Chapter 6

December 1, 1872

The day following the Battle of Lost River, Captain James Jackson rested his weary company at a temporary camp he had established near Crawley’s cabin. Surgeon McElderry kept himself and a hospital steward busy tending to the wounded and keeping the casualties as warm as possible in the freezing, wet weather.

Beneath the dripping canvas of his tent, the captain wrote dispatches to Major John Green at Fort Klamath: “I need enforcements and orders as to my future course.”

At this point in time Jackson and Boutelle were convinced they had killed not only Captain Jack, but Scar-Faced Charley and Black Jim—the three they had been ordered to bring in.

Late the next afternoon, 1 December, two long-faced civilians rode their muddied horses into the soldier camp, carrying news of the settlers murdered for the startled Jackson.

At sunrise on 2 December, Lieutenant Boutelle led a small patrol out to locate the total number of dead, and to look for the women at both the Boddy and the Brotherton settlements, who were said to be fleeing cross-country toward Linkville to avoid any roving Modoc war-parties. Returning to Crawley’s from Clear Lake, Boutelle met the women who had minutes before met up with Ivan Applegate and some other enraged civilians from Linkville. The women returned to the soldier camp to personally tell Jackson of the horror in the attacks.

With the presence of the Linkville citizens at the scene, Jackson realized he no longer needed to warn the civilians north of Lost River that the Modocs had broken out. Word of the army’s failure was already spreading like brushfire.

Back at Fort Klamath, Major Green was doing some fancy explaining of his own to his superiors, Lieutenant Colonel Wheaton and General Canby: “It was believed that the Modocs would submit.”

Canby was clearly angered: “Troops at Bidwell and the District of the Lakes … ought to have been in the Modoc country before the attempt to remove the Indians by force was commenced.” He ordered Major E. C. Mason with three companies of the Twenty-first Infantry to march immediately from Fort Vancouver for Fort Klamath.

In those first few hours of alarm, Governor Grover of Oregon Territory had issued a call to raise volunteers who would remain in the Tule Lake area only until “the regular troops take the field in force sufficient to protect the settlements.”

Meanwhile, Colonel Wheaton ordered veteran Captain Reuben F. Bernard, along with his G Troop of the First Cavalry, to join up with Jackson’s soldiers at the scene. Most of the civilians who had accompanied the army to remove the Modocs immediately returned to their homesteads to see to family and make fortifications, what with Modocs running loose.

“So this is your nephew, Ian,” Dimity O’Roarke appraised as she ground her roughened hands into her dirty apron, then presented Seamus with one of them.

“He favors his mother—God bless her,” Ian replied.

“Saints prithee,” Dimity replied quietly, stepping back to measure the young man, pushing a loose sprig of hair behind her ear.

She had a gentle smile that softened the hard lines of her angular yet simple face. A hard life for most of her thirty years could be read by any man taking but half a notice of that beauty beneath the sturdiness there. While she was clearly near the same age as Seamus, Dimity nonetheless showed the signs of child-bearing, homemaking and the frontier in every story-telling line that creased her well-tanned face.

Like a midgets’ lynch mob, Ian’s children immediately descended upon the tall newcomer who was but two years older than their mother, clamoring for his attention, asking all manner of questions as they tightened their noose.

“Scoot—all of you,” Ian scolded them. “Let the man breathe.” He slung an arm easily over Donegan’s shoulder. “You’ll have all the time in the world to get your answers.”

“I’m named Seamus too,” declared the nine-year-old to the tall stranger. “Are you staying with us?”

Donegan looked at Ian. He nodded.

“Yes. I’ll stay with you for a few days.”

“Be more than that … now,” Ian replied from the mantel of the moss-rock fireplace where he was stuffing tobacco into the bowl of his old briar. “What with all that’s happened,” he said, turning around to stare now at his nephew. “All along that ride home, I’ve been hoping you’d see clear to stay on until all this is put to rest. We’ll start by going into Linkville after breakfast in the morning—pick up some more supplies and ammunition, in case there’s a long siege of it here.”

Ian could tell Seamus wanted to stay on, if only for a while, just by the way he was looking at what Dimity had cooking on the stove, smelling its mingling of fragrant aromas that filled every corner of the main room.

“Aye. I’ll stay for a few days,” Seamus replied. “What could take long about digging a handful of Indians out of these hills?”

Ian wagged his head. “John and Press agree with me,” he said sadly. “That bunch isn’t loose in the hills. They’re already safely bedded down in the Lava Beds.”

“Lava Beds?”

“The devil’s own playground—barren and fit for no man or beast, that.”

“The army’ll go in and dig ’em out soon enough, Uncle.”

