It is night, and in the solders’ camp a wail of anguish is heard coming from the tent nearest Gen. Canby’s late quarters. Grief weighs down the heart of Orderly Scott, who is giving vent to his anguish in stifled sobs and vows of vengeance on the perpetrators of the foul deed. He rises from his bed, and, with face half buried in his hands, looks again on the mangled form of his benefactor, and, in renewed paroxysms of grief, is borne away by his friends.

The sound of hammer and saw disturbs the midnight hour, while the carpenters are transforming the wooden gun-cases into coffins for the dead. Two are in progress, but the mechanics are economizing the rough boards, for the probabilities are that the third will be needed on the morrow.

The steward is holding a lamp while Drs. Semig and Cabanis are dressing the wounds of the only patient in the hospital tent. He is unconscious, while the ugly, ragged wound in his face is being carefully bound, and the long crooked cut on the left side of the head is being closed with the silver threads, and his ear is being stitched together. He flinches a little when the flexible silver probe is following the trail cut through his right arm made by the pistol ball that struck it outside of the wrist, and, passing between the bones of the fore arms, came out on the inside, midway between the hand and elbow. The left hand is laid out on a board, and the wounded man is told that “the forefinger must come off.”

“Make out the line of the cut, doctor,” says Meacham.

“There, about this way,” the doctor replies, while with his scalpel he traces a cut nearly to the wrist.

“I can’t hold still while you do that, without chloroform,” says Meacham.

The doctor feels his pulse, and says, “You have lost too much blood to take chloroform.”

“Then let it stay until I am stronger,” rejoins Meacham.

For once doctors agree, one of them saying, “The finger would not disfigure a corpse very much.”

“Please ask Gen. Gilliam to send to Linkville for my wife’s brother, Capt. Ferree,” comes from the bloodless lips of the wounded man.

“My dear fellow,” replies the kind-hearted doctor, “the general sent a courier for him hours ago.”

This thoughtful act of kindness, on the part of Gen. Gilliam, has touched the heart of the sufferer. When he awakes again Capt. Ferree was bending over him and remarking, “He will be blind if he recovers, won’t he, doctor?”

“He won’t be very handsome, that’s a fact,” says the nurse.

In the Modoc camp, when the murderous bands arrive with their scanty plunder, a general quarrel ensues, and bitter reproaches are heard against Hooker Jim for not securing Mr. Dyer, and against Curly Jack and Curly-haired Doctor, for the escape of Maj. Boyle, and on account of the clothing taken from the murdered men. Captain Jack claims the uniform of Gen. Canby. Bogus and Boston divide the clothing taken from Dr. Thomas, and Shacknasty Jim, Hooker Jim and old Schonchin are awarded the clothing and effects of Meacham.

Preparations are making for defence, as the Indians do not doubt that an attack will be made immediately. Many bitter recriminations are uttered; but it is war, war to the last man! They hush all their quarrels in the necessity for united action. They pledge themselves to fight until the last man is dead. The Curly-haired Doctor calls his assistants around him and begins the Great Medicine Dance. All night long the sound of drum and song is heard. The Modocs expect every moment to hear the signal of their sentinel on the outposts announcing the “soldiers!” No sleep comes to this camp to-night.

The morning comes, but no blue-coats are seen among the rocks. The army of one thousand men are not ready yet.

The Modocs exult; they are jubilant; they have scared the Government. “It is afraid. It will grant us, now, all we ask.” Captain Jack and Scar-face Charley do not assent to this unreasonable view of the situation.

“The soldiers will come. Our victory is not complete. We must fight now until all are dead. The Modoc heart says ‘We must fight!’” Captain Jack affirms.

Saturday morning, April 13th, finds the three camps side by side, and each on the lookout for an attack.

Strong hands are bearing two rough-looking boxes up the steep bluff. In the foremost one is the body of Gen. Canby; in the other, all that is mortal of Dr. Thomas. Slowly they mount the rugged hill. They reach the waiting ambulances. The bodies are each assigned an escort. Sitting beside Gen. Canby’s coffin are his adjutant, Anderson, and the faithful Scott.

How changed the scene! a few hours since all were hopeful. Now, all are in despair, crushed under the affliction of the hour. While they move cautiously under escort, the terrible news is flashing along thousands of miles of telegraph lines, over mountains, under rivers and oceans. Before the sun sets the hearts of millions of people are beating in sympathy with the bereaved. Extras and bulletins are flying from a thousand presses. The newsboys of America are shouting the burden of the terrible telegram. The Indians along a thousand miles of the frontier have already learned that something of dreadful import has happened.

