Chapter 19

April 10–11, 1873

She did not know why she was going back to this den of death.

But here she was, inching her soldier horse back through the maze of slippery, black rock. Heading for Captain Jack’s Stronghold behind a stone-faced Hooker Jim.

This morning, less than two hours after Bogus Charley and the other two had learned that Winema Riddle knew of the plot to kill the peace commissioners, Hooker Jim had arrived in the soldier camp. Unannounced, and surprising everyone, he had poked his face next to Winema’s while she sat among the peace talkers and a handful of other white men.

“Jack wants to talk to you,” Hooker Jim declared in Modoc.

Beside her, Frank Riddle began to rise. She placed a hand on his thigh, urging him to sit.

“What…” she said, swallowing hard, “what does Jack want to talk to me about?”

Hooker Jim shook his head, showing his brown teeth through his strained smile. “He wants to see you at his cave.”

She glanced at her husband, now noticing the other white men studying her and Hooker Jim.

“Now—Winema.” The Modoc’s words were terse.

“What is this about?” Meacham asked, coming over quickly.

Hooker Jim straightened, his hands flexing. His eyes met Frank Riddle’s for a moment. “Tell the old man this has nothing to do with him.”

“It has everything to do with me,” Meacham stated. “Tell this one I can have him thrown in irons here and now for harassing this woman. I’ll have him held as my prisoner.”

Hooker Jim licked his lips, smiling, drawing his lips back over his teeth, which reminded Toby of the color of pinewood chips flying from the blade of the axe when she had helped Frank build their cabin years before.

Finally the Modoc sputtered his answer, somewhat cowed by the white men who had risen to impress the warrior.

“Jack wants to know why his niece tells lies about him.”

“How do I know you are not lying?” Meacham replied.

Hooker Jim pointed at the woman. “She tells lies! We do not plan to kill you!”

Toby wanted to cry, looking at the face of Meacham as he stood there. She could tell he did not believe a single one of Hooker Jim’s protests.

“If Captain Jack wants peace—if he truly wants us to believe you and he are not lying,” Meacham said, grabbing Hooker Jim’s sleeve for emphasis, “then you go now and tell Captain Jack to come here to talk.”

With a sneer, the Modoc yanked his arm from the white man’s grip. “Modoc won’t do what white man says no more. Modoc is not your dog. Woman lie about our chief. She come and face her people.”

“She ain’t going anywhere with you, Hooker,” Frank Riddle said quietly.

“Winema is Modoc. She does not belong to you white men. She Modoc.”

“She’s not going anywhere,” Riddle said in Modoc.

“I won’t leave without her,” the warrior hissed between his thin lips.

They stood glaring at one another, hands flexing, perhaps ready to pull a knife or pistol. She saw the same look darken Frank’s eyes as she read in Hooker Jim’s. At last Toby laid a hand against her husband’s arm.

“This is important, my husband. I will go—to help make peace between our peoples.” Toby spoke in English. She gripped his wrist tightly.

He gazed down at her. “They will kill you.”

She bit her lip. “Perhaps. But I took that chance when I rode in there alone yesterday.”

“That was different—they are angry with you now,” he pleaded. “They might even kill you for betraying their secret.”

She shook her head, sensing at last her own resolve beginning to glow like a valiant candle flame fighting a windswept gale. The look in Frank’s eyes made it hard to pull away.

Toby turned to Hooker Jim. “I go. Because I am Modoc, I am brave as any warrior. I go with you now.”

From time to time throughout the three-mile trip, Hooker Jim had glanced back at Winema and smiled that crooked, wicked smile of his between those two thin lips. And each time he gazed back at her, Toby vowed not to let him see her crying. She jut out her chin, blinked her eyes clear and held herself erect atop Frank’s saddle. She was Modoc.

Yet she had never felt so alone, so much a stranger, as she did when she reined up within the heart of the Stronghold itself.

They inched forward, like coiling snakes, each of those warriors. Behind them the women and old people. Their faces each bore the same unmasked hatred for what they saw as her betrayal of her people.

Reluctantly she slid from the saddle, refusing to release the rein, as if it were her last remaining link with her husband’s people, with their life together, her only link with life itself at this terrible moment—as first one, then a handful, and finally all of the Modocs closed in about her and began to fling their venomous words at her.

As suddenly as they had started to defile her, calling Winema the most vile of names, the Modoc men and women fell silent. Then slowly parted.

Before her stood her uncle by birth. Captain Jack. Chief Kientpoos of the renegade Modocs.

He strode up to her dramatically, then took his time circling her, appraising her up and down—as if stripping her of all self-respect here before her own people. Then he stopped and spoke.

“Why did you tell the peace talkers we are going to kill them?”

She started to choke, sensing the bile at her throat. “It—It is true, Kientpoos? You have murder even in your heart?”

“What right do you have to judge?” he shouted into her face. “You are no longer Modoc! You have a white heart. No Modoc blood flows in your veins!”

