by Lori Benton
As she watched him sleep, that familiar bone-deep longing nearly overwhelmed her—to take him up and start walking, through the bark lodges, out through the fields standing ripe with corn, with Pippa strapped to her back. And just keep going.
This could be her only chance.
Yet what chance was there really? It would take weeks to get back to the Ohio on foot, with two small children to keep alive, countless perils between, including an army of Virginians purportedly marching westward to do harm to these people, therefore more Shawnees than usual running about the countryside keeping an eye out for them. Not to mention wild animals, starvation, accident, and who knew what other perils?
Even in the face of all reason, the temptation was strong.
“Clare?” She looked across the lodge to where Jeremiah sat at the table. “I wish it could be so simple. I do.”
Her every thought must be written on her face.
Sighing, she dropped her gaze to her son, having to content herself with the sight of his sprawled limbs, his sweat-dampened hair, his little mouth fallen slack in sleep. However fleetingly hers.
“I know,” she said.
Rain Crow was at the door-hide the next morning, demanding her son’s return. Clare gave him over with a smile that seemed to take Rain Crow, and everyone gathered to watch the exchange, visibly aback. Had they expected a battle? The only battle raging was the one inside her heart as she stood outside the lodge, Pippa in her arms, and watched as Jacob looked back after Rain Crow summoned him to her side. Mildly confused, he raised a hand and waved to her. “ ’Bye, Mama. ’Bye, Mr. Ring. ’Bye, Pippa!”
Rain Crow’s face stiffened, but she pretended not to have heard what Jacob called her.
Clare hadn’t allowed herself to think that Rain Crow would let Jacob stay with her one moment longer than necessary. Yet the crush of disappointment felt unbearable.
“Clare? I’m so—”
The warmth of Jeremiah’s hand on her arm made her yank free of him. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry. Not now.”
She was fighting for control, fighting the doubt that seethed like waves against her heart. She was doing what Jeremiah said she must, but it seemed to be making no difference. This tiny taste of what she’d lost only broke her heart afresh. Was this the best it was ever going to get? Now and then a stolen moment, an hour, a day with her son, watching him grow up Shawnee, calling Rain Crow mother?
Provided that army of Virginians would leave them in peace. Or was that coming army the thing that would set them free?
“I wasn’t going to say that,” Jeremiah told her. “I was going to say how proud I am of you. That was a hard thing, but you did it with grace.”
She opened her mouth, but no words came. Only tears, swelling in her nose, burning her eyes, blurring her vision. Still she saw the arms held out to her.
Moving purely on instinct, she walked into them, felt them come around her, warm and solid and strong.
She let Jeremiah Ring hold them both until the weeping passed.
LATE SEPTEMBER
KANAWHA TRAIL, 12TH WEST VIRGINIA CAMP
Captain Alphus Litchfield left a meeting of the officers frustrated enough to curse. James Harrod’s Kentucky Pioneer Company hadn’t arrived at Camp Union before the Augusta County Regiment was ordered to begin their march westward—a methodical winding over terrain both mountainous and heavily wooded. Now, he’d just been informed, Harrod’s company—having arrived at Camp Union the day after Alphus’s departure—had remained behind when the Botetourt Regiment marched. Once again Alphus was prevented from speaking to the one man who might have some notion of what had befallen Clare and her family.
With every day’s passing, his worry deepened, no matter how often he told himself Philip wasn’t so great a fool as to leave his wife and children undefended against the depredations of raiding Indians.
Truth be told, he wasn’t sure on that score.
Lord, help. Alphus lifted another prayer for Clare, as he did whenever she crossed his mind, morning, noon, and night, then shoved those anxieties to the side and set his thoughts to the business at hand, with which there was plenty to contend.
The regiments were encamped where the Elk River joined the Kanawha. While awaiting Colonel Lewis and the rest of the army, the Augusta Regiment had built a fortified supply camp. While the remaining cattle would come along the trail, from that point canoes were to carry the Southern Army’s supplies more swiftly to the mouth of the Kanawha at the Ohio.
Twenty-seven large canoes, all of which must be built.
