Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  “What is ‘skull’?”

  Big Fish touched himself on the forehead. “The head bone. From a grave that was dug up. Named Poor York, I think it was.”

  “Oh, yes! In the book is a picture of somebody holding up a head bone. Look, look through the leaves for it!” He gestured with his forefinger, and Big Fish paged through, looking for it. “Yes, there it is,” Tecumseh exclaimed. “I thought he dug that head bone up from that grave to steal it, as the Long Knives did when they burned Chillicothe. White men disturb our bones, you know? Girty says they are looking for silver. So! So I am glad this Hamlet was not stealing from this grave, but instead”—he chuckled—“talking to this head bone. Did the head bone answer?” He laughed. “Perhaps it was a contrary’s head bone!”

  Big Fish laughed, too, then said, “Maybe it was. In that story, only the skull had nothing to say!”

  IN THE GREEN MOON, TECUMSEH WAS ONCE AGAIN WITH Chiksika and his warriors. One of them was Thick Water, who had already been in a few ambushes against the Long Knives and was said to be very bold. Thick Water had never run from any battles. Tecumseh was glad that Thick Water had not been at the ambush where he had disgraced himself last fall.

  Tecumseh knew that if he lost heart and fled this time, he probably would never again get to be with Chiksika in a dangerous place. Chiksika had taken a big step in trusting his brother enough to give him this second chance. Chiksika himself did not want to be embarrassed again. And it was more than embarrassment; a warrior who fled from danger made the danger worse for his fellow warriors.

  Nenothtu, Tecumseh addressed himself silently. Warrior.

  Now at this moment Chiksika was watching his young brother out of the side of his eye as the ten warriors eased down a wooded slope of the river bluff toward the cookfire of the white men from the boat. The foliage on the trees was still light green and half-open and thus did not provide much cover. The warriors were creeping down from rock to rock and tree to tree, careful not to show themselves too soon, careful not to dislodge any stones that might clatter down.

  These white men—there were thirteen of them, all well armed—had been spied from the Raven Head Rock, landing on the O-hi-o shore instead of the Kain-tuck-ee shore, near the mouth of the Scioto-se-pe. It was a cloudy, windy day, and the waves on the Beautiful River were rough, capped with white, and probably that was why they had put to shore here. The wind in the trees and along the narrow bottomland was rushing through the new foliage and whiffing over the water. The white men were trying to cook over whipping flames, so they were less vigilant about their surroundings, and the noise of the wind helped cover the little sounds of the warriors’ approach. Most of the white men stood with their backs to the wind, but some were kneeling on the other side of the fire, squinting against the blown smoke. Three had left their guns in the boat, which was tied to a large snag at the shore. The others held their guns or leaned on them or had propped them against a willow trunk that stuck up near the fire. These men looked big and bulky and dirty in their long brown coats and three-cornered black hats. There were kegs and bundles and instruments in their big rowboat, which had an awning over the stern. One could only guess what kind of men these were, surveyors or traders, hunters or militiamen. Chiksika had a notion that they were army suppliers and hoped they were because of the things they would have. Whatever they were, they looked dangerous enough, and there were enough of them that they would have to be taken by surprise if this raid was to succeed.

  Tecumseh had a weapon he had never used before. Stands Firm had given it to him. It was a war club, made of a fist-sized rock sewn into a rawhide casing that also enclosed the handle, a slender hickory stick as long as his forearm. By a loop this weapon could be hung from the right wrist, leaving the hand free for shooting and loading a rifle.

  Tecumseh’s heartbeat was going fast, but for once his hands were steady. He did not mean to disgrace himself again, and to prevent it he had done two things before starting this stalking of the whites’ camp. He had gone into the woods to relieve himself. And then he had held his pa-waw-ka stone in his hand and clenched his fist over his heart and had asked through it for Weshemoneto to keep him brave and steady while he did this for the good of the People. Even now as he edged his way down around a mossy boulder closer to the white men, he could feel the warmth still glowing in his palm, and it was this, he believed, that kept his hand steady now, because he was scared, scared of what could happen in the next few moments. An attack like this one could turn out any way; there were more of the white men than of the warriors. Stands Firm had wanted to go up the Scioto-se-pe to the war camp and get more warriors and come back in canoes. But Chiksika had argued: “No. They could get away. This boat they have is a fast rowing boat, not a float boat.”

