Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  I am unworthy!

  Weshecat-too-weh!

  No, I am unworthy and weak!

  Weshecat-too-weh!

  Now he heard flintlock hammers being cocked all around him, and their sound squeezed his bowels and bladder even tighter. He clamped and squirmed to control them as the first of the Long Knife soldiers appeared in the thick leafless brush by the riverbank below, and his hand shook more violently.

  Two horsemen passed below, veering to the left, their eyes darting everywhere. These two were dressed in skins and were lean and hard-looking. Probably these were advance scouts; Clark was known by now to be almost impossible to surprise because of the fringe of scouts he always kept far out on all sides of his army. Those who had just passed were strong-looking men, keen and hawk-faced. But at least neither of them was But-lah, the chief Long Knife scout. And they did not have dogs. And so they seemed not to have detected this ambush. The two rode on up the riverbank among the bare gray trees in the bottomland along the Mad River.

  This morning Chiksika’s war party had gazed southward to see the enormous smoke clouds rising into the sky where Chillicothe had been burned down once again. There had been no fight at Chillicothe. Once again Black Hoof had abandoned the town and left it to the Long Knives. There had not been enough warriors to defend it.

  This time he had also abandoned Piqua Town, and also the upper and lower towns where the Shawnees had wintered after Clark’s last attack. This year Black Hoof had moved his people far north and west, clear up to Wapatomica Town on the Upper Mad River, far enough, he hoped, that neither wing of Clark’s army could get there in this late season. And to keep Clark from getting to that final stronghold, Black Hoof had sent certain select warriors, like Chiksika and Stands Firm and Blue Jacket and Black Snake, to lay traps all along the Long Knives’ route of march, to ambush them, harass them, and then withdraw to ambush them again and pull back again, to kill as many officers as they could until perhaps Clark’s column would become too long and disorderly to continue. It was the only kind of resistance the Shawnees had the resources to make anymore.

  This was just such an ambush. Chiksika was in charge, and Stands Firm was his second. Now the white scouts had ridden past without detecting it, and soon the advance part of the army would emerge among the dry brown leaves and the gray tree trunks, and as many of them as possible should be killed, and then there would be fewer to fight at the next ambush. Along every river and across every trace between the Shawnee and Miami towns there would be ambushes like this, of a dozen or a score of warriors, who would do all they could to hinder Clark’s advance even though there was no chance of stopping it until Clark chose to stop. It would stop only when Clark should decide he had done enough to avenge the losses at Blue Licks.

  Now Tecumseh sensed that Chiksika had moved and stiffened. He looked and saw him lay his cheek against his gunstock and close his left eye. Tecumseh looked out over the lichen-spotted boulder, his heart quaking and hand shaking and his sphincter tight, and saw the front part of the army coming, saw clothes and metal through the gray brush, mounted men mostly in tan and gray, with bullet bag and powder horn slings crisscrossing their chests.

  “Metchi, many!” Stands Firm murmured nearby.

  “Shoot the officers,” Chiksika said softly. “Now!” And he squeezed the trigger.

  The cracking guns and the smoke all around almost made Tecumseh dirty himself in that moment. His gunsight was on a whiteface when he squeezed the trigger, but he knew the gun was unsteady, and by the time he was groping for his powder horn to reload, the horsemen were already coming at a canter, yelling in bold rage and shooting. Chiksika gasped in pain, and Tecumseh in the edge of his vision saw him clap his left hand on his right shoulder. A rifle ball ricocheted off the boulder in front of Tecumseh with a deadly spannnnng! and his cheek was stung hard by stone grit, and the Long Knives were charging at him as if they had no fear.…

  The next thing Tecumseh really knew was that he was squatting in a ravine emptying his waste on the ground, moaning like a hurt animal in his fear and shame, and that the shouting and shooting were still going on down near the river, and he was hearing in his head, I am unworthy I am unworthy, and he was wondering how he could ever face his brother Chiksika again, if Chiksika still lived. I am unworthy I am unworthy!

