From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  “So then what’s being done about Dunmore?” John Clark asked the night rider. Sitting halfway up the stairs watching and listening was little Billy. On the step below him and almost pressed against him sat York. The little fat black fellow was desperately afraid of the men who came at night and shone their lanterns around in his mother’s cabin, and he was able to stay this close to one of them now only because his friend Billy was next to him.

  “Well, sir,” said Roberts, “Colonel Woodford’s regiment’s been sent down to Great Bridge, with an order to drive ’is Ludship out if he can.”

  “Woodford’s and not Henry’s, eh?” said John Clark. “That’s good, anyway.” Patrick Henry, because of his popularity among the patriots, had been given command of one of the two colonial regiments, but the Safety Committee had had the wisdom so far to put only Woodford’s regiment in the field. William Woodford was a veteran of the French and Indian War. Henry had never soldiered in his life, except to lead an excited mob last spring down the road toward Williamsburg.

  “And so,” the rider continued, smacking his lips after a sip of Indies rum, “there sits Bill Woodford in Great Dismal Swamp, with all them minute men and no cannon, watching Dunmore’s fort, and probably prayin’ he’ll not get a chance to attack ’im. By what I hear, all those boys want t’ do is hunt boar in there. And as I see it, all ’is Ludship needs do is wait till those fools’ve shot up all their powder, and then walk out with ’is Redcoats and catch ’em chawin’ their bacon. Oh, by th’ bye, did you hear yet we caught John Corbin for a spy?”

  “Oooh,” Billy whispered to York. “A spy!”

  “Oooo,” York whispered back. “Wha’sat, a spy?”

  John Clark was shaking his head. “Ah, that’s sad. Mind ye, I’ve no love for Corbin. But one’s own neighbors! They’ll not hang ’im, I hope.” The Corbins were one of Caroline’s most prominent Tory families.

  “Hang a spy,” Billy whispered to York, clutching his own throat and sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth. York cringed, white eyes bulging in the shadows, wondering whether a spy was what he was.

  “They’ve flung ’im in the guardhouse at Williamsburg. They say he was carrying messages to Dunmore,” said Roberts.

  Boots clumped in the mud room at the rear of the hall as the rest of the riders came in. They stood looking so longingly at the decanters that John Clark told them to help themselves. Then he added:

  “If I was to run out of ardent spirits, I wonder me, Mike Roberts, whether your patrol would have such a keen interest in my poor, tame nigras.”

  The riders laughed, their big voices filling the hallway. “Well,” said one of them, “ye do have one missin’ out o’ quarters, Mister Clark.”

  “What?”

  “But I found ’im. He’s right up there a-spyin’ on us.”

  And when York saw all these dreadful night men looking and pointing up at him, he flung his fat little arms around Billy’s waist and began wailing. Billy was moved to action. He stood up, gripping the banister, and faced them defiantly.

  “No,” he proclaimed. “Yorkie’s not a spy! He’s my personal own man!”

  JONATHAN CLARK PACED ABOUT HIS OFFICE IN THE COURT HOUSE, heels resounding on the plank floor. He could not sit still. He could not get the news of Great Bridge out of his mind. Colonel Woodford had defeated Dunmore’s Redcoats there with his regiment of half-trained Virginians! They had shot down thirty or forty British Grenadiers on the wooden bridge, repelling two waves of real Redcoat Regulars, and had driven Dunmore off the peninsula and re-opened the road to Norfolk, without the loss of one Virginian! The war was really on Virginia’s soil now, and Jonathan was so stirred that he could not work.

  He could hear shouts outdoors. He put on his hat and coat and went out. It was a mild winter day, almost like spring, and most of the townspeople of Woodstock were out in the streets. Abraham Bowman, a strapping young farmer of Jonathan’s age, hailed him and fell in step beside him, grinning and sucking the fresh air through his teeth. “Wright and Marshall are pitting their best cocks up at Wright’s shed. What sayee to a bet or two?”

  “Lead the way. Ah, Lord! I couldn’t stay in. Maybe a man’s not meant to sit on a chair all day.”

  “Sure not.”

