Long Knife (13 page)

He slept in his deerskins on the ground at the river’s edge, while the stars wheeled silent above.

T
HE CONVOY REACHED THE
W
HEELING SETTLEMENT LATE THE NEXT
day, acquired a few more supplies, and encamped on the heights outside Fort Henry overlooking the river. The small populace of the town was agitated by the numerous reports of increasing Indian activity to the west, and George forbade his men from circulating in the village where all the talk was so demoralizing.

The next morning he had his boats in the current again before daybreak, and that afternoon the flotilla reached a region of magnificent bottomlands which, reluctantly, he passed without stopping. These were lands he had cleared and planted six years earlier during an idyllic and profitable year. He had built a small fortune there at the age of nineteen, with his corn crop, through a nice cash trade in surveying, and ultimately through a very profitable sale of the improved land. Now he sat silent and dreamy in the prow of his war boat as it glided by this familiar place, and scanned the shore.

Soon, his eyes falling on a sun-drenched slope near the edge of the forest, he felt a rush of good memory; he put his hand on Captain Bowman’s arm. Bowman turned and was surprised by the rapturous expression in those usually piercing eyes.

“Joseph, you remember Chief Logan the Mingo.”

“Who of us don’t?” Bowman exclaimed. Logan had been a staunch friend of the white men until 1774, when a border ruffian named Greathouse had murdered every one of the chief’s relatives. Logan then had taken up his tomahawk with a vow not to lay it down until he had taken the lives of ten whites in revenge for each victim; and the terrorism associated with Logan’s revenge had become a part of the reason for the ensuing campaigns known as Dunmore’s War. George had fought in that campaign as a militia captain, alongside Bowman, William Harrod, Leonard Helm, Simon Butler, and Matthew Arbuckle, who was now commander of Fort Randolph at the mouth of the Kanawha River.

“Well, you see that big beech tree up yonder at the top of that meadow?”

“I see it,” Bowman replied.

“That’s where I first met Logan. Before he took up the tomahawk.”

“Aye! I ‘member you tellin’ me about that! You was surveyin’, you said …”

“And I felt—well, like you said—I felt my back draw up, and I turned around and there Logan stood, no more than twenty foot away. Rifle restin’ over his arm. I reckon we stared at each other five minutes without a sign. Oh, what a man, Joseph! I guess you never saw him. But he was tall, and straight. Joseph …” he lowered his voice, somehow almost ashamed to be heard talking this way about an old enemy, “you could’ve put Logan in a room with all those periwigged dandies in our Assembly—yea, even Tom Jefferson and Governor Henry themselves!—and he’d have looked like a god among ’em!”

Bowman listened to this in wonderment. He had heard Logan described as a murderous savage, but never a god. And he had never heard George Rogers Clark wax rhapsodic like this about anything, except the splendor of some fertile new valley or limpid waterway.

“So,” George continued, “we spent the entire afternoon, Logan and I, sittin’ at the foot of that selfsame beech tree up there and smoking tobacco. We spoke of just about everything there is under the sun. Probably wasn’t another human soul in fifty miles of us, but there we sat holdin’ council like we were in the Roman Senate or some such thing. I tell you, that day passed and it seemed like an hour, if that. I reckon I probably learned more in that day than I ever learned from anybody, even my grandfather or George Mason …”

Bowman nodded in amazement and gazed toward the distant beech, as if trying to see two ghosts under it smoking their pipes. “Such as what did you talk on?” he asked.

“Well, it is strange; I can remember we talked about everything that matters, but I can’t recollect much specific. Now, there was God. I don’t think we spoke of God or the Great Spirit, by name at all, but …” he lowered his voice further and glanced at the backs of the rowers, “I got satisfied that there’s no difference between ’em, except in name …” He did not know how, or whether, to explain to Bowman how his own family’s Episcopalian God had, in effect, shifted shape during that afternoon, to become less like a single sublime personage
and more like a boundless current of spiritual power, flowing everywhere on the face of the earth. No, perhaps it would not be wise to try to express that to Bowman. “… No difference except in name,” he said again.

“Hm,” Bowman grunted and nodded, choosing not to comment.

“I remember one thing,” George said. “There was a kind of a … a
sadness
about Logan’s friendship with the white men. I doubt I have his eloquence to say it. He loved the white people, you see, but to him that love was a tragical thing. He said that his people need wilderness to range in, while we Virginians have an equal passion for tillable land, and he seemed to know … I remember how he said it: ‘The two cannot be at once, for there is no world big enough.’ He said it was a good thing but a sad thing to care for the white man; he said it was a situation as bad as loving someone’s squaw. What d’you think of a ‘savage’ who thinks like that, eh, Joseph?”