  The worst of all possible kinds of shame was upon Tecumseh. He had lost control of his will and had just cast away his rifle and run blindly into the woods to do this on the ground, this which had seemed more important than living or dying or having honor. And now with shaking hands, and with tears wetting his nose and little strangled sobs in his throat, he was standing here in a stark woods pulling up his loincloth and tying the band around his waist and wondering whether Chiksika was alive and what to do now and wishing that that rifle ball instead of its rock dust had hit him. It was the worst moment he had ever had in his life, and all his tomorrows looked no better than what he had left in the leaves on the ground.

  THERE WAS NO PUNISHMENT GIVEN FOR SUCH A THING. CHIKSIKA and the warriors did not call him a coward or even look at him with contempt. In fact, they did not look at him at all. It was as if he were painted black for a Vision Quest. They had not been able to see him during the fight, so he must not really be, and so they could not see him now. It was worse than if they had looked right at him and said, “Tecumseh, you are a coward.”

  Chiksika’s war party made no campfire that night. They made their cold camp on a rise of ground north of Piqua. They had no need of fire for light because the flames of burning Piqua Town lit the sky in the south.

  Still no one said anything to Tecumseh as the night wore on. They dressed their wounds and ate cold jerky and then got ready to sleep, putting two men on guard and one near the horses.

  Tecumseh lay, sick in his heart, looking up at the dull red fireglow on the underside of the low clouds, and felt as if he were alone in the entire world. He was exhausted by fear and remorse. He went to sleep wondering whether he would be able to redeem himself the next day if Chiksika made another ambush, but also wondering if he would be the same again and not be brave enough to redeem himself.

  When he awoke before dawn the next day, he seemed still not to exist in the warriors’ eyes. The shoulder of Chiksika’s tunic was cut open and brown with blood from his wound. The wound was like a reproach. The worst part of what Tecumseh had done was to desert his beloved brother after he had been hit. But in spite of this, there was no scorn in Chiksika’s eyes, just a look of sadness. He said to Tecumseh:

  “Ride to Wapatomica Town. Tell Black Hoof of our ambush yesterday and tell him we will try to do as well today, if the Long Knives continue to come on beyond Piqua Town, and that we will keep doing it as long as they come. And that if they turn and go back toward Kain-tuck-ee now, we will follow and try to kill them one by one as they go.”

  Tecumseh nodded. He suspected that he was being sent back so that the warriors would not have to depend upon a coward in battle again. This thought nearly crushed his heart. And then he asked a question that he had been thinking of last night while lying awake looking at the red clouds.

  “When I tell Black Hoof what we did, shall I tell him what I did?”

  “Ask not me but yourself,” said Chiksika. There seemed to be a cold distance between them. “I,” said Chiksika, “will not tell Black Hoof. These warriors … I do not think they will tell him. After all, you are only a boy.”

  Tecumseh looked down. It was terrible to be called “only a boy” by someone who had the day before called him a warrior. He looked up at Chiksika’s face and said:

  “Tell me truly why you send me to Wapatomica. Are you afraid I will fail again? Or are you trying to keep me from harm, as you used to do?”

  “To me,” Chiksika answered, hardening himself to say the cruelest thing he had ever said to his young brother, “it seems you do well enough at keeping yourself from harm.”

  Tecumseh turned and ran to his horse. He sped away withou
t looking back, thundering through the thickets so recklessly that the bare branches whipped him as if he were racing through a gauntlet.

  HE TOLD BLACK HOOF WHAT HE HAD DONE.

  The great Chalagawtha chief said nothing for a while. Of course he had much else on his mind. But finally, when no one was close by, he turned his intense dark eyes on Tecumseh and said:

  “Your father and I were together the first time he was in battle. That was a long time ago, in the war when the English and the Frenchmen fought each other.” He was still for a minute, and it seemed that perhaps he had mentioned Hard Striker only to add to Tecumseh’s shame. But then Black Hoof went on, looking not at Tecumseh but at the distant treetops. “The first time the white soldiers shot at your father, he ran away.”

