Long Knife

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  “Return their fire! Gunners, rake those buildings!”

  Soon the musket fire from the fort began banging, more resonant here within, against the distant crackling of the enemy’s weapons. Then there was a flash of yellow-red from the nearest blockhouse and the roar of a four-pounder, followed immediately by another, and another, and the hearty shouts of the British gunners. The acrid sulphuric smell of gunpowder rankled like snuff in his nose, stimulating him as it always did, and momentarily his dread solidified into a happy, clearminded ferocity. He thought of Leonard Helm’s mockery, and wondered how Helm had learned of this before the fact. It could be his friend Clark out there, Hamilton thought, though I don’t see how he could have come here. But whoever it is, and whatever he has in mind, he’ll find that he’s dealing with Englishmen, not Creoles, this time.

  At that moment, another of his English gunners yelled in pain and fell back from the palisade, his collarbone broken by a rifle ball that had whistled in through the embrasure.

  Damn it! Hamilton thought. Where’s LaMothe with his volunteers? We’re going to need every man we have.

  The British regimental surgeon trotted to Hamilton across the parade, huffing and blowing, eyes wild. “I just made it in through the gate,” he exclaimed.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Doctor McBeath. I’m afraid we’re going to need you.”

  “I was in the village when the shooting began,” panted the surgeon. “The lady of the house told me Colonel Clark has arrived from the Illinois with an army of at least five hundred.” Two cannon in the blockhouses boomed.

  “Clark, eh? That’s hardly credible. But never mind that, Doctor. Have the wounded moved into my quarters, out of this cold, and attend to them.”

  And another soldier yelped and spun to the ground.

  IT WAS REMARKABLE THAT THEY WERE EVEN ON THEIR FEET. BUT they were, and they were doing with a fervid eagerness everything George needed done, and it seemed that he well might have more of a problem holding them back than driving them forward.

  They’re like wolves, he thought, made even more reckless and determined by their starvation.

  He knew, from his own state, that they all were in an almost disembodied frame of mind from hunger and suffering, that clear-eyed and dauntless condition which he knew the Indians sometimes attained through deliberate fasting. They all seemed to be beyond fear or pain now, and he was certain that any one of them was worth ten British soldiers in this fight.

  They had secured the town without firing a shot and now had surrounded the garrison completely. They had found natural cover behind houses, garden walls, ditches, and the riverbanks. Some of the woodsmen moved forward in the darkness and set up breastworks of logs and old timbers within twenty or thirty yards of the fort’s walls, so close that the cannon muzzles could not be depressed enough to fire on them, and from this range they could put almost every shot right through a firing port or embrasure. The cannon belched smoke and fire over their heads as the night deepened, shattering a few walls and outbuildings, but so far not one of the Americans or their partisans had been wounded. The British soldiers on the walls poured out musketry as if powder and ball were inexhaustible, and their shots went whining and cracking everywhere but never found flesh. The Americans had found or made such good cover that they were almost as well protected as anyone within the fort. George knew he could not afford to lose men, and so had admonished his officers not to let them grow careless of themselves.

  The hoarded supply of powder and lead turned over by Messieurs Bosseron, LeGras, and Gibault was, to George’s mind, another of those small miracles that had come to his aid throughout this expedition. Marching on the town at sunset, with most of his ammunition still aboard the absent galley and the rest somewhat deteriorated by the conditions of the march, he had not expected to have firepower to spare. But when his allies had greeted him with the great cache, giving him the luxury of sustained fusillade, the effectiveness of his sharpshooters was vastly increased. A hail of rifle balls would riddle any spot where an Englishman showed his head, and it was not long before the British firing was nearly silenced.

  At this time the woodsmen began to play with their enemy.

  “Hey, laddies,” one would cry toward the fort in that maddeningly insolent tone that only an American hill man can produce, “stick yer arse up, an’ I’ll wager I can put a ball through it without makin’ another hole!”