  One of the white men squatting beside the fire rose to his feet, looking toward the slope. He had a sharp, narrow face, dark with stubble. He was staring up at a place on the steep bluff. Tecumseh tensed. If that man had detected a warrior, things would have to be done with no hesitation. Tecumseh cocked his flintlock and aimed it at the man’s chest.

  The man suddenly began raising his rifle and yelled to the others, who burst from their positions like quail from a covert, snatching up their guns. In that same instant Chiksika screeched a tremolo and fired at the white men. Tecumseh pulled the trigger of his rifle, and several other guns went off at the same time. He yelled at the top of his lungs and sprang out from cover and ran like a deer, but this time he was running down the slope toward the enemy instead of the other way. In the edges of his vision he could see the naked, painted bodies of Chiksika and Stands Firm and Thick Water and others speeding and darting down through the fresh young foliage. Some of the white men’s guns were going off. In ten quick strides the warriors were off the slope and onto the muddy, pebbly beach and in among the white men, some of whom were already on the ground. All that happened then was a whirl, and yet Tecumseh’s senses were perceiving everything around him, and his reflexes were controlling his every move. He felt almost unbearably alive and vital. He wasted no motion. A big, broad-faced man with blue eyes and bared yellow teeth was aiming a pistol at him, but Tecumseh darted under its muzzle flash, and with the knife he held in his left hand, he stabbed up under the man’s ribs. The turning of the man’s falling body wrenched the knife out of Tecumseh’s hand, and he saw now that another white man was in his way, his rifle barrel in both hands, starting to swing the gun like a club at Tecumseh. Tecumseh sprang like a cat at the man’s legs, hitting them with all his weight, and then as he rolled over on the muddy ground, the white man fell with a grunt, his feet in the air. Tecumseh was immediately up in a crouch, and with his own gun butt he crushed the back of that man’s skull. All around were yells and thuds and groans and pistol shots, and bodies lurching and turning and grappling. Chiksika was crouched in front of a thick-bodied man; both had their tomahawks ready and were about to strike each other. Tecumseh swung his rifle in a wide sweep that broke the handle of the white man’s tomahawk, and then Chiksika lashed out and sank the long, narrow blade of his hatchet through the man’s nose and into his brain. Chiksika uttered a triumphant syllable of a laugh for Tecumseh, but the boy had already spotted his next opportunity. Stands Firm had been thrown onto his back, and a white man was on top of him, with all his weight on both hands pressing his rifle barrel across Stands Firm’s throat. Stands Firm was flailing and trying to get breath. The tomahawk blow had smashed the flintlock of Tecumseh’s rifle, and he cast it aside. Now, with the long war club in his right hand, he leaped close to the struggling pair and aimed a curving side-armed blow at the white man’s temple. The velocity of the swinging club head was so great that the man’s skull exploded and the scalp burst open and a mass of bloody pink-gray brain matter was protruding when the man slumped to his side on the ground.

  In an instant Stands Firm was up and fighting again, wielding the very rifle with which the man had been strangling him. He was exulting but could not yell because
of his crushed windpipe.

  Momentarily having no foe within reach, Tecumseh stood in a ready crouch, turning on the balls of his feet, getting his first glance at the whole battle. Twenty feet away, Thick Water, sweaty with desperate exertion, having lost or used up all his weapons, was bellowing like a madman and trying to wring the life out of a lanky man whom he held under his right arm in a powerful headlock. Thick Water needed no help.

  The narrow-faced man at whom Tecumseh had fired his first and only shot lay on the beach on his back, dead, mouth open, a bloody hole in his gullet. Two warriors were knee deep in the river next to the tethered boat, each pulling one leg of a white man who had gotten halfway into the boat. One of the warriors raised a knife and began stabbing him in the buttocks. The man began screaming, and the Indians laughed and kept cutting his seat to bloody shreds. Elsewhere warriors were kneeling, taking the scalps off the men they had killed, and two warriors were running up the shore in pursuit of a white man who had lost his weapons and was trying to escape into the willows.

