Jack said:  “Agent no come next week and bring something to eat, I take all Injuns, go Tule Lake and catch fish.  What you think?”

I said:  “Jack, I do not know what to say, but you come home with me and I will give you one sack of flour and I have a deer there, I will give you half of that, and by the time you eat that up perhaps the agent may come with provisions.”  A few days later Jack came to my house and said:  “Agent no come to-morrow, I go Tule Lake, take all Injuns.  Plenty fish Tule Lake, easy catch them.”  To this I did not reply.  I dare not advise him to leave the reservation, and at the same time I knew they were almost in a starving condition and were compelled to do something or sit there and starve; and here I would say that in this case Captain Jack was not to blame for leaving the reservation.  I just state these few facts merely to show that while the Indians are as a general rule treacherous and barbarous, at the same time, in many cases no doubt similar to this one, they have been blamed more than was due them.

As the old adage goes, I believe in giving the devil his just dues, and I do not believe that Jack would have left the reservation at that time had he been supplied with provisions sufficient to live on.

I do not pretend to say whose fault this was, but merely state the facts as I know them.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

The Modoc war—­gen.  Wheaton is held off by the Indians—­gen.  Canby takes command and gets it worse—­massacre of the peace commission.

Two weeks later I went out to Linkville to buy some groceries.  This place was fifteen miles from where I had settled, and the nearest trading post or settlement to me, telling my two hired men that I would be at home the next day or the day after at the outside.

The store was kept by a man named Nurse.  He told me he had a band of mares that he would sell cheap, and insisted on my staying over night with him, saying that he would have them brought in the day following, which I agreed to do, and the next morning he started his men out to look for the mares.  They did not get them gathered up until the afternoon, and Mr. Nurse and I were in the corral looking at them, when a man rode up at full speed, his horse foaming all over, and said in a very excited tone that the Modoc Indians had gone on the war-path and had murdered most all the settlers on Lost River and Tule Lake, the latter being only twenty miles south from Linkville.  The courier that brought the news to Linkville said that the soldiers had come down to Tule Lake and fired on Captain Jack without any warning whatever, which we learned later to be all too true.