He brought the pipe to smoke, then tossed the sulfur-headed lucifer into the fireplace. “Sounds to me like my own nephew is bound to find any reason he can to leave—when he just got here!”

Seamus finally grinned, settling in a big rocker little seven-year-old Charity dragged up for him. “Yes, Ian. We have much to catch up on.”

From the corner at her dry sink, Dimity cleared her throat. That had always been signal to Ian that she had something of import to say.

“Have you ever thought of putting your roots down, Seamus?” she asked, not turning from the work of her hands over the vegetables she was slicing directly into the cast-iron kettle. “Thought of doing the honest work of a farmer like your uncle here?”

Ian was still angry with her for those pointed words the next morning when he and Seamus stepped from the low-ridged door into the main yard, their breath frosty on the warming air. Everything was still slick with icy sleet; fence rails and barn siding. But the sun was emerging over the low hills, giving a pink glow to the thick glaze.

“She didn’t mean to cause you hurt, Seamus,” Ian said as they slipped bridles warmed under their arms on the horses brought out of the barn.

“No hurt to me, Uncle.”

“She was talking out of turn.”

“Sounds to me like you took more offense than I.”

“Perhaps I did at that.”

As Donegan smoothed the blanket then laid the saddle atop it, he asked, “You happy settling down, are you?”

Ian stopped and sighed. “Sometimes, Seamus. It’s hard sometimes. But the pain of staying planted in one spot like these big trees comes less and less to hurt me with the work of every spring. I’ve done it for so long—for Dimity and the children.” He climbed into the saddle and adjusted the reins, waiting for his nephew. “A man grows older—and so he learns to swallow down a lot of the pain.”

On the way down the road past Pressley Dorris’s ranch, Ian pointed out Hot Creek to their right. “A small band of Modocs lives downstream under a fella called Shacknasty Jim.”

“Shacknasty?”

“Miners named him that ’cause his mother didn’t keep a too tidy place, Seamus.”

They chuckled, and Ian went on to explain that the band had no connection to Jack’s or Hooker Jim’s troublemakers. Instead, they lived by themselves, causing no man harm.

Donegan and O’Roarke were rounding a curve in the rutted road when the clatter of many horses and the creaking of wagons greeted them.

“Ho, Ian! Morning to you, Mr. Donegan!” called out John Fairchild.

“Morning!” shouted Pressley Dorris, waving.

“Shacknasty,” Ian said, acknowledging the Modoc warrior on horseback between the two settlers. Then he looked at his white friends. “What’s going?” Ian asked, the jut of his chin indicating the small cavalcade of horsemen and wagons filled with women and children.

“Shacknasty brought in his bunch to my place late yesterday afternoon,” Fairchild replied. “They don’t want to go join up with Captain Jack—’cause they realize it will mean their deaths. But with all the soldiers roaming the countryside, they came to me for help.”

“Well, we’re gonna help, ain’t we?” Ian asked.

Fairchild and Dorris smiled.

Press Dorris said, “Of course we are. I’ve convinced Jim to take his bunch on up to the Klamath reservation—as long as I can get them there without trouble from the army or Oregon militia.”

“I hear things are nasty in town,” Fairchild muttered under his breath so that Shacknasty would not catch his pessimism.

“They’re all here?” Ian asked, his eyes counting off Jim’s brother, Shacknasty Jake, along with Bogus Charley, Steamboat Frank, even Ellen’s Man George.

Fairchild said, “Last night I sent my hand, Sam Culver, into town to wire agent Dyar up at Klamath that I was gonna bring this bunch in to the reservation. How ’bout you coming along, Ian? You ride with us into town?”

Ian glanced at Seamus.

“We were headed to Linkville anyway, Uncle.”

“We’ll ride along,” Ian replied, “to make sure no one ruffles any feathers there.”

Yet the town had a bad feel to it as the escort slowly plodded down to the first buildings scattered crudely on the outskirts of Linkville.

“I got a feeling we better cut short of town and ride down the back street to Whittle’s Ferry,” suggested Dorris.

“Good idea, Press,” Ian said quietly.

As they were starting to turn the procession away from the main street, an agitated Sam Culver pushed himself off the boardwalk and signaled Fairchild to heel over.

“I don’t know how it happened, John,” he began, huffing, his eyes big as penny saucers.

“What happened, Sam?”

“Somehow they found out.”

“Who found out what?”

“Lot of drinking going on already today—knowing you and Press was bringing them Injuns into town.”

Ian eased back in the saddle as some heads popped out of doors farther down the street. There was some muffled shouting as the excitement grew along the main street.

