“Aye, and it’s as I say, you think you can do something comparable.”
“Well, sir, it’s a worthy example.”
“I’m not a soldier, George, as all my boys seem to want to be. But I have read enough history to know that it takes cannon and a great number of men to storm forts.”
“True. But surprise makes one man worth ten. Richard,” he said, turning to his brothers, who were listening in awe, “and you, Edmund, I’ll remind you not to discuss this outside the family.”
“La, la, la,” came a woman’s voice from the kitchen door. “Intrigues and strategems, in our own home! Or have I entered the Continental headquarters by mistake? Wash up and come to the table, all you generals.”
For the occasion of George’s visit, Ann Rogers Clark had cooked an entire wild turkey, which Edmund had bagged the day before at the edge of the clearing. He had brought it home headless; the ball from his long rifle had neatly decapitated the great bird at a distance of some twenty yards. Edmund, cheeks flaming with shyness and pride, was coaxed to explain why he had aimed precisely at such a small part of such a large creature.
“He’d caught sight of us,” Edmund said. “He was tryin’ to sneak off in th’ brush, and alls I could see was his dang ol’ head. So, I shot it off.”
George clapped his hands together and gave a whoop of approval. “Now there’s a sharpshooter!” Little William mimicked his glee, clapping and crying, “Edmund is a sharpshooter!”
Ann Rogers Clark, majestic and firm-jawed even though haggard from twenty-seven years of bearing and rearing her ten children, gazed at her son George for a moment, very thoughtfully, then tucked a damp strand of gray hair back under the edge of her dust cap. “You’re our guest of honor, George. Would you say the grace, please?”
A hush fell around the table; heads bowed and eyes closed. George did not feel especially solemn and reverent. He was too exuberant with his sense of purpose, and felt playful here in the bosom of his family, and decided that he would extemporize rather than recite the usual invocation. He paused and looked around at the ruddy faces, the heads of red hair, all colors of red: some copper, some sand, and some so dark a red they looked almost black. He looked at the brown basted turkey and the steaming bowls on the table. He caught Frances Eleanor, who was almost five, sneaking a look at him with her luminous eyes, and she shut them quickly.
“Our Father,” he began, “accept our humble thanks for the marksmanship Thou hast blessed Thy humble servant Edmund Clark with, and for putting this noble gobbler within its range.” He sensed someone at the table trying to suppress laughter. “Our gratitude for our health and for the tranquility and happiness of this house. Now, Lord, if Thou wouldst know how much we appreciate the bounty on this table, just watch us Clarks eat. Amen.”
He looked up to see both his father and mother, their lips compressed, shaking their heads and looking at each other. The children were smirking but afraid to laugh aloud.
“Lord forgive my son for his jocularity,” John Clark implored heavenward, then stood up, and with a keen-edged knife began laying open the turkey, and the clatter of a spirited feast began.
“Where will you stay, George?” asked John Clark.
“I’ll lay up at the Gwathmeys’ a day or two, but expect I’ll have to take lodgings at an inn.”
“Will you have time to pay a visit to Gunton Hall while you’re here?” asked Mrs. Clark.
“No, but I shall see Mr. Mason in Williamsburg. He’s helping the governor and Tom Jefferson advance my proposal in the Assembly.”
“Ah! Tom, too?” exclaimed John Clark. “Well, you’ve certainly enlisted enough old friends and neighbors to your cause.”
“I wish you’d enlist me,” interjected Richard.
“Time will answer that, and I suggest you be patient,” Ann Rogers Clark said severely. “And as for you, George, don’t be coveting Edmund’s markmanship for your army. Grace of God this war will end before he’s of age!”
“Amen,” said John Clark.
3
WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
December 1777
A CARRIAGE DREW UP BEFORE AN INN IN WILLIAMSBURG. SEVERAL soldiers were in its path, arguing, laughing, and exchanging money. They jostled each other out of the way as the driver urged the team alongside the building. A slight young courier in well-cut velvet clothing and polished pumps stepped down from the carriage, and picked his way among the puddles and the heaps of dirty snow to the door of the inn. In the doorway stood the innkeeper and a comely golden-haired chambermaid, both peering up the street.
