Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  “When Harrison dies,” Open Door had promised them, “any soldiers that are still alive will run and hide in the grass like little quails, and then they will be caught and made servants to the women of our town!”

  So now Open Door, the greatest prophet and shaman the red men had ever known, stood on this stone cliff over the valley, feeling the invisible net tightening around Harrison’s army below him, knowing this holy mission could not fail, and he felt his soul to be as vast as the sky that looked down, as he did, upon the approaching victory. The power was all his now. Tecumseh had always warned that the Americans could not be defeated until all the alliance was complete, until his sign of the shaking earth came. But Tecumseh had assumed too much power. He had acted as if he were still the older brother, as if his leadership in games of war were more important than Open Door’s magic. And though it was true that Tecumseh had done wondrous things, it was also true that Open Door’s own visions and spiritual powers had drawn the Peoples together in the first place and had kept them full of hope and faith. And Tecumseh would come home from the south to find that Open Door had defended the town and killed their strongest enemy!

  Yes, it was true that Tecumseh was a great leader. But, Open Door thought as he waited on the stone cliff for the great holy battle to begin, was it not I, Tenskwatawa, who commanded the sun to go dark? It was I!

  WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON HAD NOT SLEPT WELL.

  Physically he was comfortable enough. His field cot in the tent was nearly as pleasant as his own big bed at Grouseland, and the rain on the canvas of the tent had been soothing. But conscience and worry had been attacking him, and from several angles. He had thought of his soldiers out there trying to sleep fully clothed on the ground—mud now, surely—in that soaking rain. If only it hadn’t rained, he had been thinking. He hoped they wouldn’t all come down sick. And the poor lads will require so much cleaning up to make a good show at the parley, he thought.

  Then he had started thinking about the parley. Once in the night he had awakened to the nagging hunch that the Shawnee prophet might try to murder him. He had made a mental note to talk with Colonel Owen and Colonel Boyd in the morning about precautions at the council. Only, say, six Indians inside our lines for the parley, perhaps. They wouldn’t dare anything then. Then he had thought: I’m glad it’s to be the Prophet instead of Tecumseh. I don’t think Tecumseh would be afraid to, even under those odds. He remembered, with a shudder, that time more than a year ago when Tecumseh had stood facing him with that gleaming tomahawk raised.

  It was hard not to think of Tecumseh, even though he was surely still far away in the south somewhere. But what if he’s back? Harrison had thought. A thought like that could grow large in the still of the night, and it had.

  Again, surprisingly, Harrison’s conscience had nagged him. Tecumseh had asked him not to do anything like this until he could return and talk to the president. And although Harrison certainly had not promised anything, he knew that he was deceiving a man he admired.

  But he’s my enemy. You deceive your enemy if you can.

  And now those thoughts made him doubly glad Tecumseh was away, far away. If Tecumseh were here, he thought, he’d be mad enough, and bold enough, to attack us tonight.

  The Prophet wouldn’t, he thought. He’s intimidated. Our threatening maneuvers near his town really humbled him.

  Strange, he thought, that those two are brothers. Such opposites! The best and the worst!

  Harrison stretched. The cot creaked. The stretching told him how tired he really was, and he shut his eyes, hoping he might sleep a few minutes more. Surely it isn’t four yet, he thought. He always roused the troops at four in the morning when in Indian country, because dawn was the savages’ favorite hour for attack. Orthodox military wisdom was that Indians are afraid to fight in the dark, for fear their souls would get lost if they were killed or some such aboriginal superstition.

  Harrison listened to the sound of the camp beyond the patter of the rain on the canvas: just the crackling of the fires, now and then a cough, the stamp and snort of the horses tethered beside the officers’ tents, and in the distance now and then a restless lowing from down in the beef herd. He let his mind go fuzzy and tried to think of absolutely nothing. For a little while he worried about not having erected breastworks, but then he made himself stop thinking about that. That sham shaman is too meek now to come near this camp, he assured himself, and soon that worry dissolved to naught.

