Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  The Shawnees had fought the Long Knives for so long in Kain-tuck-ee this year that they had learned the names of some of them. The war had become very personal. No longer were the white men just a horde of nameless enemies coming closer and closer or burrowed in behind their palisades. Now some of them were spoken of by name, as one would speak of the name of a great chief or warrior of an enemy tribe, and the warriors would describe some of them with such clarity that Tecumseh, wide-eyed and openmouthed by the story-telling fire, could envision them. Plainly, some of these Long Knives were great warriors and crafty chiefs, for had they not resisted Black Fish’s invasion? They had killed several warriors, including one of Black Fish’s own sons. This had brought deep grief to Black Fish and all his people, and it had hardened the chief’s sense of vengeance.

  The chief of all the Long Knives’ fighting men in Kain-tuck-ee, the warriors had learned, was a big young man with red hair and a voice that could be heard over the loudest battle. He seemed never to sleep. His name, said the warriors, sounded like “Mehjah Clark.” He had been in command at a fort called Harrod’s Town, whose village chief was another huge, loud-voiced man, named Harrod. Here Black Fish had conducted a siege for several days until it grew too cold to fight.

  There was another chief of the Long Knives whose name was Boone. He was chief of another fort, named after himself, less than a day’s travel from Harrod’s Town. This Boone was known to be a great hunter and scout. Years ago he had been chased out of Kain-tuck-ee by Shawnees, back before there had been any treaties allowing him to be there. Some of the older warriors had recognized him. This Boone was a quick-minded man and very hard to fool, almost impossible to ambush. It was he who had killed Black Fish’s son. Boone had escaped death several times during those four moons and had commanded a defense of his fort that had inspired a grudging respect from the warriors.

  One of Boone’s amazing escapes had been witnessed by Chiksika, and he had told and retold it:

  “Six of us caught their woodcutters outside the fort. We scalped one. Then this Boone and ten of his men rushed out of the fort to chase us. They thought that these six were all of us. It was the only time we fooled this Boone, for when we had led them far outside their gate, a large number of us rushed at them from the woods. They were surprised. But this Boone was quick, and told them to get back in the fort. One of our warriors shot this Boone in the leg, and he fell, and lost his gun. We were almost upon him, and he was helpless.

  “But then one of Boone’s men did a remarkable thing that I will never forget. This was a giant man with shoulders like a bison. He ran through our gunfire and picked this Chief Boone up in his arms, like a child, and carried him toward the fort. What strength this man had! Even with Boone in his arms this man could run like a horse!” Chiksika’s voice had been full of admiration as he told this. “Two of our swiftest ones got ahead of him, with their hatchets ready. And you cannot believe what he did then! He threw this Chief Boone at them and knocked them both down! Then he killed one with his tomahawk and kicked the other one’s ribs in, all in a moment, then he picked this Boone up again. He ran. He ran through our bullets and got inside the gate, and it was closed against us. What do you think? Do you believe a man could do this? I tell the truth. And so that Boone lives.”

  Tecumseh believed anything Chiksika said. And he would have had to believe this story anyway, because he had heard so many other warriors talking about it. His wonderment at that story had turned mostly toward the giant who had saved Chief Boone. In his imagination this was a giant like the ones in the red coats and big hats he had seen with Black Fish in the village two years ago. But no, Chiksika had said. He had not looked like that at all. “He dressed like a red man. In skins. He wore no hat. His hair was thick and long, the color of a fawn’s coat. After a time we learned this man’s name, too. It is like But-lah. Some of our people already knew of him. They had fought him before, in encounters in the woods near the big river. He is the chief hunter for Boone’s Town. Someday a Shawnee warrior will get this But-lah, and such a fame that warrior will have then!” Chiksika’s eyes had glittered as he said this, and it was plain that Chiksika hoped to be that warrior. All the warriors who had gone with Black Fish were proud to say that they had engaged in battle against a man like that But-lah, and each liked to dream that he would be the one to get But-lah, whose description was now fixed in the mind of everyone who had heard the story.