Following the rhythmic bite of axes, he found half his company grouped around the base of a broad cedar. Having over half the tree left to cut, they broke off to gather around their captain, eager for any news or orders he might impart.
Before Alphus could do either, young Geordie Reynolds piped up, “Mustn’t be good news, Capt’n. You got your stormy face on,” and blushed scarlet when Alphus leveled him a look and the rest hushed him.
Drawing a breath laden with fresh-cut cedar tang, Alphus gazed round at his men. “It’s troubling news, right enough. You’ll have noted the Botetourt companies come in to lend a hand with these canoes.”
“Yes sir, we have,” Ezra Baldwin cut in, ax in hand, pale hair darkened with the sweat of his labor. “About time, too.”
Alphus forced a smile as the rest of his men grunted approval to the pronouncement, then proceeded to pass along what he’d learned at the meeting with the Colonels Lewis and the regimental officers thus far gathered. “There’s been some changes to our orders.”
This was met with the grumbling Alphus expected. He raised a hand to stem the questions he saw forming on the lips of Baldwin and others prone to talk before thinking. “Governor Dunmore reached Pittsburgh early in the month to lead the advance of the northern army, but he’s changed his mind about the rendezvous at the mouth of the Kanawha.”
That had been where the two wings of the army were meant to converge before crossing the Ohio and marching up the Scioto to attack the Shawnee towns on the Pickaway Plains.
“The governor has it in mind now to try talking with the Shawnees and Mingos one more time.” More grumbling, but others did the shushing and Alphus went on. “Seems some Delaware chiefs—ones that might hold sway over the Ohio Indians—aim to head straightaway to the Scioto towns, convince the Shawnees to meet at the mouth of the Hocking River for a council. That’s to be in early October.”
“Is that where Dunmore wants us to go?” Ezra asked.
“Where is the Hocking?” asked a young man, Judah Sawyer.
“Empties into the Ohio,” Alphus said. “Above the Kanawha some seventy miles.”
All the men stood staring, silenced by this, until Baldwin asked, “So what’s it mean for us? Do we continue on to the mouth of the Kanawha?”
“Soon as we get these canoes built, that’s exactly what we’re meant to do.” Alphus could see most of them had held hopes of leaving off the laborious job.
“And after we reach the Ohio?” Sawyer queried, but that was a question even Colonel Andrew Lewis hadn’t been able to answer; the commander of the Southern Army had been none too pleased about the muddled change in orders and hesitant to commit to them.
“Runners are going between,” Alphus said. “Like as not there’ll be a message from Dunmore waiting for us when we arrive at the Ohio, if one doesn’t find us sooner.” But the question he couldn’t put out of his mind was what Dunmore might have decided to do by then—send them all marching back to Virginia? It wasn’t as unlikely as it might have seemed a few weeks ago. “One thing’s certain: we and all our victuals have to reach the Ohio.”
“What about Harrod, sir?” Baldwin asked. “You get to speak with him?”
Gazes shifted in the awkward silence that followed. In the distance the chopping of axes sounded loud as other companies worked at felling trees.
Alphus let his silence speak.
“Did the colonels have anyth
ing to say about the ruckus back east in Massachusetts?” someone behind Alphus asked, the voice he recognized as that of Jon Lawson, last to be recruited into the company. The others turned to look at him, some with blank gazes, some questioning, some dark with knowledge of said ruckus.
Alphus was of the latter group. “Where did you hear that?” he asked, turning to eye the man.
Lawson shrugged and wiped at the sweat on his neck, smearing it with the dirt and tree bark clinging to his hand. “A Botetourt man’s spreading it about. Got the news afore they marched.”
No point letting rumor spread.
“It’s true, right enough. Round the first of the month a General called Gage sent soldiers to seize militia arsenals in Charlestown and Cambridge, Massachusetts.”
Lawson asked, “Them Bostonians ain’t going to sit back and let themselves be overrun by Crown troops, are they?”
“I cannot speak for the people of Boston,” Alphus said. “What I know is that we now have us a Continental Congress, which has met in Philadelphia.”
“A congress?” Geordie asked. “Of what?”
