Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  Tecumseh felt a tug on the sleeve of his hunting shirt. He turned. There as always was the long face of Thick Water, who shouted over the gunfire:

  “Naiwash sent this man to tell you something!”

  It was one of the Ottawas, who were fighting on the left end of the line, near the other bridge. Tecumseh and the messenger knelt behind a thick-trunked oak to get out of the rain of lead. The Ottawa, using hand language and a few Shawnee words, told him that the Wyandot chief Walk-in-Water had deserted his sector of the battle line with sixty of his warriors and was going over to the Americans’ side to offer Harrison their hand. “Ahhhh,” Tecumseh growled in his smoke-tortured throat.

  It was not a surprise; Walk-in-Water had swayed for months back and forth always with the stronger wind. But happening now, it was still another sign that the great cause was falling apart.

  Thick Water was kneeling in the brush beyond the shelter of the great oak, head swiveling, watching for any approaching danger, hardly bothering to fold his long frame down into real cover.

  “Thick Water!” Tecumseh suddenly called to him. The bodyguard turned and scooted down closer in the wet leaves. One of the American cannons discharged again, shaking the ground and splintering another swath of underbrush. Tecumseh leaned toward Thick Water to make himself heard and told him:

  “Brother, do this for me. I want you to go away.…” With his left arm he indicated a sweep around to the north and west and saw the pathetic look of disbelief in Thick Water’s face. “Go,” Tecumseh said, sweeping his arm wide again, shouting over the battle din, “and follow Walk-in-Water.…”

  A gunshot cracked very close by, and Tecumseh lurched backward, grunting as he fell into the leaves. His left arm was suddenly numb, but his shoulder felt as if it had been pulled out of its socket. Thick Water hovered over him, face full of anguish, and with the help of the Ottawa raised him and leaned his back against the roots of the oak. Blood was seeping all over Tecumseh’s upper sleeve. Grimacing, Thick Water pulled his knife and slit open the sleeve, and they examined the wound. Tecumseh could see the oozing, puckered hole where the ball had slammed into his bicep muscle.

  “Here it came out,” Thick Water said, looking at the tattered flesh on the rear of the arm. Tecumseh raised and moved the benumbed arm and was satisfied that the ball had missed bone. Several warriors nearby had seen their chief fall and were gathering, crouched around him.

  “See!” he told them, waving the limb and grinning ferociously. “It is only little! Go back and shoot the Long Knives! This bullet came from down there, those soldiers under the bank! We must drive them out! Quick, now!”

  And then, while the battle roared on and Thick Water packed the wound with moss and humus and bound a white strouding cloth around it to stanch the bleeding, Tecumseh continued his instructions: “Follow Walk-in-Water,” he said. “Go where he goes, if he does not stay in the American camp. If you can find him and talk to him, tell him to come back and rejoin us, and we will not think or say evil of him.” Rifle balls were still whickering through the foliage, bringing down a rain of bark and twigs and yellow bits of leaves, and the dank air was full of concussions, rank with powder smoke. Tecumseh studied the grief on Thick Water’s face and went on: “Tell him we will win when we fight with the British cannons tomorrow at the Jesus town. Tell him we want him to be with us instead of the Long Knives when we defeat them. You know his tongue. Go tell him that, Thick Water.”

  “I do not want to go.”

  “Yes. Go, brother. You can do us good this way!”

  “But if I leave the battle now, our brothers will say I was a coward!”

  “Our brothers know you are no coward. And I will tell them what I sent you for. I ask you to go, my brother. Do this!” In Tecumseh’s arm there was no bad pain, just a great ache underlying the numbness. He did not feel faint or weakened at all and rose and picked up his rifle with his right hand, looking around, seeing his warriors still shooting, still howling, still bleeding. More soldiers were trying to get down under the near creekbank. “Soon we will have to get out of this,” he said. “We will all draw back, to fight better tomorrow, with the cannons and Redcoats beside us. You will miss nothing by going now to do what I asked you.” And he reached over with his left arm, as if it were not even hurt, and clasped his hand on the side of Thick Water’s neck, then grinned and pushed him away.

