Devil's Backbone: The Modoc War, 1872-3

by Terry C. Johnston

  * * *

  Perhaps that fickle, fickle bitch called fate would smile on him as warmly as the sun caressed his neck right now. It had been a long winter going, here in Montana Territory. After a long winter before that, spent down in Colorado as well. Both winters filled with too damn many lonely hours put in remembering faces, tastes and smells—and the touch of a certain woman who alone still kicked around inside his empty heart.

  Back to the fall of ’69 he had arrived in Denver City, his wounds from that brush with death still taut and pink and puckered. But the work he hired on to do at Teats’s Elephant. Corral slowly loosened up hide and sinew. Through that winter he had bedded down in the corner of a spare room at the back of a gambling hall beside the Chase Hotel on Fifteenth Street. Denver City was full of gambling halls and dance halls and whore cribs, and there was never any lack of something to do in that town for a man with healthy hands and strong back. Nor were there any lack of diversions and leaks for a man’s purse.

  The whiskey was strong—better than a thirsty man would find out among the string of posts and forts dotting the high plains where the sutlers invariably watered down their stock, padding their already substantial profit margin.

  Besides the more potent whiskey, in Denver City a man could always find the girl of his liking: be she fleshy or thin, dark or pale, Mexican, Oriental or a smoke-skinned buffalo-haired chippie.

  Many were the times it ate at him—this not knowing why the coffee-colored mulatto had hunted him down and nearly killed him in that stinking slip-trench latrine back of Bill McDonald’s watering hole serving the frontier soldiers stationed at Fort McPherson, Nebraska Territory.

  If it hadn’t been for Bill Cody come back to the latrine looking for him that sundown …

  Time and again he shook off the dread of the thought and learned to celebrate each new night he allowed himself to share with a new chippie in a different crib. One hurrah a week was about all Donegan could afford dipping into his purse, what with the way he went at the whiskey and the women.

  As those months following the summer battle of Summit Springs had become years, he had noticed some subtle changes that warned him he was getting older. Besides the tiny cracks at the corners of his eyes that crinkled when he laughed or squinted across the great distances of this western land, no longer did he revel in all-night celebrations, wearing down the whiskey and the women both as he had once done. No, it was plain as paint he was slowing. It took longer to pull himself from the blankets the morning after when the sun came brutally calling.

  As if that weren’t the damndest thing about aging now—not only were the bad times getting him down all the more, but the good times took their toll on him as well.

  Come the spring of eighteen and seventy there in Denver City, Seamus admitted he finally had his gullet fill of it all and promised himself he would follow down the only clue Liam O’Roarke left of his brother Ian. Remembering the two had their falling out in a place called Cripple Creek, Colorado Territory.

  Not that there hadn’t been times the Irishman wondered why he was even trying to follow the ghostly trail of his uncle when it seemed the only one who cared was his mother. But each time, Seamus finally admitted it mattered every bit as much to him.

  It was family.

  To his surprise, it hadn’t taken all that long to run across some sign of Ian. A few questions asked at the marshal’s office led him to track down a one-legged ex-prospector who lived in a shanty down below the creek. It was he who had known the O’Roarke brothers in better days.

  “You do resemble ’em both, come to look at you,” said the old man as he hobbled back to allow the Irishman room to pass into the low-roofed shanty built back into the hillside.

  They both settled at the sheet-iron stove. Eventually, that night, Seamus eased around to telling the man how Liam had died—buried in an unmarked grave out on the prairie.*

  “Heard something of that fight you had out there on the Arickaree, son,” the old man admitted with no lack of admiration in his watery eyes. “There was talk of it for weeks.” He shook his head. “Must’ve been something—nine goddamned days. Shame though … Liam going under that way.”

  Seamus found the old man’s eyes boring into him.

  “He was the better of the two, boy. You know that, don’t you?”

  Donegan had to nod. “You’re not the first to tell me.”

