Long Knife

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  Hamilton, bewildered, suddenly felt one of his most cherished personal fancies shattered. The American, by dismissing his gaze as unimportant, had prevailed. Hoping no one had really noticed this, Hamilton glanced about to find the American Captain Bowman regarding him amusedly with his own ghostly pale-gray eyes. Then Bowman too stepped past him and joined in greeting Helm. Hamilton was mortified; he felt he had been dismissed as a less important personage than this yokelish Helm. Clenching his jaw, toeing the earth, and waiting for these arrogant louts to conclude their uproarious reunion, he found himself looking at the faces of some of the most piratical human beings he had ever seen; they were drifting close around, snaggle-toothed, evil of eye, lumpish in their rags and rotting buckskins, some barefoot, all unshaven and scrawny as jerky, stinking sourly even at this distance, but every one grinning with a happy mockery. A huge beast of a man stood smirking at him, testing the edge of a big hunting knife with his thumb, then suddenly reached up, snatched off his mangy coonskin cap, bent, and exhibited an ugly scar on the crown of his head, the white of skull-bone showing through. Then the man put his cap back on and winked at Hamilton, wrinkling his porous nose. Suddenly Governor Hamilton had the dispiriting notion that he would be unable to stare down any one of these fetid scoundrels; they were looking at him as if he were a swine ready for the butcher block. Every last one of them felt superior to him!

  Hamilton turned smartly away from them. He presented his page of terms to Colonel Clark. “I trust you will find these reasonable and honorable,” he said. He gazed at the Virginian’s hard brown hands and broad chest while the proposal was being scrutinized.

  Then George handed the document off to Captain Bowman and came a step closer to Hamilton.

  “Governor, hear me,” he said. “It’s as vain of you to try to bargain with me as it is to think of defending yon fort. My cannon’ll be up in a few hours—though I doubt I need ’em—and the bank side of your fort is already considerably undermined. You can’t escape by water. Furthermore, I know, to a man, which of your Frenchmen you can count on, and that’s a precious few. If you stand here trying my patience with haggling, I shall have to make an assault. My boys ’ve begged my permission to tear your fort down and get at you, and if they do that, Gov’nor, I doubt that a single soul of you will be spared. On the other hand, if you’ll surrender at discretion and trust to my generosity, you’ll have better treatment than if you stand here and haggle for terms.” He stopped and waited, unblinking.

  “Then, Colonel Clark, I’ll have to abide the consequence, for I’ll never take so disgraceful a step as long as I have ammunition and provision. My numbers are small, but I can depend upon my Englishmen.”

  The Virginian nodded, but replied, “You’ll be answerable for lives lost by your obstinacy. The result of an enraged body of men like these …” he said, sweeping his arm in the direction of those crowding around, “must be obvious to you.”

  “Mister Clark, I perceive you’re trying to force me to a fight in the last ditch!”

  “Well you might suppose!” the American roared suddenly. “Every fiber in me cries out to let these men avenge their massacred families and friends! If I let you live at all, it’s more than a man of your known barbarity deserves! Aye, it’s true, I should like nothing more than an excuse to put all your Indians and partisans to death!”

  “Colonel, for God’s sake, I am not such a monster! Why, your own captain Helm I am sure would verify that I am a gentleman …”

  “Captain Helm is a British prisoner, and thus it’s doubtful whether he can speak with propriety on the subject.”

  “Then he is from this moment liberated,” snapped Hamilton, “and free to speak at his pleasure.”

  “I don’t receive a prisoner’s release on such terms. He’ll return to the garrison and await his fate. If I get my friend back, I take him back!”

  Hamilton looked at the obdurate American. “Then nothing will do but fighting?”

  “I know of nothing else. Except surrendering, as I’ve said, at discretion. You’re a murderer, you’re caught, and you have no right to demand conditions. That’s it, Mr. Hamilton!”

  “George …” Leonard Helm began, stretching out his hand.

  “Not now, Len,” George said.

