Life Amongst the Modocs: Unwritten History/Chapter 30

by Cincinnatus Heine Miller

CHAPTER XXX.

DEATH OF PAQUITA.

ET us pass hurriedly over those dread ful events; but remember I kept my promise like a man. There are a thousand things you will condemn and denounce, but if you endure what I endured to keep faith with your captors, I for one will pronounce you not wholly bad, whatever you may do.

I was surrendered to the sheriff and taken before a judge. I feared an investigation, lest something might be revealed which would connect the pale- faced boy in black with the long-haired renegade living with the Indians, and thus throw me into the hands of the military, which I had just escaped.

The Prince was in Nicaragua battling for the esta blishment of an order of things even more impossible than my Indian Republic, and I had not a friend with whom I dared communicate. I pleaded not guilty, declined an examination, and was taken to prison. And what a prison ! A box, ten feet by ten ; a little window with iron grates looking to the east

over the top of another structure that clung to the steep hill-side on which the rude and horrible prison was built. A mattress on the floor ; filth and vermin everywhere ; not a chair, not a drop of water half the time ; not a breath of air. The food was cold refuse of some low chop-house. You could some times see teeth-marks in the soggy biscuits. Some sovereign, no doubt, had a contract for feeding the prisoners, and was doing well.

Low-bred and half-read lawyers beset me. They would tell the jailer I had sent for them, and thus gain admittance. Somehow they thought I had or could obtain money. They were coarse, insolent, and persistent in their efforts to get into the secrets of my life. At last, when they got what jewelry and few available gold pieces I had, and could not get my secrets, I saw them no more. If the treatment I received at the hands of these wretches is a fair example, then here is a wrong that should be corrected, for a prisoner, let him be never so guilty, has more to fear from these fellows than from his judges.

Many people visited me, but they could not remain long in the wretched pen; and as I would never speak to them, I had but little sympathy. Some times for a while I was out of my mind. At such times I would write strange, wild songs, in the Indian tongue, all over the walls.

At length the kind young man mentioned at my capture came with a young lawyer named Holbrook. This young lawyer was a gentleman, kind-hearted and

intelligent. After a few visits I told him my story with perfect confidence. I do not think he believed it altogether, for he now insisted on putting in a plea of insanity. I scorned to do this, and grew indignant as he persisted. He never betrayed a word of my history, however, and went on, honestly, no doubt, making up his case to prove his client insane.

Brave, noble Holbrook ! he was doing, or thought he was doing, all in his power to serve his client. This man became a brilliant lawyer, a leading spirit in Idaho, and twice represented the Territory in Congress with distinction. He was killed in the prime of manhood in a hand-to-hand encounter a sort of duel.

One night, as I lay half-awake in the steaming little den, I heard the call of the cakea, or night bird, on the steep hill-side above the prison. It stopped, came nearer, called again, called three times, retreated, called thrice, came again nearer, and called as at first. I sprang to the window and answered through the bars, till I heard the jailer turn in his bed, where he lay in a large room into which my cell opened, and then I was silent. But ah, how glad ! All night I paced eagerly around the room, trying to strengthen my legs, and throwing out my arms to harden them for action. I knew my friends the red men had followed and found me. Here was something to be done. I forgot about my lawyers, refused my food no longer, and filled my head with plans.

The next day I waited for night, and it seemed the sun would never go down. Then I waited for mid night ; and at last when it came, and no call from the hill, I began to despair. I could hardly repress my anxiety ; my heart beat and beat at every breath, as if it would burst. After all, I said to myself, I am really insane.

I lay down with my face to the low window, look ing out to the dim, grey dawn breaking and flushing like a great surf over the white wall of the sierras to the east.

Maybe I slept an instant, for there, when I looked intently, sat Paquita on the roof of the lower build ing, peering through the rusty bars right into my face.

I had learned the virtue, if not the dignity, of silence, and arose instantly and stole up to the bars.

The poor girl tried, the first thing, to pass me a pistol through the bars, as if that could have been of any use to me there; but it could not be passed between. Then she passed through a thin sheath knife, but never said a word.

She made signs for me to cut away the bars with the knife, that she would come and help me, motioned to the grey surf breaking against the sky in the east, and disappeared.

I hugged that knife to my heart as if it had been a bride come home. I danced mercilessly and Indian- like about my cell, and flourished the knife a bove my

head. I was now not so helpless. I was not alone. This knife was more to me than all the lawyers.

I will kill that dreadful jailer with this knife some night when he comes in with my supper, I said, pass out, slip into town, mount a horse and escape to the mountains. I lay down at last, hid the knife in my bosom, and hugged it till I fell asleep.

Paquita came early the next night. Indians are too cunning to come twice at the same hour.

I had done nothing all day. This time she spoke and told me that the bars must be filed and cut away, that this was now the only hope, since all other attempts of hers had failed. An Indian war rior was waiting, she said, with horses out of town ; only get the bars away and we could almost step from the house-top to the steep hill-side, and then all would be well.

She had hacked two thin knives together, making a kind of saw, and we set to work. The bars were an inch in diameter, but made of soft iron, and the knife-blades laid hold like vipers.