  The old man went back to gazing at the glow of the fire radiating through the slots in the stove door. “Not that the older one was really a bad sort—just that … seems he was weaned on sour milk. Always took offense at everything.”

  “You really knew them well—both me uncles?”

  He finally nodded. “We panned—worked the same sluice. You work with a man like that, with your backs day after day—you get to know him.”

  “Threw in together?”

  “For a time, we did,” he replied. “Until the woman came to mess things up.”

  “The woman?”

  With a gap-toothed smile he answered, “Woman always does make for the devil with a man, don’t she?”

  “I suppose she does at that,” Donegan admitted. “What happened?”

  “She belonged to another man. A cruel fella—he bought her in Denver afore crossing over the hills here to Cripple Creek.”

  “She was bought?”

  “Paid for proper—and not with paper money. A young thing too. Her folks was poor-off, so they up and sold her to the fella with five gold pieces in his pocket.”

  “How was it Ian O’Roarke ended up with her?”

  “She tired of the beatings from the man what owned her—so cast her eye out for someone who’d help her, I imagine,” he replied. “Ian was there—and under her spell from the start. Not that I blame the girl none. She was needing help—and that’s the Bible’s truth of it.”

  “They ran off—Ian and this girl?”

  “Not before things got ugly, son. One Sunday morning, it was. The fella—this husband of hers—he found out she had been talking to O’Roarke—lots. Others with loose jaws that liked to flap had seen ’em together a’times in secret. He come roaring in, saying she was his property, bought and paid for proper. If O’Roarke wanted her, he’d come up with the money or leave Cripple Creek for good.”

  Seamus wiped a hand across his dry mouth. “How much?”

  “Five thousand in gold.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Damn tootin’ it is. Especially to buy a woman!”

  “Ian have that much?”

  He laughed. “Shit, son. All three of us together never seen that kind of dust in our lives!” Then he wagged his head. “Ian stood there, looking like he was figuring on it hard. Then finally told the woman to get out of the way. Up and told the gal’s owner that he didn’t have enough gold, but he figured there was lead enough in the pistol he carried in his belt to pay his debt.”

  “He killed the gal’s owner?”

  The old man nodded, a smile caressing his eyes. “Weren’t clean, though. After they shot it out that morning, that fella’s friends showed up that afternoon and set up a ruckus. Ian skeedaddled from town.”

  “How’d Liam figure in all of this?”

  “All along he told his brother to stay clear of another man’s woman—said there was always enough whiskey and enough women to go around. No sense worrying about one woman over another. But Ian seemed like he was bit something bad, that he just couldn’t stay clear of her. Shame of it—Liam and he broke up our outfit over that woman.”

  “You sound like you figure Liam wanted the woman too.”

  “Liam? Shit, he wasn’t the kind to get caught up yoke and traces in a woman. Not that one. He just … just didn’t want to stir up no trouble.”

  “Where’d Ian go?”

  “I heard later from Liam that his brother headed up to Silver Plume.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “North of here a ways.”

  “When?” />
  He thought on it, tapping a finger against his lower lip. “Eighteen and sixty.”

  “The woman went with him?”

  The old man nodded. “Bad blood she caused between them brothers. Women just naturally have a way of stirring things up a’tween men.”

  “You’ve been a lot of help. I’ll head out for Silver Plume in the morning.”

  “You might. Then, you might not,” the old man said quietly, cryptically. “No sense heading there when I heard Ian didn’t stay long in Silver Plume. Moved on north with the gal, fixing to make a clean break.”

  “Liam ever know of this?”

  “I figure he did. But I suppose from the way he talked that he figured there was no sense in trying to mend things a’tween him and his brother. A woman can cause a deep wound that oft times won’t heal just right—like a bad bone growed back crooked.”

  “Where’d Ian head off to?”

  “By ’sixty-two he was pushing north to the Idaho fields. What was Idaho then—called Montana now.”

  “Alder Gulch? Virginia City, Nevada City, Bannack?”