The words stung, but no more than the horror she felt as the crowd jostled and surged around her, yelling their profane oaths at her.

“I am Modoc,” she replied quietly, raising her head high. “I tell the peace talkers because I do not want to see the little ones, the old ones, the ones so ill they cannot fight—I do not want to see them killed when the soldiers charge in here. And they will come, Kientpoos.”

Jack was shaking, his hand trembling terribly with undisguised rage as he raised it to strike her. But as she stood there, not shrinking from the blow, not flinching in the slightest, he stayed his hand.

“Who told you we plan to kill them? Who!”

“I know it is true in my heart, Kientpoos. I have eyes—I can see when I come here that your heart has become bad toward the peace talkers. I have ears—I can hear for myself—”

“No!” shrieked Curly Headed Doctor. “Who told you? One of these warriors—who?”

Winema looked back and forth between the two men: Jack and the shaman. Here at last she was totally certain. The two of them allied in this terrible act. “My dream spirits tell me you kill them—”

Jack grabbed the front of her coat angrily, his other arm shoving the shaman back. “No dream spirits come to you—tell you of this! A man—one of these men here—tell you. Who!”

“I know in my heart—”

He yanked her about by her coat again. “You tell me, now, or these men kill you, Winema!”

She watched the rifle and pistol muzzles come up to stare at her with cold eyes. Then she swallowed, certain of her own death coming. And with one swipe of her forearm, bravely knocked Jack’s grip from her coat.

In a fury that she knew would be her dying moment, Winema flung the rein aside and hurled herself into the crowd, pushing the shocked men and women aside. She reached the low outcrop of black rock that overlooked the main gathering area of the Stronghold, where the war councils were held.

There on high she stood, turning herself toward them, tearing open her coat. “Here beats the heart of a Modoc. Brave and strong. If you must kill me—then do it now, you yellow-spined cowards!”

There was a loud rattling of hammers as guns were leveled and men jostled below her. Jack and the shaman surged through the crowd toward the outcropping.

“Shoot me—Kientpoos—you frightened dog! You are right. No dream spirits told me. Yes—one of your warriors told me of your treachery. He looks upon me with his eyes now.”

She watched the warriors glance at one another suspiciously.

“But I will not speak his name. I will never betray him—because my heart is Modoc.”

“You have a white squaw’s heart!” yelled the Doctor.

Winema wheeled on him. “I am brave enough to die here—now. You are so brave to kill an unarmed woman! Is your medicine so weak that you cannot face an armed warrior, shaman?”

“I curse you—”

“Kill a brave woman if you dare, cowards! But do not kill the four white men who come among you to make peace.”

One by one the muzzles of those pistols and rifles fell away. Hatred on those faces now replaced by something close to grudging admiration. She turned to her uncle.

“You, Kientpoos? Will you kill a brave woman?”

Finally he shook his head. “No—no man will kill you. Not today. Not any day. Your heart is as brave as any warrior’s.” He turned back to the crowd. “Help this woman who is possessed with a strong spirit down from the rock.”

A half-dozen warriors shoved forward as the crowd surged back, among them her informer. For an instant their eyes met in that noisy throng. Winema read gratitude written in his, there among the mist that moistened his admiration of her courage.

“Accompany this woman back to her husband in the white soldiers’ camp,” Jack ordered. “Let no one do her harm!”

“She told them of our plan!” shrieked the shaman.

Jack whirled, grabbing the front of the Doctor’s shirt in both hands, shaking the older man in rage. “Today this woman did a brave thing. With my own bare hands, I will kill the man who harms Winema. You and your kind are cowards. She is right, shaman. You have made me a coward with you. So understand my words I spit into your face now: like her, I too am not afraid to die. But I will take you with me, Doctor.”

Jack hurled the shaman back against some of his supporters. “If any of your men lay one hand on my niece—with my dying breath, I will rip your heart out.”

*   *   *

While Frank Riddle’s Modoc wife was gone to the Stronghold, Seamus Donegan watched with growing alarm as two warriors expertly played on Reverend Thomas’s most fervent hopes.

At the civilians’ evening fire the Irishman listened while the preacher swallowed the Modocs’ professions of a change of heart.

“We no longer have bad hearts for the white man,” Bogus Charley said, waiting while John Fairchild interpreted.

“We want to live as God’s children beside our friends—the white man,” added Boston Charley.

“My sons,” the reverend said, glowing in pride. He clamped hands on the warriors’ shoulders. “God has truly performed a miracle among the Modocs. I must tell General Canby and Mr. Meacham of this immediately. We cannot betray this work of the Lord by carrying weapons into that meeting.”

Seamus sloshed his coffee across the ground as he set his cup on a fallen log, heading to cut off the Methodist minister.

He put out a big hand and slowed Thomas to a crawl. “You surely aren’t buying all that cock and bull, are you, Reverend?”

Thomas stopped, his face twisting. “How dare you speak to me of the Lord’s business in that blasphemous tone, Irishman!”

