Long Knife (14 page)

Sergeant Crump stopped. “Beggin’ yer pardon, Colonel, but I think this is what we come here fer.”

“You’re in my pay, Crump, so you’ll obey my orders.” The crowd was gathering close, watching their faces. In the hush a cardinal’s song trilled. Then Crump grimaced.

“Orders be damned!” he snarled; then he snatched off his hat and dropped his head forward, thrusting his skull under George’s nose. “Look!” The crown of his head was a ragged, puckered pink scar; in its center the bone of his skull shone through like old ivory. He slammed his hat back on as the crowd murmured and growled, and he started to move forward again.

Suddenly he felt a wrenching pain in his hands, and before he could yell, found himself disarmed, his own rifle pointed straight at his chest, its hammer clicking back.

“You’re right lucky to be alive, I see,” said George in a quiet voice. “And now if you want to remain that way, you’ll get back aboard this boat and lean on an oar. You too, Key,” he said, waving the rifle barrel at the other sergeant. Both clambered meekly back over the gunwale, not taking their eyes off
his face. He shoved the vessel off and leaped aboard in one move, and soon the boats were again moving downstream. All the people on shore had begun talking the incident over as if they had attended some play at a fair. George tossed a salute back to Captain Arbuckle, who stood at the water’s edge; the captain stood there expressionless and did not return the salute.

George turned away, looked once at Joseph Bowman’s puzzled, accusing eyes, and passed Crump’s rifle back among the rowers, who were saying nothing.

“Hear this now,” he said as the fort began to fade into the smoke and mist. “You’ll soon enough have all the fighting and vengeance you can dream of. But you’ll have it to suit
our
purpose, and any man who chooses to go his own way will have to get past me. For your sakes, don’t try it.” A full minute went by, the dripping oars rising and falling. Then he said, “Are there any questions, boys?” After a pause, a familiar voice came from among the rowers.

“Sir, just where in th’ ring-tailed hell
are
we goin’ in such a hurry?”

George grinned and waited for a moment. “Sergeant Crump,” he replied, “when I’m ready to answer that, you’ll like the news. I assure you, it’s going to be more satisfying than chasing a pack o’ Shawnees up the Kanawha.”

“Wal, I’m a-takin’ yer word f’r that, sir,” Crump’s voice came back.

Good, thought George. Crump and I are all settled up now and it shouldn’t be necessary to punish him. The incident may have done us all some good, in a way; they’re learning not to take me lightly, and they really must learn that.

He thought of the hideous scar on Crump’s head. That’ll make him the center of attention for the next few bivouacs, he thought. We’ve got us a real showpiece.

Now, he thought. Now to see if I can mollify Bowman.

S
ERGEANT
C
RUMP WAS INDEED THE CELEBRITY FOR THE NEXT
three days. He was repeatedly asked to doff his hat and show his scalping scar, as few of the men had ever known anyone who lived to tell of his own scalping. Crump considered it a badge of honor and, gruffly at first, then cheerfully, obliged all the awestruck and curious. But at the breaking of camp on the fourth morning, one of the older woodsmen apparently decided that Crump had enjoyed all the glory that was his due. He sidled up to him as they were loading the boats.

“I say now, Mister Crump,” he remarked in a carrying voice, “may be my eyes is deceivin’ me, but seems to me they’s more o’ yer skull a-showin’ this mornin’.”

“What?” said Crump, reaching up toward his hat.

“Wal, hit reminds me of when I was a tad,” the man began, “and my ma would darn my socks. You rec’leck how a sock looks stretched over a darnin’ egg, with th’ egg showin’ through whar th’ hole is?” The big sergeant’s eyelids narrowed and this nostrils widened, but the woodsman politely, conversationally, continued, as George and a few men nearby paused to listen: “Wal, when Ma’d pull down tight on thatair sock, why it’d stretch an’ more o’ that egg’d show. So I was just curious to know, maybe yer scalp is gittin’ stretched, as if, mought be, uh, yer headbone’s a-gittin’ bigger?” The listeners broke out in laughter.

Sergeant Crump’s whole huge self seemed to swell at that, and one of his dirty hammer fists began to rise to the ready. But George stepped between them.

“Let’s get aboard, gents,” he said cheerfully. “We aim to reach the mouth of the Kentucky by afternoon, and there Will Smith’ll join us with his people.”

