Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  On the cliff, Open Door finished his prayer and looked down now at the blur of yellowish smoke, that glowing, roaring, howling turmoil in this pocket of a black, cold, rainy universe, and even in his exalted state he could see that the combat was not diminishing yet. In fact, it seemed to grow louder and more furious. And something about it was troubling. Instead of being all along the wedge of land, the combat seemed to be concentrated mostly at the north end only.

  And if White Loon and Stone Eater and their chosen hundred had penetrated to Harrison’s tent and killed him, why was the battle going on so long? By now Open Door had expected to hear nothing but the screams of dying or fleeing soldiers and the joyous yipping of warriors in triumph and pursuit. Instead it was a continuous crackle and thunder of gunshots, going on and on, mostly at the upper end of the camp, and he could hear the big, deep shouts of officer soldiers.

  And, strangest of all, it was growing darker down there. He could see muzzle blasts flickering like sparks down among the leafless oaks, but the glow of the bonfires was less and less. Open Door looked down at this change and wondered if something might be going wrong.

  He took a necklace of deer hooves from his neck and held it up, and shook it, and rattled the hooves toward the dark sky, and resumed his prayer for help and protection.

  SOLDIERS WHO WERE NOT YET ON THEIR LINES AROUND THE perimeter had got the order to douse the bonfires and were snatching up rain-damp blankets from the ground and throwing them over the flames or beating the flames madly with them; some were kicking the fires apart with their boots and scattering the firebrands over the wet ground; cooks and staff soldiers were fetching pails and kettles of water and emptying them on the flames. In the last dull, reddening light of the dying fires, the army camp was like a half-extinguished inferno of tortured figures all dimmed by a choking pall of smoke and steam, stinking of wet ashes, smoldering wool, and gunpowder. The fires had been giving the savages too much of an advantage, silhouetting their targets and showing them where everything was. Now as the flames were extinguished it became more of an equal contest, but a more terrifying one. Men stood trembling in ranks, firing outward into the blackness where muzzle blasts flashed. They groped in their cartouche bags, tore the paper ends off powder cartridges with their teeth, poured powder down their hot gun barrels in total darkness, rammed home patch and ball, primed their flashpans blindly, and fired into the howling darkness again. And every few moments a comrade would grunt or screech and fall thrashing against their legs, or somebody else’s gun muzzle would blast out right at their ear, or men would accidentally strike each other with their guns as they loaded and manipulated them in the dark.

  Some of the men stood shooting in the darkness with arrows sticking in their flesh, tears in their eyes, and urine or feces oozing down their leggings. There had been that heart-stopping awakening and then this howling death storm ever since, without a moment for anyone to do the morning labors at the latrines.

  In some places along the perimeter, the units had been unable to form or had formed and been scattered, and those places were the most terrifying. Soldiers and warriors were all intermixed, striking and choking, grunting and dying, all around. Here a man would find or collide with another man, and the two would have to grope over each other to know whether, this was friend or foe. Shako or feathers? Deerhide or wool? Blades and clubs and rifle butts slashed and thudded unseen, only felt. Only the flash of gunfire nearby would, like intermittent lightning, reveal for an instant the identity of friend or enemy, the shape of the skirmish. Many a man in these tangles of invisible chaos was left wondering if his own last act on earth might have been the maiming or killing of one of his comrades.

