University of Virginia Library

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.
BATTLES ON THE BORDER.

ENTIRELY with my left hand had I made
the fight, for my right one was still stiff and
useless from the shot of the would-be assassin
of the Pit River expedition. My friends and others
were now running up the hill to the fallen officer,
and Hirst was only now and then sending up in my
direction a random shot as I turned my back on the
scene, and pushed up the mountain into the forest.
My Panama hat flapped and fluttered down on one
side of my face like the wing of a wounded bird. A
pistol ball had torn it to ribbons.

A bullet makes only a small hole in cloth, in buckskin
a still smaller one; but it tears linen savagely,
as well as straw. The hard, tough fibre of which
Panama hats are made, particularly when rendered
hard and brittle in a California sun, flies into shreds
before it.

Most people imagine you can hear any bullet whistle
that passes you. This is a mistake; you hear only

the bullet that has first struck some object and then
glanced on, catching the air, and whizzing like a bee
at your ear, but almost quite as harmless. These you
can hear distinctly a hundred yards away, and they
sound very ugly; but a round, unmarred pistol ball
can pass within six inches of your head and hardly be
heard. You not only do not hear the ball strike your
body, but you scarcely feel it at first, though you can
hear it strike a man at your side; and the sound is
dead, dull, suggestive and almost sickening.

I began to think I had escaped without a scratch;
but after climbing up the hill till quite out of reach,
and turning to look below, I raised my disabled right
arm, and found my hand and fingers streaming with
blood.

I was still strong and resolute; and, observing
some men coming slowly up the hill with a show of
pursuit, I hurried to the top of the hill, sat down
there and examined my wound. A ball had torn
across the back of the wrist and cut a vein or artery
there, but done no further damage whatever.

I was wearing a linen shirt, for I always dressed
as nearly like the white men as I could when
amongst them, and from this I tore a strip and bound
up the damaged wrist. But it still bled dreadfully,
and I sat down often, as I retreated still further into
the forest, and up and over the hills, and bound the
wound as best I could, and tightened the bandages.

The weather was intensely hot, and my blood was
boiling from excitement and exertion. This made
the blood stream the more profusely, and I suffered
dreadfully from thirst.

I sat down at length on a log by the side of a
thicket of chaparral to decide, if possible, what
course to pursue, and was still tying up my wound
and trying to stop the blood, with a pistol lying at
my side, when I saw two men approaching on horseback.

My first impulse was to dash into the brush; but
then I resolved to fight if must be, and run no
farther. I took my pistol in my hand, cocked it,
laid it across my lap, and sat still.

The men were strangers. They held up their
hands in sign of friendship; but I was excited, weak,
alone, almost helpless, and hence suspicious.

“Don't be afraid, little one,” one of them called
out; “we are friends, and only want to assist you.”

I still said nothing, held my pistol ready, and did
not move.

They talked together a moment, then one of them
dismounted and came toward me, holding his pistol
by the muzzle in his left hand.

“Here, take this pistol,” were his first words, and
he reached it out and sat down by my side. “You
see we don't know much about you; you may be
good or you may be bad, but we don't like to see too

many on one, and we are come to help you get
away.”

These men proved to be miners; prominent, peaceful,
and influential men.

They gave me another pistol to replace the one
that had been discharged in the fight, the best one of
the two horses, and a trifle of money, and insisted
that I should return to civilization.

I told them that that was impossible; that I could
not abandon my Indians; besides, pursuit would run
in that direction, and more blood would follow. I
told them frankly that I should return to the Indians
in the black forests of Mount Shasta; and they let me
have my own way.

I mounted my horse, shook hands with them soon,
and almost in silence. I could not speak. I was
choking with a new emotion. Injury and insult,
oppression, persecution, mental agony, and wrongs
almost intolerable, had not roused me; but now I
drew my battered hat down over my eyes and hid my
face. The strong men turned their backs, as if
embarrassed, looked down over the smoky camp, and
I rode away in silence.

These two noble, manly-hearted men, heroes who
never fought a battle, never had a quarrel, at last lie
buried on the hills of Idaho. May the wild spring
blossoms gather about them there; may the partridge
whistle in the tall brown grass of autumn, plaintive

and tenderly, and the snows of winter fall, soft
and beautiful, above their peaceful breasts.

I turned a spur of the mountain, through the wood,
till I came to an open space that looked down over
my Indian camp, and dismounting, made a signal,
such as is used by the Indians in war.