  “To have a great enemy is a gift from Weshemoneto,” Black Fish would say. “A great enemy makes you worthy.” That was something Hard Striker had used to say, too. It was important among the Shawnee teachings.

  But now Black Fish and his warriors were home from war; now they were hunters. The British whitefaces and the Long Knives were having their great war in the east, on the other side of the mountains; their big armies fought each other in great battles with cannons, which were guns too big for a man to carry. Here in the valley of the Beautiful River there were not nearly so many people to do such a war, and Black Fish and his warriors had done the fighting for the English king. They had been glad to try to chase the Long Knives back over the mountains. They had done what they could and had put the Long Knives in desperate trouble. But because Cornstalk, the principal chief of the Shawnee nation, had signed a treaty and had to stay neutral, there had been no great victory over the Long Knives, and they were still there in Kain-tuck-ee. At least they had been reduced so far that they probably would not dare to come across the river anymore and murder Shawnee hunters. Now it was time for the warriors to be hunters again and prepare for winter.

  Thus Chiksika and Tecumseh crouched among these shaggy vines and watched a large buck come down the path through the yellow woods, come stepping slowly and with dignity, upwind from them and not aware of their presence. Tecumseh nocked an arrow and looked at Chiksika, imploring. Chiksika nodded; he would let his little brother have the chance to shoot at it with his great osage bow and would not fire his rifle unless Tecumseh missed.

  Silently they stood up. Tecumseh looked through a gap in the tangled vines. He had already planned his shot. There was only a small gap through which the arrow could be shot without hitting vines. This was a disadvantage of hunting from a blind. The hunter might be hidden from his prey, but he had only one good chance with his arrow. A hunter with a gun might shoot right through vines with a chance of killing the deer. But the tough vines could deflect an arrow, so Tecumseh would have to shoot in the moment when the buck was visible through that gap.

  So Tecumseh touched his pa-waw-ka with the thumb and fingers of his right hand, then he put three fingers on the bowstring, drew just slightly back on the string, and watched for the shape of the deer to approach that short stretch of open path. He could hear its delicate hooves crushing leaves in its path. On the breeze now he could even smell the buck smell. His heartbeat was quickening, but he knew he must not get excited. He could not draw the bow all the way yet; it was too powerful a bow to hold at draw for more than a moment without getting shaky from the strain. Therefore he would have to draw and release very quickly and smoothly just as the buck passed the opening. Chiksika knew this, too, so he eased back the hammer of his rifle, cocking it with a barely audible click, and stood ready to snap off a quick shot in case Tecumseh’s arrow missed. Tecumseh heard this little click and with a flush of happy defiance vowed to himself that Chiksika would not have to finish the kill of his first buck.

  Head and antlers appeared in the gap; Tecumseh with straining muscles pulled the bowstring back to his nose, sighted over the arrowhead to the buck’s left shoulder, prayed for the animal’s pardon, and let fly.

  For a boy who had once made a running shot to kill a running rabbit, this deliberate shot at a huge, walking target was easy. The arrow went almost to its feathers in the buck’s side just behind the shoulder, exactly where Chiksika had always said it must go to hit the heart. The buck sprang awkwardly, reflexively, high into the air and fell dead on the path, at the moment a gasp
of amazement escaped from Chiksika.

  Usually a boy’s first few deer kills were sad and messy, the animal wounded and fleeing far in agony, leaking blood, through miles of forest, or lying down in a covert somewhere to pant its life away and die of pain or thirst or infection, or eventually to be finished off by the hunter himself if he could track it that far, or to be taken off by a wolf. But this, Tecumseh’s first deer, was as clean and merciful a kill as Chiksika had ever seen, and his heart swelled with appreciation for his young brother. It was still another sign of a blessed life, for the Masters of the Game did not like to see their animals die in pain and terror.

