by Lori Benton
Then once again the line of battle thinned and receded northward as the Indians fell back farther.
Alphus found a breath of space to take stock of the immediate situation. More Virginians had fallen, a few dead, more wounded. Some thirty yards ahead on the ridge, figures were moving, Indians dragging their wounded and dead back with them as they retreated, not quite concealed in the sun-dazzled woods, hazed with drifting smoke.
Geordie saw them too, and something Alphus had missed.
“Sir! Is that—it’s a white man with ’em. Fighting with ’em. Look!”
Alphus looked, even as he was thinking he’d fought as long as a body his age could be expected to fight and then some. Lord, but it felt like suppertime, though it couldn’t be that late in the day. Whatever the time, he didn’t know if he had it in him to make one more rush after their enemies.
But the boy was young and grieving and freshly riled. He’d his rifle loaded and was already swinging it toward the trio of warriors, two of which were supporting the third who sagged between them, clutching their long firearms in their free hands.
Along the crest of the ridge, other Indians were doing the same, bringing off dead and wounded comrades as they withdrew, but only among these, dressed like them in breechclout and war paint and little else, was the unmistakable pale skin of a white man. He was one of the two supporting the wounded warrior. The other was an Indian, tall and well-muscled, his hair unshaven. The three were about to pass between two towering yellow-leafed oaks and disappear over the crest, down the other side.
Alphus felt a seething at sight of that long white back.
“Take him down, Geordie,” he said, voice rasped with shouting, throat gritted with smoke.
“Gladly, sir.” The boy leveled his rifle and fired.
Falling Hawk lived, though his wound was deep and bleeding heavily. For a while he’d sat upright behind the tree while Jeremiah and Wolf-Alone continued to fire. Jeremiah had seen too many acts of bravery and fortitude to count on the part of the Shawnees and Mingos, far beyond what these warriors were accustomed to committing to in a battle. They’d lost valued men in the doing of those deeds, some of them chiefs. Puckeshinwah, the war chief, and Silverheels, Cornstalk’s brother, were counted among the dead. Many besides Falling Hawk were wounded.
At some point in the afternoon, word had come that more Virginians were on the Kanawha Trail; runners had been sent up to alert them of the battle and hurry them along. Even if the Shawnees defeated these soldiers, more were coming. And there was still Dunmore’s Northern Army to reckon with. If they didn’t triumph here, that army would likely sweep them west beyond the Scioto, if they weren’t all killed first and ceased to be a people.
So they’d fought longer and harder and taken more risks, all these brave warriors, than they would have if the consequences of failing weren’t so high, but the afternoon was passing and hope for victory with it. The pushes forward had become less frequent, the fallings back deeper. The Shawnees couldn’t break the Virginians’ line, and they were running out of powder and ball.
Falling Hawk, though conscious, was slumped against the broad oak behind which Jeremiah and Wolf-Alone still took aim. They had wounded more Virginians from that spot, but Falling Hawk needed to be taken off the field.
When there was a lull, Wolf-Alone and Jeremiah got their brother up and, supporting him between them, made as hurried a dash as they could to reach a point of better cover. Jeremiah recalled a hollow beyond the crest behind them, just a few yards distant, that would lend cover. They’d get Falling Hawk well back, then return to help hold off the Virginians while the wounded retreated to the river and the rafts that would carry them across.
The three reached the lip of the hollow amidst the leaf-ripping of musket balls, the shouts of soldiers and warriors, the screams of dying men. Wolf-Alone descended a short way first, reaching back to take Falling Hawk’s weight as Jeremiah steadied him from above.
He never heard the shot—his ears were in a state of constant ringing—but a fiery pain seared the flesh above his right hip, and he stumbled under the impact, lost his grip on Falling Hawk, and tumbled down the leaf-strewn forest slope into the hollow below.
He fetched up hard against a stony outcrop. Wolf-Alone lost his grasp on their brother, who likewise fell, landing atop Jeremiah, who had to roll him aside in order to get to his knees.
“You are hit?” Wolf-Alone had leapt down into the hollow to crouch beside them, desperation marking that face so habitually composed.
