by Ron Carter
“I’ll take care of it. Let’s go home.”
Matthew held the door while the other two walked out onto the ancient black timbers of the Boston docks and waited while he locked the door. They went west together, away from the waterfront, and had just reached the intersection where they would separate when Billy stopped and looked at Matthew.
“What’s the best way to the Ohio Valley right now? The lakes or down across New York and Pennsylvania?”
Matthew reflected for a moment. “I think I’d take the land route. We’re in control of Lake Ontario and have been since the British attacked Sacketts Harbor and lost the battle last May. But they still control Lake Erie. An American ship might run into trouble. I’d go cross-country.”
“That’s what I think.” Billy paused for a moment. “I could be gone in the morning. If I am, would you write a letter to Madison? Tell him I received his. Tell him I’m looking for Eli.
Matthew nodded. “You be careful. Hear? We’re both too old for this business of war.”
Minutes later Billy walked through the front door of his home and Brigitte called from the kitchen, “Billy, is that you? Supper in ten minutes. Get washed.”
Supper was finished, the dishes washed, dried, and in the cupboard, and the remains of a leg of lamb were in the root cellar when the large clock on the mantel sounded half past seven o’clock. Billy led Brigitte into the library and invited her to sit opposite him. She sat erect, focused, aware something had happened.
She spoke first. “Is it Adam?” she asked, and he saw the dread in her eyes.
“Not Adam. I received a letter today from President Madison. He asked me to find Eli and tell him to meet with Tecumseh. The Shawnee are gathering up north, and Madison believes they intend joining with the British to drive us out of Canada. Madison wants Eli to persuade Tecumseh to give it up.”
“He wants you to find Eli? That’s all? Not go to war?”
“That’s all the letter said.”
“How soon?”
Billy drew a deep breath. “It has to be done soon. I’d like to leave in the morning.”
Brigitte stiffened in surprise. “So soon? When will you return?”
He looked her full in the face. “There’s no way to judge. It could be two or three weeks. I’ll come home as soon as I can.”
He saw her shoulders slump and the air go out of her. For a time she sat with her head bowed, looking at her hands folded in her lap. “When will it ever end?” she murmured.
Billy sat back in silence, giving her time. Finally she raised her head, and he saw the resolution in her eyes. “I’ll help you pack,” was all she said.
Clouds had covered the moon, and a breeze was coming in from the Atlantic to stir the curtains at the open windows when Billy finished rolling clothing and cheese and cooked mutton and hardtack inside a blanket and tying it. The mantel clock struck ten times as Billy blew out the lamps and the two of them sought their bed to kneel while Billy offered their nightly prayer. In the quiet darkness they heard the first sound of raindrops through the open windows, and moments later the soft, steady pelting of a summer rain. Brigitte rose to close the windows far enough to hold out the rain, and still leave an opening large enough to let the breeze clear the heat from the house. She returned to the bed, and moved close to Billy with her back to him.
“Hold me,” she said quietly. He could hear the strain in her voice, and he reached to gather her to him, to drift to sleep.
The dawn came gray, and the soft rain was still falling when Billy tied his blanket behind the saddle and mounted a bay gelding with his rifle across the saddle bows. He moved west, away from the dripping town to the narrow neck that connected the peninsula to the mainland, sharing the muddy, rutted dirt roads that wound through the thick forests with great two-wheeled farm carts drawn by horses, moving steadily past him toward Boston, loaded with the summer’s harvest for the markets of the city. He stopped to noon beneath the sheltering arms of a tall pine and hobbled the horse to let it graze while he ate cheese and hardtack and drank from a rain-swollen stream. The heavens cleared in the late afternoon, and at dusk he spread his blanket beneath a huge oak tree and built a small fire over which he heated mutton for his supper with the hobbled horse feeding in tall grass nearby.