This is done by making a bunch of dry grass or
leaves into a little ball, lighting it and holding it
up as it smokes and burns on the point of a stick;
if you mean danger to your friends, and wish them
to fly, you hold it up till it dies out, which takes
some minutes. If danger to yourself, and you need
assistance, you hold up the signal and let the smoke
ascend, at short intervals. If you wish some one to
approach you move it backwards. If you wish only
to signal your own approach you move it forward,
and so on through a long list of signs.

There is a great difference in the density and
colour of the smoke made by different combustibles.
You know, or at least all who read ought to know as
much as an Indian about a thing so simple as this,
that the smoke of dry straw or grass, particularly of
the wild grass of California, is so much lighter than
the atmosphere of even the rarest season, that it goes
straight up—a long, thin, white thread, surging and
veering toward heaven against the blue sky like the
tail of a Chinese kite.

Another noble fellow found me here and gave me

the hand of friendship; Frank Maddox, now a
wealthy and influential citizen of Ummatilla, Oregon,
where he has been for a succession of terms sheriff
of the county.

It takes a brave man to step out from the world
arrayed against you and stand by your side at such
a time. Such deeds, rare as they are, make you
believe in men; they make you better.

The Indian warrior at length came, stealing through
the brush and up the mountain. I told him what had
happened, bade him return to his camp, and tell the
women to pack up and push out through the mountains,
with what arms and ammunition they had, for
the McCloud. The faithful fellow went back, and
before dusk returned to me with water, Indian
bread and venison, and then back again to make his
way with the women and children through the mountains
to our home on the other side of Shasta. I
never saw him again.

In crossing the trail leading from the head of Shasta
valley to Scott's valley they fell into the hands of
some brutal rancheros who hung the Indian warrior,
plundered the women and took some of the
children to keep as herders, cooks, and for such
other service as they might see fit to impose.

I stole down the mountain to the stage road, some
miles to the east; and what a glorious ride! I was
glad again, free, wild as the wind. Once more on

horse and anticipating pursuit I forgot my wound,
the care and peril. I exulted in my fierce and fearless
flight.

My horse proved to be of the noblest blood and
mettle. In less than an hour we were on the best of
terms and understood each other perfectly. I would
dismount at every steep or dangerous pass, stroke his
neck, set the saddle well in its place and talk to
him as to a friend. He in return would reach out his
nose, snuff the air loud and strong, strike the ground
with his feet, as if to tell me he was equal to it all
and was anxious to plunge ahead.

If you have a hard and desperate ride to make
get on good terms with your horse. Do not beat
him, do not spur him, but stroke his mane with your
hand, speak to him, show that you are a man and in
peril and he will take you through or die in his
tracks. All through that ride of fifty miles I lived a
splendid song. I climbed the mountains at dawn,
my horse, strong and nervous still, foaming and
plunging like a flood.

That night I reached the Indian camp. Here was
business,—blood. The women and children were
mostly high up in the mountain, almost against the
snow; but the warriors, with a few women that refused
to leave them, were on the east of the McCloud,
on the outskirts of their possessions. They had been
assisting the Pit River Indians, and had invariably

lost, until their force, weak, even at the opening of the
spring, from starvation and disease and disaster, had
become thinned and dispirited.

A council was held that night, and the few warriors,
scared, wounded, and worn-out, talked themselves
and their friends again into heart, and preparations
were made to go still further, and assist the Pit
Rivers against the white soldiers to their uttermost.

Little Klamat, now a man, and a man of authority,
was already in the front. That fierce boy, burning
with a memory that possessed him utterly, and made
him silent, sullen, and desperate, cared not where he
fought or for whom he fought, only so that he fought
the common enemy.

Paquita was also with the Pit River Indians.
What was she doing? Moulding bullets! Grinding
bread? Shaping arrow-heads and stringing bows?
Maybe she was a sort of Puritan mother fighting the
British for home and hearthstone in the Revolution.
Maybe she was a Florence Nightingale nursing the
British soldiers in the Crimea. No! the world will
not believe it. No good deed can be done by an
Indian. Why attempt to recount it?

We went down to the camp, where Klamat, Paquita,
and about one hundred warriors, with a few women
who were nursing their wounded, were preparing for
another brush with the soldiery. Here we waited
till the Modocs came down, and the three tribes

joined their thinned forces, and made common cause.

In a few days we advanced, and fell in with a
company of cavalry scouring the country for prisoners
to take to the dreaded Reservation. Women gathering
roots for their half-starved children, children
whose parents had been slain, lost in the woods, and
wandering they knew not whither, were about all
they thus far could capture.

Shots were exchanged. The cavalry dismounted
and fought on foot. The Indians shot wildly, for
they were poorly armed; but the soldiers shot still
more so, so that but little damage was done to either
side. Now and then a soldier would be carried to
the rear, and now and then they would charge up the
hills or across the ravines, but that was all that marked
the events of the day till almost nightfall. I was
impatient of all this. We could not reach the rear
of the soldiers, resting against the river, nor offend
the flanks.

