Chapter 27

April 24–26, 1873

“They’ve got Canby’s replacement coming,” Seamus announced to A. B. Meacham.

Each day, the Irishman had made it a point to visit the peace commissioner in the hospital. For almost a week now there had been little going on in any other army camps.

But today word had it that Gillem was sending out his artillery officers on a reconnaissance south of the Stronghold into the Lava Beds, where all reports had the Modocs holed up. The officers could then tell the colonel what his chances were of driving the hostiles out of their position without investing the lives of more infantry over that rugged and unforgiving ground.

“I’ve heard as well,” Meacham replied. “A dyed-in-the-wool soldier, I’m told. Jefferson C. Davis: colonel of the Twenty-third Infantry up at Fort Townsend, Washington Territory.”

“Breveted a major general during the rebellion down south.”

Meacham coughed a bit of a chuckle, wincing with the pain of his head wounds. “How you put on, Irishman. Don’t you think I know that was more than a damned rebellion? For the likes of you it was nothing less than the pure hell of war, was it not?”

Donegan peered at the ground between his cracked boots and for a moment brooded of how he could talk the quartermaster out of a new pair. But like a troublesome prairie buffalo gnat, Meacham’s question still invaded his thoughts as much as he might try to evade the brutal memories.

“Davis ought to show up here any day now.” It had been ten days since the War Department appointed the hard-bitten colonel to fill Canby’s shoes.

Meacham lay back against the pillow made of a rolled army blanket. “This war’s hell by itself, Seamus. Can you believe those young soldiers cut off the head of an old man they killed in the Modocs’ Stronghold and presented it to Dr. Cabaniss?”

“What for?”

“I suppose for a souvenir—an oddity of sorts. Cabaniss says he will keep it preserved in a glass morning jar. Perhaps for display someday as the head of Schonchin John.”

“Was it his head?”

Meacham’s eyes told it with a glint of fire. “I ought to know, shouldn’t I? He was one who tried to kill me.” He sighed. “No. Whoever that poor old man was—it wasn’t Schonchin John, brother of the Yainax chief, Riddle agrees with me … but it’s no use telling any of these soldiers—even that butcher of a surgeon Cabaniss.”

“Now, the man’s good on bones and bleeding, Alfred.”

“Lot you know, Seamus. It’s not been your wounds he’s been jabbing with his probe three times daily. And a lot he lacks in civility as well—I’ve had to take another vow of temperance because of that man!”

“That whiskey was just what you needed right then.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, lad. I needed to get my hands on Schonchin John at that moment.”

Seamus wiped his palms across the tops of his thighs. It was warm in the tent today, the sun beating down on the canvas, making things much warmer in here than they were outside in the gentle spring breezes.

“I hear Gillem’s sent those Tenino Indians down to hold the Stronghold,” Meacham said.

He nodded. “They’ve got themselves a nice camp there now, so the Modocs can’t come running back in to reoccupy the area. But there’s not much going on over there except that Muybridge fella from San Francisco.”

“The photographer I’ve heard about?”

“Yes, that’s the one. Been taking stereoscopic views of the Stronghold caves and fortifications, officers and the Warm Springs scouts—even this camp.”

“Perhaps I should pretty myself up and let him take a photograph of me—warts, scars and all.”

Donegan smiled. “Don’t you joke now—Muybridge would jump at the chance to immortalize one of the survivors of the peace tent massacre.”

“Him and every other hack newsman west of the Missouri River.”

“They’ve been hounding you again.”

“Every day it seems someone new arrives here from Linkville or Yreka—representing one newspaper back east or the other. And all wanting my story of the murders. I bloody well keep those young guards at the tent flaps busy turning reporters away.”

“Don’t be so hard on them, Meacham. Their kind will bite at any little morsel any one of us feed them—blowing it up into a story of their heroic exploits for their readers back home.”

He sighed deeply. “I’m growing weary again, Irishman. I apologize.”

