The women inside the Crawley cabin drew back the heavy bolt and flung open the door as the first of the men reached the muddy porch.
Modoc bullets randomly slapped the side of the house and smashed windows. The Indians shot from long range, concealed down in the hillside sagebrush. A few daring warriors had mounted and rode back and forth provocatively at the end of the slope, daring the white men to come out and fight. Beyond them, on the far side of the village, the women and children continued their flight.
Dorris and O’Roarke quickly took a head count. Every man had made it out of the village. But Thurber was dead before he was dragged up the hill. Another settler’s arm hung shattered and useless from its bloody socket. It would have to come off, and soon. Three more were wounded and oozing blood from the wild melee when the shooting broke out.
Ian wiped the back of his hand across his dry lips as the Modocs drew off. The women in the cabin sobbed while some of the men cursed their pain and anger. Some of them talked in hushed tones—for the first time wondering why they had not seen or heard from any of the settlers living on south of Crawley’s.
Brown bit his lip and looked at Crawley.
Dennis Crawley quietly admitted again that they had not warned anyone below his place. “Brown and me … we both figured it would be wrapped up quick—with no bother,” he moaned.
All Ian was thinking about was Dimity and the children, far to the southwest for the time being—praying they would remain safe.
“Damn you, bastards,” he hurled his oath. “There’s Injuns busted loose, and them poor folks don’t know they’re coming.”
* * *
In Hooker Jim’s heart boiled the blood of vengeance.
Less than a mile below the Crawley cabin, he halted the fourteen warriors who were covering the retreat of the women and children along the shore of the lake. They collapsed into the sagebrush and grass, heaving with their exertion.
Three of his warriors were wounded: Miller’s Charley, Black Jim and Duffy. But there was more rage electrifying that tiny clearing than there was fear of the white man and his soldiers.
“They have all turned on us!” Hooker Jim growled.
“I say we let the spirits take care of the white man!” Curly Headed Doctor said, leaping to his feet, stomping the beaten, soggy grass in a sudden chant for power.
“It is a time for fighting—not for dancing,” Hooker Jim replied.
Curly Headed Doctor stomped in his direction, shaking a small fan of withered feathers. “Yes—it is a time for fighting. The spirits are with us.”
“We must get our women and children to the Stronghold where Jack will take his people,” Miller’s Charley said as he inspected the bullet wound in his thigh.
“Good!” Hooker Jim replied, rising in a leap. “We will leave a trail of blood and white scalps on our way to the Lava Beds!”
“We should kill them all?” Black Jim asked, fear again etching his face.
“Every one!” Curly Headed Doctor shrieked. “The white man came into our camp this morning … not his soldiers. The pale-skinned men who always claimed to be our friends—then they turned their guns on us, our women and children.” He threw his head back, cackling, raising his chin to the sky. “The spirits cry out for their blood!”
“Let us go,” Hooker Jim said, leading them out of the clearing. “This morning we’ll give the spirits so much blood they’ll choke on it!”
Two hundred yards down the trail skirting the north shore of Tule Lake, the warriors ran into two white settlers who had heard the shooting and were coming to find out what was going on. Greasy smoke burst from the trees lining the road. The two horses reared, pitching their riders.
Wendolen Nus spilled from his saddle, dead from a head wound. In a heap, Joe Penning landed in an ice-slicked puddle, unconscious and barely breathing from the gaping hole in his chest, which slicked the warming ground beneath him with shiny pink.
“This one’s not dead,” Long Jim snarled, bringing the muzzle of his rifle down to Penning’s head.
“Leave him,” One-Eyed Mose said. “Don’t waste your bullet. He is as good as dead now.”
They moved on, herding the women and children toward the scattered settlers’ cabins hugging the lakeshore meadows.
Three and a half miles from Crawley’s place, they fell on a group of Australian immigrants just arriving in their fields for the morning’s labors. The shooting was over in a matter of seconds. The team of horses pulling the settlers’ wagon bolted, taking their clattering load back down the road. William Boddy, his son-in-law, William Schira, and Boddy’s two stepsons, Richard and William Cravigan, lay dead in the muddy hayfield. The Modocs pounced upon the bodies, mutilating them, tearing off each scalp with a sucking pop.
Back at the cabins, Mrs. Schira heard the frightened team clattering her way down the hard, frozen road. The animals skidded into the yard with the empty wagon. She called out for her mother. Together they bolted from the cabin and went running up the road, long skirts flying. Knowing something terrible had befallen the menfolk.
Halfway to the fields they slid to a halt in the icy ruts of that road, clutching one another in fright as the grim-faced, blood-splattered Modocs appeared like apparitions from the woods.
“We no hurt you,” Hooker Jim explained in his poor English. Like most Modocs, over the years of contact he had learned a passing amount of the white man’s tongue from those friendly miners in Yreka.
The women shrieked, trying to escape. Four of the warriors leaped behind them. Their dark faces drawn, eyes like ten-hour coals of hate.
“We want men. More men in your place?”
“N-No,” Mrs. Boddy stammered. Her daughter was sobbing. “No more … don’t hurt us—please … please—”
“We want men,” Curly Headed Doctor explained, stepping up with a wild, crazed expression twisting his face. He held up his hands to the women, palms out. “This is Boddy’s blood. Look, I drink it!” He licked his fingers clean, relishing it as the women shrieked, sobbing, clutching one another in terror.