  When the bodyguard was gone into the undergrowth, Tecumseh pulled the Ottawa messenger close and told him: “Go and say this to your chief Naiwash: tell him to burn down the building where the Redcoats left the things they couldn’t carry. Do this so the Long Knives cannot use those things when they come over. Say that when it is on fire, we will begin to leave this place. We have done all we can do here. We have given our families some time. Tomorrow we will have the fight we have wanted with the Long Knives, and there we will stop them, or there we will leave our bones.”

  THICK WATER STALKED THROUGH THE RAINY WOODS, AWAY from the noise of the battle. He clenched his teeth to keep from crying out with the desolation in his heart.

  It was true, what he had protested to Tecumseh; he did not want the others to think he had left the battlefield in fear. But even more true was the other thing.

  He was afraid that if he went far from Tecumseh, his great friend would be killed, and he would never get back to his side. Weshemoneto had put him here and made him invulnerable so that he could always protect the greatest chief of the People. They had gone all over this land together and had escaped death more times than he could remember.

  Now Tecumseh was without his protection, and Thick Water was so full of fear for him that he could hardly breathe, could hardly see, as he thrashed through the wet, yellowing woods.

  INSIDE HIS WHITE TENT THAT NIGHT, WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON dismissed his secretary and aide-de-camp and stood up beside his field desk, the fingertips of his left hand resting lightly on the green deal cloth that covered it. The young men clicked their heels and ducked out of the tent. A whale-oil lamp and an inkstand sat on the green cloth, and a stack of papers and maps lay beside them. Governor Harrison kept meticulous papers, even in the field, even on days like this when he had battled Indians. Being such a dedicated student of military history, he was always aware that he was making more history, and he always liked to get his version down on paper as quickly as possible, before anyone else’s interpretation of his actions could circulate.

  From all around came the late evening sounds of a large army camp: axes and shovels chunking as breastworks were finished up around the perimeter; the drone of hundreds of voices talking, boasting, laughing; here and there a Jew’s harp twanging and a fragment of song, now and then a yelp or scream from the surgeon’s tent where bullets and arrows were being extracted from flesh.…

  It had been a hot skirmish, but surely it had not been the retreating enemy’s last stand. There had been only Indians at the Forks, no British artillery, infantry, or cavalry. Just Tecumseh’s Indians.

  Or maybe only Tecumseh himself alone, Harrison thought with a smirk of amusement; just about every soldier who had taken part in the engagement claimed to have shot at Tecumseh or been shot at by him, even though in this whole army there were only a handful who knew the chief by sight. Tecumseh was their bugbear; they hardly thought about the Redcoats. Harrison was aware that the British army was in disarray; it was shedding equipment and boats and vehicles all along the road. Nevertheless, the Redcoats were up ahead there someplace and could not be dismissed. The fact that it had not been engaged in any of the rearguard skirmishes indicated to Harrison that it was going to be used in a big way someplace ahead. Yes, there had been a fight today. But somewhere ahead, there would be a battle. Harrison thus knew that his best hope lay in pursuing the British so closely that they would not have time to set up a real defense anywhere. It was true that for now Tecumseh was the enemy, and sometimes Harrison fancied that he was in a personal conflict with that Shawnee, which would not be concluded until one of th
em lay dead.

  Harrison had become chilled in the unheated tent while dictating his reports and dispatches and got up stiffly from the camp chair intending to go out and warm himself among his officers at the bonfire. He paused beside the desk, slowly twisting in the top button of his cloak, musing on a thought that had just visited him.

  He had just thought of Julius Caesar: Caesar standing like this in a tent by lamplight, a tent somewhere in Gaul, perhaps, or beside the Rhine, or in ancient Britain … Caesar in a tent on foreign soil, at any rate, surrounded by the men of his legions and their campfires, and those in turn surrounded by night and barbarians. Harrison thought of Caesar with a surge of empathy.

