Chapter 32
May 10–18, 1873
The sun had not yet fully risen when Captain Hasbrouck dispatched a mounted messenger bearing a quickly written report of the Modoc attack on the patrol camp.
When Davis received word of the encounter, the colonel ordered another 170 men moved out as reinforcements, with his command to follow the Modocs into hell once and for all.
At the same time, Hasbrouck had McKay’s scouts follow the foot-trail of the fleeing warriors into the black labyrinth of the Lava Beds. The Teninos returned shortly after noon to report they had located the Modoc camp near the base of Big Sand Butte, less than seven miles from where the soldiers stood at Sorass Lake.
The captain determined he had less than twenty gallons of water and would now have to temporarily delay his trip back to Scorpion Point for more. He forbade all able-bodied personnel from what water they had left. It was to be used for the wounded.
* * *
“You must take the blame for the death of Ellen’s Man George!” snapped Hooker Jim.
While never an endearing friend of Ellen’s Man, Jim seized upon the warrior’s death by the soldiers at Dry Lake as an occasion to chop away at Captain Jack’s power.
It was Ellen’s Man whom soldier bullets had struck in the dawn attack that morning. He was unconscious and mortally wounded when they dragged him from the fight. Lingering in a fitful delirium for a few hours, Ellen’s Man finally died.
The whole world had tipped on its side for the Modocs. Until this day, in every battle fought with the soldiers, there had been booty abandoned on the field with the dead white men: rifles and ammunition, clothing and boots and even food. But this morning the warriors themselves had been forced to flee—leaving behind two dozen horses. Back in the Ice Moon they had lost some horses to the soldiers, then more were captured by the white man several weeks later. Besides being a serious blow to their pride as a people, Jack’s band had lost nearly all its mobility.
But at that moment the death of a warrior like Ellen’s Man hit them the hardest.
The band carried the body to a clearing a few miles from their camp and scratched an oblong hole out of the ground. Sagebrush, juniper and mahogany were heaped into the pit before Ellen’s Man was laid atop. The pyre was lit as the men and women and children stepped back, flames clawing higher and higher into the spring sky.
Jack stood watching, surrounded by his tribal enemies, who hurt most at this loss of one of their own. As they witnessed this cremation which marked the Modoc manner of freeing the spirit into the afterlife, a gold pocket watch slipped from the clothing being quickly consumed.
General Edward R.S. Canby’s watch—twisting now, its painted face crackling under the extreme heat of the flames totally engulfing the body of one of the two Modocs who had killed the soldier chief. The watch too, freed now of its temporary imprisonment.
Others like Shacknasty Jim and Steamboat Frank, both Boston and Bogus Charleys, all stood ready to side with Curly Headed Doctor in blaming their chief for the warrior’s death when they returned in silence from the funeral. The time for respectful quiet was done. Emotions exploded like a sudden, volcanic eruption.
“You only think about protecting your own hide,” Shacknasty cursed. “You never worry about others.”
Rarely had Jack felt this alone.
“I’m done fighting for you,” vowed Steamboat Frank.
“Good!” Jack shouted. “Go, run away from here and let men do the fighting now.”
“Men—ha!” Boston Charley lunged forward, his breath hot in Jack’s face. “No more will we fight for a coward, Kientpoos!”
Knowing the soldiers and their Tenino trackers would soon be coming along their backtrail, Jack was nonetheless forced to listen to this tirade from the lips of the feckless murderers the moment they had arrived back at their camp.
“These warriors are ready to fight for me again. Your magic is only as strong as a dog raising its leg to piss against these soldiers. No coward should lead fighting men!” declared the Doctor.
That singular insult was the straw. The words had barely crossed the shaman’s lips when Jack crumpled the Doctor’s shirt in both fists, pulling him off his feet.
“Coward? You call me coward?”
With a mighty shove, Jack hurled the shaman backward into the arms of his supporters.
“You—each of you are the cowards. Spineless dogs, the lot of you. Come to me after your bloody murders of innocent, unarmed men, didn’t you? Whined and cried for help hiding you from the white man you knew would come, didn’t you? Everything was good when you had the protection of my people, my warriors—while you were killing soldiers. You even called me a squaw, dressed me as a woman—shamed me before my family!
“But when one of your faithless ones is killed—you come crying to me,” Jack hissed. “Me a coward? You are the cowards—killing good men in cold blood when they come to talk peace.”
