Chapter 28

April 26, 1873

The last two miles reaching the Black Ledge had proved a hard march for the soldiers. New topsoil lay atop the older lava flow broken down by millions of years of weathering. In that soil among the sharp-edged stones the size of a man’s fist emerged the new green bunch-grass, scrub oak and sage. As they climbed, the soldiers entered a land of stunted mahogany trees that would at least provide some shade for the coming noon hour.

For the past two hours the soldiers had been observed by Captain Jack, who had brought along twenty-two warriors.

At first Scar-Faced Charley and his men had been worried the approaching white men intended on attacking their camp of women and children. But when the soldiers kept on moving directly south instead of angling east into the rougher lava-flow country where Jack’s band had their camp, the Modocs began to skulk along the soldiers’ path to the Big Sand Butte. At times the warriors were no farther than a half-mile from the white men, remaining hidden behind the higher ridges bordering the valley. And as the soldiers bunched tighter and tighter together, it became easier and easier to watch them. Especially when the soldiers marched slower and slower.

Even though Captain Jack’s warriors had to cross much more difficult terrain, they were able to keep up with the soldiers’ plodding progress.

As the sun climbed to mid-sky, Jack and Charley conferred, figuring the objective of the white men was the tall singular butte near at hand. Jack ordered his warriors to hurry on ahead to set up an ambush in a good place on the far side of the Black Ledge where the soldiers would pass.

As ordered, the warriors climbed the eastern slopes of the butte and concealed themselves behind outcroppings of black rock and settled in to wait for the soldiers who would soon be marching beneath them to their deaths. There was plenty of cover to hide them, what with the grass and sage and stunted mahogany trees.

The soldiers came on, marching tightly together at their plodding pace, even the few skirmishers in the vanguard slowing now as they climbed the gradual slope up Black Ledge.

“Once they are over the top, and past that large depression,” Charley explained to Jack, “we can fire on them at once and kill them all.”

Jack nodded, approving the plan, just as one of the soldiers leading the group two hundred feet below them held up his arm and shouted to the rest.

“They’ve seen us?” asked the chief anxiously.

Charley’s eyes grew big with fear that they had been discovered. But below them the soldiers did a very strange thing.

They stopped their march far short of the planned ambush site—then milled about a moment while they stacked their rifles. This done, they gathered in knots to plop in the shade of the mahogany trees.

*   *   *

Seamus joined the rest as the soldiers broke ranks and settled on the sparse, new grasses in the patches of welcome shade, while guide Ticknor assured Captain Thomas.

“Ain’t a Modoc in fifteen miles, Captain. I know this country—and those damned Modocs too.”

They pulled their haversacks from their arms and drank greedily at the canteens before digging out their lunch. Some men yanked off their dusty broughams, rubbing their sweaty, aching feet with a primitive, carnal pleasure as they joked and jabbered like a bunch of boys playing hooky, slipping away from school to cavort at the local swimming hole.

“Say, Malachi,” hollered a soldier. “Sing us that song you was trying to teach us last night.”

Sergeant Clinton beamed. “You mean the one Perry’s cavalry boys taught me about Cap’n Jack?”

“Yeah,” answered another soldier. “The one about Cap’n Jack!”

Clinton swiped crumbs of hardtack from his bushy mustache and downed a swallow of lukewarm water from his canteen before he attempted his off-key rendition of the current popular song.

“I’m Captain Jack of the Lava Beds,

I’m cock o’ the walk and chief of the reds.

I can lift the hair and scalp the heads

Of the whole United States Army!”

Most of the men, officers included, roared with glee at that first verse and begged Clinton to sing more.

“Let me have my lunch, boys—then I’ll teach all the words to you.”

Seamus nudged Romer and asked quietly, “Where are those Warm Springs scouts supposed to meet up with us all morning?”

“That’s a good question,” replied Captain Thomas, overhearing the civilian. He stood, dusting off his blue britches, ramming the cork back in the neck of his canteen. “They damned well should have joined up by now.”

“We’ve seen ’em from time to time all morning, sir,” Lieutenant Harris said as he too stood. “It’s almost like they didn’t want to march with us, sir.”

“C’mon, Mr. Harris,” Thomas replied. “Bring a couple signalmen and their heliograph with you.” He pointed up the slope of the tall butte. “We’ll go up there, give the country a look for McKay’s scouts—then signal back to camp that we’ve seen nothing and will be turning back soon.”

Minutes later Lieutenant Wright approached a pair of soldiers finishing their meal and pulling on their boots. “You men—go up that little ridge to the east there. Keep an eye out for us. I don’t want any of Captain Jack’s butchers sneaking up on us from the place yonder where we spotted that smoke yesterday.”

As an afterthought, the two infantrymen picked up their rifles and plodded toward the slope. They were halfway up when the first bullets from long range cut the air around them. Diving and dodging, the pair scurried downhill.

Up the slope, Captain Thomas turned at the first shot, his face gone chalky. Grabbing the shoulder of the signalman kneeling over his heliographic equipment on the slope, the captain demanded, “Are you set up to send to camp?”