  “Hey in there! How about Mister Hamilton’s scalp, in trade fer th’ one you took off my daughter?”

  “Aye, you cowardly redcoat scuts! You dare come out from behind yer Indians an’ meet a Kentuckian face to face?”

  “Come out, you boneless buggers! Come on out! Come on, God blast you, an’ have a taste o’ long knife!”

  “Hi bully boy! I’ll snip off yer family jewels, if y’ have any!”

  “Here’s the answer to your dumb ballyraggin’!” a voice would cry back from the fort; an embrasure would be thrown open and a cannon flash fire, but before its ball could even crash into the rubble, a dozen Kentucky rifles would be fired through the embrasure and a British gunner would spin away with an ear shot off or a ball through his shoulder.

  And so this deadly riposte of word and gunshot continued into the night. Sometimes a volley of fire would come from one corner of the town, then stop instantly and a volley of nasal laughter would come from another quarter. A nasty snigger would draw fire, which would be returned instantly, tenfold. The British troops dared not go on relief, for fear that the walls might be stormed or sapped at any instant. Redcoats stood on the western parapet, tormented by the sounds of digging a mere thirty feet below, where Captain Bowman’s men were undermining the wall near the powder magazine, but dared not raise their heads above the parapet to fire down because of the bullets and splinters that would meet them if they did.

  George moved from one place to another watching this grim amusement, cheering the men on but warning them to protect their precious heads and save themselves for the morning. His men could not have performed more satisfactorily or with higher morale; he marveled that they could even lift their rifles after almost a week without food or warmth, yet here they were firing away in the darkness with the steady accuracy of starved hunters in the joyous pursuit of meat.

  An ensign came to George shortly before midnight, where he had set up a command post in the old church, and told him that Tobacco’s Son, the Grand Kite of the Wabash, had come to see him. The Piankeshaw chief, who had treated with Leonard Helm in the fall and proclaimed himself a Big Knife, strode into the candlelight, looked at George, smiled, nodded, then came forward with his eyes full of tears and gave him an earnest handshake. He was tall and proud, with deep parenthetical lines in his cheeks enclosing his thin mouth, with strands of gray in his greased and braided hair. He wore leggings and a hunting shirt of soft, nearly white deerskin, and had two pistols in his belt. His glittering eyes feasted on George for a moment as rifles crackled in the night outside. “You know,” he said in a resonant voice, “that I am a Big Knife, your brother.”

  “I know that and I am content,” George replied.

  “I have told the Englishman Hamilton that I am a Big Knife, when he tried to buy my warriors to fight for him.”

  “Good. To fight for the British is a low thing.”

  “I have many warriors,” said Tobacco’s Son. “I have one hundred warriors with me near this place, and I wish to join my brother the Long Knife tonight and strike against the British fort.” His straight white teeth glinted in the candlelight as he talked. A cannon boomed in the night outside and there was a shower of falling stone nearby but the Indian did not flinch.

  George thought for a moment. Then he said, “I thank you for your friendly disposition.” He did not want to risk the confusion that might result if a body of Indians mixed with the Americans in the dark, and was not altogether sure the chief could be trusted. “We are sufficiently strong ourselves,” George said, “and would prefer that you keep y
our braves back. But I personally would like to have your counsel and your company, and invite you to stay at my side.”

  Tobacco’s Son beamed with pride and pleasure. “This is a great honor. I have yearned to stand beside my brother the Long Knife, whom the Master of Life has sent among us to clear our eyes and make our paths straight. Now you are here and I am pleased with you.”

  “And I with you. Now let us take a walk and see how this business goes.”

  They found Captain Bowman outside in the street. He reported that his tunnel-diggers were being slowed by cave-ins as they tried to burrow under the fort’s powder magazine. “By God, George,” he breathed happily. “We’ve not had a man scratched yet, but I think we’re playing havoc with ’em inside. Fine sport for the sons o’ liberty, eh?”

