Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  Tecumseh sat late that night by the fire in Stands Firm’s lean-to, and around him were all the living members of his own family: Star Watcher, Open Door, and Cat Pouncing. Star Watcher fed everyone from a large kettle of succotash seasoned with herbs and a small stew made of English beef. Tecumseh sat watching her thoughtfully, as if from across the Circle of Time, remembering her great beauty as it had been long ago. She was a gray-haired woman now, her hands rough and veined and big-knuckled from the work of raising crops and two generations of children. Her skin was loose. She no longer had a waist. Her body was straight up and down, all its curves long since gone, and it was lean and hard, and her breasts were wrinkled and pendulous. Only her face and soul were still beautiful, but they were very beautiful. The wrinkles around her eyes and mouth were the lines of smiling. When she looked at Tecumseh it was with the same care and tenderness as when she had tended to him as a child. She was as much like his mother as his sister.

  Open Door sat on the other side of the fire. He had eaten prodigiously. After his great disgrace at Tippecanoe and his fall from power, he had begun eating like the hog he had been in his youth, and much of his thought now was of food. But there was some good that could be said of him. He had never gone back to liquor, even after Tippecanoe. He still believed in all the tenets of the religion he had founded and even had a few followers, though his circle of influence had become very small. He was always very careful not to say anything that might annoy Tecumseh; although Tecumseh relied upon him as the shaman of their Shawnee band, he was aware of being barely tolerated by most of the leading men and knew that if he were not Tecumseh’s brother, he would be an outcast—or, just as likely, a dead man. Open Door was a sad and gloomy man now, but when he was around Tecumseh he tried to be cheerful and funny.

  Cat Pouncing, Tecumseh’s son, was handsome and well mannered, a bit shy around his father. He seemed soft. He still had not found a Spirit Helper. It was strange to Tecumseh that this son of himself and the willful She-Is-Favored was so placid. The sight of him was a reproach to Tecumseh, who knew he had never been a good father. He had spent so much time away at war and council throughout his son’s lifetime that he had been almost a stranger to him. He had been closer to a white girl, Rebekah Galloway, than to his own son, and to think of that shamed him. He had hardly ever taken time to teach him anything. Raised by his aunt, Cat Pouncing had been more like Stands Firm’s son than his own. Tecumseh remembered how much his own father, Hard Striker, had taught him, directly or by way of Chiksika, and he knew he should have made more time to teach his own son the same knowledge. Now he felt that the smooth-faced, shy-eyed young man by the fire was more like a nephew than a son, and it humbled him. He was supposed to be the greatest of all Shawnee men, yet he had failed in something that the most ordinary men did well.

  When the war is over, he told himself now, I will come and get my son and hunt with him and take him to the places I have seen, and teach him to be a man. It is not too late to make him into a strong and good man. He is already good; my sister has made him good. He only needs to be strengthened. Stands Firm might have taught him manliness, but Stands Firm himself had been away for so much of his own life as a member of Tecumseh’s retinue that he had not had much life in his family, either.

  Yes, my son will be a strong and good man someday, Tecumseh thought. It will take time and very much attention, which I have long owed him. Now it is the red people and their homelands that need me.

  And if the Shawnee people are not saved, he thought, it will not even matter what kind of man I make my son. He will be but a dog in the white man’s yard.

  “This tastes better than the horsemeat,” Open Door was saying with stew grease shining on his mouth. “Tell them, brother, how you made Procter stop giving our people horsemeat.” Open Door, as he had done when he was a boy, tried often these days to make Tecumseh look good in the eyes of others.

  Tecumseh came out of his grave ponderings and smiled around at them all. “I went to Procter. I said to him, ‘Procter, I have learned that you give beef to your soldiers and horsemeat to my warriors. I know you use my warriors as a hunter uses his dogs, to go out in front and get the game. But my warriors are not your dogs. They do more of your fighting than your soldiers do, and you will give them the same kind of meat.’ That is what I told Procter.”

