Читать книгу Shaman's Dream: The Modoc War - Lu Boone's Mattson - Страница 77

All morning long they had trailed him as he and three of his men worked the last of his sheep down to where they could get onto the old road. Jesse Applegate had been looking off to the south, surveying in his mind what he and Jesse Carr had talked about, when he spotted them. The Indians were filing along an outcropping that paralleled his path; then when he looked again they were gone. Every so often they would reappear, though, still heading in the same direction. They showed no sign of trying to close with him, and after a while he stopped paying them much attention. They had to be Modocs, even though he couldn’t tell which ones. They were never close enough for him to be sure. No one else would be out here, though, on a line toward Clear Lake. He took them for a group headed out to scare up antelope, and so he, too, settled down, minding his own business, watching the dogs nurse the sheep along. He had enough to think about anyway, reviewing what remained to be done. Jesse Carr’s ambitions were beginning to scare him. Jesse Applegate was accustomed to doing the big thinking around these parts, but Carr outdistanced even him, step for step, inch for inch.

The surveying: Jesse Applegate thought he understood the project when he started out to do it. Securing the area around Clear Lake was a very big idea. He had led Carr out to show him all the springs and the creek beds that cut through the land, dry now, as was usual; pointed out the other natural features. Then, when he had things drawn up, in a preliminary kind of way, he had laid out the rough map between them, with Clear Lake right in the middle, the left edge along the ridge of hills that separated it from Tule Lake.

“Good,” Carr had said. “But where’s the rest of it?”

“What ‘rest’?” Jesse Applegate had asked.

“The rest over to Tule Lake. On up to where Lost River comes in.”

“What do you mean?” Applegate had asked. “That’s taken.”

“Who said?” Carr had asked.

“Why lots of people. Land. Miller. Brotherton. Boddy. Crawley.” He had ticked off the names of the ranches as they occurred going north along the Tule Lake shore and then west, over toward where Lost River emptied in.

“They haven’t all claimed yet,” Carr had responded matter-of-factly.

“Well, no. Maybe they’re not finished up legally.”

“Not even started, some of them. I looked. And they haven’t put up their money.”

“But they’re settled. The places are worked.”

“That may be, but the titles are, you might say, still clouded. Anyway, if I can qualify them as ‘Swamp Lands’ I can claim them. I reckon I will be able to do that. That’s legal. Dollar an acre, just like this.” He had swung his arm in an arc across the horizon. “This ranch we’re doing here, it makes a lot better sense with the east shore of Tule Lake as a boundary.”

It did, of course. But, Jesse Applegate had told himself, that the same logic would hold if Carr wanted to sweep up everything clear to the Pacific. Could be he would get all of it designated ‘Swamp Land,’ unless some other land-grabber beat him to it.

Seeing his hesitation, Carr had steered him over it. “Don’t bother your head about that part. I’ll take care of it. Right now, see what your map looks like if you leave Clear Lake smack in the center. But let the Tule Lake shore be our western edge. Work that one up for me, would you?”

“How you going to control something that big?” Jesse Applegate had asked, as if playing his ace. But he knew Carr would trump it.

“How far is it, would you guess, say from the toe of Clear Lake straight west, over to Scorpion Point on Tule Lake?” Carr asked.

“Ten miles maybe, as the crow flies. Could be more.”

“That’s about what I thought, too. You could just make that one additional fence to mark off the southern boundary. The lakeshore itself would close in the rest.”

Ten miles! Of stone wall! The discussion had left Jesse Applegate flabbergasted -- and queasy in his stomach, especially when he considered his own family’s lands up in Oregon. The Jesse Carrs of this world would surely not overlook them. But he had started drafting. He hesitated to consider how this would come to pass with the other settlers already in place. He would need to reorganize his own thinking, widen his horizons, to keep up with this man. Otherwise, Carr would get so far ahead of him he’d disappear completely out of sight.

Thinking about all that, Jesse Applegate was just dropping down into the gully and taking the turn to where his path would meet the road when all hell broke loose. One moment he was thinking about his surveying, leaning back in his saddle to ease his weight back onto his sliding horse’s rump, and the next he was fighting to hold the shying animal in. Around him, the sheep were flowing and bleating, heading off back uphill, away from the men lunging down on them, shouting.

“What the hell!” Jesse thundered. “Goddammit!”

He wrestled his horse to face them, the band of Indians, men he knew, every one. Black Jim, Slolux, Barncho, Bogus Charley. And Jack.

Jack was shouting, too, at his men. Commanding them to do something. Do what?

“Stop!” Jesse yelled as the sheep racked themselves away in two bunches, some heading back the way they had just come, some shouldering on off down the hill. The despairing dogs tore after them.

That must have been what Jack was shouting, too, for the Indians reined up, pulling their ponies in until they stopped and stood. Then Black Jim came forward, Jack behind him.