  “Then, Colonel,” said Hamilton, “will you stay your hand until I return to the garrison and consult with my officers?”

  “Do that. You’re at liberty to pass safely. Good day, Gov’nor.”

  PACING SOLEMNLY ON THE PARADE GROUND IN THE FORT, GENERAL Hamilton was aroused from a brown study by an awesome murmur coming from the men along the parapet. They seemed to be watching the village and the meadow. Hamilton climbed back up to the parapet, just in time to see a company of the Americans emerge from the village onto the gate road hauling forward six Indians covered with war paint. Each captive was being led by a rope around the neck. They were brought to the place where the street was crossed by the barricade, herded into a circle, and shoved to their knees. Hamilton recognized them; they were part of a war party he had sent to the Ohio weeks before, twenty Indians headed by a bloodthirsty Vincennes youth named St. Croix. Somehow on their return they had fallen into the Americans’ hands. Numbers of the frontiersmen were leaving their places behind the barricade to crowd in a wider circle, jeering and howling, around these kneeling warriors, and Hamilton grew cold with the understanding that he was about to witness something most unpleasant.

  Two or three Americans or Illinois volunteers now stood around each of the kneeling braves, threatening them with raised tomahawks, swords, and knives. A large group of the Tawaway Indians who had been sheltering in the fort came out onto the parapet to watch this proceeding. And then, from the church, Colonel Clark strode across the meadow toward the place where the captives were.

  George moved into the circle where the painted Indians knelt. “What have we here, Captain Williams?”

  The captain’s mouth was set in a bitter sneer, his eyes bulging with fury, the whites showing all the way around the irises. “There was twenty of ’em comin’ in with all these—” He swung up from his side a heavy fistful of scalps, brown hair, blond hair, white hair, black hair, red hair, each with its circle of skin encrusted with brownish dried blood. A ferocious muttering swept among the American troops. George felt a shock of fury; his hands clenched to fists, opened to talons, closed again to fists, and he stared from one to another of the captives. “They must of thought we was some of Hamilton’s men coming out to greet’em,” Williams went on. “They walked right up t’us a-whoopin’ an’ hollerin’ and a-poundin’ ’emselves on th’ chest, jus’ as jolly as you please. They didn’t realize their mistake till they was right among us, and tried to turn tail an’ light out. We kilt fourteen of ’em an’ caught these. Thought th’ boys might like t’ have at ’em. What say you, George?”

  George looked at the Indians and at the scalps, blood raging in his veins. He remembered the Puans who had knelt with this same fatal resignation before him at Cahokia six months ago, awaiting the fate their warriors’ minds accepted as fair, and he remembered how well his purpose had been served by sparing them.

  Now the scene was similar, and once again he had the godlike power to grant life or take it away, whichever would serve him better.

  He looked at his men, who were waiting his permission to strike. He turned, then, to look at the Tawaways up in the fort, who believed that the great English Father, Hamilton, could always protect them against their enemies. Then he looked at General Hamilton and Major Hay on the parapet.

  George knew that his marksmen had already struck terror into the garrison, but Hamilton was hesitating and apparently needed the final sign of his determination.

  Looking for a while out of the corner of his eye at the watching Englishmen, his head tilted in an attitude of deliberation, he then turned back to Captain Williams.

  “John,” he said in a loud, carrying voice, “let any man here who has lost a blood relative to the H
air-Buyer’s savages put one of these murderers to the tomahawk.”

  There! He had said it!

  A fierce shout of approval went up. Four of Williams’s men turned and looked around, then stepped back to let someone else take their places in the circle.

  A wiry Kentuckian with crooked teeth stood over the chief of the Indian party. His tomahawk trembled in his right hand, its long narrow blade ruddy with rust. The chief straightened his spine, threw back his head, and began singing his weird, quavering death song. The other captives joined in with theirs. The Kentuckian’s cap was made of a whole muskrat pelt, the little animal’s head projecting out like a bill over the wearer’s nose. Its dried up little eyeballs stared blindly at the Indian chief and he looked back at them as he sang.

