Chapter 15

Late March 1873

Ian O’Roarke watched Steele, Atwell and Toby Riddle ride back into the outskirts of Gillem’s army camp. From the haggard, wind-blustered look of his friend, Ian immediately knew something had gone awry.

“Tell me, Elisha—you found out how wrong you were, didn’t you?” Ian asked, walking along at Steele’s stirrup until the Yreka attorney reined up his horse.

“Tell them, Steele,” Atwell prodded angrily.

The attorney nodded and sighed. “I had to … had to promise them that the commissioners would come to a conference…”

“Yes, so?” Ian said, watching others coming up to the three on horseback.

“I promised the commissioners would come to a meeting with the Modocs in their Stronghold … unarmed.”

“Unarmed?” O’Roarke asked, his voice rising two octaves.

“You actually promised the Doctor’s butchers that the commissioners would lay their lives down on the Modocs’ front step—unarmed?” John Fairchild asked.

“It was the only way he could get us out of that camp alive,” Atwell said, still visibly shaken.

Ian looked at Winema, her head bowed. At that moment Frank Riddle shouldered his way through the crowd. The couple spoke quietly for a moment, then he lifted her down from the horse.

“I don’t think Jack would let her be killed,” Frank said as he turned to go, Winema beneath an arm. “She’s his niece, for God’s sake.”

“Still, she might be caught in some fury provoked by the Doctor,” Fairchild said.

Riddle nodded, obviously concerned for his distraught wife, and led her away from the growing crowd.

“They’re planning nothing more than bald-face treachery,” Ian said, “demanding Steele guarantee the commissioners come to that evil den of death, unarmed.”

“You had no business making any promises on our behalf,” said Alfred B. Meacham as he came to a stop.

Steele whirled, his hands before him, imploring. “I said what I had to—just to get us out of there before—”

“You might well have hamstrung us, Steele,” Meacham growled.

“More than that, Alfred,” O’Roarke said quietly, “you go and choose to meet with those warriors now—your life hangs by a most slender thread.”

*   *   *

By the first week of April an impressive array of newspapermen had gathered at Colonel Gillem’s camp, each one eager to feed his hungry readers back east with the latest morsels from what was now being headlined as the MODOC WAR IN THE LAVA BEDS. This would prove to be the first, and in many ways the only, campaign comprehensively reported on during the entire quarter-century era of the Indian Wars. And with the way things were going, it was sure to make headlines for months to come.

“A ragtag band of poorly-armed Injins holding the mighty U.S. Army at bay!” Seamus cried. “That damn sure will make news back east.”

“One of the New York papers even has a veteran of the British army reporting here for them,” Ian O’Roarke said as he stirred the coals of their evening mess-fire.

John Fairchild squatted down beside them. “Heard he was working for the New York Herald.”

“The stuff he’s writing about—and how he’s writing it—won’t do Gillem no good,” Seamus said. “Those articles get back east—all those politicians back there with their starched collars will cry even louder for the army to make peace with Captain Jack at any price.”

“Just to avoid a war. A bloody shame,” Ian growled, dragging the bubbling coffeepot from the coals.

“They haven’t been kind to the commissioners already here to make their peace with the Modocs. Not that I really care for the rest of ’em.” John Fairchild accepted a steaming cup. “But when they go sniping at Meacham—that’s when I get my hackles up.”

“What they been saying about the old man?” Seamus asked.

“Saw a soldier’s paper yesterday. One of the reporters was writing that Meacham could ‘talk the legs off a cast-iron pot in just ten minutes,’” Fairchild replied.

Seamus shrugged. “Sounds like Meacham’s the man for the job. Them Modocs been hard as cast-iron so far.”

They chuckled a bit, blowing steam from their coffee as night came down hard on the Lava Beds.

“I just don’t like the way some of them others been reporting on Meacham,” Fairchild continued. “Another one said that ‘words roll from his silvery tongue like green peas from a hot platter.’”

“Don’t let them worry you none, John,” Ian said. “Those reporters are only angry because Meacham won’t let them attend any of his conferences—or his meetings of the commission. They bloody well print anything these days.”

“But Uncle,” Seamus said, “the truth is that if Meacham is every bit as good as the reporters are saying he is at charming the pants off those Modocs—then he’s the perfect man for what task lies ahead of them.”

