Prelude to Glory, Vol. 4

by Ron Carter

  Eli broke the silence. “See the tracks?”

  Billy nodded. “Panther. Big one.”

  “Male or female?”

  For a moment Billy narrowed his eyes in thought. “Probably a tom.”

  “Good,” was all Eli said.

  They hunched low to approach the rimrock, then laid on their bellies to move the last twenty feet and peer over, down the slope. The entire Three Rivers valley spread before them, wisps of morning fog rising from the rivers to drift through the trees and disappear. For a moment both men lay still, struck by the power in the sweep of the great forest as far as they could see, with the rising fog and the rivers, and everything changing from moment to moment as the eternal sun once again did its work.

  With the morning sun warm on their backs, they had no fear of sunlight reflecting off their telescope lenses to warn the enemy camped below. They quickly drew them from their scarred leather cases, and in a moment each was slowly working his glass back and forth, counting tents, lodges, and as far as they were able, men.

  Eli spoke quietly. “Some more came in last night.

  “Maybe twenty more Indian lodges, and six more tents.”

  “Wonder who they are.”

  Billy shrugged, and they continued their vigil, watching, counting, waiting while unanswered questions silently came and went. Suddenly Eli tensed, then spoke quietly.

  “There he is. Brant. In the clearing off toward the lodges.”

  Billy shifted his telescope and twisted it to bring it into clear, sharp focus. At eight hundred yards, through a telescope, there was little to distinguish one man from another, yet instinctively Billy knew which one was Brant. He was dressed much like the others, but there was something about the way he carried himself.

  Eli again broke the silence. “There’s Daniel Claus. Off to the right, walking south between the tents.”

  Again Billy shifted his telescope until he picked up a white man among the tents. He was not wearing a uniform. Eli drew a stick of green pinewood from his belt and began cutting notches as he counted. Both men raised their telescopes as a white man came pounding into camp on a galloping horse, hauled it to a sliding stop in the open ground, and dismounted. Joseph Brant and Daniel Claus came quickly to meet him as the animated man pointed east. Brant stood still, apparently listening, while Claus moved, obviously agitated, then walked back toward his tent with Brant following. The two disappeared inside for half an hour before Brant threw back the flap and walked purposefully away, back toward the Indian lodges on the south side of the clearing. He entered a lodge, and Eli marked it well with his eye, gauging distance and direction from the trees and from the Seneca River.

  Again Eli spoke. “I believe that horseman was Tice. Captain Tice. He was with St. Leger over near Fort Oswego. Whatever news he brought got Claus excited.”

  The sun had climbed to its zenith, then started west, when Billy pointed. From their right, approaching the campsite, nine Indians, stripped to the waist, armed and painted, broke from the forest into the open, and a column of men followed them. Mixed among them were white men, and suddenly Eli started.

  “Butler! With his Indians! He was back on the Unadilla, headed north to gather warriors. There must be more coming in behind him. If he’s here, this is more than just a gathering. Get a count on those Indians if you can.”

  Both men steadied their telescopes and began counting the moving dots when Billy stiffened and pointed north. Eli brought his glass to bear, and his breathing slowed. A column was coming in north of the Oneida River, led by a horseman in a British uniform, with gold braid sparkling on his shoulder and on the trim of his tricorn. Behind him marched an army.

  “St. Leger! That must be St. Leger,” Eli hissed. “That explains it. He’s the one St. Clair said was sent to lead the attack on Stanwix. That’s what this gathering is all about. Try to get a count, and watch for cannon.”

  In silent concentration they watched and counted as the column forded the river and came dripping into the camp. The leaders assembled and waited for St. Leger to halt his column in the center of the clearing and dismount. They spoke, Claus pointed, and St. Leger turned to give orders to his command. They broke ranks and gathered around him, waiting. Brant turned from the circle and walked rapidly back to his lodge, then returned one minute later carrying something wrapped in doeskin. There was a brief conference, and the leaders turned to give orders. Ten minutes later every man in the entire camp was gathered in the clearing, surrounding the leaders, who had formed a circle around Joseph Brant.