“I am.” Jeremiah’s voice issued breathless as he tried to cover the blaze of agony arching through his side, above the cord of his breechclout. He reached his hand down and found leaves plastered to the wound, held there by his blood. “Just a graze.”
He barely looked at the wound, so he didn’t know whether he spoke the truth, but fear nipped at his mind as he got to his feet. He dropped a glance to his side. Blood was spilling down his leg.
Wolf-Alone hadn’t noticed, busy getting Falling Hawk back on his feet while Jeremiah reached to brace their brother beneath a shoulder. He made it a few yards beyond the hollow, following the low ridge back the way they’d come in the predawn, before he staggered, his right leg giving under him.
“You are bad hit?” Wolf-Alone asked, taking Falling Hawk’s weight.
Jeremiah went down to one knee. “Get our brother to safety. I can walk but cannot carry anyone else.”
Again somehow he was on his feet, but Wolf-Alone protested, “I will not take him and leave you!”
“I will be coming.” When Wolf-Alone still hesitated, Jeremiah found the strength to give his arm a push. It nearly sent him reeling off his feet. “Go!”
He could see the reluctant decision made in his brother’s face, while Falling Hawk raised dark eyes to him in a dazed, wordless look of…not farewell but something near to it.
“I will return for you,” Wolf-Alone said, and the two started away.
Jeremiah made it to a tree and looked back but saw no sign of militia following them over the lip of the hollow. Not yet. They would come, but cautiously.
He made it three steps alone, four…
The earth hit hard as he fell. Almost at once he roused, fear coursing through him. He would be overrun by Virginians if he didn’t draw off farther or…could he hide himself?
On his knees he looked about. No hollow logs or stumps met his gaze but there…a drift of leaves at the base of a tree. He crawled toward it but didn’t reach the leaves before his arms buckled.
A musket ball whizzed past his ear as he fell facedown again. He was in someone’s sights. He rolled onto his back, nearly screaming with the pain.
Briefly he thought he heard Cornstalk’s mighty voice shouting to his warriors to be strong and to fight. Some would be holding the line to let the wounded and those who helped them retreat.
Cornstalk’s voice—if it had been his—faded.
Others replaced it, shouting in English. The Virginians were about to overrun him.
Wolf-Alone would not be back. Not in time.
He felt his blood flowing out onto the ground and tried to gaze along his ribs but couldn’t raise his head to see far down his body. Blood spattered the fallen leaves near his face. Small blotches and pools of it, red on gold. Or were those red leaves among the yellow?
Beyond them warriors lay, three in a tangle of limbs. He hadn’t noticed them before. He knew their faces. He’d be among their number soon. He was dying, leaving something undone. Some important thing he’d been meant to do.
Many Sparrows. No, Jacob Inglesby. Clare. Father in heaven, help her…Clare.
Still lying on his back, no longer hearing shouts or gunfire or even the crackle of leaves as booted feet approached him, he turned his face to the boughs above, eyes struck by the light of a westering sun. It slanted in beams through a canopy speckled every shade of gold imaginable. If he couldn’t see Clare again before he died, those green eyes, her smile, then this was a
good sight to end it with.
Until it was blotted out by a shadow coming between, indistinct in form with the blaze of sunlight behind it.
He blinked. The shadow resolved into the faces of two men looking down at him. Both were white, one more boy than man, though he’d a man’s hardness about the eyes. The other was older than Jeremiah. Begrimed with soot and streaked with sweat, both wore the same twisted look of disgust, as if he were an insect one of them had stepped upon.
The older one was speaking. Leastwise his mouth was moving. Jeremiah couldn’t make out the words. There was something about that face, those eyes, something he maybe ought to know. Or remember.
Something chill and wet struck his brow. At first he thought the men were crying over him, ludicrous as that seemed, but the wetness pelted him again and he knew it for rainfall. It was the last he knew before darkness rolled over him.
POINT PLEASANT, VIRGINIA COLONY
OCTOBER 11, 1774
With the rain’s onset, the Indians had fallen back a final time, with enough skirmishing to convince Colonel Lewis to send three companies scrambling up the high ridge to the east to fire down on the retreating Shawnees, encouraging them to keep going—all the way across the Ohio. The rest of the army, ordered back to camp, brought with them the battle’s casualties.