  “I was there when that was said,” remarked Stands Firm. “That fat general’s face became as red as his coat.”

  Open Door laughed, an exaggerated laugh, and slapped his thigh. He laughed louder and longer than the others. Tecumseh looked at him reflectively, with pity and regret, thinking of all the things his brother had been in his lifetime, how he had been great in his smallness and small in his greatness. Tecumseh glanced over at Star Watcher, who was moving cookpots away from the fire, shaking her head at the hysterical sound of Open Door’s cackling, a patient, fond smile on her lips.

  “Brother,” Stands Firm said now to Tecumseh, “what will happen if the American ships defeat the British ships? What will come of things if Procter and One-Arm are wrong about who can win on the battlefield of water?” There had been little talk of such a thing happening, but a few had been thinking of it. Tecumseh replied:

  “Procter will be so surprised, he will make soil where he sits.”

  “Like this!” cackled Open Door. He tilted to raise a buttock off the ground and made a moist wind, which, for once, everyone thought was funny.

  Tecumseh did not want to talk seriously about this now; his head had been heavy with serious matters for too long. It seemed he was always in council with his war chiefs or with Elliott or the British officers, and it was good now to be talking about little things with his family and joking about matters. But Stands Firm had asked the question seriously and deserved a serious answer, so Tecumseh said:

  “Most of the food and ammunition comes to this place by ships. And when Procter needs to take the big guns and the soldiers anywhere to fight, the best way is to put them on ships, as he did to go to Fort Meigs. If the American ships defeated the British ships, Procter is afraid that no food and ammunition could come here, except by the bad road from the east. And that the Americans then could bring Blue-Coat soldiers in their ships to land on this side of the lake between here and Niagara, and then Procter would be cut off from his king’s government, and could not get his chocolate and brandy. Or food and ammunition. This I think he fears more than anything. That is why he would make a mess where he sits if such a thing happened.”

  They were quiet for a while, looking into the fire, thinking of it in this way for the first time. Before, while watching the British ships go down to the lake, they had not really understood the consequences or how important it was. After a while Stands Firm said, “They took some big guns from the fort to put on the big new ship. How can a ship float with something so heavy?” He smoked for a while, then said, “I saw the big guns shoot at Harrison’s fort. When the ships fight other ships, do they shoot at them with those guns? Would it not turn the ship over, as it would seem to me?”

  “Think of it this way,” Tecumseh said. “You have shot your musket from a canoe?”

  “Yes.”

  “A cannon to a big ship is about like a musket to a canoe. So a cannon does not turn the big ship over when it is shot from it.”

  “That is your answer?” said Stands Firm. “When I shot my musket from a canoe, the canoe turned over!” Everybody laughed, and Stands Firm smiled around, but then he went on. “Brothers, I will tell you this: I would not want to be on a ship when it is shooting cannons. Nor would I want to be on one ship when another ship is shooting cannons at it. No. I would not. One should stay out of ships and forts. They draw more cannonballs than one would want.” He pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows, then nodded to show that he had had his say.

  “The one-arm, Barclay, has done that many times,” said Tecumseh. “It is why he has one arm only. Yet he goes out again today, knowing it could happen. I admire the one
-arm captain. I think he is much more brave than Procter.”

  “We should pray for the Master of Life to help this one-arm,” Open Door said, “even though he is a white man.”

  THE NEXT MORNING WAS CLEAR AND STILL. MANY OF THE Indians went down to the end of the island at daybreak, drawn by the memory of their night’s dreams to go and look at the lake. There were no ships anywhere in sight, only canoes and fishing boats and army boats near the river’s mouth and beyond them the miles of water sparkling with sunlight and the straight silver line of the horizon. There was very little breeze, and the lake water only slurped at the shore of the island. The sun rose over the lake and climbed. The smells of woodsmoke and cooking hung in the air, and in this beautiful place by the water it seemed like a time of peace.

