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

by Terry C. Johnston

  He whispered, and listened to some rocks tumble nearby, sure that a Modoc was creeping, crawling, skulking in on him out of the darkness. His finger was stuck to the trigger of his pistol—dried in blood. With his left hand he found the hammer still cocked, and prepared to sell his life when a weak voice answered his.

  “That you, Irishman?”

  “Doc?”

  “It’s me, lad.”

  “You hit bad, Doc?”

  “No,” and Semig coughed up some phlegm. “Just the leg. Lost a lotta blood and both bones broke clean through.”

  “Anyone else around you alive?”

  There was a long silence that made Seamus grow fearful Semig had passed out again. It made him feel even more alone than before.

  “Doc? You hear me, Doc?”

  “No—no one else around me appears alive, Irishman. How—How about you. Can you crawl over here in the dark to help me?”

  “I ain’t moving good at all, Doc,” he tried to explain, feeling guilty that he should try. “My shoulder—whole front of me covered in blood—can’t feel my arm no more.”

  He listened to some far-off sound of some rocks clattering. There were more and more over the next few moments. Then Semig whispered harshly.

  “You got a weapon, Irishman?”

  “Yeah—my revolver. You?”

  “Can’t find it—not now anyway. But just listen. Those rocks…”

  “I heard ’em.”

  “If that’s the red devils coming back to take us alive—you take that pistol of yours and shoot in the direction of my voice.”

  Seamus realized he too did not want to be fodder for the Modocs. “Don’t worry, Doc. I’ll take you with me. We won’t let the bastirds get us alive.”

  “Bless you, Irishman. I don’t know if I’ll come out of this alive—so I’ll pray now for a while that the Lord our God will bless you for your kindness to a dying man.”

  “You’re not dying, Doc. Not—Not just yet.”

  “But I’m very, very tired. I think I want to sleep now.”

  “You get that leg of yours bandaged up yet?” Seamus asked, of a sudden frantic that the physician had not ministered to himself since the battle.

  He finally answered after several minutes. “No. But I’m a doctor. I should know if I’m going to be all right. I’m just … tired now.”

  “Doc?” A few seconds later as more of the distant rattle of rocks floated to his ears again, he called out once more, “Doc?”

  And for the first time that night the chill breeze that brushed over his shirt drenched in blood made Seamus Donegan feel cold inside.

  And more alone than he had been since coming to Amerikay.

  * * *

  They sounded far off at first, those falling rocks. Tumbling from the high places in his mind. Clattering, skittering as they fell.

  Then he realized it was not a dream but part of his very real ordeal as he blinked his eyes open to find the sky going gray along the east behind the tall butte above him. The sun would be coming up soon enough.

  It only made him thirst all the more for something to drink.

  The blood on his shirt had grown stiff and cold. He shuddered, his lips quivering with the chill made more painful with each new gust of breeze that swept down into the depression.

  He stiffened instinctually with the new rattle of rocks falling. Closer and closer still. Much nearer than they had been last night. Coming out of the northeast—where the Modocs had come yesterday at noon.

  Yesterday seemed so long ago. The right arm tingled with cold. As painful as it was, that tingle brought him hope that he would not lose it. He could hold out until they came today. Surely someone had heard the shooting yesterday. Surely Gillem would send out a rescue party today at dawn.

  It was dawn now. He had only to wait until about noon.

  The rocks rattled again, a stone’s throw away now. Closer still.

  He brought up his weary left arm, unsure of his aim, and saw the hammer was cocked back. Drawing up his left leg, he balanced the barrel on his knee and prepared to take the head off the first Modoc who poked his head over the lip of the ledge. Four.

  Maybe he could take four of them with him before he shot the doctor, then himself.

  “Glory!” came a voice to his far right.

  Seamus jerked, frightened.

  There were dusty kepis and dirty faces popping up all around him now, looking down into the shallow depression where Thomas’s men had waged their last fight.

  He started to cry when he recognized his uncle’s drawn and haggard face, the tracks of Ian’s first tears starting to smear the black dust on his cheeks.

