that Ben Wright had come back with his white flag early one rainy morning to the camp. “Where’s Schonchin?” he asked, but the headman wasn’t there. “Then what you done with the settlers’ things?” he demanded. “What things?” somebody said. “Them things you took at the slaughter. Bloody Point things!” said Wright. “No things with us!” said another. When Wright shot through the blanket he was wearing for a jacket and a Modoc Indian fell dead, all the village men came running out of their houses and huts. And the whites who were hiding stood up on the bank above them and shot them. Shot them dead where they stood in the rain, looking up. Shot them where they ran into the tules to hide in the water. Shot them in the sage-brush. Rounded up who was left and shot them dead, too. Then scalped them and cut them up. “That’s for Bloody Point!” Ben Wright said. Forty gone -- men, women, children. Five survivors. John Schonchin was one. So was he. So was Old Schonchin. They didn’t need any more feedings. So why was Jack messing with this? No good could come to any Modoc from it.
There wasn’t anything new for the Bostons to say, so how come there was all this talking?
#24
Now they were finished, but it had taken longer than he thought it would. At first they wouldn’t touch the food that had come down in big pots and parcels all the way from Linkville. Then Toby picked up a metal plate and shoved it into Knapp’s hands.
“Go first,” she said to him, handing another plate to Meacham.
“I don’t want that slop,” the agent said.
“Never mind about that: just do it.” She reached into the pot and spooned out stew for both of them. Meacham understood and took a piece of the bread to sop up the gravy, then went to sit on the ground where he meant for the circle to form.
“Come on,” he said to Knapp. “Dig in.”
He attacked the meal with as much gusto as he could, smacking his lips, mopping at the juices when the thick hunks of beef were gone until no morsel was left. He reached for the can of coffee. He drank it in great gulps, blowing on it to clear away the steam after he had loaded it with sugar.
He leaned back, patting his middle, looking as satisfied as he knew how to. All the Modocs stood transfixed, watching their hosts to detect any sign.
“Now all come and have some meat,” he said to Jack as he finished and turned his bowl over onto the dried grass before him. “You and your people. Join in.”
Eventually, satisfied there had been no coyote poison this time, the Modocs let the drovers hand them plates heaped with stew and covered with thick slabs of bread. Meacham would let them eat until the last one declared himself full; then he would pass around the tobacco he had brought for each man to keep. Loading up his own pipe, he lit it and offered it first to Jack. This time Jack took it.
#25
That night it was time to decide. With his house once again full of people, Keintpoos said to Meacham, as if he had a new idea, “And if I say no? If I stay here where I was born? If I and my people just kill you and send back your bodies to say what the answer is, then what happens?”
Meacham looked at him sadly: “Then not one of you Modocs will live.”
The words hung thick on the air after Toby had translated them.
“Well, then, Meacham, maybe me and my boys be ashamed to fight so few men as come along with you.”
When Meacham continued, his words were studied, like those of one offering counsel:
“That’s right. You think straight. This goes even beyond the military. Killing us now is just what many out there wish you would do: give them just the excuse they need. They will say Ben Wright knew what he was doing, and so did all the settlers who rode into your camps and killed your women and children. The ones who came in the winter and burned what you had stored up against the long cold months. They will say you are, after all, just a savage. And savages should be exterminated. If the military won’t do it, they will kill you and your men and your women and children themselves. Someone will pay them to do it, just like the State of California did with Ben Wright.”
“Why is it I should believe you?” Jack asked. “No one up till now has told us the truth. If I trust you, and if you put us and our things in your wagons … ,” he started. But the others wouldn’t let him finish. They were all on their feet, shouting, Euchoaks and John Schonchin leading them:
“Don’t even talk about that! Don’t even say it to him!”
He had been thinking to say what Meacham wanted to hear. He had wanted to tell the others, when he could, that they could go where there were winter things for them, and if anything was wrong, they would come back. There were ways the brass buttons wouldn’t know of. But if they stayed here, and then Meacham sent the brass buttons on them …. But the others wouldn’t hear him, even if he could say it.
“How can you think this?” John Schonchin demanded. “One dish of stew got you ready to go with him! We will not follow you!”
The chorus of angry voices stopped him, and he couldn’t answer them. Why should he trust this stranger, this Meacham, when he had come to doubt even Lindsay Applegate? Why should he let himself trust this one when he knew he shouldn’t have trusted the others? What if he didn’t trust him? All anyone ever wanted from them was their land and that they should go away from it. Keintpoos knew this Meacham’s desires were the same. If they didn’t go, the soldiers would come with their new guns and kill them. He couldn’t see anything he wanted to choose.
“We will not go!” John Schonchin flared, pulling at his pistol this time. But someone laid a hand on the gun and shoved it down. It was Whim, young and untried, surely, but sensible, and strong enough in the heat of the moment to put his advice up against an elder’s:
“Listen!” he said. “Words aren’t what will hurt us.”
Meacham sat silently, a brave man or foolish, while the flame that had started with John Schonchin and the shaman spread to others. Out of the folds of their tattered clothing, their rude horsehide belts, those ones ripped their guns and knives, ready to shove Keintpoos aside.
“Wait! Wait! Hear me before you shoot!”
It was Keintpoos’ cousin, exhorting them in Modoc to keep the peace, not harm these people who had not come to fight. Who saw the one way that would save them. Who asked only to set things on a straight path! And Frank Riddle joining her, repeating only “Wait! Wait! Put the guns away! Put the guns away!” Saying it over and over. And two or three other voices joining them, saying “Wait!”
“Go away from here, Meacham!” Toby ordered. “Go away from this house. When it’s time, I call you!”
#26
“… but if they prevailed,