Seamus felt the sting of the last word, spoken as if it were some profane oath of the devil himself. “They’re lying to you.”

“Unhand me, heathen.”

Donegan took his hand off the man. “I’m no h’athen. Me mither always taught me to respect men of God. But you’re something else, Thomas. You’re a ruddy fool.”

Thomas shoved an arm before him, pushing past Donegan. “Get thee behind me, Satan!”

He watched the minister go, and was standing there shaking his head when Fairchild came up on one side of him, Uncle Ian on the other.

“I always wonder why they called the Indians savages,” Fairchild said. “Seems some of them Modocs are a bunch smarter than a lot of us, don’t it?”

O’Roarke agreed. “He’s the sort of small-minded Christian makes me think of the Inquisition. That preacher’s got God and miracles on the brain—and nothing will keep him from convincing the others to go to their deaths … unarmed.”

“We can’t allow that,” Seamus vowed in a whisper. “If Thomas’s God wants him to go to that council with the Modocs unarmed—by the saints, my God has bound me to see the others are not so foolish.”

*   *   *

Canby remained unswayed, believing with the fervent Thomas that the Modocs had undergone a change of heart.

“Despite what Toby has told you?” Meacham demanded of the soldier.

“Yes—she is Modoc. But perhaps she misunderstood something. My own instincts tell me to trust these Modocs. After all, Mr. Meacham—I’ve been dealing with Indians for over thirty years.”

“You’re going ahead with this meeting you’ve scheduled for tomorrow at noon?”

Canby nodded. “Yes. Good Friday, Mr. Meacham. Don’t you agree it will be an auspicious day upon which to make peace with Captain Jack’s people?”

Meacham wagged his head. “No peace meeting, General.”

“But I quite agree with Reverend Thomas that God has wrought a miracle in that Stronghold. While I have slowly pressed in my army making for an ever-tightening noose about them, their own hunger and desperation has brought about their change of heart. God is to be praised—”

“Dammit!” Meacham cursed, flinging down his tin plate and standing. “God had nothing do with this—can’t you see? God has been nowhere near the Lava Beds … and God most certainly will not be with us at that meeting tomorrow!”

That night, Bogus Charley slept in army blankets with the reverend’s blessing, just outside Thomas’s tent at the center of the soldier camp.

Not long after sunrise that Good Friday morning, 11 April, Boston Charley showed up as well, again professing that the Modocs were to surrender if a favorable home could be found for Jack’s band of holdouts.

“That runt of a pie-faced one stayed with Thomas all night,” Donegan whispered to his uncle as he soaked hardtack in his bitter coffee that clear morning. Out of the clear blue of a cloudless sky, a chill breeze rattled the restless canvas of nearby tents.

Ian nodded. “Aye. Bogus Charley doesn’t want to see anything happen to their murderous scheme now.”

“And the other one showed up to press the case,” Seamus replied. “Look how he plays the part of the dutiful lap dog to the preacher.”

Ian set his plate aside. “I’ve lost my appetite, nephew. Just look at that—Boston Charley: eating his breakfast off the preacher’s plate now, drinking his morning coffee from the preacher’s cup.”

“Thomas really believes he has wrought his miracle with those two cutthroats—believing peace will be made on this holy day.”

“Good Friday—the day long ago when Christ was crucified for our sins,” Ian muttered, staring down into his coffee cup. “A day when Thomas will see the others butchered for his sin of pride.”

Seamus drew the chill air of a spring morning deeply into his lungs. “Odd, isn’t it, Ian—for it’s the sort of morning a man offers his thanksgiving for being alive.” He turned at the bustle of talk across the fire.

From bundles of brown waxed paper tied with manila twine, Thomas pulled new clothes he had purchased from the camp sutler, McManus, for his Modoc wards. Colorful cotton hickory shirts and woolen button-fly britches were given both Bogus Charley and Boston Charley.

“He makes gifts to those bastards,” Ian muttered as he rose from his seat. “I can’t take any more—watching this … hearing those two butchers telling Thomas that the fighting is over and that peace will be made with the white man today.”

“You’re leaving, Mr. O’Roarke?” asked Canby as he strode up with his orderly Scott.

“You have business with me, General?”

“Why, no. I’m here to dispatch these two Modocs to their Stronghold with word to their chief.”

Canby stepped away, around the fire, as O’Roarke glanced at Donegan, deciding to stay.

“Mr. Fairchild—tell these two men to carry my message to Captain Jack,” Canby began, accepting a cup of coffee from Commissioner Dyar. “I will meet with his men at the council tent—and no farther. At noon, as agreed.”

Fairchild translated as the two Modocs finished donning their new clothing, proudly smoothing it with their palms. They nodded without reply and loped on foot from the camp, headed east to the Lava Beds.

Seamus looked into the blue of that clear sky overhead, finding the sun bright, warming the chill from the air.

“Noon,” was all he said as he went back to soaking his hard cracker in the bitter coffee gone cold in his cup.