With the days growing cooler as he moved inland, away from the humidity of the coast, he angled south of due west to cross the Hudson River thirty miles below Albany, then paid the fare to ferry across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania, well north of Philadelphia. The fourth day he crossed the Susquehanna River and turned just north of due west, winding through the incomparable beauty of the Appalachian Mountains to the Allegheny River, where he rested the horse one day before taking the ferry across to continue into Ohio, and on to the Sandusky River. There he turned north, directly toward the southern shore of Lake Erie.
It was late in the day when he reined in his horse at a trading post in a clearing carved out of the thick woods. One outside wall of the old, weathered log building was covered with a lion pelt and half a dozen out-of-season beaver pelts. Near the front door about twenty rusty beaver traps hung from pegs. A tired old gray mare stood at a hitch rack near the entrance, and Billy tied the bay next to her before he pushed through the rough plank door. He stood for a moment on the dirt floor with his rifle in hand while his eyes adjusted, then walked to his left where two heavy planks were supported by two barrels to form a counter. Behind the counter was an old, thin, gray-haired man with a straggly beard and a withered left arm that hung limp. Seated towards the rear of the room at a rough-cut table with a jug before him and a pewter mug in his hand was a round man with a jowled, bearded face and suspicious eyes.
Billy walked to the old man behind the counter and nodded to him. “I’m in need of some direction. I wonder if you might help.”
The old voice was high, scratchy. “Lost?”
“No. I need to find the nearest place where the military has an outpost.”
“Which army? British or American?”
“American.”
The aged man pointed through the wall behind him. “Straight on north. Can’t miss it. They been gatherin’ up there for days.”
“Who’s been gathering? For what?”
“Soldiers. Militia. Heard they’re expecting a fight up there on the lake. British and Americans.”
“Navy? Ships?”
The man bobbed his head. “Navy and army. Ours against theirs.” He pointed at his useless arm. “It was a fight like that cost this arm. Back in ’81.”
“Where? Which battle?”
“Yorktown. Heard of it?”
For a moment Billy was back thirty-two years at the edge of the small tobacco-trading village of Yorktown in the dark preceding dawn on that October day when the French and American soldiers stormed the British redoubts numbers nine and ten on the banks of the York River. He was Lieutenant Billy Weems, hearing the roar of the cannon and seeing the flash of the muskets as he led his company leaping over the ditch and sprinting up the rise to the abatis and then over the top, plunging in among the British soldiers. He saw his sergeant, Alvin Turlock, go down in the deadly hand-to-hand melee, and then the British threw down their arms in surrender, and he gathered Turlock into his arms and ran to find the surgeons.
He nodded to the old man in the trading post. “I’ve heard of it.” He paused, then asked, “You’ve seen soldiers passing here going north?”
“Several. Come in bunches. Some stop here. Goin’ up for a battle.”
“See any Indians going north?”
“Don’t hardly ever see ’em on the roads. They move through the woods. Don’t hardly ever see ’em.”
Billy nodded. “Thanks. I better be going on.”
The man asked, “You need supplies? Salt? Gunpowder?”
“No,” Billy answered, then reconsidered. “You have any brown sugar?”
“Got some. Gone lumpy.”
“I’ll take about a pound. And carrots. Go
t any carrots?”
A quizzical look crossed the old man’s face. “You’re askin’ for carrots?”
“Got a few?”
“A few. In that barrel over there.”
Minutes later Billy walked out to his waiting bay with a threadbare cloth sack holding lumpy brown sugar and twelve unwashed carrots. He held a large lump of sugar in the flat of his hand and lifted it to the nose of the bay. The long upper lip reached to grasp it, and Billy smiled as the horse worked it in its mouth and then lowered its head looking for more. He fed the horse two more lumps before he mounted and rode on north until dusk, when he set up his camp near a small stream, built a small fire, caught a trout with his hands, cleaned it, and set it on a spit to roast. He spread his blanket nearby and fed the horse three carrots before he hobbled it and let it go to graze through the night.
