of my sons and grandson in Lost River Country have all invested in a band of cattle for which they are cutting hay at Clear Lake. Duty requires my own return to that vicinity tomorrow, not however near enough to them to render any assistance if attacked.”
He would get Oliver to post the letter tomorrow.
#75
“I am on my way to the Umatillas,” Meacham said, dropping into the chair the adjutant had shown him to. Canby sat behind the polished desk, his papers mustered neatly before him, like so many squadrons awaiting his command. The desk backed to a window, the better to illumine the tasks to be dispatched. Backlit like that, Canby seemed without features, a silhouette general, his greying hair catching the light and outlining his head in silver. Meacham rested his elbow on the arm of the chair and rubbed his eyes, seeking to dispel the illusion.
“There is a Big Talk I must have there. I promised it months ago, and I mustn’t change it.”
“Why should you?” Canby asked.
Meacham waved his hand toward the letter that lay open atop the general’s first stack of work.
“This? Saying Jack wants to see you? I think this will keep,” Canby said. “Go see your Umatillas.”
“I must confess, I look forward to it. I need to see a place where things are working as they’re supposed to. Besides, I can finally trust in my agent down at Klamath. My brother can handle things as well as I can. Better, probably. And he has Ivan.
“There are rather a lot of Applegates around, aren’t there?” Canby asked, lifting Jesse’s letter, then letting it settle. “And now Meachams,” he said, gently jesting.
“Not too many of the latter, I hope! I’ll let John know how to proceed. That’s what I want to check on with you. Are we singing from the same page, so to speak?” Meacham gestured toward Jesse’s letter. “What’s your impression of that?”
“That the man’s conflicted. That at least. What do you read into it?”
“I don’t know what to make of it. He supported the reservation idea -- just recently. Now I don’t know where he stands.”
“Oh, that doesn’t seem like much of a mystery. He’ll stand with the Applegates. And they’ll stand with the settlers. It’s no surprise. After all, the old man went out of his way to invite them here some time back, didn’t he?
When Meacham gestured his dismay at that assessment, the general hurried on to reassure him.
“It’s really nothing new,” he said, evidently sensing Meacham’s disappointment. “You know, I learned my lesson on this kind of thing a long time ago. Before the war, when I was charged with settling matters with the Navajo. It was just like this. I started out with the notion that they should have what they needed by way of land to use as they always had. Of course, they were herders. Had tens of thousands of sheep, so it seemed. Hard to draw a very circumscribed line around that kind of a situation. So I let them roam their old ranges in the New Mexico territory to do their grazing, as they always had, after extracting some promises about their managing to control their own renegades. Made perfect sense. The army and the Indians didn’t have any trouble working it out. On paper.
“What I didn’t bother to include in the equation was the settlers. I calculated without them. They were like this Applegate clan -- and their immigrant brethren. They had a whole different set of ideas, and they undid everything I patched together with the Indians.
“I’ll spare you the details, if you don’t know them. Suffice it to say that by the time it was all finished, I was the one who had changed. I had opposed the notion of forcing the Navajos onto reservations because it cut against the grain of their whole wandering way of life. By the time it was all over, I was the strongest proponent of locking them up. Because if we didn’t, the settlers were going to kill them. Simple as that. This is the same thing all over again.”
“It’s why I have to go to see my Umatillas, to reassure myself these things can work.”
Meacham stopped himself, a bit ashamed at the sarcastic note that had crept into his voice.
“Cheer up, Meacham,” Canby said, “we’ll have our new reservation. Either the one you proposed to Washington, or else Malheur. When it’s open. That’s sufficiently far north to be out of the line of fire from the settlers. If we can get our red friends there before things blow up. By the way, I understand Ivan talked Captain Jackson into sending out some men from the fort.”
“Not enough, to hear Ivan tell it.”
“Probably not. We may not see eye-to-eye on this, Meacham. But Jackson did right, doing little. That may frustrate you, but I’m advised to let the Modocs settle this matter their own way.”
“I know. So am I. By Steele and Rosborough. And some others.”
“And you think … ?”
“That I don’t want to have to touch it either. It complicates matters. What concerns me first is to get this Lost River reservation business finished with Washington. We say what Jack did is murder, but I have to keep my eye on the bigger picture. I don’t want the Indian service to be the cause of Jack’s removal. I want that group held together until we can get them settled.”
“So you wish the army would do what, then?”
“About what it’s doing. Keep the fear of God in them for the time being. Until we hear.”
“Then we are on the same page, Meacham. You and I, at least. I’m not sure that includes Ivan.”
“It doesn’t, I assure you. When your army people couldn’t locate Jack, Ivan got a really hare-brained idea: wanted to personally lead an expedition to run Jack down.”
“That doesn’t sound like Ivan, does it!” Canby said.
“No. He’s usually more cautious. Don’t worry though. I threw water on it. Told him if you didn’t choose to pursue the matter, he should just lay it before the Grand Jury down there. Let the Oregon civil authorities indict, if they care to. Frankly, I can’t believe they’ll trouble themselves much about what one Indian did to another. In any case, the last thing I want is a vigilante action with an Indian agent running it.”
“So we’re together for the present,” Canby said, sounding gratified. “But I would go you one better. If we really want to keep Jack quiet, offer him amnesty; offer him a tribunal of Indians. I don’t care.
“But I should be more forthcoming with you, since we’re on the subject. You asked what I thought about the letter. There’s something about this doesn’t strike me just right.” Canby picked it up and scanned it. “There’s some bug biting these Applegates. I don’t doubt for a minute that Jesse is rightly representing the two points of view here, but he makes it sound as if everything is tinder waiting to ignite. You once told me that was a favorite Oregon settler tune, and now I hear it from him, too. Yet somehow I doubt that judgment. Nothing has happened with these Indians lately, has it, except for this business with the shaman?”
“Nothing
