They couldn’t set up at the springs. The Bostons had got there in the time that had gone by since the last camas season. The whites had gone ahead and put up a big barn and made some corrals. They had cattle. There was a house going up, like the white ones at the agency. Keintpoos swung his people past the place in a wide arc up on the north flank of the butte, keeping it between them and the settlers. He headed them east toward the head of Lost River, half a day’s walk farther on. They could start their digging there, until he figured out what was going on at the springs. Where the Bostons were putting the buildings was just down the slope from where the cremation place was and the spot the Modocs had for their ceremonies. It looked like they were doing their building just off the old trail, on the green.
Next day, his people got moved onto the edge of the meadow below the black rocks of the canyon. All around there was that little time when the buck-brush went green and the flowers of the lava beds lit up, the days grew longer all the while. The women put up their summer houses. Not roofed enough to close out the starlight at night. But the season of rain was over, so it didn’t matter. The winds, if they blew, would come through the little shelters, but the girls could go get brush to pile against them, and usually that was enough.
While the women were setting things up, Keintpoos sent Boston Charley back to find out who that was in there. He could almost talk like a white man. Pretty quick he came in with the news. He had met Jesse and Oliver Applegate and some other man they also called Jesse. Maybe it was his place that was building, but it looked like Jesse Applegate was figuring to stay there, too. He had told Boston Charley to come on and work for them. They would show him how to do cattle. They were fixing to lay out a spread, he said, and ranch it.
Keintpoos’ people scattered along the canyon and off onto the flats and got their camas dig going. The women wove sacks out of sedge and tules while the roots were doing their half-drying in the sun. In the morning, it was time for the men to get fish, time for the women to turn the drying bulbs. In the heat of the day they rested in the shade cast by the little shelters and let Sun do the work. At night, just at dusk, when the bats started flittering against the sky, Keintpoos’ first wife told stories about the time before this, after Kumush had gotten things started. She spoke deep in her throat, like the bat people do, and told the Näníhläs story, about how they captured all the deer in the world in the deep pit; about how Maûk, the fly, led the others to find and release them.
Keintpoos sat apart with Scarfaced Charley and figured how they would put aside some of the camas for trading, so much from each family. They worked out how they would explain it, for the women would not likely give up what they had gathered for their husbands and children. The women would argue that when Tániäs Sléwis blew they would need all the dried camas they could store away. It would be hard to talk the women around after the hunger of last winter. The two men made up some plans for getting hold of a few ponies for trading. They figured how they would have Boston Charley write down on a paper all the names of the people to give to Steele. They talked about what it would be like if they were to be like white men.
When John Schonchin came over from where his wife had set up their shelter, they stopped talking about that.
#57
“I wouldn’t say he exactly threatened me,” Jesse Applegate said.
It was the middle of July, and heat of the summer was on them. Far as the eye could see, the air shimmered over the dry sage-brush. On the hottest days, a haze hung between the house and the western mountains. Medicine Mountain was blue now. The tip of Shasta stood white beyond it.
“What was it he wanted, then?”
The round-headed man with the neatly trimmed grey whiskers stood in the still-unfinished living room. His tan summer suit, the pongee cravat, the hand-lasted fine-leather boots said ‘city.’ The flat wide-brimmed black hat with its silver concho band said ‘vaquero.’ All of him said ‘rich.’
His clipped words were insistent, the voice one of a man who brooked no interference.
“Rent,” Jesse Applegate said.
“Rent!” the man exclaimed. “By whose leave? Why didn’t you shoot him?”
“No need for that,” Applegate said. “In fact, that would be quite a mistake.”
He could see by the arched eyebrows that had flown up and were yet to come down that the man was in some consternation. He set out to soothe him.
“It doesn’t really mean anything,” he said. “Jack’s just feeling his oats, I’d guess. This is an old issue between us.” He could see the man was waiting. You couldn’t slide by him without full explanations.
“The trail.” Applegate gestured along the lake’s shore. “Coming through here when we blazed it, we actually followed along an old Modoc path. It took us past half a dozen or more Modoc places between Goose Lake on over past Lower Klamath. Summering places, mostly. All of them abandoned at least half the year, since the Indians move back and forth between summer and winter quarters.
“That’s what got their noses out of joint. They always complained we whites and our wagons drove the game off -- or desecrated their sacred places.”
“So what?” the man asked. “How did they expect you to get through here? Fly like a bird?”
“No, I don’t think that’s what they had in mind.” It was clear Mr. Carr was impatient, so Applegate hurried to finish. “These Indians just walked off the reservation a couple of months ago, and so far no one has forced them back. Now they think the treaty doesn’t count any more and they aren’t bound by it. In this Captain Jack’s mind, that means all this range is still his. He wants rent.”
The man puffed at Applegate and turned away on his heel, tapping his hat against his thigh, impatient at being detained by a ridiculous idea.
“Well,” Carr said. “You should shoot him. Then he wouldn’t think it was his.”
He walked out of the house through the still-empty door-frame and stood in the shade, squinting his eye against the bright sunlight, scanning from west to east and back again.
“Tomorrow I’ll want to ride down on the far side of the lake and see if we can’t figure out the southern boundary. You bring along your surveying stuff. I’ll need a legal description of all the lines, metes and bounds I guess, before I put a word out about this. I want you to survey it, if you can do it.
“And if you’re going to manage this rancho for me,” he continued, “you’re going to have to ride better herd on those Indians. I don’t put up with insolence, and I don’t want my foreman doing it either.”
#58
Black Jim shoved on the door when the woman opened it just a little. When she screamed and backed away, he pushed in past her. The cabin was just one room, but it had everything in it: a cook place, a bed, some straight-up chairs, a table. The oil-cloth over the window cut down on the light, but he could still see it looked good in there.
“My
