Panther in the Sky (95 page)

Colonel Abraham Owen, the general’s aide, saw his commander’s gray mare trotting, riderless, among the tents and darted out to catch her. His first thought was that Harrison must have been shot off her back, but he heard him shouting in the distance, again heard him calling. As he tugged the reins he saw all the officers’
tents twitching as bullets slapped through them. Soldiers were gasping and screaming and falling down. An arrow flicked past his nose and broke against a tree. Again now he heard Governor Harrison’s voice calling his name in the din and heard him bellow, “Get those fires put out!” Colonel Owen chased the mare through a couple of pirouettes and finally got a foot in the stirrup, swung up, and spurred her in the direction of Harrison’s voice. Suddenly he was astonished to see painted warriors running right through the firelit heart of the camp, screaming their curdled screams, shooting at the milling soldiers with guns and bows. At last the troops were awake enough to do something, those who weren’t simply petrified, and Blue-Coats were rushing pell-mell against the savages, shooting them down, bayoneting them, or clubbing them with their gunstocks. Two hideous-looking painted warriors with shaved heads were sprinting toward the marquee tent. Colonel Owen cocked his pistol and aimed at one, but the mare wheeled and started running, and he lost his target. He reined her around and spurred her toward General Harrison’s voice. He could now see the general riding on a bay horse near the thickest of the fighting, saber upraised, shouting orders. Owen rode toward him, shouting, “I’m here, Gen’l!”

A Winnebago, crouching between a dead soldier and a campfire to reload his rifle, saw the big, splendid-looking officer riding by, shouting, on the gray horse they had spoken of, and he knew it must be Harrison. There was no time to finish loading his own gun. He dropped it, snatched up the weapon of the soldier he had just killed, and shot Colonel Abraham Owen through the body. He screeched with exultation as the officer fell sideways off the horse into the mud and dashed toward the body, drawing his knife to take the most prized scalp. But a bullet slammed into his temple, and he tumbled dead beside the colonel’s body.

O
N THE CLIFF BEYOND THE CREEK, THE
P
ROPHET STOOD IN
the cold drizzle watching and listening. His heart was pounding fast.

All that was happening down there was his doing! It was he who had made the sun go dark, and now it was he who had made this equally great thing happen! He imagined that every gunshot that rose to his ears was the death of a white soldier. He felt that surely Harrison was dead in his tent by now. His heart drank up the continuous music of the war cries. What a glorious ferocity in his people as they defended their holy town from the white governor’s criminal intents!

And all the predictions he had made seemed to be proving true. The rain surely was ruining the Americans’ powder. The campfires had grown brighter just before the start of the conflict and must be giving his warriors all the illumination he had promised them. Surely this would all be done soon, a total victory for the allied warriors, every soldier dead or a captive. A strong shudder of exultation shook him, and he raised his face to the unseen rain and spread his arms. The power and spirit of his warriors he had brought down from heaven and directed into their bodies as they had encircled the enemy camp; now they were fighting the enemy with all that power and spirit, and the Master of Life must be thanked.

So, in his piercing, throaty voice he chanted, so loudly it could be heard even in the roar of the battle below, a prayer of thanks and a plea for still more courage and protection for the fighters below.

He sang, and his voice was throughout the valley of his home, his voice flew down like a swooping bird and into every pause in the roar of the battle and into the ears of the warriors around the battlefield, and they sped forward through the cold wet grass of the marsh, they slipped forward from tree to tree in the woods, they stood swinging and shooting into the faces of the Blue-Coats and the beaver-hats and the hunting-shirts who kept coming out to the edge of the camp and forming into ranks and lines. Never had warriors stood fighting so furiously in the face of such volleys of gunfire, never had they burst from cover like this to throw themselves at lines of bayonets.

On the cliff, Open Door finished his prayer and looked down now at the blur of yellowish smoke, that glowing, roaring, howling turmoil in this pocket of a black, cold, rainy universe, and even in his exalted state he could see that the combat was not diminishing yet. In fact, it seemed to grow louder and more furious. And something about it was troubling. Instead of being all along the wedge of land, the combat seemed to be concentrated mostly at the north end only.

And if White Loon and Stone Eater and their chosen hundred had penetrated to Harrison’s tent and killed him, why was the battle going on so long? By now Open Door had expected to hear nothing but the screams of dying or fleeing soldiers and the joyous yipping of warriors in triumph and pursuit. Instead it was a continuous crackle and thunder of gunshots, going on and on, mostly at the upper end of the camp, and he could hear the big, deep shouts of officer soldiers.

And, strangest of all, it was growing darker down there. He could see muzzle blasts flickering like sparks down among the leafless oaks, but the glow of the bonfires was less and less. Open Door looked down at this change and wondered if something might be going wrong.

He took a necklace of deer hooves from his neck and held it up, and shook it, and rattled the hooves toward the dark sky, and resumed his prayer for help and protection.

S
OLDIERS WHO WERE NOT YET ON THEIR LINES AROUND THE
perimeter had got the order to douse the bonfires and were snatching up rain-damp blankets from the ground and throwing them over the flames or beating the flames madly with them; some were kicking the fires apart with their boots and scattering the firebrands over the wet ground; cooks and staff soldiers were fetching pails and kettles of water and emptying them on the
flames. In the last dull, reddening light of the dying fires, the army camp was like a half-extinguished inferno of tortured figures all dimmed by a choking pall of smoke and steam, stinking of wet ashes, smoldering wool, and gunpowder. The fires had been giving the savages too much of an advantage, silhouetting their targets and showing them where everything was. Now as the flames were extinguished it became more of an equal contest, but a more terrifying one. Men stood trembling in ranks, firing outward into the blackness where muzzle blasts flashed. They groped in their cartouche bags, tore the paper ends off powder cartridges with their teeth, poured powder down their hot gun barrels in total darkness, rammed home patch and ball, primed their flashpans blindly, and fired into the howling darkness again. And every few moments a comrade would grunt or screech and fall thrashing against their legs, or somebody else’s gun muzzle would blast out right at their ear, or men would accidentally strike each other with their guns as they loaded and manipulated them in the dark.

