Panther in the Sky (111 page)

Harrison accepted the proffered cup with a nod and a wry little smile, put his left hand behind his back, and touched the rim of his cup to the congressman’s.

“Fortes fortuna juvat,”
toasted Colonel Johnson, who had learned enough Latin to become a lawyer and to awe voters.

“Deo adjuvante, non timendum,
” replied Harrison.

The Latin toasts delighted him, his head just now having been so full of Caesar. Another officer, looking almost a twin to Johnson, appeared beside him and raised his own cup to theirs. This was Colonel James Johnson, the congressman’s brother and second-in-command of his brigade. “Death to the slippery red bugger,” proposed this lesser Colonel Johnson, who was known at home as Reverend Johnson.

“Which red bugger d’ye mean, Jimmy?” the congressman smirked. “Redcoat or redskin? Ha, ha!”

“I mean that Tecumseh. I do aim to take home a patch of his hide, God willing.”

“And just so does every man here,” came the raspy voice of old Colonel Whitley, an aging Indian fighter sitting near the fire, all clad in deerskins and wampum belts. “That there Shawnee better have a lot o’ skin, I’ll say!”

“Well, sir,” said the congressman, “if he’s as big as all the talk has it, he should have enough hide to go round.” That brought more hard laughter from around the bonfire.

Now Harrison spoke, his tone a bit condescending. “Contrary to his legend, gentlemen, he’s not all that big; no more than your height, I’d say, Congressman. But on my word, when he jumps up before you with his tomahawk, he does
seem
gigantic, take it from one who knows.”

Those around the fire murmured appreciation. They knew that story: Harrison facing off against an angry Tecumseh with drawn sword, all in a large crowd of witnesses and with a newspaper journalist present. Harrison tended to mention it often, to remind people of it. He would still get shivers when he remembered that cocked, taut, copper-skinned arm, those hazel eyes blazing into his own. And yet, sometimes, Harrison would remember those eyes instead shining with charming mischief as the Shawnee crowded him toward the end of their log bench. It was a shame Tecumseh was such an intractable enemy, for Harrison would have loved to have him as a friend. The governor believed that aside from his color, Tecumseh was superior to any of these heroes around this bonfire, except himself. He glanced around at their firelit faces. He pointed with his cup toward a huge, graying man in a woolen cloak, with a mane and face like an old lion’s. “General Kenton, you know Tecumseh. He’s not such a giant, is he?”

Somebody called out, “Hellfire, Gov’nor, to Simon Kenton
anybody’d
look little!”

In the laughter, Kenton wagged his big, shaggy head, then replied in his cavernous voice, “Gov’nor, I’ll just say this, ye tangle with that’n, size don’t count. It’s like havin’ a bobcat caught by his privates. Th’ harder ye squeeze, the longer his claws git.” He paused and shook his head again, gazing into the blaze, remembering across his eventful years. He started to say more but instead just nodded and sat back. Kenton did not wish to get into particulars; it embarrassed him to remember the times Tecumseh had turned the tables on him.

Harrison, thoughtfully swirling the liquor in his cup, said, “But then, as the maxim goes, gentlemen, ‘The greater the enemy, the greater the victory.’ ”

“Hear, hear,” cried the congressman.
“Aut vincere aut mori!”
It was a phrase he had liked to use while stirring up congressional enthusiasm for this war.

“To conquer, or to die,” echoed Harrison, raising his cup high.

“Aye!”

“Hey, hey!”

“Remember the River Raisin!”

“Remember the River Raisin! Death to all the red buggers!”

“A patch o’ Tecumseh’s hide for every man jack of us!”

“Here’s to our hero of Tippecanoe! Tecumseh’s scalp for Gov’nor Harrison, hey, boys?”

Harrison acknowledged their hearty sentiments with stately nods befitting a Caesar, though they grated on his soul. No one wanted more than he to see the British smashed in Canada and Tecumseh’s stubborn Indian confederation scattered. Harrison himself—he and young Oliver Perry—stood fair to become the saviors of the Northwest in this war. Harrison knew that well, and it chimed with his ambitions. Like Caesar the campaigner who had gone home from the wars to rule Rome, William Henry Harrison aimed to go home someday and be president. The support of these rowdy westerners would help him get there. But he had always felt, secretly, that he was of a finer grade than they. And though he had done more than any of them to destroy the world of the red man, he did not relish the vision of their bloody hands scalping and flaying a noble leader—even though he was only an aborigine of the woods.

