I find that there are insufficient funds. That complicates matters for us, doesn’t it. Things being as they are, you’d do better to just let them know that they can’t come sniveling around here for a hand out.”
“But it’s what the government promised.”
“That will do, Ivan. It’s not what we are going to give.”
#49
“What you think, boy? You vater goin’ to get it?”
Joseph didn’t know what to answer the shepherd. But his father got what he went after, that much was sure. Always did. He could hope that his father would remember, and think about the coming birthday. Ten would be old enough, and he would be that on May 9, in two weeks. In his mind’s eye he could see it as it stood in the rack at the smith’s at Linkville: the blue-barrelled rifle, its oiled stock. He hoped his father would remember that there was enough money, almost, in the jar Joseph kept in his clothes press. Nickels and pennies he had earned during the last lambing and this one for keeping the sheep safe in the mornings and again in the late afternoon. Shearer would tell his father he couldn’t have managed without him.
“He’s a good little mister,” Shearer said to his father. “De sheep’s safe with him there.”
He had watched them two times during each day for the season while Shearer was off doing things, getting ready. Tending to the new ones, getting rid of the bummers.
So it was honest-earned money, his first.
“Just think, Mr. Shearer,” he said. “With that, I could run off the coyotes. Any coyote come after these sheep, I’d shoot him.”
“Wirklich you would,” the man replied. “But for a time I think you papa keep that gun for you till you bigger. Or for time he could go with you out to hunt them coyotes. You almost big enough now, that’s sure. But pretty soon you be way bigger. You watch you, see if Shearer ain’t right. Then you could be a man taking care of things here. But right now you got some growin’ to do.”
“But I still think he’ll remember the gun. For my birthday. He promised.”
“Well, when he promised you, den he’ll do it. William Brotherton always kept his word with me. But for now you can leave off your watchin’ for him. Way too early.”
Joseph looked off toward the northwest, trying to pick out the place where the track up to Linkville went. Beyond Miller’s, off across the top of the lake, he could make out the smoke from the Boddy’s. Beyond that, the other little plumes would be Crawley’s or Monroe’s over by the ford at the stone bridge. The boy squinted to make the picture come clear in the afternoon light. He searched for anything that could be a sign of his returning father; but there was no one to be seen except his uncle off in the junipers, working at something, his mother back down by the house with Mrs. Swan, out by the chickens. That was all there was. Even next door at the Miller’s there was no one in sight.
The sheep grazed their ways off to the south, flowing along down the creek side like water themselves, washing slowly toward the lake shore, pulling eagerly at the new grass shoots. Too tender yet to have much to it, that was what Mr. Shearer told him. It would be good, Joseph thought as he watched them, if his father would just remember.
It was then that he saw them, coming down from the eastern rim of hills, along the old trail. He had to squint his eyes to make sure he was seeing rightly. At first he thought it was just a few men on ponies headed on a line that would take them uphill from where he and the shepherd stood and over toward the other ranches. But then he realized he wasn’t seeing just horsemen. Behind them, reaching back up to the top of the grade, for as far as he could make out the trail, there were others coming, on foot. More men, he thought, lots of them. Then back of them came the women, their huge burdens bulking out their figures so you could hardly tell they were people. Children, in two’s and three’s, ran like his lambs along side the moving column. He thought it was more people than he had ever seen together in his life.
“Look!” he said. “Who’s that, Mr. Shearer?”
The old German turned away from his flock in the direction Joseph pointed.
“Indians,” he said under his breath. “Mein Gott, would you look at them! Where they comin’ from? Or goin’ to?”
#50
“Listen, Lieutenant, it’s your job to get them back!”
“You’ll pardon me if I disagree there. Sir.” The word was an afterthought, added ironically, full of implication. “If you ran them off, it is difficult to see just how the army should shoulder the responsibility. Let your sub-agent bring them back. I haven’t the men to spare.”
Ivan hung back, trying to look busy as the meeting escalated to a higher level of hostility, not wanting to be noticed but afraid of simply leaving the two men to their own recriminations.
“We notified you as soon as we knew of their going, but you did nothing.”
“What was I to do, tell me. By the time I heard anything of it, practically every Modoc on the Klamath Reservation had taken French leave of your operation. How did you expect me to stop them if even you didn’t see this coming? By your own admission -- ‘proclamation’ might be better -- everything was fine here. It was all under your control, last report I heard. That’s how you would have had it understood, I believe.”
“Still, you could have intercepted them.”
“How? You still can’t tell me how they left. They didn’t exactly march down the road to Linkville whistling ‘Dixie.’”
They would have gone over the shoulder of Saddle Mountain, Ivan thought to himself. They would have followed the footpaths straight south and swung around the eastern side of Lost River. They would have crossed the range of hills there into the Clear Lake basin and picked up the old trail someplace. No one would have had to see them. They might have passed by the place Jesse Carr was trying to homestead, with his uncle Jesse Applegate’s assistance. It was all old Modoc range. They made their summer settlements out there each year, gathering epos, and drying fish or meat. They had old ceremonial centers there as well. All that country south of the Sprague River from the ridge of Saddle Mountain on down was country the Lost River Modocs used. They could have filtered through there almost anywhere and no one would ever have had to see them.
He was sure he could go out and find the marks of their passing through the land. Three-hundred and seventy one of them would have left plenty of sign. But he wasn’t about to do it. Knapp could, if he was able to figure it out. But Ivan had just shrugged when the agent raged at him.
“I don’t like admitting it,” Knapp said now to Ivan, as if the lieutenant were not there, “but Meacham was right. I tried to tell him otherwise, but I was wrong. The military at the fort are entirely useless. I can see now. They are no good at anything but marching up and down that parade ground and drawing their pay.”
Lieutenant Goodale stiffened at the insult, then said: “If those Modocs hadn’t been driven from the agency by ineptitude, they would be here yet. Pardon me, but I will commit troops when settlers are threatened, not before. You had them here; you have lost them. Having gotten them here once, perhaps you will remember how to do it again.
“Good day. Sir. I’m afraid my duties at the post require my presence.”
He stood at attention and snapped off a salute to the agent, then turned and strode out through the agency office door. The few lingering Klamaths fell back as he came down the stairs and mounted his horse. Without a further glance, he was gone down the agency street toward the fort.