“You waited a long time to pull your gun on the soldier tyee,” Shacknasty dared speak.
Jack whirled on him, raising his hand and watching the warrior cower beneath its shadow. “That soldier chief was a better man than any of you! He was brave, facing death when it stared him in the face … while all of you run and cry out to the sky when one man gets killed.”
“How many more of us will fall dead if we follow Kientpoos?” asked Hooker Jim, his voice an impassioned shriek. “We must go before this man gets us all killed.”
Jack turned on him. “Go! Yes, go! I do not want you here anymore. Run far, far away now while you can—all of you who want to go. I will stop the soldiers as long as my body stands to receive their bullets. Yes—I will stay and fight. For I am the only true Modoc of you.”
“Maybe we kill you instead before we go!” Hooker shouted back, angry at the rebuke and reaching for the pistol stuffed in his waistband.
Scar-Faced Charley stopped the gun hand. “You want to kill—go kill white men. Lots of soldiers left. We can’t kill each other now. Not enough Modocs left.”
Jim yanked his hand away from Charley’s grip and stomped away a few steps, then turned, burning with indignation.
“Yes, go, Hooker!” Jack taunted his enemy before Jim could speak. “You can never kill me!”
Hooker suddenly lunged back through the knot of warriors for Jack, hands like hawk’s talons aimed at the chief’s neck. Charley and the others kept the two men separated as they hurled their threats at one another.
“I kill you—with my bare hands I kill you!”
“Ha! I will not die by Modoc hands, Hooker. I will die fighting! No cowardly Modoc like you will ever kill Captain Jack!”
“Let me go!” demanded Hooker Jim. “I show you how you die by Modoc hands! Mine!”
His father-in-law, the shaman, pulled Jim back from the chief. “We go.”
Jack watched them load up a few horses with what few possessions they had been able to carry all these weeks since leaving their Lava Bed Stronghold. Hooker Jim and the shaman led twelve warriors and their families, sixty-two women and children, away, heading west.
When the Tule Lake murderers were gone, Jack turned once more to those who were left. “Now we must flee ourselves.”
“There is time,” said Schonchin John.
“Yes, let us rest,” William Faithful added. “Every time we have fought the white man, he is many days coming after us.”
“Yes, your words are true,” Jack replied. “But today is the first time we have been driven off, fully beaten—”
“Soldiers coming!”
They all turned together to find a young warrior they had stationed on their backtrail running into their camp near the base of Big Sand Butte.
“Soldiers?”
“Many, many soldiers.” The young one huffed to a halt, catching his breath, hunched over and hands on his knees as the warriors crowded around him.
“How many?”
“Many, many—”
“The soldiers from the dried lake?”
“More—twice that number.”
“The Teninos with them?”
“Yes—and they bring their big guns that shoot twice too!”
* * *
The army was moving, but not against the Modocs that tenth day of May.
Instead, Captain Hasbrouck finally ordered his men north with their dead and wounded for Scorpion Point to reoutfit and obtain more water. The next morning, Davis signaled Hasbrouck to take his three companies back south to Big Sand Butte. The colonel was also ordering Major E. C. Mason out of the camp in the Stronghold, with plans to link up with Hasbrouck’s patrol and make a concerted, overwhelming attack on the Modocs’ mobile camp.
By the night of the twelfth, as the soldiers made their bivouac, Mason and Hasbrouck were less than three miles apart, with not only Big Sand Butte, but what they believed would be the Modoc camp between them. On the thirteenth, when the two patrol leaders met to plan their attack, they determined to delay the offensive until more water could be transported in for both wings.
By the next afternoon a Tenino scout informed Hasbrouck that he believed the Modocs had fled their camp and were now in parts unknown. Lieutenant J. B. Hazelton volunteered to take a patrol in to find out conclusively if the Modocs were gone. Twenty-six men immediately lined up to join Hazelton’s reconnaissance. It would not be the first indication that Colonel Jefferson C. Davis had indeed infused these tired, frightened, battle-whipped soldiers with a new sense of courage and hope.
A few hours later Hazelton returned, reporting that the Modocs had disappeared. The war was no longer one of searching for Captain Jack’s band, hoping to surprise the Modocs in their camps. From Davis on down, the officers now realized how liquid the situation had become. Needed now were the cavalry.
The chase was on.
