Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  “What is wrong? Oh, Ga-lo-weh, this: When there is a governor of a territory, I know, as you have explained to me, and as I have seen happen with my eyes, there will soon be more states. You like many states, for they are your people’s states. I do not like many states, for they swallow the lands of my people. You are good, Ga-lo-weh. I suppose some other white men are good, like you.

  “But, Ga-lo-weh, you face me from one side, and I face you from the other side. And that is what is wrong.”

  Galloway nodded and was quiet for a while, his enthusiasm suddenly clouded by the signs of Tecumseh’s sadness and distress. Galloway sat fingering the lump of Girty’s bullet in his neck, absently. And Rebekah nearby, though little more than a lovesick girl, was perceptive enough to feel the widening of the chasm between the races even more poignantly. As she rubbed one of the silver brooches between her thumb and forefinger, she was looking at the silver ornaments in Tecumseh’s nose and was now more deeply aware of the space between their two worlds, and for the first time that evening she was not so sure that Tecumseh was there to sue for her hand. She grew frightened, troubled by a premonition of loss.

  James Galloway had warned himself time and again not to jeopardize his friendship with Tecumseh by prying into his affairs at the Greenville town. But it was hard now not to say something that had been much on his mind. So he said it:

  “I should tell you this, as your friend, because we are, as you say, looking at each other from different sides. There are people around here, powerful people, who want the government to move your tribe away. They don’t know what you’re doing, and they’re scared because they see so many coming and going.”

  “Yes, Ga-lo-weh, the white people are always scared when we do something they do not control.” Tecumseh’s voice was low and even, but his lips were hard. “What we do there is worship. We learn not to drink liquor. Not to be violent. Not to breed with white people. Not to steal. Only to do good and keep peace. I think many white people do not like it because we worship our Great Spirit instead of yours. Listen, Ga-lo-weh! The white people would rest if they believed how good our people are in that place, but to trust is not their way. That is all I want to say about it, Ga-lo-weh. It is ours, what we do there. Not of your powerful people around here.”

  Galloway took a long breath that hissed in his nostrils and decided to say just a little more, since he was at it, for Tecumseh’s own sake.

  “One of those people is General Kenton. He looked at your town, and he believes you’re preparing for war.”

  Tecumseh’s eyebrows went up. “Ah! Let us speak of this, then, yes! This general and some other militia soldiers with him came to my town, while my chiefs and I were away. He said he is General Kenton, but some warriors see he is But-lah! I have been angry about this. Is this a true man, then, to come and pretend he is another name, not our enemy? This is deceit—”

  “Oh, wait! Wait!” Galloway said, holding up his hand. “You are right. Kenton is Butler. He called himself Butler, back in the war, because … well, for his own reasons. But he uses his real name now. He wasn’t trying to deceive you. He is as honest a man as ever was. And people listen to him, my friend, because he is honest. He’s a friend of mine, you know; he was a scout for Gen’l Clark, just like me. He’s a fine man! But here’s what he told me. He said you chiefs were gone to the British when he went to your town. And he said your people wouldn’t give him their right hand, but only their left. That, I reckon, stuck in his craw most.…” Galloway suddenly realized he was revealing the private notions of one friend to another and stopped. There was a moment’s silence, and the words seemed to hang in the air.

  Finally Tecumseh said, simply, “They gave their left hand only because they thought this man was lying about his name. That is interesting, about But-lah’s name. It is good to learn there is an honest man. Thank you for clearing my eyes on his name. My people, too, may change their name. If their life is not good under one name, perhaps it is a bad name and it will be better under a better one.” He was thinking of his brother Loud Noise, now Open Door.