  When the sun was at its highest, Tecumseh was talking with Roundhead about the problem of Walk-in-Water. Word had come, by way of a relative of Thick Water’s Wyandot wife, that Walk-in-Water was in a secret agreement with the Americans, that if Harrison brought his big army up the western shore of the lake, Walk-in-Water would advise his men to leave Tecumseh and help Harrison. This was not a new problem with Walk-in-Water. When Hull had first invaded Canada, Walk-in-Water had deserted the British, then had rejoined them after Brock and Tecumseh captured Detroit. Walk-in-Water’s village was right in the way of the war road, and that was why he always wanted to be on the winning side. At the present time, the Americans showed more promise of winning. Roundhead had been an unshakable follower of Tecumseh since the beginning, and he was ashamed of Walk-in-Water and scorned him. “He is like a weather sign,” Roundhead growled. “To know who is winning the war, we only need to sit and watch Walk-in-Water.”

  At that moment, though the sky was blue and sunny and there was no scent of rain, Tecumseh heard thunder. Roundhead had heard it, too. His anger about Walk-in-Water vanished from his face, and he looked up and around at the sky. Other people in the camp had paused in what they were doing.

  It was like thunder, but not quite like thunder.

  “The ships are fighting,” Tecumseh said.

  The people began hurrying down to the lake end of the island. Tecumseh and Roundhead strode along with the crowd.

  The lake looked just as it had before: glittering water, the line of the horizon. But the thundering went on and on. It was so constant that Tecumseh knew there were many more cannons shooting than there had been at Fort Meigs during the great sieges there. It was amazing that this rumbling could be so loud even though the big ships were so far away that they could not be seen.

  After a while Tecumseh raised his arm and pointed toward the horizon just a little east of south.

  There was a smudge of smoke against the pearly-bright sky.

  LITTLE FORT SENECA WAS MORE THAN THIRTY-FIVE MILES south of Lake Erie, on the Sandusky River, but General Harrison could hear the naval guns thundering. He stood on a parapet in the sunlight and listened for a while. An officer said, “Listen at ’em, sir! Sounds like young Oliver’s giving ’em proper hell, doesn’t it?”

  Harrison nodded, but he thought: Or vice versa.

  He was worried. Captain Perry had set sail with an appalling shortage of trained naval officers. Even his crews were so undermanned that he had had to ask for volunteers from among the Kentucky riflemen, who were anything but sailors.

  Harrison went down to his headquarters. He had moved his command post to this little fort from Fort Meigs because it was more central to all the Lake Erie posts, and from here he could respond more quickly to attacks anywhere.

  Even here in his room he could hear the thumping grumble of the naval guns and could not concentrate on anything. Just getting a fleet built and launched on Lake Erie had been a miracle. What if it were being sunk now by the British navy?

  After an hour or so he went back up on the parapet. And while he was there, listening and thinking, the distant thundering died out. He stood for a long time listening, but there was no more cannon fire.

  Now there would be the waiting. How long would it be before the outcome was known?

  It was only a few hours. A horseman came galloping up the river road that evening, and he had a message written to Harrison on the back of an envelope:

  Dear General: We have met the enemy and they are ours—two ships, two brigs, one schooner and a sloop.

  Yours, with great respect and esteem,

  Oliver Hazard Perry

  For two days after the long thunder of the ship battle, the Indians watched for the British vessels to return from the lake. Tecumseh continued to meet with his warriors and administer to the needs of the people, but he could not keep from wondering where the ships were or why Procter had not sent any word about their victory.

  On the second of those two days, some warriors who had been at Fort Malden came to the island and told Tecumseh that they had seen Procter from a distance, and that he had looked like a very troubled man. They had noticed also that some of Procter’s aides were making crates and carrying trunks and barrels at Procter’s headquarters.

  A few days later, the British soldiers were seen taking apart kitchens and armories and offices of the fort and loading wagons. Tecumseh sent a messenger to Procter asking to know what had happened to the ships and for an explanation of the activities in the fort. Procter sent back no reply, but the messenger had noticed that he was still packing. Now it was plain that he was getting ready to flee.

