From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  His yodel poured throbbing out of his throat and his heart felt as big as a barrel. Hundreds of throats opened up with his, and now he was splashing out of the river among sycamore roots and could see painted faces and brown bodies moving among the tree trunks, and there had been no time for the savages to reload their muskets. Some of them were sprinting back toward their camp, others were standing fast, drawing bowstrings or rushing forth with raised tomahawks. A brave with a very boyish, round face with a stripe of vermillion painted across his nose and under his eyes had just notched an arrow and was pulling his bow ten feet away with William as his target. He was only a boy and except for the painted face looked terribly much like just anybody in a schoolroom, and William didn’t want to kill him, but had to, and put his rifle to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger and saw the stripe-painted young face jerk back, one eye blown in through its socket and spouting blood. The arrow went whirling sideways.

  And so now William had done one of the big things in life: he had killed a man—a boy, at least. But there was no time to think about it: a warrior was in his path with his tomahawk cocked behind his shoulder and his black eyes on William’s and his teeth bared. William raised his empty rifle in front of his chest to parry the blow. The tomahawk whacked so hard his hands stung. Don’t hesitate ever. He brought his knee up into the Indian’s groin and ran over him as he doubled over. Head a-swivel. They were through the sycamores now, howling murder, the line still moving forward even though every step forward was a mortal fight for every man. This bank was a narrow level bottom of tall horseweeds and willows on silty ground. It was a chaos now of running and wrestling bodies, powder smoke, gunshots, grunts, shrieks, thuds, curses, neighing horses, cracking of wood on wood, crunch of steel into bone, men sitting or lying dazed and dying, dark blood pouring onto the gray soil. Some yards off to the right Colonel Hardin rode hatless, maneuvering his great wild-eyed stallion with one hand full of reins and the other slashing with a crimson-bladed saber as if he were mowing wheat. Major Wyllys fired a pistol point-blank into the face of a huge Indian, but then dropped to his knees with an arrow in his side. William clubbed a warrior with his rifle butt and then whipped out his sword and slashed his throat as he fell, and his hand was bathed with spurting hot blood. Two yards ahead of him an Indian was pounding in the skull of a fallen militiaman. William ran up and kicked him; when the Indian yelled and spun about, William slashed across with all his might and the Indian’s body jerked and flopped, headless, jets of blood pumping from the ghastly stump of meat and gristle while the head rolled the other way like a ball in the dust. This shook William, this that he had done so often to chickens and turkeys for the family table and had now done in a reckless fury to a human being.

  The slaughter continued all around him and he stumbled ahead now like a man hacking his way through a thicket. A bullet passed through his clothes with a yank and he felt warm blood from a grazed flank running to his waist. Most of the Indians he saw now were in flight. He stubbed his foot on an iron kettle and realized that they had advanced into the camp. He sheathed his bloody sword and knelt to reload his rifle, head still a-swivel. His hands were sticky with blood, which smeared his powder horn and ramrod as he touched them, and he reloaded, still looking right and left. He remembered the feel of pig blood on his hand, that first slaughter so long ago.

  The banging and howling continued around him, and men were falling and powder smoke burned his eyes and nostrils. His heart was thudding fast in his ribs and he had lost count of the men he had killed, and suddenly he was struck with the realization that he had no idea of the shape of the battle; he had been too involved in rushing and personal bloodletting to notice how the battle was going—the very purpose of all this frenzy had gotten lost somewhere; he had been a wolf, an animal for which there is no design, no future. Men to his right and left were hacking and shooting and stabbing and howling with the same sort of blind impetus, no different from his. But he was supposed to be an officer, responsible for a larger part of this battle than just the radius of his sword’s swing. He began looking beyond that distance, standing with his rifle in his left hand and drawing his saber with his right. At his feet a dead Indian lay face down in a still smoldering campfire, his flesh cooking with a smell like venison. A few feet away a saddled gray horse, its neck red with blood, lay on its side twitching, trying to raise its head. The battle roared everywhere, a whirlwind of mortal struggle, but it was impossible to determine what was happening in the large view. Everywhere in sight lay the blue-coated bodies of regular soldiers; they seemed to have been chosen as special targets by the warriors, and William could not see a one alive anywhere. Sunbeams slanted in through dust and the dense smoke of campfires and gunpowder. A horse galloped through the melee a few feet in front of William, its rider, foot in stirrup, being dragged, flopping and bouncing, under it, and William saw that it was Major Fountain, commander of the cavalry detachment.