  With great dignity Brant laid the doeskin on the ground before them, threw back the folds, and solemnly knelt to pick up an object partially hidden from Billy and Eli. He raised it chest high, handling it reverently.

  Eli reared up in shock. “That’s an Iroquois warbelt! They’re going to take up the hatchet!”

  Billy rolled partially on his side, staring at Eli for an explanation.

  “Take up the hatchet. Declare war. If I’m right, the whole Iroquois confederation is going to be divided—ruined. We’re watching the destruction of everything the Iroquois have stood for ever since Hiawatha and Deganawida buried their weapons so long ago.” His eyebrows were peaked, forehead wrinkled, hands trembling. Billy had never seen him so moved, so shaken. They turned their glasses back to watch, Eli still as a statue as he gaped.

  Joseph Brant raised the warbelt toward the heavens, and they watched his mouth move with words they could not hear. He lowered the warbelt, offering it to the leader next to him. The man accepted it, raised it to the heavens, and also spoke.

  “That’s Giengwahtoh,” Eli said. “He accepts it for the Seneca.”

  The belt was passed to the next man, who repeated the raising and the words, then passed it on.

  “Juggeta,” Eli murmured. “For the Cayuga.”

  The belt moved on as Eli called the names. “Gahkondenoiya, for the Oneida. Shegwoieseh, for the Tuscarora.”

  Eli pushed his telescope away from his face and his head dropped forward, eyes closed, as the realization of what the two had just witnessed more fully drove into his heart. The mighty Iroquois, divided, split, at war with each other. The work of the greatest leaders on the continent, smashed in ten minutes. Decades of diplomacy, restraint, building, patiently building, cut down forever as they watched. A wave of sorrow swept over him, and for a moment his whole body trembled. Billy did not understand it all, only enough to realize something profound had just occurred, and that it had reached into Eli as nothing ever had before. Billy neither moved nor spoke.

  In time Eli raised his head again, and peered through his telescope. The warbelt was passing among all the men, both Indian and white, with each man touching it, committing himself to fight to the death in the taking of Fort Stanwix and in the war against the Americans. In short order, Butler brought out six barrels of rum, and within minutes the camp was a scene of raucous, drunken celebration. Chests of trinkets appeared, and the Indians broke them open to seize the gaudy baubles and parade about with them like children.

  Slowly Eli lowered his telescope and turned tortured eyes to Billy. “It’s over. More than a hundred years of peace. Brotherhood. Compassion. Bought by white men with rum and trinkets. Bought because the white men want the Indians to fight their white man’s war. Half the Indians with the British, the other half with the Americans. The peace and strength of the Iroquois confederation, all gone, forever.”

  Billy saw the beginnings of rage in Eli’s eyes, and then Eli slowly shook his head as he took control of himself. “We better get a count.”

  For a long time they patiently counted before Eli reached for his pine counting stick and began cutting notches. Minutes later he spoke quietly, subdued. “I count three hundred British and Germans in uniform, about four hundred Canadians in uniform, and around seven hundred Indians and Canadian civilians. That’s fourteen hundred. Maybe five, six cannon. What’s your count?”

  Billy turned to look at him, studying his eyes f
or a moment. They were flat, blank. “I’d say a few over fourteen hundred. I saw about seventy rangers in there.”

  “I saw them, but I didn’t see St. Luc or Langlade. I wonder why they aren’t here.”

  Billy shrugged. “Maybe they’re still coming, later.” He pointed west. “If they are, they better hurry. Feels like weather’s coming.”

  The two men settled and waited. The light breeze in the trees died and an odd stillness stole over the land while the air became muggy, sweltering. Sweat ran from their foreheads into their eyebrows, then their eyes, and dripped from their noses and chins. Eli glanced west. “Storm coming off the lake. A big one.”

