up. What’s up is locking us in, with or without us liking it.”
“Well, if you ask Old Schonchin … .”
“I don’t need to ask him anything,” Keintpoos said. “He turned into a natural reservation Indian. Once he was a fighter for his people, but all he knows to do now is wait on a government gift. All you Modocs from over at Sprague River, you know what I’m saying is true. All he knows to do is take care of his old age. Anything you ask him will come off of that, you can bet.”
“If you’re going to live here on this reservation,” Curley Headed Doctor said to them, “only way you can do it is to forget. Don’t you remember, you people? You been sitting there five years since the treaty, and you fall into forgetting who you are. I’m here to remind you. You’re Modocs, not Klamaths. All them white ways! You and the Klamaths! Can’t tell you from one another. Can’t tell either of you from Knapp. You forgot how to take care of yourselves, how to take from the earth that is yours and give back. You forget what the old people showed us they had learned. All you know any more is how to get into line and wait for the beef and the blankets. And how to watch out for the army. And listen to Meacham. And hope for any easy old age. How can you forget just like that?”
And then, after Euchoaks had finished shaming them, Jack laid out his plan.
#48
“See here, Ivan, you just put it to them plainly. Just tell them. They are to go do their own gathering and hunting. They are not to turn to us with their hands out. It isn’t good for them to expect to be given everything. The weather is good now, or it will be soon enough, and they can live off the land.”
“That’s not what the plan was,” Ivan said.
“I beg your pardon,” Knapp said, warning him to be careful, not forget his station.
“It wasn’t. We were to break them of those ways. Teach them other means to get what they need. The Superintendent said it himself.”
“That’s touching,” Knapp said. “You’d need Oliver to teach them that, wouldn’t you? Maybe even Lucien. Certainly Applegates would be required, wouldn’t they? That amounts to quite a little bit. But you know, as I go over the books, I find that there are insufficient funds. That complicates matters for us, doesn’t it. Things being as they are, you’d do better to just let them know that they can’t come sniveling around here for a hand out.”
“But it’s what the government promised.”
“That will do, Ivan. It’s not what we are going to give.”
#49
“What you think, boy? You vater goin’ to get it?”
Joseph didn’t know what to answer the shepherd. But his father got what he went after, that much was sure. Always did. He could hope that his father would remember, and think about the coming birthday. Ten would be old enough, and he would be that on May 9, in two weeks. In his mind’s eye he could see it as it stood in the rack at the smith’s at Linkville: the blue-barrelled rifle, its oiled stock. He hoped his father would remember that there was enough money, almost, in the jar Joseph kept in his clothes press. Nickels and pennies he had earned during the last lambing and this one for keeping the sheep safe in the mornings and again in the late afternoon. Shearer would tell his father he couldn’t have managed without him.
“He’s a good little mister,” Shearer said to his father. “De sheep’s safe with him there.”
He had watched them two times during each day for the season while Shearer was off doing things, getting ready. Tending to the new ones, getting rid of the bummers.
So it was honest-earned money, his first.
“Just think, Mr. Shearer,” he said. “With that, I could run off the coyotes. Any coyote come after these sheep, I’d shoot him.”
“Wirklich you would,” the man replied. “But for a time I think you papa keep that gun for you till you bigger. Or for time he could go with you out to hunt them coyotes. You almost big enough now, that’s sure. But pretty soon you be way bigger. You watch you, see if Shearer ain’t right. Then you could be a man taking care of things here. But right now you got some growin’ to do.”
“But I still think he’ll remember the gun. For my birthday. He promised.”
“Well, when he promised you, den he’ll do it. William Brotherton always kept his word with me. But for now you can leave off your watchin’ for him. Way too early.”
Joseph looked off toward the northwest, trying to pick out the place where the track up to Linkville went. Beyond Miller’s, off across the top of the lake, he could make out the smoke from the Boddy’s. Beyond that, the other little plumes would be Crawley’s or Monroe’s over by the ford at the stone bridge. The boy squinted to make the picture come clear in the afternoon light. He searched for anything that could be a sign of his returning father; but there was no one to be seen except his uncle off in the junipers, working at something, his mother back down by the house with Mrs. Swan, out by the chickens. That was all there was. Even next door at the Miller’s there was no one in sight.
The sheep grazed their ways off to the south, flowing along down the creek side like water themselves, washing slowly toward the lake shore, pulling eagerly at the new grass shoots. Too tender yet to have much to it, that was what Mr. Shearer told him. It would be good, Joseph thought as he watched them, if his father would just remember.
It was then that he saw them, coming down from the eastern rim of hills, along the old trail. He had to squint his eyes to make sure he was seeing rightly. At first he thought it was just a few men on ponies headed on a line that would take them uphill from where he and the shepherd stood and over toward the other ranches. But then he realized he wasn’t seeing just horsemen. Behind them, reaching back up to the top of the grade, for as far as he could make out the trail, there were others coming, on foot. More men, he thought, lots of them. Then back of them came the women, their huge burdens bulking out their figures so you could hardly tell they were people. Children, in two’s and three’s, ran like his lambs along side the moving column. He thought it was more people than he had ever seen together in his life.
“Look!” he said. “Who’s that, Mr. Shearer?”
The old German turned away from his flock in the direction Joseph pointed.
“Indians,” he said under his breath. “Mein Gott, would you look at them! Where they comin’ from? Or goin’ to?”
#50
“Listen, Lieutenant, it’s your job to get them back!”
“You’ll pardon me if I disagree there. Sir.” The word was an afterthought, added ironically, full of implication. “If you ran them off, it is difficult to