“We thought you someone else,” Jim said, deferentially. “We thought you new settlers!”

“So you were going to do what?!” Jesse demanded. But they didn’t answer. They just turned their horses away again, in tight little circles, while Jack told Jim things in Modoc.

“Get those sheep!” Jesse ordered his men, and sat while the chase started to bring the herd back together. He pulled off his hat and wiped at his face with the back of his sleeve while he waited for his heart to stop rattling his ribs. “What in thunder are you up to!” he demanded. But Jack couldn’t answer, except by motioning Black Jim to speak.

“We not kill you. Just thought you im-grins. Gonna tell you give us some grub, some bullets.”

“I’ll give you bullets, all right!”

“No. We thought you im-grins, coming in.”

“From where! And what if we were!”

“No. We won’t hurt you. Just wanted some stuff if you was im-grins coming through Modoc land.”

“Well, I’m not. And this isn’t. Not any more. And even if it was, what right would that give you?”

All the while Jack kept saying things to Black Jim, with Black Jim listening, passing the words along.

“Jack says tell you he your friend. He just don’t recognize you with them sheep.”

“Some friend! You don’t chase your friends!”

“No. Jack says he knows that. Even though soldiers keep on chasing him now. How come they keep on doing that?”

“I don’t know about any soldiers,” Jesse said. “If they’re chasing him, it’s because of what he did to the reservation Indian. He can’t go around doing that, no matter what the Indian way is. Ask him didn’t I just sign a damned safe-passage paper for him? If you’re going to live off the reservation, then you’ve got to live like whites. Kill someone, and you bet the soldiers will come looking for you. Lock you up. Put a rope around your neck. String you up to the next tree. Or take you to court and let the judge do it. Either way, you end up dead if you kill someone. You tell Jack that for me. Tell him he better go back to hiding with the squaw-men. Soldiers are sure gonna find him if he goes ramming around like this!”

Off in the distance Jesse’s men were managing to fold the sheep back together again. The animals had fallen to grazing nervously alongside the road; the dogs, red tongues lolling, sides heaving, eyed them. The men stood looking back to see what Jesse wanted next from them. He waved them to stay put, that everything was all right, then turned once more to Black Jim.

“Tell Jack he needs to talk to Meacham. He’s your friend. Let him set things right.”

“You talk to him on paper, Jack says.”

“Maybe I will,” Jesse said, “if Jack’s good for ten days. I’ll look and see, if he’ll promise that.”

Then it was Black Jim, talking for himself: “Captain Jack just did what he did for Compotwas Doctor killing one of his family children. He only supposed be on reservation cause Old Schonchin made that new treaty. Then he took all the good from it for his own people, and the Klamaths -- you know how they done us. They got everything from the agent for their selves. That was your family, wasn’t it? Then they shamed us.”

The Indian, who had seemed truly embarrassed at their mistaking Jesse for some newcomer, had started out by wheedling. But now, as he rehearsed the wrongs done to them, his anger suddenly surfaced and his face and voice hardened.

“Right now we got no homes, no country. The settlers pushing aside our wikiups. Building the white man’s houses where the wikiups was. And now here come the brass buttons to chase us into the mountains. There ain’t no roots there, no fish like here or at Lost River. Our hungry women hiding out and all the time, afraid from the soldiers. And we men go this way and that. We don’t know when them soldiers going to jump us. No good like this.

He paused and thought about what he had just said.

“We got no reason not to die, Mr. Applegate!”

Jesse watched as Jim turned to tell Captain Jack what he had said. The chief nodded his agreement, then looked directly at the white man.

“Meacham,” Jack said for himself. “Meacham. You write. Him. Paper. Meacham come see Jack.”

“I said I’ll write him. That’s a promise. Tell Jack I give my word. Long as he promises, too: ten days, be good. I’ll watch. But Meacham already is your friend, so you should mind him.”

The look that spread across Jack’s face was full of disdainful remembering. Jesse, seeing it, rushed on to prove he was right: “Tell Jack that Meacham talked to me about it. He wants to get you people a reservation, there where you been living. It wouldn’t be a big one, like the Klamath’s, but he’s asking for it already. He already got me to draw up a picture of it on a paper, so he could send it to the Great Father in Washington to decide. For the Modocs.”

As Black Jim translated, Jack took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He sat there astride his pony, expressionless, listening. When he spoke, it was hard to hear him.

“He say,” Jim repeated, “that’s what he wants. A little reservation there by lake and river, where we always been. He say the Bostons can have all the rest. He says our boys could work for settlers and herd up their animals. They could buy shirts then and blankets. Our old men and women could sit then in their own places in peace.”

As Black Jim finished, Jack spoke to him again.

“He says he want Meacham and one other to see about this. He wants you to do this with Meacham. You two the only ones. He wants to honor you old man around here, like chief.”