“No need. I’ll find me something else to do, and leave you sleep in peace. At least in here you don’t have to worry about looking yourself over at least once a day to check for wood ticks.” Seamus scratched at his collar absently. “Just came down to see you after Gillem sent his artillery officers off to study the terrain where he figures the Modocs are hiding. When they get back, the colonel will know better how to drive Captain Jack’s warriors out into the open—”

The not too distant crack of rifles interrupted Donegan and aroused the dozing Meacham.

“That sounded damned close, Irishman.”

“Too close,” Donegan replied, already on his feet and halfway to the tent flaps. “I’ll see what’s doing.”

Outside, the camp was a mass of confusion, soldiers going this way, teamsters in another, most dragging teams of horses or mules to the far side of the tent village. Seamus grabbed the arm of a young soldier as he was trotting by.

“What’s the commotion?”

“Modocs attacking the camp.” He pointed, pulled his arm free and trotted on toward the sound of the firing.

The first shot to actually reach camp whistled through the leafy branches of a tree overhead.

“Donegan!”

He was back in the tent before Meacham could holler out again.

“Are we in danger?”

He shrugged. “Can’t tell—but I wouldn’t put it past those red bastards to boldly stomp on in here to try to finish the job they started on you two weeks ago.”

Seamus watched Meacham shift uneasily on his bed, eyes squinted as he adjusted the bandages wrapped about his skull.

“I’ll stay with you, friend.” Donegan took a pistol from his belt and laid it on the side of the cot in easy reach of Meacham’s hand. Then took his revolver from its holster at his hip. Meacham laid his hand on the pistol and closed his eyes a minute.

“No man is ever going to try for my scalp again—I’ve sworn to that, Donegan.”

Seamus winked as a flurry of shots landed close by, snapping canvas and banging pots and pans in a nearby mess-kitchen.

“Why would anyone want your poor scalp? There’s too damned much fallow ground there between the fertile grasslands for one of Captain Jack’s boys to make much of a fuss over.”

Meacham reached up to rub a few fingers over the very top of his bald head not covered with bandages. “I suppose you’re right. But just the same—I’ll keep your pistol here till the ruckus is over. With that fine head of curly hair, you might need my help saving your scalp, Irishman.”

The sudden roar of one of the mountain howitzers shook the sides of the tent. A second cannon erupted. In the distance they could hear the impact of the shells. Ian O’Roarke poked his head through the flaps, then strode on in with a look of relief on his face.

“By glory—I feared I’d lost you to the Modocs, Seamus. Pardon me, Alfred.”

“Come in and pull your pistol free, Ian. We’re preparing for the bastirds to breech the walls.”

Ian dragged up an empty hardtack case and settled atop it. “Everytime the cannon fires, the Modocs scuttle for the rocks. After the shell explodes, they come prancing back out to show us their brown bottoms and call the soldiers by every name the miners in Yreka taught them!”

“A lively show of it, eh?” Meacham asked, stroking the blued metal on the pistol.

“They come out laughing at the soldiers, line up and point their rifles at an angle—just like Gillem’s mortars—then one of ’em gives the command to fire and the bullets rattle into camp.”

“You’re sure they’re not storming the camp?”

Ian shook his head. “Not a chance of it, my friend. Rest easy now until it’s over. Captain Biddle is mustering a force of infantry to go chase the warriors back to wherever they came from.”

“Hell, most likely,” Meacham muttered, his head sinking into the blanket pillow.

“Aye, hell is where they ought to return as well.”

*   *   *

Late the next afternoon, 25 April, word came from the signal station located high on the bluff that they had spotted a thin column of smoke rising some five or more miles south of the army’s camp, away in the heart of the Lava Beds. The tallest landmark in that inhospitable area was what the soldiers had come to nickname Sugar Loaf, called Big Sand Butte by the local settlers.

And to the west of that ugly, bald cinder cone was hell on earth—a place called Black Ledge.

Despite the austere conditions to be found in that country, John Fairchild along with other civilians advised Colonel Gillem that the Modocs could survive in there for some time.

“There’s enough water back in some of those lava caves cut through the Black Ledge,” Pressley Dorris explained.