A
RED MAPLE LEAF FELL LOOSE FROM ITS TWIG IN THE DARKNESS
of a treetop and tumbled down through the air toward the glow of a small fire. It danced and turned among the branches, falling toward one campfire among a hundred campfires. Six red men sat around this campfire, sharing a pipe.

Tecumseh saw the red leaf coming down from the high darkness into the smoky fireglow. It looked as if it would fall into the flames. But when it reached the heated air above the fire-ring it hesitated, rose slightly, veered outward, caught the eye of Stands Firm, and then came to rest on the edge of Tecumseh’s scarlet British army cloak. Tecumseh looked at it and thought about the short life season of that leaf and the uncountable other leaves covering the ground, falling on the blankets of hundreds of sleeping warriors, falling on the new graves of fourteen warriors who had died today at the Forks of the Thames, ten miles back.

Now scores of wounded warriors were lying in the barn and sheds, the mill and even the house, of Captain Arnold’s farm, while the unhurt ones camped under these trees. Arnold and his wife and sons had doctored the wounded and cooked kettles of porridge for the rest. And Arnold himself, Tecumseh’s acquaintance from the siege of Fort Meigs, had helped dig the graves for the fourteen. He had invited his friend to stay the night in the farmhouse, but Tecumseh had asked him to keep the badly
wounded in the warm house instead; he needed to stay outside and council with his chieftains.

Now it was the middle of the night, and Tecumseh and these five chieftains sat in a circle of friendship that was so old and deep that he could not hide his doubts from them. He had talked to them tonight and tried to raise their hopes for a great victory tomorrow, speaking eagerly of the long-awaited confrontation, but inside himself he could feel the cause growing hopeless, falling like an autumn leaf whose season is over, and they could see this in his face. These five knew him so well that his face was like another language to them. They had gone to the Four Winds with him and helped him carry his great message. They had danced with him to bestir the nations. They had been with him when he had made his prophecies and when they had come true. They had seen him fight with the swift force of the panther, but they had also seen the uncommon mercy of his heart and the long vision of peace in his head. They had flown on the wings of his words and had crawled in mud and blood with him. They had helped him triumph over whole brigades and armies of the Long Knives, but they had also seen him howl amid the ashes of his home. Following Tecumseh had consumed their lives and for many seasons had kept them from the embraces of their families, and yet they felt that they were the most privileged of all men, to have been with him along this hard road.

Now they sat together late, after a long, long day of retreat and battle, more retreat, burying, and council. They smoked together from Tecumseh’s tomahawk pipe, the same one they had seen him raise over Harrison’s head, the one they had seen him smoke with Harrison in council, the one he had smoked with the old chiefs in the red nations all over this land. They breathed the fragrant smoke of the kinnick-kinnick, their bodies weary and bruised, their heads buzzing with fatigue and turbid with last thoughts. Tecumseh’s wounded arm had been re-dressed with a poultice of healing herbs, and it throbbed with a dull ache as his heart beat. The campfire in their midst had almost burned down to shimmering coals, but they made no move to put on more wood, as they would have to sleep soon.

Stands Firm looked up to Tecumseh’s firelit profile. Just then Tecumseh’s somber gaze turned to meet his. Tecumseh handed the pipe off to Charcoal Burner at his right and said to Stands Firm:

“I have been thinking, brother, you should go up the road at the earliest light tomorrow, and help Star Watcher with the families,
help her move them along faster. Help Open Door get food for them. The children and old ones are suffering very much.”

Stands Firm drew back and regarded him for a moment, then replied, “I, I do not think I should do that.” They stared at each other for a while as if they might argue. Then Stands Firm said politely, “As you know, my brother, I am always pleased to do what you ask me. But until now you have never asked me to leave you before the start of a battle and go join the old men and women. And so I say, I do not think I shall do that.”

After another time of silence, Tecumseh said, “I would like you to do it.” And Stands Firm replied:

“My brother, today in the fight at the Forks, you sent Thick Water away with that message to Walk-in-Water. It was a message that Walk-in-Water will not listen to, as I know and you know. And so it seemed to me that you were really just sending Thick Water out of the way of danger, because of your love for him. Is that perhaps true?”

For a moment Tecumseh looked very annoyed. But then he compressed his lips to keep from smiling and finally could not keep from it, and he breathed a small laugh out from his nose.

