I don’t want to go.”
He promised too much, though, started wheedling again, let it look like he was asking when he should have stayed strong:
“This is a poor country. You don’t need it. It would not be of any account to you. The white men can come when they please and live close by us. I have but a few people and I want to look after them. This is a poor country -- all of this. Klamath is a good country.”
Then Meacham’s words were stern and out of patience:
My heart is not bad. I came here because I was told to come and give you advice. I come to represent a Government that will do just as it says. The reason I want to put you alongside the Snakes is to set an example to show them how to work. I have heard much of your people. They are like the white people …. I don’t care what part of the reservation you want to go on. I understood you to say you would go if you would be protected, and that is the reason I talked the way I did. The Government of the United States owns all the land from one end of the country to the other, and she gives portions of it to the Indians. She looks upon all the Indians as her children and tells them where to live. The Government says they must live on Reservations where they can be cared for. It is my duty, as you made a Treaty with the Government, to see you and ask you to go onto the Reservation. If you are ready to go with me I will take care of you, and if not I will turn you over to the Military.
There it was. Now everybody could hear it. This was what they knew, what they had always known since Fort Klamath and Fort Warner and Fort Bidwell got going and the brass buttons came to them to do their marching. The people did not know how to answer. They only knew Keintpoos should do it.
“I told you!” Euchoaks spit out the words.
Again Toby picked up Meacham’s words: “I told the Commander of Fort Klamath that Captain Knapp and myself would go first and see the Indians. The officer said, ‘All right, if they go with you, all right. And if not, the Soldiers will come after them.’ I am your friend. If the soldiers come after you, you will remember what I have said.”
And Meacham told them even the Yreka people had made a petition to have them removed. He pointed out George Nurse and Gus Horn and said: “They told me that if you go there, back to the reservation, and are there yourself they would come with you.”
Then he stood the red-whiskered man up with him and told them this was an army captain but acting as a citizen. And the red-whiskered man got up and said:
I am the Agent of Klamath. If you go with the Superintendent and myself, you shall be protected. The Government owns all the Country. You have agreed to abide by the law of the United States. If you go you will be protected. If you are turned over to the military, you will be forced to come.
And then it was the Meacham again: “…. I want you to say whether you will go peaceably or stay and let the Soldiers come after you as if you were coyotes. I have twelve soldiers coming. They may be here tomorrow or possibly tonight. If you want to go with me all right and if not the soldiers will force you.”
That was what he said.
Euchoaks stopped in the track and listened, certain now that he did hear the drovers and the wagons. At least that much of what Meacham said was true. Afraid that the rest might be, also, and that Keintpoos would listen, he turned and hurried back. They were coming to take them, and it felt to him as if it would be to an execution. This knife edge Keintpoos walked along even talking to these Bostons: he should not go near it.
#23
They must eat, this Meacham said. As soon as the first of the wagons got there, he would make the Indians a feast. There would be beef and bread and sweets and strong coffee. And when they were through and their bowls were turned over, they would smoke the Big Tyee’s tobacco -- and then the Modocs were to decide, and then they would do what the Modocs agreed to.
First of all, thought Euchoaks, they would not eat. Not John Schonchin nor Keintpoos nor him, nor any of the Modocs who could remember or had ears. There had been another feast offered here on Lost River, by another who had shown his snakeskin underneath. When they had been too afraid that he would poison them, they had refused to eat what he gave them. Then pretty soon that Ben Wright had come back with his white flag early one rainy morning to the camp. “Where’s Schonchin?” he asked, but the headman wasn’t there. “Then what you done with the settlers’ things?” he demanded. “What things?” somebody said. “Them things you took at the slaughter. Bloody Point things!” said Wright. “No things with us!” said another. When Wright shot through the blanket he was wearing for a jacket and a Modoc Indian fell dead, all the village men came running out of their houses and huts. And the whites who were hiding stood up on the bank above them and shot them. Shot them dead where they stood in the rain, looking up. Shot them where they ran into the tules to hide in the water. Shot them in the sage-brush. Rounded up who was left and shot them dead, too. Then scalped them and cut them up. “That’s for Bloody Point!” Ben Wright said. Forty gone -- men, women, children. Five survivors. John Schonchin was one. So was he. So was Old Schonchin. They didn’t need any more feedings. So why was Jack messing with this? No good could come to any Modoc from it.
There wasn’t anything new for the Bostons to say, so how come there was all this talking?
#24
Now they were finished, but it had taken longer than he thought it would. At first they wouldn’t touch the food that had come down in big pots and parcels all the way from Linkville. Then Toby picked up a metal plate and shoved it into Knapp’s hands.
“Go first,” she said to him, handing another plate to Meacham.
“I don’t want that slop,” the agent said.
“Never mind about that: just do it.” She reached into the pot and spooned out stew for both of them. Meacham understood and took a piece of the bread to sop up the gravy, then went to sit on the ground where he meant for the circle to form.
“Come on,” he said to Knapp. “Dig in.”
He attacked the meal with as much gusto as he could, smacking his lips, mopping at the juices when the thick hunks of beef were gone until no morsel was left. He reached for the can of coffee. He drank it in great gulps, blowing on it to clear away the steam after he had loaded it with sugar.
He leaned back, patting his middle, looking as satisfied as he knew how to. All the Modocs stood transfixed, watching their hosts to detect any sign.
“Now all come and have some meat,” he said to Jack as he finished and turned his bowl over onto the dried grass before him. “You and your people. Join in.”
Eventually, satisfied there had been no coyote poison this time, the Modocs let the drovers hand them plates heaped with stew and covered with thick slabs of bread. Meacham would let them eat until the last one declared himself full; then he would pass around the tobacco he had brought for each man to keep. Loading up his own pipe, he lit it and offered it first to Jack. This time Jack took it.
#25
That night it was time to decide. With his house once again full of people, Keintpoos said to Meacham, as if he had a new idea, “And if I say no? If I stay here where I was born? If I and my people just kill you and send back your bodies to say what the answer is, then what happens?”
Meacham looked at him sadly: “Then not one of you Modocs will live.”
The words hung thick on the air after