All told they’d lost upwards of eighty men, nearly twice that wounded. Alphus had been appalled at the lack of tending the latter were receiving as darkness fell. Overwhelmed by sheer numbers, their sole army surgeon had conscripted anyone willing to help, no matter how unskilled, but some of the wounded had expired for neglect.
Bone-weary after nearly twelve hours of battle, after carrying in the white man found fighting with the Indians and leaving him bleeding outside the hospital tent, after helping bring in the dead—including Woodbane—after sitting with Geordie Reynolds while the lad bawled his eyes out for that old soldier…after all that, Captain Alphus Litchfield slept like one dead himself, straight through the midnight arrival of reinforcements into camp.
In the predawn gray next morning, he joined his men at the fire. Most had risen early despite fatigue, half-expecting the Indians to attack again. Thus far stillness had prevailed in the mist-shrouded wood and along the foggy rivers. The only sounds were the clanking, hawking, cow-bawling, fire-crackling, and steam-hissing of an army encampment coming awake.
They were a subdued lot, his company. Besides Woodbane they’d lost two others, Jon Lawson among them. Most of the rest bore some manner of wounding. One or two moved with evident pain.
Ezra Baldwin laid a seared slab beef on a tin plate, handed it to his captain, and as Alphus took it said, “Don’t know if’n you heard, Capt’n, but that fellow you been keen to find? He come in late last night with the Fincastle companies fetched in by Colonel Lewis’s runner.”
Judah Sawyer, next in line for a steak, muttered, “Too late to be of help.”
“Better late than never,” Baldwin countered. “Who’s to say we won’t need ’em in the next half hour?”
It had taken a moment for Alphus’s tired brain to spark to life and grasp what Baldwin was saying. “Are you speaking of James Harrod? He’s here in camp?”
Baldwin stabbed at a steak over the fire, ready to serve it up. “That’s the one, sir. Here with his Kentucky men. They pitched over on the Ohio.”
Alphus thrust his plate at Sawyer and took off at a trot for the Ohio side of camp. He found the newly pitched tents deserted, the fires in their stone rings dying. All but one. Outside the last tent, he found a private no older than Geordie sitting on a log, clutching his belly, his color ashen-green.
He stopped before the lad, who blinked up at him. “Private, what’s your company?”
Through gritted teeth the lad replied, “Capt’n Floyd’s…sir.” He started to stand, or try to.
Alphus motioned him to sit. “Where’s your company, son? And the rest come in last night?”
The boy licked his lips. “Colonel Lewis sent ’em up the Ohio…not ten minutes past…to see where the Indians’ve got to. I was too sick.”
Alphus waited, pitying but impatient, while the boy vomited on the other side of the log. “Might want to get yourself over to the hospital tent,” he said, pity winning out.
The boy straightened, wiping his mouth. “No sir. I know what ails me. Et some berries on the trail I knew better’n to. It’ll…pass.”
Alphus gave the boy a wry smile. “Don’t envy you meantime. But tell me one thing, is James Harrod’s company gone with the rest upriver?”
“Cap’n Harrod? Yes sir. I seen ’em go.”
“All right then, son. Take care of yourself. Drink some water.”
Alphus took off at a lope, headed out of camp. His better sense told him to wait, that Harrod’s company would return in a few hours, either with word that the Shawnees were gone or else they weren’t and there’d be more fighting directly. A few hours more wouldn’t change whatever had become of Clare and Philip.
But if there was to be fighting, he had to find Harrod before some Indian’s arrow took him out. Maybe Philip himself was among the company ahead. He ought to have asked the boy that.
Along the easternmost low ridge he ran, nearest the river, ground he hadn’t covered in the battle. Much sooner than expected, he spotted the tail of the Fincastle companies ahead through the trees and hailed them. Two men bringing up the rear turned, halting as he reached them, others ahead on the trail pausing to look back.
“What’s afoot back in camp?” asked one. “We been recalled?”
Alphus sucked in air, attempting to steady his voice. “No. Just me looking for James Harrod.”