  They walked up the dirt street between the hewn-log houses. Down a side street, a gang of young horsemen were whooping and charging in a gander-head-pulling contest. The white gander hung by its legs from an oak limb, squawking and flapping as each rider galloped by and tried to yank its head off. Jonathan and Abe stopped to watch. Several unsuccessful passes were made. “Wisht I was horseback,” Abe said. “Bet you I could do ’im the first try.” Bowman was known as one who would bet on anything, especially his own abilities. A horse was spurred, hooves beat, and then a triumphant shout went up. A young man reined in, holding the gander’s head high in his bloody fist while the white body in the tree flopped and sprayed blood and rained feathers. “That’s th’ way it’s done,” Abe Bowman said, and they walked away. “Say, friend Clark, what d’you hear from your brother George? Joe was askin’ me t’ other day.” Abe’s cousin Joseph had been George’s lieutenant in the Indian uprising. “Joe esteems him right high.”

  “Oh, last letter I got, he said he’d laid out a town, Leesburg he called it, seventy miles up the Kaintuckee River. Said he looked for fifty families to be livin’ in it by Christmas. O’ course it was last July he wrote that, and I guess they’d not even heard o’ Lexington and Concord by then. Medoubts they even know out there that a war’s on.”

  “Oh, they know more out there than y’d reckon they would. Joe bet me that Dunmore’s connivin’ out there in ’74’ll mean a lot o’ British-like Indians to bother with.”

  Jonathan remembered what Washington had said about the need to defend the West. But he shrugged. Worthless wilderness, he thought. They turned into the hubbub at Wright’s tobacco shed, and stooped to look at the cages of the fighting cocks. “I like the looks o’ Marshall’s birds. I’ll lay a pound on his the first go-round.”

  Abe doubled over and slapped his thigh in exaggerated hilarity. “Y’ll never learn, Jonathan Clark! Now listen, no matter how someone else’s birds look, never bet against Wright’s!”

  “I take that to mean you’ll accept the wager?”

  “I do! Oh, ye fool! It’s a tradition! Wright’s always wins!”

  They leaned their elbows on the rail of the cockpit. Abe Bowman was still laughing and shaking his head. The air in the shed was close, and stank of tobacco and whiskey-breath. There were about thirty men around the pit, and most of them appeared to have been at the jug since morning. Many of them were speaking German. A large part of the populace of Shenandoah County was made up of German frontiersmen. The name had been changed recently to Shenandoah to obliterate Dunmore’s name. Jonathan had had a lot to do with that. As the county’s clerk and representative to the Revolutionary Assembly, he was becoming an ever more avid patriot, and that was one reason why Abe Bowman was so drawn to him.

  “Here come the first cocks,” said Bowman, nudging him in the ribs. “Poor Clark! Tradition, remember? He, he!”

  The trainers threw in their roosters. Wright and Marshall were both squat, fat-faced, mean-eyed men, and it was said that the only way to tell them apart was by seeing which roosters they held. The bettors started shouting. Abe Bowman immediately began taunting Marshall’s rooster, which was standing in one place, scraping the ground nervously with the claws of its right foot, bobbing its head like an ouzel, swelling and deflating, backing slightly as Wright’s bird advanced. “Hey-o, Marshall bird,” Bowman yelped at it, “don’t just stand and wait! What are ye, a buzzard?” That brought on a wave of laughter and similar jibes, Bowman jabbed Jonathan again with his elbow, sure his point was being taken. Wright’s bird kept advancing until the tailfeathers of Marshall’s reluctant bird touched the pit wall.

  Then the laughing taunts were suddenly drowned by an explosion of squawks, whiffing and flapp
ing wings, and thudding bodies. The air in the cockpit was so full of dust, drifting feathers, and bloodspray that the whiskey-dazed spectators could not follow what was happening. The jeering stopped and now a dozen voices were shouting questions, in English and German. Both trainers stood with their mouths open, squinting into the turmoil.

  It was over in seconds. Wright’s bird lay in a tattered, twitching heap in the center of the pit, bleeding from both pecked-out eyes and from other wounds beneath its feathers. Its neck appeared to be broken. The ground under it darkened with blood as its movements grew feeble, then ceased. Marshall’s cock stood arched, blinking and crowing over it, flapping its iridescent feathers back into place. Its beak and spurs were crimson.

  “Well, Abraham,” Jonathan said, extending his hand, palm up, to accept his winnings, “my bird took your advice. So much for traditions, eh?”