“And enough seeps in the ledge that’s been catching water one rainy season after another,” added Ian O’Roarke. “Likely that smoke your men spotted was the Modocs burning their dead.”

The colonel looked up in amused wonder. “They cremate their dead?”

O’Roarke nodded. “No other reason I can think of for Indians on the run to be making such a big fire.”

Gillem drummed the fingers of one hand on the map he had spread beneath his elbows, his eyes focused on something more than the rugged terrain of the Black Ledge country.

“All right,” he sighed. “Thank you very much, fellas. Now I need you to excuse the rest of us so we can discuss our plans for a reconnaissance in force down to that Big Sand Butte.”

Seamus recalled how John Fairchild had stopped at the flaps of the colonel’s tent and turned to speak to Gillem.

“That purgatory of the devil is where you’ll find the Modocs—I’ll lay my ranch on it.”

Gillem grinned without humor. “We’ll see if there’s anything substantial about your hunch on the Black Ledge, Mr. Fairchild. Now, if you and the others would step aside and let the army do its job.”

By the time the stars came out that night, Seamus had talked his way into accompanying the patrol that would be leaving in the morning, as one of three civilian packers assigned to go along. Lieutenant Thomas F. Wright of the Twelfth Infantry readily agreed, but said he would have to clear it with his company commander for the reconnaissance, Captain Evan Thomas of the Fourth Artillery.

“Artillery?” Seamus asked.

“Gillem wants Thomas heading things up so he and his boys can determine if cannon can be used to blast the red devils out of the rocks once the Teninos find them for us.”

“We’re taking scouts?”

“They’re meeting us somewhere down the line,” Wright explained. His father, George Wright, had been a brigadier general of volunteers and had commanded the Military Division of the Pacific until he drowned at sea in 1865. Young Wright had attended West Point in the forties, then served with distinction during the Civil War. “Gillem’s going to send them heliograph orders come sunrise. McKay’s to take fourteen with him from their camp in the Stronghold and meet us near that Big Sand Butte and Black Ledge everyone’s talking about.”

With the gray of dawn creeping over the land, Seamus stood with the others that Saturday morning, 26 April, drinking steaming coffee and eating hardtack soaked in pork grease at the fires that drove a chill from the spring morning. Fifty-nine enlisted soldiers would be led by Captain Thomas and Lieutenant Wright, in addition to three more officers: Lt. Albion Howe, son of General A. P. Howe, and a Civil War veteran of Cold Harbor and Petersburg in his own right; along with lieutenants George M. Harris and Arthur Cranston.

In command of the mule-train was head packer Louis Webber, who welcomed the offer of help from Donegan and another assistant packer. Assistant Surgeon Dr. Bernard A. Semig was assigned to accompany the scouting detail to be guided by H. C. “Bill” Ticknor, a civilian familiar with the area and surveyor of the Ticknor Road south of the Lava Beds.

As the infantry and artillery troops lined up in double columns preparing to march out, many handed their comrades letters they had written to family back home. Those young men and those not so young were cheerful as they pulled out at sunrise, marching south into some of the most rugged country to be found in the Lava Beds. Guide Ticknor suggested they march down a wide depression that existed between two up-vaulted lava flows that had long ago heaped themselves ominously on either side of the eroded valley.

Not long after leaving Gillem’s camp, the land began to slowly rise toward the south. Thomas ordered twelve soldiers from Company E out as skirmishers to march in front of the column, as they were forced to slow their pace in making the climb, along with the difficulty encountered upon entering the rugged terrain characterized by the passing of the two great lava flows: rocks of all sizes, from knife-sharp pebbles to house-sized boulders; cinder cones left behind by ancient geologic activity; buttes composed of crumbling black pumice.

It was as if Seamus could almost smell the stench of the devil’s own sulfur and brimstone exuding all along their path through the wavelike layers of frozen lava.

For better than a mile they had marched without any flankers to cover the higher ground on either side of their column. Growing more anxious as they moved farther into the unknown, bleak and forbidding country, Seamus sensed the scar on his back burn like someone had poured coal-oil down his spine and set that strip of pain afire with a match.

