Panther in the Sky

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  At first sight this did not look like as good a battlefield as Chatham on the Forks had looked. It had no creek, no bridges, no buildings.

  Here the road passed between a bend in the river and a wood of big maples and oaks and beeches. The trunks of great fallen trees lay on the forest floor covered with moss and drifted deep with dead leaves.

  Now with his chieftains Tecumseh rode to Procter. The general’s jowly face was sallow and puffy, his eyes were squinting, his nose and cheeks etched with scarlet capillaries; his hands were shaky. But for once he was able to look at Tecumseh’s eyes instead of around them, because he had stopped running from the enemy.

  “You choose to fight here, not at the Moraviantown. Why is this, Father?” Tecumseh asked.

  “The Americans are too close behind, I believe. We wouldn’t have time to march there and fortify the place. So we will turn and face them here.”

  Tecumseh felt a wave of scorn and old anger and wanted to flail Procter for not fortifying the Forks instead—but this was the day he was to die, so yesterday did not matter, and it was too late to cure a man’s stupidity. So he said instead, “Perhaps that is better.” He thought of the refugee families that would be filling the town by afternoon. It would be better to keep the battle far from them. “But,” he said, “are your cannons not already at the town? I see only one here.”

  At this, Procter’s face grew flushed, and his hands flopped at his sides. Tecumseh could see in this gesture alone that Procter had indeed lost control of everything and knew it, and that he was making his stand only because he had no more choices. He said, “Have you not sent for them to be brought here, Procter?”

  “I … well … not yet.…”

  “You have five cannons in a place where you have decided not to fight, and one cannon here where you mean to fight,” Tecumseh said. “Would it not be better the other way?”

  Procter, pawing at his chin, turned and looked about till he saw a major, whose name he seemed not even to remember, and he stammered, “Uh, you … send, uh, somebody, and tell Trough-ton to bring the artillery back.… Oh, no, I’m sure there’s not time.…”

  Tecumseh glanced toward Colonel Warburton, who stood nearby, his expression fallen into a set of resignation and disgust. Other officers were grouped around as if waiting to be told what to do.

  “Come,” Tecumseh said to his chieftains, “let us look at this place where we will fight.”

  It was not a good way for a general to choose his battlefield. But of course Procter could not help that, really, because this was the place the Great Good Spirit had long ago appointed for Tecumseh to die.

  His hopes rose as he looked over the place. It was better than he had thought. The huge fallen trees made natural breastworks. The western edge of the old woods opened onto thickets of second growth, which would hinder any charge of horse troops and give dense cover for his warriors. He rode weaving slowly through this, having to duck and fend off branches. He emerged on the edge of a reedy swamp where dead tree trunks stood gray and barkless in the muck. Two hundred paces to his left was the road, clearly visible. On the right of the swamp was a brushy meadow and beyond it a larger swamp, extending far to the west, parallel to the road.

  To his eye it looked like a fine place for either an ambush or a stubborn defense. The steep-banked Thames would protect the defenders’ left flank. The road led straight between that barrier and the woods and the small swamp. Any attacker who tried to outflank the defenders by swinging away from the riverside would be caught in a wide meadow between two swamps, facing a dense thicket. With those swamps and woods and thickets filled with warriors and Redcoats, and with cannons set up behind barricades and aimed down the road, it would be perfectly set up to trap an army.

  Tecumseh rode out across the meadow now, galloped out westward toward the road, then turned and rode toward the thicket in order to sense the terrain from the Americans’ viewpoint. As he rode back in, he could see that the Long Knives, in order to get close enough to attack, would have to funnel themselves into either one or both of two traps: between the two swamps or between the little swamp and the river.

  “The Master of Life has shown us a good place to meet the Long Knives,” he said. “Let us bring our warriors up and place them.”