Ian and Fairchild both nodded. Donegan’s uncle stared into the flames. “Then I suggest we all pray Meacham’s up to the task of making peace out of this dirty war, nephew.”

If the administration of Ulysses S. Grant back in Washington had anything to say about it, they were bound and determined to make peace with the Modocs. Twice in those past four months, the U.S. Army had tried, and failed miserably, to muscle Captain Jack’s people onto the reservation.

A majority of politicians and power brokers alike back east were dismayed that Grant’s Secretary of War, William Belknap, and his Secretary of the Interior, Columbus Delano, would not join forces to annihilate the Modocs. Instead, the administration had closed ranks to negotiate with that ragtag band of renegades holding out against the might of the frontier army.

Yet as the headlines bannered across the front pages of eastern newspapers, daily reporting the bumbling attempts of the army and the staggering, wavering efforts of the peace commission, more and more of the east came to debate the fact that it appeared the Modocs were doing only what could be expected of them—given a reservation on the homeland of their ancient enemies when their own Lost River land was stripped from them by white settlers.

Even more impressive, it was becoming more and more abundantly clear to a growing number of politicians who had their own agendas that this little war with the Modocs was turning into an affair lasting much too long, and by every means of accounting, much too expensive.

But try as A. B. Meacham and General Canby could, the Modocs were not cooperating in making peace.

Twice the Modocs sent word that they were ready to surrender provided they would not be hanged and the band would be given a reservation far from the Klamaths. Twice Canby sent wagons to the agreed-upon meeting place. Both times the wagons rumbled back to Gillem’s headquarters empty.

Forces against surrender were at work in the Stronghold. Each time it appeared Captain Jack was making headway convincing his people that surrender was the best path to take—Curly Headed Doctor and his zealots intimidated and threatened. As murderers of the white settlers four moons before, these warriors knew that surrender for them meant the end of a white man’s rope. Besides, everytime the mood of the Modocs huddled in the Stronghold seemed to inch toward giving up—the shaman would leap to the top of a boulder and harangue his believers.

Pointing each time across the lake to Bloody Point.

Where twenty winters before, a white peacemaker named Ben Wright had come among the Modocs—and savagely slaughtered most of their village.

As the frustrations had simmered week after week with complete lack of progress in the negotiations, the face of the commission changed. General Canby found himself dealing more with Meacham and the hope for peace talks every day. In addition, fifty-eight-year-old Methodist minister Eleazar Thomas was appointed to replace a departing commissioner. Also, the subagent on the Klamath reservation, L. S. Dyar, was appointed to take the place of the departing Jesse Applegate.

If it were to be a staying action meant to contain the Modocs in their Stronghold while the commissioners talked, then Canby would guarantee his superiors that the local settlers were protected and that he would know what the hostiles were up to. Accomplishing this had meant the construction of signal towers the soldiers would use in transmitting heliograph and semaphore signals between Gillem’s headquarters and Bernard’s camp, located at Applegate’s ranch on Clear Lake.

It was there that Captain James Biddle received orders to lead his K Troop, brought in from Camp Halleck in Nevada, on a reconnaissance of the Ticknor Road that strung its way through the roughest of country skirting the south side of the Lava Beds.

Seamus led his horse up beside Sergeant Maurice Fitzgerald and mounted when the older cavalry veteran gave the order to his horse soldiers. Around last night’s fire the two had shared memories and tales of battles, fighting units of J.E.B. Stuart’s Confederate horse at Gettysburg and in the Shenandoah for Phil Sheridan.

“By God, Irishman,” Fitzgerald bawled now within his black beard, already flecked with white, “what you and me could do to clean this little matter up and quick, eh?”

Seamus eased down onto the saddle as the sun warmed a cheek. “This ain’t the kind of horse war I grew used to fighting, Sergeant.”

Fitzgerald appraised him, then finally nodded. “If only those bastards back in Washington would turn the cavalry loose—we’d show ’em which way the Modocs run!” He urged his mount near Donegan’s, flinging his fist at the big Irishman’s arm. “If only we could get you back in uniform, you bloody renegate!”

“Things working out fine just the way they are, Sergeant,” he said as Fitzgerald signaled his patrol to move out. “I get me fill of fighting when I want it. But I don’t do no kitchen patrol and don’t dig no latrines.”

“Ah—you do have the best in life, don’t you, Donegan!”

