Long Knife (30 page)

Now the interpreters were waiting and it was time to conclude. “Since I am convinced that you’ve never heard the truth before, I do not wish you to give me an answer before you’ve had time to council. We will part this evening, and when you’re ready, if the Great Spirit will bring us together again, let us prove ourselves worthy by speaking and thinking with but one heart and one tongue.”

With that, he turned on his heel, went around behind the table, and sat down, his sword and the belts before him. A cool
breeze in the elm shade soothed his damp face. Birds twittered in the high foliage. A fly buzzed past his ear. Bowman shifted on his bench and rested his elbows on the end of the table and, his left profile to the Indians, winked his pale right eye at George. Beyond, Father Gibault sat beaming, his fingers laced across his midsection. And then the chiefs, following the example of their white-braided spokesman, stood up one by one and filed out of the shade into the sunlight, silent, straight, and dignified, their warriors falling in behind them. In two minutes they were all in their camps and the great pool of shade was deserted, ringing with the endless call of the summer locusts.

H
E AWOKE IN THE DARKNESS, MOANING LOW IN HIS THROAT AND
taking deep breaths. Voluptuous thoughts, of arms and hips and long hair and bedding, roiled and grew vague as he became aware of the crickets outside and the dim gray square of the window, the stars glinting through the closed panes, the slick place under his hip in the sweat-soaked bedding. It had happened again, that curse of the lonely man, the seductive dream. It had been of a young woman he had bundled with one night in Caroline County. The constraint of the bundling-board had been ineffective, as it sometimes proved to be, and the occurrence of that night had repeated itself periodically in his dreams, as just now. Sleeping naked because of the summer heat in the closed room—security among the congregated tribes here at Cahokia forbade open windows—he lay now feeling the sensations ebb from his loins. He did not like it to happen. There was always the clammy discomfort afterward, and the sense of wasted energy. And what if the guard outside the door had heard him moaning, as he was sure he had been? And, too, it reminded him of his perennial loneliness.

He moved aside a bit in the narrow cot and considered that loneliness, which had become worse since his successes here in the Illinois. A private soldier could either bear his loneliness, which was part of being a soldier, or he could court or buy some temporary companionship when his energies ran too high in the night. The commander, though, especially one who had become such an object of public attention as he had, was forced to be totally discreet. Even though his successes in leadership seemed somehow to have made his yearnings even stronger, made every woman he saw seem more desirable, they had isolated him more than any private soldier ever could be. He could not take up with some common woman of the villages, or a
squaw, or go to a brothel. Some commanders, less jealous of their example, might, but he could not. And gossip, which seemed to be the main preoccupation of the French villagers, made it almost impossible to imagine how he could have an affair of the heart—or even one of the loins—with any one of those respectable misses such as he had steered about the ballroom floor at Cerré’s.

I am chaperoned by my role, he thought. I am as tightly chaperoned by my reputation as a Spanish noblewoman is by her
duenna
.

And now he had brought himself thus to thinking of that young woman again.
Teresa
, that was her name.
Teresa
. He had learned it from that trader yesterday, that Vigo. A fine fellow. Simply by mentioning de Leyba, George had brought down upon himself a torrent of praise and information about that lovely family. Vigo was enchanted by them all, by Teresa, especially, but apparently in an avuncular way. And she
was
de Leyba’s sister; his guess about that had been right.

But how that Vigo had prattled on about her charms! As if advertising her. Could it be, George thought now, amused, that the little fellow is one of those congenital matchmakers who seem to exist everywhere, in every village? He smiled in the darkness and listened to the night sounds. Be that as it may, he thought, that fellow is a splendid character and promises to be an incomparable ally. One who ranges this whole territory, is trusted by everyone, knows the commercial ways, has goods and credit. And Gibault says you can trust him with your life if he’s taken a liking to you.

George did not like to mix his thoughts of one’s usefulness with his thoughts of one’s friendship, but all American responsibilities out here being his own, he had to think in terms of everybody’s usefulness. Someday, he thought, I’ll have the luxury again of enjoying friends who are of no use to me. As for now, they have to be considered part and parcel of the plan to survive.

In his mind now he saw a connection, a sort of vein work, consisting of Gabriel Cerré in Kaskaskia, de Leyba in St. Louis, Vigo everywhere in the territory, and Oliver Pollock and Governor Galvez in New Orleans far down the river. Through them flowed the lifeblood of his triumphant but desperate little army. Lead and powder. Grain. Meat. Clothing. Tools and canvas and weapons and paper and rope, wax, cotton, quinine, tallow and salt and rum. And all of this flowed according to the power of
an ephemeral something called credit. His signature and the name of the Virginia Assembly, written on hundreds of ledger sheets and vouchers of paper. Paper. Scarcer even than gold. He had made lists and vouchers on flysheets cut from books, on the backs of letters, on anything made of that precious stuff. One of his most worrisome burdens now, one that he felt must be guarded at the cost of life almost, was his packet of records. He had signed his name too many times, and in that network of goods and credit imprinted on his brain there was not even a shadow of a line leading directly to or from Virginia. Nothing from there but silence. Someday there’s going to be an accounting, he thought. He had faith in the word of Henry and Jefferson and their peers and in the state itself. But it was exceedingly tenuous, that connection. He longed for messengers from Virginia as he longed for food. I’ve built a mountain of promises out here in this valley, he thought, promises to the French, and promises to my boys, and now promises even to the Indians, all of which I have to trust Virginia will honor. Yet I can’t seem to get from that place even an inflated pound note or an able-bodied rifleman. Nay, not even a
word
.

