The day is passing away with the almost useless expenditure of powder and shells. However, there was a shell sent in yesterday that did not explode when delivered, and the Modocs are anxious to see what is inside of it. How to do so is a question in the Modoc mind. Several plans are tried unsuccessfully, until an old Cum-ba-twas, with jaws like a cougar, taking it in his hands and clinching the plug with his teeth, produces a combustion that he does not anticipate. That shell does execution. In fact, it is worth about five hundred thousand dollars to the Government, rating its services pro rata with the total cost of killing Modoc Indians. When the plug starts, the head of the old fellow who is holding it goes off his body in a damaged condition. Another younger man, who stands by waiting the result of the experiment, is blown all to pieces, cutting his scalp into convenient sizes for the soldiers to divide to advantage.
Two or three old Indian women pass through the lines to the water. A young brave dons woman’s clothes and comes to the line. After slaking his thirst he starts to return. Something in his walk creates a suspicion.
“That’s a man,” says a soldier.
The Indian runs. A dozen rifles command, “Halt!” The Indian halts. The soldiers take five or six scalps off that fellow’s head, and would have taken more, had the first ones been less avaricious. However, soldiers are kind-hearted and unselfish fellows, and the scalps are again divided, so that, at last, ten or twelve are happy in the possession of a scalp.
It is now five P.M. Let us see how the several parties are situated at this time. Couriers are en route to Y-re-ka with despatches, telling the world about the terrible slaughter, and, by the authority of the general in command, assuring the powers that be, in Washington, “The Modocs cannot escape. They are in our power. It is only a question of time. We have them ‘corralled.’”
In Portland, Oregon, an immense concourse of citizens are awaiting the arrival of the train bearing the remains of Gen. Canby. The streets are hushed. The doors of business houses are closed. A general feeling of sorrow is everywhere manifest. Officers of the army and a delegation from a Great Brotherhood are there. On every hand flags are at half mast. Emblems of sorrow meet the eye. The grief-stricken widow sits in her room, cold, comfortless, inconsolable.
The Fraternal and Church Brotherhoods and thousands of mourning friends crowd the wharf in San Francisco, eagerly watching the coming of a steamer from Vallejo with flags at half mast. This boat is bringing home for interment the body of another great man, whose spirit went to its Maker in company with the Christian General, for whom the city of Portland, Oregon, mourns. Nearest to the dark tabernacle two young men are standing. They are the sons of Dr. Thomas.
While the two cities of the western coast are exchanging telegraphic words of sympathy, kind-hearted friends are filling a parlor where three sorrowing children are weeping without the presence of parents. The friends are repeating the hopeful telegrams
of the Iowa veteran, and assuring them that their mother is with their father by that time as she left Y-re-ka the previous morning.
At this hour a young physician is hurrying to the bedside of an aged man, who has passed threescore years and ten, near Solon, Iowa. A glance at his face and we are reminded of the wounded Peace Commissioner in the Lava Beds, three thousand miles away. Five days ago he had read the telegram that said, “Meacham mortally wounded.” He threw himself on his bed then, saying, “If my son dies I never can rise again,—my first-born soil who went with me through all my dark hours on the frontier, twenty-five years ago. Must he die? Can I bear it? Thy will be done, O Lord!”