Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/345

 ow drag

through, and are going on in a little time the same as before. But only think how much time, how much talk, how much that is cruel must come out of the memory of a single war so long as any one lives to remember it. If in the great conflagration every book from Homer to the New Testament had been utterly swept away, the world had been another world. The poets, the painters, the historians, have this in their own hands. u Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war." If I were a great poet, rather than celebrate the deeds of battle, I would starve.

I now threw all my energy into the effort to keep faith with the Indians in the mountains.

I reached the Sacramento river and crossed at the ferry near Rock creek. I hid the Indians camp in the willows near the mouth of that stream, and a few miles from Shasta city, while I took lodgings at a wayside hotel hard by, and began at once to pur chase arms and ammunition, which I carried by night to the Indian camp in the willows.

I soon had a good supply, and was only waiting a fine moonlight night to push out, when it became evident one evening at my hotel that my movements were watched. I ordered my horse, left him standing at the rack, and went at the back of the house up the hill, and from a point whence I could not be seen from the hotel, signalled for one of my Indians. He came, and I hastily gave this order : " Pack up at once, three of you, swim your horses, cross the