“I have a message for Major Clark,” said the courier. “He’s said to be lodging here.”
“So he is,” the innkeeper said, and pointed a fat hand up the street. “Here he’ll be coming now.”
The soldiers in the street had burst out in cheering. The girl was hugging herself and jouncing up and down, her bosom and ringlets bobbing. “He’ll be the first,” she squealed.
The courier looked up the wet, gray street and saw four men in shirt-sleeves running abreast at remarkable speed, sprinting and lunging like racehorses. As they drew near the inn, a tall, wide-shouldered youth suddenly surged ahead of the other three, and passed the door twenty feet ahead of them, laughing, his shoes scarcely seeming to touch the street, the pigtail of his copper-colored hair flying. The others then thundered past, their soles slapping the cobbles as they drew themselves to a heaving, panting halt amid the taunts of the soldiers. The girl was watching the red-haired one, who had stopped a few yards farther on and was now coming back, grinning, carrying his strapping frame with an easy grace, and seeming to be hardly winded. “What did I say?” the lass exulted.
“There is your Major Clark, sir,” said the innkeeper. “It’s the fourth race he’s won this hour. Major!” he called.
The young officer came over, and the courier noticed that the wench inhaled to raise her bosom at his approach, as if in salutation.
“This man has come to see you,” said the innkeeper.
The courier and the young officer bowed slightly to each other.
“I come from Governor Henry, sir. May I speak with you?”
“Ah! I’ve been waiting for you, then. Is he ready to see me?”
“Yes. I’ve brought a carriage.”
“That’s good. Have we time for me to wash myself down and dress myself up? Nell here can bring us an ale. Would you, Nell? Now, sir,” the young officer said, taking the messenger by the arm and leading him into the inn, “tell me your name, and …”
“Heyo, Major,” one of the soldiers called. “Don’t forget the purse.” He crossed the street and spilled a handful of coins into Major Clark’s hand. “You’re the very devil on your feet, sir.”
“Thank you kindly. As I had to be, to outpace such fellows. Goodbye. Well, now,” he said, jingling the silver as they climbed the stairs. “Not bad for an hour’s exercise, eh? So tell me, how is the great Patrick Henry these days? I’m sorry; what was your name?”
“Jonathan, sir. Jonathan Herring.”
“Jonathan! I have a brother named Jonathan. He was with Henry in the Revolutionary Convention. He’s serving with General Muhlenberg now …”
They entered Major Clark’s room, where he dropped a towel in a basin of cold water, stripped off his shirt and began wiping his torso with the damp towel. The messenger was awed by the power and symmetry of the young frontiersman’s physique. As he toweled himself, the long muscles knotted and rippled, sharply defined by his leanness. He was deep-chested, small in the waist, with a thick, sinewy neck. Red hair lightly covered his chest and abdomen and forearms. Nell came in with two tankards while he was drying, and blushed mightily at the sight of him. Herring smirked as she went down the stairs.
“I do believe, Major, that the wench has some feelings for you.”
“Do you.” The major said only that, but a hard look that flashed in his dark eyes made the courier wish he had not made the remark. He found himself a l
ittle confused by this; the young officer seemed so affable, so sporting, hardly the sort to take offense at some harmless remark about a bawd. So Herring sipped his ale in silence for a while as Major Clark dressed in a clean linen shirt and red velvet coat which appeared to be fresh from the tailor’s. Herring took note that the only other garments that hung in the room were a long hunting coat and leggings of soft buckskin, decorated with colorful designs in quill and trimmed with fringe, and a wide-brimmed sweat-stained hat. These garments were redolent of wood smoke and old perspiration, and appeared to have been worn so long as to be permanently impressed with the shape of their owner. They imparted, somehow, an air of wildness and savagery to the clean, precisely civilized decor of this room in a Williamsburg inn.
Herring wanted to restore the amiable mood they had begun with. “Tell me,” he ventured, “what is it like out there in the Kentucky country?”
The major, buckling on his sword, paused and gazed westward out the window. After a while, he answered:
“If you can, imagine trees six feet thick, and leafage so dense overhead that the sunshine never reaches the ground. These from one horizon to the other. Can you envision oceans of cane and grass high enough to obscure a mounted man? Streams like crystal, and game so profuse that you could nearly shoot blindfolded and hit something? Earth so rich you have to jump out of the way after you plant a seed in it?”
