Shadows of Shasta

by Joaquin Miller

"Yes, an' got in a poker game at Mariposa, and didn't get back for four days."

"Yes, and the doctor didn't come; and so the baby got well."

"Yes, just so, just so." And old Col. Billy bobbed his head, and fell to thinking of other days.

This little piece of land where the old Indian woman had lived so long, and about which she had built a fence, was very valuable indeed. Valley land was scarce here in the mountains; and there was a young orchard, the only thing of the kind in the country. And then the roads forked there, and two little rivers ran together there, and that meant that a town would spring up there as the country became settled, farms opened, and the Indians were swept away. Evil-minded men are never without resources. The laws are made to restrain such men; but on the border there is no law enforced. So you see how powerful are the wicked there; how powerless the weak, though never so well disposed.

In the far West, if an Indian is in your way, you have only to report him to the Agent of the Indian Reservation. That is all you have to do. He disappears, or dies. This Indian Agent is only too anxious to fill up his wasting ranks of Indians. They are dying every day. And if they all should die, sooner or later the fact may be known at Washington, and in the course of a few years the Reservation and office would be abolished together. And then each additional Indian contributes greatly to the Agent's income, for each Indian must be fed and clothed—or at least, the Agent is permitted to draw clothing, blankets and food for every Indian brought upon the Reservation. As to the Indians receiving these things, that is quite another affair.

Well, here were men wanting this land. Down yonder, far away to the scorching South, at the edge of the level alkali lands, in a tule swamp, where the Indians taken from the mountains were penned up and dying like sheep in a corral, was a bold, enterprising Indian Agent who was gathering in, under orders of his Government, all the Indians of Northern California. He could appoint a hundred deputies, and authorize them to bring in the Indians wherever found.

The two children—"the babes in the wood"—had been taken to the Reservation; but being bold and active, they contrived to soon escape and return to the mountains. Men whispered that the girl owed her escape to the great and growing favor in which she was held by one of the deputy agents, who, with his partner, a rough and coarse-grained man, had their homes in this camp. The cabin of these two deputy agents, Dosson and Emens, stood not far from that of old Forty-Nine. But so far as I can remember, the old man and the newly appointed deputy agents had always been at enmity.

This Dosson was certainly a bad man. He was in every sense of the word a desperado, and so was his partner; just the men most wanted by the head agent at the Reservation to capture and bring in Indians.

But whether this girl owed her escape or not to this ruffian, Dosson, certain it is that on her return she avoided his cabin, and when not in the woods, hovered about that of old Forty-Nine. This enraged Dosson beyond degree. To add to his anger, she now began to show a particular preference for John Logan. The idea of having an Indian for a rival was more than this ignorant and brutal Deputy Agent could well bear, and he set to work at once to rid himself of the object of his hatred.

The hard and merciless man-hunter almost shouted with delight at a new idea which now came upon him with the light and suddeness of a revelation. He ran at once to his partner, and told him of his determination.