  Captain Spier Spencer’s Yellow Jackets, down at the far southern heel of the encampment, had leaped out of their slumbers at the first shots and shouts, had stumbled in the darkness into ranks facing the marsh, and then had waited there in uncertainty and growing terror for a long time, hearing the din of battle swell to the north of them, hearing the war cries and shooting erupt along the Fourth Infantry sector behind their left flank, hearing now and then through the uproar an ungodly, eerie singsong of a voice from away up on the prairie to their right, and waited for they knew not what or how long, while Captain Spencer’s gravelly voice talked their courage up. Then finally from the cold darkness outside their lines came the bellowing and thunderous hoofbeats of the stampeding beef herd, followed at once by a chilling chorus of war whoops and a blazing hail of gunshots. Dozens of militiamen fell at once. Captain Spencer stood bleeding from the head, yelling at his men to stand their ground and fight on. Bullets smashed through both his thighs, and he kept commanding from where he lay in his own blood on the ground. Only when a ball passed through his body did his voice fall still. His lieutenant frantically sent a runner up through the camp to tell the general they needed reinforcements. Then the lieutenant fell dead. And as the Indians came battling their way into the nest of Yellow Jackets, the young Ensign John Tipton was the only officer left to command them. He would not let them fall back, and they held their corner, but the Indians kept coming.

  THE PROPHET WAS STILL CHANTING ON THE CLIFF WHEN Charcoal Burner rode up the steep, dark path from the creek valley. The battle raged unabated, as it had for nearly two hours, a deafening storm. It was still dark, but the pitch blackness was just beginning to fade enough that he could negotiate the familiar path up through the woods to the rock bluff at the edge of the prairie. So much blind shooting was being done that even as he rode up this bluff, Charcoal Burner heard stray musketballs snapping among the trees around him.

  He reached the top of the bluff and dismounted. He walked close to the dark, strange figure in the fur robe and winged headdress and stood there waiting, not willing to interrupt a prayer between the great Prophet and the Master of Life, but waiting for an opportunity to say a few things that had become important. A few warriors of the Prophet’s bodyguard hovered in the windy, rainy gloom nearby. At last becoming aware of Charcoal Burner’s presence, Open Door finished his prayer and turned to him.

  Charcoal Burner had to shout to make his words heard over the roar of the battle.

  “Father, we have failed to destroy them!”

  Open Door’s expression could not be seen in the darkness. He was a silhouette against the dark gray sky. He replied:

  “But soon we will! It is not done yet!”

  “Father, they say they still hear the governor’s voice everywhere in the army camp. It is believed he escaped the knife. White Loon and his hundred were driven out, many killed.”

  “Then Harrison will die in battle instead of in bed. But he will die! I have seen it! Are our people not fighting with bravery?”

  “Like never before, it is true. They kill many soldiers. But they complain that the soldiers were neither dead nor crazy, as you said they would be. They have rallied, and they fight like devils. Their powder was not wet, as you said it would be.”

  If Charcoal Burner could have seen the expression on Open Door’s face, he would have seen his mouth distorted, a corner of his upper lip between his teeth. Charcoal Burner went on: “Our surprise was lost when a sentry shot one of our warriors. That warrior did not die in silence, and the whitefaces knew we were around them. Had that warrior been still, the others might have got into Harrison’s tent.”

  Open Door waved his hand impatiently. “It is no matter! He will die in battle instead! They will not escape. Their bones will lie forever on that place. Small matters change and shift. But our great victory is determined!”

  “When the sentry fired, the warriors on the east and south were still in the marsh and had not reached their places. The attack was ragged, and we lost many. The little-shot from the soldiers’ guns is like hail in the woods.”

  “My son! We are still killing them! A blade or bullet will find Harrison yet, and then they will crumple down! I have felt the power of Weshemoneto go through me to our People. Daylight will reveal Harrison very soon so he can
be killed! Daylight will find the Blue-Coats all dead!”

  “Daylight,” replied Charcoal Burner, “will show the soldiers where we are, and they will turn us with bayonets. Father, I tried to prevent this. The war chiefs say your medicine did not work. They are angry. They say that only courage and skill have killed soldiers, not your medicine. You should know, Father, that they are saying these things.”

  The Prophet swelled up and hissed, but the contempt was only to conceal his fear. “Go back down,” he said in a hoarse voice, “and tell them to kill the rest of the soldiers. Say I have praised their bravery, and that Weshemoneto will help them strike the governor down!”

