Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/178

 rehension.

Why not escape? There are some popular errors of opinion that are amusing. Men suppose that if a man is in the mountains he is safe, hid away, and secure ; that he has only to step aside in the brush and be seen no more.

As a rule, it is infinitely better to be in the heart of a city. Here was a camp of three thousand men. Each man knew the face of his neighbour. There was but one way to enter this camp, but one way to go out ; that way led to the city. We were in a sac, the further end of a cave, as it were. You could not go this way, or that, through the moun tains above. There were no trails; there was no food. You would get lost; you would starve.

Besides, there were wild beasts, and wilder men, ready to revenge the hundred massacres up and down the country, not unlike the one described. Here, in that day at least, if a man did wrong he could not hide. The finger of God pointed him out to all.

Late one September day it grew intensely sultry; there was a haze in the sky and a circle about the sun. There was not a breath. The perspiration came out and stood on the brow, even as we rested in the shadow of the pines. A singular haze ; such a day, it is said, as precedes earthquakes.

The black crickets ceased to sing; the striped lizards slid quick as ripples across the rocks, and birds went swift as arrows overhead, but uttered no cry. There was not a sound in the air nor on the earth.