  Tecumseh’s heart was hammering. There were no more white men left to fight! Tecumseh held up his war club and looked at the dark blood spatters on its leather. The warriors were yelling and laughing now, waving bloody scalps, picking up weapons, piling into the boat and ransacking its cargo. The man Thick Water had been strangling had gone limp, and the big youth had dropped him to the ground and stood over him, chest heaving, looking around in amazement. The two warriors up the riverbank were coming out of the willow thicket, dragging by its feet the body of the white man they had chased. Not one warrior had been seriously hurt.

  Chiksika came panting and grinning to Tecumseh. He grabbed his shoulders and held him at arm’s length and looked into his eyes with open pride. Then he put a knife into Tecumseh’s hand and pointed to some of the corpses on the beach.

  “Those four are yours. Four!” he exclaimed. “You will want their scalps, my brother, as proof to the people who will be too amazed. Four!”

  Now almost in a daze, feeling suddenly so tired he could hardly move, Tecumseh went to each of his victims, knelt, wrapped his fingers in the hair, pulled up, and made a circular cut in the scalp. The trophies each came loose with a wet popping sound, except that of the man he had hit with the war club. His skull was too fragmented, and it was a mess getting his scalp off. Tecumseh was beginning to feel sick.

  The scalplocks were all different. The hair of one was thick and brown and wavy. Another was the color of dry grass in autumn, straight and greasy. Another was thick and straight and black; the last was dark brown with some white hairs in it and sticky with blood. Tecumseh knew he should try to remember which lock of hair had come from each of the men he had killed. But it was too hard to concentrate now. He was swallowing hard.

  It would not be good after all this for the others to see him vomit. He wondered if his body would in some way like this embarrass him every time he got into battle. So now his task was to keep from vomiting.

  The only white man left alive of the thirteen was the one Thick Water had choked. He was conscious now, looking very miserable, one side of his face red with contusions. He had been stripped naked and tied to a willow tree, and his body was smudged with bruises. He looked like a man without a hope and stayed very quiet in order not to attract the attention of his captors.

  Now the warriors, exultant, went about the business of gathering their booty and celebrating.

  Much of the boat’s cargo was gunpowder, lead, and weapons. Some of the small kegs in the boat contained gunpowder, a great prize. Two smaller kegs contained liquor, also a great prize. Apparently Chiksika had been right; it was a military supply boat. Perhaps all this had been on its way down to Clark’s fort at the Falls. It was very satisfying to believe that.

  The warriors were exuberant; all this they had done and with no losses of their own to grieve, so when some of them chopped in the ends of the liquor kegs, Chiksika did not stop them. In fact, Chiksika himself put his face down to the rum and sucked up a mouthful and stood up and swallowed it with a smile on his lips and tears in his eyes. Then he shuddered, teeth clenched, and let out a loud whoop. “Brother!” he called to Tecumseh. “You are a man now! You must taste this! Every man should know the taste of this! Here is the white man’s most powerful medicine! With this in their veins it is no wonder they are such devils and fools! Hi-hi-yeeee!” And all the others of the band, who were rejoicing for Tecumseh’s bravery and his remarkable deeds, agreed that he should celebrate with the strong spirit water.

  Tecumseh had always done what Chiksika had told him to, so now he stepped up to the rum keg, dropped to his knees, and put his face down to it. The smell rising from it seared his nostrils and made his eyes water and nearly turned his stomach over, and he wondered, How can this be good? The liquor was the color of the gum that forms on the bark of a nicked wild cherry tree, a beautiful color, but the stench of it was like evil itself. Surely the urine of the Great Horned Snake must smell like this. He did not want any. He was afraid of it; it seemed to burn the eyes and nose with invisible flame. The other warriors had already drunk some, and he could see that they were becoming clumsy and looking stupid in the eyes and whooping over anything. But they were all encouraging him to do it, and he did not want anyone ever again to think he was afraid of anything, so he put his face down through the rankling stink and sucked up a mouthful. It burned in his mouth, and he swallowed it at once.