It was true. Tecumseh today had sent the bodyguard after the Wyandots expecting that when his mission failed, Thick Water would be closer to his wife’s village and would simply go there, to that beautiful wife, to those beautiful children who were always on the verge of becoming fatherless because of Thick Water’s rash bravery.

“I know you care for me as for Thick Water,” said Stands Firm, “and that you do not want your sister to be a widow. And that you care for the rest of us here as well.…” He swept his hand around to indicate the other chieftains at the fireside. “But if you send your best chieftains to a safe place, how will it go in battle tomorrow? I, for one, mean to be at your side when we face Harrison.”

And the others, at once, grunted their agreement. So Tecumseh, with a sigh, let his gaze drop to the burning oak branches in the fire-ring, a look of acceptance and resignation. It was plain that none of these intended to choose safety. These were not like Withered Hand and Walk-in-Water. These were the true ones.

Billy Caldwell said, “Do you
believe,
Father, that Procter will stand with us and fight tomorrow, instead of running again?”

“Yes. At last he has no choice. By doing everything so badly, Procter has made himself unable to run any longer. Now he must turn and fight. He knows that if he does not help us fight tomorrow,
we will all go and leave him to face the Long Knife army by himself. That he fears more than anything. Yes. Tomorrow we will be in the smoke of their guns again, and the Redcoats will be at our side. On the field there we will beat Harrison, or there we will leave our bones. Harrison is very far out of his own country now, far from his supplies. He can be stopped, and cut off, as we cut off Hull in Detroit. All this we can do, I believe, if the British fight bravely beside us as they have promised to do.”

The Winnebago, Chief Wood, passed the pipe to his fellow chief, Four Legs, murmuring in approval of Tecumseh’s words. Four Legs drew from the pipe and let the fragrant smoke flow up from his lips into his nostrils, gazing into the dying fire. A last tongue of flame trembled on the end of a charred chunk of oak, playing its light on the gray ashes and the six faces, then winked out, and the faces at once faded back into the night’s gloom; now the six were dark shapes silhouetted against the diffused glow of the many other campfires around them in Arnold’s Woods. Still the six faced inward over the shimmering orange embers of their own fire. They were all exhausted, but reluctant to leave each other.

Tecumseh could feel their presence around him like a warm cloak. He felt the dank autumn fog on his face and hands, smelled the sharp smell of smoke from maple and birch and oak, heard the soft voices of the warriors all around who had not yet bedded down beside their own fires; he could feel their presence around him, too. He felt that his soul extended to the outer circle of his camp, that these hundreds of souls were parts of his own soul. He had felt this often: he
was
his People. Tecumseh picked from his cloak the red leaf that had fallen on him from the treetop and leaned forward to drop it on the embers. The leaf curled, smoked, blackened, then flared up and went out, brief as a shooting star.

This night, here among his chieftains, Tecumseh had been feeling a coldness growing in his center. His heartbeat throbbed in his wounded arm.

The fire inside him had never cooled before. Ever since Chiksika had taught him how to keep the inner fire, it had always been in him, and though his feet and hands and face might have been numbed by winter winds, he had never quaked with chill or been dominated by cold. But now, even though the autumn night was not severely cold, and though he was warmly dressed and warmed by the presence of his comrades near a bed of embers, his inner fire was lessening and a coldness was spreading in him.

And now as he sat here, the murmur of voices in the camp became
in his head the murmur of all the voices of his People, those present and those absent, those alive and those departed, and the faces came with the voices; they came along as if passing him in a long file on a trail in the dark of the night, each face in turn lighted dimly for a moment as it passed near and murmured to him in its own voice and then faded into the darkness ahead: Turtle Mother, happy in youth, bitter in age. Pucsinwah, the Hard Striker, his father, the Shawnee nation’s main war chief but a man who had laughed and had been tender. Chiksika, great warrior and teacher, the brother he had buried in the south. Cat Follower, killed robbing a honey tree. Stands-Between, his brother whom he had buried by the Maumee-se-pe. Open Door, who had nurtured the red man’s hope and then nearly ruined it. Star Watcher, who was like the other half of himself. Change-of-Feathers, the shaman … Eagle Speaker, the first to see the great events … Black Fish, his foster father … Black Snake, Blue Jacket, Cornstalk, the chief Tall Soldier Woman, Black Hoof, She-Is-Favored … all passed.…