Читать книгу Shaman's Dream: The Modoc War - Lu Boone's Mattson - Страница 19

A week before Christmas of the same year, 1869, Meacham was bundled, half-frozen, onto the back of his bay, shuffling down the defile that passed for a road, toward the so-called ‘town’ of Linkville, Oregon. Meacham told himself it already looked godforsaken, this place trader George Nurse had started a couple of years back. Yankee faith and optimism made manifest in a clapboard shack hotel, a store, scattered shanties and a saloon or two on the banks of the Link River connecting Upper and Lower Klamath Lakes. Linkville was held together with baling wire, eager for the settlers who were sure to come, the hope of the few who were already there. It was, some said, more in need of missionaries than even the Indians. This time of year the wind blew ruthlessly off the Upper Klamath Lake, down the ravine that led in from the north, from the direction of the agency.

And at home in Salem, three hundred miles away -- a lifetime away -- his wife Orpha and the children went ahead without him, preparing for the season.

The little company of soldiers he had finally managed to beg from the fort had been split in two: half in front of, half behind the string of wagons. He had bargained mightily to get them. Lieutenant Goodale had offered only six, and those grudgingly. Meacham had been forced to agree to have the soldiers’ horses shod, agree to provide his own teamsters and packers, before the number got raised to a dozen. Now the collars of their blue army duffle coats were turned up against the wind, their caps pulled low over their ears. Their pace, tediously slow a mile or two earlier, had quickened as the horses -- or more likely the riders -- sniffed relief in the poor cluster of shacks before them.

Soon the column would halt, and the troopers would be left behind until sent for, to find whatever comfort they could in the town. Judging by the steadily accelerating pace of the line, it seemed they anticipated they could locate some.

He had sent his emissaries on ahead to Lost River, two Klamath men with Modoc wives, bearing his invitation: Meet me with your sub-chiefs at Link River bridge so we talk. But the word had come back just as Ivan had promised it would.

“If this Meacham wants to see me,” Keintpoos had said, “it is he who must come to me. I am as big a man as he is.”

Now, watching the two mounted figures coming toward them from the town, Meacham groaned, reflecting that he and the rest of the party still had half-a-day’s journey ahead of them. He was so stiff that even the thought of moving pained him, insofar as he could feel anything at all. Numb feet, numb fingers and nose. But an exquisitely aching backside, he discovered. It had been much too easy, he told himself ruefully, to say “yes” to this that spring afternoon in the White House.

It had taken more than two weeks to put this party together according to Ivan’s prescription. Moving the line forward, Meacham looked back over his envoys. With the soldiers dropped off in the town until sent for and the wagons to follow the next day, the group could hardly be considered menacing. He had taken only Knapp and Ivan together with Doctor McKay, whom he appointed to serve temporarily as Acting Superintendent for Indian Affairs. There were the two Modoc women and their Klamath husbands -- intermarried couples, meant to be a proof that the Klamaths meant no ill-will to Jack’s people. They were Indians who were now resigned, if not entirely content, to accept what the reservation could offer, or who had learned how to work with the Bostons and profit from it. And here came George Nurse and Gus Horn riding up. If Ivan was right, the Modocs trusted these two white settlers. Tomorrow would come the wagons and the drivers, and with them more gifts. He hoped this little party would answer, that Jack would not fail to understand what he meant to signal. He did not want to make this trip more than once.

Only Knapp and he were newcomers. Before he could be expected to agree to return, Jack would need to meet the man who had replaced Lindsay Applegate. He would want to size up the official whose actions could so touch him. And he would want to meet him, Albert Meacham, most of all. What greater acknowledgement of Jack’s status could he make, as Superintendent of Indians in Oregon, than to come all this distance and present himself?

Later, the sun hanging above the horizon, Meacham turned in the saddle as his agent moved up the line to him. Knapp came on at a trot, his head and shoulders swathed in a shawl, the strap on his hat pulled tight to hold it in place. Meacham knew from his own aching back that the man must be miserable.

“I hope this is worth our while,” Knapp muttered through clenched teeth as he pulled his horse abreast of Meacham’s. “We should have sent Ivan to do this. We’re not going to get there much before night.” He freed his hand from his coat pocket and pointed toward the sky. Sun dogs glinted feebly in the thin skiff of high clouds, reminding the men, as if it were necessary, that this would be the first week of winter. “What makes you think he will even let us in?”

Meacham didn’t answer that. Instead he said, “No, thanks. I don’t touch it,” to the flask Knapp proffered him. He started to express his disapproval, but the wind cut the words from his lips.