  But Galloway was not ready yet to lapse back into general conversation. They had at last spoken of the tension created by the Indian town, and Galloway wanted his friend to be aware. “They’re saying, my friend, that your town is inside the treaty lines, and that you have no right to be th—”

  He stopped. Tecumseh’s face had suddenly flashed anger as clearly as a bolt of lightning. It passed, but everyone in the room remained electrified for a moment. Tecumseh stood up quickly. His expression was kindly again, but his eyes were now troubled, even as he smiled at the members of the family, and he was strung very tight. Galloway had risen halfway out of his chair, a hand outstretched, hoping to calm and detain him, deeply sorry that he had said too much and caused this unpleasant moment, the first unpleasant moment they had ever had in Tecumseh’s presence.

  “I have sat here too long,” Tecumseh said, “as it pleases me to do with my friends.”

  “Tecumseh,” Galloway said earnestly, now standing before him, “please know that it’s not I who question your right to be there.…”

  “I know, Ga-lo-weh. Thank you for that. Good-bye.”

  And then he was out the door into the night, stalking through the fresh air toward his little camp by the riverside, breathing hard, his jaws clenched and lips open in a grimace as he tried to control his fury.

  No right to be there!

  He wanted to howl like a wolf, to ease the fiery pressure in his heart. But he must not let this family hear such a sound.

  He heard a voice calling his name, footsteps behind him. He stopped and turned.

  The girl Rebekah was hurrying along the path, thrashing in brush as she came through the darkness, calling in soft urgency, “Please! Wait.…”

  She ran against him in the dark, bumping hard, and as if to catch herself, she reached around him and sagged against him. He held her upper arms, gently, steadying her, pushing her away. But she clung to him, panting against his chest, shaking her head in confused desperation, making little sobs in her throat, and trying to talk through them. In her hair was the particular musk of her, and the trace of tallow soap and of the woodsmoke from the cooking hearth. Tecumseh’s anger was still in him but going away like a muttering thunderstorm and confounded by the tenderness he had felt for her since she was a child.

  FIVE OF TECUMSEH’S BODYGUARDS LAY ON THEIR BLANKETS around a little campfire by the river, at the place where he had always camped when he visited the Galloway family. In the old days he had camped here alone, but as the importance of Open Door’s movement and the white people’s nervousness about it had grown, the bodyguards had grown more concerned about Tecumseh and would no longer let him travel alone. These bodyguards were very anxious for him while he was alone in the house with the white family and did not easily understand why he visited white people like this. He had told them the truth, that it was an old friendship with a good and sober white man who gave him useful information and helped him understand what the white settlers were doing and why they did it. The bodyguards accepted this to a degree, but they were uncomfortable and nervous here, and none of them wanted to be near the white family or to eat with them. So they would just wait in the camp, the horses tethered nearby ready for quick flight, and watch the dim glow of the distant light in the window of Galloway’s house and listen for any sounds of trouble there until he would walk back down the path into camp or until the fireglow and the murmur of the river put them to sleep.

  But one of Tecumseh’s bodyguards never slept while he was here. Thick Water sat facing the little dim rectangle of the lighted window and listened, all the time his chief was in that house. His thoughts were often with his young and beautiful Wyandot wife back in the holy town, where she had become one of the selfless helpers in the struggle to feed and care for the pilgrims. But even while he was thinking of her and of what she was doing, he was on guard for any indication that Tecumseh might need help. Sometim
es Thick Water would have an urge to go near the house and look in, but Galloway had several long-eared dogs that barked loudly at the approach of any red man except Tecumseh.

  Suddenly now Thick Water leaned forward and cupped a hand behind his ear. It seemed he was hearing voices and movements, very slightly audible over the gurgles of the river, somewhere between the camp and the white man’s house. He held a half breath and concentrated. It seemed to be on the path by the riverside.