  And now through the acrid curtain of smoke and dust in front of him came a dire howling, war cries from countless throats, and then a wall of dusky bodies materialized through the haze, coming toward him. It was a counterattack, a great wave of savages coming from somewhere, scores of them abreast, brave and disciplined, moving as if with a single will, driving back the militiamen who were still on foot. Arrows and bullets hummed and whispered thick as hail across the battleground and Kentuckians were crumpling to earth everywhere. William began backing up, yelling over the din:

  “FALL BACK TO THE RIVER AND FORM A LINE!” He tried to repeat it but his throat was clogged with dust and he could only croak.

  But they had heard him, and when their retreat carried them back to the sycamores, they did not plunge back into the river but turned to reload and fight. A brown figure sprinted straight at William, waving a war club. He parried with his sword and the blow of the club wrenched the sword from his blood-slippery hand. As the savage whipped his arm back to deliver the death blow, William punched him between the eyes with his big fist and the Indian caved in.

  Some of the troops managed to load and fire here, and a score of Indians tumbled. The rest of the horde dropped into the weeds and behind cover, but kept crawling forward.

  “Stand your ground and reload!” William bellowed now. He saw a face coming forward among the weeds, a face with a blue circle painted between the eyebrows. He threw his rifle to his shoulder and put a ball in the blue circle.

  He glanced up and down along the river bank while reloading. A few hundred yards upstream, Hall’s men were already retreating across the river in a cloud of gunsmoke, and several of them at that moment were crumpling into the water. Downstream, Colonel Hardin suddenly appeared from the trees, and rode out into the middle of the stream. “Fall back!” he was roaring in a mighty voice. “Back ’cross the river and form up!”

  In a moment the river was full of splashing, scrambling militiamen trying to get back to the east bank, desperate to put the river between them and the howling horde. William repeated the command to the men around him, and when they were in the river he stepped off into the water himself. He retreated, sidestepping on the mucky bottom, keeping his rifle on the sycamores. He could see motion among the trees as the savages moved to the bank, but could not get a clear shot at any. Then a fusillade of shots erupted. Chewp! chewp! chewp! Balls hit the water around him. One flicked the top of his hat; another pinged on the brass of his sword scabbard.

  The watersoaked leather of his leggings weighted his legs as he scrambled out on the bank. Hats floated slowly on the current. Hands reached up out of crimson-stained water and then sank. His men—the few of them who remained—were milling or lying on the bank. “Load up!” he roared. “Here they come!” Now the savages were leaping in the water to come after their quarry, high-stepping through spray, a yodeling mass of painted skin, feathers, and quills, weapons in both hands, mad for victory. Hardin was riding back and forth now, trying to rally his men and move them upriver toward Hall’s struggling force. “F
ish in a barrel, boys!” William yelled, and aimed for an amulet on a brown chest. He squeezed the trigger and was reloading by the time that Indian had sunk. Now his men were doing their business well. Almost every shot found its mark and at least a dozen Indians were slumping or reeling in midriver. Smoke rolled yellow in the sunbeams; ramrods slid down and up; rifle fire roared continuously from the shore, and the river ran blood. The Indians were now stumbling over the floating bodies of their own dead and wounded. Some began to turn and wade back to the west bank. But now Hardin was close by, virtually driving his troops before him. And William could see through the smoke now that the Indians had crossed the river downstream; they were pouring across onto the ground Hardin had vacated. “Up! Up!” Hardin was barking. “Close up with Hall!” His face was strained white, hollow-cheeked as a death’s-head; he was frantic.