The prospect of seeing their party enlarged put the men in high spirits. In the last few days they had cautiously passed the mouth of the Scioto River, a major artery for Shawnee water traffic, then the Miami and Little Miami rivers, upon whose banks stood the major Shawnee towns of Chillicothe and Piqua. Though they had seen no Indians around any of the river mouths, they deemed it almost certain that their flotilla had been observed, and in this region, so near the Indian strongholds, they knew the Shawnees could quickly put hundreds of warriors on the river to come against them. The two hundred men Smith had promised to enlist would make the flotilla much less susceptible to attack.

George summoned Captains Helm, Harrod, and Montgomery to his boat before casting off. “Ride with me this morning,” he said. “I’d like us all to be up front when we meet Smith.”

They talked little as the convoy found midstream and rowed southwestward in the ponderous current. Lounging in the prow of the boat, they watched the darkness leach out of the sky astern, watched the eastern vault brighten and ripen to the color of persimmon, watched the high forested river bluffs turn from black to golden green. Somewhere in the woods a panther coughed and roared. In the first flood of light from the orange sun, wraiths of river mist drifted like silvery ghosts, and the following boats appeared to be afloat on a river of cloud. From both riverbanks, filtered by distance, spilled the rasping of crickets and the exuberant morning calls of thousands of songbirds. The officers, rough and uncouth-looking as they were, contentedly sniffed the river-damp air and enjoyed the dawn as if entranced, until George at last sat up, leaned his elbows on his knees, and cleared his throat.

“Gentlemen, when we put ashore at the mouth of the Kentucky, we’ll unload the salt kettles we brought for those people, and that’ll make some room. But then we’ll have to squeeze up pretty tight, because we shall have to double the number of men in each boat. We’ll be riding low in the water then.”

“I don’t mind some company,” Harrod said.

“Me neither,” said Montgomery. “My boys’ll be glad t’ see some fresh labor to spell ’em on them oars.”

“I reckon a couple more days will put us at the Falls of the Ohio,” George said. “You may know of Corn Island, on the south bank. Here.” He spread a rough map. “If this island is all I expect it will be, we’re going to put up a base there first thing. Cabins, blockhouses, and stockades. We can’t spare but a few
days for building, so civilians and troops alike will work. Then we’ll put the civilians to planting a late crop while we whip this bunch of poachers and bushrangers into an army. D’you follow me so far, gentlemen?”

“I folly
what,”
replied Helm, “but I’m a razorbacked roothog if I folly
why
. Sir, I fear I just fail t’ see what buildin’ a fort on an island plumb downriver at th’ Falls has got t’ do with fightin’ off Indians who been raidin’ on the Kanawha and th’ Licking an’ th’ Kentucky. There ain’t anybody
out
there, I know of, is there? Other’n fur traders an’ vagabonds …”

“Beggin’ your pardon, Colonel,” Montgomery joined in. “My people been hornswoggled too, ever since we left Matt Arbuckle standin’ back there on th’ riverbank with his mouth hangin’ open.”

George nodded from one to another as they quizzed him in turn, but said nothing.

“George, I’ll tell you a little observation,” William Harrod said. “Ever’ time I run across you last year, seemed like you was porin’ over some dang map or other. Now, I always figured, this boy is whuppin’ up some real bodacious caper. And now, ever since I been on this river with you, I’ve had a curious idee that I’ve got myself smack in th’ middle of it, whatever it is. Might I be right, George?”

“You might be.”

“Well, I would sure like t’ know about it.”

“I know you would.”

“Well, then?”

“Soon as we make camp on Corn Island, you’ll know.”

Harrod gazed at the distant riverbank. The profusion of grizzled brown whiskers that covered all his face below the level of his livid nose hid any facial expression, but his shoulders were tense and hunched. Finally, he said, as if talking to himself, “Seems t’me like the Kentucky River’s where y’d put an army. There y’ could get quicker t’ any o’ th’ settlements where you was needed. Y’d be a few days’ march from any of ’em. Humph.”

George glanced quickly at the other officers. They were saying nothing, but they were looking at old Bill Harrod’s craggy profile thoughtfully, and no doubt were agreeing with the common sense of his observation. Harrod soon became aware of their attention; he turned to look each in the eyes. Then he smirked and punched George’s knee with his fist.

“Well, you know me, m’boy. Show me th’ smarts of it, an’
I’ll do anything.” The rest grumbled and relaxed then, and the discussion was closed.