  Tecumseh’s heart was in a tumult now. He felt even worse, as if his father’s old shame as well as his own now weighed on his shoulders. Black Hoof continued:

  “You did not know that.”

  “I did not know it. Chiksika never told me that.”

  “No. Chiksika himself did not know it. Chiksika was not there. Chiksika had not even been born. I was there. I saw it. It saddened my heart.”

  Tecumseh could only look at the ground now. But Black Hoof’s rumbling voice said:

  “From that time on your father was the bravest warrior I ever knew. I suppose he became a greater warrior than he would have been if he had not run away that first time. I have seen this happen with people who ran the first time.”

  Tecumseh thought on this revelation for a while. He did not know whether he would ever recover enough courage to face an enemy without fleeing. But at least he knew now that it meant a coward at first was not certain to be a coward forever. Finally Tecumseh took a deep breath and looked at Black Hoof’s craggy face and said:

  “May I ask you something, Father?”

  “Ask me.”

  “Did you ever run away?”

  Black Hoof took a sharp breath. Then he said, his voice deep and warm:

  “If you dare to ask your chief that question, you surely have some boldness in your heart.” He was quiet for a moment, then said: “I never ran away. Most warriors never do. But … but many times my feet have run forward when my heart wanted them to run backward. No, my son, I have never run away, but I have often been scared enough. No one is without fear. Not even Chiksika. But one can stay above his fear. That is what one must do. Maybe you thought you would have no fear in your heart, and you were defeated by discovering it there.”

  “I do not know what happened,” Tecumseh said truthfully. He did not mention that about his bowels and bladder.

  “Listen, my son. Most of what we learn is to keep us alive. Only one thing we learn is otherwise: to be brave in war. It is not hard to forget that one thing. Only remember this: When you are in war, then you must think first of keeping the People alive, and pray that Weshemoneto will help you in that. He does not like to hear a person pray for himself. But he answers prayers that are for the People.”

  TECUMSEH THAT WINTER WORKED QUIETLY AT KEEPING THE People alive. Once again the Shawnees were forced to live on the small portion of their crops that the Long Knives had not destroyed and in hastily made shelters far from their own towns. They moved into the edges of Maykujay Town, and Blue Jacket’s Town, and Girty’s Town, and Wapatomica, these being the only towns that Clark had not destroyed. The family stayed in Wapatomica Town. It stood on a plateau on the west side of the Upper Mad River. Above it was a high ridge with springs and below it the bottomlands. It was a good place for a town, but it was not a good place to be now. There was little game in the vicinity of these towns. Many of the old people were starving. Many mothers were so hungry they gave poor milk to their babies. The building and repair of wigewas was hard because winter is the wrong season to try to strip bark from trees.

  And so Tecumseh, as if trying to redeem himself for his cowardice, which he perceived to have been a kind of selfishness, now gave almost all his waking hours to hunting and snaring meat, most of which he gave to families that had no hunters to provide for them or whose hunters were sick or unlucky. And the hides from the animals he killed he gave to the old people or the weak ones, who were poorly dressed for winter or who had gaps in their shelters. A hide could patch a bark hut and keep out some of the wind. The warriors had told no one about Tecumseh’s flight from battle, so nobody knew that he was trying to atone for a sin. He had always been thoughtful toward old and weak people. Now when he would appear at the lodge of an old grandmother and give her the first venison haunch or marrow bones she had seen for days, the old woman would not say to herself, “What has come over Turtle Mother’s son?” Instead she would say, “Ah, that one has always been so good a boy!”

  Even Star Watcher did not know why he was doing all this, but it was what she believed a person should do, and she helped him. Some of every little bit she had, she gave him to give to the hungry and ragged ones. Star Watcher was growing a baby inside. Stands Firm told her not to give so much away, as she herself needed much nourishment for the baby. Then one day Chiksika came and told Tecumseh almost the same thing: “Brother, you do well to share so much. But listen. You must not starve yourself to feed those who do not hunt. I can see your bones under your skin. It is a duty of the hunter to stay strong enough to hunt. Consider the wolves.”