Bowman shook his head, lower lip thrust out, frowning. “That was Logan, by your account. Mighty fine. The recollection I have of Logan is his belt of thirty white people’s scalps. Whole families found murdered. To me,
that’s
Logan.”

George nodded. “I know.” He gazed back toward the meadow, which was fading out of sight as the boats swung into another long bend. “But he was justly outraged. He sent a message to the peace parley after the campaign; wouldn’t come himself. It said something that moved me all the way through. It said:
‘There runs no longer a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one!’
You know, I went home to my family last winter while I was at Williamsburg, and … if I had entered that house and found—God forbid!—my entire family murdered, and by someone I had trusted … And not a drop of Clark blood left! … That’s what Logan found. My God, Joseph! A man is alone enough in this world as he is; who should bear having no relatives?” He saw in his mind the Clark table, surrounded by redheads. He thought then of Joseph Rogers, his cousin, dead now or living a prisoner in some Shawnee town, probably with no expectation of seeing his family again. He sighed, and suddenly found himself feeling very naked of soul under the quizzical gaze of Bowman. He turned to stare ahead down the river. After a while Bowman cleared his throat.

“Well, it ain’t hardly a just world, George.”

“No. So I reckon what a man’s to do is, see as clear as he
can what
is
just, and do that. Anyhow, I do wish you could have seen Logan as he was that day.”

T
WO MORNINGS LATER, ROUNDING A BEND IN THE
O
HIO A FEW
miles above the Kanawha River, George saw dirty smoke spreading like a stain across the river, hanging low in the wet air which lingered after a drenching predawn rain. There had been little talk in the boats this morning; the men had been growing sullen and uneasy in the previous twenty-four hours, partly because of the damp discomfort brought on by alternating rain showers and steamy sunshine, partly because of the hard and relentless rowing which had made some begin to feel like galley slaves, and partly because they knew the river was carrying them along the edge of the region controlled by the hostile Shawnees.

An ominous murmur went up in the boats when the woodsmen saw the smoke. “It must be coming from Fort Randolph,” Bowman said.

George turned and called, “Faster.” The pace quickened and the boats sped down the middle of the stream. He had a foreboding. This place at the Kanawha’s mouth, though known as Point Pleasant, had been a place of ugly tragedies. Here in October of 1774 the Shawnee chief Cornstalk had cut off an encampment commanded by General Andrew Lewis, lured five hundred frontiersmen—nearly half of Lewis’s force—into a trap, where his braves killed nearly fifty of the whites, including two colonels and four captains, in a hot day-long battle, before withdrawing across the Ohio. Cornstalk had yielded to a peace treaty soon afterward, and had remained friendly for the next three years, even resisting British pressures to make war on the American in 1777. But then in November of that year, while staying at this same Point Pleasant as willing hostages of its commander, Captain Matthew Arbuckle, Cornstalk and his son had been murdered in their cabin by a band of soldiers infuriated by the scalping of one of their hunters across the river. The place had a history ill-befitting its name.

Now here on Point Pleasant sat the precarious Fort Randolph, still commanded by Arbuckle, and George urged the rowers onward, dreading what he might find under the pall of smoke, listening for gunfire, watching for some sign which might indicate whether he was speeding into a trap. He glanced back at the men in his boat and saw that now they looked tense and eager instead of sullen. The hot wet air seemed to crackle with a
sense of impending danger, and he sensed their urgent lust for vengeful action against Indians.

The oars swished; the fort came into view, and beyond it the mouth of the Kanawha. The stockades appeared to be intact. The curtain of smoke was rising from the blackened ruins of some riverbank cabins, which were still smoldering. There was a smell of wet ashes mingled with that of the smoke. A great deal of yelling could be heard, and as the boats drew abreast of the outpost, a dozen frontiersmen came spilling out of the gate and down among the smoking cabins to the waterfront to greet them. It was apparent that Fort Randolph had survived a very recent raid. “Joseph, pass the order no one’s to leave the boats.”

“Oh, by God, but you’re a joyous sight to see!” exclaimed the red-eyed, square-faced Captain Arbuckle as George leaped onto the shore and took his hand. “It was more than two hundred of them, mostly Shawnees, George. All day yesterday.”

