Those had been her impressions so far of the Illinois country, and now they were nearing St. Louis, the capital of Upper Louisiana, a mere village on the western bank of the great Mississippi, on the edge of a vast, unexplored land tenuously claimed by Spain, a mere river’s breadth from the troubled country where unfriendly England held sway over a few hundred half-civilized French settlers and thousands of fickle savages. To the east, she had heard, American colonists even more barbarous than the Indians were waging a sporadic war to obtain independence from the British, and there were rumors that this conflict could sweep someday even into this remote Mississippi Valley, which was coveted by every faction as a water road for munitions and supplies. It was a frightening prospect all about, and Teresa de Leyba, timid, introspective, delicate, and vulnerable, could no longer even pretend to share her brother’s enthusiasm for his new adventure.
“There lies St. Louis, Excellency,” said the vessel’s captain, coming astern to point northwestward at a cluster of stone houses standing on the western bluff of the river a few miles ahead, tiny, gleaming white in the late afternoon sunlight.
“St. Louis, at long last,” breathed Don Fernando, rising stiffly to his feet, stooping to stand under the awning, stroking his neat goatee. His velvet pantaloons and the white stockings on his slim legs were rumpled and soiled from the long repose in the dirty river-galley. “And that on the far bank, up that stream. That, I presume, would be Cahokia?”
“Cahokia, Excellency. Creole French and Indians under the English flag.” He shook his head and then made a scornful gesture toward the town with two fingers. “That the mongrels should stay on their side of the river.”
“Enough of that, Captain,” said Don Fernando, taking the hand of his wife, who had risen to stand beside him. “Load the six-pounder and signal the fort that we are here. St. Louis, Maria,” he said gently to her as the captain went forward, scolding the Negroes to a faster cadence. “You’ll be able to rest soon and be strong again.” She lowered her kerchief from her face to give him a feeble smile. Teresa rose and stood beside Maria, placing her hand at the small of her back. She jumped and flinched when the little swivel-cannon in the bow of the galley spat orange flame and a cracking roar rolled away over the river and returned in echo. The acrid smell of burnt gunpowder was still in her nostrils when a puff of smoke appeared from the village at the top of the bluff, followed a moment later by its report, then another and another and another: St. Louis saluting her new governor. Tears of appreciation stung Teresa’s eyes and momentarily swept away her lassitude as she looked at her brother, the proud young grandee silhouetted against the setting sun. Suddenly this valley looked rich and mellow and spacious, and perhaps full of a new and different kind of promise after all.
Can there perhaps, she wondered, be other men in this land as noble and fine as he? Mother of God, that there should be. She flushed as she made this frivolous prayer, but prayed it nonetheless. Maybe, she was thinking as boats came out from the foot of the bluff to meet them, this is not the end of my world at all.
“Teresa,” Don Fernando said, now turning to her, obviously feeling expansive, “little sister, I feel that you are going to find much happiness here, more than anywhere before.” He so wanted her to; she knew that. Perhaps, she thought, it is possible.
6
PITTSBURGH
May 1778
GENERAL EDWARD HAND OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY, WHO WAS thirty-four years old but moved with no more spirit than an old man, walked with George Rogers Clark as far as the great open log gate of Fort Pitt and stood there with him looking down over the woodshingled roofs of the town of Pittsburgh to the wharf on the riverbank where the young colonel’s ten boats hung to their moorings, filled already with men, bristling with long rifles. The Ohio River here blended the waters of the Allegheny and Monongahela and then, broad and green, curved away to the northwest and vanished into the fresh springtime emerald of the forest. The sky was azure from horizon to horizon; the shrilling of locusts stretched like an invisible skin over the shimmering fields of the valley. Far downstream a hunter’s single gunshot struck like a pulsebeat on the air.
George took a last look back inside the fort, where regular soldiers in buff trousers and blue coats and a ragged assemblage of civilians had gathered in curiosity. They stood about on the beaten, dusty yellow parade ground and lounged against the palisades and blockhouses, somehow looking soiled and stupid in contrast with the vast clean wilderness outside the fort.
My God, but I am happy to be quitting this place, he thought. Nothing here but disappointment and subterfuge.
General Hand stood nibbling his thin lips and gazing with ennui down at the boats. The flesh hung gray on the shapely bones of his face, and a day’s stubble on his chin glinted in the morning sun. He had hardly met George’s gaze, even while hosting him and filling his requisition for boats and munitions. General Hand’s aspect was distinctly that of a failure. His effort four months earlier to lead a force of more than five hundred soldiers against the British trading post at Sandusky had become bogged down in snow and floods and illness and the weight of its own baggage; he had overrun a few Indian villages deserted except for old women, and thus had returned to Pittsburgh to be ridiculed behind his back as the leader of “the squaw campaign,” had asked to be relieved of his command, and was awaiting his successor now. It was discouraging even to look at him, and George was as anxious to be gone as the general obviously was to see him leave.
“My thanks, sir,” said George, careful as always to keep the pity out of his voice, extending his hand.