  PROCTER’S ORDERS TO HIS OFFICERS WERE VAGUE AND CONTRADICTORY. The Redcoats responded by milling about, getting in the way of each other and grumbling because they had been marching hungry and there was no breakfast in view. Procter failed to tell them to build breastworks, so they didn’t. The artillerymen set up the six-pounder cannon in the roadway and aimed it down theroad but built no barricade in front of it. Colonel Warburton was put in command of the first line, which was deployed athwart the roadway, from the river to the small swamp, and a second line was stationed in reserve two hundred yards to their rear. The Redcoats did not stand in ranks in the open, as was their custom, but took cover behind the big trees of the woods and in clumps of brush.

  As the hour of battle drew near, Tecumseh grew very animated and keen. He moved along the lines quickly, a fresh white bandage on his left arm, stationing his warriors in the margins of thicket and swamp and encouraging them. He seemed to shine with light, though he had discarded all ornaments and wore only his plain, close-fitting buckskins. Stands Firm could hardly keep up with him; he followed him with the ramrod clutched in his hand, thinking that Tecumseh did not act like a man who expected to die.

  Tecumseh gave command of his right wing to the Ojibway chief South Wind, who had influence over both his own tribe and the Sioux, and told him and Naiwash to infest the edge of the large swamp on the right. Then Tecumseh himself, with Winipegon, Black Hawk, Black Partridge, and Charcoal Burner under him, took charge of the tribes who would defend the thicket between the two swamps and the forest behind it. This put his Shawnees next to the right flank of the Redcoats. He felt that Procter would need watching, and he wanted to be close enough to coordinate the actions of the Redcoats and the tribes. Billy Caldwell with his good command of the English tongue and his ability to write messages would be the liaison between them.

  Every warrior had been given a finger-size stick as he approached the battlefront. When these sticks were collected along the battle line at noon, they numbered five hundred. The British force, soldiers of the Forty-first Regiment, with Canadian dragoons and the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, were no more than that, as so many had been scattered out on details at Moraviantown and along the road. So it would be a thousand against the three or four thousand of Harrison’s Long Knives. But Tecumseh could not feel discouraged. Five hundred Redcoats were a magnificent sight, and Tecumseh felt that any one of his warriors was worth five Americans in a contest of this sort. They had wanted this fight for a long time. And they knew they were the only barrier between their families and the Long Knife soldiers.

  After midday Open Door came down from Moraviantown, where he had left the refugees, and now he rode out along the battle line in a flowing cape, sitting tall and looking almost as grand as he had in his days of prominence, and he even handled his horse tolerably, as he went along assuring the warriors that he was praying for power from the Great Good Spirit and was caring for their families. He held Tecumseh’s hand for a moment, saying nothing about Tecumseh’s premonition, which Star Watcher had confided to him. His eye glimmered with tears, and Tecumseh could feel coming from him some of that unselfish love that Open Door had possessed for a few years while giving his best service to the People. Tecumseh looked at his brother’s dead eyesocket and remembered that long-ago accident with the arrow, and his heart swelled with pity and affection for this strange brother of his. Then Open Door squeezed Tecumseh’s hand very hard and rode back to take a place near Procter’s carriage and sat there holding his medicine fire stick tightly in both hands, praying as he had used to pray when he was Weshemoneto’s vessel.

  Soon the scouts came up to report that the Americans had already forded to this side of the river. They had cro
ssed very quickly, each horse soldier carrying an infantry soldier across behind his saddle, and now they were but a mile down the road, though still out of sight in the woods beyond a bend in the road. There the army had stopped, and their Leathershirts and their Shawnee scouts from the band of old Black Hoof were coming ahead to reconnoiter.

  So now Tecumseh set out to make a final tour of his battle line, riding with his head high and his painted face agleam with eagerness. He carried his rifle slung on his back, his sheath knife hanging from his neck, his tomahawk and Brock’s silvered pistols in his belt.

  He rode first to Procter, who was standing nervous and pale and blinking behind the center of his reserve line. Seeing the general’s abject wretchedness, he decided to encourage him if he could. He dismounted, went to him, and extended his hand. Procter’s palm was clammy.

  “Father,” said Tecumseh, smiling at him, “have a big heart. Tell your soldiers to be firm, and all will be well!”

