It was probably a sentry belonging to the army. But I quickly dismissed that, for I was practically stepping on his toes, and he should be calling out his challenge. With everything to lose and nothing to suffer other than a mouthful of leaves and a new fit of wounded pride, I tripped a-purpose and squawked like an alarmed rooster, imitating a clumsy, accidental fall. Soon as I was flat on my back, I rolled and aimed my rifle where I sensed the danger. Then I waited, motionless as a man severely hurt and unable to stir.
My simple ruse put me in better position to locate the stalking enemy. The advancing redstick would count on the thick brush amid the tree butts to hide him. But lying flat to the ground, I hoped to detect the movement of his legs and feet through the lower, spindlier portions of that same concealing brush, a favorite trick of Bear’s.
I watched and listened . . . and for all my trouble and playacting, saw and heard absolutely nothing. I was beginning to feel like a child afraid of the harmless noises natural to the night hours.
Leaf dust tickled my nose, and I reared upward to avoid sneezing. The flying arrow flashed by my throat at such speed the threat to my life wasn’t apparent till its flint point, powered by the launching bow, thwacked into the beech trunk next to my ear. The chunking impact stopped my heart no less suddenly than a giant fist smashing into my chest, for the quivering arrow was so tight to my neck I could have laid my chin on its yellow-painted shaft with no strain whatsoever. Had I not raised my head at just the right moment, I would have been pierced from temple to temple.
The arrow had approached from my right, not the left where I had been watching, and with frantic haste, I rolled and squirmed and quit doing so only when I had the protective trunk of that handy beech perfectly centered twixt me and the new position of the enemy. Whoever the Injun was out there, he was damnably clever. Giving himself away with a misstep hadn’t discouraged him or deterred him. He had ignored my ruse, circled silently, and missed killing me by the thinnest of margins.
It didn’t take much anxious pondering for me to reckon what was required lest I wanted to die then and there. Where I might have been a match for Gabe Hookfin, I was against a superior foe now, and I wasn’t shamed by such an admission.
Sooner beating later, I had me a deep gulp of wind, and unlike my slow walk leaving the Dodd fire, departed the sheltering beech trunk in a bobbing, weaving crouch of a run. I prayed at every footfall I was a flitting, difficult, impossible target in the moonlit, brush-choked, heavily treed bottom of Seven Mile Creek. And for what reason I knew not, the Lord in this instance chose to favor me over my enemy.
It was a well from which a man didn’t dare draw water too often.
Chapter 7
Nighttime, 5 October
The shimmering waters of the creek loomed before me, and I bore upstream, running fast as I could till I was among the grazing horses. A soft whistle brought me to a halt, and there stood Bear, wide and thick in the moonlight. Damn, but he was a most welcome sight.
“Shadows spookin’ yuh, lad?” he asked calmly.
“No, an Injun,” I squeezed out, gasping for air.
With that simple statement on my part, Bear Watkins was suddenly serious as a hangman with the gallows rope in his fist. “Was he alone?”
“Don’t know. He sent an arrow at me, but I never got the first glimpse of him or any others.”
A few pointed questions and Bear had the whole story from me, excepting, of course, why I had been barging about in the woods. That I kept to myself. My squabble with Gabe Hookfin was a private affair.
“Well enough,” Bear decided. “We raise the alarm an’ bolt after your Injun, we’d likely get one of us killed, maybe more. Come along. We’ll fetch Tap and have us a parley. I don’t allow that brash pup Hookfin will place much faith in anything I say, but perhaps the other Dodd men will. They deserve fair warning. The Injuns would provide the same for their own.”
At our camp, Val Dodd, Ira Fellows, and Gabe Hookfin were roasting strips of freshly butchered beef strung on iron rods over open flames, meat drippings sizzling and popping. A kneeling Henry Cross tended a skillet of johnnycakes lumpier than the head of a frog with the point of his knife. Brackish tea boiled in a battered tin pot hanging by its handle from an iron tripod. It surely was a far journey backward from the sights and smells I had experienced at Molly Green’s fire. Elegant fare being easy to recognize and appreciate, not surprisingly, Tap’s nose wrinkled in disgust at what he branded marching victuals, those cooked with few seasonings and little flair.