  With his eyes shut, General Harrison did not see the man’s shadow that moved across the firelit canvas to the door flap of his tent. The shadow paused for a moment. Then the tent flap was raised, and a figure slipped into the tent and stood by the cot. Hesitantly one hand reached toward the cot. Harrison, not quite back to sleep yet, had felt the dank, fresh air come into the tent and could smell wet clothing a few inches away.

  “Yes?” he said.

  For a moment there was no response. Then:

  “Bugler, sir. Shall I sound reveille? It’s onto four o’clock.”

  Harrison chuckled. “No bugle this morning. Those Indians over in town might think it’s a bad spirit and stampede. But do go about and start shaking the staff officers. Wake Colonel Owen first, and tell him I need to talk with him right away.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you, son. Then get the cooks up, if they aren’t yet. Like to have the men awake, fed, and watchful by dawn.”

  “Yes, sir,” the bugler replied, and ducked out.

  Harrison sighed, threw back his blankets, and sat up on the edge of the creaking cot in his flannel undergarments, his breath condensing, and muttered:

  “Dreadful day for a parley. Just dreadful.”

  CORPORAL MARS DESPERATELY NEEDED TO URINATE, BUT HE was afraid to move. He still couldn’t see much of anything; even though the fires in camp apparently were being built up, he was too far out in the woods to get much benefit from their light. He couldn’t really see anything, but he kept thinking he was seeing something. When he would look directly at a place in the dark, he could make out nothing. But sometimes in the corner of his eye he would see—or think he saw—something moving slowly, close to the ground. Then he would stare at it and decide it was a thing—a fallen log, a bush—that had always been there. And he could not quite get up the initiative to move away from his tree and probe whatever it was to make sure. He surely didn’t want to probe a log and have it jump up with a tomahawk in its hand.

  This had been the longest four hours of his life. He had stuck to the side of that tree like part of its own bark, hardly even turning his head, for about four years, it seemed to him. He ached everywhere, and his bladder was full up to about his ears. Now he was sure his watch was about over. If they were building up the fires, it must be close to four.

  He shivered again, thinking, There’s scarce any misery known to mortal man worse than being cold and needing to piss, both at once. But he sure wasn’t going to unbutton and do it now. Making water would be noisy, for one thing, and by damn, if those were Injuns he was seeing in the corners of his eyes, he didn’t want to get his throat cut whilst holding his pizzle in his hand. So he would just hold out till the guard sergeant let him off post. I’ll wait, he thought, till I’m relieved afore I relieve myself, and he smiled. It was the first time he had smiled in a long time.

  Just then he heard something, very close. A soft rustling. A little off to his left. His heart leaped up and pounded like a hammer till he couldn’t hear anything but his pulse. And on a low shape he had thought was a fallen log, he saw a glint of reflected firelight.

  He drew his rifle out from under his cloak and eased back the hammer, scared that its click would be heard fifty yards in every direction. The click was loud.

  The glint on the fallen log was gone now, and he began wondering if it had been just a drop of rainwater picking up the firelight. Just to be a bit safer, he pointed the rifle toward it. Then he heard something nearby on his right, a tiny knocking sound, and at the
same time he inhaled a sniff of something different from the tangy, loamy smell of the rain-wet woods: something half like tobacco and half like the muskrat smell he had got to know so well as a sometime trapper down home.

  God help me, he thought. Now he had the strong notion that there was one Indian on either side of him. And if there were two, how many others might there be? Which one should he shoot? He couldn’t see anyone to hit if he did shoot. He would only have time to shoot once, not reload. Frantic plans tumbled in his mind. He would shoot quick, then run back into the lines as fast as he could. So what if he woke up the whole camp? It was time they were up anyway. Especially if these were Indians, not figments of his fright. He’d stood alone long enough, by God. If he shot and there weren’t any Indians around after all, that would be as embarrassing as all get-out. But it would be better to be embarrassed than dead.

  Then, as he was bringing his gun barrel slowly around to the right, he had a confusing thought:

  What if it’s just the next sentry?