  His well-seamed face brightened. “Lordee! Does sound like you know of the place, son!”

  “I’ll be blessed!” Seamus exclaimed. “Of a time I was heading there meself. Glory … glory be.”

  * * *

  Captain Jack told his people they were once more returning to their homeland, this time when he returned from visiting the agent O. C. Knapp. He promised them they would stay on Lost River for all the seasons to come.

  No more would they listen to the paper-thin promises of food and clothing, of safety from enemies and a peaceful life. A small minority of the Modocs chose to stay on at Yainax under Old Schonchin, while the majority followed Jack’s dream of freedom, sharing his undying thirst for the old life.

  And return to their old ways they did. The men resumed their visits to Yreka, where they frequented the watering holes, getting drunk and selling their women to the white miners for gold and horses and weapons.

  During this time the fire-eyed, wavy-haired shaman the miners had named Curly Headed Doctor rose to some prominence among the Modocs and split off from Jack’s band, taking some nine or ten hot-blooded warriors who steadfastly believed war would one day come to Modoc land—when they would drive the white man out forever. To the Doctor’s camp flocked the worst of renegades, who immediately renewed causing trouble for the settlers living in the Lost River country—frightening women and children while the men were away in the fields, demanding food here or an iron kettle there, occasionally killing a stray cow or stealing a horse.

  Again the white man’s cry of indignation was raised, louder than before. Most of the settlers demanded government action to force the Modocs back to their reservation. Yet a few white men counseled prudence—saying it was the Klamaths causing all the turmoil. If not those other tribes, surely it was nothing more than a few bad seeds among the Modocs.

  Even if they had wanted to, by mid-1870 the army could not provide the help needed to quell the growing unrest along Lost River. Most of the western posts had been emptied of all but a skeleton force as the army shipped troops to General George Crook’s drive to round up the renegade Apache in Arizona. With Crook himself dispatched to the southwest from the Division of the Pacific, General Edward R.S. Canby was placed in charge of the Department of the Columbia.

  At nearby Fort Klamath, built in 1863 mainly to watch over the local reservation, there remained but two companies of infantry: only seventy-two soldiers. Over at the nearest relief station, Camp Warner in Paiute Territory, could be found another two units—one infantry and one cavalry.

  Matters were growing steadily warm in the Lost River country by the week, not all of it local. In the summer of 1871 a new religion was spreading across the great basin. Over toward Nevada a Paiute named Tavibo was promising the destruction of the world as it was presently ruled by the white man. Earthquakes would swallow up the unfaithful whites while the red man would be allowed to repopulate the land in peace and prosperity.

  A wild-eyed Curly Headed Doctor accepted the new religion with a vengeance. It was everything he had been praying for and preaching about among his zealots. As prescribed by the Messiah, Tavibo, the Modocs began dancing back the ghosts of their departed relatives in their camp beside Lost River.

  Finally, in that summer of the year the white man called his 1872, Captain Jack was sternly warned by Indian agent Knapp that his people must return to the reservation or suffer the consequences.

  Unhappy with the lack of progress in the Modoc affair under the old regime of Alfred B. Meacham, the agent informed the Modoc chief, the government had replaced the aging superintendent with T. B. Odeneal. That meant a new era of stricter control had dawned for the tribes.

  Knapp went on to declare strongly, “The army has grown tired of you and your kind thumbing your noses at them and living off the reservation, Jack. Mark my words: the soldiers will soon come and remove your tribe by force if they have to.”

  “I am but one man. Yet I am the voice of my people. Whatever their hearts are—those are my words. I want no more war. I want only to be a man. You deny me the rights of a white man. My skin is red; my heart wants what a white man’s heart wants; but I am a Modoc. I am not afraid to die. I will not fall on the rocks. Hear me! When I die, my enemies will be under me.”

  The agent slammed a palm down on his desk. “You sound like you’re goading for war with the white man, Captain Jack.”

