Let those whose lives are spent where they are protected by the strong arm of law, go with me for a day, while we hunt up the victims of this wholesale murder.
Perhaps, if we are honest, and our hearts are open to conviction of truth, and we are actuated by the impulses of Christian sympathy, we may suspend our charitable emotions for the “noble red man,” by the time we hear the dull thud of the clods at Linkville cemetery mingle with the sobs and shrieks of the widows and orphans.
From one who was with a party who went out on
this sorrowful mission, I learned something of the scenes that met them.
On arriving at the grove of timber where Brotherton was killed, they found his body lying stark and cold, with his glassy eyes wide open. He had been pierced by four Modoc bullets. Near him was found his axe, with the handle painted with his own blood. Then another was found on a wagon, lying across the coupling poles, with his face downwards. He, too, was stripped of his clothing.
Another was found a few rods from his work, with his bowels beside him, and his heart taken from his body, and hacked to pieces. This was the work of Hooker Jim.
Thus the party went on from one to another, until thirteen bodies were found. Some of them were off from roads, where they had evidently run in their attempts to escape.
While the kind-hearted settlers were performing this sad duty, they were continually on the lookout for an attack. Let us follow this heavily-laden train of wagons, and be with them when they arrive at Linkville. Can human language depict the agony of that hour? We may tell of the outburst of grief, when the widows gather around that solemn train, preparing to unload its ghastly freight, and how, with frantic movements, they threw themselves on the remains of husband, brother and father. But we may not tell of the grief that overwhelmed their hearts in that darkest hour, when beholding loved ones mangled and mutilated by the hands that had so often received gifts from them, now so stiff and cold in death.
There are moments in life when the great fountains seem broken up as if by some terrific explosion, until even the very streams that otherwise would flow out are dried up.
Oh, how dark the world becomes to the wife and mother when the sunlights of life go out, and they stand amid the gloom, unable to recognize the hand of our heavenly Father!