  The men stood around later and drank from a demijohn of rum that Wright had paid up in losses. Marshall’s cocks had overthrown a tradition of many years, defeating seven of Wright’s ten best birds. “’Twas a true rebellion,” Jonathan gloated, raising his cup to Marshall. “Worthy of Lexington, Breed’s Hill, and Great Bridge.”

  Heads were turning. Hoofbeats were coming lickety-cut down the road from Massanutten Mountain, and a voice was crying to herald some great news. Jonathan couldn’t make out the words at first; half the voices in the shed were still discussing the outcome of the cockfight, and the other half were demanding quiet to hear what news the rider was bringing.

  And then he heard it:

  “They’ve burnt Norfolk! The Redcoats burnt Norfolk!”

  The courier was halted by the crowd outside Wright’s and he blurted what he knew of it. In retaliation for Great Bridge, Dunmore’s Redcoats had raided Norfolk from the sea and set the town afire. Hundreds of people were homeless and seeking refuge farther inland. The drunks from Wright’s shed were roaring in anger.

  “By God in Heaven!” Jonathan Clark bellowed, shaking a huge fist toward the East. “That does it for me!” He turned to Abraham Bowman and yanked him up by his lapel. “You’re a Son o’ Liberty,” he yelled into his pale blue eyes, “are you with me? I’m goin’ soldierin’, by God! Devil Dunmore will pay for Norfolk!”

  “I’m with you!” Abe Bowman shouted. “And I’ll bet a hundred quid we’ll run the last Redcoat off this land before a year is out!”

  6

  KENTUCKY RIVER VALLEY

  June 6, 1776

  GEORGE LAY AS LOW AND STILL AS A SNAKE UNDER THE HIDDEN ledge of limestone and peered out through a sun-dappled screen of maple leaves at the Shawnee’s dark, unblinking eye and the circle of vermillion war paint around it, and he thought:

  He sees me.

  George tightened his hand on the walnut handle of his knife, and his heart beat fast against the ground. The warrior was so close, kneeling down out there and looking in, that George could have put the knife right in his eye if his arm were ten inches longer.

  But if he sees me why doesn’t he do something?

  Come on, Shawnee, he thought. If you’re going to do something, do it and let’s get this over with. You people have slowed me up enough today. Come a little closer and let’s get it done. I’ve got a meeting to go to.

  The eye did not look away, but it blinked once. The maple leaves were aglow with sunlight, brilliant green. They stirred a little, but it was a movement caused by a breeze; the Indian had not touched them. George could smell wet limestone and humus right under his nose. His clothes were soaked with sweat and creek water. He and his friend Jones had spent half the day running, hiding, swimming, and backtracking to elude these five or six Shawnees, but they were tenacious as bloodhounds. Now they were out there in the green woods combing this bluff, and if George and Jones were to get to Harrod’s Town today, or ever, it looked as if they would have to kill a Shawnee, this one outside their cranny. At least one they’d have to kill; maybe they would have to kill all of them. But first there was this one to deal with, and this one would not move.

  George hoped he would move this way. If he moved away, that probably would mean he was going to get some help to look into this cranny. If he came this way, George was pretty sure he could get a hand on him and a knife in him before he could make too much noise.

  Come, George thought hard, as if he could will the Shawnee to come closer.

  It would have to be with the knife. George’s rifle was under his body where he could not extract it without moving noticeably. And he could not use the long gun in this tight place anyway, and besides that, its priming powder would be wet from his clothes. George lay willing the Indian to come closer.

  It would be hard to do even with the knife. George could not move his lower body because John Gabriel Jones was lying across his legs. And Jones could not move off George’s legs because he was wedged in under the limestone so tight that George could feel the pressure every time Jones inhaled. He didn’t know whether Jones could see the Shawnee or whether he knew one was here. But Jones had not moved or whispered, even as cramped as he was, so probably he knew. George hoped he knew, because he did not want him to move or whisper just now.

  Come, George thought to the Indian, who had just blinked again. Move, damn ye!

  The painted face moved slightly down and to the side, so now George could see both eyes. A ruddy brown hand now came up stealthily beside the face, to push some maple leaves aside. It was the Indian’s left hand, and there was no weapon in it, which would mean that he probably had his musket in his right hand, one of those nice new British muskets they were all carrying these days. George hoped that if the Shawnee did have a weapon in his other hand, it would be his musket instead of a knife or tomahawk.