  He had had that feeling often. More and more lately he had reviewed the Roman conquerors, and to him, Caesar and Tacitus and Aurelian were very sympathetic souls. He could see their faces in his thoughts sometimes, and he had a habit, in his voluminous correspondences and the gigantic tracts on honor and discipline that he penned for the Vincennes newspaper, of making analogies between his purposes and theirs. As he paused now in the cold tent, his fingertips trailing on the table, he felt his soul leap back nineteen centuries, and he was Caesar, Caesar crossing borders into wild and hostile lands, the vanguard of a great empire, call it Rome or call it America, and out there someplace in the wild darkness was Tecumseh the Shawnee, his own Vercingetorix, the barbarian leader he must conquer in the building of empire. “Hm,” he said in his throat, cocking his head. He ran his hand from his crown down over his forehead, smoothing his short Caesar-styled hair forward onto his brow. Then he put on his bicorn hat, ducked out of the tent door, and strolled to the bonfire.

  Several officers and scouts, sipping from cups, sat on camp stools and on large logs flanking the bonfire. Their talk and laughter fell off, and some of them started to rise as Harrison came into the firelight, but he told them in a soft voice, “As you were, gentlemen,” and they eased back, holding their cups and basking in the comfort of the crackling fire. They had smelled gunsmoke today—their army had killed perhaps a dozen savages, at a loss of only three dead soldiers—and were mellow with whiskey, enjoying that satisfying sense of camaraderie and manly purpose that old campaigners feel when there has been a not-too-costly victory.

  Those who sat in this privileged circle were all heroes—either very recent heroes like Captain Perry or long-ago heroes like Shelby and Kenton. Their uniforms, except for the blue-and-braid of the regular army, were an anarchy of comic-opera soldier suits, many designed by the militia commanders themselves or perhaps by their wives or mistresses: top hats with rosettes and plumes, frock coats of many colors and cuts, hunting shirts, silk sashes, thigh-high boots or leather leggings. These heroes, Harrison knew and often regretted, were not the sort of obedient, anonymous drones that would make up an ideal legion. They were frontier adventurers, undisciplined individualists, glory seekers, politicians, scoundrels, aging revolutionaries, each bent upon making himself a legend, it seemed. They were a commandant’s nightmare. Though at times they were as brave as centurions, their discipline was as motley as their fancy costumes. As they had shown at Fort Meigs six months ago, they were as quick to flee in panic as to charge with, reckless bravery.

  Especially so were the Kentucky Mounted Riflemen, whose commanding officer just now had risen and was coming toward Harrison, carrying in each hand a pewter cup that gleamed in the firelight. This officer, of patrician features and grand bearing, was Colonel Richard Mentor Johnson. He was also Congressman Johnson. He was one of the congressmen known as the war hawks, and he had left Washington to come out and gain laurels in this war he had helped to start. Colonel Johnson’s dress reflected his two roles: the beaver top hat and elegant, fur-collared frock coat of the statesman were veneered with the plume and gold braid of the soldier.

  Harrison accepted the proffered cup with a nod and a wry little smile, put his left hand behind his back, and touched the rim of his cup to the congressman’s.

  “Fortes fortuna juvat,” toasted Colonel Johnson, who had learned enough Latin to become a lawyer and to awe voters.

  “Deo adjuvante, non timendum,” replied Harrison.

  The Latin toasts delighted him, his head just now having been so full of Caesar. Another officer, looking almost a twin to Johnson, appeared beside him and raised his own cup to theirs. This was Colonel James Johnson, the congressman’s brother and second-in-command of his brigade. “Death to the slippery red bugger,” proposed this lesser Colonel Johnson, who was known at home as Reverend Johnson.

  “Which red bugger d’ye mean, Jimmy?” the congressman smirked. “Redcoat or redskin? Ha, ha!”

  “I mean that Tecumseh. I do aim to take home a patch of his hide, God willing.”

  “And just so does every man here,” came the raspy voice of old Colonel Whitley, an aging Indian fighter sitting near the fire, all clad in deerskins and wampum belts. “That there Shawnee better have a lot o’ skin, I’ll say!”

  “Well, sir,” said the congressman, “if he’s as big as all the talk has it, he should have enough hide to go round.” That brought more hard laughter from around the bonfire.

  Now Harrison spoke, his tone a bit condescending. “Contrary to his legend, gentlemen, he’s not all that big; no more than your height, I’d say, Congressman. But on my word, when he jumps up before you with his tomahawk, he does seem gigantic, take it from one who knows.”

