out the story, Bogus Charley rushing to keep up his translation, the Klamaths hooting him on. Grim faced, Knapp listened, until the noise from the crowd made him throw his hands up over his head.
“All right! All right!” he said. “Everyone be quiet! I got something about rails, and something about the Klamaths took them. That right?”
When the translator nodded, Knapp turned to Jack.
“But they were brought here to the agency, right? So what are you stewing about? They belong here.”
“But the Klamaths said they were theirs.”
“They are. They from our land.”
“Never mind, Jack. Go on back to work and mind your business. I’ll look into it,” Knapp said, turning on his heel and yanking the door open again. Before Bogus could translate what Jack was saying, it slammed to, the agent inside.
When Bogus started up the step toward the office, Jack pulled him away and shoved him back down to the street and their horses. They mounted up amid the cat-calls and whistles. As they rode back out toward camp, someone shouted:
“Go split us some more rails, there, Jack! We be right down to get them!”
#42
They had cut maybe three hundred more. Boston Charley wrote the numbers down When they showed up again and made off with the rails, Jack asked John Schonchin to tell him if he was crazy or something. Who were they working for anyhow? They split rails which the Klamaths took away; so why didn’t they just quit it? That was the end of working the timber, at least until this thing got settled. The agency kept silent. Knapp looked out his window when Jack or some other Modoc rode in to get stuff at the commissary, but he was never more than a pale ghost standing behind the glass. You couldn’t see where his eyes looked or what he was thinking. And there never was any word from him about how the Klamaths had been put in their place. There never was nothing at all.
There was Klamath tormenting of his women, Jack said. Striking them and driving them away when they went to gather seeds.
“Those are for our families!” the Klamath women said, and they grabbed the Modoc kids and shook them. “Why don’t you all just go back where you come from?”
There was a pony shot, and you knew a Klamath did it, even though no one saw.
There was a Modoc man stoned by a bunch of Klamaths.
Every time, Jack said don’t do nothin’ about it. But that didn’t go down good with the women or with the men who’d done the splitting.
“Our time’s going to come,” he told them, and he rode over with John Schonchin to Sprague River to talk to the Modocs over there, see what they could work out. Old Schonchin heard them. He knew there was trouble, since the Klamaths kept him up with it, enjoying telling him how the Lost River Modocs didn’t belong there, watching to see that he agreed with them.
“You gotta go see Knapp for us,” John said to his older brother. “You can go up to him and say you know everything’s not right.”
“I’d go,” Old Schonchin said, “but he won’t like me standing up for you. You gotta see him yourself. You only talked to him the once.”
So eventually Jack went again. It was spring coming by then, and there was plenty of work ahead. No reason to stay out of the timber now that things were warming up. There were the houses to finish, if they would just get the mill up. There was hunting to do, horses to swap. The young men were getting itchy to be doing things; the time was ripe.
“They want to stay here if the Klamaths will let them alone,” he said to Knapp through his interpreter. “They say to be good Indians, but they gonna go out of here if I can’t show them something comes from their working. They got nothing for them rails; the women get struck and driven away from the lake when they go to get seeds or eggs or fish; the kids get whipped; the stream gets muddied. And they just hang around and watch us.”
“Then you just better go where the Klamaths can’t get to you so easy. You have to stay out of their way. Keep to yourselves. I’ll send the wagons, and move you on over onto the Williamson River. The agency Indians will let you alone over there.
Jack wanted to say something about the house he had half finished, and the way the others had fixed up places that were just now starting to be like homes to them, but the agent turned his back on him and called out to Ivan:
“Let’s get the wagons down to them next week,” he said. “The road over to the Williamson ought to be dry enough then. Move the whole lot of them out of the way.”
Jack wanted to say it was too far to the timber. They wouldn’t be able to work there without walking half a day, but the agent closed the door again, and he was left with a handful of Klamaths looking on, smiling their satisfied way.
#43
He left the timbers sticking up out of the earth, and his wives and sister complained loudly all the way over to the Williamson -- until he rode away from them and went to join John Schonchin and Scarfaced Charley up by the front wagon.
#44
He got Old Schonchin to go in and talk for him.
“I told him they still watching you people. Just like you told me. I told him you didn’t like it.”
“Did you tell him my people won’t have it this way any more? Did you say about them taking the fish?”
He could tell by the way Old Schonchin sat there smoking, not looking at him, that he hadn’t said much. Or hadn’t said it like it mattered.
“Did you say I can’t hold in my boys? They don’t know about this putting up with things. Nor about being held in -- by me or anyone else. They’re not used to being told one thing and then seeing another thing happen. They’re not going to listen to me for long. Did you tell him that stuff, like I told you?”
Inside, in his belly, he felt a sickness. The old Sprague River chief just sat there and listened, and Keintpoos could see in his mind how it had gone there at the agency. Old Schonchin had said a few things, whining, most likely. Not looking directly at Knapp like he meant it, but watching the ground as he spoke. Not saying his words loud enough even to be understood. And that would have suited him, Jack realized. He would have whined his words out like a good reservation Indian, to let the boss know he meant no rebuke. It would have been just fine with him to be turned down, too: with the Modocs it was getting to be so Keintpoos’ failure was Old Schonchin’s own success. They were getting to think like the white men: there wasn’t any need for two chiefs.
All the way back to the Williamson River, Keintpoos stormed at John Schonchin about his brother. But John was already madder
