Two or three old Indian women pa.s.s through the lines to the water. A young brave dons woman"s clothes and comes to the line. After slaking his thirst he starts to return. Something in his walk creates a suspicion.
"That"s a man," says a soldier.
The Indian runs. _A dozen rifles command, "Halt!" The Indian halts._ The soldiers _take five or six scalps off that fellow"s head_, and would have taken more, had the first ones been less avaricious. However, soldiers are kind-hearted and unselfish fellows, and the scalps are _again divided_, so that, at last, ten or twelve are happy in the possession of a scalp.
It is now five P.M. Let us see how the several parties are situated at this time. Couriers are _en route_ to Y-re-ka with despatches, telling the world about the terrible slaughter, and, _by the authority_ of the general in command, a.s.suring the powers that be, in Washington, "The Modocs cannot escape. They are in our power. It is only a question of time. We have them "corralled.""
In Portland, Oregon, an immense concourse of citizens are awaiting the arrival of the train bearing the remains of Gen. Canby. The streets are hushed. The doors of business houses are closed. A general feeling of sorrow is everywhere manifest. Officers of the army and a delegation from a Great Brotherhood are there. On every hand flags are at half mast.
Emblems of sorrow meet the eye. The grief-stricken widow sits in her room, cold, comfortless, inconsolable.
The Fraternal and Church Brotherhoods and thousands of mourning friends crowd the wharf in San Francisco, eagerly watching the coming of a steamer from Vallejo with flags at half mast. This boat is bringing home for interment the body of another great man, whose spirit went to its Maker in company with the Christian General, for whom the city of Portland, Oregon, mourns. Nearest to the dark tabernacle two young men are standing. They are the sons of Dr. Thomas.
While the two cities of the western coast are exchanging telegraphic words of sympathy, kind-hearted friends are filling a parlor where three sorrowing children are weeping without the presence of parents. The friends are repeating the hopeful telegrams of the Iowa veteran, and a.s.suring them that their mother is with their father by that time as she left Y-re-ka the previous morning.
At this hour a young physician is hurrying to the bedside of an aged man, who has pa.s.sed threescore years and ten, near Solon, Iowa. A glance at his face and we are reminded of the wounded Peace Commissioner in the Lava Beds, three thousand miles away. Five days ago he had read the telegram that said, "Meacham mortally wounded." He threw himself on his bed then, saying, "If my son dies I never can rise again,--my first-born soil who went with me through all my dark hours on the frontier, twenty-five years ago. Must he die? Can I bear it? Thy will be done, O Lord!"
For five days has he laid hanging between life and death. His physician has watched the telegraph, and now, with the words of the Iowa veteran, he is hurrying to the bedside of his patient.
"Your son will recover!" the doctor exclaims before reaching him.
The white-haired man rises on his elbow, saying, "Do I dream? Is it true, doctor? Will my son live?"
About this hour, away up on Wild Horse Creek, Umatilla County, Oregon, a young man is writing a letter that seems to come from an overcharged heart submerged in grief. The letter runs as follows:--
MEACHAM RANCH, WILD HORSE CREEK, April 17th, 1873.
MY DEAR NEPHEW:--I have just heard of the death of your father.... Eleven months since we kneeled with him beside your Uncle Harvey"s coffin and pledged our lives to care for his widow and orphan children.... You and I, George, are all that are left to care for two widows and two families of orphans. ...
The stroke is heavy to be borne.... I will try to be a father to them. We must be men.
Your uncle,
JOHN MEACHAM.
Again we stand on the bluff, at this hour, overlooking the Lava Beds. In a little tent among the hundred others the Iowa veteran is telling his brother-in-law that his wife will be in camp by seven. A courier arrives saying that the Modocs are hanging about the trail leading down the mountain. The officers are aware of the near approach of Mrs. Meacham.
They decide that she cannot come to the camp with safety. A detachment is ordered to escort Commissioner Dyer up the mountain to meet her and take her to Linkville.
While he is working his way under escort, the Modocs are seen creeping towards the road. At the top of the mountains Dyer meets the ambulance. He a.s.sures the woman that she cannot reach the camp; that her husband is well cared for, and that she must go back to a place of safety.
She remonstrates, saying, "I must--I _will_ go to my husband." She alights from the ambulance and starts on foot, but is intercepted and forced to go again to the ambulance, with the a.s.surance that "_her husband will be sent out to her within a day or two_".
