“Maybe I have’t been around much longer than Toby. Not long enough to see what John Schonchin and some of you others saw. But what he says is right! It isn’t just the old men think so. We shouldn’t go! Don’t listen to those women. They’ll always try to turn you down some easy path, thinking they can get you out of things. But I’ll tell you, there are some things you shouldn’t try to get out of. If you ever mean to call yourselves men from here on out, you better agree with me now: We won’t go! And we’re going to teach them to leave us be!”
Curley Headed Doctor shook his maned head and raised up his singing, and the noise from the men near the center made your head split. And when someone threw more brush on the fire, it was more than heat made everyone sweat!
#28
He must have fallen asleep. He couldn’t believe it, but surely that was it. All he knew for sure was that the gun blast seemed to come right over the place where the fire should have been. All he could think was that Knapp’s worst fears had come true and they had broken loose. They were in all directions, some still pouring out of the roof-hole, as far as he could make out. Shouting. So it would end like this! Meacham fumbled through his greatcoat, thinking to find the little derringer he had packed ashamedly into the inside pocket. Around him he heard the clash of metal and of cries in the night. Then he realized that what he was hearing had about it a too familiar ring. No Indians on this border, he thought, would know a Johnnie Reb yell! But someone did, and it was coming from right behind him
#29
“Listen!” someone at the back of the house shouted, in a voice that cut through the words of the speaker and silenced those who were goading him on. “Listen!” he repeated, and a hush descended on them.
The flat report and crash of gunfire, the sound of many horses running, the shout -- repeated! The men tore away from the fire, up the ladder, through the roof hole. You could hear them scrambling down outside, hear the sounds of them running, then nothing as the gunfire thinned and started to die. Gone from its proper place, Keintpoos’ rifle. And John Schonchin’s. They had gone out into the dark, and now there was just a silence while everyone listened. The gruff man’s voice in English barked orders, and then the guns stopped firing.
#30
“Damnation!” The word shattered his teeth. “Damnation! Knapp!” He sputtered to a stop, wordless.
He could hear his furious agent off in the darkness shouting:
“Cease your firing! Cease your firing! Stop it! Sons of bitches! Cease firing!”
Meacham ran to the soldier nearest him and knocked his rifle away, erasing the proud smile from his now startled face. Behind the man another sat astride his horse, this one waving his saber. At the superintendent’s rush, he dropped its tip toward the ground and sat weaving, bewildered.
“Sir?” he cried.
“Stop this firing immediately! Get that animal out of here!”
The Klamath men and McKay peered out from under their wagon, and George Nurse came running into the dim circle of light near the fire, half shoving, half carrying a crazy-eyed and struggling sergeant.
“Drunk as the Lord!” Nurse exclaimed.
“Damnation! Knapp! Where in thunder are you?”
“I’m here,” the agent said, joining him, furious. “Give me that man!” he ordered Nurse. “Sergeant! Come with me! Get your men! Go on! March!” He shoved the soldier’s arm, nearly flattening him, and the two of them vanished back into the night.
In the heavy silence Meacham could hear Knapp’s gruff voice, now here, now there, followed by the slurred, to Meacham unintelligible, syllables of the sergeant. In the commotion at Jack’s lodge, he had the sense of hurrying figures; but soon there was only silence. The light that had shone through the roof-hole blinked out. The darkness was total except for the few glowing embers, the remains of his campfire. He sank down by it and waited for Knapp.
“Damnation!” he muttered one last time as he made out the figure of Toby coming past the wagons toward him.
“They gone!” she said.
“All of them?”
“Not all. Just a bunch of them, men. Jack. John Schonchin. Black Jim. Boston Charley. Euchoaks. Barncho. Slolux. Ten, twenty maybe. Where’s Frank?”
He didn’t know, and said so; hadn’t seen anything of him.
She slumped onto the ground next to him. He needed to think over the news she had brought him. She had run off a long list, most of the names he recognized as those of the leaders. They must be gathering to attack, and unlike his own party, they knew the lay of the land. He wondered where they might come from. Perhaps Toby could say.
“No. No, Meacham,” she said when he asked her. “That ain’t right.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, confused.
“You got it wrong. They ain’t going to attack you. They run off. They gone!”
“But where have they gone to? How will we find them?”
“Don’t know, Meacham. Don’t know. Maybe they went over other side of the river, headed for the other camp. Maybe they’re going down to lava beds. Better ask Mary. She start out with them, come on back. Probably because of her kids.”
The woman had dropped her head onto her knees. The mention of Jack’s sister, the knowledge that head men were out there someplace, only poorly armed -- the glimmering of an idea started to form itself in his mind, but if it were to work, they would have to hurry.
“Can you get Mary for me?” he asked. “Would you be able to go back and find her?”
When Toby heaved herself reluctantly to her feet, Meacham shouted into the night:
“Knapp! Knapp! Get over here! We have to act fast!”
#31
“I talk for myself,” she said, shrugging away from Toby. Meacham threw some brush on the fire, and in its flare got his first real look at her. So this was Queen Mary. What with her claims to privilege as the chief’s sister and her easy style with the miners, her reputation ran ahead of her. They said she had been sold several times to whites, but sooner or later every one of them had been glad to return her. Not five feet tall, he would guess, but every inch the image of Jack. The same features: his broad face, straight nose. But the eyes