“I—I am, sir!”

“Then by damn tell them we’ve found the Indians—behind the bluff!”

It was the only message received by Lieutenant John Quincy Adams in the signal tower at Gillem’s camp.

Almost immediately firing broke out above the soldiers on a wide front. In panic some of the men dove alone or in pairs for cover among the fissures in the black rocks, without weapons or their shoes. Others jostled and fought among themselves for their clothing and weapons, knocking over the stacks of rifles.

It was precious minutes before any fire was returned at the Modocs. But in that time Jack’s warriors moved one by one down the butte until they ringed that wide depression where the soldiers huddled. For the most part the warriors were behind the rocky ridges bordering that hollow the white men had chosen for the noon stop.

Seamus slid up beside Sergeant Romer. “We’re trapped.”

“Like fish in a barrel here, mister. Only way out is to make a dash through their flanking fire—or charge face-on up that slope into the jaws of it.”

“This bunch listen to you?” Donegan asked.

“Look at ’em,” Romer growled, indicating some who were breaking and running. “They’re peeing their pants right now. This bunch won’t make a charge like that!”

“Mr. Wright!” barked Thomas as he made it back to the depression, bullets spouting earth around his heels.

“Sir?”

“Rally some of these men and take that ledge.”

Wright swallowed hard. “That’s more than five hundred yards of open ground, Captain.”

Thomas’s eyes implored him. “We’re taking the hardest fire from that quarter, Lieutenant. And this patrol’s done for if something isn’t done about that bunch of snipers.”

“We’ll open up a path, sir,” Wright replied with a swallow, turning to call upon his company to follow him in the assault.

“Pray these boys can make it through what you open up, Lieutenant,” Thomas whispered as he turned to dash off to the southwest.

In a matter of seconds after Wright disappeared from the depression with his men, Seamus heard a volley of shots, then the rattle of withering gunshots. A handful of Wright’s soldiers came scurrying back in the face of devastating fire. The rest were scattering off Black Ledge, running north for their lives.

Up top of the rocky ledges, Donegan watched one of the older Modocs pointing with his rifle, sending some of his warriors to follow the fleeing soldiers.

They’ll follow those sojurs down like dogs—picking them off one by one, Seamus thought as he brought the Henry to his shoulder again and squeezed off a shot at the warrior directing the attack. The bullet smashed against the top of the ledge, splattering and kicking up a spray of black dust.

“Wright needs help,” Thomas was thinking out loud as he listened, watched, and grew more despondent.

“I’ll go, sir,” the young lieutenant volunteered.

Thomas turned to Arthur Cranston. “See if you can drive them back and give Wright a chance to break out.”

Cranston could find only five soldiers who would accompany him into the open. Three were from Artillery Battery A, the other two from Wright’s own infantry outfit. Seamus watched the lieutenant go, then decided to join the six. He reached the edge of the depression in time to watch Cranston turn his men to the west—right into the face of some Modoc flanking fire.

The six troopers lasted as many seconds, driven back and shot down to the man, their bodies shattered on the black rocks.

His heart in his throat, Seamus dropped to his belly behind some gray sage. You’ve not been in it like this for a long time, Seamus. Hopeless, it is. Perhaps this is it—one by one … by one—

“Mister!”

He turned to find Ticknor hollering at him, waving at him. Behind the guide, Thomas was leading what he had left of men. Something over thirty.

Donegan’s mind burned, realizing in the space of a handful of minutes half of the captain’s command had been slaughtered.

Slowing behind Ticknor, surgeon Semig waved the Irishman on as he passed.

“We’re busting through! Going north!” Ticknor yelled, pointing, then hurrying to join Thomas’s soldiers.

Thomas stopped, stood a moment, hollering. “Wright! Where the devil are you, Lieutenant? Wright!”

Semig halted suddenly as Donegan crabbed up through the mahogany trees and grass, bullets spewing dirt clods around him.

“There’s two here still alive,” Semig muttered in a low voice, as if he were talking only to himself.

Seamus turned, watching a half-dozen, then more of the Modocs, leap off the ledges, working their way down into the depression to follow the retreating soldiers, shrieking their horrific war-cries. Some of them stopped momentarily, pointed their rifles at the ground and with a victorious screech fired their weapons.

“They’re killing the wounded Thomas left behind!” Seamus started to rise, his instinct to defend those who had taken shelter in the confining fissures of rock, only to find that there was no escape once the Modocs came down from the ledge.

Semig yanked him back down. “I need you here, dammit! Help me stop this bleeding. Look at this,” he implored, showing the Irishman his two hands glistening with crimson beneath the noonday sun.

“That’s Wright,” Seamus said, finally realizing.

“Four bullets—abdomen, thorax and head. Lord, how the man holds on—”

Donegan jerked Semig around. “Look around you. The Injins flanked us now.”

Semig gazed up for a moment, seeing that the warriors were hotly pursuing the soldiers, mixing in among the fleeing troopers now, picking them off one by one in their wild flight. The Modocs were letting Ticknor escape.