No language can portray the feelings and emotions of this woman when, after travelling three hundred miles on stages and in ambulances over the Cascade mountains, through a hostile country, she is compelled to turn back when within three miles of her wounded husband, with those ominous words saying, like a funeral dirge, "_Your husband will be sent out to you in a few days_".
While she is yet pleading for the privilege of seeing him the mountain"s sides reverberate with the sounds of rifle shots coming up from a point half way to the camp, volley answering volley. While she is in a half-unconscious condition, the team drawing the ambulance is turned about, and the guard take their places on either side, and the team moves away towards the frontier.
When the woman returns to consciousness, she exclaims, "Take me to my husband! I must see him before he dies."
The kind heart of Mr. Dyer is moved. He pleads with her to abandon the attempt, consoling her with Christian a.s.surances that "G.o.d does all things well." With the guard in skirmishing order the party hurries away.
The mutilated body of young Hovey is lying stark and cold, beside the road where he fell.
Sundown is announced by the repeated volleys of musketry at the cemetery, as the bodies of the soldiers are laid away in their last sleep.
The friends of the young lad obtain permission, and the necessary facilities, from the quartermaster, to bring in his body. A coffin is prepared, and in it is placed what was, a few hours since, a n.o.ble-hearted youth full of life.
A part of the army is resting, and a part is bombarding the Modocs.
Captain Jack has kept the "flat" cleared, and now, while the shot and sh.e.l.l are being tumbled in around his camp, he draws his people out under cover of darkness, and leaves the soldiers to fire away at his empty caves until morning, when another order to charge is made, and the lines close slowly up with great care, like fishermen who feel sure they have a big haul, until they land the seine, and discover that a great rent has let the prize escape. See the soldiers" line! How carefully it contracts to the centre, the soldiers expecting each moment that the Modocs will make a break, until, at last, the lines come together like a great draw-string, only to reveal the fact that _no Indians are there_, except one old man, whom all declare to be Schonchin, who was wounded by Meacham"s Derringer last Friday. _He shall not escape_, and a dozen bullets pa.s.s through him.
He falls over, and the men gather around and scalp the old fellow.
"Meacham shall have a lock of his hair," says one; and he cuts it from _one of the scalps_.
Then the old Indian"s head is severed from his body, and kicked around the camp like a foot-ball, until a surgeon interferes, and saves it from further indignities by sending it to the camp, where the face was carefully skinned off, and "put to pickle" in alcohol. The men shout and hurrah while exploring the caves, expecting to find Captain Jack, like a wolf at bay, somewhere, determined to "die in the last ditch." Instead of Modocs, they find the remains of soldiers who have been killed, ammunition that had been captured, and dried beef that had not been required; but no evidence of any "_Modoc bodies having been burned_."
While they were rejoicing in the capture of this great natural fortress of the Modoc chief, _he_ was in a new position with his people, resting and recruiting from the three days" battle, and so near his old "stronghold"
that he could hear the reports of the soldiers" muskets when they finished up the supposed Schonchin.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
MUSIC DON"T SOOTHE A SAVAGE--FIGHTING THE DEVIL WITH FIRE A FAILURE--"WE"LL BURY THE OLD MAN ALIVE."
The expectant man has waited, watched, listened for the sound of a voice that would bring joy to him. His attendant carefully breaks the disappointment, fearing the consequences.
Friday morning, and a Warm Springs soldier is sitting beside the commissioner. A look at his face, and we recognize him as the man who stood out so long in the meeting at Warm Springs Agency, in 1871.
Pia-noose had come in to vent his feelings and to express his friendship.
After the usual ceremony of salutation on his part, he remarked that the white men did not know how to fight Modocs. "_Too much music._ Suppose you take away all the music, all the big guns, all the soldiers, and tell the Warm Springs, "Whip the Modocs," _all right_. Some days we get two men, some days we get more, and by and by we get all the Modocs. Warm Springs don"t like so much music,"--referring to the bugle.
This morning Gen. Canby"s remains are lying in state in Portland, and a whole city weeps with the widow who does not--cannot look on the beloved face.
In San Francis...o...b..lls are tolling, and a vast concourse of sad-hearted citizens are following the dark-plumed hea.r.s.e that conveys the Rev. Dr.
Thomas to his last resting-place in Lone Mountain Cemetery.
Mrs. Meacham is sitting in a small parlor at Linkville, and expecting each moment the arrival of a courier that will confirm her worst fears. Mrs.
