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

by Terry C. Johnston

  Seamus recalled how John Fairchild had stopped at the flaps of the colonel’s tent and turned to speak to Gillem.

  “That purgatory of the devil is where you’ll find the Modocs—I’ll lay my ranch on it.”

  Gillem grinned without humor. “We’ll see if there’s anything substantial about your hunch on the Black Ledge, Mr. Fairchild. Now, if you and the others would step aside and let the army do its job.”

  By the time the stars came out that night, Seamus had talked his way into accompanying the patrol that would be leaving in the morning, as one of three civilian packers assigned to go along. Lieutenant Thomas F. Wright of the Twelfth Infantry readily agreed, but said he would have to clear it with his company commander for the reconnaissance, Captain Evan Thomas of the Fourth Artillery.

  “Artillery?” Seamus asked.

  “Gillem wants Thomas heading things up so he and his boys can determine if cannon can be used to blast the red devils out of the rocks once the Teninos find them for us.”

  “We’re taking scouts?”

  “They’re meeting us somewhere down the line,” Wright explained. His father, George Wright, had been a brigadier general of volunteers and had commanded the Military Division of the Pacific until he drowned at sea in 1865. Young Wright had attended West Point in the forties, then served with distinction during the Civil War. “Gillem’s going to send them heliograph orders come sunrise. McKay’s to take fourteen with him from their camp in the Stronghold and meet us near that Big Sand Butte and Black Ledge everyone’s talking about.”

  With the gray of dawn creeping over the land, Seamus stood with the others that Saturday morning, 26 April, drinking steaming coffee and eating hardtack soaked in pork grease at the fires that drove a chill from the spring morning. Fifty-nine enlisted soldiers would be led by Captain Thomas and Lieutenant Wright, in addition to three more officers: Lt. Albion Howe, son of General A. P. Howe, and a Civil War veteran of Cold Harbor and Petersburg in his own right; along with lieutenants George M. Harris and Arthur Cranston.

  In command of the mule-train was head packer Louis Webber, who welcomed the offer of help from Donegan and another assistant packer. Assistant Surgeon Dr. Bernard A. Semig was assigned to accompany the scouting detail to be guided by H. C. “Bill” Ticknor, a civilian familiar with the area and surveyor of the Ticknor Road south of the Lava Beds.

  As the infantry and artillery troops lined up in double columns preparing to march out, many handed their comrades letters they had written to family back home. Those young men and those not so young were cheerful as they pulled out at sunrise, marching south into some of the most rugged country to be found in the Lava Beds. Guide Ticknor suggested they march down a wide depression that existed between two up-vaulted lava flows that had long ago heaped themselves ominously on either side of the eroded valley.

  Not long after leaving Gillem’s camp, the land began to slowly rise toward the south. Thomas ordered twelve soldiers from Company E out as skirmishers to march in front of the column, as they were forced to slow their pace in making the climb, along with the difficulty encountered upon entering the rugged terrain characterized by the passing of the two great lava flows: rocks of all sizes, from knife-sharp pebbles to house-sized boulders; cinder cones left behind by ancient geologic activity; buttes composed of crumbling black pumice.

  It was as if Seamus could almost smell the stench of the devil’s own sulfur and brimstone exuding all along their path through the wavelike layers of frozen lava.

  For better than a mile they had marched without any flankers to cover the higher ground on either side of their column. Growing more anxious as they moved farther into the unknown, bleak and forbidding country, Seamus sensed the scar on his back burn like someone had poured coal-oil down his spine and set that strip of pain afire with a match.

  On the outside of the columns, he edged up to Sergeant Robert Romer, attached to the Fourth Artillery. “Say, Sergeant. You remember those Modocs we saw far to the east when we marched out of camp this morning?”

  Romer nodded, his eyes scanning the higher elevations on the right side of their march.

  “I sure don’t feel good with Cap’n Thomas not putting out flankers.”

  “We usually push cannon around, so you see why we’re not used to this marching like foot-sloggers,” Romer replied. “I’ll go talk with the captain myself.”