Bear halted at Val Dodd’s shoulder and gazed across the flames at Gabe Hookfin. “Dodd here says you suspect the redsticks are stealing our horses. Ever seen any of your thieves?”
The beanpole’s slit of a mouth stopped chewing. “Naw, but they’re out there. How else can we be losin’ animals?”
“I’m not doubting your word,” Bear asserted. “The Shawnee are lurkin’ nearby as we speak.”
Four pairs of eyes moved as one, first surveying the surrounding woods, then centering on Bear. “How you know this?” a nervous Val Dodd inquired.
“Ethan nearly lost his life to a Shawnee arrow a few minutes ago, that’s how,” Bear said, settling the butt of his rifle on the ground.
“You wouldn’t be tryin’ to tree us, would you?” Hookfin asked, his tone both hostile and suspicious.
Bear leaned forward, insuring each of the Dodd men a clear gander at his rough-hewn, fully bearded face. “No, I ain’t tellin’ nothin’ but the truth, and so’s Ethan. Ethan ain’t no stranger to the wiles of the Shawnee. He wasn’t but ten and four when they waited till his paw and the rest of us Downer men, all except the smithy, went off on the fall hunt. Then they burst into the Downer cabin. If’n Ethan hadn’t killed two of the red heathen with his hatchet soon as their heads showed at the top of the loft ladder, and Jehrico done for two more and barred the door against the rest, Caleb Downer would be without heirs. Even then, the redsticks still carried off Ethan’s brother, never to be seen again.”
I’d been watching Hookfin, and he was, in turn, studying me. If Gabe believed what he had just heard, he had to be wondering if I really feared a fight with him. Maybe I wasn’t a coward after all. Either way, his dislike for me was obvious and unmistakable, for his close-set eyes glowed hot and bright as the coals of the cooking fire.
Bear peered left and right, head moving slowly. “I ain’t blowin’ Ethan’s horn for the joy of it. We searched the woods after we returned from our hunt an’ learned a heap. Them Injuns scouted that cabin for a full week till the time was ripe in their favor. An’ they’ll be skulkin’ thataway along every mile we march into their country, waitin’ for the slightest chance to lift our hair. So we want to live to spend Duer’s gold, we best not stack our weapons like St. Clair’s soldiers. We best keep our long guns at the ready wherever we be an’ not venture off alone. The Shawnee and their friends, the Miami, crave a quick, quiet scalpin’ with little danger to themselves well as anything.”
“You make me wish for the stables at Fort Pitt,” blurted Val Dodd. “Once I was asleep there, I had only to worry about the rats gnawing on my toes. How can we best guard the animals until dawn, Monsieur Watkins?”
“Now whoa up, Goddamn it,” Hookfin protested. “You’re in charge, Dodd, an’ we ain’t takin’ orders from no man of Caleb Downer’s.”
Henry Cross swallowed a mouthful of johnnycake and pointed his knife at the beanpole. “Don’t fret so, Gabe. Ira and me followed Dodd out here from Fort Pitt to store up coin for the coming winter, not to do battle with any damn redsticks. So you speak for your ownself. We’ll do our own jawin’.”
The beanpole snapped the iron rod in his hand downward, dashing his uneaten meat into the fire. Snorting angrily, he retrieved his musket from the upright stack of weapons behind Ira Cross, snatched his rolled blankets from the ground, and paused at the outer edge of the firelight, a step from the blackness masking the creek. His anger stretched the dry, leathery skin ever tight
er over the sharp bones of his lean features. At that moment, Gabe Hookfin appeared more dead than alive.
“I’ll take my next orders from Court Starnes an’ nobody else!” the beanpole vowed before brandishing his musket and striding into the night.
Ira Cross sighed and stared where Hookfin had disappeared. “We told Starnes that skinny snot would be trouble he hired him. Maybe he gets himself killed, Court’ll start listenin’ to us.”
“The cold air will cool his temper,” Val Dodd concluded with a shrug, reaching into a canvas bag and passing iron rods to Bear, Tap, and me. “Meantime, you gentlemen need not starve. The beef hangs from that limb behind Ira, and Henry’s johnnycakes may be coarse as a dime whore’s heart, but they won’t break your teeth.”