  Tecumseh himself understood all this, as it had so often been explained to him, and he was as grateful as he was triumphant. He felt the buck’s swiftness, goodness, and dignity at once enter into his own being, and tears of gladness glinted in his hazel eyes.

  The buck was very big, heavier than two large men, so they would carry home only the meat, hide, heart, and brain, not the whole carcass. Under Chiksika’s supervision, Tecumseh cleanly removed the steaming intestines, skinned the buck, butchered it, and tied the cuts of meat in the hide. He was nearly choked with strange emotions as he reduced the splendid creature to bloody meat and offal, but he did not try to tell Chiksika how he felt. Then he tied the legs of the hide together and slipped a pole between them. He and Chiksika each lifted an end of the pole, and they set off through the cool yellow woods. They had not come by horse, as horses complicated the hunting of deer, so it was a long, tiring trek of several miles back to Chillicothe with the great, hanging load of flesh. They stopped several times to rest, and at one stop they ate. They built no cookfire. “The heart is yours to eat,” Chiksika said. Tecumseh cut out the hole made by his arrowhead and then cut the rest of the firm red meat of the heart into strips and chewed vigorously, while Chiksika ate from a tender strip of venison loin. “We can eat the deer flesh raw,” Chiksika said as he chewed, “but remember that bear must always be cooked or, like the meat of the white man’s pigs, will make sickness.”

  The meat of the buck’s heart was pure and strong-flavored and without fat, and Tecumseh seemed to feel the life of the buck growing in him as he filled his stomach. To eat the heart thus in silence, with his osage bow lying beside him on the fallen sugar-tree leaves on the sunlit ground, felt like a prayer. He could feel the spirit of the Shawandasse, the South Wind People, running back all the way to the Beginning. He tried to make words and express to Chiksika what he felt, but it was hard to make words that would tell of the profound joy of such a day. He tried:

  “Brother?”

  “Yes?”

  “At this time I think of the prayer words. Neweh-canateh-pah Weshemoneto.”

  “The Great Good Spirit favors our People. Yes. It is good to be who we are. The blessed People.”

  “And how good it is that you are my brother.”

  “It is good for me, too, Tecumseh. I am proud.”

  “Chiksika! Tap-a-lot, my brother,” Tecumseh blurted. He knew a man was not supposed to show how he felt, but he had to blink because of the stinging tears on his eyelids. Chiksika nodded, compressing his lips and crumpling his chin, and reached over and pulled Tecumseh’s earlobe gently.

  “I love you as well. Every day our family grows more and more proud of our Tecumseh. Our father would be very pleased. Now, come. They will be even more proud when they see what you have done today.”

  STAR WATCHER PUT THE DEER’S BRAIN IN A WOODEN BOWL and mashed it with a pestle until it was smooth, while her mother stretched the hide between two posts and then worked slowly over the inside of the skin with a scraper made from a shoulder blade, removing all the flesh and fat. “Such a big buck,” Turtle Mother said with a sigh. She was not complaining of how big a hide it was to flense. She was very proud of her boy and of how he had killed the buck so expertly that it had not died in pain and terror.

  Turtle Mother had a heavy heart on this day. This was the Hunter’s Moon, and it had been in the Hunter’s Moon three years ago that her husband, Hard Striker, had gone away to be killed because she had yielded to him and not spoken against war in council. Whenever the leaves turned red and yellow she would sigh and feel the loss of him so deeply that she could hardly speak. Her mourning time had ended two years ago, but she had never stopped mourning. And every time she heard of another Shawnee hunter being found dead somewhere in the hunting grounds down near the Beautiful River with white men’s footprints around, she would grow more bitter. Her husband’s life had been thrown away in a useless battle, and still the white men came over the river, ignoring even their own treaties. Now Turtle Mother did not like even the British, who brought new knives and blankets and kettles for the people and fixed broken guns for the warriors. They were still white men, and it was their conflict with the Long Knives that kept the country full of blood and revenge and cost the lives of warriors every year. Always she expected that Chiksika would go away and not come back. He was like a mad animal against the Long Knives, and from the tales the other warriors told, he was too bold. How often Turtle Mother would remember that autumn three years ago and think: We should have paid heed to Cornstalk. Cornstalk signed a peace with the white chief, and now he does not have to feel his heart eaten by revenge.