By midday a damp breeze was turning the leaves along the riverbank pale side up. A slate-gray overcast crawled up the river to meet them. They rowed another half an hour in a windless stillness and then, as if they had passed through a curtain, found themselves in a deluge which obliterated both banks of the river and turned the water’s surface to a hissing, silvery froth. The rowers sat with water to their ankles despite the others’ steady bailing. Grain sacks and powder kegs were wrapped in tarpaulins and set up on the thwarts. The boats were moved into tighter file so that each would be in view of the one ahead and the one astern, and the convoy moved on through the rushing oblivion, every man, woman, and child drenched through, every hat brim spilling water like a gutterspout.

George led the convoy closer to the left bank so that they might not miss the mouth of the Kentucky in the blinding downpour, and suddenly, on a grassy bottom, a few yards away, a lone human figure in wide hat and blanket materialized out of the sheets of rain; he was staring toward the convoy which must have looked to him as much like an apparition as he did to it. He turned as if to flee, then came about, and drawing his long rifle out from under his blanket, raised it and aimed it at George, who had risen to stand in the bow of the boat.

“Who be you?” came the man’s voice, almost blotted up by the rushing of the rain.

“George Rogers Clark with militia.”

The man turned, with a wave of his arm, and began running westward along the bank, feet squishing audibly in the sodden turf. He vanished in the rain, but in a moment shouts were heard not far ahead, and in minutes a lean-to grew out of the curtains of rain, with a small orange cook fire glowing within, then a few more brush shelters and a tent, and a score of white men were running down to the shore to greet them, shouting cheerfully, and George knew he had, at last, reached the Kentucky River. He jumped ashore, sinking almost to midcalf in muck, and in the hubbub of excited voices now issuing both from the boats and the camp, called out, “I’m looking for William Bailey Smith!”

“I am here, George,” came a raucous, twanging voice from a tall figure now strolling down from the tent. Wearing a three-cornered hat, a deerskin draped over his shoulders like some unfinished cape, Smith came to Clark, shook his hand solemnly,
then looked at him through forlorn and wavering eyes. He was emaciated, gray under his weathered skin; a drop of rainwater hung at the end of his blackpored beak. His underslung jaw moved as if on a cud. “Shore glad you got here, George. You wanta get them folk o’ your’n under some shelter?”

George ordered the boats beached and covered and the troops and families into the lean-tos. Something seemed awfully wrong with Smith, who usually rampaged and squawked about like a blue jay. As they walked through the rain among the smoky hovels toward the tent, George peered about the wretched little camp.

“Lot of trouble down along the Holsten,” Smith mumbled as they went up. “Folks down there’s more concerned about Cherokees ’n they are about any redskins from over th’ Ohio. Hard t’ get any of ’em to come away.”

They stopped at the entrance of the tent. George looked hard at Smith’s miserable face. Then he looked back through the ragged little camp, where his soldiers and civilians now were crowding in around the cookfires, their voices filtering through the sibiliant rain. He felt a sudden, dreadful comprehension. “Where’s the rest of your army, Mister Smith?”

Smith squinted into the rain and sighed.

“George, I done my goddamndest. But what you saw is all I could raise.”

George’s heart felt as if it had dropped through a trap-door. He clenched his fists at his sides and clamped his teeth shut to keep from yelling in frustration. He glowered from under his dripping hat brim toward the river, suddenly feeling drained and chilled. After a painful silence, he took a deep breath and cleared his throat, and his hands relaxed at his sides. “Will, d’you know we’re desperate? D’you have any notion how desperate our situation is?”

“I’m sorry. I done everything I could. I beat doors and wheedled like a …”

“How many? Thirty?”

“About twenty able-bodied.”

“Any good?”

“They look like a herd o’ yayhoos. But I’d ruther have ’em fer me than agin me.”

George gazed over the camp, listened to the whooping and laughter, saw old comrades pummeling each other and yelping in the delight of recognition, their buckskins dark with rainwater, mud to their knees, eyes red from the smoke of wet
wood, but all seemingly impervious to their discomfort. He followed Smith into his tent and accepted a cup of rum, sat on a cask looking out at this crowd of backwoods ruffians. Less than two hundred, instead of five hundred! He drank his rum down, thought over everything he knew about the enemy outposts along the Mississippi, four hundred miles farther yet into the wilderness, thought of the hundreds of miles he had come since Fort Pitt, and somehow, to his own surprise, began to feel elated, almost mad with an absurd confidence that was swelling up inside him. He took a long look at Smith’s woebegone bird-eyes, which now were searching his own.