  Then the American said simply to the chief, “Here.” And with a quick, whiplike movement of his arm, he swung the weapon at the painted forehead.

  Chewk. It punctured the skull and stuck. The song stopped. The Kentuckian let loose of the handle and stood back, panting with excitement. The chief, quaking but still conscious, blood running down between his eyes and off the end of his nose, reached up and pulled the blade out, and handed the weapon back to his executioner. The woodsman took it, quietly muttered, “Sorry,” then chopped a second and third time into the chief’s skull. The other captives raised their eyes and continued singing their death songs. The chief slowly fell to the side, and two Americans, pulling on the rope around his neck, dragged him across the meadow, past the walls of the fort with its spectators perched aghast along the palisade, and down to the riverbank where they threw him in. The dying chief struggled a moment in the current, then slipped under, leaving a swirl of crimson on the turbid brown water.

  Now the Indians on the fort wall all turned their heads toward where General Hamilton stood, glowered at him, began shaking their fists at him and berating him, demanding to know why he was not protecting the red man as he had always promised to do.

  In slow succession, four more of the captives were struck down and dragged past the fort to be thrown in the river. The defenders in the fort watched these executions with an awful fascination, wincing, groaning, or inhaling sharply each time a tomahawk fell. Hamilton stood frozen in horror and indignation, his mouth hanging open. Such incredible barbarism! he thought over and over. But the delicious savor of his moral indignation was spoiled, repeatedly, by the whisper of his conscience reminding him that these murders were acts of revenge for his own deeds. This realization twisted deeper and deeper in his breast. It was the worst moment he had experienced in his life. He felt the pillar of personal power crumbling inside him and trickling away; or, rather, it was as if someone had grasped the end of his spine and begun pulling it out of him bone by bone, leaving him no way to stand.

  GEORGE STOOD AND WATCHED THE EXECUTIONS, HIS FEELINGS IN AN indescribable turmoil. Each time the steel split skullbone and pierced brain, and a death song broke off, his body surged as if he were driving the blow himself, his blood bubbling with the powerful, joyous wrath of justice. But at the same instant his bowels would grip with the shame of a murderer. By the time the fifth warrior had been struck, George was dizzy with nausea and seeing everything as if through a curtain of red mist.

  One more. The last one of the condemned sang no death song, but knelt, shaking uncontrollably; his doglike groan had become louder each time one of his comrades fell. Standing behind this wretch to guard him was the white-whiskered Frenchman, lieutenant of Captain McCarthy’s Cahokia volunteers, named St. Croix. Despite his age, he had proved himself an admirable and durable campaigner throughout the grueling march and the attack on the fort. He was an inveterate hater of the British. Now he stood with his sword point between the shoulder blades of this doomed man as the executioner raised his tomahawk.

  Knowing this was the last moment, the kneeling man raised his eyes to heaven and wailed, “Mon Dieu! Au secours!” And despite his painted face, all realized at once that he was a white man. The tomahawk hesitated, and at that moment, just as George experienced a fresh rush of indignation at the thought of a white scalp-taker, Lieutenant St. Croix yelped and clutched his breast as if shot. He threw down his sword, jumped, shoved away the man with the tomahawk, grabbed the kneeling man’s chin in one hand, and stared into his painted face, crying:

  “Jacques! Mon fils!”

  The painted face, its colors streaked by tears and slobber, worked and grimaced, the eyes darting and uncomprehending for a moment, then the youth cried: “Papa! Papa! Aidez-moi! Aidez-moi, Papa!”

  The old man sagged to his knees and embraced his son. Both sobbed and blubbered for a moment as the Americans stood frozen in their attitudes, just beginning to understand this appalling coincidence.

  George, though astonished, could muster no feeling of mercy for such a monster as a white man who employed himself in taking white people’s scalps, and, rather than subject himself to the old man’s solicitations for his son’s salvation, turned away and walked a few steps off. All his emotional stores were exhausted and he did not think he could endure this. He believed the youth should be executed swiftly for his murders, but he also knew that he could not bear to view the fine old man at the moment of his son’s death. George stood, his back to the scene, looking over the horizon, his mouth open, breath quaking, waiting for it to be over. He heard footsteps and a sobbing voice approaching behind him, and the old man dropped to his knees beside him.