  The British had promised to help the red men regain their homelands, but now they were apparently getting ready to retreat farther and farther from the Indians’ lands. Tecumseh was growing hot and tight inside. He sent for Matthew Elliott and told him to go to Procter. “Tell the general,” Tecumseh said, “that if he does not give me the truth of what is happening, I will cut my end of the wampum belt, and the results will be bad!”

  IT WAS A FULL WEEK AFTER THE CANNON THUNDER ON THE lake before old Elliott finally prevailed upon General Procter to meet with Tecumseh and his chiefs. They were to assemble at the big council hall at Amherstburg.

  By this time Tecumseh was almost in a fury at Procter’s evasiveness. He had warned Procter in the past that if he ever lied to him, he would take his red men and abandon the British. Tecumseh had had enough experience with such evasiveness in his own brother to deduce that Procter was afraid to lie to him but also afraid to tell the truth.

  In the vast hall with its vaulted ceiling, the hundreds of warriors and chieftains filled every foot of floor space, a colorful, agitated, murmuring mass of men. Officers of the militia and the Redcoat Forty-first Regiment stood along the walls.

  Procter came in looking sullen, pale, and nervous. Many of the officers with him looked sullen, too. Their noses were in the air, and they would not look at Procter, so it seemed that even they were displeased with him.

  Before the panorama of brilliant costumes and garish ornaments and intense, dark faces in the smoky room, Procter announced curtly that plans were being made for a withdrawal to someplace eastward, closer to the other wings of the British forces. He said nothing about the naval battle and made no further explanation. As his words were translated, the voices of the Indians began to rise, droning with consternation and anger in the great hall. Tecumseh rose and spoke loudly:

  “Father, listen! Our fleet has gone out; we know they have fought. We have heard the great guns. But we know nothing of what has happened to our father with one arm. Our ships have gone one way, and we are very much astonished to see our father tying up everything and preparing to run away the other, without letting his red children know what his intentions are for them!”

  He paused and stared at Procter while this was being translated into English and into the various tribal tongues. He saw that Procter’s face was sweaty and red. And he also saw some of the young British officers, who had been his comrades in some of the battles, nod their heads and look accusingly at Procter.

  The Indians too were all watching Procter with clouded faces; many of them had already deduce
d to their own satisfaction that he was deceiving them and going his own way with no concern for their opinions or their welfare.

  While Procter sat glowering at Tecumseh with his head back and his lips set thin, Tecumseh went on:

  “You always told us to remain here and take care of our lands; it made our hearts glad to hear that was your wish. You always told us that you would never draw your foot off British ground, but now we see you are drawing back, and we are sorry to see our father running without even seeing the enemy!”

  He paused again. The warriors were muttering their agreement, their indignation. Procter’s eyes were looking glazed; his lip quivered with the hint of a sneer. His face infuriated Tecumseh; this was like the expression that had been on his face while he had stood by and watched the slaughter of prisoners at Fort Miami, afraid to try to stop it. Procter was contemptuous of Indians but afraid of them at the same time, an attitude that insulted Tecumseh and every other red man who perceived it.

  So now Tecumseh allowed himself to speak directly of Procter’s cowardice; he cared not at all how angry he made him.

  “We must compare our father’s conduct to that of a fat animal, that carries its bushy tail high upon its back, but when frightened, he drops it between his legs and runs off.”

  Laughter swept through the whole room when this was translated, and it was not just the Indians laughing but also the British officers around the walls. Several of the officers right beside Procter were biting their lips and flushing, trying to keep from guffawing. Procter’s face had darkened almost to livid, and he was shaking visibly, either from mortification or with his effort to contain himself. Suddenly Tecumseh overrode the tittering and laughter with his voice.

  “Listen, Father! The Americans have not yet defeated us by land; neither are we sure that they have done so by water. We therefore wish to remain here, and fight our enemy if they should appear. If they defeat us, then we will retreat with our father!”