“Hooka Jim says you gonna fight sooner or later, looks like. Better do it now, get it over. They don’t want to do any talking. Talking just like flies buzzing by some heap of cow shit.”
Now Jack turned to face the younger man in the open-collared shirt and tight, beaded necklace. Some words of disagreement passed between them, and Hooka Jim got to his feet. Over his shoulder, as he stamped away toward the pasture, he called back in clear English:
“I’m gonna go piss!”
His words were like the end of a chapter, and then the new one started. It was Jack speaking this time, without looking up, recounting as if for the hundredth time the list of grievances, urged on by the others to speak. They nodded and muttered in agreement at each item on the list. John Meacham knew them all by heart, dating back to the Ben Wright massacre, coming up to the present and his Klamath Agency. Worse, said Jack, than any of the rest: the shamans from over at Klamath who now had started killing them.
“Our object here is to avert war,” John Meacham said, stopping to help Boston Charley understand the words. “But you Modocs got to remember: it was you killed off all those settlers back in Ben Wright time. It’s you who are insolent to these settlers today.”
“Who says that about any of us bothering settlers?” Jack insisted.
“Never mind names,” Ivan said. “Some big important people. They’re afraid you Indians will go off on a killing.”
“I only killed Compotwas Doctor. To stop him.”
“Well, don’t do more, any of you,” John Meacham said. “My brother sent me to show you he cares about you Modocs. He could have sent someone who wasn’t his own family. But he wanted you to see how much he trusts you. Stay put, he wants me to tell you. Don’t go roaming around the country. Don’t fight the soldiers. Don’t listen to bad white men telling you ways that will get you in trouble. Only the military and the Salem Tyee Meacham or reservation agents can council with you. Be patient, until my brother can get things fixed up.”
Half of the Indians looked away, muttering in disgust. Half listened, their faces furrowed in concentration as Boston Charley’s voice droned on. Until at last Jack stood up. This was to be his last word, evidently.
“Keintpoos says, ‘You call off them soldiers. I won’t try to keep them whites from settling long as they don’t harm my people or try to keep them from doing what they got to do. I’m going to tell my boys not to go prowling about and frightening white women. You and your brother and Ivan here got to tell all them whites the Modocs are friendly to them. No need then for brass buttons.’”
When he walked out through the seated men toward the grazing ponies, he finally looked like a chief. It wasn’t the way he moved or anything special he did. In fact, John Meacham thought, there was an inward thing about him that made him seem too aloof to be a leader. But the others got up as one, crowding around him, the belligerent men as well as the others who seemed not so sure about things. As one, when Jack left, they did, too; no one looking back, no one talking to any other.
“Well,” Ivan said when they had ridden off, “killing the shaman accomplished something! Up until that happened, they wouldn’t sit and talk like this for anyone.”
“They’re afraid we’ll get the soldiers to go really after them.”
“Yes,” said Ivan. “They are touchy about that.”
“From what you told me, I thought the way the army fumbled around and didn’t find Jack would set us back. But looks like it didn’t. Some of them make it sound like they’re spoiling for a fight, but now I doubt it. I think your uncle’s got things wrong. Just getting those few ‘brass buttons’ out in field and parading them where the Modocs could see them got the Indians’ thinking on track, even if the troops rode home empty-handed. It’s nice to see a little respect for a change, even if it’s just for a gun. But in this game, you take what you can get.”
John Meacham clapped Ivan on the shoulder, the meeting over.
“Nice place your uncle’s laying out here,” he said. “Looks like an up and coming operation.”
And it did. The corrals were in; the barn and house finished. Stone fencing stretched a distance up toward the road that ran off into the timber. It was going to be a substantial spread, John Meacham observed, the biggest one he had come across over in this region. Why shouldn’t it be, he thought to himself. Good grazing. Plenty of water. This was the first time he had gotten over this way. A low ridge of hills separated the place from Tule Lake. Otherwise, you’d be able to see clear over to Shasta on the western horizon. Beautiful country, really. No, he told himself. Better than that. It had magic.
#78
29 August 1871
General E.R.S. Canby
Commander, District of the Columbia
Sir:
Responding to your query of 4 Aug: There is no imminent danger of an Indian outbreak. They may be insolent beggars, but no one has been hurt, robbed or seriously threatened. Only Ivan Applegate has made complaints regarding them, and that was to arrest Captain Jack....
Jesse Applegate’s charge that a “petition” of settlers…”for protection” being disregarded by the military is untrue. No such petition was made to me, nor to my predecessor. I didn’t even know these Indians were troublesome until Ivan’s arrest request.
The reports regarding these Indians are very conflicting. Captain Jack carries letters attesting to his character. Many settlers in his district “where he roams” are against his being molested. There has never been a proposal to raise a force of settlers for his suppression, nor have inhabitants thought of taking “their defense into their own hands.”
Herewith I append John Meacham’s report. I assure you my small military force is large enough “to wipe out” this remnant of a tribe, should it become necessary.
James Jackson,
Capt 1st Cav.
#79
The thing about Tichnor was that he was persistent. You would have to be that to run a stage company through this country. Because the roads tore things apart. Took the rims off wheels, busted the spokes out of the hubs, snapped the pins. It was well enough that he ran his advertisements in the paper indicating to the hour when the stage would come in -- after a two or so day journey, but everybody knew that was wishful thinking. Everybody, that is, except H.C. Tichnor. For him, what he listed was the reality. The actualities were just random deviations from it.
“See,” he said to Elijah Steele as they were putting out their bedrolls, “with the new road open, I can take seven and one half hours off the running time from here to Yreka.”
The two men were headed home from Surprise Valley, over on the Nevada border, going due west for Yreka.
