The women are much excited and are crying. They lose self-control. Mrs. Boddy, drawing from her pocket a knife, dashes at Hooker Jim’s breast. Mrs. Schiere, with a pistol, attempts to shoot Steamboat Frank. The man who would not brook insult from Gen. Nelson could not see these women commit a crime; with almost superhuman strength and agility he disarms both women before they have sipped from the cup of revenge, accidentally receiving a slight wound in one hand from the knife held by Mrs. Boddy. The savages stand unmoved and make no effort to escape. Let the reader be charitable in judgment on the actions of these widows. They
were alone in the world. Their protectors had fallen by the hands that have since been washed by a just Government, when in its dire necessity it accepted their services as traitors. Ah! double traitors to a reluctant, but brave leader. If the men who killed the unarmed captives in Fairchild’s wagon yesterday can go unpunished after killing Indians that had not harmed them, let charity extend to these broken-hearted women, nor censure them for a thirst for vengeance, especially when they realized that justice has hid her face to these inhuman monsters who are reeking with blood, and guilty of the most damnable treachery. True, these are women; but the accident of sex does not change nature, and never should be urged against those whose wrongs drive them to desperation.
The quarter-master’s carpenters are putting on the finishing strokes to the extempore instrument of a partial justice to be administered without even the farce of an ex-parte trial. The trap is being arranged. Eight or ten ropes are hanging from the beam. Gen. Davis is preparing a statement of the crimes committed by the captives, and, also, his verdict, which he proposes to read to these unfortunate subjugated warriors before he tests the strength of the dangling ropes with live-weight. A courier arrives from Y-re-ka. A message is received by Gen. Davis, ordering him to hold the prisoners subject to further instructions from Washington.
The work on the hanging-machine is suspended. The Modoc medicine-man assures his friends that he has won another victory. Gen. Davis is thoroughly chagrined. The disappointment is great. Modocs
enjoy it; white man does not. The brittle thread of life has been strengthened for the temporary benefit of a few vagabonds whose existence is no blessing to mankind outside of the Modoc blood; whose death would cause a shout of joy over the civilized world. Not because it would bring back the dead, and cause them to stand in the flesh again, but because justice has been done to a man with a red skin who dared claim the privileges of manhood; and, being denied, had resisted a good Government in which he had no part.
The scaffold stands untried. Nobody knows whether it is a good hanging-machine or not. The camp is broken up; the war is over, and the Modocs are now where they can be controlled. They are en route to Fort Klamath, under guard.
The chieftain who, a few weeks since, was over-matching the best military talent of the army, holding in abeyance twenty times the number of his own forces, and defying a great, strong Government, is now a captive and in chains, compelled to travel under an escort over the route he had passed so often in the freedom of days gone by. Familiar objects greet his eyes as he raises them from the last look he will ever take of the scene of his glory as a chief; and his shame as an outlaw.
The first place of historical interest on this last ride of the Modoc chief, as he leaves “the peninsula,” is where Ben Wright killed nearly as many warriors as Captain Jack has had in his command. If the angel of justice accompanies this conquering army with its dejected captives, she will cover her face while it passes the spot where Modoc blood watered the
ground under a flag of truce, when she remembers that the perpetrators of that deed were honored for the act. A few miles only, and the vacant cabin of Miller stands, accusing Hooker Jim, the murderer of its builder and owner, for his treachery, and upbraiding a Government that excuses his crimes, because he can be made useful in hunting to the death the chief who led where such a villain forced him to go.
Justice uncovers her face when this army reaches Bloody Point, for now she remembers that it was here that a train of emigrants were waylaid and cruelly butchered, and she shows no favors to the descendants of those who committed the crime. Again the eye of the conquered chief glances over the scene of his childhood, and, too, over the field where he fought his first battle. Since it would be pronounced sickly “sentimentalism” to ponder over the scenes of such a man’s boyhood, and lest we should offend some white man’s fine sense of pride that he is a white-skinned man, though he may have little else of which to boast, we pass along up Lost river, with simply recalling the fact, that this man’s—Captain Jack’s—early home abounds with traditional literature connecting his name with the savage scenes of the past, and linking it with the tragic events of 1872-3.