  “Fine sport indeed. Their hearts’ desire. But this business has to be resolved quick, Joseph, before we get overrun by his Indians and reinforcements … What’s that?”

  There was a crackle of gunfire in a quarter of the town far from the fort. “What could be happening over there?” Bowman asked.

  An emaciated woodsman, one of the scouts who had been sent down the riverbank to watch for the Willing, soon came panting up with the answer. “They’s a party of the enemy out south side o’ th’ town, colonel. ‘Bout two dozen, it was. They tried to break through our line an’ scamper into th’ fort, it looked like. We turned ’em back and gave a chase but they just plumb disappeared.”

  “What, Indians? British?”

  “One o’ Charleville’s boys said they was Canadians, an’ said he heard th’ voice of a Captain LaMothe.”

  “Aye, I know of that one,” George said. “A dangerous rascal, I’ve heard.”

  “Captain LaMothe is like the fox,” said Tobacco’s Son. “He will be hard to find in the night.”

  “Tell Charleville to keep a detail looking for LaMothe,” George said to the scout. “He could cause considerable mischief being at large thataway.”

  LAMOTHE, MAISONVILLE, AND THE CANADIANS AT THIS MOMENT lay panting in a cold wet bed of straw and manure inside a barn south of the town. The fetid moisture soaked into their clothes. But the hazards of being outside were, for the moment, worse. LaMothe peered out between stones of the barn’s wall. A tumbrel with a broken wheel leaned on its hub just outside, and now and then its outline would leap into clarity with the light from a cannon blast at the fort. LaMothe sent one of the Canadians out to seek a way into the fort. After a long wait, the man had not returned, and LaMothe sent out another.

  He leaned against the stone wall and wrinkled his nose at the stench. His party had been returning from scouting the flood-lands down the Wabash at sunset when the sound of cannon gave them their first knowledge that the fort was under attack. Returning to the village, they had made several rushes to get back into the cover of the fort, but had succeeded only in getting themselves pursued. And now here they were.

  “Merde,” cursed LaMothe with a bitter smile unseen in the dark. “Now I doubt they would let us into the fort even if we could get there.”

  Maisonville smiled. LaMothe was much more personable in danger. It seemed to bring him to life.

  “Lieutenant,” LaMothe said, “send another one out.” Another Canadian crawled through the wall and vanished.

  “Do you think they’re getting caught? Killed?” Maisonville whispered.

  “Non. Defecting, more likely,” LaMothe whispered, then spat. “Canaille!” He spat again. “Eh bien, Maisonville, we’ll have to get into that compound before daylight. They’ll find us here otherwise.”

  “Listen. We might be of more service out here,” Maisonville suggested. “We could go among the tribes and gather enough to trouble the rebels.”

  “What’s this? Afraid to return to a besieged fort?”

  “Mais non! Only that I could do better! Rather I should ask, are you afraid of being away from the fort among the Bostonnais!”

  “Listen, m’sieur: LaMothe fears nothing!”

  “Pardon.”

  “Lieutenant, send out another one. And warn this cur that if he doesn’t report back, I’ll find him someday and cut his throat.”

  Another Canadian went out, thus warned. The hours wore on, punctuated by constant gunfire, and he did not come back either.

  THE SMELL OF GUNSMOKE WAS DENSE IN THE COLD AIR BEFORE dawn. George looked out into the fading darkness. The ring of muzzle flashes and verbal abuse around the fort continued as it had for the last twelve hours.

  He was very pleased that despite all the lead the British had poured out into the surrounding darkness, not one of his men had been wounded. They were combining his cautionary orders with their own huntsmen’s cunning to keep themselves virtually invisible, while at the same time doing more shooting than twice their number could have been expected to do. But George was growing anxious about Captain LaMothe. After midnight LaMothe had shown up in several places around the perimeter trying to make a break for the fort. Each time he had failed, but had escaped each time and was still thought to be hovering about the town waiting for his opportunity.