  He rose silently and picked up his musket. He considered waking the others but decided not to stir them until he felt there was a reason to. His joints hurt a little at first as he stole out of the circle of fireglow. Thick Water was forty-two years of age, and many winters of exposure had cost him some of his suppleness. But he was keen, and a little alarmed, and he moved now as smoothly and silently as a wildcat stalking—a few steps, then stopping to listen, a few more steps, a stop …

  Thick Water shivered. Though he saw nothing, a few paces ahead of him he could hear a woman’s voice talking in the English tongue with, it seemed, urgency and great emotion. He was recently enough married that he was reminded of the talk his wife made in soos with him. And on the cool night breeze he now detected the faint odor of soap and a woman’s musk. Perhaps this was the white farmer’s pale, strange-looking daughter, whom Thick Water had seen from distances.

  He presumed from her impassioned tone that she was with some man in the dark beside the path, though he did not hear a man’s voice respond to hers, nor did he smell the usual dense smell of these men who never bathed their bodies.

  Amused, smiling now, near to laughing aloud, Thick Water thought for a moment of creeping closer and startling these people with a war whoop. But no. The consequences of a prank like that could be anything. The white man in the house might jump up at the sound of a war cry and try to kill the nearest red man—Tecumseh. This man had been one of the scout-warriors of the old Long Knife Clark, Tecumseh had said.

  Also there were now several white men’s cabins in this valley within the sound of a shout, and all the white men in these lands were very nervous now about red men. And they probably knew of Tecumseh’s camp on the riverbank.

  So Thick Water, who seldom thought in terms of pranks, let that prankish impulse pass and turned to go back toward the little camp, walking back as stealthily as he had come.

  TECUMSEH STOOD HOLDING THE GIRL’S WRISTS TO KEEP HER white hands from clutching at him and listened with bewilderment and pity to her entreaties, hardly comprehending them. He was used to hearing her speak her tongue with clarity and precision; now she was mumbling and gasping and whimpering. She seemed to be saying that despite the troubles between their races, he must not leave her. Had he not brought her a dowry? “What is ‘dowry’?” he asked, and she spoke of the silver brooches. “Yes,” he said, “those dowry are for you.”

  His feelings were in turmoil. He wanted to soothe her, but knew not what words to use. He could hear voices at the house, her father’s, her mother’s, talking to each other, calling low for Rebekah, anxious voices. Then he saw a little glimmer of a lantern moving. She turned her head toward the voices.

  “Maybe they be afraid I hurt you,” he said. “Go make them calm.” He was impatient now, and his anger at the presumptions of her race still seethed inside him, yet he did not want her or her family to have any distress. And he was confused by the musk of desire that rose from her clothing. He remembered with shame how he had daydreamed of her womanhood before.

  The girl’s face was just an oval not quite as dark as the darkness around it. She turned and started to move toward the floating spark of the distant lantern. Then she stopped a few paces away and spoke to him in a tremulous voice.

  “Will you come back soon?”

  “I … Yes.…” He was not sure he was telling the truth.

  “You spend all your time talking to Papa. I want … I want to be with you a bit now and then.…” Then she went toward the house.

  When she appeared in the light of the tin lantern, her father blew a breath of relief. “Are you all right? Whatever possessed you to run out here in the dark? Did ye talk to him? Is he angry at me? What—”

  “He …” She looked back toward the darkness, shaken to her soul, feeling moist between her thighs, remembering what he had said about the silver. “He wants to marry me, Papa.”

  She believed that was what all this meant: the silver gifts, his promise to come back soon.

  “Oh, Lord God,” Galloway moaned.

  Down the path, Tecumseh stood in the dark listening to their faraway voices talking and wondered if Ga-lo-weh would come and follow him. He felt as if he had betrayed his own deepest beliefs, the trust of his people, by entering the bosom of that white family as he had done. He felt as untrue and as unworthy as when he had tricked the People with the Black Sun. He felt as low as he had felt on that day so long ago when he had run from his first battle … the same day he had first seen this same white man! His heart felt dark and foul, and the night was ominous. Such intimacies as he had known with the enemy would disturb the spirits.