With the moon rising in the east and the hush of night all around him, he leaned his rifle against the trunk of a sycamore tree and sat down with his knees drawn up, staring into the last, low flames of the dying campfire to work with his thoughts.
If American soldiers and seamen are gathering at some military post up by Lake Erie, they’re expecting a major action, and that means the British are up there waiting. If they are, Eli’s most likely already up there or on his way.
Forty feet across the campfire, two large yellow eyes appeared in the blackness of the woods, and Billy stopped all motion to watch them. In his mind he was unconsciously judging how many seconds it would take to reach the rifle, cock it, bring it to bear, and fire. For three or four seconds the eyes did not move, and then they were gone as suddenly as they had appeared. Billy remained still, watching, listening for more than one minute for any sign of the big cat, and there was nothing. He continued with his thoughts.
If there is a major battle taking shape up there between the Americans and the British, the Shawnee are bound to get into it, and that means Tecumseh will be there. That’s where Eli can find him. The question is, can Eli find him before the fight, and if he does, can he talk him into staying out of it?
Billy pushed dirt over the coals of the fire and sat for a time in the black of the forest, listening for any sound that would tell him a great cat was circling, waiting. The only sounds were the frogs, the soft whisper of the stream, and the ruffle of silken wings of the night birds overhead. He went to his blanket with his rifle at hand and slept the sleep of a tired, aging man.
He awakened with the morning star fading and saddled the bay, hungry to ride north until the sun was directly overhead, when he stopped near a stream to eat what was left of the fish with some cheese and hardtack, and to drink from the stream and let the horse graze for half an hour. It was late afternoon when he caught his first glimpse of Lake Erie, shining in the sunlight in the far distance. He camped on the bank of a river and was up the next morning and mounted on the bay with his rifle across his thighs before sunrise. By late afternoon he was approaching the south shore of the lake, riding through a sprawling camp of men camped in clusters, some in uniform, some in homespun, some in buckskins, a few stripped to the waist, splitting wood or washing clothes or tending huge smoke-blackened kettles dangling over fires from twelve-foot tripods and filled with steaming soup. Some paused in the confusion to watch him pass while he made his way to a large tent with a flagpole and an American flag hanging limp in the still, warm air. He dismounted and approached the tent flap to rap on the front support pole. From inside a voice called, “Wait,” and a minute later a young, blond-haired man with blue eyes and a saber scar on the left side of his neck pushed the flap aside, still buttoning his tunic, with the gold bars of a captain on the shoulders. The man studied Billy for a moment and with narrowed eyes asked, “You wanted to see me?”
“Yes. My name is Billy Weems. I’ve been sent to find a man named Eli Stroud. He ought to be somewhere nearby.”
“Who sent you?”
“President James Madison.”
The young officer’s mouth dropped open for a moment, and then he laughed. “President Madison sent you?”
Billy drew the letter from inside his shirt. “Yes. He did. Would you care to read his letter?”
The officer stopped laughing. For long seconds he stared before he reached for the letter. For a time Billy stood quietly while the man read it, and read it again, then raised his eyes to stare in disbelief.
“Who wrote this?”
“President Madison. I need to find Eli Stroud.”
The officer refolded it and handed it back to Billy. He rounded his mouth to blow air for a moment. “Well, that may or may not be a letter from President Madison, but whatever it is, it looks authentic to me. Who is this man? Describe Eli Stroud.”
“Tall. About sixty years old. Raised Iroquois. Should be wearing buckskins. Moccasins. Carries a Pennsylvania rifle and a tomahawk. Fought with distinction thirty-five years ago in the Revolution. Sparse with words. Knows the woods. Good man.”
“He can speak Shawnee?”
“He speaks seven languages.”
The officer gaped. “Seven?”
“Including French and English and all Iroquois dialects.”
“He knows Tecumseh?”
“He knows him well.”
“How do you know this Eli Stroud?”
Billy paused for a moment. “I fought beside him in the Revolution. I was a lieutenant in the Continental Army.”