“Delegates from the colonies, including Massachusetts. I reckon there’ll be answer to Gage, and a great many other grievances, directly. If there hasn’t already been.”
Again silence fell, in which Alphus could tell the attention of the men had suddenly divided. West toward the Indian problem. East toward the British problem.
“Sir?” Lawson ventured. “Any hope this council on the Hocking will end things here for us? Let us head back home and tend to matters there?”
“And them that wish it go about settling the Ohio,” Baldwin added, being of the latter sort.
“Let’s hope so,” was the best Alphus could say to that. “For now, men…make those wood chips fly.”
Alphus heard only one or two muffled groans at the order, though most of the men muttered to each other about all he’d conveyed—Dunmore’s puzzling change of plans and the ruckus back east, as Lawson had phrased it.
The river wasn’t running high now. Though its banks were still clothed in summer’s tired green, here and there a tiny flame of the coming fires of autumn had kindled. The hills were steep, rising up from the banks in rounded crowns thick with tangled woodland. A peaceful setting, at first glance seemingly devoid of any life save that of bird and beast and biting bugs.
Alphus knew better. They were being watched—had been as far back as Camp Union on the Greenbrier. Whether it was Mingos, Shawnees, or both, Alphus didn’t know, but there’d been some wounding of men who’d strayed too far from camp alone, and one night some horses had gone missing.
Behind him came a shout and the great, tearing crash of a falling giant. The earth shuddered beneath his boots, and the displaced air of the fallen cedar swept past. He was turning back toward his men, ready to pick up a blade to assist, when he sighted the figure on the river’s far bank.
Drawn no doubt by the noise they were making, the tall Indian had brazenly shown himself, stepping out from tree cover to stand and stare, risking a rifle shot, for while the river was wide, it wasn’t wide enough to guarantee a miss.
They know we’re coming. And our numbers. Hang it all, they likely know our names and what we ate for breakfast.
Across the distance the Indian scout held Alphus’s gaze with a force so strong the river between might have shrunk to a bitty creek. Then the Indian moved back into cover, gone so quick he almost seemed to vanish.
The hair on the back of Alphus’s neck stood stiff.
Maybe it wasn’t a bad thing Dunmore had changed his plans. Might make it harder for the Indians to anticipate their next move if half the army hadn’t a clue what that next move might be. But a thousand men, their cattle and victuals couldn’t be expected to dart about the wilderness like a flock of parakeets. They were a ponderous thing, easily overtaken.
It was all well and good for Dunmore, still safe up along the Ohio, to jump from plan to plan as the fancy took him. Alphus only hoped the Southern Army of Virginia wasn’t moving straight into an ambush.
LATE SEPTEMBER
CORNSTALK’S TOWN
Wolf-Alone was away scouting, down along the Kanawha River where the southern division of Dunmore’s army was making its slow progress toward the Ohio, but Jeremiah and Falling Hawk were present in the council house, where the chiefs of the Shawnee towns and their warriors had assembled. Each had had a chance to speak. Now all were listening to their principal chief, Cornstalk, address them on the issue of war with the Virginians.
Jeremiah sat to the side, on a raised platform. From there he could see through drifting pipe smoke the upturned faces of those men seated in the forefront of the gathering, arranged in a half circle around the open space where speakers stood. Among them was Puckeshinwah, war chief of the Shawnees, come from across the Scioto River. A thick-set man and muscular, his broad face was set, the mind behind it fixed, Jeremiah was certain.
There were Delawares present, among them the war chief Buckongahelas.
Though Logan wasn’t present, there were Mingos.
Around the half-circle sat the Shawnee chiefs Black Hoof, Blue Jacket, Black Snake, and the brothers of Cornstalk—including Silverheels.
Directly across from Jeremiah on the far side of the half-circle sat Nonhelema, come to listen on behalf of the women, who had yet to declare whether they were in favor of their men going to fight the Virginians. She hadn’t spoken, but nearly all who had addressed the assembly had done so in favor of meeting the approaching Long Knives head on.
Not Cornstalk, who was making a final plea for diplomacy and warning of the losses they would suffer if it came to battle.