  Procter, who knew nothing of Tecumseh’s premonition, stood puzzled by this effusion of goodwill. “I hope,” Tecumseh said, “the other cannons arrive before Harrison attacks.”

  Then he swung onto his horse and trotted down to the Redcoats’ first line. He gripped the hand of Colonel Warburton and suggested that he should have his cannoneers place some kind of protection in front of the cannon. Then he shook hands with Colonel Evans and Major Richardson, sometime comrades in the defense of Fort Malden, wished them strong hearts, and rode northward to his sector and dismounted. On foot then he moved swiftly along his line of warriors. “Weshecat-too-weh, be strong! Stand your ground! Shoot well! They are out of their groundhog hole at last! Have a big heart! Weshe-kesheke, a fine day!”

  They felt the warmth pour from him into their own hearts. They knew what they were to do if he fell and could not rise again. But they saw his brother-in-law right beside him with that magical ramrod, and they believed that even if he fell, he would be touched by it and given back his life, to fight on, as he had said. They had no doubt that this could happen on such a day. This was their father who had made the earth shake and who had defeated American armies almost every time he had fought them. They drank up the warmth and love and strength that came from him, and they did not believe he could die, they did not believe he could lose, and so they were in good heart for the battle. Along the right wing he found his son, whom South Wind had asked to fight alongside him again today. He wanted to embrace his son, but now this was a warrior, not a boy, not someone to be embarrassed or weakened by a show of affection. So Tecumseh only reached over, shook him by the shoulder, and said, “Weshecat-too-weh! Make our People proud of you, as I am now. Tanakia, farewell!”

  “Tanakia, Father.”

  “WHY DOES THIS BLUE-COAT GENERAL WAIT SO LONG?” Stands Firm asked in the middle of the afternoon. He was clutching the ramrod as if in a death grip, and he had stayed within two paces of Tecumseh all day, ready to tap him four times with it the moment anything happened. Far down the road, through gaps in the golden foliage, the American army could be seen moving, and the blended noise of all their movements and voices was like the rush of water. It was not raining today, but the ground was soft and the sky was overcast. Tecumseh said:

  “Remember, brother, this is General Groundhog. He is cautious outside his burrow.” But the waiting was almost too hard to joke about, and Tecumseh was so eager for the final things to happen that he felt ready to leap out of his skin.

  Then at last the brassy blare of the bugles sounded through the chilly air, the munching and rustling of thousands of boots through the brush, and the long formations of the walking soldiers could be seen coming into the open, seeming to come very slowly. Behind the walking soldiers, visible over their heads, were the mounted troops. There looked to be at least ten hundreds of men on horses.

  Tecumseh, standing on a log, saw what he had been looking for. He pointed. “Harrison!” he shouted.

  There he was, a half mile away, riding his light gray mare slowly up the road, at a little distance off to the side of one of the masses of walking soldiers. Tecumseh tried to think hard enough that Harrison would feel the thoughts. Come close, Harrison! Let us sit on this log together, and this time you will fall off! Here I am, and we are our peoples, you and I! Come close enough!

  Tecumseh wondered if the cannon Redcoats were aiming down the road at Harrison, with grapeshot in the barrel. The road was straight. Surely they could see him. Tecumseh wanted above all to kill Harrison himself, but if he got no opportunity to do that, it would be almost equally satisfying to hear the cannon blast and see Harrison blown out of his saddle way over there.

  But the cannon did not shoot, and Harrison came no closer but just held up his saber and made his horse prance around out there beyond gunshot range, and the walking soldiers came on.

  Harrison, O enemy, will you never come as close as you did once, there by your own house, when you pointed your little sword at me?

  When the walking soldiers were a little closer and their crunch and rustle came louder in the breeze, their officers shouted, and their formations began changing shape; their front seemed to widen and veer northward. And two long lines of them were now flanking toward the big swamp where the Ojibways, his son among them, lay in wait. Harrison’s scouts had done their work well; Harrison knew just where all his enemies lay concealed, and there would be no surprise.

  But yes, Tecumseh thought, the surprise will be how firm we stand before his numbers.