“Whiskey and blood don’t mix well, John,” Ian said. He leaned over to Seamus. “This is turning into something bigger than we thought. You can ease yourself on out of here and get back to the ranch now before—”

“I told you, Uncle—I was riding into town with you. And now’s not the time to leave you by yourself.”

Ian smiled with his eyes only as he turned to watch the crowd congealing in the middle of the street. The smile completely disappeared as the mob turned, rumbling up the street toward them.

“Ho, Fairchild!” hollered the man leading the bunch. He wore a surly look on his face, chicken-tracked with burst blood vessels.

“Fritz Dinkins,” the settler replied, pulling the flap of his coat aside to expose the handle on his Colt revolver.

Dorris and the rest did likewise. Donegan brought up the Henry into plain sight.

Dinkins wiped a hand across his mouth, that grin still there. “We hear the army’s sending two hundred soldiers down here. Won’t be a Modoc worth a greasy spot on a barn floor by the time they get through with these murdering bastards.”

“You been working yourself up some, ain’t you?” Ian said, easing his horse up beside Fairchild’s. Now he could clearly see the hard red lines checkering the German’s eyes, the rosy glow tattle-telling his cheeks and nose.

Dinkins stared back hard. He threw a thumb over his shoulder even before his voice rose a pitch. “You seen the bodies of your friends they’ve got laying in the back of the hotel?”

“Boddy and the rest? Well, I know what you’re thinking,” Dorris spoke for the first time. “But this bunch didn’t have a thing to do with those murders.”

“They’re goddamned thieving Modocs, ain’t they?” shouted someone from the crowd.

The rest surged forward a moment, jostling roughly, muttering their oaths.

“One of the bodies had the heart ripped out, Dorris!”

“’Nother had his balls cut off!”

“They didn’t find all the pieces of the German!”

“Hold on, dammit!” Fairchild hollered above the commotion.

“This bunch is giving itself up to avoid trouble,” added Dorris. “Going to the reservation peaceable. So you boys just go on back to town and let us get down to the ferry where we can make the crossing.”

“I figure we owe it to those dead friends of ours laying back there in the hotel to even the score a bit. Fourteen of these red bastards—for fourteen of our white friends!”

“Simmer down, Fritz—I don’t wanna have no trouble here!”

“Shit, Fairchild! You’re leading trouble right there!” shouted Sam Blair. “Just ease on out of the way now and let us string ’em up. We’ll damn well save you the trip to Klamath!” He patted his pocket. “I got a order right here from Governor Grover says I can hang the nine Injuns murdered our citizens!”

“This ain’t that bunch!” Ian hollered. “I was there when Hooker Jim’s band broke out and ran off to do their bloody work.”

“I say hang these bastards anyway!” Blair shouted.

Donegan cocked the Henry as the crowd surged against itself again.

“Listen—we’re trying to get this bunch to the reservation so they aren’t loose … so they can’t join up with Captain Jack’s renegades,” Fairchild tried reasoning again.

“It’s a shame, Fairchild,” Fritz snarled with some morbid humor. “The ferry ain’t working.”

“It ain’t?” Dorris asked, looking down the long slope toward Whittle’s buildings.

“Whittle says it won’t be till morning he gets it going again,” Fritz said, and many in the group laughed.

“We got no choice but to keep the bunch under guard till then,” O’Roarke said for the four of them. “Any the rest of you feeling as spry as Fritz here—come on and start your trouble now.”

“Better than waiting until later,” Fairchild said.

For a few tense moments the crowd muttered, then first one and a handful inched away, moving back up the street to the hotel beckoning with warm, yellow light on what was turning into another gloomy afternoon of leaden skies.

“Let’s get Jim’s bunch camped—and quick. Down there by Whittle’s place,” Ian suggested.

Late that afternoon before all light drained from the sky, the five civilians sat in Whittle’s warming shed, planning their rotation of guard duty. As best they could, they had explained their situation to Shacknasty Jim and his men. His Modocs were armed to a degree—but the faces of that lynch mob had clearly frightened the women and children of the band.

Ian stood first watch, then Seamus. Behind him came Fairchild, then Dorris. Last watch of the night was Sam Culver.

And when the rest came to relieve Culver at dawn, there wasn’t a Modoc left anywhere near Linkville, Oregon.

Scared of the white citizens, the entire band of forty-five Indians had slipped away in the darkness while Culver snored.

“Goddamn the luck!” Fairchild cursed.

Ian only wagged his head. “Shame. It’s a shame. Fourteen more warriors on their way right now.”

“Way where?” Donegan asked.

He looked up at his nephew. “On their way to join Captain Jack’s holdouts and Hooker Jim’s cutthroats.”