Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  But the song in Star Watcher’s soul was not the result of that victorious defense: she never rejoiced in the killing of men.

  For days she had felt growing inside her a certainty that her brother Tecumseh was coming near, returning after his long absence in the south. It was an instinctive sureness that grew as the hazardous years went by, like the unsaid knowings that animals have. In her heart and dreams she seemed to know when he was going farther or coming closer. And sometimes there would be the hard sudden pulse and want of air, when she felt that he was in extreme danger. Only a few days ago she had felt that, even though he was now not far from home; through a part of a night she had been sleepless and anxious, but finally it had passed.

  At this moment Star Watcher was working a new deerhide over the end of a post, twisting it and pulling it and rubbing it, to make it soft and supple. She gripped it with both hands and pulled this way and that with all the strength of her shoulders and back and arms. She would do this for hours, until her hands were so cramped she could hardly open them. It was hard work, but she maintained a kind of rhythm, and her mind drifted with the rhythm and was calm and full of hope. Now and then she would stop and wipe her hands and go in to look at her husband, help him drink water, feed him a little. Her daughter, now six, was playing with a corn-husk doll, the only toy she had managed to hang on to in the flight from the Long Knife army. Her son was out in the town playing with a pack of little ones. It was a cool day, but not raw as the days of this moon usually were, a good day for working outside.

  She thought of Tecumseh and of all the things that had happened to him in the south. The stories had come home, season by season, told by warriors of his band who came and went. Star Watcher had long known of Chiksika’s foretold death and of Tecumseh’s journey to find their mother. And in the year since, there had come story after story of his astounding deeds in the Ten-ness-ee country, in the lands of the Cherokee and Alabamu peoples. In the time since Chiksika’s death, Tecumseh had fought the Long Knives as if all of Chiksika’s prowess and courage and cunning had passed into his own soul. He had ambushed supply trains and militia patrols everywhere from the mountains to the Missi-se-pe, often attacking even though outnumbered. The warriors who served with him came home full of glory, for he gave them opportunities to do more than they had suspected they could do. They brought home scalplocks and wonderful stories of miraculous triumphs. A young Creek named Seekabo came and told stories that made it seem that Tecumseh could see in the dark, hear through mountains, and deflect bullets; his tales had so stirred Thick Water that he had returned to the south with Seekabo to rejoin his old boyhood comrade. And one of the things these messengers always said that pleased Star Watcher was that Tecumseh never hurt a prisoner. He never killed women or children. Tecumseh might have assumed many of Chiksika’s traits, but not his cold vein of cruelty. Even at this distance, and through years of absence, she was still the Watcher of the Shooting Star.

  Then she heard the voice behind her: “Meh Ah’ shemah, my sister.”

  Star Watcher shut her eyes for a moment. A smile shaped her lips, and her heart felt as if it were being squeezed, then released. She dropped the deerhide, straightened her tired back, then turned to look at him.

  “Meh Ah’ thetha, my brother! I knew you would be here soon!”

  The faces around him were a blur; she did not even see who they were. His eyes were, as always, looking in a way that perceived not only the sight but the spirit of their object, eyes that seemed to pull everything into themselves. He was so lean, so tight-skinned, that every bone and muscle in his face and neck was distinct. When she embraced him, he was hard as oak, but as always he gave off great warmth. For a long while they held each other, faces radiant, feeling the long-divided oneness between them closing, becoming again that one dual being: Star and Star Watcher. And finally she drew back, holding his wrists—he remembered how his mother had held his wrists just that way—and she told him, “You must come in and see my husband. The Long Knives almost killed him; to see you will bring him up a long way.”

  And so it did.

  Later Stands-Between and Loud Noise came hurrying. They were of warrior age now. Stands-Between had fought in that long battle by the river. He could not raise his left arm very far; a sword cut was healing along his ribs. “Here is the man who cut me with his long knife,” he said, holding up a yellow-haired scalplock and smiling.