  He strode up to Thomas with Donegan along.

  “It’s a good idea, Romer,” responded the artillery captain. “Mr. Wright, let’s order out some flankers.”

  A half-dozen men were ordered out on the right, another six for the left flank. Yet the farther Thomas’s men left Gillem’s camp behind, the more the flankers tended to ease back toward the column of twos.

  Growing angrier by the mile, infantry sergeant Malachi Clinton sped up to growl at Lieutenant Wright.

  “I don’t figure it’s any use forcing these fellas out any farther than they’re willing to go for now, Sergeant,” Wright said.

  “The hell, you say?” Sergeant Romer growled, disgusted. “We need flankers out, Malachi. If those privates won’t do it—and the lieutenants won’t make ’em—then it’s up to the sergeants to do it.”

  Romer strode off alone, walking the far right flank by himself, intently watching the countryside.

  Seamus grew more and more anxious as with every yard the soldiers in the columns bunched closer and closer together, purposely slowing their march as they began the tedious climb to higher country.

  “You going to cover the left flank?” Donegan asked Clinton.

  The sergeant wagged his head. “No need, mister. We haven’t seen a sign of those Injuns since we pulled away from camp.”

  Wright glanced at the Irishman, clearly disgusted with the performance of the soldiers so far on the patrol. “I haven’t been out here in the west all that long, but, Sergeant—I do know that when you don’t see Indians, that’s when you better be on the lookout for them.”

  * * *

  “Where the devil you going this morning, Patrick?” Ian O’Roarke asked of the civilian sutler who was whistling as he saddled his mule at the corral when the settler walked up with Frank and Winema Riddle. “Heading into Linkville for more supplies today?”

  “No,” McManus answered. At the outbreak of war the government had awarded him the sutlering contract for the campaign. “Been thinking some about riding out to catch up with that bunch headed down to Big Sand Butte.”

  “What the hell for?”

  McManus smiled. “See for myself some of that country, since there’s soldiers enough going that way for Gillem.” From the corner of his eye he suddenly caught some movement off to his side. “Hey, what’d you do that for?”

  He lunged for Winema as she slapped the rump of his mule, sending it galloping off through the tents into the soldier camp.

  “Goddamn you!” he whirled, glaring at the woman, then Frank Riddle. “What’s got in your wife, Frank?” He ripped the bridle Winema had taken off the mule from her hand. “Gimme that—goddamn!”

  McManus stood there frustrated, swearing, shaking a fist at the frightened woman as Frank pushed her behind him, pointing his own finger at the sutler.

  “Stay back, McManus—Toby’s trying to tell you something.”

  He stopped in his tracks. “What the hell’s she trying to say? That your squaw don’t like me?”

  “I like you, McManus. You good white man,” Winema started to explain. “I like your wife.”

  He shook with anger. “Then why go and run off my mule like that?”

  “Don’t go with soldiers.”

  Ian craned closer. “She … you mean you don’t want him to go with that bunch marched out this morning?”

  Winema nodded.

  “Why?”

  “I have bad feeling.”

  Ian rocked back on his heels, his eyes moving to Frank. “Same kind of bad feeling she had when Canby and the others went down to meet Jack in the meadow?” />
  Frank nodded.

  But McManus still refused to believe. “Why there’s over sixty armed soldiers in that bunch—against only forty some Modocs—if there was to be a fight. And I can’t see it likely that—”

  “I run mule off for the sake of your wife.” Winema came around Frank at last, her hands supplicating McManus. “Please,” she begged. “Please! Stay in camp—for sake of your wife.”

  Chapter 28

  April 26, 1873

  The last two miles reaching the Black Ledge had proved a hard march for the soldiers. New topsoil lay atop the older lava flow broken down by millions of years of weathering. In that soil among the sharp-edged stones the size of a man’s fist emerged the new green bunch-grass, scrub oak and sage. As they climbed, the soldiers entered a land of stunted mahogany trees that would at least provide some shade for the coming noon hour.

  For the past two hours the soldiers had been observed by Captain Jack, who had brought along twenty-two warriors.

