but I figure to join the wind and spread over all this place. It got given to us before any Boston laid eyes on it.”
He paused for a moment, then gestured back over his shoulder. He said to Old Schonchin, “Your brother here talks for me. But sometimes, he goes past where I would. He and some others keep pushing on me to take back everything that was ours. They tell me they could get those cabins over there burned in a day, and the fences could be undone in less time than it takes to spit. Then as far as you could see there’d be only what we always had. I listen to them and keep on turning it over in my head. But I don’t think we could do that.”
“No,” said Old Schonchin, “you could not. I give up on that. And I heard you say you did, too, at the treaty. That day we signed, you understood me when I told them, ‘I thought if we killed all you white men we saw, that no more would come. We killed all we could, but you came like new grass in the spring.’ You remember: the tyees just laughed at us and showed where we should mark on the paper. That was long since, and now they’re all around you. Even then, when they were way fewer, I couldn’t get them killed enough to make them go. Less so can you, Keintpoos. You going to have to choose the way I chose.”
“No. I tried it. They can’t keep our enemies off us. We’re going to do it our own way. We’re going to have our own reservation, right here, where we belong. With no agents. These here whites can keep what they got; we don’t plan on harming them long as I say something about it. The rest we will all use together, us and them. That’s the only way I can be a reservation Indian. I can’t go as you go.”
“You’re both wrong,” John Schonchin said. “You can’t make a talk with the Boston tyees. The white man speaks only one language truly, the one that comes out of his gun. Give me a gun good as his, and I’ll speak to him so he understands me. I say no more reservation at all for us, here or anyplace else. Both of you are cowards. You’ve forgotten how to fight. The Modoc way: black as night, hot as fire, hard as the rock that bled out of that mountain over there.” He pointed to the horizon. “Now you’re whiter than it is. There ain’t enough heart between the two of you for either of you to lead. There’s others here who think the same about that.”
The sun fell warmly on all of them, with the words leaving nothing settled. Off in the distance, beyond Mahogany Mountain, stood Shasta -- Mlaiksi -- still white with the snow from the winter. They all knew the mountain was the burned heart of Tûtats, alive always, where great talkers and brave warriors might go to hear wisdom. But now it was silent, looked only on itself and said nothing. Along the riverbank, the willows were leafed out, the new growth a soft green. There was a cleanness to the air that shimmered in the distance beyond the lake, softening the lines of the hard landscape.
“I feel sad for you, Keintpoos,” Old Schonchin finally said. “You can’t follow me; you don’t dare lead my brother where he wants to go. I’m not sure what else that leaves you.”
#54
The day was almost finishing, and they would have to hurry if they didn’t want to get caught in Yreka by the dark. Keintpoos and Scarfaced Charley left the building and headed for their horses. They had left them with the black man who kept the livery stable. He had let them, as part pay for the pony they had brought along to sell him. Now, in the gathering dusk, Keintpoos stopped where the big street crossed another one on its downhill run to the gully. He pulled the buckskin pouch from under his shirt, tugging to get it clear of his chin. Then he picked with his fingernails at the twine he had knotted around it. He took out the wad of papers and spread them, smoothing the new sheet to square with the old ones. He folded the lot together, new sheet in, to protect it. Then he stuck them back in the pouch and cinched it. He shoved it again inside his shirt front.
“I hope you don’t have to get to that fast,” Scarfaced Charley said, grinning. “They’ll have us shot before you can show it to them.”
Keintpoos looked at his translator and grunted, acknowledging there was truth in what he said. Finally, his new pass tucked away and his head buzzing with what he had heard, Keintpoos headed for his horse, Charley still chuckling to himself beside him.
Over on the other side of the street one of his young people -- Whim, he thought -- stuck his head out of a doorway, then pulled it back in quick when he saw them. Keintpoos knew there were a bunch more of them here in town, having a time of it. He and Charley had come up on a young woman on foot that morning, her whole face below her eyes shiny black, a new goose quill shoved through the septum of her nose, a pretty new skull cap she had woven on her head, her baby lashed up on her back in his fine beaded basket, bright as the new day. The two men had been able to follow the tracks of the unshod ponies of many others all the way from the cutoff at Shasta. They hadn’t waited but a few days, his boys and the bunch of young women, before they found their way back over. Yreka would draw them, he knew, pull them in like a noose. By morning, if he tried to, when the light came again, he could find them by the corners of the buildings and in the little alleyways, tied up by the whisky like roped calves. They would drift back home a day or two later, too many dollars in their pockets or not enough; vague about how that money had gotten there -- or where it might have gone. He told his boys to stay away from the saloons, told his women not to run around like she-dogs in heat. But he could see by the way they listened none of them were paying attention. Maybe he was going to have to beat some again.
But they would have to take care of themselves today. He wanted to get back with the others quick as he could. There was just the glimmer he caught in what the judge said, Rosborough, and Steele -- if Scarfaced had translated it right. As he had listened, he had caught a hold of the idea, and now, as they tightened the cinches on their saddles and loosened the horses’ halters, he turned over in his mind what Charley had said they had said:
“Ask him how come the squatters can come there to Lost River and all around and we can’t,” he had said to Scarfaced Charley as they stood in the law office. And he had listened while the two men talked, half to them, half to each other.
“They say those ‘squatters’ aren’t squatters,” Charley said. “They say they’re ‘settlers.’”
“They look like squatters to me. What’s the difference? They’re squattin’ on our land.”
“They say they aren’t. They say those people are on government land now. Because of the treaty.”
“But I don’t have my name on that treaty any more. I called it back.”
“They say you can’t do that. You gave over the land to the government and the government gave it over to them.”
“Why’d it do that?” Keintpoos demanded. He listened as Scarfaced said the words, then waited while he had the answer told to him over and over again until he nodded his head when he finally got it.
“Steele says they got the land because they gave the government some money and they paid ‘taxes.’ ‘Taxes’ is money for that; you give it to the government to get something. Every one of the settlers on our land paid taxes and gave money for it; that’s how they got to be on the ‘land lists.’ That’s how come they get to be there.”
“Then tell them we’ll give some money and pay taxes, too. Tell them that.”
He watched as Scarfaced translated. The two Bostons looked at each other, arched their eyebrows, and shrugged. He could read the gesture. It said they didn’t know what to say.
“Ask them where