  But when Loud Noise emerged from the crowd, Tecumseh was shocked. It was the puffy-eyed face of a flabby drunkard, fat-cheeked, slack-lipped, a smile more like a sneer. And he stank like a French trapper. Seeing the revulsion in Tecumseh’s eyes, Loud Noise suddenly was ashamed and almost afraid. But Tecumseh said, “Brother, I have thought of you very much. They say you did not serve in the battle.”

  “I am learning to be a shaman,” Loud Noise muttered.

  “I think that you will need much attention from me.”

  THE NEXT DAY THE STORYTELLING BEGAN, BETWEEN THOSE who had been fighting in the south and those who had made such a victory here. Old Black Hoof looked at Tecumseh and remembered that this was a boy who had run from his first battle. But he was here with a band of young men who had taken almost as many scalps as the united tribes had taken from the soldiers after the battle. Black Hoof’s adopted son Big Fish proudly told most of the stories about what Tecumseh’s band had done. The listeners were spellbound throughout, but especially when he told of a miracle Tecumseh had made only a few nights ago, after crossing into O-hi-o. Surrounded in their camp one midnight by about twenty-five white men under command of the great-voiced But-lah, they had escaped when Tecumseh threw his blanket over the campfire and created darkness. Then Tecumseh had rallied his eight to attack the confused white men in the dark, killing twelve of them and chasing the rest away.

  Tecumseh had a curious reluctance to boast and soon told Black Hoof that he felt foolish for fighting little bands of whites south of Kain-tuck-ee and missing the nation’s greatest victory. “I should have been here instead,” he said, and laughed.

  Black Hoof told of the cautious and fearful way the American general had conducted his forces, never making bold moves, never once firing the cannons he had dragged all the way up from the Beautiful River. The general’s name was Harmar, and he had been an officer in the big war against the British. But he had not known how to fight warriors in the woods.

  “I am happy that it was not the old Long Knife General Clark, then,” Tecumseh said. “They would have been wiser to have Clark!”

  “Perhaps not,” said Black Hoof, his black eyes glittering under his thick, white-frosted eyebrows. “Girty has heard that Clark is bitter and angry at his government, that he falls drunk in the streets of their town of Louisville where he lives. I think we will never have to fear the name of Clark anymore.”

  “Ah.” Tecumseh pondered on this, with both gratitude and sadness. The evil of drink was mighty if it could bring down even a great and strong man. Even an enemy should not be humiliated by it, if he was a great enemy. But maybe it was more than that. Change-of-Feathers, the aged shaman, said:

  “When he built his town in that Falling Water place, among the ghosts of the old white giants, he was making his doom.”

  “Now,” said Black Hoof, “our nation is joyous and resolute. Surely the white men everywhere are humbled and discouraged even as we rejoice.

  “But we have seen that with the white men, even as with ourselves, out of the smoldering ashes of defeat are fanned the flames of vengeance. It is our turn to rejoice, their turn to vow revenge. Before a year is gone, I expect, their father Washington will send another army against us. And surely it will be a bigger army than Harmar’s, and surely with a braver general.”

  “Should this prove to be so,” Tecumseh spoke into the thoughtful silence, “then once again we must meet them allied with our brothers from the other nations. Little Turtle, Breaker-in-Pieces, Tarhe the Crane. We must forget old disputes and join together, as you did with the co
nfederation, as we did with our Cherokee brothers. If we are all of one heart, we are all of one people, and however brave their new general is, he will not defeat us. This we must have learned by now.”

  “Yes,” Black Hoof said when he had heard all this. “We must work this winter to strengthen our friendships. What Tecumseh says is true.” But Black Hoof’s face looked tired and worried as he said this, and Tecumseh thought: Every time, it grows harder for him. As he grows old, he wants peace and rest. How good peace and rest would be. But I hope I shall never grow so old and tired that I would think of peace while the white men come into our country!

  IT SEEMED THAT LOUD NOISE TRIED TO AVOID BEING ALONE with Tecumseh.

