Читать книгу Shaman's Dream: The Modoc War - Lu Boone's Mattson - Страница 36

Meacham talked until his jaws ached. The men who had not scattered, the women and old folks had come nervously around him when Toby and Frank Riddle finally could round them up.

“I called you here for your good,” he told them. “I am your friend. Your chief got scared and ran away like a coward. I am your chief today and will tell you what is good.”

They listened silently this time. Like yearlings herded into a corral for breaking, they looked around them, skittish, ready to bolt but unsure how to do it. The soldiers stood off in the shadows, no telling just where. The Modoc leaders -- and thirty or forty men -- were gone. There was no one now to call for war on the whites or tell them what else they should do. With the anger of Euchoaks and John Schonchin and Black Jim stilled, there was no one to goad them.

“No man, woman or child will be hurt,” Meacham continued. “I told your chief yesterday the same thing, but he would not believe me…. If he goes off and takes the young men, I can’t help it. We want you to get your horses and provisions and start tomorrow for Link River. I think you all have good hearts. You must not try to get away tonight and must not take any guns away. If Captain Jack comes I will receive him with a good heart, too.

“You judge wisely,” Meacham said, for he read assent in the absence of anyone calling for resistance. Sensing that it was over, Knapp stepped forward.

“You must turn in your rifles at once,” he ordered, then paused to see if their acquiescence would hold. When the silence said that it would, he continued. “You must bring them here to this wagon. You must do that now, right away.

“As soon as it is light you must get your ponies. Gather your belongings, the food you cached for the winter. The drovers will show you where to put things. Do not bother with what is broken. Leave those behind, for you will be given new things when you get where you are going. Go on now and get started. We have a long way to go to your new place.”

When dawn broke and the Modocs finally saw how small a group of soldiers had coerced them into giving up their arms, their silence had shame to it.

Two days later, Meacham and Knapp watched as the last wagon was loaded and the last bunch of ponies was herded together and turned up the trail toward Linkville. They counted one-hundred and fifteen people. Ivan went on ahead to the agency to get everything ready to receive the Modocs. Meacham and Knapp remained behind as their party of envoys fell in at the end of the line. Queen Mary stayed with them, looking back toward the tules that separated them from the lake until it was time for them, too, to start on their way.

Two more days they sat outside Linkville, trusting Queen Mary had not lied. “They coming. You wait,” was all she would say, and at length she proved right; they did come. Captain Jack and his lieutenants Scarfaced Charley and John Schonchin rode abreast down the trail followed by the other men. Off the track to one side came the medicine man, his face hidden by that mane of hair. Sullen, chanting, refusing the warm food that was handed up to him on his pony.

They, too, saw it was only a handful of brass buttons that had set them running.

“The Klamaths must not smell out how this happen,” Jack insisted. It was his only demand, and Meacham acceded to it gladly, relieved on his own part to shelve any discussion of how barely a fiasco had been avoided. And for themselves, the cavalry welcomed silence on the matter, to cover their rookie charge from the rest of the post, especially from the commander.