  It had made a mockery of his brother’s inspired teachings, about drawing back from white people, about sharing with them no more. His heart was squeezing down with regret. He thought of how Star Watcher would be ashamed if she knew of this. He was angry at the strange white girl for coming after him with her yearning, but he was much more angry with himself for causing her to do it. A woman knows if you even think of her with yearning, he thought. That is why she came running. Most of all he was afraid of the displeasure of the Great Good Spirit.

  Thick Water had just put a few sticks on the fire and sat back to amuse himself with the thought of white people having soos on the path when he heard a whisper of motion beyond the fire and saw Tecumseh striding into the firelight. Thick Water was about to ask him if he had not found white copulators underfoot on the path—surely he must have stepped right over them on the way from the house—when he noticed the stricken, angry look on his face. He presumed that he had, and that it had disgusted him.

  Tecumseh hardly glanced at him and stopped to lay his knife and club on a log near the fire. Thick Water sat with his mouth open. He watched, stunned and confused, as Tecumseh went back out of the firelight, this time down the riverbank. Then he could hear water swishing and splashing down there.

  In a short time Tecumseh emerged again from the darkness, wet from head to foot, water dribbling from his hair and his loincloth. As he stood by the fire sluicing water off his limbs with the edges of his hands, the other warriors began opening their eyes, sitting up. Tecumseh said very quietly, “Let us break the camp and ride away from here.” At once they were all wide awake and moving. One rode at night only if there were danger or urgency.

  Despite his muddled feelings, Tecumseh was now becoming alert to a possible danger. Rebekah’s father might have supposed anything from her agitation, and instead of coming out alone to confront Tecumseh, knowing he had bodyguards camped here, he might have set out to gather neighbors to attack the camp. Tecumseh was ready and willing to face Ga-lo-weh, but he did not want to draw danger down on his men by this problem he had caused. No. It would be good to get his companions out of this place. Sometime later, when he had had time to weigh all this in his soul, he might come back and face Ga-lo-weh. Now it would be wise only to leave.

  THE ROAD WAS EASY TO FOLLOW UNDER THE STARS. HE looked down toward the site of old Chillicothe as he rode away and could see a few patches of soft light, from the doors of the white men’s cabins in the old Shawnee main town. It was they who had no right to be here! Did they not know that?

  Perhaps they do know it in that kind of knowing that will not speak, he thought. Perhaps that is why they are always afraid of us: they know they are wrong. To know you are wrong makes you afraid of those who are right.

  No matter what hard things happen to my People, he thought, how good it is to know we are not wrong about who should be here.

  But h
e was afraid now in a part of him, because he knew he had been wrong. To have given so much warmth to those whites was against the teachings of Weshemoneto as brought by his own brother.

  Tecumseh felt terribly unworthy now, and in many ways. He had come only to bring gifts of gratitude, but the visit had revealed the great division, the boundary, between their races, and the girl’s confusion had made him realize that he had overstepped the boundary.

  They rode a long time before the soft noises of the unshod horses and the monotonous motions of riding calmed his thoughts; the stars made the troubles smaller and more remote.

  The girl had acted like a desperately lonely person.

  Maybe that is why white people are the way they are, he thought. They live in solitary houses, far from their tribes. No wonder they are afraid and suspicious. And lonely.

  A girl of her years should be among other young women. She should have plenty of young men around, to tease, to choose from. She should have grandmothers, to teach her about her people, about the moons.

  Her only grandmothers are books, he thought. No wonder she is confused and reaches out to her father’s friend! Tecumseh was now nearly forty summers in age. This girl could be no more than fifteen or sixteen. In the tribe, a girl of that age knows much and is ready to become a wife and mother. But this white girl is like a child in her heart and like an old man in her head, he thought.

  I should not have made her so warm.

  He remembered how her body had interested him even though she was of that race. He had not suspected that she would be perceiving those private thoughts and growing warm. He thought that if he had not taken things out of his town to give to white people as gifts, they would not have presumed so much.