Читать книгу Shaman's Dream: The Modoc War - Lu Boone's Mattson - Страница 38

Yes. Keintpoos reckoned he could do that. He could come up to the place where Meacham laid the axe down. Under that Peace Tree on the slope. Walk up to it when he was called, if David Allen did. Each thing they told him he tried out in his mind first, thinking whether he could do it -- or if it was just to shame him.

From here he could look down over the camp. Tents, willow-pole frames covered with matting or blankets or wagon sheets. Ponies cropping the winter grass, scattered over the plain, or tied up and waiting. Fires where the women had dug their holes to cook up the beef heads and pluck.

Ivan had give-awayed some stuff the other day when they got there, but there was more give-away coming. Blankets, wool shirt cloth, flannel dress patterns, thread, needles, buttons.

Long as he could, he would just keep on doing things they told him to do -- one after another -- long as he was sure it was going to stay as Meacham said it would. But one wrong thing and he and his people would get out of there, back on the road to Lost River. Just one thing, and no fence here could keep them.

But walk up to the axe laid on the ground under the Peace Tree, he could do that, just as well as David Allen. He could stand at the axe and stare across it into the Klamath chief’s face. He could put down the pine branch Ivan handed him onto the axe, either on top of David Allen’s or under, he didn’t care which. He could shake hands, with Meacham standing there between them, showing them what to do next. He could make a talk for his people. It all depended on what David Allen said first. If it was to be peace, let David Allen say it. Then later they all would see who it was who lied.

But just because they made peace, he didn’t have to trust David Allen, who had gone over to the Bostons. Someday, he’d like to hear it, just how David Allen made it all right to have once set the army against him. David Allen would have to come up with something really good if he was going to explain away telling Lindsay about the ammunition. David Allen should have known Jack would find out who the skunk was who made everything stink. Before, when he was off the reservation, after the treaty, he did run ammunition to Paunina and his band of Paiutes while they were rampaging. But why should he not? He wasn’t friends any more then with Old Schonchin, who sold out so the Bostons would treat him good. He wanted to be the ‘big chief’ the Bostons insisted on, let him. But Jack didn’t have to just sit around and take it, so he had shown them. Let them talk to each other: the Applegates and the army could jaw with Old Schonchin long as they wanted. He himself had persuaded his people to follow him out of there back to Lost River, and then he had run down Paunina and seen if he didn’t need some ammunition. Paunina had known who to trust, and it wasn’t anyone here at the agency or over on Sprague River either. But he’d still like to know who told David Allen in the first place, because Allen told the Applegates, and they told the brass buttons.

But if David Allen wanted to shake hands now and make peace, and if Meacham wanted him to do it, he would join up. Just so they kept their word and made their talks with him, and not just with Old Schonchin. Just so stinking David Allen said in front of everybody that he was the one wanted peace.

It was not as good here where they meant to put them as it was up by the agency. Not as much timber by a lot; mainly scrub on the flat and clear over to the bluff. But it wasn’t far to where they could do some cutting. There was lots of wocas and plenty of tules over at the lake. Only ten miles up to the agency commissary, not even that much more to the fort. More game here than he could scare up on Lost River in the winter. Too far from Yreka to put ideas in his young people’s heads. No settlers running you off your own land, pulling down your summer houses. So this would be all right.

All the Klamaths standing there now to see what would happen, way more of them than his own people. Add to them Old Schonchin’s Sprague River Modocs who were just hanging around and would go whatever easier way the wind blew. Well, they would see something here today if they wanted to look. He took the pine bough from Ivan and went up to toe the mark, staring David Allen in the eye.

“The white chief brought me here,” David was saying. “… I felt like a man in a strange country without a father. My heart was afraid… I have planted a strong stake in the ground. I have tied myself with a strong rope. I will not dig up the stake. I will not break the rope… .”