  He was always there in the councils, where there were many people present; he was always there when Tecumseh talked with the family and visited the healing Stands Firm. He always yipped and applauded loudest when Tecumseh was praised and honored, and he even took it upon himself to be a horn and magnify in his own voice the exploits that Tecumseh himself understated. But when everyone else left, he left with them. Yesterday, even when Tecumseh had asked him to stay a while, Loud Noise had murmured that he had something urgent to do and would be back, but he had not come back until today, bringing Change-of-Feathers with him. For a man known as a recluse, Loud Noise had suddenly become quite a crowd seeker. They sat for a long time and talked, and with the old medicine man present, it was not a private conversation. But at last, when the old shaman had grown sleepy and begun snoring right where he sat, Tecumseh turned his full gaze upon Loud Noise and said, “My brother, I sense that you are afraid to talk with me. Why?”

  “What!” Loud Noise protested, his eye shifting all around. “How can you think such a thing? I admire and love you!” But he looked away and forced a fake coughing spell, as if hoping to wake up old Change-of-Feathers, who, alas, slept on. Tecumseh reached out and grabbed his brother’s chubby chin and forced him to look straight at him, then said in a soft voice:

  “When I saw our mother in the south, I had to color my words when she asked me about you, so that she would not have a sorry picture of you. And I thought, Perhaps when I return, the years will have made my brother braver and more trustworthy.

  “But since I came back, I am not encouraged. I learn that you did not go to fight the army. I see that you are fat and soft. I hear that you have grown to need liquor, and that when you drink it you bully people, and take things that are not yours, and that you try to force women to lie with you. I think these are some of the reasons why you have been afraid to face me alone. You were afraid I would speak to you of these things.”

  Loud Noise tried to turn his eye away from Tecumseh’s probing stare, but the strong hand still held his face. He murmured through twisted lips, “People make more of things because they don’t like me. I do not drink very much. I have not stolen, only borrowed things. And no woman has lain with me unless she chose to.” Now, though his head was still locked in place, his eye was rolling, trying to avoid the needles of Tecumseh’s gaze, which seemed to penetrate right into mind and heart. Now Tecumseh let loose of him.

  “I told our mother I expect you will become a great shaman, that the signs say it will be so. But, my brother, hear me: You cannot become one just by pretending to be one. You have to become worthy of any gift, or you will not receive it. You will not learn to heal just by following Change-of-Feathers around and talking with him. You cannot force a woman to want you. And above all you cannot draw the power of Our Grandmother down from the moon to help you when you are so drunk you see several moons.”

  Loud Noise, despite his great discomfiture, almost smiled at that. If Tecumseh joked even a little with you, you knew you were not out of all favor. Loud Noise lowered his face and gazed wistfully into the fire. The old Shaman snored on. And now Tecumseh went on in a quiet voice, “If you do not believe you can be a real shaman, then you cannot be. But anybody can be good, even one who does not believe he will be great. Our father charged Chiksika not to let us become a shame to the family. He did this as he died in his arms in battle. Now Chiksika has died in my arms, and he passed this same charge on to me. Tell me if our family means nothing to you.”

  “Brother,” Loud Noise whined, “our family is important to me.”

  Tecumseh gazed at him for a long time. After a while Loud Noise grumbled, “Who tells you I bully and steal?”

  Tecumseh did not answer that. Instead he said, “Tell me, brother. In your own heart, how do you esteem yourself?”

  Firelight flickered on the walls of the lodge. Outside in the winter night the sounds of the village, voices, crying babies, were faint: the sounds of the people. In Tecumseh’s eyes Loud Noise was a shapeless lump with hair and earbobs and a feathered turban on top, abjectly looking down and away, his face hidden. Tecumseh suddenly remembered that long-ago day when the bow had sprung and the split arrow had pierced his little brother’s eye, and the memory stabbed him in the heart. He reached and put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. He felt him take a deep breath, and then the ugly face turned to him, the one eye glittering with a tear, but a kind of angry resolve showed in the set of the fleshy lips. Loud Noise began speaking.