  Lordy, it might be. Everybody in this dang army does smell of tobacco.

  He wondered if he dared whisper the challenge. He decided he’d better. The words formed in his mouth as he shivered and strained to hold his bladder, the words Who goes there?

  But just as he was about to say it, he saw in the edges of his vision that there were movements everywhere around him. Left and right, in front, even something between him and the camp, silhouetted by fireglow.

  Oh, almighty God, make me a place in Paradise, he thought. I done waited too long.

  He turned away from the tree and aimed at the only one he could really see, the form silhouetted by the fireglow. He squeezed the trigger.

  The flash from the flintlock and the muzzle were blinding after all the darkness, and the shot sounded like the end of the world. In its echo came a short scream of pain.

  And then, as Corporal Mars started to run toward the camp on his stiffened legs, he could hear movement all around him. He had gone three steps when something hit him in the back with such force that it numbed him clear through his chest, and he fell on his face in the wet leaves. When he put his hand under his chest to raise himself, he felt an arrowhead protruding from his front. Under his palm were cold wet leaves. On the back of his hand was his hot blood. And now he thought he was hearing all the wailing wolves in the world.

  He had forgotten about his bladder. He lay there on the cold wet leaves and everything leaked out of him. Hope, strength, everything.

  GOVERNOR HARRISON WAS SITTING ON THE EDGE OF HIS COT pulling on his other boot when he heard a shot, then a scream, not far away, surely no more than one or two hundred yards, up in the northwest sector somewhere. The Kentucky flank, he thought.

  And then at once there came from that direction that most hair-raising of all the sounds he had ever heard: countless Indians all giving their pulsating shrieks.

  An uproar immediately swept through the whole camp. Men were shouting, horses whinnying, things bumping, feet thudding. A staccato racket of gunfire erupted in that same quarter just as Harrison emerged from his tent door, pulling on his saber belt. He stepped out into a garish, firelit chaos. Horses had pulled loose their tethers and were rearing and galloping about, wild-eyed. Men were struggling out of their sodden blankets everywhere, trying to avoid the horses, or were already up, some kneeling, some standing, in every attitude of confusion, some with their muskets and rifles in their hands, their faces looking stricken as men’s faces can look only when they are hurled from sleep into panic. Rain was spitting down into the light of the smoky bonfires. The shrill howling was unnerving and frightfully close by. Lead balls were whacking into wagons, tents, horseflesh, men. Some of the soldiers who had just stood up now reeled and fell, arrows sticking in them. A nearby soldier’s head twitched, and bits of something spattered the side of Harrison’s face. Absently wiping it off, he saw that it was bloody bits of someone’s flesh.

  “Colonel Owen!” he shouted. “Where are you? Boyd!” Some kind of tremendous mayhem was under way up by the Kentuckians and in that part of the rear line where Major Baen’s detachment of the Fourth Infantry had camped: a terrifying uproar of shooting, war whoops, commands, running, clattering, and screaming. And it was coming, spreading toward the center of the camp. Now Harrison thought he was hearing a similar commotion beginning to build up over on the front line, on the east side of the camp. “Up! Up! You officers! Form up your troops! Get them on line!” Harrison bellowed at the top of his mighty voice, trotting around the edge of his tent to get his gray mare. She was not there. He saw her rear end disappear around the tent. There was a bay still tethered there, though, yanking at its tether. Quickly he ran his hand down its face to calm it, undid the reins, and mounted. The animal, terrified by the roar of gunfire and especially by the screaming of Indians, whirled twice before he could get it settled down and put his spurs in to head toward the heaviest fighting. He kept shouting for his aide as he went.

