Chapter 29

April 26, 1873

After Winema had done all she could to give sutler Patrick McManus the willies, Ian O’Roarke strolled over to the bluff and found himself a spot in the grass near the signal tower.

Through that morning the soldiers atop the tower reported that they had the Thomas patrol in sight for the first three miles or so after the troops entered the heart of the Lava Beds. But the Warm Springs scouts who had marched out of their camp at the Stronghold that morning were still holding back and had not joined up with the soldiers by eleven o’clock.

That’s when the patrol disappeared behind a high ledge better than halfway to Big Sand Butte.

Despite the confidence of Lieutenant John Adams’s signal crew, Ian sensed the first flutters of fear trouble his belly.

“Thomas got sixty goddamned men, Mr. O’Roarke,” one of the signalmen said. “And with another platoon of those scouts going to join up with ’em—the Modocs would be crazy to try anything.”

“That’s right,” joined in another soldier. “There ain’t but forty warriors left to that bastard Jack now. We can lick ’em, they choose to come out and fight.”

“If they’ll fight,” echoed the first soldier.

“Squash ’em like bugs in those rocks!”

It was shortly after noon when Ian sensed real hunger rumbling in his belly. He rose, dusting off his canvas britches as Lieutenant Adams hollered down to the pickets at the foot of the signal tower.

“Tell the colonel I’m observing some activity from the bluff, private. Receiving a signal from them … wait.”

Ian waited too, his hands gripping one of the tower support poles, knuckles gone white.

“We—have—found—the—Indians … They—are—behind—the—bluff.” Adams tore the field glasses from his eyes. “Take that message to Colonel Gillem.”

In a matter of minutes Gillem came trotting up with his staff, still buttoning his tunic.

“Is Thomas in danger?”

Adams looked down at the colonel, shaking his head. “Not from what I can see, sir. I’ve heard some distant firing—but it looks like they’re hammering the Modocs pretty hard. From the looks of it, they’ve got the Injuns running, and hard—even driving ’em this way. About fifteen of our own behind them, and heading north through a narrow gap in the rock, coming this way quick as well.”

This report would prove the beginning of another very dark day for the frontier army.

“Very well, Lieutenant,” Gillem replied with a sigh that showed his irritation at being disturbed. “Send a messenger to let me know how things develop.”

Nearly two hours of uncertainty passed. The hunger in Ian’s belly grew every bit as much as the not knowing.

“Someone’s coming in!” shouted a signalman atop the tower.

Many of the soldiers and a group of civilians hurried to the edge of the bluff to watch the first of the survivors reach Gillem’s camp. They had covered more than four miles across formidable country in something less than an hour. These first were escorted into camp to find Dr. Cabaniss.

More showed up, straggling in alone or in pairs, exhausted but all telling the same story of terror.

When all these stragglers could tell was that Thomas had been in a fight with the Modocs and that they had been cut off from the captain, Gillem decided the enlisted men were simply overcome with shock and incapacitated with fear.

“Thomas outnumbers them, pure and simple,” Gillem announced, replying to calls to send out a relief party. “I’m not alarmed in the least.”

Nearly a half hour later a bugler stumbled into camp, telling for the first time a hair-raising story that was believed. In running from the scene of the attack, the soldier had dashed right into the arms of McKay’s Tenino scouts. They had heard the firing and were finally hurrying to the scene when they were pinned down by the twenty-some men of Wright’s company who had escaped the massacre and were fleeing pell-mell from the scene.

On their way those soldiers bumped into McKay’s scouts—and in their terrified state, any dark face appeared to be an enemy. The soldiers fired on the Warm Springs Indians, cutting the scouts off and preventing them from marching to rescue the troops still pinned down at Black Ledge.

McKay had ordered the bugler to blow every call he knew. The half-breed declared that if the soldiers back in Gillem’s camp didn’t respond to the frantic call of the bugle, perhaps the Modocs killing the soldiers at Black Ledge would become fearful, believing that soldiers were on the way to rescue the encircled patrol.

More than an hour after his own capture by the Teninos, the bugler watched McKay’s men bring in a captured artillery sergeant. The half-breed asked the two soldiers to go to their frightened comrades and tell them to stop firing so his Teninos could go on to help those who were still up near the Big Sand Butte.

But when the sergeant and bugler got clear of the Indian scouts, the pair doubled back and around, heading directly for Gillem’s camp in great haste.

Only then did Gillem wake up and realize Thomas was in serious trouble.

Ordering Major Green to take all available men with him, Green found sixty-five soldiers ready to move out immediately. At the same time, Lieutenant Adams signaled the news to Major Mason’s camp near the Stronghold. Mason dispatched Captain James Jackson along with lieutenants Kyle and Miller to lead a detachment of cavalrymen to the scene.

As Green was marching his troops out of Gillem’s camp, O’Roarke watched assistant surgeon McElderry present himself to the colonel and volunteer to go along with the major.

“There’s no need of that, Doctor,” Gillem replied. “Mason will be sending out one of his three physicians with his rescue party.”