  And now William could see why. The Indians who had crossed the river were fanning up the east bank, up the slope toward the hazel thickets, outflanking the retreating Kentuckians, trying to compress them into the low ground of the river bottom, encircle them, cut them off before they could reach Hall’s men. Hardin was right; there was nothing to do but retreat up the river, and they would have to fight every step of the way. An army sergeant trotting past William suddenly cried something that sounded like “HUNG!” and dropped his rifle and went knock-kneed. He fell face-down with an arrow through the X where his shoulder straps crossed his back. There were hardly any of the blue-coats to be seen now. There had been eighty of them on the assault; there were only a half-dozen or so still moving. William herded his own men along now, making them move as rapidly as they could while still loading and firing back.

  He kept to the right, picking off any Indian he could see trying to get around their flank. Hardin up on his big stallion now seemed to be the main target for all the Indians, and though he appeared to have a charmed life, it was not good to be near him. Several men were nicked by bullets aimed at him. “Colonel!” William shouted at him as the wild-eyed, frothing stallion danced near. “Where’s Colonel McMullen?”

  “Decoyed off someplace, the fool son-of-a-bitch!” Hardin snarled. “Left our right flank wide open. HEYAH! HEYAH!” He dug in his spurs, shouting: “HEYAH! Some o’ you idle jackasses tote them wounded! HEYAH! Don’t leave a livin’ soul for those murderers! HEYAH!”

  It was a bad-luck day. It looked as if half of the men were walking wounded now. Some, stained with their own blood, were carrying or dragging blood-soaked comrades whose heads wobbled on their necks. William, aiming at a sprinting Indian, heard a gasp beside him and felt a body slump against his leg. He fired; the Indian tumbled; he reloaded, and only then looked down. Lying there by him, propped on an elbow, face chalky, a sinewy runt of a fellow with salt-and-pepper hair was blinking in disbelief at a bloody arrowhead that protruded from under his left collarbone. It was one of George’s old campaigners. William knelt beside him amid the shuffling of feet and the roar of gunfire and howling of Indians, and said, “Care to walk with me, old-timer?” and stretched out a hand.

  “Just as soon not,” the man wheezed. He was not bleeding from the mouth; likely the arrow had missed his vitals.

  “Want to lay here then till they come scalp you alive?”

  The man reached for William’s arm. “No, don’t b’leev I do.” William got him up and he was able to hitch along with his right arm over William’s shoulder, his left hanging, bloodsoaked. His eyes bugged now and then, and William knew he was doing his damnedest not to faint.

  The shooting and wailing and cursing went on and it was like being herded along a gauntlet of Hell’s own demons. Now the retreating troops were within a hundred yards of Hall’s soldiers; the Indians, in a last effort to keep the two groups divided, suddenly came rushing down the slope and up from the rear, and were splashing into the river from the other bank.

  It was bewildering how they could swarm and maneuver so effectively, like bees by some common instinct, yet fight singly with such initiative. Even as they came down in this terrible onrush, William had to admire them, and sense the greatness of Little Turtle and Blue Jacket and Black Hoof and such chiefs.

  He had to let the wounded man down. He fired one shot and then there was no time to reload because the warriors, all swift, hard muscle and joyous frenzy, had crashed into the mass of Kentuckians from three sides, and now it was just simply a deadly brawl, tomahawks, clubbed rifles, bayonets, swords, knives, fists, teeth, and feet, the awfulest melee one could have dreamed of in a nightmare. William stood and plunged, ducked and swung and skipped, kicked and stabbed, reeled from blows, saw sparks, drew blood, twisted one braceleted arm until it broke, knocked out teeth, squeezed someone breathless and bit off his nose, yanked out a handful of black hair, fell to his knees from a blow on his back but somehow got up again, his vision coming and going until he could see again, and what he saw was a savage straddling the poor old fellow with an arrow through him, ripping open his abdomen with a knife, reaching in, yanking out the still-beating heart and sinking his teeth into it. “Oh, no, God damn you,” William roared and, with an infuriated lunge, thrust his hunting knife through the Indian’s temple up to the hilt into his brain. The Indian died, blood from the torn heart bathing him; William could not pull his knife out of the skull and so left it there, and resumed the battle with a tomahawk he found lying on the ground. He fought on with a cold, sick efficiency, mostly reflex, unable to forget the sight of the gushing, bitten heart. He knew the Indians believed they could obtain the strength of an enemy by eating his living heart. But what strength had that fainting old man had?