  At first Scar-Faced Charley and his men had been worried the approaching white men intended on attacking their camp of women and children. But when the soldiers kept on moving directly south instead of angling east into the rougher lava-flow country where Jack’s band had their camp, the Modocs began to skulk along the soldiers’ path to the Big Sand Butte. At times the warriors were no farther than a half-mile from the white men, remaining hidden behind the higher ridges bordering the valley. And as the soldiers bunched tighter and tighter together, it became easier and easier to watch them. Especially when the soldiers marched slower and slower.

  Even though Captain Jack’s warriors had to cross much more difficult terrain, they were able to keep up with the soldiers’ plodding progress.

  As the sun climbed to mid-sky, Jack and Charley conferred, figuring the objective of the white men was the tall singular butte near at hand. Jack ordered his warriors to hurry on ahead to set up an ambush in a good place on the far side of the Black Ledge where the soldiers would pass.

  As ordered, the warriors climbed the eastern slopes of the butte and concealed themselves behind outcroppings of black rock and settled in to wait for the soldiers who would soon be marching beneath them to their deaths. There was plenty of cover to hide them, what with the grass and sage and stunted mahogany trees.

  The soldiers came on, marching tightly together at their plodding pace, even the few skirmishers in the vanguard slowing now as they climbed the gradual slope up Black Ledge.

  “Once they are over the top, and past that large depression,” Charley explained to Jack, “we can fire on them at once and kill them all.”

  Jack nodded, approving the plan, just as one of the soldiers leading the group two hundred feet below them held up his arm and shouted to the rest.

  “They’ve seen us?” asked the chief anxiously.

  Charley’s eyes grew big with fear that they had been discovered. But below them the soldiers did a very strange thing.

  They stopped their march far short of the planned ambush site—then milled about a moment while they stacked their rifles. This done, they gathered in knots to plop in the shade of the mahogany trees.

  * * *

  Seamus joined the rest as the soldiers broke ranks and settled on the sparse, new grasses in the patches of welcome shade, while guide Ticknor assured Captain Thomas.

  “Ain’t a Modoc in fifteen miles, Captain. I know this country—and those damned Modocs too.”

  They pulled their haversacks from their arms and drank greedily at the canteens before digging out their lunch. Some men yanked off their dusty broughams, rubbing their sweaty, aching feet with a primitive, carnal pleasure as they joked and jabbered like a bunch of boys playing hooky, slipping away from school to cavort at the local swimming hole.

  “Say, Malachi,” hollered a soldier. “Sing us that song you was trying to teach us last night.”

  Sergeant Clinton beamed. “You mean the one Perry’s cavalry boys taught me about Cap’n Jack?”

  “Yeah,” answered another soldier. “The one about Cap’n Jack!”

  Clinton swiped crumbs of hardtack from his bushy mustache and downed a swallow of lukewarm water from his canteen before he attempted his off-key rendition of the current popular song.

  “I’m Captain Jack of the Lava Beds,

  I’m cock o’ the walk and chief of the reds.

  I can lift the hair and scalp the heads

  Of the whole United States Army!”

  Most of the men, officers included, roared with glee at that first verse and begged Clinton to sing more.

  “Let me have my lunch, boys—then I’ll teach all the words to you.”

  Seamus nudged Romer and asked quietly, “Where are those Warm Springs scouts supposed to meet up with us all morning?”

  “That’s a good question,” replied Captain Thomas, overhearing the civilian. He stood, dusting off his blue britches, ramming the cork back in the neck of his canteen. “They damned well should have joined up by now.”

  “We’ve seen ’em from time to time all morning, sir,” Lieutenant Harris said as he too stood. “It’s almost like they didn’t want to march with us, sir.”

  “C’mon, Mr. Harris,” Thomas replied. “Bring a couple signalmen and their heliograph with you.” He pointed up the slope of the tall butte. “We’ll go up there, give the country a look for McKay’s scouts—then signal back to camp that we’ve seen nothing and will be turning back soon.”

