Chapter 10

January 17, 1873

Here in the middle of the Ice Moon, Captain Jack was doing his best to lead his men in battle. He had never fought the white man before. None of his band ever had on anything close to this scale.

With less than sixty armed warriors, Kientpoos spread his fighting force across three miles of terrain, forced to cover two fronts, both east and west. Most of Jack’s men kept moving, using the fogbank to their advantage: firing randomly at a portion of the soldier line, then disappearing, to reappear somewhere else where they would wreak havoc for a few minutes before disappearing there as well.

While the fog tied the white men down, it could only help the Modocs, who knew every foot of these terrifying Lava Beds.

Jack was sure this hit and run approach to fighting the soldiers had to give the army the unmistakable illusion they were fighting a much larger Modoc force.

Within their bastion the Modocs had been using a few large pits one could not really call caves for shelters. Over them they had suspended their blankets or a few old animal hides against the freezing rain. Splitting their Stronghold was a series of three or four long, lateral cracks in the lava rock, making a space wide enough for a man to squeeze through—and now used to move small groups of warriors back and forth across the Stronghold itself, from front to front.

The increasing noise coming from the lakeshore alerted Jack that the soldiers were moving once more, this time from the west to the north—toward the lake itself. Inching closer to the edge of his Stronghold.

He quickly ordered Scar-Faced Charley and Steamboat Frank to take a handful of others to that section of the rocks that would overlook the shoreline. There his warriors would be hidden among the rocks some twenty feet above the approaching soldiers—able to fire down on the unsuspecting attackers.

If they were going to instill cold fear in the bowels of the white men, his Modocs had until sundown to do it. He gazed overhead, watching the sun fall off mid-sky and slip into the western side of the world, as the Modocs knew it.

By sundown that relentless winter sun could in all likelihood burn off the fog.

His fifty warriors would then be up against four hundred soldiers and Klamath scouts.

Jack willed the sun to stand still in the sky.

*   *   *

The whole area Green had been trying to force his way across since dawn was a rumpled landscape scored by ridges and gullies of lava flow frozen long ago in time. Each deep gully, some a hundred feet wide, had to be crossed by the soldiers while exposing themselves to Modoc fire. When they would reach the far side, the white men still had to climb a steep twenty- to thirty-foot wall of black rock, cross the top of that ridge, then drop down into the next deep gully. It was hard going, and the young soldiers resisted every step of the way.

No one could blame them. They were called on to bare themselves to Modoc riflefire for every foot of ground they gained.

Because of the hard going and the effective use of the terrain by the warriors, by one o’clock in the afternoon the entire advance had slowed to a halt, pinned down by the random, yet uncannily accurate fire of the ghostly Modocs hidden somewhere in the white fog.

During the painstaking crawl forward, Mason’s infantry had somehow lost track of the slower Oregon volunteers. Major Green soon realized that there was more than three hundred yards of open field between those two outfits. He dispatched his scout Donald McKay with an order for the volunteers to close up the ranks. Instead, the civilians turned around and sent that order on to Captain Perry’s cavalry unit, then the Oregon volunteers retreated, carrying along the body of one of their own casualties.

Not long after this mysterious move, Green had to send word back to Wheaton that his right flank had become mired down, unable to move and taking heavy fire from the unseen Modocs. Even more distressing, the major reported, his positions were not only hearing fire from Bernard’s troops dug in on the far side of the Stronghold, but some of Bernard’s bullets were falling among his skirmish lines—although it seemed Bernard’s forces were not moving forward at all.

“Wheaton wants us to get your cavalry and Mason’s infantry shuttled down to the lakeshore, where he wants us to make a junction with Bernard’s men,” said Major Green as he raised his eyes from Wheaton’s orders, just brought in by half-breed scout McKay.

“What good will that do us?” Captain Perry asked, rows of thick flesh furrowed between his eyebrows.

“Yes, I agree,” said Mason. “Our plan was to join on the south, not on the lakeshore. If we join on the lake, we’ll be driving them toward open ground where they can flee.”