  Those around the fire murmured appreciation. They knew that story: Harrison facing off against an angry Tecumseh with drawn sword, all in a large crowd of witnesses and with a newspaper journalist present. Harrison tended to mention it often, to remind people of it. He would still get shivers when he remembered that cocked, taut, copper-skinned arm, those hazel eyes blazing into his own. And yet, sometimes, Harrison would remember those eyes instead shining with charming mischief as the Shawnee crowded him toward the end of their log bench. It was a shame Tecumseh was such an intractable enemy, for Harrison would have loved to have him as a friend. The governor believed that aside from his color, Tecumseh was superior to any of these heroes around this bonfire, except himself. He glanced around at their firelit faces. He pointed with his cup toward a huge, graying man in a woolen cloak, with a mane and face like an old lion’s. “General Kenton, you know Tecumseh. He’s not such a giant, is he?”

  Somebody called out, “Hellfire, Gov’nor, to Simon Kenton anybody’d look little!”

  In the laughter, Kenton wagged his big, shaggy head, then replied in his cavernous voice, “Gov’nor, I’ll just say this, ye tangle with that’n, size don’t count. It’s like havin’ a bobcat caught by his privates. Th’ harder ye squeeze, the longer his claws git.” He paused and shook his head again, gazing into the blaze, remembering across his eventful years. He started to say more but instead just nodded and sat back. Kenton did not wish to get into particulars; it embarrassed him to remember the times Tecumseh had turned the tables on him.

  Harrison, thoughtfully swirling the liquor in his cup, said, “But then, as the maxim goes, gentlemen, ‘The greater the enemy, the greater the victory.’ ”

  “Hear, hear,” cried the congressman. “Aut vincere aut mori!” It was a phrase he had liked to use while stirring up congressional enthusiasm for this war.

  “To conquer, or to die,” echoed Harrison, raising his cup high.

  “Aye!”

  “Hey, hey!”

  “Remember the River Raisin!”

  “Remember the River Raisin! Death to all the red buggers!”

  “A patch o’ Tecumseh’s hide for every man jack of us!”

  “Here’s to our hero of Tippecanoe! Tecumseh’s scalp for Gov’nor Harrison, hey, boys?”

  Harrison acknowledged their hearty sentiments with stately nods befitting a Caesar, though they grated on his soul. No one wanted more than he to see the British smashed in Canada and Tecumseh’s stubborn Indian confederation scattered. Harrison himself—he and young Oliver Perry—stood fair to become the saviors of the Northwest
in this war. Harrison knew that well, and it chimed with his ambitions. Like Caesar the campaigner who had gone home from the wars to rule Rome, William Henry Harrison aimed to go home someday and be president. The support of these rowdy westerners would help him get there. But he had always felt, secretly, that he was of a finer grade than they. And though he had done more than any of them to destroy the world of the red man, he did not relish the vision of their bloody hands scalping and flaying a noble leader—even though he was only an aborigine of the woods.

  A RED MAPLE LEAF FELL LOOSE FROM ITS TWIG IN THE DARKNESS of a treetop and tumbled down through the air toward the glow of a small fire. It danced and turned among the branches, falling toward one campfire among a hundred campfires. Six red men sat around this campfire, sharing a pipe.

  Tecumseh saw the red leaf coming down from the high darkness into the smoky fireglow. It looked as if it would fall into the flames. But when it reached the heated air above the fire-ring it hesitated, rose slightly, veered outward, caught the eye of Stands Firm, and then came to rest on the edge of Tecumseh’s scarlet British army cloak. Tecumseh looked at it and thought about the short life season of that leaf and the uncountable other leaves covering the ground, falling on the blankets of hundreds of sleeping warriors, falling on the new graves of fourteen warriors who had died today at the Forks of the Thames, ten miles back.

  Now scores of wounded warriors were lying in the barn and sheds, the mill and even the house, of Captain Arnold’s farm, while the unhurt ones camped under these trees. Arnold and his wife and sons had doctored the wounded and cooked kettles of porridge for the rest. And Arnold himself, Tecumseh’s acquaintance from the siege of Fort Meigs, had helped dig the graves for the fourteen. He had invited his friend to stay the night in the farmhouse, but Tecumseh had asked him to keep the badly wounded in the warm house instead; he needed to stay outside and council with his chieftains.