Wheaton replied that being ill, he directed the commanding officer at Fort Klamath to represent him, and compel the Modocs to recognize the superintendent's authority, using all the force at his command to this end, and promising to reinforce him with Captain Perry's troop F. of the 1st cavalry, and also a detachment from Camp Bidwell, under Lieutenant J. G. Kyle, which would give him seventy-five cavalrymen in addition to Jackson's troop, making an aggregate force of 150 completely equipped cavalry. He directed him to proceed at once upon this duty, in every way sustaining the Indian department, but adding that nothing more than a show of military force would be required to awe sixty armed Modocs into submission. The consequence of not having made a sufficient show of such force is already known. Before Wheaton's order arrived at Fort Klamath the mischief had been consummated.
The moment that news of the disaster reached Camp Warner, Wheaton dispatched Perry's troop, by the way of Yainax, to join Jackson at Crawley's, and ordered Captain Bernard from Camp Bidwell, with all the men that could be spared from that post, to the same point, by the way of the southern emigrant road. Perry's company left Bigg's rancho, at the north end of Goose lake valley, on the night of the 3d of December, and Captain Bernard's troop left Bidwell, ninety-six miles from Crawley's, on the forenoon of the following day. Both were ordered to make forced marches, and not to wait for supply-trains, which would follow; and yet with all the haste that could be made, a week had elapsed, and ample opportunity afforded the Modocs to remove to any stronghold they might select, before reënforcements or supplies reached the camp at Crawley's.
In order to protect the roads between Linkville and other settlements, and the route to Yreka, which seemed the first and most important duty, Captain