  It was as if it did not belong in a person; it tried to turn and come back up. He clamped his throat to keep it down. His eyes poured tears, and everything blurred. The fluid did not come back up, but it boiled and burned in his gullet and guts, and its fumes now came up from inside him to scorch the inside of his nose and the back of his eyeballs. He gasped for fresh air, but the air made it seem even more putrid. His lips and fingers had gone numb, and a wind was singing and hissing in his head. But just as he was making a silent vow never to let another drop of such an evil fluid pass his lips, something in him was beginning to change, and he was starting to feel grand and strong and wise and funny.

  Thick Water did not go back for more of the liquor. Tecumseh asked him, “Do you not like that?”

  “Not much,” Thick Water replied, making a face. “I drank some on another raid, and it made me sick when I drank it, and the next day also.” He leaned close. “I pretend to drink some.”

  The warriors grew clumsier and sillier as they drank the rum and demolished the white men’s boat. Everything they wanted to keep they were carrying over to cache under a ledge in the river bluff; they would come back for it in big canoes later. As they staggered and pranced across the beach carrying things to the cache, they laughed at each other’s clumsiness and dropped things and laughed because of that, and they laughed out of sheer hilarity from their own thoughts. Then, as dusk deepened, they set to work bashing the boat apart with heavy tools they had found, and this proved to be the most uproarious fun of all. Three of the warriors fell into the river, one of them twice. One of them, pounding on the same plank he was standing on, plunged his leg through the bottom of the boat when it broke loose under his foot. His leg was gashed deeply by a splintery end, but he and the others found it all so comical that they stood helpless with laughter while he bled profusely from the leg that stuck through the bottom of the sinking boat.

  By the time they had managed to shatter and sink the boat, though, their drunkenness had taken an ugly turn. Some had taken or thrown overboard things that others said they had already claimed, and these disputes had broken into quarrels. One warrior drew a knife and threatened another, and Chiksika had to take the knife away, getting slightly cut on the arm while doing it. Tecumseh’s head was whirling, even though he had not drunk any more after that first draught. When the others had coaxed him to drink more, he had put his lips to it and only pretended to drink. He did not like the feeling of losing control over himself and was determined that he never would again. It was true that the warriors were very funny in t
he loss of their dignity, but Tecumseh was disgusted when he saw these fine young men fall to their hands and knees and spew vomit onto the ground and then get up and stagger over to drink more from the kegs. When he saw Stands Firm retching into the river, through a bruised throat so sore he groaned with agony even as he gagged, Tecumseh thought of his sister, Star Watcher, and how this would anger her if she could see it. So Tecumseh drank no more, and he was glad when the warriors held up the kegs and complained that they were empty.

  By now a large bonfire was blazing on the beach, fueled by driftwood and by broken crates and wooden artifacts from the boat. Tecumseh was kneeling by the fire, bandaging the leg of the warrior who had stepped through the boat. The injured warrior had passed out flat on his back and was feeling no pain at all. One of the warriors whooped and threw an empty liquor keg into the fire, then recoiled and laughed when a whooshing ball of flame leaped up from it. At once another threw in the other keg, to repeat the fireworks, and they all whooped with joy. Tecumseh cried out:

  “No wonder it makes us such fools! It is like gunpowder!” He moved away from the bonfire, pulling the unconscious man after him, afraid that he might blow up if he lay too close to the flames with so much liquor in him.

  But his remark about the gunpowder had stirred a reckless notion in one of the others, who apparently had not yet had enough fireworks; this one snatched up a powder keg the size of a man’s head and, with a yodel, poised himself to toss it in the fire. Fortunately Chiksika was not too drunk to react, whether to the danger or against the waste of precious gunpowder; he sprang toward the warrior and grabbed the keg out of his hands.

  Now that such diversions were over, the attention of the intoxicated warriors began to turn toward the one thing they had not yet destroyed: the bound captive. He was plain and vulnerable there in the edge of the fireglow, white and naked, his eyes wild with fear.