[J. W. Redington, Trooper Turner: A Military Mystery of a Man and a Mule, Sunset, February 1907]

TROOPER TURNER

A Military Mystery of a Man and a Mule

By J. W. REDINGTON

            THE snow that fell that Christmas Eve deepened as it fell. Not all snow does this. It whitened the lava lands of the Modocs, and they needed whitening, for they had been running red with good American blood for two months. Instead, next day, of Christmas carols, there came a Christmas Chinook, that breeze born of the warm Japan current, and it swept in from the Pacific, through the gaps of the Coast and Cascade ranges, under the shadows of Shasta, along the invisible chalk-line that divides California and Oregon. In half the time it took to fall, the snow melted away before the Chinook wind, and again the lava beds lay bare and bluish-gray.

            Contending with these Modoc warriors were three small commands of the regular army, camped at the different points thought to be so situated as to cut off escape from the stronghold which had thus far proved too strong for the spirited assaults of the soldiers.

            "I would like to have some soldier volunteer to go as courier with dispatches to Major Boyle's camp," said General Wheaton.

            Sergeant Andrews was the man who responded when the call for a volunteer for dangerous duty was made. Trooper Turner's offer to accompany him was accepted. Both were recognized as good soldiers.

            "To get to Boyle's camp by daylight in those times meant sure scalping for a small party," said Sergeant Andrews, in relating the Incident around a scout's campfire, later on, in wilder Idaho. "Many of the boys bade us a lingering good-bye, as though it was to be the last. Turner was a favorite in camp, and in a fine tenor voice sang many melodies of home and mother around the evening fires.

            "After dark Turner and I started away, calculating to make Boyle's camp before daylight. He rode a sure-footed mule, while I had one of Major Jackson's best troop-horses, and we both wore old frontier suits of brown duck to make us less prominent targets.

            "I took the lead, and my horse was so much the best walker that several times I had to check him to allow Turner's mule to catch up. We were picking a general course by the stars, with no trail or road to guide us through the rough lava fields, and along about midnight I again waited for Turner's, mule to push his head against my horse's tail. But there was no push. Ten, twenty minutes, like hours, I waited, but no Turner, no mule, caught up. I went back on the trail a hundred yards, but found no one. All was still.

            "It was no place to whistle or fire a signal-shot, for a bunch of Modocs were liable to be behind any of the surrounding rocks. I kept on my course. In another half-hour, away off to the south, I heard three rifle shots. Turner's mule, with an instinct for water, must have headed away toward Tule Lake instead of following my horse. A mule will do such things when given his head.

            "I knew that time was the essence of success if I ever reached Boyle's camp, and that approaching it after daybreak meant to be potted by the lurking foe.

            "The sudden flaring up of the cooks' fires enabled me to locate the camp, and ten minutes after I entered it its pickets and some Modocs were exchanging shots. No one had seen Trooper Turner, and he failed to turn up at either camp. Strong reconnoitering parties failed to find any trace of him. When Boston Charlie, Steamboat Frank and other Modocs came into camp under flags of truce I asked them about our man on a mule, but they closed up like clams,— halo nannich mika,—they had not seen him.

            Toby Riddle, the Modoc woman, questioned the warriors who were out on pot-shot duty, but they all denied having shot the man and the mule who passed in the night. I helped hang Captain Jack at Fort Klamath for his murder of General Canby, and asked him in his last hour to explain the mystery of Turner's fate, but he said the lava beds were wide, and the wolves might have eaten him. However, he was willing to make a fine-tooth comb search and go thoroughly through the lava beds for Turner or his mule or their remains, if he was given a pardon. He would guarantee to at least find the mule's bray.

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            "So the mystery of Turner's disappearance remained unsolved. Colonel John Green had dashed into the thickest of the charges and come out unscratched, and Captain Burton could account for every man of the fifty per cent loss in his company, but poor Turner —there was no trace of him,—and every man in the field deplored his mysterious taking off. His singing was much missed around the campfires.

            "I have not been in the Modoc country since the winding up of the war with that tribe," said Sergeant Andrews, "but Captain Oliver Applegate, who commanded the Warm Spring Scouts during the campaign, has told me that he has since seen Trooper Turner in a good home of his own two hundred miles south of the lava beds. He is sure it is the same man, and his tenor voice is freely contributed to enliven evenings of cattlemen and campers around the evening fires. Turner's name is now Histack. He has a large ranch and range, and thousands of cattle, and is the soul of hospitality to all who travel through.

            "Old troopers on the march from Camp Halleck to Klamath have expressed their opinions that this man is their former comrade but he claims that beyond the time he first found himself in the valley of his present home, his mind is a blank. 'Old Man' McDermott, the first man to settle in the neighborhood, says that he first saw the man wandering aimlessly around his haystack, with a bullet hole through his hat and a crease along his scalp. He appeared dazed and could give no account of himself. So persistently did he stick to the haystack that he was named John Haystack, and that name with a slight change, still sticks. He finally went to work for McDermott, married one of his daughters, and now has several grown children. He took up government land when the whole country laid out doors, and has thrived and prospered.

            "But on the army records Trooper Turner is dead, and no doubt one of the shots heard away to the south that starlight night blotted out all memories of his past. There is a tradition that an army mule was found dead, mired down at the end of Tule Lake."