Slolux. Ten, twenty maybe. Where’s Frank?”
He didn’t know, and said so; hadn’t seen anything of him.
She slumped onto the ground next to him. He needed to think over the news she had brought him. She had run off a long list, most of the names he recognized as those of the leaders. They must be gathering to attack, and unlike his own party, they knew the lay of the land. He wondered where they might come from. Perhaps Toby could say.
“No. No, Meacham,” she said when he asked her. “That ain’t right.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, confused.
“You got it wrong. They ain’t going to attack you. They run off. They gone!”
“But where have they gone to? How will we find them?”
“Don’t know, Meacham. Don’t know. Maybe they went over other side of the river, headed for the other camp. Maybe they’re going down to lava beds. Better ask Mary. She start out with them, come on back. Probably because of her kids.”
The woman had dropped her head onto her knees. The mention of Jack’s sister, the knowledge that head men were out there someplace, only poorly armed -- the glimmering of an idea started to form itself in his mind, but if it were to work, they would have to hurry.
“Can you get Mary for me?” he asked. “Would you be able to go back and find her?”
When Toby heaved herself reluctantly to her feet, Meacham shouted into the night:
“Knapp! Knapp! Get over here! We have to act fast!”
#31
“I talk for myself,” she said, shrugging away from Toby. Meacham threw some brush on the fire, and in its flare got his first real look at her. So this was Queen Mary. What with her claims to privilege as the chief’s sister and her easy style with the miners, her reputation ran ahead of her. They said she had been sold several times to whites, but sooner or later every one of them had been glad to return her. Not five feet tall, he would guess, but every inch the image of Jack. The same features: his broad face, straight nose. But the eyes were more defiant. So was her whole person as she elbowed Toby away and squared off to face him. She didn’t have to take anything from a white man.
Of course she could speak English. He should have known she would have picked up enough around Yreka and the camps. Many of the women, he knew, could hold their own in a conversation, better than the men. She might have a somewhat specialized vocabulary, but what she had would probably do.
“I’m sure you can,” said Meacham. “I’m not going to hurt you. Come over here by the fire. It’s too cold a night to be out without a wrap. Knapp, hand me that blanket.”
She sized him up with a look of disgust but evidently decided she could handle him, for she stepped within the warmth of the fire.
“You ready for lice?” Knapp asked as he handed Meacham’s blanket to him.
“Never mind about that,” Meacham said.
Indeed, the cold had teeth to it by now. It had stopped snowing, but the wind kept on cutting through the dark, swirling sparks up out of the fire. He sat down next to her to seem more friendly, aware that Knapp disapproved. Meacham didn’t know if he could do it or not, but he needed to persuade her that he had meant what he said in the house, that he was there as their friend, not their master.
She let him talk, staring off into the night while she listened to him, rocking slowly and deliberately back and forth as he made his appeal. Nothing had changed, he said, just because the soldiers had come. They would merely be an escort, to see the Modocs safely through Linkville and up to Rocky Point. No harm would come to them; he would pledge her his word on that. The place they were going would be better than this. No settlers to deal with. No worry about struggling to make it through the winter while the food supply dwindled and disappeared. No shortage of blankets or firewood when the cold settled in for weeks at a stretch.
What he had said to her brother and the others was true. He regretted frightening them, but there had been a mistake. The soldiers had got drunk. And she knew how drunk men could be. They were supposed to come tomorrow, to escort the Modocs safely through the town and its settlers. He got Knapp to say it, too, and gradually their words calmed her, especially his, until eventually she looked toward Toby as if asking whether she dared to believe this man.
“Trust him,” Toby said. “Just get word now to Keintpoos. You can find him.”
#32
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