  Sometimes Turtle Mother thought the best thing would be to leave the valley of the Beautiful River and go where there were no white men.

  She scraped the last pink shred of flesh she could find and called to her daughter, “I am ready for that.”

  Inside the wigewa Star Watcher pulled her skirt up to her waist and squatted over the bowl and urinated into the mashed deer brain. Then she stirred it all into a pasty fluid and carried the bowl to her mother. Star Watcher was not unhappy, as her mother was. She was delighted with many things. This excellent kill by her little brother, for one. And there glowed in her a great warmth for Stands Firm, who had come to live in Chillicothe because, she believed, of his love for her. And then, too, this was the harvest and hunt season, and she was aware of the great caches of grain and nuts stored up everywhere in the town and of the great quantities of game meats being dried and salted so aromatically everywhere, all this that would feed the People through the coming winter. The Great Good Spirit and Kokomthena did indeed favor the People, and Star Watcher was always grateful, especially in this bounteous season.

  Side by side with her mother she worked; they smeared the acrid, yellow-gray mixture thickly over the cleaned side of the deerhide. Then they untied thongs and took the hide down from the posts and rolled it up with the skin side inward. The hide would be left alone for three days, and the fluid would start tanning the hide. After that it would have to be worked and rubbed and pulled to make it more pliable. A deer had just enough brain to tan his own hide; that was one of the ways Our Grandmother had measured everything out in the Creation.

  And then, just as Turtle Mother and her daughter went to tend the fire over which strips of venison were drying, they heard the first of the shouts and wails coming from the east side of the town. The voices were fierce and full of grief.

  Even before they heard any words, they knew that something awful had happened. They crouched, Turtle Mother holding her daughter by the wrist, ready to go round up the triplets and flee if this was danger coming.

  Within moments all of Chillicothe was in an uproar of yelling, wailing, and drums. The mighty voice of the town chief, Black Fish, was calling everyone to the council house. Suddenly Stands Firm rushed up through the smoke and stopped. Usually he would come to the house shyly, taking care not to look too hard at Star Watcher, and she would lower her eyes. But now he was shaking, and his teeth were bared in a sneer of hatred.

  “The Long Knives murdered Cornstalk,” he snarled.

  Turtle Mother groaned between clenched teeth. “Tell me!”

  “That is all I know. The messenger is at the council house! Pe-eh-wah, come!”

  Black Fish with raised arms quelled the drone of anguished voices i
n the council ground. He called upon Weshemoneto to give the People strength and courage to bear what was happening to the nation. Then he told them in a voice grim and harsh:

  “What has happened in the new Long Knife fort at the mouth of the Kanawha-se-pe we know to be true because our white brother Girty learned of it and sent us the messenger. It is this:

  “Hokoleskwah, our beloved principal chief Cornstalk, went in peace to that fort, which the Long Knives have built on the place where we fought our greatest battle three years ago. With him were his son, and his chieftain Red Hawk. Cornstalk went there only to remind the Long Knives of his treaty with them. He went to explain that the Shawnees who raid Kain-tuck-ee are not his treaty signers, and that they only do it to avenge murders the Long Knives have done. He went to protest and to remind them that he was at peace with them. The whiteface captain of the fort took their guns away and made them hostages, and put them in a room. And then many of the Long Knives there went into that room. Cornstalk and his son and Red Hawk saw what was going to happen. They stood beside each other and were praying when the soldiers shot them with many bullets!” Black Fish’s hard blade of a face was a grimace as he told this. His chin quivered when the pitiful moans of dismay and the wails of grief rose around him.