George frowned and shaped his mouth for a silent whistle. “That’s a bunch,” he said. “Where would they be now?”

Captain Arbuckle pointed southward up the Kanawha, while his bleary-eyed, muddy, bandaged defenders gathered around and surveyed George with hopeful faces or held the mooring lines and talked excitedly with the men in the boats. “Their trail leads up the river,” Arbuckle said. “Likely they’re headin’ up to hit the Greenbrier settlements. I sent a runner up th’ other side of the river this morning to try to get ahead of ’em with a warning. Now, look …” He pulled a blood-spattered piece of paper from his coat. “They left these on some of the bodies after they scalped ’em.”

George unfolded the paper. It was a printed English handbill suggesting that the settlers might save their own lives by deserting the rebel cause, swearing allegiance to the king, and moving up to live under protection of the British headquarters at Detroit. His eyes flashed. “As well as you can, Matt, keep these away from your people. I expect there’s some would be tempted; they’ve seen so much of this.”

“Not mine,” said Arbuckle with resolution. “Soon’s they saw you comin’, they hollered, ‘Hey, here come the reinforcements! Now we can go after them whoreson savages!’ You are a godsend, George. I’d say we can catch up with ’em in …”

“One moment, Matt. You presume I’m at leisure to do that …”

Arbuckle’s expression suddenly went from eagerness to incredulity, and it was a moment before he got his words together.

“W-Well, what in damnation else?” He moved his lips wordlessly and fluttered his right hand vaguely toward the upper Ohio.

“It might be that I have business farther down the river …” George said. How he wished he could explain.

“The hell you say! What business …” Arbuckle’s mouth was gaping like that of a fish. “With due respect, George, but a man come through here from Fort Pitt not a week ago, an’ he said you were making an army for protection of the settlements, and if this ain’t such a case, I’m damned …”

George in turn waved his hand downstream. “The
Kentucky
settlements, Matt, those are my orders …”

The defenders had crowded close to hear this and were beginning to scowl at him and mutter their disbelief to one another. George looked toward his boats. Many of his men were standing up in the vessels, clutching their rifles, talking vehemently with those on shore. It was obvious they thought this was indeed just the sort of situation they had come for, and he knew too that they were sick of this endless rowing, spoiling for some action and ready to help avenge the atrocities they were hearing about from the people on the shore.

For an instant, George faltered, listening to the angry protestations of Captain Arbuckle. He was tempted to stop and help. It would be feasible to pursue the war party up the river, to destroy or scatter it. Defensively, it made good sense, as here was a large Indian raiding party virtually at Virginia’s back door, seemingly much more immediate and valid a threat than his objectives seven hundred miles farther west. And the Indians might be expected to strike Fort Randolph again on their return from the Greenbrier outposts. Surely in two or three days here he could stage a successful retaliation and then get his fleet back on its way down the Ohio. Not to do so would be almost inexplicable under these circumstances.

But, no. I’m on an offensive, not a defense, he thought; I can’t spare the time or risk any men.

Arbuckle stood before him, his face now hard and challenging. He’s bound to presume me a coward, George thought; that’s the worst of it. The people around them were beginning to mill about, grumbling and tentative. Glancing over the scene, George noted a few freshly dug graves on a rise of ground before the fort, smelled the stink of burnt rubble, and had to steel himself.

“D’you need food, or powder?” he asked Arbuckle. “I can’t spare much, but …”

“God damn it, no! I need your regiment, that’s what I need!”

George put his hand on the captain’s solid, dust-smudged shoulder. “Listen,” he hissed. “You’ll understand soon enough. What I’m doing will put a sure end to this, but I simply can’t stop along the way, d’you hear me? I wish I could, but now, Matt, get your people back away from my boats, and that is an order!” Arbuckle turned, slowly, toward the people as if to assuage them, and George, still haunted by the anguish in his old friend’s eyes, stalked off quickly toward his boat. “Cast off!” he roared in a pained fury, elbowing through a knot of inhabitants who stank of smoke and breath and were clutching at him and yelling, seemingly a crowd of claws and fetid mouths. As he broke through them and put one foot in the bow of his boat, two of his own sergeants leaped out of the boat and onto shore, yelling something incoherent. He sprang into their path. “Get back in that boat,” he ordered. Both were large men, nearly his height and, he knew already, strong-willed and impulsive. The larger, holding his rifle across his chest like a quarterstaff, advanced as if to go through George; the other side-stepped toward the clamoring inhabitants. “Did you hear me, Crump? Get back in the boat!”