On 15 May the Teninos guided Hasbrouck’s men west on the trail of the fleeing Modocs. For some miles Captain Jack had led his people down the Ticknor Road. Soon, however, the soldiers found the Indian trail leading away toward Antelope Springs. It was there Hasbrouck gave up the chase and returned to Big Sand Butte while Mason transferred his command back to Juniper Butte to await more water and horses.
His plans for following the Modocs renewed on the sixteenth, when he received fresh horses, Hasbrouck led his men west from Big Sand Butte toward Van Bremmer’s ranch. After several miles the captain met Captain Perry’s troop of First Cavalry out on a reconnaissance south from Davis’s camp. They camped together, and on the morning of 18 May continued in their search: Perry would ride south toward Antelope Springs, while Hasbrouck plodded north toward Van Bremmer’s Mountain, hoping to either find the Modocs trapped between them or, at the outside, to at least run across a fresh trail.
On that same Sunday, the Modocs fleeing with Hooker Jim had already skirted south of Van Bremmer’s Mountain then crossed over Ticknor Road, heading west toward a long, J-shaped ridge of higher ground that joined Sheep Mountain in the south with Mahogany Mountain farther north, directly across the road from John Fairchild’s ranch.
Moving on horseback still bothered Donegan’s tender wounds. Not as much as it had days ago. But this morning, the eighteenth, his shoulder was again stiff with the cold and damp after a night spent on the ground at Van Bremmer’s ranch with Captain Hasbrouck’s troops. Ian O’Roarke had come out from Davis’s camp with Captain Perry’s cavalry, and when they camped together on the seventeenth, Ian decided to stay on with his nephew.
After a breakfast of strong coffee and hardtack, along with strips of fried pork, Hasbrouck moved his command south along the Ticknor Road.
Approximately three miles down the wide trace, the captain came upon McKay’s scouts waiting in the middle of the road. They had something to show him.
“Tracks?”
McKay answered. “Hurrying west.”
“How many?”
“Seventy. Maybe eighty.”
“Damn. That’s only half of what we were expecting to find.” Hasbrouck sounded disappointed in spite of the good news.
“They split up on us,” McKay said with a shrug.
“And maybe they haven’t. Maybe this isn’t the main trail. Perhaps it’s only something to throw us off.”
The half-breed shook his head. “These Modocs. Warriors—with some women and children and some poor ponies. If they are not the big bunch you want, they lead you to Jack one day.”
“All right. Tell me how old these tracks are. How many days ago were they here?”
McKay gave the captain a quizzical look. “They crossed the road this morning. Maybe before dawn.”
Hasbrouck tingled with anticipation as he looked to the west at the shadowy bulk of the ridge, encapsulated at either end by mountain peaks. “All right. Put your boys on the trail, McKay. We’ll be serving Modoc soup for dinner tonight.”
A half-mile later the captain signaled Captain James Jackson forward. “I want you to take a squad of a dozen good horsemen ahead with two of McKay’s best. Press the trail hard.”
“You really believe they’re just ahead of us?”
“I do—and you’re going to find out for us, Jackson.”
“Very well.” Jackson saluted Hasbrouck and loped back along the column to pick his dozen.
“You mind if I ride along?” Donegan asked as Jackson was moving by.
The captain reined up, glancing first at O’Roarke. “I appreciate the offer, Irishman. I do. But with that bad wing of yours, you might just hamper us if we get ourselves in trouble.”
“Nothing I’m not accustomed to.”
“But in this case, having you out of commission might mean an added danger to my men.”
Ian had watched the disappointed look cross his nephew’s face. “What if I go along, Captain? I’d cover the lad’s ass. You’d not be responsible.”
Jackson considered it, then grinned slightly. “I suppose we cut our teeth together in the Modoc War, didn’t we, Irishman?”
Seamus sagged a little with relief. “We did, that, Captain.”
“All right, you both come along. And by the way Mr. O’Roarke—if you ride with James Jackson—we all cover each other’s asses in this outfit.”
Jackson reined away to ride on down the column of his B Troop, choosing the best horsemen and shots he could from among his soldiers.
O’Roarke nodded approvingly. “Maybe I’d done all right riding cavalry in the war like you, nephew. Sometimes I’ve wondered. So, why you want to try to get your head blown off again?”
“Better than eating the dust of a long column of horse.”
“Still I don’t like the idea of us riding up there in that timber—just daring those Modocs to jump us again.”
He loosened the flap on his holster and eased the extra pistol from his belt. “Chances are good—a man goes riding with the likes of that Captain Jackson will come out of any tangle with the enemy.”