  They lay on their bellies in the sweltering heat, silent, not moving, sweating as the afternoon wore on. While the two men peered west, great thunderheads formed to billow twenty thousand feet into the heavens. They covered the sun, casting the world in a strange, premature twilight. Billy and Eli sat quietly, awed, strangely feeling their own smallness as the gigantic clouds surged and rolled. The hidden sun lined the thunderheads with silver that changed to gold, then faded to gray, and finally turned to blue and deep purple. A west wind rose, light at first, then gaining as it drove the black clouds scudding toward land, their underbellies bulging, hiding the sunset. The first fat raindrops came slanting on the wind, splatting into the pines and oaks and the rocks and rivers, followed by a steady drumming that drowned out all other sounds as the cloudburst swept over them. The sun set and was gone, leaving the world in blackness and pelted by torrential rains that made it hard to breathe.

  The first lightning bolts flashed for ten miles inside the roiling clouds, and two seconds later the cracking boom shook the ground as it came rolling in. In the drenching downpour Eli tapped Billy on the shoulder. Billy leaned close and squinted to see Eli point. With lightning cracking so close they could smell the acrid aftermath, and thunder shaking the hills, and wind whipping their wet hair, the two men left their perch on the rimrock. They worked their way through the mud back to the entrance of their cave, down the slant, into the small inner chamber. They stopped for a moment, drenched, with water running from their hair, down their faces, and waited until they could distinguish between the blackness inside and the blackness outside. Then, by feel, they reached for flint and steel and tinder and dry twigs.

  Five minutes later a small fire cast their shadows huge on the walls as they set water to boil and dug salt beef from their knapsacks. They used their blankets to work the dripping water from their hair, then sat down shivering near the fire, and added larger sticks for warmth.

  They sat cross-legged before the fire with their wooden cups clasped in both hands while they sipped at scalding coffee and gnawed at strips of salt beef. Slowly the shivering stopped. Eli finished his cup and set it aside before he spoke.

  “I’m going out,” he said. “I should be back before morning. If I’m not, take the counting stick and go back to report at Fort Stanwix. There are fourteen notches. One hundred men for each notch. Three notches for the British and German soldiers, four for Canadians in uniform, and seven for Indians and Canadian civilians. Five close ones for cannon. Can you remember it?” He held out the stick and Billy accepted it.

  “Yes. Where are you going?”

  Eli exhaled. “Into their camp.”

  “For what?”

  “To let Joseph Brant see me.”

  Billy raised his head in surprise. “With the wampum belt?”

  “No. That will come later, if it comes at all. I’ve got to let him see me close enough for him to know I could have killed him. If we ever get to use the wampum belt, getting out alive might depend on him knowing I could have killed him, but didn’t.”

  “You trust his sense of honor?”

  Eli shrugged. “It’s the best chance we’ve got.”

  “Want me to come?”

  Eli shook his head. “If this goes wrong, someone’s got to get to Fort Stanwix to report there’s fourteen hundred enemy on their way.”

  “How long do I wait?”

  “I should be back sometime just before dawn. If sunrise comes and I’m not here, go east along the Oneida River, past Lake Oneida, straight east until you come to the Mohawk River. Fort Stanwix is right at the place it turns to run north. You can’t miss it.”

  Billy nodded. “You be careful.”

  “You, too.” Eli rose to a crouch, then hesitated. “If I don’t get back, will you find Mary Flint and tell her what happened? Tell her . . .” He hesitated, hunting for words that would not come. “Tell her . . . I wish her well.”

  Billy saw the hesitation, saw the look in Eli’s eyes, and knew the words he wanted to say but could not. “I’ll tell her.”

  Eli disappeared up the incline, and Billy settled beside the small fire, listening to the steady roar of the wind and the rain outside, working with his thoughts and the knot of fear in his chest as he pondered Eli’s chances of getting into the camp of fourteen hundred men, somehow confronting Joseph Brant, and getting out alive.