  “The wolves?”

  “The wolves are like us. They depend upon each other. They hunt together and bring food home. They protect their mates and cubs. But though he is for his tribe, the hunter wolf knows he must feed himself. Because if he does not, then he will become another helpless one to feed.”

  It was so good to have Chiksika telling him things again. Tecumseh felt his heart flush with warmth for the first time in two moons’ passing. Chiksika went on:

  “You have not had enough chance to watch how the wolves do. Do you remember, I have told you that we will go someday to the prairies near the Missi-se-pe and hunt among the great herds of bison.”

  “Yes! I remember!”

  “I hope that will be soon.”

  “Yes! I too!”

  “When we go there, you will be able to see how the wolves do.” He sighed. “Think how much time we would have to ride to new places and find plenty of game, if we did not have to be fighting the Long Knives all the time.” Chiksika said this with a warm and yearning voice, and Tecumseh could tell that Chiksika had not mentioned fighting in a way to shame him. Chiksika had come to close the distance that had grown between them. “We lost much of everything again to Clark,” Chiksika said now. “When the ice breaks and the white men’s big rich boats start coming down the river again, we will have to go to the river as we have done in other years, and see what we can take from their boats to make it easier for our People to live.”

  “Yes. You will have to do that.”

  “So,” said Chiksika. “Keep yourself strong, my brother. You will be needed to help us.”

  Tecumseh had to swallow hard to keep his heart from floating up and out.

  ONE NIGHT TECUMSEH SAID TO BIG FISH, “I HAVE SOMETHING I have long wanted to ask you about.”

  “What is it?”

  Tecumseh went to his bed and reached under a corner and brought out a leather packet. He folded back the leather and held forth the two books he had been hiding for so long. Big Fish’s eyes grew big.

  “Oh! Where did you get those?” he asked, taking them in his hands. He bent forward and turned them in the firelight.

  “Chiksika raided a boat on the river long ago. There were many of these. He brought only these two, the prettiest. Can you read what these are?”

  “Yes. Of course. This one is the Holy Bible that we have talked about sometimes.”

  “Ah! That is good fortune. Most of the books went into the river. This one must have been spared because it is sacred.”

  “I guess so.…” Big Fish had opened the Bible and was looking in it for people’s names. He went down the handwritten lists of marriages
and births. It was a family he had never heard of before, so he put the Bible down and opened the other book, a small one with engraved pictures. “I know this book. This is Hamlet.”

  “Is this too a sacred book?”

  “I had a teacher once who seemed to think so. But no, it is not a sacred book like the Bible. This is a play.” He used the only Shawnee word he knew for play, which was a verb, and Tecumseh was confused.

  “This book you mean is like a game?”

  “A game? No. How could a book be a game?”

  “You said you play this book Hamlet.”

  Big Fish pinched his earlobe and stared at the title page and tried to figure out how to explain what a play was. He thought about actors and stages, about which he knew practically nothing himself, and decided it would be better to try to explain all that some other time, or never. “It’s a story, that’s all,” he said.

  “Ah, a story!”

  “About a prince, who—”

  “A ‘prince’?”

  “Ah, a prince is like a young chieftain. His name was Hamlet.…”

  “Ah! Same name as the book! How interesting that is. Tell me this story.”

  “I never understood this story very much. Somebody murdered Hamlet’s father, by sticking something in his ear, I think it was. And Hamlet wanted to get revenge, but couldn’t make up his mind. Nothing much happened in this book. People just talked a lot. To each other and to themselves. And there were ghost spirits in it. And a crazy girl.”

  Tecumseh thought about his own father, who had been killed by white men, and about revenge, which had become the main thing in everybody’s life since the coming of the white men. “Why could not this chieftain make up his mind about the revenge?” Tecumseh asked. “Was he not brave?” He was thinking of everything in terms of what had happened to him.

  “I don’t know. These people talked grand, and I couldn’t understand them much. Hamlet even talks to a, uhm, skull.”