From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  The blue-faced Indian was pulling himself to the top of the fence now, his hideous face looking toward the downstairs of the house. Lucy pulled the trigger.

  The gun’s crashing recoil spun her backward against Elizabeth and they both fell to the floor, the gun on top of them. They had not seen whether she had hit the Indian. Lucy was groaning in pain, her eyes squeezed shut. But Fanny’s voice was crying from the next room:

  “They’re hiding! They’re hiding! Shoot again!”

  “Oh! I can’t! I think my shoulder’s broke!” In a tangle of skirts, she and Elizabeth were trying to get up. “Oh! Damnation! I forgot to bring up more powder and—”

  Suddenly there were sounds like axes whacking a tree trunk, and gunshots from outside and below. The sounds were of musketballs hitting the mulberry logs. There was a sound of tinkling glass somewhere. “Oh!” Fanny’s voice cried. “They’re shooting at our house!”

  Now they could hear more footsteps mounting the stairs, and their mother’s voice calling to them. “Lucy! Fanny! Get down here! Elizabeth Clark! You come down!” Another gunshot reverberated in the house.

  They went down with her. Another gun boomed below as they went down the stairs, the four of them, Lucy holding her right shoulder with her left hand while Elizabeth carried the shotgun. She could smell the burnt powder.

  The downstairs was full of slave women, lying on the floor praying and moaning. Mary Elliot and her daughter were sitting on a mammy bench outside the library, hugging each other and sobbing. In the library, York, the only male in the house except the unconscious George, was loading a rifle, tamping powder down with a ramrod. Billy had taught him to shoot and he was a fairly good marksman when shooting at game. But now he was trembling so violently that he was spilling powder as he primed the rifle. Now he poked it quickly out through the saucer-sized rifle port in the shutter and pulled the trigger with his eyes closed, then jerked the rifle back in and crouched behind the window sill to reload it.

  “Oh, York! You craven!” Lucy screamed at him. “Y’ have to aim! D’ye think they’re scared o’ mere noise?”

  He just crouched there reloading, shaking his head and saying, “Ooooooooh! Oooooh!”

  But, as if mere noise had scared the attackers, there was no more shooting from outside now. But far away, down the road, there was yelling, and the sounds of galloping horses.

  A few minutes later, John and William Clark rode up from the fields, Bob Elliot and half a dozen armed field hands following them, and up to the gate thundered a squad of militia scouts, who had heard the shooting while passing on the public road below. Major Anderson was not among them, to Elizabeth’s disappointment. They rode all over the grounds, but found no trace of the savages, except their footprints on the ground in the woods and outside the yard fence. There were some buckshot pellets in the white fence, and a few small blood spots on the fence post where Lucy had aimed the bird gun.

  Maybe the Indians had been expecting a totally undefended house, with a few women easy prey in it, the militiamen speculated. Maybe they had been very edgy about coming to this house anyway, for surely they knew it was where the Long Knife Chief lived, and they had quit at the first sign of a defense. Again the militiamen implored John Clark to bring his family in to the safety of the fort, and this time he said he would think about it.

  As for George himself, he had been totally unaware of the attack. All the shooting and screaming had failed to rouse him from his coma.

  One thing was certain, something they had learned in a year since they had come to their new home: Kentucky was no paradise.

  It looked like one, but it surely wasn’t.

  “LUCY, IT’S YOUR BEAUUUUUU!” FANNY SANG OUT.

  Lucy was outside and off the porch and down to the gate before Bill Croghan reached it. He swung off his horse, laughing, lifted Lucy up and swung her in circles, then set her down and kissed her on the mouth, while Fanny chanted from the dormer window: “Little Brother Lucy has a beau! Little Brother Lucy! Ho, ho, ho!”

  Lucy raised a fist at her, then winced.

  “Lucy! You hurt?” Bill Croghan exclaimed.

  “Just an achy shoulder. I’ll tell you later.” They were walking up toward the house now, and other members of the family were coming out on the porch to greet him. The leaves of May were full out on the trees now, fresh light green, and the yard was edged with wildflowers transplanted from the woods.

  “How about George?” he said.