Looming out of the shadow of the ledge, Thomas reappeared, waving his pistol, his other arm hanging limp and useless, blood dripping from it in huge glops to the sandy, rocky soil beneath him.

Semig looked up. “I found Wright for you, Captain.”

Thomas did not glance down. “Good, Surgeon. Perhaps together we’ll get out of here.”

“Wright’s not traveling anywhere, Cap’n,” Donegan snapped. “He’s too far gone.”

Thomas fired his pistol up at the ledge above them, then wagged his head dolefully. Only then did he stare down at his lieutenant. At last his eyes turned to the Irishman, glazed.

“Then, I’ll not retreat a step farther. This is as good a place as any to die.”

“There’s no retreat for any of us now,” Donegan said as he watched the troopers hurrying away to the north, followed by a few Modocs who continued to cut the soldiers down one at a time and fall on them with glee.

“The rest of you!” Thomas shouted at what he had left of his command. “Gather in here with us—now! We’ll make a stand right here.”

A few, then a dozen, and finally sixteen, crawled, crabbed and slid into the depression to join Thomas, Semig and the tall, gray-eyed civilian with the Henry at work and the big, brass .44 caliber shells dangling between the fingers of both hands like glossy sausages.

There was nowhere to go now. The Modocs were up on the high ledges two hundred feet above them. And many were circling on the slopes, dropping into the depression where the last survivors had gathered around the captain.

“Pile up what rocks you can around you, men. We can hold—”

Thomas spun around, the side of his face gone in a red explosion. He sprawled atop a soldier who shrieked in terror as the captain trembled. Then lay still. Seamus pulled Thomas off the frightened youngster.

“Turn around, you bloody idiot—and shoot that gun of yours!”

Semig cried out in pain and anger.

He was clutching his lower calf when Donegan slid down beside him. Blood oozed between the surgeon’s fingers.

“At least they didn’t kill me,” he gritted his words out between his clenched teeth.

“Can you help yourself?” Seamus asked.

He nodded as the Irishman rolled away, plopping on his belly to fire the Henry. Up the slope he heard another unearthly scream that raised the hair on the back of his neck. He figured the Modocs had run across another wounded soldier and were making sport of their victim. He vowed they would not take him alive.

Seamus rolled on his side to pull free the pistol at his hip, not wanting to have it pinned under him when the final moments came.

That’s when the bullet burrowed through him.

Cracking the collarbone, splintering it into sharp shards of icy pain that drove on through the Irishman’s shoulder and upper arm.

Never since that day when the surgeons had poured fumaric acid into the wide saber slash along the great muscles of his back had he experienced such pain. So icy-hot and intense it took his breath away. He blinked with the creeping darkness threatening to swallow him, sure it was night and him staring into the black canopy overhead filled with a meteoric splendor.

Forcing his eyes open, he clambered for the pistol, hearing more and more of the shots whine and rattle into the depression Thomas had chosen for their last stand. A few men cried out. And he knew he could hear Semig muttering in pain. Others just breathing, raspy and fluid-filled with every terror-filled suck at life into their shattered lungs.

Somewhere close a man was cursing up a storm, his voice low and filled with rage. Cursing God and Jesus and the Virgin Mary and a litany of saints all in the same breath for his bad luck.

Then Seamus realized it was his voice—finding that he was doing the cursing. Consciously he bit down on his tongue until it hurt—but refused to cry out.

Instead he grabbed for the pistol, feeling how sticky it was in his hand. He could not see the hand for the shooting stars, but he knew where the hammer was beneath his thumb and pulled it back, listening to the cylinder roll amid the war-cries.

He hoped the chamber was loaded. A funny thing to pray for now. If not to shoot the first Modoc who he heard inching close, then to shoot himself—

“All you fellows that ain’t dead!” echoed a loud Indian voice from high on the ledge, speaking his best pidgin English, “you better go home now. We don’t wanna kill you all in one day!”

Laughter resounded off the black ledges above him, all around him, as more and more of the Modocs took up the wild cackle that first erupted from their war-leader.

Donegan listened carefully, blinking his eyes again and again to clear them. He couldn’t. One of the Modoc bullets had splattered against a nearby rock and blinded him. But the tears came for the pain. Tears come of the relief swelling in his breast now as he heard nearby footsteps moving off, slowly—no longer concerned with creeping in silence.

Now the many footsteps rattled rocks and rustled through the underbrush and grass along the slope of the depression.

Seamus brought the pistol up as his vision cleared for a moment in blinding sunlight. He looked down at his hand, within it the blood-covered revolver. The arm of his shirt and the entire front of his body covered with glistening crimson.

He felt faint again and fought the first eruption of his stomach with the fresh hardtack and warm water he had forced down for lunch minutes ago as the Modocs circled in for their attack.

Slowly, as his eyes cleared, Seamus rolled his head to see if anyone else was alive. The only one moving was Dr. Semig.

If you called his shallow breathing moving. Seamus watched the rise and fall of the surgeon’s chest until a blessed blackness dripped over him once more. Purging the pain from his soul.

This time Seamus did not fight its long-awaited relief.