About the middle of the afternoon of this day a woman sitting in her room on State street, Salem, Oregon, raises her eyes, turning them towards the street. Perhaps the sound of steps on the wooden pavement attracts her attention. She sees two familiar faces turned towards her window. “Oh, see her! How pale she is!” She drops her work, and runs hastily to meet the two gentlemen.

“Is he dead? Is he dead? Tell me! Has my husband been killed by the Modocs?” the woman cries.

The gentlemen are speechless for the moment, while the lady pleads. They dare not speak the truth too plainly, now; she cannot bear it.

One of them replies, “Gen. Canby and Dr. Thomas have been killed by the Modocs, and Mr. Meacham is sli—” “mortally wounded!” shrieks the lady sinking to the floor.

Three young persons are coming home. The eldest is a young lady of eighteen. The lad that walks beside her is her brother of sixteen; and the other is an auburn-haired girl of fourteen. There is something in her appearance that connects our thoughts with the mutilated, almost bloodless man who is lying in the hospital in the Lava Beds.

They turn the corner leading out of the Plaza and in sight of home. They see men and women hurrying across the front yard.

“Has father been killed by the Modocs?” bursts from their lips as they fly.

Dr. Hall meets them and says, “Your father is slightly wounded. He is not dead.”

The three frightened children gather around the tearless, pale-faced mother, who says, “Don’t deceive me. I am strong now. I can bear it. Tell me the worst.”

The friends exchanged glances. Dr. Hall shakes his head, slightly motioning towards the elder girl, whose face is buried in the bosom of Mrs. Dr. Smith.

“George, run to the telegraph office and bring the despatch,” says the mother to her son. “I must know the truth.”

The boy bounds away towards the office, and is met by Prof. Powell, who says, “Come back, George. I will go home with you, and tell your mother all about it.”

The two return, and the professor, with faltering voice reads the despatch: “Canby and Thomas killed. Meacham mortally wounded.” The marble-faced wife arises, saying, “I am going to my husband.” Her friends remonstrate with her.

“I am going to my husband. Do not hinder me,” she repeats.

“My father! my father!” cries the elder daughter, as she is borne to her room.

“My father will not die. He must not die. My father will live,” the younger daughter insists. Her brother is trying to hide his tears while he talks hopefully.

“Father is a very strong man. He may get well. I think he will,” he says.

It is midnight, and sympathizing friends are in the sitting-room and parlor. The daughters and son have sobbed themselves to sleep. The mother and wife, with bloodless face, is on bended knees, and, with uplifted hands clasped, is whispering a prayer.

At this moment her brother is bending over her husband three hundred miles away, watching his breathing; while thoughts of a widowed sister and her orphan children sadden the heart of the veteran who has passed through the war of the Great Rebellion. A silent tear drops on the mangled face beneath him.

Donald McKay, “the scout,” with seventy-two picked men, is dismounting at Col. Mason’s camp. Leaving them, he is challenged by the picket guard and, passing in, reports himself to the officer of the day.

His men stand waiting his return. Meanwhile we will go close enough to inspect them. They are dressed in the uniform of the soldiers of the United States. Their arms are the same, and in the moonlight they appear to be “Regulars.” If the wounded man in the hospital were here they would salute him with, “Tuts-ka-low-a?” (“How do you do, old man Meacham?”) And he would reply, “Te-me-na, Shix-te-wa-tillicums.” (“My heart is all right.”)

These boys are Warm Spring Indians, and the same men who were in the council tents in 1856, when the Government swindled them and their fathers out of their homes in the beautiful “Valley of the Tygh.” They were also in the revival meeting at the Warm Springs Agency in 1871, when the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, who now lies in yonder hospital, and Agent John Smith, took so many red hands in their own and recognized a brotherhood with them. They are the same men, too, who have for years past, each Sunday morning, joined their beloved agent in prayer and song. They have left behind them humble homes, in a poor country, where the Government placed them, and where it still keeps them by the strong arm of the law, without consulting their wishes,—a home they cannot leave, even for a day, without a “pass.” Their manhood was acknowledged in making a treaty; but denied as soon as the compact was completed, until in 1866, when the Government found it had an expensive war on hand with the Snake Indians, and then it offered these men the privilege of volunteering to whip the Snake Indians. This offer they accepted, and were rewarded for their services with a few greenbacks, worth fifty cents on a dollar, and an invitation to a new treaty council, in which they were cheated out of a reserved right to the fisheries on the Columbia river, near “The Dalles;” and then they were summoned back to their unsought homes, subject to the whims and caprices of Government officers, who were given positions as a reward for political services. True, they agreed to the terms, and they must be made to stand by them whether their pledges were made freely and voluntarily, or under the shining bayonets of an army, and by reason of the superior diplomatic talent of the Government officials who outwitted them. It makes no difference. They are Indians, and three-fourths of the people of the United States believe and say that “the best Indians are all under ground.”