The man who’d spoken raised his brows. “Capt’n Harrod? What’s he wanted for?”
Alphus didn’t bother replying but stepped aside and looked down the line of men, most still trudging off toward the river and called, “Captain James Harrod!”
More men looked back at his shout, but only one peeled away from the file and doubled back. He was tall and young, dark-haired, strong-jawed, and bright-eyed beneath his hat brim.
“I’m James Harrod,” he said upon reaching them. “Who’s asking?”
“Captain Alphus Litchfield, Augusta County Regiment.” Alphus saw the name meant nothing to Harrod, save it gained him a nod for his rank. No reason it should. Clare might never have mentioned him. “I’m looking for a man, I hope of your company. My niece’s husband. They were aiming to catch you up at Wheeling Settlement, back in April, meaning to claim Kentucky land.”
Harrod’s brows tightened. “His name?”
Alphus felt a fool for not having said at once. “Philip Inglesby. Married to Clare. They’d a boy, Jacob. She was expecting another babe. It’d be some months old by now.”
Harrod’s blank expression hadn’t cleared. “Ingles, you say? Some kin to them at Ingles’ Ferry?”
“Inglesby. Clare and Philip…” But Alphus saw his answer in Harrod’s gaze before the man’s head began to wag. He’d never heard of Philip Inglesby. Or Clare.
It left him feeling poleaxed, how quick and utter that flame of hope long-nourished had been quenched. Lord Almighty, I got no more trails to follow. Give me something. Some sign. I need a trail.
Alphus didn’t hasten back to camp but picked his way through the battle-churned wood, gaze falling only half-seeing over the castoff bits left behind—a broken powder horn, a severed leather strap, a bloodied moccasin, a feathered arrow sunk in a tree. His stomach growled with hunger.
His need to know was a sharper pang. Dead or living, what had become of Clare and her family? And the question nearly as haunting: why had he ever let her go into the west with a man who’d no idea what he was getting himself into?
Some of the company were still at breakfast when he reached the fire, but Alphus’s dazed attention sharpened at sight of Geordie standing apart, nearly hopping foot to foot.
“Capt’n!” The boy rushed to intercept him out of hearing of the others.
“I been over to the field hospital. Went to see if’n the prisoner we brought in died in the night.” Color crept into the lad’s cheeks as he rushed on, “On account I got to thinking maybe he weren’t a traitor exactly. Maybe he were one of them taken a young’un and made to grow up Indian. Maybe he ain’t ever known no other way. I got to feeling bad for how we left him lying and thought I’d see did he speak any English, if he was alive.”
Alphus, having waited out this explanation, asked, “And is he? Does he?”
Geordie nodded vigorously. “Is and does, sir, but he’s done lain out all night more or less untended.”
Alphus wondered at the concern in the boy’s voice. “You saw how overrun the surgeon is. Our men came first, no doubt.”
“I know, sir. But you ain’t seen him. Took me a while to find him ’cause he’s been moved over by the…” Geordie hesitated, swallowing. “By the dead ones. I think someone drug him there hoping he’d die, maybe used their fists to help it along. He’s roughed up a sight more’n when we left him. I tried asking his name, but he only moaned and said…”
The boy hesitated again but seemed finally to be getting to the point.
“It sounded like he said the name of that niece you been looking for. If’n I remember right and her name’s Clare.”
Alphus stared at the lad, trying to wrap his mind around those last words. “You heard him speak of Clare?”
“That’s her name?”
“It is.” Forgetting his empty stomach, he took the lad by the shoulder and steered him away from the fire. “Show me to him. Right now.”
Traitor or not, it was disconcerting to find his erstwhile prisoner lying among the dead, still clad in nothing but breechclout and moccasins, still caked in his blood. While a binding had been placed around his torso, makeshift at best, it was soaked through and likely dried to the wound, which apparently had been neither cleaned or closely examined, only the bleeding slowed. Contrary to even such slapdash tending, fresh bruising covered the man’s torso and face. One eye was swollen shut. Also swollen, his nose had bled down over his mouth and the blood had dried in dark rivulets, mixing with smeared war paint.