After an hour and a half of rapid march to the south, Captain Jackson joined up with Major Green’s men. A few minutes later McKay hailed the column and brought his scouts in.

The half-breed told the soldier leaders that his Teninos had gone on in to the battlesite and found only a handful of wounded men left alive. While they were certain they had not found all those who might have survived the attack, the scouts gave water and wrapped some wounds before they turned back toward Gillem’s camp.

The rest were dead.

It was only then, as darkness was beginning to swallow the land and McKay told them of the few wounded they had found, that the soldiers realized there was not a surgeon among them. After conferring, Jackson and Green agreed that the peril faced by any survivors far outweighed any difficulty in negotiating the difficult terrain in the dark. They chose to plunge ahead through the Lava Beds, heading for the faraway Big Sand Butte slowly as it slowly disappeared in the deepening twilight.

For more than three hours they fought their way through the unforgiving landforms until it became clear they might be in danger of injuring their own men as darkness seeped down upon the jagged countryside.

“We’re lost—there’s nothing else to do until morning.” Lieutenant Kyle moved among the men to explain as they were ordered to find themselves a patch of ground and pile up rocks around them in the event the Modocs returned to fight.

“We going on in the morning?” asked a soldier near Ian.

“As soon as it’s light enough for us to pass over this godforsaken ground,” Kyle replied before disappearing into the dark, only the whisper of his voice to tell a man where the lieutenant was going.

The moon hung just past mid-sky when a commotion was caused by the arrival of five soldiers—survivors of the Thomas-Wright patrol. Three were injured, limping, groaning, hauled along by the other two soldiers who had escaped with them after darkness eased their fears of being discovered by wandering Modocs.

While the three wounded troopers were sent on to Gillem’s camp with a pair of McKay’s scouts to guide them, Green asked the other two survivors if they could lead his men to the scene of the battle.

After more than an hour of wandering over the broken country, searching for some clue as to where they were or how they could reach the Thomas command, the two young soldiers admitted they too were hopelessly lost in the dark. Even though they had drawn close to the butte that loomed like a dark monolith nearby, Green decided his men had had enough of the dangerous gamble. Again the order was passed to settle in and fortify for the shank of the night.

Far behind them, to the north, the men watched the glow of a huge bonfire built at the edge of the bluff near Gillem’s camp. It made a cold, lonely light against the far sky.

“They’ll keep that lit all night—to shine as a beacon to any survivors still wandering out there in the Lava Beds,” said a soldier quietly as he settled down near O’Roarke.

Ian dragged a hand beneath his nose, hoping it was only the cold that made it and his eyes run here in the darkness. “I pray there’s survivors left to see that light, son.”

*   *   *

From where he lay, Seamus Donegan could not see that beacon when he came to sometime after sundown.

The depression cradled him down in its rocky bosom. As he slowly moved his eyes, he could make out the blacker outline of the rocky ledges high above him against the night sky. There were only stars out in the sky, but he was sure the moon must be up by now, as dark as the canopy was overhead. Hidden, perhaps, behind that tall butte to the east of him.

He called out once, quietly. No one answered. Then he tried to move, his right arm gone to sleep and aching. The pain was so intense he swallowed air then suddenly puked on the ground beside him. Seamus gasped as the waves of nausea subsided and blessed sleep overtook him again.

The thin rind of a linen moon hung against the starry sky when next he opened his eyes. That taste in his mouth was something awful, reminding him of younger days when he would pass out drunk after puking up a bellyful of good whiskey.

But that was before he had learned how to drink and hold it down like a man.

A lot of good that done you, Seamus, he growled at himself.

Gritting his teeth as pain swamped over him, Donegan dragged the sticky arm up and across his belly, which relieved some of the agony in the shattered shoulder. He wondered if gangrene would set in soon.

They should have been here by now.

Perhaps he would lose the arm. And that made him cry more than the fear of dying here alone.

Snorting back the tears of loneliness, Seamus decided to call out quietly again, still fearful the Modocs may have left some guards behind to watch over the white men.

He whispered, and listened to some rocks tumble nearby, sure that a Modoc was creeping, crawling, skulking in on him out of the darkness. His finger was stuck to the trigger of his pistol—dried in blood. With his left hand he found the hammer still cocked, and prepared to sell his life when a weak voice answered his.

“That you, Irishman?”

“Doc?”

“It’s me, lad.”

“You hit bad, Doc?”

“No,” and Semig coughed up some phlegm. “Just the leg. Lost a lotta blood and both bones broke clean through.”

“Anyone else around you alive?”

There was a long silence that made Seamus grow fearful Semig had passed out again. It made him feel even more alone than before.

“Doc? You hear me, Doc?”

“No—no one else around me appears alive, Irishman. How—How about you. Can you crawl over here in the dark to help me?”

“I ain’t moving good at all, Doc,” he tried to explain, feeling guilty that he should try. “My shoulder—whole front of me covered in blood—can’t feel my arm no more.”

He listened to some far-off sound of some rocks clattering. There were more and more over the next few moments. Then Semig whispered harshly.

“You got a weapon, Irishman?”

“Yeah—my revolver. You?”