At dawn she filled up the little gashes we had cut across the bars with a substance she had prepared just the colour of the rusty bars, and again dis appeared.

For more than a week we kept at this work. No one passed on the brushy hill-side or dwelt there, and we were never disturbed. At last three bars were loosened, and on Saturday night, when, as was then the custom, the men of the city, office rs and all,

would be more or less in their glasses, our time was set for the escape.

She came about midnight, the true and faithful little savage, the heroine, the red star of my dreadful life, crouching on the roof, and laid hold of the bars one by one, and bent them till I could pass my head and shoulders. Then she drew me through, almost carried me in her arms, and in another moment we touched the steep but solid earth.

She hurried me up the hill-side to the edge of a thicket of chaparral. I could go no further. I fell upon my knees and clasped my hands. I bent down my face and kissed and kissed the earth as you would kiss a sister you had not seen for years. I arose and clasped the bushes in my arms, and stripped the fragrant myrtle-leaves by handfuls. I kissed my hands to the moon, the stars, and began to shout and leap like a child. She laid her hand on my mouth, and almost angrily seized me by the arm. I turned and I kissed her, or rather only the presence and touch of her. I lifted her fingers to my lips, her robe, her hair, as she led me over the hill, around and down to a trail. There, in answer to the night-bird call, an Indian, a brave, reckless fellow, who had been with me in many a bold adventure, led three horses from a thicket.

The tide was coming in again. The great grey surf was breaking over the wall of the Sierras in the east. They lifted me to my saddle, for I was as weak as a child. We turned our steeds heads, we

plunged away in the swift, sweet morning air, and as we climbed a hill and left the town behind, I looked across my shoulder, and threw a bitter curse and threat ....

But the prison only was burned. The town, Shasta city, stands almost a ruin. The great men who made it great in early days have gone away. Chinamen and negroes possess the once crowded streets, bats flit in and out through broken panes, and birds build nests in houses that are falling to decay. The city of twenty years ago looks as though it had felt the touch of centuries.

How grandly the eternal old snow peak lifted his front before us ! How gloriously the sunlight rolled and flashed about his brow before its rays got down into the pines that lay along our road.

We plunged into the Sacramento river at full speed, and swam to the other side.

When you swim a river with a horse, you must not touch the rein; that may draw his nose into the water, and drown you both. You drop the rein, clutch the mane, and float free of his back, even using your own limbs, if strong enough, to aid your horse in the passage. You wind a sash tightly about your head or hat, and thrust your pistols in the folds. Keep your head above water, and you are ready to fight the moment you touch land on the other side.

As the first rays of the sun shot across the mighty ramparts to the east, we climbed the rock y bluff

and set our course through the open oaks for a cross ing on Pit Kiver, not far from the military camp spoken of before. We hoped to reach it and cross at dark, and rode like furies. Where did the Indian get these horses ?

The escape so far was a success. At first I had had no hope. The idea of cutting away iron bars with knives seemed a delusive dream. But Indian patience can achieve incredible things. At first the knives would pinch and bite in the little grooves, for the back was of course thicker than the edge. But Paquita was equal to all that. By day she would grind the knives on the rocks, while hiding away in the bushes, till they were thin as wafers. A watch- spring is a common instrument used to cut away bars or rivets. The fine steel lays hold of the iron like teeth. Mexican revolutionists, liable at any time to imprisonment, sometimes have their watch- springs prepared especially for such an emergency; and I have known common cut-throats on the border to have a watch-spring around the arm under the folds of a garment. Prison-breaking in the Old World, owing to the massive and substantial struc tures, is almost a lost art. " But few escapes are made now," said a Newgate prisoner to me, " and those are mostly by strategy, like that of the illus trious prisoner of Ham."

It was nearly dusk when we touched the bank of the river, up which we must ride a mile or so before we came to the crossing.

Our horses fairly staggered under us, but we kept on, full of hope, and certain of security.

We descended the hill that sloped to the crossing, winding our scarfs about our heads, and preparing for the passage, which, once accomplished, would make our rest secure.

Suddenly, from a clump of low fir-trees, an officer with a platoon of soldiers stepped out, with rifles to their faces, and called to us to surrender.

The soldiers were there concealed, waiting for Indians that might attempt to cross at this favourite pass, and we were upon them before we suspected an enemy within miles of us.

They were almost between us and the deep cut leading to the river that had been made by animals and Indians from time immemorial, and we could not reach it. To attempt to ascend the hill, up the trail, on our tired horses, had been certain death.

The officer called again. The Indian drew his pistol, called to us to leap our horses down the bank into the river, and as we did so, fired in the face of the officer. Then, with a yell of defiance, he followed us over the precipice into the boiling, surging river, cold and swollen from the melting snows of Mount Shasta.

It was a fearful leap; not far, but sudden and ugly, with everything on earth against us. My horse and myself went far down in the blue, cold river, but he rose bravely, and struck out fairly for the other side.