Green shook the orders angrily, frustrated. “I don’t understand, gentlemen.” Suddenly he turned to the Californians standing nearby, observing the officers’ conference. “Fairchild—you and O’Roarke—come on over here. Can you tell me what happens if we form a solid line of troops at the lakeshore then attack inland toward the Modocs’ Stronghold?”

Fairchild looked at O’Roarke, some confusion in his eyes. He stared back at Green, unblinking. “You’re opening the corral gate, Major.”

O’Roarke snorted, wagging his head in exasperation. “Don’t you soldiers see it’s like flushing your breeding pens? You’ll never catch the Modocs then.”

Green turned to Perry after some moments of deep thought while staring at his boots. “Perhaps it would be better for the soldiers among us not to second-guess Colonel Wheaton.”

“With all due respect, Major—”

Green held a hand up and silenced Perry. “Captain, we will proceed with our orders as received.”

“Sir—I’ll take heavy casualties if I send my men across that terrain. They’ll be exposed every time they climb—”

“Captain, take your men and commit to making a junction with Bernard’s stalled offensive.”

Perry straightened and sighed. He saluted. “Yes, sir.”

“We’re going too, aren’t we, John?” Ian O’Roarke asked Fairchild, still tasting in his mouth the stale coffee and greasy salt-pork the army had fed the civilians that morning in the predawn darkness.

The settler looked at the handful of others who stood watching Perry march off, flinging his arms at his men, ordering them from behind their boulders, demanding they form up for the advance. He turned back to O’Roarke.

“We’re going, Ian. But, by God, some poor soul is gonna pay for this fool’s errand.”

O’Roarke spoke a silent prayer he would soon be walking back up that muddy, rutted path from the Ticknor Road, seeing Dimity in the distance, waving her bonnet at him, raising herself up on her toes the way she always did when she first spotted him coming up the path, gone long to Linkville or beyond, watching for him out the front window and rushing into their tree-shaded yard in her still-youthful excitement. Ian prayed.

Foot by foot Perry led his troops and the Californians along the dangerous shoreline. When they were less than 150 yards from the rocks ringing the Stronghold, the Modocs opened a sudden, devastating fire. Two of the volunteers dropped, dead where they lay on the black sand. Then, as suddenly as the gunfire had erupted, it slowed, trickled off and stopped.

“Hello, white mens!” sang out a Modoc voice.

Ian turned to Fairchild. “That sound like Steamboat Frank?”

The rancher nodded as the disembodied voice continued.

“Charley—don’t you see some Yreka boys with those white mens?”

“Yes—I see them good down there,” came a second voice.

Pressley Dorris crabbed up on hands and knees to collapse between Fairchild and O’Roarke. “Scar-Faced Charley—know his voice anywhere.”

“Look—that was old Dorris talking! What you Yreka boys want with us, say? Dorris, what you want doing here?” The Modoc brazenly raised his rifle and fired a shot at the soldier lines.

“Fairchild with you?” Charley asked, and fired a shot.

“How about O’Roarke?”

Another shot fired.

“How long you boys going to fight us?”

Again and again Scar-Faced Charley emphasized each question by firing a round from his captured rifle. Keeping soldier and civilian heads down as he had his fun.

“What’s matter with you, Dorris?” Steamboat Frank asked this time, and fired his own rifle.

“Can’t you hear us, boys?” Charley chimed in again.

Frank laughed loud enough for the soldiers to hear. “Ain’t you got no ears, white men?” He fired another shot. “Can’t you talk?”

Scar-Faced Charley laughed with Frank. “These white boys ain’t got mouths!”

As the afternoon dragged on, the Modocs slowed their funning with the white men and began to have real sport with the attackers. By that time most of the canteens had been drained while the lake lapped invitingly close. Trouble was, each time a soldier attempted to belly-crawl to the shore, he had to cover the last ten yards without the protection of any boulders, exposing himself to fire from the warriors stationed high in the rocks above the soldier position.