Not a soul ringing the fire gave the departed beanpole another thought. Val Dodd granted us time to roast and eat our fair portion of the available victuals. It was while pouring scalded tea into our drinking vessels that he repeated his earlier question. “Monsieur Watkins, how can we stand watch over the animals until dawn?”
“We can’t,” Bear answered bluntly.
A startled Val Dodd was at a loss for words. “But, but we—”
Dense hair covered the top side of the hand Bear raised to quiet Dodd, and one of the gray eyes almost hidden by his heavy, overhanging brows winked reassuringly at the confused horse master. “There’s an Injun roundabouts, an’ we ain’t sacrificin’ any of us to him. We’ll move into the trees and sleep in twos, backside to backside. As for the animals, we’ve got the riding stock strung on a picket line. The creek bottom should keep the packhorses bunched together. Come first light, the riding stock can graze on longer ropes while we gather the packhorses. Tomorrow, we’ll talk Starkweather into assigning some of his dragoons to help us. Then we’ll be strong enough to post guards on the entire herd through the night.”
Val Dodd’s lips curled in a smile so wide it all but buried his thin mustache. “I believe you and me will become the best of friends, Monsieur Watkins. I have always trusted you men from the woods. Let me pour you more tea.”
Despite its rank flavor, we spiked the tea with dollops of rum and finished it, every last drop, then set about retiring for the night. When Ira, Henry, and Val Dodd saw us Downer men piling layers of branches to separate our blankets from the bare ground, they hastily did likewise. Tap didn’t say anything aloud, but he muttered to himself and shook his head at how a body could live years and not know enough to avoid a cold bed.
It was some later that a careful shaking awakened me from sound, dreamless sleep. Tap, his backside pressed against mine, turned his shoulders and whispered, “Take a peek at the fire.” I did, and beside what had become a pile of gray ashes and a few glowing embers squatted Gabe Hookfin, blankets wrapped ’round his narrow frame. Tap wiggled closer. “That’s a right fine lesson for yuh, sprout. Stubbornness is big a sin as ignorance. It’s made Walking Stick there a prime target for your Injun if’n he’s still on the prowl. Shame to think a fellow, even a turd like him, might die for just wantin’ to be warm a spell, ain’t it now?”
Tap, of course, expecting no answer, rolled over and was immediately asleep and snoring. I, on the other hand, lay awake no little time. And when I did drop off again, I slept fitfully, drifting from one disturbing dream of new acquaintances to another. First came a scowling Court Starnes, walnut-knuckled fists poised to strike. Then Miles Starkweather seated on the Kentucky sorrel, examining a long-bladed knife with a rosewood handle. Then Tap’s newly named Walking Stick, Gabe Hookfin, dressed like a cornfield scarecrow, yelling orders I couldn’t hear. Then a bejeweled Erin Green, clothed in a silk gown, dancing in the middle of a ballroom filled with uniformed officers, a dazzling Erin Green who ignored my beseeching calls from the edge of the crowd. And, lastly, a painted Shawnee with his bow fully drawn, the feathered arrow aimed at my chest.
For all the true rest I gained, I might as well have stayed awake till dawn.
Chapter 8
First Light, 6 October till Retreat, 7 October
My dreams vanished when I came awake at the first hint of day. Wood smoke stained the faint light seeping through the trees as it had yesterday, and leaves pattered the ground, shed from branches by a whisper of chill breeze. Drums rolled upcountry, indicating St. Clair’s army, two thousand four hundred bodies strong, was on the rise, as were the shapes lumped in pairs shy of the Dodd fire.
Ira Cross shook free of his blankets, the barrel of his long gun rapping the curve of his skull. “Ain’t natural sleepin’ with no rifle. Proper man sleeps with a woman, not somethin’ cold and hard and likely to gouge him where it’s tender.”
“Trust me,” said Tap. “In a few nights that old gun will seem like a third arm, an’ you won’t be able to sleep without it no more’n a baby can doze off without his spell at the teat.”
Henry Fellows stood and stomped feeling into his booted feet. “Yeah, but no rifle’s ever gonna surprise you with a wet kiss in the middle of the night neither, is it now?”
Tap laughed uproariously and swatted Henry on the shoulder. “You’ll do to stone the deck with, my friend. You’ll do just fine.”