“Can’t find it—not now anyway. But just listen. Those rocks…”

“I heard ’em.”

“If that’s the red devils coming back to take us alive—you take that pistol of yours and shoot in the direction of my voice.”

Seamus realized he too did not want to be fodder for the Modocs. “Don’t worry, Doc. I’ll take you with me. We won’t let the bastirds get us alive.”

“Bless you, Irishman. I don’t know if I’ll come out of this alive—so I’ll pray now for a while that the Lord our God will bless you for your kindness to a dying man.”

“You’re not dying, Doc. Not—Not just yet.”

“But I’m very, very tired. I think I want to sleep now.”

“You get that leg of yours bandaged up yet?” Seamus asked, of a sudden frantic that the physician had not ministered to himself since the battle.

He finally answered after several minutes. “No. But I’m a doctor. I should know if I’m going to be all right. I’m just … tired now.”

“Doc?” A few seconds later as more of the distant rattle of rocks floated to his ears again, he called out once more, “Doc?”

And for the first time that night the chill breeze that brushed over his shirt drenched in blood made Seamus Donegan feel cold inside.

And more alone than he had been since coming to Amerikay.

*   *   *

They sounded far off at first, those falling rocks. Tumbling from the high places in his mind. Clattering, skittering as they fell.

Then he realized it was not a dream but part of his very real ordeal as he blinked his eyes open to find the sky going gray along the east behind the tall butte above him. The sun would be coming up soon enough.

It only made him thirst all the more for something to drink.

The blood on his shirt had grown stiff and cold. He shuddered, his lips quivering with the chill made more painful with each new gust of breeze that swept down into the depression.

He stiffened instinctually with the new rattle of rocks falling. Closer and closer still. Much nearer than they had been last night. Coming out of the northeast—where the Modocs had come yesterday at noon.

Yesterday seemed so long ago. The right arm tingled with cold. As painful as it was, that tingle brought him hope that he would not lose it. He could hold out until they came today. Surely someone had heard the shooting yesterday. Surely Gillem would send out a rescue party today at dawn.

It was dawn now. He had only to wait until about noon.

The rocks rattled again, a stone’s throw away now. Closer still.

He brought up his weary left arm, unsure of his aim, and saw the hammer was cocked back. Drawing up his left leg, he balanced the barrel on his knee and prepared to take the head off the first Modoc who poked his head over the lip of the ledge. Four.

Maybe he could take four of them with him before he shot the doctor, then himself.

“Glory!” came a voice to his far right.

Seamus jerked, frightened.

There were dusty kepis and dirty faces popping up all around him now, looking down into the shallow depression where Thomas’s men had waged their last fight.

He started to cry when he recognized his uncle’s drawn and haggard face, the tracks of Ian’s first tears starting to smear the black dust on his cheeks.

For the longest time Ian sat hunched over him, letting his tears drop one by one on Seamus’s devastated shirt, mixing with the dried, browned blood—not knowing whether to pick his nephew up and cradle him in his arms or not.

“Hold me, Ian. Just hold me and tell me it’s really you.”

Seamus swallowed the pain come of that rough embrace, listening as the soldiers continued to call out to one another as they found Semig alive. Then another. And another. And finally another who had somehow lasted the attack and the mutilation suffered by those back along the ledge.

And beyond that they had lasted the long, black night of fear and despair, and aloneness.

As much as it hurt to cling here to his uncle, Seamus did not want to let go.

But a soldier came to help O’Roarke, and together they bound up the right arm, lashing it against Donegan’s body, and then gave him another drink from a warm canteen. Water had never tasted that good on his tongue.

“It’s almost enough to make a man swear off whiskey, that water is,” Seamus whispered to Ian as they watched the soldiers doing what they could for the rest of the wounded, those few survivors of the Black Ledge Massacre.

“Whiskey? You’re a damned Irishman, Seamus Donegan,” Ian said, his eyes going moist “Your blood’s half whiskey as it is!”

“I was scared last night, Ian,” he said later when he came to again as the sun climbed high in the sky and Green’s men had fanned out, bringing in the bodies of the dead they had found scattered over a wide area.

O’Roarke nodded. “I was fearful too, Seamus. I’d lost my own brother by something foolish. I did not want to lose you too.”

“All night I heard the rocks clattering.”

Ian smiled. “Weren’t no Modocs, son. Us: Green’s outfit—where we spent the night, piling up rocks to protect ourselves from the wind and Injuns.”

“The wind made it so cold…”

“I know, Seamus. You hear it blowing softly at first. Then finally it seems like it’s blowing right through you, making the pure marrow of you cold with it.” He watched some soldiers tearing up sagebrush they threw on the fires to heat water to wash the wounds of the survivors. “To think you laid here all night—and we weren’t no more than a few hundred yards off from this ground while you lay here, alone.”

“Never want to be that cold, or alone again, Ian.”

“Perhaps you’ll think about staying on with me and Dimity now. Help me—help make this a place that belongs to you too. That’s all I ask of you, lad.”

He nearly choked on the thick ball of sentiment, his eyes welling. “I’ll think about it … this staying with you.”