Part 61 (1/2)

8. _Curly-haired Jack._ The answer comes from the bones of a suicide, muttered up through the blood of Sherwood, ”_Here_.”

9. _Big Ike._ The remnants of a brave who stood too near the valuable sh.e.l.l, on the third day of the big battle, answers in broken accents, ”_H-e-r-e_.”

10. _Greasy Boots. ”Here,”_ is answered by the ghost of the brave killed the day before the battle of January 17th.

11. _Old Chuckle Head._ On a shelf, in a certain doctor's private medical museum, a skeleton head rattles a moment, and then answers, _”Here.”_

12. _One-eyed Riley._ The bones of the only brave who fell in Lost-river battle answer, ”_Here._ I fell in fair battle; I don't complain.”

13. _Old Tales._ The ghost of Old Tales answers, that he was killed by a sh.e.l.l, and murmurs, ”_Here_.”

14. _Te-he Jack_--

15. _Mooch_--

16. _Little John_--

17. _Poney_--

A dark spot in the road between Fairchild's ranch and Gen. Davis camp shakes, upheaves, and with thunderous voice proclaims in the ears of a Christian nation, ”_Here_ we fell at the hands of your sons after we had surrendered. 'VENGEANCE!'”

Fifty thousand hearts, in red-skinned tabernacles on the Pacific coast, respond, ”WAIT.”

Seventeen voiceless spirits have answered the roll-call who were sent off to the future hunting-ground by United States _sulphur, saltpetre and strong cords_.

Seventeen from _fifty-three_, leaving _thirty-six_,--the returns say, _thirty-nine_.

How is this? Look the matter up, and we shall find that ”_Old Sheepy_” and his son Tom Sheepy, who never fired a shot during the war,--in fact, was never in the Lava Beds,--are compelled to leave their home with Press Dorris and go with the party to Quaw-Paw.

Another,--a son of Old Duffey,--who remained at Yai-nax during the war, sooner than be separated from his friends, joins the exiles on their march. Now all are accounted for, and the record here made is correct.

The other side we have told from time to time in the progress of this narrative. The cost of this war has not yet been footed up.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

THE TWO GIBBETS.

A gloomy picture fills the eye from the height of the bluff whence we took our first view of the Lava Beds, Jan. 16th, 1873. The whited tents are there no more. The little mounds at the foot rest heavy on the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the fallen. No curling smoke rises from savage altar, or soldier camp. The howl of cayote and cougar succeed the silver bugle, calling to the banquet of blood. Wild birds, instead of ascending ghosts, fill the air above, and their screams follow the weird wild songs of the medicine-men. The caverns answer back to bird and beast--no more to savage war-whoop, or bursting sh.e.l.l. The cannon are cooled by a winter's frost, while a winter's storms have given one coating to the scars left on the lava rocks by the iron hail. The dark spots, painted by mad hands, dipped in the blood of heroes, grow dim. A rude, unfinished gibbet stands out on the deserted promontory of the peninsula, a reproachful proof of a soldier's unwarranted haste, a token of a nation's prudence; while another rude scaffold, which justice left half-satisfied, also remains at Fort Klamath, defiant and threatening, and upbraiding her ministers for unfair dispensation in sparing the more guilty, while writing her protest on the blood-stained hands of the felons who provoked her wrath, as she follows them to the land of banishment.

The lone cabins, made desolate by the casualties of war, are again inviting the weary traveller to rest. The ranchmen of the Modoc country follow the cattle trails without fear. The surviving wounded are trying to forget their scars, or hobbling on crutch or cork. Tall gra.s.ses meet, fern and flowers bloom over the graves of loved ones, bedewed with the tears of the widows and orphans of a nation's mistake in refusing to recognize a savage's power for revenge, until recorded by scars on the maimed hands and mutilated face of his biographer, and proclaimed by the marble shaft whose shadows fall over the breast of the lamented Canby, near _Indiana's_ capital, and by the tomb of the no less lamented Dr. Thomas, which keeps silent vigils with those of Baker and Broderick, on the hallowed heights of Lone mountain, San Francisco.

The broken chains of the royal chief hang noiseless on the walls of his prison cell. His bones, despised, dishonored, burnished, sepulchred in the crystal catacomb of a medical museum, represent his ruined race in the capital of a conquering nation; and the survivors of his blood-stained band, broken-hearted, mourn his ignominious death, shouting their anguish to listless winds in a land of exile. He lives in memory as the recognized leader in the most diabolical butchery that darkened the pages of the world's history for the year eighteen hundred and seventy-three.

The Congress of the United States devotes itself to the payment of the cost of the war; while the results stand out ghastly monuments, calling in thunder-tones on a triumphant nation to stop, in its mad career; _to think_; upbraiding it for the inhuman clamor of power for the blood of heroic weakness, until it thwarted President Grant's policy of doing right, _because it was right_; at the same time applauding him for his courage in proposing, and his success in consummating, a settlement on peaceful terms with a powerful civilized nation, with whom we had cause of estrangement.

If it was bravery that courted the accusation of cowardice, while it grandly defied impeachment by proposing to settle a financial difference, involving questions of national honor, in the case with England, on amicable terms; it was infinitely more patriotic, more humane, more just, and more G.o.dlike, boldly to declare that a weak and helpless people should be treated as men,--should be tendered the olive-branch, while the cannon were resting from their first repulse.

The civilized world joins in honoring him in the former case; cowardly America burns in effigy his Minister of the Interior for failure in the latter; while on neither magistrate nor minister should fall the blame. On whom, then, should it fall? Where it belongs,--on the American people as a nation. If you doubt it, read the history written by our own race, and you will blush to find from Cape Cod bay to the mouth of the Oregon, the record of battle-grounds where the red man has resisted the encroachments of a civilization that refused him recognition on equal terms before the law. You will find that these battle-grounds have been linked together by trails of blood, marked out by the graves of innocent victims of both races, who have fallen in vindication of rights that have been by both denied, or have been slain in revenge by each. You will find scarce ten miles square that does not offer testimony to the fact that it has been one continuous war of races, until the aborigines have been exterminated at the sacrifice of an equal number of the aggressive race.

You will find that in almost every instance where the white man and the Indian have met in conference, the latter has been overmatched with diplomatic schemes, plausible and captivating on the surface, while behind and beneath has always lurked a hidden power, that he dared not resist in open council.