  The Shawnee’s hand was pushing leaves aside and now George could see the green light from the sunny maple leaves gleaming on the Indian’s oiled brown forearm and he could see the black dirt under the Indian’s fingernails. The Indian was on his hands and knees, and George now could see part of his right shoulder with sun on it, as well as the face and the hand. It was bright out there and it well could be that the Shawnee really had not seen George’s eyes in the shadows. The painted face was young, with square jaws. The face was no more than five feet from George’s face and the eyes were probing.

  Now, George thought, and, quick as a copperhead, he grabbed the Shawnee’s wrist with his own left hand and pulled.

  JIM HARROD LOOKED OUT THROUGH WHAT HE WAS SURE was the only glass windowpane in Kentuck. It was good to see so many people milling around in the compound; it gave Harrod’s Town an air of special importance he thought it deserved. He and his thirty workmen undeniably had built the best and stoutest fortified town in all of Kentuck. The place still smelled of raw new wood, and the entire compound had been paved with sawdust and shavings and hewing chips and tanbark, which was far nicer to walk on than dust or mud, especially when you had a crowd in.

  Harrod turned from the window and looked across the crowded room at what he was sure was the only Swiss mantel clock in all of Kentuck. It was four o’clock. He scowled and growled.

  “I swear to God, that Clark boy’s got this whole country bumfuzzled! He calls everybody here to my town, for some mysterious God-damned callathump. Then ’e gives us all th’ bubble by not showin’ up for his own meeting! I swear it makes less sense than tits on a boar hog!”

  “Don’t get your internals all in an uproar, Jim,” said a soft, merry voice nearby. “He said he’d be here, and he will be. Meanwhile, let us poor folk wallow in the luxury of your great city.” It was Daniel Boone, who so loved to play off against Harrod’s beetle-browed bluster. Boone had brought most of his men down from Boonesboro for the meeting.

  Harrod scowled at Boone’s strong, serene face, then grumbled, “Well, there’s not a whole lot o’ day left, so I say we’d better start the meeting without him. We all got a good idea what it’s about, now, don’t we?”

  They did know. That Clark redhead had talked to every soul in Kentuck
, it seemed, in the last three months. He had talked to them and asked their views on the future of the territory. Even when most of them had been preoccupied with digging up the next stump, hewing the next log, shooting the next meal, or fighting the next Indian war party, he had forced them to look further ahead: You’re making your house in Kentuck, he’d say. This is a sacred land to the Indians, and they sure don’t mean to let you stay here. How do you intend to protect yourselves? By the Virginia militia? Do you intend, then, to be represented in the Virginia Assembly as a new county of Virginia? Or do you mean to establish an independent state and have your own militia? Or do you expect to be under the proprietorship of Henderson’s Transylvania Colony? Or are you going to be British subjects and appeal to the Crown for your safety? How much gunpowder have you? Not much, is it? Where do you propose to get more? He had made them all think on these questions and had told them they would not survive long without some sort of law and some sort of military protection. Since the start of the rebellion in the East, Indians had been coming down across the Ohio in larger and more frequent raiding bands, equipped with good British guns and plentiful English gunpowder, and with sharp new red-handled scalping knives of British steel, often even led by British army officers from the forts at Detroit and Vincennes and Kaskaskia. The British intend to drive us all back across the mountains, he had said, and it will be easy for them to do unless we have a means of defense. What will it be?

  He had showed up everywhere, that intense and likable Clark lad from Virginia, full of news and interesting talk, and his disturbing questions. With him usually was his friend John Gabriel Jones from the Holston Valley, a tough, bespectacled young man with that same agreeable gift of gab and good sense. Sometimes they arrived in time to help raise a log cabin or budge out a stump; sometimes they showed up with a fresh-killed deer when there wasn’t anything else to eat but flour and berries; sometimes they arrived in time to foil a theft of horses by some Indian band, or to escort some decimated family to the safety of one of the walled towns. The fact was, those two were as well known around the country as Boone or Harrod, and they had helped people and made them think; and so now that they had sent word of a public meeting at Harrod’s Town, the people had come from miles all around. They all knew now what the needs and the problems were. And so, though Clark and Jones had not arrived, the settlers proceeded with their meeting.