Herring, man of the city though he was, thrilled at the thought of such abundance and at the hushed timbre of Major Clark’s voice as he described it. The descriptions sounded like hyperbole, but the enthusiasm was genuine.
“That’s what it is like out there,” he continued. “But just now there is a bloodiness about it as would make your nape crawl. It’s a part of the day’s work to keep your scalp on your skull, and I am not exaggerating.”
He drained his tankard, took a tricorn hat from a box and put it on, then tucked a roll of papers under his arm and rushed Herring out of the room with him. “Now, then,” he said as they tromped down the stairs and out to the waiting carriage. “If the governor is going to help me tame that savagery out there, we mustn’t keep him waiting, eh?”
GOVERNOR HENRY, WIRE-FRAME SPECTACLES PUSHED UP TO REST on the top of his head, raised his glass of port to touch the one he had poured for Major Clark. They drank, and sat down on chairs facing each other across the hearth.
“Your health is better,” said Clark.
“Much better,” said the governor, dipping his long nose into the glass, inhaling, then sipping.
“My father sends his compliments, and thanks you for your many past kindnesses.”
“Return my best wishes when you see him next,” replied Henry, who had served John Clark as a lawyer on several past occasions. “Now, I understand you have had a harrowing year since last we met, young man.”
“Any venture west of the mountains is harrowing in these times. We’ve done what we could in spite of that.”
“I’ve not heard the particulars of your journey back with the gunpowder. Only that your assemblyman Mister Jones was killed. Most regrettable!”
“Aye. Well, sir, we got the powder through, all five hundred pounds of it, and again I thank you for it. I doubt there’d be a white man alive west of the mountains by now had you not secured it for us. Anyway, with a certain amount of hardship we boated it from Pittsburgh plumb down the Ohio to Limestone. We were ambushed by Indians several times along the way, but no harm done that far. On Christmas Day, though, nigh Harrodsburg, going overland, we were set upon by another band. That was a grievous Christmas Day, indeed. John Gabriel Jones was killed, and within a few miles of home. Three others of the company, among them my cousin Joseph Rogers, were taken captive and we’ve heard no more of them.”
“Ah, that’s a sad thing.”
“That hurt me deep, sir; I had persuaded him to join our party.”
Governor Henry studied Major Clark, who was frowning into the dregs of his port, the left side of his face ruddy in the glow of the fire. The governor felt a rush of sympathy and admiration for him. Then the youth swigged the rest of the port, worked it over his tongue, swallowed, and returned his gaze intent to the governor.
“Anyhow, I organized a government for Kentucky, as I wrote you, and made military discipline for its defense. Made as my captains four of the keenest Indian fighters as ever slipped through the woods. Daniel Boone, Jim Harrod, John Todd, and Ben Logan. What men! By God, sir! But by spring, as you know, the Indians resumed their raids across the Ohio in big bands, led and outfitted by the British. Hamilton at Detroit is supplying ’em with scalping knives and paying a bounty for all the scalps and captives they can get.”
The governor nodded and stared grimly into the fire.
“Since then,” Clark continued, “it’s been pretty much one routine, defending our forts against siege, getting what food we can, chasing Indians about the woods—or being chased by them—dressing our wounded, and burying our dead; that seems to be most of our business. Them able to bear arms are spread so thin among the settlements that even the ladies sometimes have to spell them at the firing ports. Disease takes as many as the fighting, though, cooped up as they are in those stockades with their animals. And not able to get out and plant or harvest, why, you can imagine they’re on rations not fit for a rat. But get by they do, and live a life while they’re at it. You’d be astounded at some of the tales. Why, a fellow was killed and scalped one day in March, and his widow was married up a month later by a gent whose own wife had been massacred some short time previous … Boone’s leg was broken by a bullet in a raid outside Boonesboro, but a big free scout named Simon Butler—mark that name well—toted him into the fort with them at his heels …
“Now that’s the Kaintuck as it is today, and to defend it long with those few men as we have is desperate at best. If John Bowman hadn’t arrived with that company of militia you sent, I couldn’t have left to come here now. Settlers are returning back over the mountains in numbers, and that hurts us sorely. Part of my way back this journey, I escorted a party of seventy-six, besides women and children.”