Anxious to demonstrate their loyalty to a Government that has been so good to them, and to establish their right to manhood’s privileges, when an opportunity offered, they enlisted by the advice and consent of their agent, and, followed by his prayers, they are here to-night under the famous scout, Donald McKay.

He evidently is not a “Warm Spring Indian,” yet they trust him, knowing, from their experience with him in the Snake campaign of 1866, that he is thoroughly reliable. Donald McKay is half brother to Dr. Wm. C. McKay. His mother was a Cayuse woman. Being a man of extraordinary endowments, which fit him for a leader, he has taken an active part in all recent Indian wars of the Northwest. His name alone carries a warning to refractory “red-skins.”

As Donald approached his men on his return from head-quarters, several voices inquire if “old man Meacham is dead.” Quietly leading their horses inside the picket line, they unpack the kitchen, mule and blanket ponies.

It is now Sunday morning, the 13th of April. The sun finds couriers on the road to Y-re-ka, bearing despatches announcing that “Meacham is sinking. The surgeons have extracted four bullets from his wounds. The Modocs cannot get away.”

A sad, anxious woman is leaving the depot at Salem, Oregon, destined for the Lava Beds. At home her children are in tears, realizing how dark the clouds of sorrow may become.

The childless widow of Gen. Canby sits with broken heart, in her parlor in Portland, Oregon.

The family of Dr. Thomas, in Petaluma, Cal., are kneeling around the family altar, and a bereaved widow is praying for resignation to this dispensation of Providence,—is praying for strength to say “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Monday morning, April 14th, opens amid the noises of camp life; the drum and bugle calls, and human voices join in songs of praise. They are strange sounds for a military camp on the eve of battle. There is an uncommon accent to them, but they sound familiar. What! The sounds come from the lips of men who were born in wild camps among the mountains of Eastern Oregon. Can it be that these red men have so far advanced in Christian civilization that they are now doing what not one of the five hundred white men have the courage to do? Yes, my reader, it is true that the Warm Spring Indians, who have learned from Agent John Smith these songs of praise and the honor that is due to God, are faithful to their pretensions, and are worshipping Him, and seeking strength to sustain them in the coming strife.

Blush, now, will you not, you who prate so loudly of the superiority of the white men! of his sense of right controlling his actions! Here are red men, who are but a few years removed from savage life, living the “new religion”—Christians in real earnest, and shaming the hypocritical pretenders whose cant and whine make liberal-minded people turn away in disgust. You Christian Indian-hater, look at these red-skinned people, and learn a lesson in Christian honesty and moral courage!

The shadows of Van Bremers mountain come slowly over the Lava Beds. In the Modoc camp the “medicine-man” is conducting the war-dance and working the blood of Modoc hearts up to fighting heat. He promises his people that he will make a medicine that will turn the soldiers’ bullets away. He points to the great battle of January, and its results, to inspire confidence in him. The chief is saddened, and fully realizes the situation. He is desperate, and is resolved to fight to the bitter end. He has already appointed the places for each of the warriors. He tells his people that the hated Warm Spring Indians are now in the soldiers’ camp. He reminds them that these people are their enemies; that it was the Warm Spring and Tenino Indians who killed his father. He counsels them to remember his father’s death. He knows that a thousand white soldiers are there and that the “big guns” will reach his stronghold.

Some of his followers have superstitious faith enough in the medicine-man to believe that they will outlive the war, and to believe the white men are conquered already. The chief knows better.

In the soldiers’ camp preparations are making for the assault. The Coehorn shell-guns are made ready for putting on the backs of mules. Food for the soldiers has been prepared. The guard is stationed. The soldiers in either camp well understand that the morrow’s sun will witness another bloody struggle. Those of them who were in former battles shrink from this one, knowing how nearly impregnable the “stronghold” will be.