  For the longest time Ian sat hunched over him, letting his tears drop one by one on Seamus’s devastated shirt, mixing with the dried, browned blood—not knowing whether to pick his nephew up and cradle him in his arms or not.

  “Hold me, Ian. Just hold me and tell me it’s really you.”

  Seamus swallowed the pain come of that rough embrace, listening as the soldiers continued to call out to one another as they found Semig alive. Then another. And another. And finally another who had somehow lasted the attack and the mutilation suffered by those back along the ledge.

  And beyond that they had lasted the long, black night of fear and despair, and aloneness.

  As much as it hurt to cling here to his uncle, Seamus did not want to let go.

  But a soldier came to help O’Roarke, and together they bound up the right arm, lashing it against Donegan’s body, and then gave him another drink from a warm canteen. Water had never tasted that good on his tongue.

  “It’s almost enough to make a man swear off whiskey, that water is,” Seamus whispered to Ian as they watched the soldiers doing what they could for the rest of the wounded, those few survivors of the Black Ledge Massacre.

  “Whiskey? You’re a damned Irishman, Seamus Donegan,” Ian said, his eyes going moist “Your blood’s half whiskey as it is!”

  “I was scared last night, Ian,” he said later when he came to again as the sun climbed high in the sky and Green’s men had fanned out, bringing in the bodies of the dead they had found scattered over a wide area.

  O’Roarke nodded. “I was fearful too, Seamus. I’d lost my own brother by something foolish. I did not want to lose you too.”

  “All night I heard the rocks clattering.”

  Ian smiled. “Weren’t no Modocs, son. Us: Green’s outfit—where we spent the night, piling up rocks to protect ourselves from the wind and Injuns.”

  “The wind made it so cold…”

  “I know, Seamus. You hear it blowing softly at first. Then finally it seems like it’s blowing right through you, making the pure marrow of you cold with it.” He watched some soldiers tearing up sagebrush they threw on the fires to heat water to wash the wounds of the survivors. “To think you laid here all night—and we weren’t no more than a few hundred yards off from this ground while you lay here, alone.”

  “Never want to be that cold, or alone again, Ian.”

  “Perhaps you’ll think about staying on with me and Dimity now. Help me—help make this a place that belongs to you too. That’s all I ask of you, lad.”

  He nearly choked on the thick ball of sentiment, his eyes welling. “I’ll think about it … this staying with you.”

  Chapter 30

  April 27–May 7, 1873

  That morning of the twenty-seventh was spent gathering the wounded who could be found and caring for them with what warm water and torn rags could do. An occasional Modoc was spied on the skyline of some distant ridge, curiously watching the knots of soldiers clambering over the bloody ground.

  In the afternoon, as cold, gray clouds scudded out of the mountains looming to the south laden with frozen moisture, Green ordered patrols out to locate the dead. First came the cold rain, which quickly turned to icy sleet mixed with wet snow as the soldiers clattered over the slickened black rocks, dragging out the naked, bloodied, mutilated dead.<
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  The Modocs had killed most with shots to the head, then taken guns and ammunition, canteens and boots, uniforms and hats. Leaving the silent dead among the bunch-grass and mahogany trees dotting Black Ledge.

  With the weather closing in and the falling of the sun, Green made a decision to leave the dead enlisted men in one group there in the depression, hidden as well as possible beneath sagebrush gathered by his soldiers. He would remove the five dead officers strapped to mules and the nine wounded tied down on stretchers, forging their way across the forbidding expanse of the Lava Beds as night was calling close at hand.

  Lieutenant Boutelle mustered the rescuers into three squads: the first group would carry the stretchers for a distance, while a second group carried the rifles of those handling the stretchers and a third group rested, ready to relieve those bearing the wounded.

  McKay and his scouts took the lead, guiding the solemn procession into the bleak purgatory that lay between them and Gillem’s camp.

  Up and down, climbing and descending, the stretcher-bearers fought the cruel terrain while other soldiers followed behind, weighed down, their arms loaded with rifles. The men grumbled, their arms aching from the load of stretchers or weapons, wishing they could use lanterns to light the uneven ground where they often stumbled and fell, crying out. Yet not one man among them failed to realize that any light might bring the feared Modocs down upon them as they clattered on into the night later described by one soldier “as black as a wolf’s mouth.”

