other things he had to think on, other things he must get on with. He thought toward the sweating he now must do to wash himself from this insofar as he could; to get straight again. In the early morning light -- as the dogs came shuffling stiff-legged out from the cluster of houses and shacks toward them, sniffing up into the cool morning air -- after they had dumped the body, he turned his horse toward the south, back off the reservation, toward Lost River. In his mouth was the taste of the sleepless ride up here, the grief of his sister, the bilious taste of revenge. But all was right, at least for now. It was the way, and he knew Compotwas Doctor would bear no grudge, even as he hated him. They at least had kept faith with one another. It was for the others to feel shame. Let them run around for cover, weasels afraid of this hard kind of truth.
The tyees would think something about this, but he did not know what it would be. He wondered about it as he turned his horse away from Sprague River, toward the Yainax Butte.
Chapter 8: Letter to a Sheriff
#69
Steele said to Roseborough: “I told him I couldn’t answer the question. I said, ‘You asking me what the white men will do to you for killing the shaman? Which white men are you talking about?’ I said. ‘The ones north of the border who might indict you and the others? They’ll lynch you. Oregon men would just like the excuse to get Captain Jack.’
“‘Them other ones wasn’t even there,’ he told me.”
Steele stopped and looked at the judge, to see his reaction. When Rosborough nodded his head in agreement, Steele continued.
“Of course, I didn’t bother to tell him how ironical it would be -- for the Oregonians to lynch one Indian because he killed another. Still, I think he got the idea. But that kind of subtle nicety would never occur to some bunch of Linkville patriots with a poker up their behinds.
“I told him, ‘I can’t make any promises about your Californians, either. But they’re not likely to be real interested. What was between you two was between you two. Besides, you didn’t kill him in California, so they can ignore it.’
“I don’t know what he made of those fine territorial distinctions. I don’t think it makes a whole lot of difference to him that something as abstract as a state line got drawn right below his village, even though he can see the mounds of earth that were piled up to show where it runs. Trying to answer him does make you pause to wonder about some things, though.”
Judge Rosborough grunted to say he agreed. “Well, much as I might want to help out, I for one am grateful that medicine-man headed north to get killed. I’ll be pleased, thank you very much, not to have the case show up in my California court!”
“Ah, yes!” Steele said. “‘Jurisdiction’ is another one of those interesting concepts, isn’t it? Who does the corpus delicti belong to? California or Oregon? Depends on a line. Federal or state officials? Depends on the boundaries inside the state. And who in the country has responsibility: the Department of the Interior or some other legal ‘entity’?” He paused and smiled grimly. “Another nice Latinate word!
“An Indian who has eloped from a reservation kills a reservation Indian not on a reservation… .
“And Jack comes in here with Black Jim, who barely speaks English, to do his translations and wants to know what the white men are going to do to him. Then he patiently waits for me to explain to his translator whether or not someone is now going to kill him. And Black Jim hears me out and then just stands there, as if there were more -- or less -- to be said. And then he turns to Jack and just shakes his head and shrugs. Flummoxed! That’s how to wear an Indian down: explain him to death!
“So I wrote to Meacham. ‘Don’t meddle,’ I told him. ‘Let them settle this thing their own way.’”
“Pray God he listens to you!” Judge Rosborough said devoutly.
#70
That late June morning, they had ridden right into the Yainax settlement, the bunch of Lost River and Hot Creek Indians, not dodging Ivan as they usually did when they came over to visit their friends and the remnants of their families. In fact, they had come looking for him. As he watched, they had lashed their ponies to the fence and headed stolidly up to the administration office. When some of the Snakes had tried to come along with them, they had left a couple of men behind to block the door, telling the Snakes this was none of their business, that they came to have a Big Talk with Ivan.
He hadn’t expected them, and their sudden appeal to him had come as a surprise. Ivan couldn’t help wondering what hidden respect for the order he represented still lay in their renegade breasts. Before they would tell him anything, they insisted he say to them that he knew they were here on their own hook. Jack hadn’t sent them. Did he understand that? They stood there waiting for his response.
“If you tell me that, I believe you,” Ivan said, wondering, knowing more was coming.
They still wouldn’t go on, apparently not yet sure that they could trust his words, and so not saying what it was they wanted next. Some sign, he supposed, and so, to get them past this stuck place, he offered Black Jim his hand. The Indian reached his out and grasped it, and then they all did: Shacknasty Jim, Boston Charley, Scarfaced Charley, Ellen’s Man. Their eager hands groped for his, and then they seemed satisfied.
“You not go down against Captain Jack for this,” Scarface said. “You not say he done a wrong thing. Not put the army on him. You won’t care about him if he stay down by Lost River.”
So that was what they had come to see him about! They must have seen his amazement, for they all joined in offering words, explaining, some in trade jargon, some in English, most in Modoc. In truth, he was not able to tell them that he understood what they were saying, and he realized, as they tried to persuade him, that they mistook his surprise at their coming here at all for surprise at what they requested.
Of course he was not surprised at the murder. To be a shaman was to be a marked man. Sooner or later, some ‘patient’ was bound to die in spite of the best hocus-pocus of the ‘doctor’ -- maybe even because of it. Ivan knew how the rule went: someone would have to rise up then to stop the shaman, before he could work his poison again in the same family. Sometimes they would stop him by killing one of his children, but sooner or later it would be his turn. This had not been the first shaman death Ivan had known of. No, the murder was not the surprise. This outright appeal to his authority by Jack’s Modocs was. He had not realized he had any power remaining over them.
“Compotwas Doctor put poison in the girl. We know it. We all saw it. You believe us. Ghost Spirit showed it. It was the kiuks put her down, let her die right while we looked.”
“He had it in for Jack!”
“Keintpoos just did what he was supposed to.”
“You shouldn’t put the soldiers or anyone on him.”
“Compotwas Doctor just got what was coming. That’s all.”
“But Jack didn’t tell us to come here to say this to you. We did it because