  Colonel Abraham Owen, the general’s aide, saw his commander’s gray mare trotting, riderless, among the tents and darted out to catch her. His first thought was that Harrison must have been shot off her back, but he heard him shouting in the distance, again heard him calling. As he tugged the reins he saw all the officers’ tents twitching as bullets slapped through them. Soldiers were gasping and screaming and falling down. An arrow flicked past his nose and broke against a tree. Again now he heard Governor Harrison’s voice calling his name in the din and heard him bellow, “Get those fires put out!” Colonel Owen chased the mare through a couple of pirouettes and finally got a foot in the stirrup, swung up, and spurred her in the direction of Harrison’s voice. Suddenly he was astonished to see painted warriors running right through the firelit heart of the camp, screaming their curdled screams, shooting at the milling soldiers with guns and bows. At last the troops were awake enough to do something, those who weren’t simply petrified, and Blue-Coats were rushing pell-mell against the savages, shooting them down, bayoneting them, or clubbing them with their gunstocks. Two hideous-looking painted warriors with shaved heads were sprinting toward the marquee tent. Colonel Owen cocked his pistol and aimed at one, but the mare wheeled and started running, and he lost his target. He reined her around and spurred her toward General Harrison’s voice. He could now see the general riding on a bay horse near the thickest of the fighting, saber upraised, shouting orders. Owen rode toward him, shouting, “I’m here, Gen’l!”

  A Winnebago, crouching between a dead soldier and a campfire to reload his rifle, saw the big, splendid-looking officer riding by, shouting, on the gray horse they had spoken of, and he knew it must be Harrison. There was no time to finish loading his own gun. He dropped it, snatched up the weapon of the soldier he had just killed, and shot Colonel Abraham Owen through the body. He screeched with exultation as the officer fell sideways off the horse into the mud and dashed toward the body, drawing his knife to take the most prized scalp. But a bullet slammed into his temple, and he tumbled dead beside the colonel’s body.

  ON THE CLIFF BEYOND THE CREEK, THE PROPHET STOOD IN the cold drizzle watching and listening. His heart was pounding fast.

  All that was happening down there was his doing! It was he who had made the sun go dark, and now it was he who had made this equally great thing happen! He imagined that every gunshot that rose to his ears was the death of a white soldier. He felt that surely Harrison was dead in his tent by now. His heart drank up the continuous music of the war cries. What a glorious ferocity in his people as they defended their holy town from the white governor’s criminal intents!

  And all the predictions he had made seemed to be proving true. The rain surely was ruining the Americans’ powder. The campfires had grown brighter just before the start of the conflict and must be giving his warriors all the illumination he had promised them. Surely this would all be done soon, a total victory for the allied warriors, every soldier dead or a captive. A strong shudder of exultation shook him, and he rais
ed his face to the unseen rain and spread his arms. The power and spirit of his warriors he had brought down from heaven and directed into their bodies as they had encircled the enemy camp; now they were fighting the enemy with all that power and spirit, and the Master of Life must be thanked.

  So, in his piercing, throaty voice he chanted, so loudly it could be heard even in the roar of the battle below, a prayer of thanks and a plea for still more courage and protection for the fighters below.

  O Great and Good Master

  You have answered my call!

  You have sent strength pouring down.

  I have caught it in the cup of my heart

  And my warriors, your children,

  Have drunk from it

  And it nourishes their blood!

  It warms them as they steal through the cold,

  It fills their arms with strength,

  And they strike! They strike!

  And they are killing the Evil Thing,

  Washing away the Spawn of the Serpent!

  Hear them O Good Master!

  Hear them exult from their throats

  As they destroy the Evil Thing!

  O Great and Good Master

  Father of all our race

  Who now stand together unbreakable

  A bundle of living sticks!

  Give still your courage to us

  And put your hand in the way

  Of the soldiers’ bullets

  A little while more

  Until the Evil Thing is crushed!

  He sang, and his voice was throughout the valley of his home, his voice flew down like a swooping bird and into every pause in the roar of the battle and into the ears of the warriors around the battlefield, and they sped forward through the cold wet grass of the marsh, they slipped forward from tree to tree in the woods, they stood swinging and shooting into the faces of the Blue-Coats and the beaver-hats and the hunting-shirts who kept coming out to the edge of the camp and forming into ranks and lines. Never had warriors stood fighting so furiously in the face of such volleys of gunfire, never had they burst from cover like this to throw themselves at lines of bayonets.