But poor Paquita and her brave companion were not so fortunate. The river ran in an eddy, and their weak and bewildered horses were spun around like burrs in a whirlpool. The soldiers had discharged a volley as we disappeared, but I think none of us were touched from this first fire. My horse swam very slow, and dropped far down the current. The sol diers came up, stood on the bank, deliberately loaded, aimed their pieces, and fired every shot of the platoon at me, but only touched my horse. They had not yet discovered Paquita and her companion struggling in the eddy, almost under their feet, else neither of them had ever left it. Now, they got their horses turned and struck out, diving and holding on to the mane.

They were not forty feet from the soldiers when discovered. The guns were dropped, pistols were drawn, and a hundred shots, and still another hun dred, rained down upon and around those two brave children, but they gave no answer.

I was down the stream out of reach, and nearing the shore. I witnessed the dreadful struggle for life, looking back, clinging to my almost helpless horse s mane.

They would dive, then the black heads and shiny shoulders would reappear, a volley of shot, down again till almost stifled; up, again a volley, and shouts and laughter from the shore.

It seemed they would never get away from out the rain of lead. Slowly, oh ! how slowly, their weary,

wounded horses struggled on against the cold, blue flood that boiled and swept about them.

At last my spent horse touched a reach of sand far below, that made a shoal from shore, and I again looked back. I saw but one figure now. The brave and fearless warrior had gone down pierced by a dozen balls.

My horse refused to go further, but stood bleeding and trembling in the water up to his breast, and I managed to make land alone. I crept up the bank, clutching the long wiry grass and water-plants. I drew myself up and sat down on the rocks still warm from the vanished sunshine.

When I had strength to rise, I went up the warm grassy river-bank, peering through the tules in an almost hopeless search for my companions. Nothing was to be seen. The troops on the other bank had gone away, not knowing, perhaps not caring, what they had done. The deep, blue river gave no sign of the tragedy now. All was as still as the tomb. I stole close and slowly along the bank. I felt a desolation that was new and dreadful in its awful solemnity. The bluff of the river hung in basaltic columns a thousand feet above my head; only a narrow little strip of grass, and tules, and reeds and willows, nodding, dipping, dripping, in the swift, strong river. Not a bird flew over, not a cricket called from out the long grass. u Ah, what an ending is this !" I said, and sat down in despair. My eyes were riveted on the river. Up and down on the

other side, everywhere I scanned with Indian eyes for even a sign of life, for friend or foe. Nothing but the bubble and gurgle of the waters, the nod ding, dipping, dripping of the reeds, the willows, and the tules.

If earth has any place more solemn, more solitary, more awful than the banks of a strong, deep river rushing, at nightfall, through a mountain forest, where even the birds have forgotten to sing, or the katydid to call from the grass, I know not where it is.

I stole further up the bank ; and there, almost at my feet, a little face was lifted as if rising from the water into mine.

Blood was flowing from her mouth, and she could not speak. Her naked arms were reached out and holding on to the grassy bank, but she could not draw her body from the water. I put my arms about her, and, with a sudden and singular strength, lifted her up and back to some warm, dry rocks, and there sat down with the dying girl in my arms.

She was bleeding from many wounds. Her whole body seemed to be covered with blood as I drew her from the water. Blood spreads with water over a warm body in streams and seams; and at such a time a body seems to be covered with a sheet of crimson.

Paquita?

I entreated her to speak. I called to her, but she could not answer. The desolation and so litude was

now only the more dreadful. My voice came back in strange echoes from the basalt bluffs, and that was all the answer I ever had.

The Indian girl lay dead in my arms. Blood on my hands, blood on my clothes, and blood on the grass and stones.

The lonely July night was soft and sultry. The great white moon rose up and rolled along the heavens, and sifted through the boughs that lifted above and reached from the hanging cliff, and fell in lines and spangles across the face and form of my dead.

Paquita !

Once so alone in the awful presence of death, I became terrified. My heart arid soul were strung to such a tension, it became intolerable. I would have started up and fled. But where could I have fled, even had I had the strength to fly ? I bent my head, and tried to hide my face.

Paquita dead !

Our lives had first run together in currents of blood on the snow, in persecution, ruin, and de struction ; in the shadows and in the desolation of death; and so now they separated for ever.

Paquita dead !

We had starved together ; stood by the sounding cataracts, threaded the forests, roamed by the river- banks together; grown from childhood, as it were, together. But now she had gone away, crossed the dark and mystic river alone, and left me to make

the rest of the journey with strangers and without a friend.

Paquita !

Why, we had watched the great sun land, like some mighty navigator sailing the blue seas of heaven, on the flashing summit of Shasta ; had seen him come with lifted sword and shield, and take possession of the continent of darkness; had watched him in the twilight marshal his forces there for the last great struggle with the shadows, creeping like evil spirits through the woods, and, like the red man, make a last grand battle there for his old dominions. We had seen him fall and die at last with all the snow- peak crimsoned in his blood.

No more now. Paquita, the child of nature, the sunbeam of the forest, the star that had seen so little of light, lay wrapped in darkness. Paquita lay cold and lifeless in my arms.

That night my life widened and widened away till it touched and took in the shores of death.