Bear then introduced the Dodd men to another dawn ritual, the checking of powder and pan and lock and flint, all of which preceded even the morning call of nature. A genial gathering at a rekindled fire followed, for Gabe Hookfin was nowhere to be found. At the finish of rather scanty fixings, Val Dodd announced, “We must secure new rations from the quartermaster. It is my hope that your father, Monsieur Downer, has a shipment arriving today. If he doesn’t, Captain Starkweather says the general will be forced to reduce us to half rations, perhaps as early as tomorrow. And many in the ranks have threatened desertion if they don’t receive what their recruiting officers promised them.”
“The silly fools. You ain’t nothin’ but if’n you believe the army can provide a pound an’ a half of flour, a pound of meat, and a half-pint of whiskey every day of the year,” reasoned Ira. “So far, they’ve failed on everythin’ at least once but the whiskey, an’ that’ll dry up sooner or later, mark my words.”
We shortly went off on our morning horse gather, and nothing else was said about the critical shortages threatening St. Clair’s regiments. For that, I was thankful. After Ira’s blaming of the army itself, I had nothing valid to offer as to why paid civilian contractors like Duer, Starnes, and my father had failed to deliver not only the daily rations in a timely fashion but also necessary equipment and dry powder. More and more evidence indicated Paw was in mighty big trouble with General St. Clair, and it bothered me I wasn’t at his side. I felt helpless as a blind calf.
Our morning gather revealed we were missing two head of riding stock and an equal number of packhorses, not a large number given the fact that we were responsible for seventy animals of Duer’s along with the army’s five hundred baggage horses. Miles Starkweather, moving the baggage horses forward with his mounted dragoons, took a different slant on our latest losses. “I must inform General Butler personally. Those are my orders. He’s extremely upset that you have neither hobbles nor bells to prevent such occurrences.”
“Captain, we need to arrive at an understanding,” Bear suggested smoothly.
“And what would that be?”
“Six men can’t look after these horses by themselves. We need a guard detailed to help us.”
“How large a detail would you need, Mr. Watkins?”
Bear didn’t slight the opportunity Starkweather laid before him. “No less than forty men. Combined with what we have, we can split into two squads, one for each half of the night hours.”
Starkweather thought a few moments, then his billed helmet bobbed up and down. “I shall discuss the matter with General Butler. Perhaps I can persuade him to listen. Till this evening, Mr. Watkins.”
The army jerked into motion at ten o’clock beneath fair skies, and for the next two days clawed a path to the northwest, its objective the upper reaches of Seven Mile Cre
ek, the rim of the valley of the Great Miami River. Tightly growing tree butts and hardy brush impeded our advance every rod. The ground dipped and climbed, and the ring of felling and clearing axes echoed all about us, constant as the beat of regimental drums. Countless streams and shallow ravines required bridging timbers, and the long column, stretching three-quarters of a mile from advance to rear guards, lurched and stopped, lurched and stopped, till the curses of the marchers rivaled the ring of axes and the beating of drums. In forty-eight hours, we marched a grand distance of nine whole miles.
A tired and worn Miles Starkweather joined us in line behind the officer’s servants late the second afternoon, 7 October. A smile eased his square, clean-shaven jaws. “Mr. Watkins, I have finally arranged a meeting with General Butler. I shall tell him we lost additional animals last night. You may count on my utmost support in mounting a military guard over the horse herd.”
That said, he hefted two fifty-pound cloth bags of flour tied across the pommel of his saddle, one in each hand. “Mr. Downer, I have an errand to ask of you. Please deliver these rations to Molly Green. Sergeant Devlin cannot be spared anytime soon, General St. Clair may arrive within the hour, and those who depend upon Mistress Green are in need. Can I trust you to do so?”
I vowed then and there to pray more frequently. I had spent every waking minute trying to conjure up a means of seeking out Erin Green without leaving Bear in the lurch when it came to my share of our daily duties. And now Starkweather had requested I visit her family on official army business. Blessed be the meek and the faithful.
Bear didn’t speak till Starkweather rode beyond earshot. “Deliver the flour and feast your eyes on that sweet gal, if’n you must.” He removed his hat and swiped sweat from his nose. “I expect you back by sundown. Can’t say I wouldn’t race you to the Green camp was I a tad younger,” he said with a sly grin. “Be off with you, lad!”
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