  When Charcoal Burner had started back down the path, Open Door stood grimacing toward the ominous sky. He was quaking inside. He could hear the white officer-soldiers’ commands bellowing in the roar of the gunfire. The rain clouds crawled overhead. It was light enough to see the clouds moving now, and features of the land were separating into different shades of gray: the woods, dark but full of the sparks of gunfire and overhung by a pale cloud of smoke, the marshy grasslands beyond, a shade lighter than the woods.

  The Prophet’s bodyguards could see his robed figure now, the tall bulk of him. They saw him turn from the cliff and come toward them. He took the bridle of his horse from one of them and swung onto the animal without a word. He kicked in his heels and began to trot, then gallop, across the prairie toward his town. Bewildered, they looked at each other, then mounted and rode after him.

  Why their prophet would stop invoking the Great Good Spirit’s protection while the warriors were still fighting, the bodyguards did not understand. But it was their duty to follow and protect him. So they followed him as he rode in a wide arc across the prairie, around the thunder of the battle, and down the slopes into Prophet’s Town.

  AS THE DAWN GRAYED, GENERAL HARRISON RODE FROM ONE end of the long campground to the other, riding up behind each unit, conferring with its officers, giving them words of encouragement, then riding on. He was in plain sight now in the half-light, and scores of Indians saw him, saw the huge bicorn hat of an officer among the oaks and the smoke, and shot at him with gun or bow, but the missiles only barked trees around him or flipped through his cloak. It was as if he, not the Indians, had the protection of the Great Spirit around him—or that he had the stronger god. Major Floyd rode up to him and pleaded with him to take cover, but Harrison waved away the suggestion and rode on to the next unit, cheering the troops as he went.

  The camp was a shambles of tattered tents and flags, overturned wagons, dead soldiers and Indians and horses, burnt woolen blankets, smoldering ashes, dense smoke, bloodstained mud and puddles, arrows sticking in everything. Every tree in the woods had been completely barked by bullets from waist height to head height. Wounded soldiers by the score lay crowded into half-sheltered coverts, wrapped in muddy blankets and bloody rags, the surgeon moving among them and squatting beside them. There were already at least fifty soldiers dead, Harrison estimated, and of the two hundred or so wounded, there were many who looked almost gone. One man’s whole jaw had been shot off, and his ghastly half face with its haggard, stunned eyes was more than Harrison could bear to look at as he went through comforting the wounded and praising them. Some of them were busy in awkward postures trying to clean the waste out of their pants. The surgeon had told Harrison that many of the flesh wounds and abdominal wounds were particularly ugly because many of the savages had chewed their musketballs before going into battle—the surgeon showed him one he had just extracted—apparently to make them flatten or fragment on impact or perhaps to increase the chance of infection. There also were many arrows that had been dipped in excrement. As Harrison had looked at these things, an awful remorse had plummeted in his breast. He was thinking what an intense, profound hatred would have to grow in a people to make them create such things. And in this harsh, soggy, smoking, gray reality of a dismal morning, here within a mile of the Indians’ holy town—a place where he really had had no right to come, he could admit to himself now, himself only—he finally understood that the hatred manifested in those chewed musketballs and besmirched arrowheads had been created by his own race.

  He clenched his teeth and shook his head to get this forlorn admission out of it and spurred his horse on toward the northern flank, where the shooting was growing heavier again. He was met by Colonel Daveiss of the Kentucky Dragoons, whose face and hands, like those of everybody else, were black from gunpowder and gunsmoke, and Daveiss repeated the same request he had made twice before: permission to charge a wooded rise from which a nest of Indians had been pouring gunfire into the compound. Daveiss’s red-rimmed eyes blazed in his sooty face. His white blanket coat, a mark of his flamboyance, was now filthy with mud and chaff and soot. This Joe Daveiss, a noted Kentucky lawyer, had once told Harrison that the two of them were the only two men west of the Alleghenies with any strategic sense. Now he said the best strategy would be to get control of that high place. Finally Harrison said, “Use your discretion, Colonel. If you think it’s light enough to see what you’re doing.” Then he rode off toward the front line, where the Fourth Infantry was having a terrific, noisy gunfight on a bigger scale.

