We be right down to get them!”
#42
They had cut maybe three hundred more. Boston Charley wrote the numbers down When they showed up again and made off with the rails, Jack asked John Schonchin to tell him if he was crazy or something. Who were they working for anyhow? They split rails which the Klamaths took away; so why didn’t they just quit it? That was the end of working the timber, at least until this thing got settled. The agency kept silent. Knapp looked out his window when Jack or some other Modoc rode in to get stuff at the commissary, but he was never more than a pale ghost standing behind the glass. You couldn’t see where his eyes looked or what he was thinking. And there never was any word from him about how the Klamaths had been put in their place. There never was nothing at all.
There was Klamath tormenting of his women, Jack said. Striking them and driving them away when they went to gather seeds.
“Those are for our families!” the Klamath women said, and they grabbed the Modoc kids and shook them. “Why don’t you all just go back where you come from?”
There was a pony shot, and you knew a Klamath did it, even though no one saw.
There was a Modoc man stoned by a bunch of Klamaths.
Every time, Jack said don’t do nothin’ about it. But that didn’t go down good with the women or with the men who’d done the splitting.
“Our time’s going to come,” he told them, and he rode over with John Schonchin to Sprague River to talk to the Modocs over there, see what they could work out. Old Schonchin heard them. He knew there was trouble, since the Klamaths kept him up with it, enjoying telling him how the Lost River Modocs didn’t belong there, watching to see that he agreed with them.
“You gotta go see Knapp for us,” John said to his older brother. “You can go up to him and say you know everything’s not right.”
“I’d go,” Old Schonchin said, “but he won’t like me standing up for you. You gotta see him yourself. You only talked to him the once.”
So eventually Jack went again. It was spring coming by then, and there was plenty of work ahead. No reason to stay out of the timber now that things were warming up. There were the houses to finish, if they would just get the mill up. There was hunting to do, horses to swap. The young men were getting itchy to be doing things; the time was ripe.
“They want to stay here if the Klamaths will let them alone,” he said to Knapp through his interpreter. “They say to be good Indians, but they gonna go out of here if I can’t show them something comes from their working. They got nothing for them rails; the women get struck and driven away from the lake when they go to get seeds or eggs or fish; the kids get whipped; the stream gets muddied. And they just hang around and watch us.”
“Then you just better go where the Klamaths can’t get to you so easy. You have to stay out of their way. Keep to yourselves. I’ll send the wagons, and move you on over onto the Williamson River. The agency Indians will let you alone over there.
Jack wanted to say something about the house he had half finished, and the way the others had fixed up places that were just now starting to be like homes to them, but the agent turned his back on him and called out to Ivan:
“Let’s get the wagons down to them next week,” he said. “The road over to the Williamson ought to be dry enough then. Move the whole lot of them out of the way.”
Jack wanted to say it was too far to the timber. They wouldn’t be able to work there without walking half a day, but the agent closed the door again, and he was left with a handful of Klamaths looking on, smiling their satisfied way.
#43
He left the timbers sticking up out of the earth, and his wives and sister complained loudly all the way over to the Williamson -- until he rode away from them and went to join John Schonchin and Scarfaced Charley up by the front wagon.
#44
He got Old Schonchin to go in and talk for him.
“I told him they still watching you people. Just like you told me. I told him you didn’t like it.”
“Did you tell him my people won’t have it this way any more? Did you say about them taking the fish?”
He could tell by the way Old Schonchin sat there smoking, not looking at him, that he hadn’t said much. Or hadn’t said it like it mattered.
“Did you say I can’t hold in my boys? They don’t know about this putting up with things. Nor about being held in -- by me or anyone else. They’re not used to being told one thing and then seeing another thing happen. They’re not going to listen to me for long. Did you tell him that stuff, like I told you?”
Inside, in his belly, he felt a sickness. The old Sprague River chief just sat there and listened, and Keintpoos could see in his mind how it had gone there at the agency. Old Schonchin had said a few things, whining, most likely. Not looking directly at Knapp like he meant it, but watching the ground as he spoke. Not saying his words loud enough even to be understood. And that would have suited him, Jack realized. He would have whined his words out like a good reservation Indian, to let the boss know he meant no rebuke. It would have been just fine with him to be turned down, too: with the Modocs it was getting to be so Keintpoos’ failure was Old Schonchin’s own success. They were getting to think like the white men: there wasn’t any need for two chiefs.
All the way back to the Williamson River, Keintpoos stormed at John Schonchin about his brother. But John was already madder than anybody.
“I told you not to come back here.” John spit out the words. “But you wouldn’t listen. You wouldn’t listen to Curley Headed Doctor or Black Jim. You wouldn’t listen to Ellen’s Man. You wouldn’t listen to nobody but that Meacham -- and Toby. And now you want my brother to fix this for you. You won’t stand up no more against Knapp. You won’t stand up to Ivan. Way I see it, you gonna be the biggest reservation Indian we got.”
After that, they didn’t talk the whole way back to the camp.
Next morning, Jack was on his way to the agency with Scarfaced Charley. No one but his wives knew of his going. When he told them where he was headed, they just kept on stirring at the mush.
#45
This time he just laid his hand on the door and shoved it open. Knapp sat at the desk, the papers spread before him. He looked up in surprise as the two men came in. He didn’t bother to get up. He sat there just holding the pencil over the page he had been writing on while Scarfaced Charley said what Jack had told him to, like he was waiting for it to be over so he could write down the next thing. The agent’s face got redder and redder as Charley talked, so Keintpoos figured he was remembering to say it all. Charley didn’t even bother to look at him for instructions. When he finished one thing, he just went on to another, talking even, not raising his voice, but saying the words out steady like, without any stopping. Charley raised his arm and gestured around the agency. He pointed off toward the Sprague. When he finished talking, he just shut his mouth up, and the two of them stood there facing Knapp. Waiting.
Knapp chewed for a while at his lip, then he said, “I’m damned sick and tired of this bellyaching. Tell him this