“I say, old man, there is a little bit of fun going on. I wish you could be up to see it.” Thus spoke Capt. Ferree to Meacham, and continued, “You know Long Jim—a Modoc prisoner—is under guard. Well, the boys are going to give him a chance to run for his life without the knowledge of Gen. Gilliam. They have everything all fixed, and I’ll bet fifty dollars he ‘makes it!’ They have him in the stone corral, and the plan is to station the boys outside next to the Lava Beds and leave one or two men to guard him. They will pretend to sleep, and Jim will jump the wall, and then the boys will let him have it. Two to one he gets away! I thought I would just tell you, so you wouldn’t get scared to death, thinking the Modocs were attacking the camp.”

This man, Long Jim, had pretended to desert the Modoc camp during the peace negotiations. He had a bullet extracted from his back while in the commissioners’ camp, several weeks before. He was afterwards caught while acting as an emissary to other Indians, and, by order of Gen. Canby, was being detained under guard as a prisoner. Hence his presence. He stoutly denied having any desire to return to Captain Jack’s camp.

The officers are assembled in Col. Green’s quarters. They are celebrating a half-solemn, half-sentimental ceremony that is sometimes indulged in before an engagement. To a listener who lies in a hospital it sounds somewhat as does the medicine war-dance in the middle camp. Indeed, its results are the same, although the design is different. In the Modoc camp, the dance and medicine are for the purpose of invoking spiritual aid and stimulating the nerves of the braves to heroic deeds. In the soldier camp the intention is to celebrate the stirring scenes passed, to exchange friendship, to blot out all the personal differences that exist, and pledge fidelity for the future.

They tell stories and pass jokes and witticisms until a late hour. Before adjournment they join in singing a song that is sung nowhere else and by no other voices. The wounded man in the hospital tent hears only the refrain. It sounds melancholy, and has a saddening effect.

rings out from the lips of brave men who dread not the strife of battle under ordinary circumstances; but to meet an enemy who is so thoroughly protected by chasms and caverns of rock does not promise glory that inflates men’s courage previous to battle.

Col. Tom Wright and Lieut. Eagan drop into the hospital, and, sitting down beside the wounded commissioner, assure him that they will remember Canby and Thomas, and will avenge his own sufferings. They retire with expressions of hope for his recovery. They meet Maj. Thomas and Lieut. Cranston coming to pay a visit. Exchanges of sympathy and friendship follow, and they return to quarters to sleep before the battle, leaving behind them but one wounded man. He is peering into the future, wondering who of all the five hundred men and officers will be his first neighbor.

The camp is quiet. Midnight has passed. The relief guard has been stationed. In the corral Long Jim is sleeping. He shows no sign of any intention to escape. The guard is discouraged. The boys outside are impatient. What if Jim should not make the attempt? It would be a huge joke on the boys who planned this little side scene. Truth is, nearly everybody who is in the secret is cursing Jim for a fool that he don’t try to escape. A consultation is held. Something must be done. “I’ll fix it,” says a “little corporal.” Going to the corral he says, “Don’t go to sleep and let the prisoner get away.” Everything becomes quiet and the two guards sit down, one at each side of the corral.

“I’m so d—d sleepy I can’t keep awake,” says one to the other.

“Sleep, then. I won’t say a word,” rejoins his companion. “He can’t get away from me. He’s sleeping himself.”

The first speaker soon hangs his head and sleeps. Soon the other’s chin rests on his breast and he begins to snore. Long Jim slowly raises his head. All is quiet. There sit the two guards, sleeping. One is snoring. Jim listens. His love for his own people and for liberty burns in his heart. He has picked up many items that would be valuable. He knows that the attack will be made on the morrow. His friends must be notified. He listens a moment, and then, cautiously laying aside his blanket, he stands erect. One of the guards sits in the gateway of the corral. The wall around him is higher than his head. He cannot see over it. Laying his hands on the stone and summoning all his strength he springs. A blaze at either end of the corral, then bang! bang! go the guns outside like the firing, of a string of China crackers, only louder. Twenty shots are fired, and still Jim does not fall. He reaches the outer picket line. Two more guns are fired off, lighting up the track for the runaway, and still he flies. The boys reload and send a parting volley in the direction Jim went.

“He ‘made it’; and a madder set of fellows you never saw. I knew they couldn’t hit him. I’ve tried that thing, and it can’t be done.” I need not tell my readers who uttered this remark.

You may suppose that this little episode, “just before the battle,” roused the camp. No such thing occurred. Gen. Gilliam, it is true, jumped to his feet, but was reassured when he was told that it was nothing—only Long Jim escaping.

Before daylight this distinguished individual was “a-tellin’ the Modocs the news,” as one of the sleeping guard declared. So he was, with his clothing pierced by half-a-dozen bullets, but “with nary a wound.”