  * * * * *

  Taking direction and judging distances during the lightning flashes, Eli worked his way down the gentle slope west of the rimrock, angling slightly to the south as he went. At five hundred yards he turned to his left through the brush and mud to the trees, until he reached the bank of the Seneca River. He followed the curve of the riverbank north, slowing as he came in behind the Indian lodges. He stopped, waiting for the next lightning to show him where they were, and how close he was to the one into which Joseph Brant had gone after his conference with Daniel Claus.

  The flash came and for two seconds the entire camp was brighter than noonday while the thunder shuddered the ground. In that instant he saw the lodge he was seeking, sixty yards ahead and to his left, near the tree line. And in the same instant he saw the Indian picket just to the right of the lodge, hunkered down beside a boulder, nearly invisible.

  Did he see me? Did he?

  Instantly Eli broke to his left, moving quickly ten yards before he crouched beside a windfallen tree and drew his tomahawk from his belt. Silently he worked his right hand through the leather loop, took a grip on the wet handle, and waited. Seconds became a minute, then two, and he could hear no break in the sound of the wind and the rain, see no movement in the blackness. Not one campfire remained burning in the downpour. Across the campground, among the white men’s tents, through the pelting cloudburst he could see a few dull smears of light where soldiers had lighted lanterns inside their canvas shelters.

  Where is he? Coming?

  He was rising to move when lightning broke overhead and thunder cracked, and from the corner of his eye he caught the movement. He was partially turned when the hurtling body struck him, and Eli went down to his left, onto his back in the mud, clawing upward for the hand he knew had to be grasping a raised tomahawk or knife. He missed the hand, but the outer edge of his forearm struck the wrist as the hand started its downward stroke, and he shoved outward with all his strength. The head of the tomahawk smacked into the mud eight inches from his head, and he felt the hand start to rise to strike again. He grabbed desperately for the soaked buckskin sleeve and jerked it back down, then grabbed for the tomahawk. His fingers closed on the wet handle, slid up to jam against the iron head, and he wrenched it outward, away. The man’s other hand came clawing for Eli’s face, fingers searching for his eyes, while the man jerked to free his tomahawk and drive it into Eli’s skull.

  In the instant of knowing where both of the man’s hands were, Eli swung his own tomahawk in a twisting arc, and the flat of the iron blade slammed into the side of the man’s head. He grunted and lost his hold on Eli’s face. Eli struck once more, and the man relaxed and slumped forward, unconscious.

  For a moment Eli laid still with the warrior’s weight partially on him before he threw the body aside, splashing in the mud and driving rain. He rose to his feet, turned the man onto his back in the mud, and reached to feel his throat. The heartbeat was steady.

  Eli s
hoved his own tomahawk into his belt and felt for the hand of the man before him. He pulled the weapon from the limp grasp, slipped his own hand through the thong, then bent forward to take hold of the front of the man’s soaked buckskin shirt and jerk him to an upright sitting position, then stood him up and draped him over his shoulder.

  Cautiously he walked, splashing through the mud to the entrance of the lodge of Joseph Brant, leaned forward, and dumped the unconscious body against the stiff deer hide that covered the low entryway. The weight shoved the covering inward, and the upper half of the body disappeared into the dim light inside the lodge, with the legs and feet remaining outside. Eli took two steps back and waited, standing loose and easy, ready to move in any direction, with the fallen man’s tomahawk dangling from his wrist.

  Within seconds strong hands reached to pull the limp picket inside, and then, with Eli standing less than eight feet from the lodge, Joseph Brant emerged to stand erect, head thrust forward, peering into the pelting rain and the impenetrable blackness. A moment later lightning bathed the Three Rivers campsite in shimmering light, and in the three seconds of brightness, the two men faced each other less than six feet apart, each staring at the other.

  Brant did not move. Eli tossed the picket’s tomahawk at Brant’s feet and made no other movement while the face of each man was burned forever into the brain of the other, and then the world was once again locked in blackness while the thunder cracked over their heads like cannon. Two seconds later, lightning crackled once again, and in the light, Joseph Brant found himself standing alone. Eli had vanished without a trace. Brant stood for a moment longer in the rain, then bent to pick the tomahawk from the mud, turned, and disappeared back into his lodge.