“If you love bad food and wet blankets and a drippy nose.”

“What? You’d give up white beans and corn dodgers for the cooking of some soft-fleshed person of the female persuasion?” prodded Fitzgerald with a great smile creasing his dark beard.

“Before you could say deserter!”

They laughed together, joined by a few of the troopers within hearing distance, as they moved into the freezing fog of mid-morning, a milk-pale sun climbing overhead behind the thick clouds blanketing the land.

By early afternoon Troop K had plodded past Dry Lake and were heading west, nearing a low, yet prominent, outcropping known among the locals as Sand Butte. Like nighthawks flitting across the horizon at twilight, Seamus caught the barest hint of movement—ahead and to the right.

When he glanced over at Fitzgerald, he found the sergeant squinting into the haze of foggy sunlight and smudgy clouds.

“I saw it, Irishman.”

“Two of ’em?”

“Two, most like.”

“You see any weapons?”

Fitzgerald wagged his head. “But you can be damned sure if there’s a Modoc raiding party out here—they’ve got weapons.” He turned in his saddle and threw up a hand, halting the column.

Captain Biddle pushed his horse ahead and reined up beside Fitzgerald. “You spot something ahead?”

“Both of us.”

Seamus watched Biddle’s eyes flick his way, then go back to rest on his sergeant.

“You’re figuring an ambush.”

“They like working that way, Captain,” Donegan replied.

“Let’s prepare this troop for action,” Biddle said after a moment of thought. “I don’t like the lay of this country.” He flung an arm ahead, indicating the winding trail through the rocky landscape strewn with bluffs and ridges, boulders and a few stunted junipers and a profusion of sagebrush.

“They’ll draw us in, Captain—and jump when they figure the place is right.”

“Unless we make ’em jump first,” Seamus said, a small grin beginning to carve his face.

Biddle regarded him sternly. “What’s on your mind, civilian?”

“Me and Fitzgerald—best riders you’ve got, Captain. What say the sergeant and this civilian ride ahead to flush out what’s up there?”

Biddle looked at Fitzgerald, asking with his eyes. The sergeant nodded. Then smiled.

“Sounds like something I can do. With your permission, Captain.”

Once more Biddle regarded the torn, horrid country that lay just ahead as they approached the foot of Sand Butte. He sighed. “All right. But don’t take any chances.”

Fitzgerald chuckled. “Me, Captain? Not with this rummy to cover my backside I won’t! C’mon, Irishman.”

As they moved out, Seamus pulled free the mule-ear on the army holster and dragged out the .44 caliber pistol. He stuffed the long barrel beneath the belt he had tightened around his thick, blanket mackinaw. As they eased toward the foot of the butte, there were places where the horsemen had to ride single file through the boulders. They kept their eyes moving above them, on either side, expecting at any moment to see figures blot out some of the sky, firing down upon them.

Instead, as they rode free of a tangle of boulders, the two horsemen caught sight of the same two Modocs seen minutes before, but now hurrying away to the north around the base of the bluff, riding bareback on ponies.

“Wasn’t no war-party, Sergeant.”

“Just what I was thinking,” Fitzgerald answered. “But what would two of them be doing out here alone—”

Seamus tapped the sergeant’s arm. “There.”

“I’ll be go to hell right here, Irishman,” he exclaimed, pushing his slouch hat back on his head, then turning in the saddle, looking downtrail.

“We’ve hit the jackpot. Let’s go back and tell the captain he’s captured some Modoc ponies.”

“We don’t have to, Donegan.” He pointed behind them.

“Biddle got a little curious, eh, Sergeant?”

“His ass gets itchy if he don’t know what’s going on up ahead.”

They waited for the captain and his troopers to come up, then showed off the thirty-five ponies grazing on dry, brittle grasses in a long, narrow meadow totally hidden from the Ticknor Road.

“If we hadn’t come this far up the butte chasing those two herders, we’d never found those ponies,” Donegan commented.

Biddle smiled, which was signal to many of the young, green troopers to shout their approval. “Good work, boys. I suppose it is about time we took something from the Modocs. Lord knows we’ve too damned little to be proud of in this campaign.”

“Just take each day as it comes, Captain. You’ll keep your hair that way,” Seamus replied. “Might even win a scrap or two with these ruddy Modocs too.”