On the outside of the columns, he edged up to Sergeant Robert Romer, attached to the Fourth Artillery. “Say, Sergeant. You remember those Modocs we saw far to the east when we marched out of camp this morning?”

Romer nodded, his eyes scanning the higher elevations on the right side of their march.

“I sure don’t feel good with Cap’n Thomas not putting out flankers.”

“We usually push cannon around, so you see why we’re not used to this marching like foot-sloggers,” Romer replied. “I’ll go talk with the captain myself.”

He strode up to Thomas with Donegan along.

“It’s a good idea, Romer,” responded the artillery captain. “Mr. Wright, let’s order out some flankers.”

A half-dozen men were ordered out on the right, another six for the left flank. Yet the farther Thomas’s men left Gillem’s camp behind, the more the flankers tended to ease back toward the column of twos.

Growing angrier by the mile, infantry sergeant Malachi Clinton sped up to growl at Lieutenant Wright.

“I don’t figure it’s any use forcing these fellas out any farther than they’re willing to go for now, Sergeant,” Wright said.

“The hell, you say?” Sergeant Romer growled, disgusted. “We need flankers out, Malachi. If those privates won’t do it—and the lieutenants won’t make ’em—then it’s up to the sergeants to do it.”

Romer strode off alone, walking the far right flank by himself, intently watching the countryside.

Seamus grew more and more anxious as with every yard the soldiers in the columns bunched closer and closer together, purposely slowing their march as they began the tedious climb to higher country.

“You going to cover the left flank?” Donegan asked Clinton.

The sergeant wagged his head. “No need, mister. We haven’t seen a sign of those Injuns since we pulled away from camp.”

Wright glanced at the Irishman, clearly disgusted with the performance of the soldiers so far on the patrol. “I haven’t been out here in the west all that long, but, Sergeant—I do know that when you don’t see Indians, that’s when you better be on the lookout for them.”

*   *   *

“Where the devil you going this morning, Patrick?” Ian O’Roarke asked of the civilian sutler who was whistling as he saddled his mule at the corral when the settler walked up with Frank and Winema Riddle. “Heading into Linkville for more supplies today?”

“No,” McManus answered. At the outbreak of war the government had awarded him the sutlering contract for the campaign. “Been thinking some about riding out to catch up with that bunch headed down to Big Sand Butte.”

“What the hell for?”

McManus smiled. “See for myself some of that country, since there’s soldiers enough going that way for Gillem.” From the corner of his eye he suddenly caught some movement off to his side. “Hey, what’d you do that for?”

He lunged for Winema as she slapped the rump of his mule, sending it galloping off through the tents into the soldier camp.

“Goddamn you!” he whirled, glaring at the woman, then Frank Riddle. “What’s got in your wife, Frank?” He ripped the bridle Winema had taken off the mule from her hand. “Gimme that—goddamn!”

McManus stood there frustrated, swearing, shaking a fist at the frightened woman as Frank pushed her behind him, pointing his own finger at the sutler.

“Stay back, McManus—Toby’s trying to tell you something.”

He stopped in his tracks. “What the hell’s she trying to say? That your squaw don’t like me?”

“I like you, McManus. You good white man,” Winema started to explain. “I like your wife.”

He shook with anger. “Then why go and run off my mule like that?”

“Don’t go with soldiers.”

Ian craned closer. “She … you mean you don’t want him to go with that bunch marched out this morning?”

Winema nodded.

“Why?”

“I have bad feeling.”

Ian rocked back on his heels, his eyes moving to Frank. “Same kind of bad feeling she had when Canby and the others went down to meet Jack in the meadow?”

Frank nodded.

But McManus still refused to believe. “Why there’s over sixty armed soldiers in that bunch—against only forty some Modocs—if there was to be a fight. And I can’t see it likely that—”

“I run mule off for the sake of your wife.” Winema came around Frank at last, her hands supplicating McManus. “Please,” she begged. “Please! Stay in camp—for sake of your wife.”