Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/486

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474
SOME INDIAN EPISODES.

ting and hauling fire wood. The women, two in number, were permitted to escape. The Boddy family consisted of William, his wife, his daughter and her husband, Nicholas Schira, and his step-sons, William and Richard Cravigan. Mrs Schira's narrative was substantially as follows: On the morning of the 29th Mr Schira was looking after some sheep on the border of Tule lake, and came in during the forenoon with some ducks he had shot, changing his muddy boots, and afterward taking his team and going to the woods for a load. Mrs Schira subsequently took the wet boots out in the sun to dry them, and it being a quarter past eleven, she thought it time for her husband to be returning. Looking up the road, she saw the team coming without a driver. She went up to the mules and stopped them, took up the lines, and saw that they were bloody. She informed her mother that something had happened to her husband, and after putting the animals in the stable, the two women walked up the road together. About a half mile from the house they found Schira, dead, shot through the head with a revolver. Mrs Schira then remembered her brother Richard, who would be coming home with her husband, and ran on, leaving her mother, who could not keep up with her. As she ran, she saw Hooker Jim's Indian wife emerge from the sage-brush, and afterward Hooker Jim, Curly-headed Doctor, Long Jim, One-eyed Mose, Rock Dave, and Humpy Jerry all well-known Modocs. They did not intercept her, but went toward her mother, who was still beside the dead man, and asked her if there were any men at the house. Knowing well that much depended on her reply, she feigned not to understand their purpose, answering, "No, the mules have run away and killed the driver, and I am looking for our men." At this answer they left Mrs Boddy without molesting her, but could not have gone to the house, perhaps fearing to find men there notwithstanding Mrs Boddy's denial. Other Indians who came that way a day