Page:The Indian History of the Modoc War.djvu/160

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to go with these horses; he will make his escape sure. You go with him." Scarface said: "Look here, Mr. Big Soldier, me no what me do, dis mans no run 'way ; he come back here putty d d quick too, you bet life. 'Spose him man no like come back here, he no come you see today, you let him go, he come back putty cl d quick too, you bet him come back."

Gen. Jeff. C. Davis told Col. Mason that Charley was all right. "He understands his business. Col., he does." Mason said, "All right, Charley, you boss this job with my permis- sion." Charley says: "T'ank you, Mason." Ben Lawver soon disappeared around a little hill. Pat, the Irishman, said : "Begorra, I'll bet me auld hat against a dead rattlesnake, that long-legged Injun will be in San Francisco by this time to- morrow." Pat had not any more than finished his sentence, Ben Lawver came around the hill with his wife behind him, and the other two riding double on the other horse. Pat says, "By the Holy Scriptures, that long-legged devil is a fool. He does not know a good thing when he has got it. He could have been five hundred miles from here by morning, the fool; I'd like to stampede the devil and get him to running some time. I'd like to blow his bloody head off his shoulders for being a bloody fool."

Ben rode up to Gen. Davis smiling. Scarface Charley took the horses and picketed them. Gen. Jeff Davis, Wheaton, Col. Mason and three or four other officers had a long talk with the four Modoc scouts, that night. Mason proposed to try the Modoc prisoners right there on the Peninsular. Davis said it would be best to move the prisoners to Fort Klamath, Oregon, and try them there. So they all agreed that would be the best thing to do. Davis also learned that only a few Modocs had not been captured, namely, Modoc George's son Billie, his wife and four sisters, two grown, and their mother, last seen near Vanbrimer Mountain, California; Long Jim and father, last seen on Bryant Mountain ; two other old men and women ; one boy, last seen on Sheep Mountain, going west.

There were five other crippled Modoc Indians that were held at Fairchild's Ranch, during all the Lava Bed fighting. They were crippled in the first engagement on November 29th,