  “I swear you ask o’ him ’fore you think o’ me!”

  “Not so, not so!” he laughed. “I just want ’im to get well so I won’t always have to be away from you doing all the surveying! I take it then that he’s better?”

  “Some better. We have to sit on ’im to keep him abed.”

  “Ha! Good news! Hello! Hello!” He tethered his horse at the post and went up onto the porch, hugging everybody. “So the old Long Knife’s getting his edge back, eh?”

  “Aye, and raring to talk to you,” said John Clark. “We worried so much about you. Did ye hear that four-five hundred savages struck Louisville last month?”

  “I heard.”

  “A band of ’em struck our house,” Elizabeth said. “This very house. But Lucy fought them off!”

  “Ha, ha! No doubt!”

  “No! Really truly! See the bullet holes in the logs?”

  Bill Croghan paled. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. And she really did, too,” said William, who had just come out. They embraced and thumped each other on the back. “George’s in there bellowin’ for you, can y’ hear ’im?”

  “Hey? What do you say? I can’t hear you for that bellowing in there. Ha, ha! Let’s go see him. I’m running over with intelligence from upriver, and I’m sure he’s got plenty on his mind too. Hey! Pipe down, General! I hear you! I hear you! Ha, ha! Come on, everybody, let’s swarm on him!”

  “IT SEEMS TO BE A CONFEDERATION OF TRIBES,” BILL Croghan said, “mostly of the Wabash area. Weas, Piankeshaws, Miamis. Depending on who’s talking, there’s fifteen hundred on up to five thousand of them.”

  George nodded. His face was very pale and thin, but the old keenness was back in his eyes. “That’s about what I hear. Their base is Ouiatanon, isn’t that so?”

  “Ouiatanon. Correct.”

  “That’s awful close to Vincennes. I bet our friends up there are in a state of nerves.”

  “They well might be,” Croghan said. “Do you have a name of their main chief? I’ve heard a name something like ‘Mishyginny-something.’ Do you know of him?”

  “It’s Michi-kini-qua. Little Turtle. I remember him, a Miami. A good face. He’s something to be reckoned with. I’d say he has more shrewdness and dignity than all of Congress put together. Though that’s not saying much, is it? What I hear is, some of the Shawnee are keen to join his confederation. If they do, this country’s as forlorn as it was any time in the war.”

  In the year since William had been in Kentucky with George, he had come to understand that one of his chief advantages was his unofficial network of spies. They were not really spies, but they were a set of friends so diverse and wide-ranging and observant, and so eager to keep him informed, that even here in his sickbed he probably knew more of what prevailed in the territory than any other man. These friends were French bushlopers and merchants, American scouts and Indian fighters, rivermen, militia officers, long hunters, innkeepers, surveyors, county clerks, old comrades-in-arms, explorers, even some of the Indians he had known in the war, both as friends and as enemies. These people brought him news and talk, some of it rumor and some of it gossip and some of it reliable truth. He absorbed it all and assimilated it and fit things together in his mind until he was very certain he had the specific truth about any one thing, and a general picture of how all the little things fit together. William by and by had come to realize that it was knowledge, as well as courage and endurance, that had made his brother the most successful leader in the West.
Now as William sat with George and Croghan and listened to them talk by the hour, he understood a little better how it worked. George had a voracious appetite for facts and his attention never flagged. Although he was lying back on pillows, he seemed to lean forward.

  “… some of the savages they killed up at Limestone had new British muskets,” Croghan was saying.

  “Aye,” George replied. “I …” He was rubbing his hands together and he looked down at them. “These empty paws o’ mine are giving me the jimjams,” he said. “I need a pipe in one and a glass in the other when I’m listenin’. Billy, will you go fetch me those? Medicinal,” he said with a wink.

  And when William came back with them, George was talking about Detroit. “The place is still full o’ Tories,” he said. “It’s ours by the Treaty but it’s theirs because they occupy it. If I’d got the help I needed in the war, we’d be there now and there’d be no Hair-Buyers there to keep pumping up the savages. That would be some help. Thank’ee, Billy. Ah. Well, I learned how to run up and butt the mountain. I’m glad I’m not a general anymore. Especially now, by God. Serving Virginia was perplexity enough to put boils on a man’s brain, but now a body has to satisfy Congress too, and that’s like trying to braid a comet’s tail. No, I sure don’t want to be anybody’s general again.”