  They stopped to rest beneath the battering of freezing snow and driving wind, more and more frequently as the night wore on. And each time the stretcher-bearers found themselves more alone: each succeeding stop meaning more and more of the others had abandoned them, hurrying on ahead to the safety of the soldier camp. As much as Boutelle tried, he could not rally enough men to return to the stretchers to relieve those who wearily carried the nine wounded.

  The lieutenant finally determined that his muscle was worth more through that long march than were the bars sewn on those weary shoulders.

  During that dark night’s ordeal, pulling the dead and wounded over the rough ground, the soldiers watched distant watch-fires lit on the high ground to the east. If a man were to look long enough, he could discern the flickering movement of Modoc warriors circling their fires. Such a sight did nothing but make each hour seem longer, each mile more excruciating than the last, waiting for the Modocs to come sweeping down out of the night.

  So dark was their loneliness on that march, that many of the men at the front of each stretcher had to keep a hand out to tap on the last man of the stretcher before them. That, or intently listen to the sound of broughams and boots stumbling over rocks up ahead, guided only by those noises on into the icy darkness.

  After midnight the signal fires were blotted out by the full fury of the raging storm, blowing before it sheets of driving, lancing snow. As difficult as it was for a man to keep his bearings in that swirling buckshot of white, the strong-hearted pushed ahead relentlessly.

  But by sunrise the last of the stretcher-bearers came within sight of the signal tower high on the bluff, like a homing beacon on a rocky coast in that first light of day. Miraculously, only one of those nine wounded brought in about six A.M. would die in the days to come: Lieutenant George Harris, shot in the lower back.

  It was only then that Gillem realized the full extent of the destruction. Twelve men were unaccounted for, not found during the day-long search of the rocks.

  But what was even more telling was that in one brief flurry of riflefire, Captain Thomas had lost almost as many men as the army had lost in all battles since 29 November. Two thirds of his patrol had been killed or wounded by enemy fire. Those who weren’t injured had run, abandoning the field and their comrades.

  “Wright was dropped when a bullet pierced his groin. He was unable to walk,” explained the young corporal named Noble from Battery A, talking to all those who quietly listened throughout that day to the many individual tales of horror. “That’s when most of his men jumped and run. As Wright gritted his teeth, the rest of us watched, while the lieutenant buried his watch. He wasn’t ’bout to let them savages get the watch his wife give him three Christmases ago.”

  “How many of you were left at that time?” asked Major Green.

  “I wasn’t counting, sir. I was shooting best I could.”

  “Try to figure for me, Corporal.”

  “Seven … maybe eight is all—’cluding me. No more’n that—because the rest had gone down in blood … or run off, deserting us like a pack of sheep.”

  Gillem drew himself up, the stress of the defeat clearly etched on his pudgy face as he tried to make some sense of the senseless. “I’m going to officially commend every last enlisted man who died with Captain Thomas. Yet, it seems to me that two men seem to require special mention. Their conduct was the subject of commendation by those—there is no easier way to say this—by those who fled the fight … as well as those who remained behind and survived.”

  There was a nervous shuffling of boots and a patter of clearing throats in the hospital tent as Gillem glanced over the beds bearing those who had been wounded at the Black Ledge.

  “These gallant men were First Sergeant Robert Romer, Fourth Artillery, and First Sergeant Malachi Clinton, Twelfth Infantry. Both were soldiers to the last, who not only stayed their ground to the end, but attempted to enlist others to do so as well. Sergeant Romer was killed at his commander’s side, and was found with Captain Thomas. Sergeant Clinton was killed holding ground with Lieutenant Wright.”

  Seamus waited until the officers and their staff had left the tent before he sat up and spoke to his uncle and Commissioner Meacham, still confined to the cot beside his. “Those soldiers died without taking one damned Modoc with ’em,” he whispered harshly. “A lot that makes me bleed inside.”

  Ian watched his nephew wince as he settled himself. “That collarbone of yours won’t heal, along with that hole the bullet made clear down through your shoulder, if you don’t keep the arm still, lad.”