Governor Henry was nodding gravely, his lips compressed in a thin white line.
“You know as well as I do, Governor, we have to keep strong settlement out there to keep the British and their Indians off the back door of the colonies,” the frontiersman went on.
“I do. I do.”
“That country has to be kept secure.”
“That I know, too. I marvel at those that stay. But now, George, I know you, and I know you don’t come and get a man’s ear merely to lament a situation. You’re here to suggest some remedy, I presume.”
“Correct, Excellency,” said Clark with a sly grin.
“Very well. I’m receptive to hearing it. Mind you, I can make no promises. Virginia’s picking her own purse and getting naught but lint.”
“You’ve read my letter, about what my spies learned of the enemy post at Kaskaskia on the Mississippi …”
“Yes. And your somewhat incredible notion of invading it.” The governor shook his head, looking into his wineglass.
“Not so incredible as it might seem, though, precisely because they would think it incredible. They expect no offensive from us there, and their defense is lax. Most of its British garrison is habitually up at Detroit. Rocheblave commands the place with a collection of idlers, Creoles, and scoundrels, and they themselves are some disenchanted with the British rule. Our risk in taking it would be small, compared with the amount of mischief we could stop by doing so.”
“Go on. I am still listening.”
“Rocheblave, as the functionary for General Hamilton, gives presents and bounties to the Indians thereabouts, and incites ’em to raid our settlers in Kaintuck. And Kaskaskia has cannon to control that part of the Mississippi against any communications we might desire, and at the same time hold it open as a supply route for the British at Detroit and the Wabash posts …”
Governor Henry raised
his hand. “One moment. I respect your appraisal, both of Kaskaskia’s importance, and of its vulnerability. But my doubts arise from our own circumstance. Such an expedition would require—what? Seven hundred? A thousand men?”
“Five hundred would suffice, I think. At the very least.”
“And how much provision? How much artillery? How many boats? Horses? Perhaps we have all got unreasonably encouraged about the war, since Saratoga. You know, I presume, that Virginia is hard pressed—nay, unable—to spare men or goods, even shoes, for Washington, who’s wintering at a place in Pennsylvania called Valley Forge. Why, his own army is starving and naked. As I see it, moving against a fort no one ever heard of, nearly a thousand miles away, would require not only more men and matériel than we could justify, but more than we have.”
“But to capture that country with a small force now would cost a fraction of its next year’s defense if we don’t.”
“I wonder if you heard me,” Governor Henry said. “It’s not that I don’t like your plan. It is simply not possible for Virginia to provide for it. The Assembly would never authorize the diversion of such a force.”
The frontiersman sat back in his chair for a moment, and the governor imagined he could actually see a rapid series of calculations pass behind the glittering dark blue eyes.
“That being so,” said Clark, suddenly leaning forward in earnest again, “militia should be raised just for the duration of such a campaign. They should be woodsmen for the most part. Hunters. Swift and quiet. It requires little to equip such a man for a campaign of, say, forty days or thereabouts. That, sir, with a few boats and some ammunition, would be enough, and it would not draw off much from your eastern war here. As for the Assembly, they need only be told that it’s for the defense of Kentucky, not for an offensive so far afield. For that matter,” he added, “I’d fear for the secrecy of any mission that had to be voted through a legislative body.”
The governor nodded at the astuteness of the remark. He sat now leaning forward, an elbow on his thigh, chin in his left hand, index finger laid over his mouth and the end of his nose, tapping one foot on the floor, and stared with his ever-fierce eyes at this audacious youth. Three words Clark had said kept sounding in his head. Woodsmen. Swift. Quiet. The governor realized that Clark was talking about warfare in the Indian fashion. And as he looked at the young man’s hard, lean form and eagle’s visage, he imagined a long file of such tall men in buckskin slipping silently through wilderness shadows, all their provisions on their backs, long rifles at their sides. The governor got up from his chair suddenly and began to pace, head forward, lips pursed, hands clasped behind his back.
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