  “My colonel,” the old man begged, grasping George’s hand, “I know he deserves to die. It would be just. He is a sinner. A paid murderer. I disown him. But, my colonel, in the name of God, and your great humanity, spare him. Or let me take his place! He is young, he is my son! Have I been a good soldier for you? Then do this for me!”

  George pulled his hand free. But one word echoed in his mind. Humanity. He remembered something which, in this orgy of vengeance and victory, he had forgotten: those words he had committed to memory and made his creed, those words from his year-old orders from Patrick Henry: that Humanity that has hitherly distinguished Americans, and which it is expected you will ever consider as the rule of your conduct and from which you are in no instance to depart …

  George stood there, breathing deeply, then he felt the presence of others around him, and turned to see several of his own officers, their faces drawn and beseeching. “George, please,” whispered Bowman.

  “For the old fellow’s sake,” said McCarty intensely.

  The world composed itself around him: the blue sky, afternoon sun, the raucous ery of a distant crow, the slope of the frozen ground under his feet, the steam of his own breath in the cold air, and suddenly, the staggering weight and pain of his own exhaustion. And then a strange and incongruous image flashed upon his mind: Teresa de Leyba under a silken pavilion in a sunny, summer meadow, sobbing at the death of a rabbit. It was as if Teresa were watching him now. For an instant he saw her oval face, heard the delicate quavering notes of her guitarra, felt her bed-warm back on his hand.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, then. Let the man live.”

  THEY CAME BACK TO THE CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON. Each looked as adamant to the other as before. But each in his own way had been changed by the spectacle of the executions.

  Governor Hamilton spoke first. “Would you be so kind, Mister Clark, as to give me your real reason for refusing to accept my surrender as I offered it?”

  “I have no objection to giving you my reasons once again,” said George. “It is simply that I know the greatest part of the Indian partisans of Detroit are with you. I want an excuse to put them to death or otherwise treat them as I find proper.” His eyes were red-rimmed and ferocious and unblinking as he spoke on, his voice rising, with a forefinger pointed at Hamilton’s face:

  “The cries of the widows and the fatherless on our frontiers now require their blood from my hands. I look on their commands as next to divine, and I do not choose to disobey them. General, I would rather lose fifty men and my
own life than not to empower myself to execute this piece of business. It’s that plain, sir, and if you choose to risk the massacre of your garrison for the sake of these few murderers, then that’s at your own pleasure. I might perhaps take it into my head to send for some of those widows to see it executed. Can I make it any more clear? I think not.”

  “You dare call us murderers, after this slaughter just past?”

  “You be murderers,” George said. “I was an executioner.”

  Major Hay had stood listening to this with a raised eyebrow. “Pray, sir,” he said, “who is it you call Indian partisans?”

  George stepped quickly toward him, leaned close to him, stared into the small lashless eyes, and replied:

  “Sir, I take Major Hay to be one of the principals.”

  Hay blanched and began to tremble; a sheen of sweat wet his brow and he looked as if he might faint. He clutched at his collar and looked scarcely able to stand. Never had George seen a man so struck with terror as Hay now seemed to be.

  Glancing at Hamilton, George saw that the general was sneering and blushing, obviously much ashamed at Hay’s cowardice. Looking then to Bowman, he saw Joseph’s countenance seeming to alternate between expressions of disdain for Hay and sympathy for Hamilton’s embarrassment. Somehow, without another word being spoken, George felt that Hamilton was, for all his arrogance and misdirection, a brave and proud man, that he was being crushed by circumstances out of his control, and that he was simply holding out for a vestige of his honor. I can’t execute more people simply to deny him that scrap, he thought.

  “Governor,” he said, “let’s return to our respective posts now. I’ll reconsider the matter of terms, and let you know the result.”