Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/566



occasional sliot during the clay from nearer points. On the morning of the 19th as a pack-mule train was on its way from Scorpion point to Mason's camp on the lava beds with supplies, escorted by twenty men under Lieutenant Howe; it was attacked by eleven Modocs in ambush, who were driven back. Lieutenant Leary, coming to meet the train with an escort, had been less fortunate, losing one man killed and one wounded in passing the same spot. As the train was enterino; the lava beds it was a^ain fired on; and again on returning, at both the attacking points. During the day the Indians crept up to within a few hundred yards of the pickets, firing a volley into camp. A shell dropped among them by Captain Thomas scattered them for that day. They showed themselves however on the 20th: o^oing; to the lake for water they fired on the Warm Spring warriors burying their dead, and even had the audacity to bathe themselves in the lake in sight of camp, only a feeble attempt being made to get at them by the astonished soldiery. In fact, they exhibited no fear about approaching the army camps, and the Warm Spring warriors were posted at the head of the bay between the lava beds and Hospital rock to prevent the Indians visiting the abandoned camp to pick up cartridges, coming to the lake for water, or stealing into Gillem's camp to gather information as spies.

Why did not the troops go forward and grind the savages to powder ? The men were impatient enough to be doing something, and vexed because General Gillem preferred to wait for two companies of the 4th artillery, en route from San Francisco to Fort Crook under Captain John Mendenhall and H. C. Hasbrouck, but which, on the news of the escape of the Modocs at headquarters department of California were telegraphed to proceed by the way of Shasta valley to report to Gillem. They now thought they knew that the Modocs could not be surrounded; or