him. She didn’t have to take anything from a white man.
Of course she could speak English. He should have known she would have picked up enough around Yreka and the camps. Many of the women, he knew, could hold their own in a conversation, better than the men. She might have a somewhat specialized vocabulary, but what she had would probably do.
“I’m sure you can,” said Meacham. “I’m not going to hurt you. Come over here by the fire. It’s too cold a night to be out without a wrap. Knapp, hand me that blanket.”
She sized him up with a look of disgust but evidently decided she could handle him, for she stepped within the warmth of the fire.
“You ready for lice?” Knapp asked as he handed Meacham’s blanket to him.
“Never mind about that,” Meacham said.
Indeed, the cold had teeth to it by now. It had stopped snowing, but the wind kept on cutting through the dark, swirling sparks up out of the fire. He sat down next to her to seem more friendly, aware that Knapp disapproved. Meacham didn’t know if he could do it or not, but he needed to persuade her that he had meant what he said in the house, that he was there as their friend, not their master.
She let him talk, staring off into the night while she listened to him, rocking slowly and deliberately back and forth as he made his appeal. Nothing had changed, he said, just because the soldiers had come. They would merely be an escort, to see the Modocs safely through Linkville and up to Rocky Point. No harm would come to them; he would pledge her his word on that. The place they were going would be better than this. No settlers to deal with. No worry about struggling to make it through the winter while the food supply dwindled and disappeared. No shortage of blankets or firewood when the cold settled in for weeks at a stretch.
What he had said to her brother and the others was true. He regretted frightening them, but there had been a mistake. The soldiers had got drunk. And she knew how drunk men could be. They were supposed to come tomorrow, to escort the Modocs safely through the town and its settlers. He got Knapp to say it, too, and gradually their words calmed her, especially his, until eventually she looked toward Toby as if asking whether she dared to believe this man.
“Trust him,” Toby said. “Just get word now to Keintpoos. You can find him.”
#32
Meacham talked until his jaws ached. The men who had not scattered, the women and old folks had come nervously around him when Toby and Frank Riddle finally could round them up.
“I called you here for your good,” he told them. “I am your friend. Your chief got scared and ran away like a coward. I am your chief today and will tell you what is good.”
They listened silently this time. Like yearlings herded into a corral for breaking, they looked around them, skittish, ready to bolt but unsure how to do it. The soldiers stood off in the shadows, no telling just where. The Modoc leaders -- and thirty or forty men -- were gone. There was no one now to call for war on the whites or tell them what else they should do. With the anger of Euchoaks and John Schonchin and Black Jim stilled, there was no one to goad them.
“No man, woman or child will be hurt,” Meacham continued. “I told your chief yesterday the same thing, but he would not believe me…. If he goes off and takes the young men, I can’t help it. We want you to get your horses and provisions and start tomorrow for Link River. I think you all have good hearts. You must not try to get away tonight and must not take any guns away. If Captain Jack comes I will receive him with a good heart, too.
“You judge wisely,” Meacham said, for he read assent in the absence of anyone calling for resistance. Sensing that it was over, Knapp stepped forward.
“You must turn in your rifles at once,” he ordered, then paused to see if their acquiescence would hold. When the silence said that it would, he continued. “You must bring them here to this wagon. You must do that now, right away.
“As soon as it is light you must get your ponies. Gather your belongings, the food you cached for the winter. The drovers will show you where to put things. Do not bother with what is broken. Leave those behind, for you will be given new things when you get where you are going. Go on now and get started. We have a long way to go to your new place.”
When dawn broke and the Modocs finally saw how small a group of soldiers had coerced them into giving up their arms, their silence had shame to it.
Two days later, Meacham and Knapp watched as the last wagon was loaded and the last bunch of ponies was herded together and turned up the trail toward Linkville. They counted one-hundred and fifteen people. Ivan went on ahead to the agency to get everything ready to receive the Modocs. Meacham and Knapp remained behind as their party of envoys fell in at the end of the line. Queen Mary stayed with them, looking back toward the tules that separated them from the lake until it was time for them, too, to start on their way.
Two more days they sat outside Linkville, trusting Queen Mary had not lied. “They coming. You wait,” was all she would say, and at length she proved right; they did come. Captain Jack and his lieutenants Scarfaced Charley and John Schonchin rode abreast down the trail followed by the other men. Off the track to one side came the medicine man, his face hidden by that mane of hair. Sullen, chanting, refusing the warm food that was handed up to him on his pony.
They, too, saw it was only a handful of brass buttons that had set them running.
“The Klamaths must not smell out how this happen,” Jack insisted. It was his only demand, and Meacham acceded to it gladly, relieved on his own part to shelve any discussion of how barely a fiasco had been avoided. And for themselves, the cavalry welcomed silence on the matter, to cover their rookie charge from the rest of the post, especially from the commander.
#33
He wrote:
“25 December 1869
Dear Brother Oliver: … .”
Ivan dipped the pen again and sat calculating, his eyes on the blue flame that licked along the edge of the fresh log he had laid on the fire. He hunched lower into his jacket, rocking a bit, blowing his breath onto the tips of his fingers to warm them. Cold air sifted through every crack in the house. He had come back to the news about Lucien -- and Lucien’s anger. Now, before his brother beat him to it, he must prepare Oliver.
What was it that would pull Oliver back from the brink before them? Their brother finally had jumped ship, and Oliver must be told about it. Lucien’s version was, of course, that he was going to be pushed by the superintendent and the agent. And probably they would have been up to doing that, in time. But Lu was demanding Ivan and O.C. now follow him, throw off their agency jobs. Protest his forced ‘retirement.’ Not likely, Ivan thought to himself. He didn’t intend to lose, especially now when it seemed he and Knapp were beginning to cement something between them. He planned, instead, on a surer route. He would go on being indispensable, figuring to be at the agency long after Knapp and others had passed on through it. He took a little pride in knowing how to survive, how to manage things so they came out right for him and his. He had learned it by watching his father’s mistakes. He
