and he said he’d write, too. He’s also of the opinion the Indians would go peaceably if the white portion of the treaty were guaranteed -- however you’d go about doing that. He’ll tell Ivan no one from Yreka advised the Modocs off the reservation. He thinks there’s someone else messing in this. Someone with ‘a pecuniary interest,’ as he puts it, in having more soldiers, cavalry especially, at Fort Klamath. He can’t complain to the army, because he thinks like I do: there aren’t any Indian threats to the whites. But Ivan wants the army believing the contrary.”
Steele liked John Fairchild. He was a straight man, all right. He was clearly miserable over this: Ivan scurrying around getting people all signed up against these Indians, the Indians believing in Ivan. John Fairchild had managed to settle with the Hot Creeks by paying them a little rent for his own land -- his own according to the government. John didn’t bother to quibble about whose his ranch over on Willow Creek was legally. Some things were older than law. Inside, he knew it was theirs -- no matter what the documents said. He had found a way to make things work ever since he got there in ‘62, but his arrangement would only hang together as long as the Indians trusted him.
“I’ll talk to Ivan, too,” Steele said. “But you know, John, it won’t necessarily help. I’m more or less persona non grata soon as you get north of the California state line. The folks in Oregon have always been after my skin: some of them won’t forgive that I’m a Union man. The rest are convinced I’m a horse thief; I’m always telling the Modocs how to get around them and their treaties, so they say. They’ll never forgive me for what I did after my one glorious year in office. Indian Superintendent for the northern district of California emeritus! You do realize, don’t you, that you’re coming to one of the sources of the problem when you come see me about this?”
He looked down into the street, reflecting on what had passed: Jack still came to see him because he had made a treaty with him in ‘64, before the big one that included the Klamaths and the Snakes. Steele had gone ahead and made it, even though he no longer had the authority. The Indians had come to find him. Things with the settlers and among the local tribes were set to blow sky high; the whole place was going to be hip-deep in every race’s blood. He had helped the local tribes to make pacts with one another. He had told the Modocs to go and take care of what they had from their fathers, told them they could do that so long as they kept the peace. And they had gone and done it. But his treaty had been bound to fail, he told himself: it was too simple. Along had come Huntington and the Oregon superintendents and a lot of other interested first families from up north of the border, and they had unwound it. They had fixed it good with their own idea of a treaty.
“They think I’m a meddler. Maybe I am,” he continued, turning back toward the room. “I even went on to Washington to represent the Modoc’s true wants and condition. Much good it did me -- or them! You can see what a big success I had with the proposition they should be left where they belong, at Lost River.” He stopped short and looked at his friend. “Sure. I’ll get word to Ivan, but it won’t solve the problem.” He looked over the rancher’s letter, then handed it back.
“I ever tell you a story about a padlock and an Indian? Happened when I first got here, twenty years ago by now, when I was off mining at Scott’s Bar? Indians over there used to wear ornaments in their noses: beads, feathers, all kinds of unbelievable stuff. One of the miners had this brass padlock, and, the Indians being friendly, he hooked it into a young buck’s nose. That fellow thought the miner had done something special for him, gave him just what he wanted. He went around all day displaying his fine decoration and praising his benefactor. Then it came time to take if off. Next morning, he came in with his nose all swollen, the padlock still hanging off his face. His fine friend wouldn’t do anything but laugh about it. Sounds sort of like a parable, doesn’t it? You could almost preach a sermon off of it. But it’s unvarnished truth.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I sort of forced the issue. Which had the effect of making me famous with the Indians. That and a few other things I got settled for them -- without anyone blowing any brains out or taking any scalps. From then on I was someone they’d turn to.
“But the point I was making wasn’t about me. It was about them trusting. You know it as well as I do. Trust holds their world together. It’s that makes them keep their word like they do.”
Fairchild frowned and said, “Older ones do, you mean.” He gestured toward the window and what they had seen from it. “But I have my doubts about the young ones who’ve hung around us enough to learn English. The language of evasion. ‘Deceit’: the worm in the apple of truth.” He shook the letter in Steele’s direction. “Bah! I’m not good at this stuff!”
The rancher unfolded himself from his chair and shoved his letter back into his pocket. “I gotta get going.”
“I always think… ,” Steele pressed on. “Maybe I think about this because I’m a lawyer. I always think they have to trust because they don’t have a written law and police to enforce it. If you promise something, you have to mean it, do it, produce it -- just because you said you would. Otherwise things wouldn’t work. There’s this strong trust that underlies all that. I’ve made a good living off of the fact that that’s not exactly our system.”
He stood up and replaced the papers on the corner of the desk.
“I got thinking about that because of the miner with the padlock -- and the Indian who trusted him, when he shouldn’t have. It’s a funny story. Even I think so, and I don’t have much sense of humor left: a buck Indian with a padlock stuck through his nose. But it says a lot about things.”
“That’s like the story about old Chief Winnemucca and his hat,” Fairchild said as he headed for the door, Steele following him. “The tin pan he wore on his head because no one had the decency to tell him it was for eating out of.”
“Yes. Like that. Funny. Not funny. Funny because they’re fools to trust us? Funny because they’re dumb and we’re smart? Not funny because they wouldn’t shame someone, but we would?”
With one hand on the doorknob, Fairchild turned to face the attorney.
“You’re right. They’re back again because they made the new treaty up in Oregon six years ago but the government didn’t deliver. It managed to pick up their land, of course, and let the settlers claim it, but somehow it couldn’t figure out how to come through with a few blankets or tools or food. They didn’t get what they were promised when they followed Meacham back up to the reservation, either. Bogus Charley said as much when he brought me the letter. Said they were hungry enough up at Klamath they started in eating their horses. And now Ivan wants us to bail him out of this, him and his boss over at the agency.”
“Of course, that’s not exactly what Superintendent-of-Indian-Affairs-in-Oregon Meacham is saying up at Salem, is it?” Steele asked.
“Isn’t it? What’s his version?”
“Oregon papers said that according to him -- as he protects his posterior -- the Modocs left because Captain Jack led them. Jack left because he wanted to be a chief, and wasn’t sure he could do that if he stayed on at the reservation. ‘Love of royalty,’ I believe, is what Meacham called it.”
Fairchild swung the door open and stepped out into the hallway. “Good thing Jack can’t read!” he said. “And now they’re trusting Ivan!”
Steele called down the stairs after him as he headed for the street: “And trusting us! Can’t exactly accuse them of learning fast, can you?”