“We are Modocs,” Hooker Jim explained. “White man and soldiers—they kill women. We Modocs. We no kill women. Go find Boddy, in the woods.” He pointed behind his warriors. “Go now. You are safe.”
Not much farther to the east around the shore of Tule Lake, Jim’s fleeing Modocs came upon the land claimed by brothers William and W. K. Brotherton, a spread squatting directly upon the border between Oregon and California. Both were near their cabin, chopping firewood among a stand of junipers when the warriors were upon them without warning. They fell without a sound.
Hooker Jim remounted his men and moved a few hundred yards on south into California. On the road nearing Bloody Point, they ran across settler Henry Miller.
“Where you go?” Jim asked the white man as the Modocs surrounded him in the middle of the icy road.
His eyes grew wide with suspicion and fear. He licked his lips gone dry. “To Linkville, Hooker Jim. I have some … need some supplies there.”
Jim inched his pony closer. “Why you no tell us the soldiers come?”
He coughed, trying to chuckle. “S-Soldiers? What soldiers? Honest, Hooker Jim—I don’t know nothing of any soldiers.”
“He didn’t tell us the soldiers were coming,” Curly Headed Doctor growled in Modoc to the rest. “Henry Miller said he would warn us—he didn’t.”
Miller tried to duck as Hooker Jim’s rifle came up, but the bullet met him full in the face, blowing out the back of his head. His body spilled from the back of the pony, sprawled in the icy ruts, and voided its bowels, steamy on the frosty air.
From there Hooker Jim led his warriors down the east side of Tule Lake, where they ran across two herders tending some sheep belonging to the Brothertons. At the first sight of the armed Modocs, the twelve-year-old son of William Brotherton turned to flee. Bullets whined overhead as young Joseph leaped over the scattering sheep, fleeing on foot and heading for the main house. In t
hat next moment, German-born Nicholas Schroeder clambered aboard his horse. The warriors pursued, firing until they hit the sheepherder. His body still quivered in death throes when they set upon it with their knives.
Mrs. Brotherton had come running at the first sound of gunfire, carrying a Winchester repeater and finding her son sprinting toward her. She handed young Joseph a pistol then fired a series of shots at the advancing Modocs while she slowly retreated back to the cabin. There the two joined another son and Mrs. Swan, a Klamath woman who lived with the German sheepherder. From the pantry the four quickly dragged out fifty-weight sacks of flour to bulwark the walls. Mrs. Swan and the boy plopped down behind the sacks while the cool-headed Mrs. Brotherton bored auger holes through the house walls.
In the meantime the Modocs had crept up behind Henry Miller’s cabin, standing only some fifty yards from the Brotherton’s place. For the better part of an hour the warriors kept up a hot fire, while bullets still came from the main cabin.
It was not worth the trouble, or the wait, the Modocs decided. They mounted up and plodded off to find easier quarry. There would be a total of fourteen to mark the passing of Curly Headed Doctor and his zealots that bloody day.
Christopher Erasmus, Robert Alexander, John Tober, Adam Shillingbow and Frank Follins—one by one fell that late icy morning along the eastern shore of Tule Lake as the Modocs fled south for the Lava Beds.
To the safety of the Stronghold among that great volcanic eruption where the Lost River Modocs would prepare for the coming siege.
* * *
Seamus had heard the gunfire from across the river—a few shots clustered together, then a flurry, and finally a dying away. Minutes later more random shots had cracked the air on the far side of Lost River. Eventually those too tapered off by the time Captain Jack’s village was burning on the west side.
Jackson mounted up the wounded who could ride and his platoon, moving north upriver to the Stukel Ford.
Left behind to complete the destruction of the camp were Lieutenant Boutelle and his platoon, along with the Irishman.
No sooner was Jackson gone upstream than gunfire suddenly rattled the trees surrounding the village clearing. Boutelle’s soldiers dove for cover, hollering warnings and shrieking in surprise as the Modocs whooped, making themselves brave for their counterattack.
Lead whistled overhead, thunking into the earthen lodges, splintering drying racks for boned fish. A good half of Boutelle’s men huddled suicidally behind a lodge, refusing to budge. Seamus was among them after a wild dash across open ground.
Donegan’s chest heaved as he hoarsely rasped his words. “I suggest you boys start using them rifles of yours—if you plan on any of us making it out of here with our scalps!”
“There’s been enough killing for the day,” one of the braver spouted off.
Donegan snorted. “Not for the Modocs, there ain’t. They plan on doing some more—and now. Use those bleeming rifles or the Modocs will have your hair inside of a handful of minutes!”
One by one they turned from him, loading cartridges in their Springfields and finding a place to return the Indian fire.
Across the open ground at the center of the village, Donegan found Boutelle watching him taking command of the reluctant soldiers. The lieutenant saluted quickly before he went back to firing his sidearm.
Within minutes the gunfire coming from the surrounding woods began to die off. Then the rustling of leaves and brush faded on the freezing air.
Boutelle’s men were alone once more in the eerie quiet of the smoldering village.
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.
Devil's Backbone: The Modoc War, 1872-3 Page 7