“Good fortune to you,” said the general, at last looking directly at him. “Let’s pray there’ll be a bigger contingent awaiting you when you get down to the Kentucky.”
“I’m sure there will be. Goodbye, sir.”
There had better be, George thought, as he made his way past the massive earthwork redoubts of the fort and down the dirt road among houses and garden plots toward the wharf. He had expected to have more than three hundred men underway to Kentucky by March; now it was late in May and he and his captains had managed to enlist a mere one hundred and fifty. Everywhere they had gone to recruit, they had met the resistance of leading citizens who demanded to know by what authority their own meager manpower was to be taken away for the defense of remote Kentucky. News that Daniel Boone and a party of twenty-seven salt-makers had been captured by an Indian force in February had demoralized many of the settlements, and the borderland disputes between Virginia and Pennsylvania had dimmed George’s hopes of signing up any Pennsylvania volunteers. The whole frontier had sent up an uproar of disapproval against his recruiters, and men already recruited were being encouraged to desert. Many had.
There’ll be danger of even more slipping away until we put distance between us and these settlements, he thought. That was why he had decided not to prolong the futile enlistment effort any longer; this little band would more likely shrink than expand if it waited longer here.
Despite the disappointments of the recent months, his confidence quickened as he turned his back on civilization and strode down the hill toward his flotilla. Out there, he thought, one can control the course of things, and not be undermined by schemers.
He turned heads as he made his way to the river. Women in doorways and gardens watched him; men with barrows and mules nodded to him; Indians and bushlopers in smoke-blackened deerskins stopped and turned as he passed. He was aware of the impression he created; he carried himself at full height and deliberately expressed all his energy and power in his movements. Without the epaulets and insignia of the regulars’ uniform to proclaim his rank, he knew he had to inspire obedience by sheer force of bearing. He wore now a fine high-collared coat of soft doeskin which reached his knees, edged in fringe and emblazoned Indian-fashion on the back with elaborate designs in red and white beads and quills. At its throat showed a clean white linen stock. Into the brass-buckled swordbelt at his waist were thrust a long, slender toma
hawk and a flintlock pistol. His chest was crisscrossed by two leather straps, one supporting a large sheath knife and a powder horn, the other a pouch for rifle balls and personal effects. His long legs were sheathed in fringed deerskin leggings and on his feet he wore deerskin moccasins decorated with narrow bands of blue and white beadwork. His red hair was pulled back over his ears and bound into a queue, and his glinting eyes were shaded by the wide brim of a round-crowned soft black felt hat pinned up on the right side. Cradled in the crook of his left arm was his long Kentucky rifle, slim as a walking-stick, with its gleaming blond stock of flame maple. Even so heavily accoutred, he moved with a swift, easy gait which brought him quickly down to the water’s edge and onto the sun-warped, fishy-smelling planks of the wharf, where his captains stood waiting for him.
“How went the muster?” he asked, returning their homespun salutes.
“Real good, George,” drawled Leonard Helm, a bow-legged, barrel-chested man with a flat red face and tobacco-stained white whiskers. “Nary a one run off last night. Reckon all the chaff’s done blowed off this bunch by now.”
“I surely do hope so. Loaded to go, are we?” George stroked his jaw and looked over the heavily laden boats, which were nuzzling the wharf with their blunt prows. Captain Joseph Bowman, his young first officer, stood waiting in the command boat holding a furled flag. Davey Pagan was in the stern, leaning on the rudderpost, his good eye squinting against the sun. Each of the boats looked like a floating thicket of upraised rifles and oars, with ten to fifteen ruddy, craggy faces peering up at him, shrewd, patient, glum, or mocking. “Boah, he’s some perty, ain’t he?” twanged a voice from a nearby boat. Chuckles began, then stopped instantly when his eyes swept the boat. He stepped quickly to the edge of the wharf and stared through narrowed eyelids into the men amidships, so directly that the man who had made the remark must have thought he was recognized.
“That’s true, boys,” George said loudly, breaking into a grin, “we don’t have cannon and we don’t have cavalry, so we’ll just have to win ’em with our good looks—and that’s why I picked all you beauties!”
A wave of surprised laughter swept through the nearby boats. George leaped nimbly onto the bow thwart of the command boat, and shoved it away from the wharf with a mighty heave. He took the green-and-red-striped Virginia flag from Captain Bowman, unfurled it, erected it in the bow, then stood waving toward the west. “Cast ’em off, boys, we’re headin’ for Kentucky!”
A general cheer went up. The captains scrambled off the dock into their boats; the ten vessels swung off willy-nilly into the current. Then the steersmen strained against their sweeps, oars dipped and found their cadence, and the boats fell into file and headed for mid-channel. A few rifles were fired into the air spontaneously, their puffs of blue smoke dissipating over the river; here and there laughter and war whoops sounded. Davey Pagan started up a chanty, and soon every oar in the convoy was dipping to its rhythm. A fresh morning breeze ruffled the surface of the river and started a cheerful rataplan against the prow of the speeding boat. George stood in the prow bareheaded, looked back at the little oncoming fleet, and watched the bluish bulk of Fort Pitt diminishing astern. Eager fellows, he thought. But what an assortment.