Lieutenant John Kyle was himself hit, yet not seriously, as he emerged from the boulders, four canteens slung over his shoulder. Down he went with a clatter. Grunting with the pain of dragging his bleeding leg back across the sharp lava-laced sand, Kyle made it to the shelter of the rocks.

“Well done, Mr. Kyle,” Perry said quietly as he helped drag the lieutenant back to safety.

“Well done, hell,” Kyle growled. “I didn’t get any water—”

“Leave that to me,” Perry said as he began pulling the canteen straps from Kyle’s shoulders.

“They’ll get you too.”

“Maybe not,” Perry replied.

“Chances are good they will,” Ian O’Roarke said quietly as he knelt beside Kyle, pulling off the last of the canteens from the lieutenant’s body. “I’ll try to cover you best I can.”

Perry tore his eyes from O’Roarke to stare out from the boulders across that last ten yards of bare shore, measuring something unseen. His eyes came to rest on the civilian once more. “Might work, mister.”

Ian patted two more canteens he already carried for the other Californians. “If it doesn’t, Captain—I don’t want you blaming me for trying.”

Perry smiled wryly. “Never hold a fool accountable for his acts, mister.” He held out his hand.

“O’Roarke.”

“Let’s crawl, Mr. O’Roarke.”

Together they went to their bellies, pushing with their legs and pulling with their hands dug into the surface of black pebbles. The empty tin canteens clattered softly beneath each arm as they inched from the rocks. Slowly at first—then more quickly, perhaps frantically, as they moved each successive yard, nearing the beckoning water that lapped lazily against a slick of opaque ice that coated the black shoreline.

The first shot noisily struck a canteen O’Roarke dragged beside him.

A second shot caused a short spout of earth to erupt between the two men already scrambling apart and turning about. O’Roarke rolled onto his back, pulling up his Spencer repeater and snapping off two shots of his own. From the corner of his eye Ian watched the captain cover the last few yards on his hands and knees, fall to his belly at the water, where he plunged two of the canteens beneath the cold surface at once.

Ian fired a third round at the tall, black monoliths where the Modoc marskmen hid. Just above those rocks the white fog hung suspended, blotting out the falling sun overhead. More Indian fire rattled from the loopholes above the white men.

“Arrrghgh!”

Ian fired once more, then twisted his head to find Perry grasping his upper arm. Dark, bright blood filled the spaces between his pale fingers, oozing over them, staining his tunic and blotting on the black sand below.

“Goddamn, that hurts!” Perry hollered again.

Derisive laughter rang from the rocks above them. Then, “I’m shot!” shouted in a high, mocking voice.

“Oh, I’m shot!” another voice jeered.

“Lemme get us out of here,” O’Roarke whispered, firing his rifle toward the rocks. “Can you do it yourself?”

Perry nodded.

“You come here to fight Indians,” a squaw’s voice hurled itself down at the two at the shore, “and you make a noise like that when a bullet hits you?”

Modoc warriors laughed with her.

“You are no man, soldier,” the woman’s voice continued mocking him. “You a squaw instead!”

With every bullet that kicked up a spout of dirt around them, O’Roarke and Perry crawled that much faster back to the boulders.

Perry collapsed, breathing hard behind the rocks as a soldier wrapped the wounded arm with a strip of dull bandage. By now the captain had three dead and several wounded.

“How long you figure we can sit here?” Perry asked those gathered around him.

“I don’t figure we can afford to stay here much longer,” Kyle replied, bobbing his head back up the trail at the sound of footsteps.

Perry and the rest turned to find Major Green and some of his staff shuffling their way in a hurry.

“What’s the hold-up, Captain?” asked the commander as he brought his eyes from Perry’s wound to the captain’s face.

“We can’t get down to the lakeshore without suffering heavily, Major.”

Green yanked one of his woolen gloves from his right hand. “By damned, we have to. We have to.”

“We’ve taken heavy casualties, Major—”

“I damn well never thought it would be easy once we started this morning, Captain!”