Some of the men stood shooting in the darkness with arrows sticking in their flesh, tears in their eyes, and urine or feces oozing down their leggings. There had been that heart-stopping awakening and then this howling death storm ever since, without a moment for anyone to do the morning labors at the latrines.

In some places along the perimeter, the units had been unable to form or had formed and been scattered, and those places were the most terrifying. Soldiers and warriors were all intermixed, striking and choking, grunting and dying, all around. Here a man would find or collide with another man, and the two would have to grope over each other to know whether, this was friend or foe. Shako or feathers? Deerhide or wool? Blades and clubs and rifle butts slashed and thudded unseen, only felt. Only the flash of gunfire nearby would, like intermittent lightning, reveal for an instant the identity of friend or enemy, the shape of the skirmish. Many a man in these tangles of invisible chaos was left wondering if his own last act on earth might have been the maiming or killing of one of his comrades.

Captain Spier Spencer’s Yellow Jackets, down at the far southern heel of the encampment, had leaped out of their slumbers at the first shots and shouts, had stumbled in the darkness into ranks facing the marsh, and then had waited there in uncertainty and growing terror for a long time, hearing the din of battle swell to the north of them, hearing the war cries and shooting erupt along the Fourth Infantry sector behind their left flank, hearing now and then through the uproar an ungodly, eerie singsong of a voice
from away up on the prairie to their right, and waited for they knew not what or how long, while Captain Spencer’s gravelly voice talked their courage up. Then finally from the cold darkness outside their lines came the bellowing and thunderous hoofbeats of the stampeding beef herd, followed at once by a chilling chorus of war whoops and a blazing hail of gunshots. Dozens of militiamen fell at once. Captain Spencer stood bleeding from the head, yelling at his men to stand their ground and fight on. Bullets smashed through both his thighs, and he kept commanding from where he lay in his own blood on the ground. Only when a ball passed through his body did his voice fall still. His lieutenant frantically sent a runner up through the camp to tell the general they needed reinforcements. Then the lieutenant fell dead. And as the Indians came battling their way into the nest of Yellow Jackets, the young Ensign John Tipton was the only officer left to command them. He would not let them fall back, and they held their corner, but the Indians kept coming.

T
HE
P
ROPHET WAS STILL CHANTING ON THE CLIFF WHEN
Charcoal Burner rode up the steep, dark path from the creek valley. The battle raged unabated, as it had for nearly two hours, a deafening storm. It was still dark, but the pitch blackness was just beginning to fade enough that he could negotiate the familiar path up through the woods to the rock bluff at the edge of the prairie. So much blind shooting was being done that even as he rode up this bluff, Charcoal Burner heard stray musketballs snapping among the trees around him.

He reached the top of the bluff and dismounted. He walked close to the dark, strange figure in the fur robe and winged headdress and stood there waiting, not willing to interrupt a prayer between the great Prophet and the Master of Life, but waiting for an opportunity to say a few things that had become important. A few warriors of the Prophet’s bodyguard hovered in the windy, rainy gloom nearby. At last becoming aware of Charcoal Burner’s presence, Open Door finished his prayer and turned to him.

Charcoal Burner had to shout to make his words heard over the roar of the battle.

“Father, we have failed to destroy them!”

Open Door’s expression could not be seen in the darkness. He was a silhouette against the dark gray sky. He replied:

“But soon we will! It is not done yet!”

“Father, they say they still hear the governor’s voice everywhere
in the army camp. It is believed he escaped the knife. White Loon and his hundred were driven out, many killed.”

“Then Harrison will die in battle instead of in bed. But he will die! I have seen it! Are our people not fighting with bravery?”

“Like never before, it is true. They kill many soldiers. But they complain that the soldiers were neither dead nor crazy, as you said they would be. They have rallied, and they fight like devils. Their powder was not wet, as you said it would be.”

If Charcoal Burner could have seen the expression on Open Door’s face, he would have seen his mouth distorted, a corner of his upper lip between his teeth. Charcoal Burner went on: “Our surprise was lost when a sentry shot one of our warriors. That warrior did not die in silence, and the whitefaces knew we were around them. Had that warrior been still, the others might have got into Harrison’s tent.”

Open Door waved his hand impatiently. “It is no matter! He will die in battle instead! They will not escape. Their bones will lie forever on that place. Small matters change and shift. But our great victory is determined!”

“When the sentry fired, the warriors on the east and south were still in the marsh and had not reached their places. The attack was ragged, and we lost many. The little-shot from the soldiers’ guns is like hail in the woods.”

“My son! We are still killing them! A blade or bullet will find Harrison yet, and then they will crumple down! I have felt the power of Weshemoneto go through me to our People. Daylight will reveal Harrison very soon so he can be killed! Daylight will find the Blue-Coats all dead!”

“Daylight,” replied Charcoal Burner, “will show the soldiers where we are, and they will turn us with bayonets. Father, I tried to prevent this. The war chiefs say your medicine did not work. They are angry. They say that only courage and skill have killed soldiers, not your medicine. You should know, Father, that they are saying these things.”