Round and round they move, stepping time to the rude music, until they are exhausted. The blood of the warriors is at fighting heat.
The chief takes no part. He is ill at ease; his mind is busy with great thoughts concerning the past and the future of the Modoc people.
Leaving the Modocs to exult and quarrel alternately, let us hunt up our disappointed army. A part of them have returned to Col. Barnard’s camp at Lone Lands; another part, the volunteers, have collected at Fairchild’s ranch. Great, unauthorized councils are being held; a hundred men give wise opinions. Gen. Frank Wheaton is declared “incompetent,” and some underhand work is going on to have him relieved of his command. It will succeed, although he was brave and skilful, and did as well as any other man could have done under the circumstances.
But that is not the question now, he must be relieved; it is enough that he did not succeed, and it is
necessary now to send a new man and let him learn something of the country. True, Gen. Wheaton has experience and would know how to manage better than a new man. Political power is triumphant, and this worthy man is humbled because he could not perform an impossibility. He had raw recruits, that were unskilled in Indian wars, and he was attacking with this force the strongest natural fortress on the continent.
Let us listen to some of the pretty speeches being made in the volunteer camp.
“I tell you aint them Modocs nearly thunder though? But the ‘regulars’ fired from the hip; they could not get down and draw a fine bead.”
“It takes Volunteers to fight Ingens. Ruther have one hundred volunteers anytime than a regiment of ‘regulars.’”
“The captain says he’s going to raise a new company, picked men; and then the Modocs will get h—l. Won’t they though?”
Our unpopular gray-eyed man strolled into the volunteer camp. He is a little caustic sometimes. Sauntering up to the fellow who was so brave a few days before, he said:—