Green got to his feet, standing above the rest of the soldiers who hunkered down among the rocks.

“Major! Get down!” Kyle shouted.

“Get down!” other voices rose here and there.

A shot rang out, kicking up some black dust from a boulder behind Green.

“Damn you, heathens!” the major hollered, turning toward the Modoc position, flailing an arm in indignation.

“And damn you—all of you soldier mans!” Charley hurled his oath at the white men refusing to budge from their rocks. “You all die in hell you don’t stand and fight like mens!”

“Major—we can’t expect—”

“I damn well do expect … and order every last one of you on your feet You sonsabitches better get moving, on my command—and join up with Bernard. We have our orders. Are any of you men prepared to suffer courts-martial for cowardice?”

There arose a smattering of angry muttering from the group scattered among the rocks. Three more shots came whining past Green as he stood there, alone and unmoving, making himself a dandy target.

“Get down!” more men shouted.

“Get up and fight like soldiers, you yellow-bellied dogs! Get up, dammit!”

Ian reached over and tapped Fairchild on the arm. “You and Dorris ready to show ’em how?”

“What you got in mind, Irishman?”

“I say enough of us give these soldiers some covering fire—they can make that crossing of the open ground without too many getting hit.”

The pair nodded and led the rest of the Californians to their feet.

“C’mon, boys,” O’Roarke announced to the knots of soldiers hiding in the boulders. “We’ve got business to attend to on the other side of them rocks off yonder.”

“You figure to find your nephew with Bernard’s men?”

He nodded at Pressley Dorris. “I pray I do find him, friends. Pray I do.”

Spurred by the courage of the Californians who took possession of some rocks and began delivering a hot fire back at the Modocs, Green got Perry’s and Mason’s men moving as bullets angrily slapped the rocks around them. Every man capable made that trip past the exposed lakeshore, not tarrying in the least where so many had been wounded. Cavalry and infantry both followed the settlers’ example: while a few of the soldiers hurried east past the boulders into the naked no-man’s land, the rest laid down a hot riflefire to cover those crossing to the far side.

This maneuver dragged on and on for the longest time under a deadly hail of Indian bullets. Many of the Californians and soldiers prayed for darkness to come. Only then would they be able to drag their dead and wounded from the rocks and join Bernard’s troops.

As a shimmering, hazy sun shrank behind Mount Shasta near five o’clock, the last of Green’s men collapsed among the rocks on the far side of the Stronghold, near the shore where they effected their reunion with Bernard’s troops safely ensconced behind big boulders. In the growing twilight the Californians were the last to scurry to safety, having covered every soldier who dared make the crossing.

Darkness was sinking over the land as the wind shifted once more out of the north, bringing with it a cold, icy spray off the lake.

Among the rocks, only a hundred yards away, the wounded who had been abandoned began to howl in distress as the black of night swallowed the land.

“Don’t leave me here for them Modocs!”

“For God’s sake—come drag me outta here!”

They moaned pitiably and cried out for help.

His gut twisted in remorse, Ian tried to shut his ears to those cries of pain and anguish as night came down around them all. When he could no longer take it, he turned to Fairchild.

“I need your help,” he whispered. “Can’t go in there all by myself.”

“I’m in with you,” Dorris agreed.

Crawling back into the lengthening shadows cast across the lakeshore by the lava boulders, the trio moved out followed by more volunteers.

Five yards, ten then twenty—and the deepening gloom of twilight opened up with spurts of yellow fire. Modoc bullets sought out first one, then a second of the volunteers. Ian turned to find all but Dorris and Fairchild had abandoned the search for the wounded.

“We don’t have a chance, Ian,” Fairchild whispered.

A bullet ricocheted from a rock nearby.

“They’re aiming at sound now,” Dorris hissed, inching backward toward safety, disappearing into the gloom.

“Give it up, O’Roarke,” Fairchild said, tugging at his friend’s leg.

Reluctantly, the Irish settler swallowed down the bile at the back of his tongue.

And like the rest, abandoned the wounded.