  “Joseph, I’ve been thinking about this fox, LaMothe.” He paused for a nearby fusillade of rifle fire to die down. “We’ve been trying to keep him from getting in the fort. But, you know, I’ve been weighing it in the balance: If he got in, he’d reinforce the garrison by maybe twenty men, would you say?”

  “Aye.”

  “But if he was to get discouraged and give up trying to enter, I suspect he’d soon think of going out to stir up the Indians against us. There’s a lots of ’em in these parts, you know, that are inimical to our interest.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s true.”

  “Well, weigh it: Where would we rather have an enemy like that, hemmed in or running loose?”

  A cannon roared from the fort and simultaneously a shower of broken stone flew off the corner of a nearby house and rattled against walls and fences, leaving a rankling smell of stone dust.

  “Why, put that way, George, I’d say inside, where he can be watched.”

  “Then I believe we should give him a chance to get in.”

  GENERAL HAMILTON OPENED THE DOOR OF HIS QUARTERS, WHERE four wounded soldiers lay or sat. He stepped out into the cold air, pulled his cloak about him, and listened. The gunfire had stopped, and the silence was as startling as the first gunshots had been twelve hours before.

  The stars were fading. A smear of gray-pink light silhouetted the naked trees of the forest far to the east. The soldiers and militiamen along the parapets were cautiously peering over the palisades into the predawn gloom.

  Hamilton crossed the parade and mounted a ladder to the parapet near the gate. He looked out over the window toward the town. There was total calm, not a sign of an enemy except the barricades and breastworks that had grown up in the meadow during the darkness since the moon set, and a fortified ditch that had been dug across the gate road.

  Along the parapet the British soldiers were reloading their muskets, moving ammunition, blowing their noses, hawking and spitting, or simply stretching the stiffness and tension out of their shoulders.

  “Surely they’ve not simply quit,” said a lieutenant nearby.

  “No such thing, I’ll vow,” said Hamilton. “Now, stand ready. They may be gathering for a rush. Load. Get the reserves up here!” He strained his hearing for the sound of troops moving in the distance, but heard nothing. He hated these stealthy methods of warfare. They seemed suitable only for Indians, and, to his mind, robbed warfare of its grandeur. Rationally, of course, he understood its superior effectiveness; as the perpetrator of Indian attacks against the rebel settlements, he was its chief advocate. But as a traditional British officer he deplored it, and often daydreamed of having a command in Europe where men still fought standing up on a field.

  There was a sudden murmur of excitement along the parapet to his right. “Look you there, Gov’nor!” cried a soldier, pointing to the southeast quarter. Other
s were training their muskets there.

  A group of men was halfway across the meadow, running at full tilt toward the fort, their forms dark against the pale, dead grass. As they drew near the palisade, feet thudding, arms rattling, one cried out:

  “I’m LaMothe! Ladders! Ladders!”

  Joy leaped in Hamilton’s breast. “Drop over the ladders! Give them ladders!”

  In seconds, Captain LaMothe, Lieutenant Schieffelin, and about fifteen of their men had swarmed over the eleven-foot palisade and leaped down into the arms of their comrades, panting and gasping. The soldiers cheered them and pounded their backs. “My God,” LaMothe exclaimed shakily to Hamilton, “never was I so ready to feel a ball in my back, as when I topped that wall!” At that moment, a cackle of derisive laughter swept through the distance outside the walls, followed by a sudden hail of rifle balls which hummed past their ears and sent them all diving for cover. The Americans’ harassing fire resumed full force.

  “Congratulations on your safe return,” Hamilton said with a trace of sarcasm as they crouched behind the palisade. “But I can’t help feeling you were let in. Where’s Maisonville?”

  “He chose to stay outside,” panted LaMothe, “to go among our Indians and rally them. We parted on that …”

  “Damned good thinking!” Hamilton hissed. “You might have done better to stay with him.”

  Captain LaMothe’s exuberance drained out of him.