  Daveiss grinned and ran to his dragoons. It would not be a mounted charge. Most of their horses were dead or leaking from bullet holes. Daveiss gathered twenty young men and told them to follow him and, saber waving, sprinted in his dirty white coat out of the lines toward the muzzle flashes on the rise. Quite a few of his dragoons thought it was a foolhardy thing to do and didn’t follow.

  The next time Harrison rode to the dragoons’ sector, they were still firing at the same elevation Daveiss had tried to charge. Colonel Daveiss, his dirty blanket coat now soaked with blood, lay at the roots of a sycamore tree where his soldiers had carried him back and laid him down to die.

  NOW IT WAS NEARLY DAYLIGHT, OR AS LIGHT AS IT WAS going to get on this drizzly day. Harrison had formed the units at the north end into massed ranks for a bayonet charge into the woods where the battle had started and where the strongest concentration of Indians seemed to be.

  The warriors had fought with inspired bravery and unusual prowess for more than two hours, defending something that had somehow become more important to them than even self or tribe. Even as their brothers had fallen before the guns that were not supposed to work, fired by soldiers who were supposed to be dead or crazy, even as they had seen their assured victory thwarted time after time by the brave and stubborn Americans, still the warriors had fought on, even rushing against the dreaded buckshot and bayonets; even after they had lost faith in the Prophet’s promises and charms, they had fought on, charging again and again, for something extraordinary that had grown in their hearts.

  But finally, seeing the Blue-Coats massing and trooping forward with their indestructible general riding among them with his saber raised, and noticing that the prayers of the Prophet were no longer coming down from the far bluff, the warriors fired a few parting volleys of bullets and arrows into the many-legged army that came crunching and howling toward them, then turned and melted into the forest, taking all their wounded with them.

  The white soldiers had not won the battle, nor had the allied warriors. But in the end the red men had lost something more important than a battle: they had lost the faith that for a few years had been the most cherished force in their lives.

  THE WAR CHIEFS WITHDREW INTO PROPHET’S TOWN WITH stormy eyes. They placed their warriors to defend the women and children and old men in case the army should come on and try to attack the town. Then they went seeking the Prophet. They found him hunched near a small fire in the gloom of his medicine lodge, running his sacred beans and deer hooves through the smoke, and he called out that he did not want to come out because he was praying for more power to finish destroying Harrison and his army. Before this day, they would never have entered the medicine lodge without his invitation. But by now they had deduced that his medicine was nothing to be timid about, and th
ey pushed in, all sooty and muddy, some smeared with blood, and stood over him. One of them actually shoved the sacred reed effigy aside to make room to stand. They held their blood-dark clubs and tomahawks and looked as if they would be pleased to use them on him. He pretended to be astonished by their menacing manner, but inside his clothes he was pouring the sweat of terror.

  “Why are you here?” he asked. “Have you finished the army?”

  Charcoal Burner loomed over him and bent to stare fire in his face. “You are a false prophet. You told us Harrison would die at once and his soldiers would be helpless. Harrison still lives and rides, and he made his soldiers fight like demons. Many of our young men died, many are hurt so they will die today. Only their courage hurt the Long Knives. All your medicine was but useless noise!”

  Open Door cringed before this devastating indictment, then he replied in a voice that was almost a whine:

  “No! I have at last determined what is wrong! It was my wife’s fault that the medicine did not work yet.” They recoiled in muttering indignation at this outlandish excuse, but he explained: “When she helped me with my prayers before the vision, she handled the sacred articles and had not told me she was in her flowing moon.… That as you know is forbidden, and it corrupted the medicine.” He emitted a terrible, false laugh, then made his face most earnest and seemed to swell with power for a moment. “I have been cleansing the articles and am ready to enchant the white soldiers so they will be helpless, and you can finish yet this day what you have so bravely begun.”