  “They want you to, you know,” Croghan said.

  George took a sip of his “medicine” and smacked his lips. It made his eyes water. “D’you know, Bill, the first sight to greet my eyes when I gathered my faculties was, in place of the Angels of Heaven, a delegation of gents standin’ round the foot o’ this bed asking me to go up and thrash the Wabash tribes. Never mind that I resigned my commission three years ago. Never mind that I can’t handle a pen yet, let alone a sword. Never mind I still haven’t been paid yet for my last war. They told me I was the only one could stop the Wabash Confederation.

  “But I’ve learned a thing or two about people who flatter to get you to do things for ’em. They’ll get you to commit your whole body and soul, and then they won’t give any help. That’s been done to me by every governor Virginia’s ever had. And the County Lieutenants are worse at it. No, siree. Those tribes are in Federal lands, but Congress won’t bear the expense o’ controllin’ ’em, so they’re free to carry their torches into Kentucky, and now gents gather round my sickbed and beg me, ‘Go do what Congress can’t.’ Ha!”

  “Then you won’t, I take it.”

  “I didn’t say that. I just say I’d be a fool to. Listen, Here’s what I’d be getting myself into: I’ve studied the Invasion Law. It says a state can wage a campaign against any Indian nation that invades it, but it can’t take the militia out o’ the state without their consent. That’s the Invasion Law, and here’s why it worries me: Lincoln and Fayette County don’t see this as their war, but as Jefferson County’s. To them the only Indians are the Shawnees directly across the river from ’em. I learned long ago they’ll raise troops in a hurry to go kill Shawnees, but try to do something worthwhile, like going to Detroit, and they balk. They’ll know it’s not legal for me to take ’em against Ouiatanon without their consent, and if they get balky, I fail. And I don’t mean to fail, Bill. My whole name’s what it is because I’ve never failed. And my name’s all I’ve got.”

  “Bill,” said Lucy’s voice from outside the door of George’s room, “I’d hoped you and I might take a walk and talk about ourselves.”

  “Oh! Yes,” he said, partly rising from his chair. “Just a wee bit, my dear. Then I’ll be along.”

  They could hear her breathe an exasperated sigh. Then she said, “Are you giving that poor invalid whiskey and tobacco? Oh, damnation! Ye’ve all got about as much sense as a turtle has hair! Ooooh! Rrrrrr!”

  They smiled sheepishly as her footsteps went away down the hall, but George put his glass on the floor out of sight under his bed, just in case his mother should come in. Bill Croghan said then:

  “Seems to me you’ve thought a long way into something you say you’d be a fool to do. I’ll ask again: are you going to do it?”

  “Probably,” George said after a pause. “If they cry loud enough and assure me I can count on ’em, I’ll do it. If not, I loaf here at home as I deserve, till we all get killed in our own houses. Billy, I’m feelin’ puny. What if you fetched me another medicine? But watch out for Lucy.”

  * * *

  SO THE LEADERS OF KENTUCKY DID CRY LOUD ENOUGH AND gave him assurances enough, just as he’d said they would, until at last George Rogers Clark agreed to lead the expedition against the Wabash confederacy, and then almost immediately he found many reasons to regret it, most of them exactly the reasons he had expected.

  The militia officers came from their three counties with 1200 men, half the number promised. They rendezvoused at Clarksville, across the Ohio from Louisville, and the base camp was no sooner occupied than the officers began quibbling over George’s plan of attack.

  He wanted to march straight toward Little Turtle’s camps on the upper Wabash and strike them at once. He had learned that the Shawnees were getting ready to join the confederacy, and he wanted to attack before they could arrive to reinforce it. George thought these 1200 militiamen could succeed if they moved quickly and attacked without delay. The officers were more cautious. They thought it would be better to wait for another thousand men to be drafted. They did not want to march the 150 miles straight northwestward to the confederacy’s gathering place. Instead, they wanted to go to Vincennes first—a hundred miles almost due west—wait there for the new draftees and for large stores of flour and beef to be brought by boat up the Wabash to meet them at Vincennes, and only then march up the Wabash from there.