  “I have always told the white man to come and settle in my country; that it was his country and Captain Jack’s country. That they could come and live there with me and that I was not mad with them. I have never received anything from anybody, only what I bought and paid for myself. I have always lived like a white man, and wanted to live so. I have always tried to live peaceably and never asked any man for anything. I have always lived on what I could kill and shoot with my gun, and catch in my trap.”

  “Shut your mouth and go back to the reservation with the others,” Knapp replied brusquely, settling back in his chair. “There you will get the flour and pork we will give you. You don’t need guns—don’t need to hunt. Swallow your idiotic pride and make up with the Klamaths before it is too late for you and your people.”

  “We can never live with the Klamaths,” Jack protested, his short, stout body tensed like a spring as he turned to leave the agent’s office, fuming. “You white men may try to force us to live on a reservation—but we are Modocs. So we will make our home somewhere on Lost River … where my people have been born and cremated for centuries before your coming. If we are to die—don’t force us to die on Klamath land. Let it be among the bones of our grandfathers!”

  Chapter 2

  Early Fall 1872

  From Colorado, Seamus Donegan had pushed due north into Wyoming Territory. Company for that journey was no problem, what with all the freight outfits plying the roads north up the backside of the Rockies into Montana. From both Colorado and Utah the roads were bustling that summer of 1870.

  When he had reached the diggings, the Irishman quickly eased himself in with the hard-drinking lot hanging on by their nails to their hardscrabble existence before winter snows shut down their scanty operations. In amongst the long string of gold camps and boomtowns he asked after Ian O’Roarke and the woman.

  And kept his eye open for the gray-headed horse-breeder from Missouri—Sam Marr.

  In Nevada City he came across a man who remembered Ian and the woman. Remembered too those two small children with them. A girl and her little brother. The boy was still a babe in arms, the shopowner said, when the O’Roarkes pulled out.

  “Going where?”

  “Said they would try the California gold fields again,” with a thick Slavic accent.

  “Ian had been there before,” Seamus explained. He sighed. “I was bloody well hoping my search would end here. Now it seems I’ll be moving on west as well.”

  The shopowner laughed, wr
inging his hands on the dirty apron he had cinched around his chest, just below his armpits. “You’ll be doing nothing of the kind—less’n you plan on leaving your bones for some winter-starved wolf to gnaw on before spring.” He chuckled again, pulling the Irishman to the smudged and smoky window, pointing up the street.

  Seamus nodded as it sank in. The mountain peaks hulking over them reminded him of the Big Horns standing guard over the Piney Creeks where Carrington built his beloved fort.

  “The passes all closed up?”

  “Oh, a man could go back down to Salt Lake, I suppose. Be hard going too. Then he’d have to make his crossing down along the south, moving over the desert this time of year.”

  Seamus sighed again. “I’ll wait. And head out come spring. Been this long.” He turned back to the shopkeeper at the window. “Any idea what a man can do with his time come winter here in Montana?”

  With an easy laugh, the shopkeeper walked back to station himself behind his single, modest counter. “Lots a honest man can do if he takes a mind to. I’ve work at least one day a week for you. Others might surely find something to fill your time out too.”

  “I appreciate the offer.” He felt a bit embarrassed, as if the man were offering a handout. “But I need to find me a place to keep the horses and lay my head.”

  “Thiebalt’s—down the road. Tell him I sent you. Make you a good deal on boarding them horses. When you’re done there—come on back here and have dinner with me and the missus. We’ll fix you up something of a bed in the storeroom, if you like.”

  He held out his hand to the man. “I thank you, sir. And by the by, you ever hear of a fellow named Sam Marr? Lot older’n me—gray of hair. Stocky. Little banty rooster of a man.”

  The shopkeeper cupped his chin in a hand thoughtfully. Then wagged his head. “So many … no, I suppose not. But, there is a gent who might know of this Sam Marr. Inquire for Billy behind the bar down at Henrietta’s Roost, down the street.”