  Yell and be happy, George had told him; there’ll be time later for crying and puking.

  So William yelled, his voice curdling with fierce joy and unbearable sadness, and flung himself on the broad bare back of a Shawnee who was trying to scalp a bluecoat soldier.

  “YE KNOW SUCH KENTUCKY BOYS BE FAIR HAND-FIGHTERS,” William was to tell George and the family back at Mulberry Hill the next month, “so we fit our way to Colonel Hall, and there we formed a square, and drove ’em back to where we could shoot again. Well, we retreated up the river for about a hundred years, bloodyin’ every foot of it. Colonel Hardin wouldn’t let us break and run all morning, thinkin’ Harmar would send reinforcements. But none ever come. Damn, damn! Finally we drove ’em off, or else they got bored killin’ us and just up and quit. We hauled our wounded back twenty-five mile till we got to Harmar’s army, where he’d just been a-settin’! George, listen: our messenger had got to him, all right. But ’stead o’ sendin’ even a troop o’ horse to come help us, he’d ordered that whole damn army—nigh a thousand men, mind you!—to form a square and just set!” William’s eyes were brimming and his mouth was contorted. George nodded, and William went on.

  “And when we’d drug ourselves in, did he set off for the Maumee to strike back? No siree, he didn’t. He ordered us all back to Fort Washington, cannon and all. We were dumbstruck, George. The men wanted to go back and fight, but the general said give up!

  “A hundred and nine men, George. Left for the scalping knife and the buzzards. Meat left to rot, as you used to say, Pa. Not a one with a grave to sleep in.” He shook his head and put his palms over his face. The family looked at him in the light from the chandelier, and no one knew what to say. Finally George spoke.

  “Well, Brother, ye’ve had your taste o’ war now. And didn’t I say, there’s a time after for cryin’ and pukin’.”

  “Aye, you were so right, too.” William touched his tongue to the little scar just below his lower lip. He had discovered after the battle that he had bitten his lip through. Except for the bullet graze on his flank, it was the only scar he carried from that battle where death had flown so thick and fast.

  All the bruises and sprains that had been in every part of his body had left no scars.

  George looked at William with a heart-quaking affection and deep respect. In all the combats he had been through himself, he had never been expo
sed to such an intense or sustained hail of lead and steel as that must have been, and he wondered if he could have borne it the way William had. Survivors of the battle had told George that his brother Ensign William Clark was “brave as Caesar” and “blessed with eyes all the way around his head.”

  John Clark, sitting here now hearing his youngest son talk, was aware that he had killed so many Indians that he had lost count of them, and this brought the old confused sadness over him, for he still suspected that the Gate of Heaven is closed against those who have taken human lives, even though some passages of the Bible seemed to justify slaying in a right cause. John Clark heard and watched his youngest son now with anxiety for his soul. At least it was good that William did not seem to exult.

  And now William said: “I’m sick for the whole miserable United States Army. Its first campaign was a disaster, damn that fool Harmar. I wish you’d been leading ’em, George. It wouldn’t ha’ turned out so.”

  “Hear, hear!” exclaimed Dr. James O’Fallon. He was sitting across the room, in a straight chair, Fanny Clark in another chair at his side. He had come down the Ohio at last, after long travels in the South and East, to see the girl he had doctored and then become infatuated with back at Fort Pitt. And he had found her here, now grown into a stunning, sweet-voiced, shapely young woman of seventeen, and here his travels had stopped. He had been here for weeks now as a house guest, occupying William’s empty room. And her parents were expecting him at any moment to announce his intentions, which were already quite plain. Fanny was so a-brim with happiness that she could not bear to see William brought to such low spirits.