Jeremiah couldn’t be the only one wondering what losses such an attempt to placate the Virginians would bring. Dunmore was angry; Wakatomica’s destruction was proof of that. And determined. Even if the governor could be made to agree to a peaceful solution, he would place grievous conditions upon such peace. No outcome now could guarantee the people would be left alone, their hunting lands unthreatened. Dunmore wanted land for Virginia.
“So why not meet them in battle and take from them the chance to take from us what is not theirs to take?” Puckeshinwah stood to demand the instant Cornstalk relinquished the place of speaker. “We are strong. Together with our Delaware and Mingo brothers we are stronger. The Long Knife army is divided. The half in the north have only begun to come down the Spaylaywitheepi, while those from the south come along the Kanawha as slow as children at play with all their cattle and supplies! Let us attack one or the other of them. If we defeat that half, then we can talk of peace and come to that talk with more to bargain with. Or we can go on to fight the other half of the army if that seems best.”
Mutters of agreement arose, even a few enthusiastic yips from younger warriors tired of talking, ready to strike the war post outside, don their paint, and be about the business of slaughtering the coming Long Knives.
Puckeshinwah sat down amidst the approving clamor, letting it underscore his words.
When no other made to rise in the silence that fell, Cornstalk again stood to his feet.
“I have said all I have to say on the matter of the Virginians. You warriors know my heart is not for war, for many of our best men dying. I ask you, Puckeshinwah, and all you warriors, to go from this place and think on that, on what all that dying will mean to your women and children in the coming winter. In all the coming winters, until your sons are grown to replace you. But if your minds do not change, I will bow to the will of the people. That includes the will of our sisters.”
Turning to the woman who had sat quiet while man after man had spoken, he said, “My sister, you have yet to speak on this matter of the Long Knives. We must stop them—this I do not argue against—but by what means would the council of women wish that to be done?”
Nonhelema rose to her impressive height. Her hair was loose about her face, which still held hints of its former beauty though she was nearing fifty now.
The murmuring at Cornstalk’s final words fell away as every man quieted himself to hear what she would say.
“In this matter my heart and my brother’s are one.” Nonhelema’s voice rose clear and strong as a warrior’s, carrying to all present. “I would try for peace before I consent to war, unless the hearts of my sisters are against mine. As my brother says, we will do the will of the people, even if it proves to be a bloody path the Shawnees wish to walk.”
She paused to let those words sink in.
“Today I call my sisters to the high ground across the creek. Let the women of Cornstalk’s Town gather in my town tomorrow and make their voices heard.”
At the council’s breaking, men drifted out into the sunlight of early autumn. Some warriors not from Cornstalk’s Town had chosen to remain, ready to fight the Long Knife army, already presuming what the women would decide.
Jeremiah overheard them as he and Falling Hawk stood outside the council house speaking of Wolf-Alone. They hoped to see their brother back soon from his scouting across the Ohio. Jeremiah had wanted to go with Wolf-Alone, but in the end hadn’t felt right about leaving Clare. Or Jacob. Not now he’d begun to develop a friendship with the boy.
Though their mutual adoption made them kin, Jeremiah had kept his distance from Jacob Inglesby, apart from the contact Clare was allowed—until Rain Crow asked him to act as uncle to the boy and teach him the things he needed to know to grow into a useful man. Of all her brothers, adopted or otherwise, she’d asked this of him, and Clare had been so encouraged when he’d sought her thoughts on the matter, so moved with hope that it meant Rain Crow’s heart was softening toward her, he’d been unable to decline the offer.
Not that he’d wanted to decline it. He shared Clare’s hope. But there was another reason he’d wanted to accept. Clare had told him what Rain Crow said about choosing the name, Many Sparrows, and he was coming to think it as fitting a name as he’d ever known a Shawnee child to be given. Jeremiah doubted he’d spoken so much in the past year as he’d done since he’d begun teaching the boy to use a bow, to read tracks in the forest, to learn the ways of the animals he would one day hunt—whether he remained Shawnee or not. Clare was eager to hear about their time together, and Jeremiah indulged her. He liked the way she hung on his every word of her son. He liked the intensity of her attention.