  “It don’t hurt that much, Ian.” He smiled weakly.

  Meacham said, “I’d like to know if Captain Jack and the rest are dancing in the Lava Beds over the scalps of those poor soldiers.”

  Seamus grinned even more, his teeth bright in lamplight. “They’d be doing less dancing and more running—if they knew what was good for ’em.”

  “Why would you say that?” Ian asked. “What with the way they’ve soundly whipped the army time and again.”

  Seamus gazed at his uncle. “Why, Cap’n Jack and his renegates ain’t yet had the pleasure of meeting the iron-ass General Jefferson C. Davis.”

  On the twenty-eighth Gillem sent a detail to Black Ledge, assigned to retrieve the bodies of the dead enlisted men who had been left the day before beneath a scant pile of sagebrush as the sky had unloaded with sleet and icy snow.

  “They found nothing of the bodies except ashes and bones,” Ian whispered in Donegan’s ear, fearful of alarming the other wounded men in the hospital tent.

  Seamus grit his teeth. “They burned those sojurs?”

  Ian nodded. “That patrol came back in pretty riled up against the Modocs.”

  “It’s about time somebody got riled up, don’t you think?”

  “Colonel Davis coming soon.”

  “He is, eh?”

  “Sounds like he’s the sort to kick the Modocs’ asses.”

  “I’ll be up in a few days to help Davis spread his special cheer across Modoc land,” Seamus said, starting to rise in adjusting his position.

  Ian gently pushed him back into his blanket pillows. “You’re staying here until Cabaniss says your fit enough to go home to stay with Dimity and the children.”

  He squinted at his uncle severely. “If there’s fighting to be done—I’ll not be going home to be with the women and children. By the saints, Uncle—half me own blood is O’Roarke blood—”

  “And the other
half is fool, dunderheaded Donegan blood.”

  “Damn you, Ian O’Roarke,” he spat angrily. “I can’t have no fool blood in me, because you yourself told me the other half is pure Irish whiskey!”

  * * *

  Colonel Jefferson C. Davis himself reached Gillem’s camp four days later, on Friday, 2 May, having suffered a long trip in coming by train, coach and horseback to the Modoc theater.

  Colonel Alvan C. Gillem handed Davis a telegram received before his arrival.

  The Western Union Telegraph Company

  San Fran Cal Apr 30 1873

  TO COL J C DAVIS

  LAVA BEDS VIA YREKA

  I WISH YOU TO STUDY THE SITUATION CAREFULLY AND LET ME KNOW IF POSSIBLE WHAT IS NECESSARY TO BE DONE LET THERE BE NO MORE FRUITLESS SACRIFICES OF OUR TROOPS THERE CAN BE NO NECESSITY FOR EXPOSING DETACHMENTS TO SUCH SLAUGHTER AS OCCURRED ON TWENTY SIXTH ASCERTAIN WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT AFFAIR IF THE TROOPS OR THE NUMBER OF WHITE OR INDIAN SCOUTS & GUIDES AT THE LAVA BEDS ARE NOT SUFFICIENT TRY TO INFORM ME HOW MANY MORE ARE NEEDED WE SEEM TO BE ACTING SOMEWHAT IN THE DARK

  J M SCHOFIELD

  MAJ GEN’L

  From Washington itself as well, William Tecumseh Sherman sent a wire to Davis, telling the colonel that all he had to do was ask and he, Sherman, would immediately dispatch the entire Fourth Regiment then stationed in Arkansas. More raw recruits were on their way to San Francisco from New York City.

  But green soldiers were the last thing Davis needed. The colonel had to determine a way of locating troops with the sand and tallow enough to fight a dirty war where there was no front line as there had been in the Civil War. Almost eight years to the day after the armistice was signed at McLean’s farmhouse in Appomattox, the army was finally figuring out that Indians fought without rules of engagement.

  Worse still, among what he had for an army in the Lava Beds, Davis found enlisted morale dangerously low, while their contempt for the courage and effectiveness of their officers was exceedingly high. The first order of business for the colonel appeared to be that he take the reins into hand—ordering rest and restructuring of the entire command while he worked on this critical matter of morale and gained the trust of his enlisted.