  “I am more than anyone thinks I am. No one knows the things I see. No one knows what I have thought. All the earth and the sky and the waters have been clear in my mind. It is true that I am not ordinary, and the people do not know how to see me or hear me. Being as they are, being afraid, they think I am a witch, but that is not so. If I am different, it is because I am more, not less, than a usual man.”

  Tecumseh nodded and squeezed the shoulder, and this little pressure of affection seemed to move Loud Noise as if it were a light from heaven. In his eye suddenly burned such an intense love and gratitude that Tecumseh seemed to feel it in the smoky air, and he said to his brother, “That is what I have always hoped to believe. I have said it to Chiksika and to our mother, even when your conduct could have caused me to doubt. I am happy that you believe this of yourself.

  “Listen, my brother. The signs are a great gift. But a great gift is a great burden. One who has it cannot live only for his own pleasures. For us it will be hard. And hardest of all is to understand it.

  “Promise me one thing,” Tecumseh went on. “I have never asked you for a promise, have I? Now I ask it.”

  Loud Noise almost cringed, as if afraid he would be asked to do something courageous or inconvenient. “Promise me that you will try to master your appetites. All of them. This is the first thing a man must do if he is to deserve the gifts given to him, and if he is to be of good to his People.”

  It was as demanding a promise as Loud Noise had feared it would be. But he nodded and said, “I shall try.”

  “Weh-sah. Remember: We belong to the People.”

  THE DEFEAT OF THE WHITE GENERAL HARMAR HAD GIVEN the red men great heart, and many went down to the O-hi-o to raid boats. But a hard winter came early and froze the rivers and made it hard and miserable to live in war camps far from home, so most of the warriors returned to their villages to hunt and try to keep their families alive through the frozen and hungry moons. The distance they had been pushed northward from their old towns had been far enough to make the winters harder. Up here the wind blew hard and cold. Harmar’s army had destroyed many crops before its defeat, so food was scarce again.

  During this time, Tecumseh worked all his waking hours to help the people survive, and to help solidify the tribal alliances, and to harden himself for the great conflict that he felt would come in the next year. With his band of select followers, which now included Stands-Between, he wandered the upper Wabash and Maumee country both as a hunter and emissary, among the Wyandots, the Miamis, the Weas, the Kickapoos, and even the Ottawas, firming the bonds of friendship among the young warriors of those tribes, talking to the chiefs of the sacred duty of preserving the homelands from further invasion of the whitefaces. Tecumseh made himself known to the British Indian agents McKee and Elliott and renewed his acq
uaintance with Simon Girty, knowing that British guns and supplies probably would be needed to resist the Americans. The city of Detroit, though in American territory since the war, was still dominated by Englishmen who were eager to keep the tribes under British influence.

  And to toughen himself for the coming trials of his life, he resumed the daily ordeal that he had followed periodically since boyhood. Every morning, except when the river ice was too thick, he broke it and plunged into the river to strengthen his inner fire. Loud Noise lived in dread that Tecumseh would force him to start strengthening himself in that way. It was all he could do—indeed, more than he could do—to curb his appetites as he had promised. When Tecumseh was close by to watch him, he would resist his gluttony and would feel pious about the growling of his half-empty guts. He would not drink liquor any time when Tecumseh might detect it. But as soon as Tecumseh would leave for a while, his resolve would melt; he would gorge himself with breadwater and succotash and any kind of meat he could get, and he would scheme frantically to obtain whiskey somehow without his family’s knowledge. Then, after such binges, he would wallow in guilt or would rationalize that Tecumseh was a fanatical, unreasonable taskmaster.

  Thus Loud Noise would suffer under Tecumseh’s discipline when they were together. But only when he was suffering like this did he approve of himself, only when Tecumseh was protecting him from himself. He could not control himself without Tecumseh’s will imposed upon him.