Surprise showed in the young officer’s face. “What’s your name?”
“Billy Weems. From Boston.”
“Well, all right, Weems. I’ve not seen Stroud but that doesn’t mean I won’t. If I do I’ll tell him you’re here looking for him. You might go on over to command headquarters about half a mile west of here and ask. Someone might have seen him.”
Billy nodded. “Thank you, Captain.”
“Good luck.”
Billy remounted the bay and reined it west at a walk, studying the men and the camps on both sides as he went. Halfway to the headquarters tent he passed the largest rope horse corral he had ever seen. He judged there must be fifteen hundred saddle mounts inside, and camped next to it was a great spread of tents on the lake shore and in the woods, and men in homespun and buckskins with a flag declaring them to be from Kentucky. Some stared as he rode by. He passed smaller camps with flags from Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and Michigan. He stopped in front of the largest tent, with an American flag hanging from a sixty-foot flagpole to one side. He rapped on the support pole and waited until a man wearing the gold epaulets of a colonel opened it to stare at Billy, impatient, scowling.
“What is it?”
“I was sent here by a captain in this camp to ask about a man named Eli Stroud.”
“A soldier? An officer?”
“No. A civilian.”
The colonel shook his head. “I don’t have time right now. Wait here.” The tent flap closed, and Eli heard brusque orders given inside, and a young lieutenant emerged.
It took Billy five minutes to explain himself, in which time the young lieutenant read Madison’s letter, looked skeptically at Billy, returned the letter, and said, “I am Lieutenant Uriah Ellington. You’re looking for this man Stroud?”
“I am.”
“I have not seen him. The best I can do is inform all the other officers and hope one of them will see him. Where will you be if that happens?”
“I’ll check with you every day, if that’s all right.”
“I’ll be available. Was there anything else?”
“Yes. How many men are gathered here?”
“About five thousand. More coming.”
“For what?”
Lieutenant Ellington took a deep breath and launched into it, pointing north across the lake.
“Weeks ago we cut off the supply routes to the British forces across the lake. There are thousands of Indians over there—men and women and children—all dependent on the British for food, and since we stopped the supplies, the British can no longer feed them. The
y’re starving—getting unruly. Captain Barclay—Robert H. Barclay—is the naval commander of the British warships on the lake. He lost one arm in a sea battle years ago, but he’s capable. Right now his sailors are on half rations. He’s desperate. We’re expecting him try to reopen the British supply lines, and to do that he’ll have to defeat our naval forces on the lake. We think he’ll attack sometime in the next twenty-four hours. Does that explain what’s going on here?”
“Most of it. Who commands our naval forces?”
“Captain Oliver Hazard Perry. He’s young, but he’s good. He has nine gunboats, and they’re out there right now, waiting for Barclay.”
Billy came to a focus. “Do you know the names of the American ships out there? Is there one named the Margaret?”
The young lieutenant’s forehead wrinkled. “Is she a commissioned naval ship?”
“No. A volunteer. Civilian.”
“I only know about the commissioned ships. There isn’t one named the Margaret.”
Billy shifted his feet. “Thanks. Ask your officers about Eli Stroud. I’ll check back.”
The lieutenant disappeared back into the tent, and Billy led the bay away, further west to the fringes of the great camp, where the tents and the men thinned. He stopped just inside the woods to unsaddle the bay and buckle on the hobbles to let it graze while he sat down to eat what was left of his cheese and hardtack. Finished, he arranged the saddle beneath a tree with his blanket next to it, led the bay to a tiny brook to let it drink, then led it back to his saddle and hobbled it nearby in the grass, tied to a twelve-foot picket rope.
With the sun setting, he watched the men gather for their evening mess and took his wooden bowl to stand in the line with the Pennsylvanians, listening to the excited talk of the battle that was coming. He saw in them the rise of tension that was a strange, contradictory mix of impatience to get into the shooting and a fear of the death and destruction the shooting would bring.