Boddy--whose husband was murdered last November by the Modocs--is with her. The two mingle their tears. They are kindred, now that sorrow has united them.
Gen. Gilliam has called a council of war, and plans for future operations are being discussed. The hospital gives out a sad murmur of mingled moans, curses, and groans. Two soldiers are going toward the burying-ground; one carries a _spade_, the other a small, plain, straight box, in which is the leg of a soldier going to a waiting-place for him. Riddle and his wife, Tobey, are cooking and washing for the wounded. Riddle often calls on Meacham, bringing refreshments prepared by his wife. Col. Tom Wright calls on Meacham this morning. A spicy colloquy ensues. He remarks that the Modocs are nearly "h--l." Meacham says, "Where is your two thousand dollars now? Suppose you and Eagan took them in fifteen minutes, didn"t you?" Col. Wright: "Took "em, _not much_,--we got the prettiest licken ever an army got in the world." Meacham: "What kind of a place did you find, anyhow, colonel?" Col. Wright: "It"s no use talking; the match to the Modoc stronghold has not been built and never will be. Give me _one hundred picked men_, and let me station them, and I will _hold_ that place against _five thousand men,--yes, ten thousand_, as long as ammunition and subsistence last. That"s about as near as I can describe it. Oh, I tell you it is the most impregnable fortress in the world! Sumter was nowhere when compared with it." Meacham: "What kind of a fighter is Captain Jack, colonel?" Col. Wright: "Fighter; why, he"s the biggest Ingen on this continent. See what he"s done; licked a thousand men, killed forty or fifty, and has not lost more than _three_ or _four_ himself. We _starved_ him out, we _didn"t whip_ him. He"ll turn up in a day or two, ready for another fight. I tell you, Jack"s a big Ingen."
Let us see where this distinguished individual and this gallant band of heroic desperadoes are at this time. From the signal-station on the mountain side, above Gilliam"s camp, we can look over the spot, but they are so closely hidden that we cannot locate them; not even a curl of smoke is seen. Follow the foot of the bluff around three miles, and then strike off south, or left, two miles more, and amid an immense jumble of lava rocks we find them. Go carefully; Indian women are on the picket-station, while the warriors sleep. Since sundown last evening they pa.s.sed _between_ the soldier camp and the council tent and brought water to the famishing.
A man sits upon a jaded horse, at the gate of a farm-house, near Y-re-ka.
Children are playing in the front yard. A watch-dog springs to his feet and gives warning by loud barking. A stout-built man looks out from a barn to ascertain the meaning, while a middle-aged woman comes to the kitchen door. The whole, together, is the picture of a western farmer"s home,--happiness and contentment. The horseman takes in the scene, and while he views the photograph he recognizes in it the home of young Hovey. A painful duty is his. He hesitates. He knows that his words will send a dark shadow over this household. The farmer comes towards him. The dog is hushed; the children cease their sports; the mother stands waiting, waiting, listening, and the throbbing of her own heart prepares her for the awful tidings. "Is this Mr. Hovey?" the horseman says, while from his inside coat pocket he withdraws a letter. "That is my name," the farmer replies. "I have a letter for you, Mr. Hovey?" The children gather around the father, looking attentively at him and the horseman, while the latter, with trembling hand, pa.s.ses the envelope that is so heavy ladened with sorrow. "Where"s the letter from?" asks the anxious mother, while the father tears it open. "The Lava Beds," replies the horseman, turning away his face. The paper shakes in the hands of the farmer, while his face changes to ashy paleness. "What is it, father? Oh, what does the letter say?" cries the mother, as she comes to his side and glances over his arm.
Let us not intrude on this scene of sorrow.
Hanging to _Hooker Jim"s_ belt is a fair-haired scalp, still fresh; the blood of young Hovey still undried upon Hooker"s clothing, giving him no more concern than if it had come from the veins of a deer or an antelope.
The lock of hair had once been blessed by the hands of a tender mother, who for nineteen years had watched over her first-born son. Now it is dishonored, used only as a record by which a savage makes proof of excellence in performing feats of fiendish heroism.
The "Iowa Veteran," with an eye always out for sport, remarks, "Old man, there"s going to be some lively fun in a few minutes; wish you could see it. There"s fourteen Indians going for water, and a company has started out to capture them. Two to one the Modocs lick "em." Taking a station at the tent door, he continued: "I"ll keep you posted, old man; keep cool.