  Minutes later Lieutenant Wright approached a pair of soldiers finishing their meal and pulling on their boots. “You men—go up that little ridge to the east there. Keep an eye out for us. I don’t want any of Captain Jack’s butchers sneaking up on us from the place yonder where we spotted that smoke yesterday.”

  As an afterthought, the two infantrymen picked up their rifles and plodded toward the slope. They were halfway up when the first bullets from long range cut the air around them. Diving and dodging, the pair scurried downhill.

  Up the slope, Captain Thomas turned at the first shot, his face gone chalky. Grabbing the shoulder of the signalman kneeling over his heliographic equipment on the slope, the captain demanded, “Are you set up to send to camp?”

  “I—I am, sir!”

  “Then by damn tell them we’ve found the Indians—behind the bluff!”

  It was the only message received by Lieutenant John Quincy Adams in the signal tower at Gillem’s camp.

  Almost immediately firing broke out above the soldiers on a wide front. In panic some of the men dove alone or in pairs for cover among the fissures in the black rocks, without weapons or their shoes. Others jostled and fought among themselves for their clothing and weapons, knocking over the stacks of rifles.

  It was precious minutes before any fire was returned at the Modocs. But in that time Jack’s warriors moved one by one down the butte until they ringed that wide depression where the soldiers huddled. For the most part the warriors were behind the rocky ridges bordering that hollow the white men had chosen for the noon stop.

  Seamus slid up beside Sergeant Romer. “We’re trapped.”

  “Like fish in a barrel here, mister. Only way out is to make a dash through their flanking fire—or charge face-on up that slope into the jaws of it.”

  “This bunch listen to you?” Donegan asked.

  “Look at ’em,” Romer growled, indicating some who were breaking and running. “They’re peeing their pants right now. This bunch won’t make a charge like that!”

  “Mr. Wright!” barked Thomas as he made it back to the depression, bullets spouting earth around his heels.

  “Sir?”

  “Rally some of these men and take that ledge.”

  Wright swallowed hard. “That’s more than five hundred yards of open ground, Captain.”

  Thomas’s eyes implored him. “We’re taking the hardest fire from that quarter, Lieutenant. And this patrol’s done for if something isn’t done about that bunch of snipers.”

  “We’ll
open up a path, sir,” Wright replied with a swallow, turning to call upon his company to follow him in the assault.

  “Pray these boys can make it through what you open up, Lieutenant,” Thomas whispered as he turned to dash off to the southwest.

  In a matter of seconds after Wright disappeared from the depression with his men, Seamus heard a volley of shots, then the rattle of withering gunshots. A handful of Wright’s soldiers came scurrying back in the face of devastating fire. The rest were scattering off Black Ledge, running north for their lives.

  Up top of the rocky ledges, Donegan watched one of the older Modocs pointing with his rifle, sending some of his warriors to follow the fleeing soldiers.

  They’ll follow those sojurs down like dogs—picking them off one by one, Seamus thought as he brought the Henry to his shoulder again and squeezed off a shot at the warrior directing the attack. The bullet smashed against the top of the ledge, splattering and kicking up a spray of black dust.

  “Wright needs help,” Thomas was thinking out loud as he listened, watched, and grew more despondent.

  “I’ll go, sir,” the young lieutenant volunteered.

  Thomas turned to Arthur Cranston. “See if you can drive them back and give Wright a chance to break out.”

  Cranston could find only five soldiers who would accompany him into the open. Three were from Artillery Battery A, the other two from Wright’s own infantry outfit. Seamus watched the lieutenant go, then decided to join the six. He reached the edge of the depression in time to watch Cranston turn his men to the west—right into the face of some Modoc flanking fire.

  The six troopers lasted as many seconds, driven back and shot down to the man, their bodies shattered on the black rocks.

  His heart in his throat, Seamus dropped to his belly behind some gray sage. You’ve not been in it like this for a long time, Seamus. Hopeless, it is. Perhaps this is it—one by one … by one—

  “Mister!”

  He turned to find Ticknor hollering at him, waving at him. Behind the guide, Thomas was leading what he had left of men. Something over thirty.