  Another line of the walking soldiers was coming straight toward the thicket where Tecumseh stood. In the distance another neat formation of the Blue-Coat regulars tramped alongside the road toward the British, their bayonets thick as the quills of a porcupine.

  It was awesome how a white commander could make so many hundreds of soldiers move as if they were not men with souls and minds but fingers of his hands. Tecumseh remembered what it had been like to train two dozen dancers to do a ceremonial dance in unison. This that the white soldiers did was something like an enormous dance. As he waited with rifle ready, he remembered the first time he had seen that phenomenon, when as a boy he had watched the Long Knife Clark attack Piqua Town.…

  The walking soldiers! Suddenly Tecumseh felt strange stirrings, both of hope and doubt. For in his dreams the forms coming at him out of the noise and yellow light had not been walking soldiers, they had been horse soldiers. Could it mean that the dream had been only that, a dream, that the walking soldiers would be leading this attack as they were doing, and that he was not going to be killed today by horse soldiers? If he had dreamed something different from what was happening now, could it mean that he was not to fall in battle? Or that horse soldiers would kill him some other day, not this day?

  Then Harrison down on the road pointed his saber, and bugles bleated again, and hundreds of voices rose up whooping and yipping in the distance, and the rumble of hoofbeats overrode the tread of the walking soldiers. The mounted troops came streaming around the walking army, galloping headlong up the road. Half a thousand horse soldiers were thundering straight up the road toward the Redcoats, vanishing beyond the screen of woods at Tecumseh’s left. As many more horsemen suddenly turned out and angled across the meadows between the marching army and the swamp. They were riding more slowly because of the brush and boggy ground but nevertheless moving straight up the meadow into the trap, right up toward the Shawnee sector of the battle line. The warriors in the thicket cocked their guns and nocked their arrows and waited with prayers and pounding hearts for them to come close enough. Tecumseh stood on the thick log, and through the thicket he could see the heads and shoulders of hundreds of Kentuckians and their horses, all becoming more distinct as they rode closer. He glanced down at the gray head of his brother-in-law, who was now where Thick Water had always been, and put his hand on his right shoulder. Stands Firm pressed his cheek against that hard, cold hand for a moment. He gripped the ramrod that had become the most potent and important artifact in all the world, more sa
cred now than any of the Prophet’s carved cedar sticks.

  A volley of musket fire erupted on the left where the British were, and a great uproar of yelling and neighing and sporadic gunfire, and the continuing rumble of thousands of hooves, then another thunderous volley. But the sound that Tecumseh yearned to hear—the crash of the cannon spewing case shot into the Blue-Coats—never came.

  Now in front of the Shawnees the Kentuckians had skirted the narrow swamp and were spurring their war-horses, charging up through the brushy meadow and howling for revenge, the brush crackling and shuddering under them.

  And now it was as it had been in the dream after all: the earth quaking under hoofbeats, voices howling, Stands Firm at his side, the tall horsemen becoming distinct among the yellow leaves.…

  Now they were too close to miss. The war cry pulsated from Tecumseh’s throat. Hundreds of muskets and rifles went off at once, and flights of arrows arced through the powder smoke. Riderless horses reared and whinnied and collided and tumbled, and many soldiers fell to the ground. Tecumseh bellowed, “Tschi, kill them!” and the ground nearby was stirring with crawling, writhing, fallen horse soldiers. “Pe-eh-wah, this way,” Tecumseh’s voice trumpeted. “Chase them!” He sprang forward off the log and darted through the undergrowth toward the milling, hesitating Kentuckians and straight into their midst, Stands Firm right behind him, and a hundred warriors rose to follow. Tecumseh leaped at a soldier and dragged him backward off his rearing horse, bashed his head in with his rifle butt, then sprang for another. A soldier who had fallen from his saddle in the first volley stood up and leveled his rifle at Tecumseh. A Shawnee hurled a tomahawk from ten paces away, and it penetrated the soldier’s temple. The Shawnee leaped on the soldier the moment he fell and scalped him.