Toward nightfall the Indians, now almost entirely
out of ammunition, withdrew, leaving the soldiers, as
usual, masters of the ground.

I had taken no active part in the skirmish. I was
there as an eager and curious witness. I wished to
see how the Indians would bear themselves in battle.
I felt that on their conduct that day depended the
fate of my plans. From first to last it was not encouraging.
They were brave enough, and some were

even reckless; but I saw that dissension, impatience,
envy, and ambition to be at the head, marked the
conduct of many of the leading men. There was
too much of the white man's nature here to make one
confident of success in a long and bitter war. I had
hoped their desperate situation had made them a
unit with but one single object. I was disappointed.

For some time I had been the nominal war-chief
of the Modocs, for since the Ben Wright massacre,
where their great chief was killed, they had had no
fit leader in battle, but policy dictated that in order
to keep down jealousies, I should not at once push
the Modocs too much to the front. The three tribes
had never fought together before for many generations,
though they had often fought against each
other, and everything depended on unity and goodwill.
The results of the day were discouraging
enough.

They retreated far up a canon, plunging toward
the river, and there in a great cave by a dim camp
fire refreshed themselves on a few dried roots and
venison; then after a long smoke in silence, the chief
slowly rose and opened a council of war. Many
speeches were made, but they mostly consisted in
boasts of personal achievements. They talked themselves
into sudden and high confidence, which I knew
any little reverse would dispel. They were assured
of success by signs, they said, and dreams, as well as

by the events of the day. The spirits of their fathers
had fought with them and for them.

I spoke last of all, and spoke in no encouraging
spirit. I tried to tell them first how things stood,
and how desperate and determined they must be
before the great object—a recognition of our rights—
was reached. I told them that they had not won the
fight at all; that the soldiers stood their ground, and
now had possession of the field of battle.

An old Indian sitting back in a crevice of the rock
called out, “Ah! what matters a few steps of ground
when there is so much?”

I saw my little Republic going to pieces even
before it had been fairly launched, and slept but little
that night.

At midnight women were dispatched to the various
camps, to give glowing accounts of the action, and
also to bring provisions and whatever ammunition
and arms could be had.

That night I proposed that I should cross the
river with a few Indians, proceed to a temporary
military camp near Hat Creek, state distinctly what
the Indians desired, and try and get some recognition
of their rights before they should be driven to
the wall.

They would not at first consent to imperil any of
their number in this way. The Ben Wright massacre
could not be forgotten. They seemed to think that

no Indian could enter a white enemy's camp and
come out alive. They wanted me to go again and
attempt once more to get a supply of arms and ammunition.
They said that from the first I had promised
this, and that now it was the only thing that
would save them.

At last it was agreed that I should select four
Indians, go at first to the military camp myself with
the Indians a little in the background, so as to have
some chance for their lives in case of treachery, and
see what I could do; failing in my negotiations I was to
proceed to Shasta city at once, and endeavour to get
arms and ammunition at all risks.

I chose two Modoc Indians and two Shastas—all
young men, brave, resolute, and full of fire—and
prepared to set out at once on my dangerous mission
of peace.

The Indians had captured two stage-coaches carrying
treasure and the United States mails, besides a
small train with general supplies and a sum of
gold and silver for the payment of soldiers, and had
an abundance of money. They cared nothing for it,
however. I have seen children laying little mosaic
plots in the sand with silver and gold coins, which
they valued only for their brightness and colour.
But this now to me was of use. I took my
men, with a good supply of money, crossed the
river, pushed on through the woods to the stage-road,

and there, after some delay, bought the best
horses to be had, of several Mexican vaqueros
making their way from Yreka to Red Bluffs. I
also secured their sympathy and their friendship by
liberal and generous dealing, and assurance of safety
through the country.

These Mexicans, packers and vaqueros, ever since
the war with Mexico and the conquest of California
by the United States, have with reason held only
ill-will toward the Americans. Speaking another
tongue, adhering to another form of religion, the
mass of white men have never yet come to forget
the battle-fields of a quarter of a century ago.
I always found that I could approach these Mexican
rovers, and obtain almost any favour I asked,
most especially if it pointed to assistance of the
Indians, and disadvantage to the whites.

We rode down to the military camp, and found the
small force with the officers on parade. The Indians
rode a few yards in the rear as I approached the
officer of the day, dismounted and held my hat in
one hand and lariat in the other. The officers exchanged
glances, and I grew nervous.