  George argued that such a slow, indirect approach would almost surely make the expedition fail. But the officers knew the law; they knew that he could not lead them out of Kentucky without their consent, and they were not going to consent unless he agreed to do it their way Their men, they said, would not go without plenty of manpower and plenty of supplies.

  At length George hammered out a compromise. He would take them to Vincennes and wait there for the boatloads of supplies. That would take time. But to wait for the new consignment of draftees would allow the Shawnee army plenty of time to join the confederacy.

  Instead, he insisted, let Colonel Benjamin Logan of Lincoln County lead the later contingent against the Shawnee towns in Ohio, to divert the Shawnees from joining the confederacy. They would be Fayette and Lincoln County men, and the Shawnee towns were near them, and they always wanted Shawnee blood anyway.

  “That’s as far as I’ll bend to you people,” George concluded. “You begged me to lead this shebang, and by heaven I don’t aim to go out there and fail at it. So what sayee? Do you bend to meet me on this point, or do I go back into retirement?”

  They consented, and at last the column moved out of Clarksville in the dusty heat of mid-September, picking up the Buffalo Trace toward Vincennes, and they marched slowly, sullenly, reflecting the sulkiness of their officers. The land was rolling and beautiful and the Buffalo road was as clear and hard as a highway, but terrifically dusty. The column rattled and clanked along, the troops’ canteens and pans and kettles sounding like a mile-long scullery. A herd of beef cattle was being driven along in the rear because of the insistence on plentiful meat, but driving the cattle was unpleasant, dusty duty and no one wanted to do it, and so the column was further slowed by the need to round up strayed animals.

  Adding to the discontent were the jealousy and resentment between the militia units of the respective counties. The Jefferson County men were the smallest portion, their county being so thinly populated, and they were firmly attached to George. The Fayette County men were under the command of Colonel Levi Todd, who seemed to have dropped certain old resentments toward George and had vowed to be as useful and cooperative as he could; these Fayette men were in moderately good morale, but tended to mock the enthusiasm of the Jefferson boys. The Lincoln troops, mostly grumbling and
ill-disciplined draftees from the most populous county, made up fully a half of the army. And with the reassignment of Colonel Ben Logan, they were left under the command of Colonel Jim Barrett, whose main weakness seemed to be his desire to be liked by his troops, even if it meant echoing their unruly attitudes.

  And so the whole noisy, disorderly column, strung out longer than a mile, shuffled westward through the countryside, raising a cloud of dust among the heat-wilted woods and plains, and their pace was half that of a spirited army. It was soon obvious that the three-and-a-half-day march to Vincennes would take a week.

  George, still thin and weak from his convalescence, rode ahead with William beside him, and he was glad William had come, because he could say to a brother things he would not have aired with others. “I could have taken Detroit with an army half this size back in ’79,” he mused sadly. “But I wouldn’t have tried it with twice this many if they’d been as sulky and negligent as this mob is. Oh, I tell ye, Billy, I’d made those old boys into real Spartans. And could do the same with these, had I a free hand. But look at ’em. God damn!”

  It was William’s first ride through the Indiana Territory, and George, despite his preoccupations, had much to teach him about it. “Down yonder,” he’d say, pointing down a valley, “down near where the Blue River runs into the Ohio, there’s a cave that’s likely the biggest cave in the world. Got some rooms in it so big they have whole hills o’ broken rock in ’em. The Wyandots say it’s dry as a house inside and goes for miles under the ground. Maybe you and I’ll explore it when this present trouble’s past, Billy.”

  “God, yes! I can’t wait!”

  “Now on the other extreme, there’s a cave farther along west that’s always full o’ water, because it’s a whole danged underground river. Y’see this plain off to the right? Look how potty and dippy it is. Ever see land that shape? Sinkholes, that’s what those are. Where underground water’s eat away the stone underneath, it seems. There’s thousands of ’em, some you can go down in, others plugged up with debris.”