He looked them over carefully. Half the men in each boat were rowing, bareheaded and stripped to the waist. Their sinewy white shoulders and backs were beginning to shine with sweat in the sun. He could feel the forward surge of the boat each time they stroked in unison. If they’re not slackers now at this work, he thought, I reckon they’ll strive when they learn I’m leading them straight against the scalp-takers. Vengeance is a good wage to work for. How I wish I could tell them now! But I don’t need to yet. They’re getting to know each other. And they’re going to like me a great deal if I can manage that. By Heaven, they’ll want for discipline; most every one is used to being a law unto himself. Look at ’em. Not one I’d reckon thinks he’s an ordinary man. Let ’em get a triumph or two under their bonnets, and they’ll have the worst case of swaggers you ever did see.
He had watched that kind of spirit evolve during the defense of the Kentucky settlements the year before. Even in the most desperate days, when the women were running ammunition in skillets and there was nothing in the forts to eat but tainted meat and musty corn, every repulse made the defenders celebrate themselves as charmed beings, superior to the folks back on the seaboard side of the mountains. He had seen the survival-cockiness of the long hunters; he had seen that giddy sense of invincibility develop in farmers who had conserved their own hair a few times while snatching an Indian scalp or two instead.
Most of the men in this string of boats now were already veterans of such tests. He had interviewed each recruit personally at Redstone Fort or at Fort Pitt, and knew there was scarcely a greenhorn among them. They were trail-hardened and cunning and knew how to shoot the eyes out of a squirrel. Hardly a one had the look of a soldier about him, but they were, he knew, dangerous as a den of bobcats.
All they need to learn, for our cause, is how to follow orders and fight together, not as individuals, he thought. I could lose too many if each one tried to fight his own war, and I can’t afford to lose any.
The sound of a child’s voice from one of the boats reminded him of the presence of another element he had not initially planned for: the families of several of his recruits. There were about twenty families in the convoy. Some of the militiamen had signed up mainly because they were interested in Kentucky as a destination, or because they had friends or relatives already in Kentucky; some had had to bring their families simply because they were adrift and landless and had nowhere to leave them. Helm and Bowman, finding recruits so scarce, had signed up some such family men, on the condition that they could bring their families at least as far as Redstone Fort. George himself had invited two likely-looking adventurers who had been hanging about at Redstone, and had agreed to bring their families along part of the way in return for three months’ service in the militia. The scarcity of recruits had been that desperate. At first the presence of these women, children, and oldsters had seemed to be an unwanted burden, but then the idea had come to him that they might instead prove an asset. They could do planting and other work at the new base camp and thus free all the men for drill. George knew of course that he could not have made these dependents stay behind anyway, as they were as free as himself to venture to the frontier; he had no authority to order them back. Better to have them come along under our protection than follow at a distance, he thought. Besides, every family that settles in Kentucky helps to solidify Virginia’s frontier.
So there they were, huddled in the prows of several of the boats, these little homeless families with their precious pots and tools and bags of seed corn—all they would really need to start new lives. They were some added baggage for the military expedition, but not really very much. And their presence for the meantime would help keep the men civilized.
The oars steadily munched the river and the sun rose toward its zenith. The planks of the boats grew hot to the touch. At noon George ordered the rowers relieved, and the boats drifted on the current for a few moments while men changed positions in the cramped spaces. Murmurs, curses, and laughter, bumping and scraping sounds drifted with strange clarity across the water. Those going off the oars blew and sighed happily like pack horses, stretched and flexed their arms, pinched sweat out of their eye sockets, stood at the gunwales breaking wind and pissing over the side. Those going into the rowers’ seats now removed their shirts and hats, and some of them had tied rags around their heads to absorb the sweat of their brows.
In minutes the vessels were underway again, awkwardly at first, with some clumsy clacking of oars and good-humored taunts, until all had found the rhythm and the going became mechanical. George lounged now in his shirt-sleeves, quietly observing the men and contemplating their suitability for the expedition.
Here and there among the soiled tan buckskins and homespun hunting shirts he had seen a bl
ue military coat, but these were frayed, patched vestiges of some earlier service, or secondhand articles which somehow had worked their way into the possession of these civilians. George entertained the suspicion that a few of the men might be deserters from the discouraged and unlucky armies of the east, but there was neither means nor reason to prove those suspicions. Anyone who might have left that service only to enlist in this won’t find it a bargain, he thought. They shan’t avoid serving their state, in any case. He studied faces. Most of the men were older than he was. Many of the faces were gaunt as skulls, with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. The faces were leathery from years of exposure, with deep seams under high cheekbones and wrinkles radiating about the eyes from seasons and seasons of squinting into sunlight or brilliant snow. There were eyes fierce as a hawk’s or merry as a chipmunk’s. There were full beards or grizzled chin-stubble; here and there was a lipless thin mouth that grinned perpetually like a fool’s. Many a face had its perpetual quid-lump like a carbuncle in the cheek; those heads would turn periodically and spit brown gobs into the river.
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