any more and drifted away in their own dreamings. He talked things for Keintpoos to see as he explained them, and Keintpoos kept listening. Keintpoos would be thinking that this Meacham was a different kind of man, even to his dress. He said he honored the Indian. And when he called him child of the same God as the white man, he said the white man was but a child, too. He said he had learned to honor the Indian as a youth in Iowa, helping find a good place for the Sacs and the Foxes where they would be safe. And no harm had come to them. He said the Big Tyee, this Grant, had told him to find the lost Indians. He said he knew why they had left the reservation, that it was bad for the Modocs. He would have left it, too, he said. He thought that Keintpoos was right for that. But he had changed some things already and he would change the rest until the place was safe and the Indians could be good. There would be no more reason to sell their women: supplies would come as they needed them. There would be no loss of Modoc wealth to the Klamaths: he would not let them rob the Modocs by cheating at gambling, for there would be no more of those games. There would be no kind of slavery, since the Son of God had died to free men and a great war had already been fought to stop the evil. There would be no false prophets and fake magicians in the shamans, for he would make them cease their hocus-pocus so Jesus could come into their hearts, as he had already come to other Indians. Sunday Doctors would bring Him, and with Him, civilization.
At each thing he named the muttering of the Modocs increased, until he reached the last and Curley Headed Doctor and the other shamans cried out not to listen to this thief.
“Stop him talking!” he shouted, grabbing for his knife. “Stop his mouth!” But some of the other people told him to be quiet. Now they wanted to hear the man out. So did Keintpoos, it seemed, though the kiuks was not sure why, unless it was this picture the man painted with his words of things made right his way.
This Meacham had said they were coming, and now he knew it was so, for he tasted them in the wind, coming to take them back. To what?
Old Schonchin had been in his thoughts all the morning, a warning of what all the Modocs would be if Jack trusted this Meacham. Old Schonchin, once a leader to be followed. But his will to be Modoc fell out of him like his teeth. He sat there on his reservation now, next to the Snakes and the Klamaths, nodding and watery-eyed, despised by everyone but the Bostons and the forty or so Modocs who stayed back with him at Sprague River. Showing his bare gums whenever some Boston asked him how he was living there on the reservation. The shaman would puke on Old Schonchin’s feet, too, if he were here. Even his own brother reviled him.
Keintpoos -- Captain Jack, if you wanted his name the way the Bostons would have it: He always had been a hard one to turn. Once set down a path, he went forward. Which had been right when he led them off the reservation and back here to Lost River. Born here. Raised here. But now Curley Headed Doctor could tell: he was turning like a pony in the rainstorm, putting his tail to the wind, lowering his head, hearing the thunder, waiting for the thunder to pass. The shaman could not believe Keintpoos would do it, but he had heard him with his own ears, heard Meacham force him into a corner with some paper -- and the threat of the brass buttons.
This paper: the Meacham had pulled it from his pouch and had smoothed it out before them. Keintpoos had pulled back, shaking his head grimly, motioning for Toby.
“It’s the treaty,” Meacham told her. “Made with Superintendent Huntington, five years ago. Remind him!”
“I never put my name to it!” Keintpoos exclaimed.
“You