Five hundred men from that place—even four hundred, perhaps—maybe even three hundred and fifty would be enough, if they were like these—and I could go and reduce Detroit, and the Northwest would be secure.
Detroit
. The image of the gate of the great fort at Detroit burned in his mind now, as real and detailed as if he had actually seen it.

Big Gate, he thought. That bloody English Indian there among the chiefs: He has seen the gate at Detroit, and fought there. His time will come. He’ll need special handling. He seems to have a sense of himself in the context of destiny.

Maybe that’s my problem, too, George thought, with a sudden rush of clear understanding.

That, he thought, could be the worst kind of disease.

He thought then of another Indian who seemed to have a sense of destiny: Saguina of the Chippewas, known as Mister Black Bird. Mister Black Bird had not come to the councils, but had, like Big Gate, sent a letter. And traders had brought word that he was waiting to be invited. And so George had sent the invitation back with them. Mister Black Bird was the chief of a great band of warriors in the northern region of St. Joseph. He had personally been among those treating with Hamilton in 1777, when Hamilton had danced at the fire with the savages. Now he wanted to come and treat with the Big Knives. George
wanted very much to talk with Mister Black Bird, who was known as a wise man and probably could be brought to see the light. With him neutralized, the march against Detroit would be that much less perilous. Probably he is on his way here now, George thought. It would take him several days. But I would like to have him here while the others are still in council.

George reached for a corner of the sheet and wiped sweat from his face and chest and thought of the hundreds of Indians encamped at this moment not a half mile from where he slept. Or tried to sleep, he corrected himself.

These hundreds of savages I have surrounded, he thought, and puffed out voiceless laughter in the dark.

What a people, he thought, with his usual wonderment. How they yearn to trust! How they love ceremony, and the poesy in words and deeds! And, yet, damn! There’s nothing like them for cruelty.

A ghastly memory arose in his mind, something from Dunmore’s War: A white man, captive of the Mingoes or perhaps some allied tribe, had been stripped, his groin had been opened by a sharp knife, his small bowel severed at its lower end and tied to a sapling tree, and he had been forced to walk around and around the tree until the full length of his guts was wound around it. After he had fallen, or perhaps before, they had also lifted his scalp. The frontiersmen had found him kneeling there dead, still warm, bathed in the bloody slime of his own innards. What a people, he thought, remembering that, shuddering.

But our own people have done no less, he thought. A sergeant in Harrod’s company, for instance, had as his most prized possession a bracelet made of a squaw’s genitals.

Thank God my boys aren’t all like that one, he thought, though many of ’em are: Insane when it comes to Indians. But give me men like Simon Butler. He’s killed more Indians than any of ‘em, but he’s never killed one he didn’t have to, and he won’t take a scalp. George mused fondly on Butler, who was at this moment on his way to Kentucky to persuade them down there, if possible, to send men here for an assault on Detroit.

Outside the door the sentry moved. George heard the pop of his knee joints and a weary sigh. To have people lose sleep a-guarding you, he thought; what a sorry necessity that is. But it is a necessity. Sentinels awake, and guard squads sleeping clothed and ready, were stationed throughout the town. George knew he would be considered quite a prize, his new reputation
being what it was, for any band of braves who might have the boldness to try to surprise him in the night and carry him off, either dead or alive. Any warrior who could do that right now would become a legend among the tribes and a prince among the British. Another dubious benefit of my new-made fame, he thought. Not only have I no privacy, but must be guarded like a chest of gold.

He tried to give the Indians an impression that he was careless about his personal safety, that he had no anxiety whatsoever, and thus he kept his guard as unobtrusive as possible, and lodged in a seemingly unguarded house outside the fort. But beyond that door sat the hidden sentry, and in an adjoining room dozed a dozen more armed men. And directly across the street in another house was a guard squad of French militia, volunteers from Kaskaskia.

But, my God, I might as well let them all rest and guard myself, wakeful as I am, he thought. He got up from the clammy bed and stretched, licked his teeth and gums, leaned against the windowsill, and looked out into the street.

What he saw sent a chill of alarm through him: Darting across the pale starlit dirt of the street, crouched low, in a silent file, moving directly toward his window, were Indians with muskets. Perhaps a dozen of them, it appeared; two or three, he saw now, were right outside the window already. His scalp prickled.

Silently grabbing his breeches off a chair back, he pulled them on and hastily knotted the string at his waist. Then he picked up his pistol from the table, and went swiftly in bare feet to the door of the adjacent room. Thrusting it inward, he groped in the dark for the sergeant of the guard who slept on a cot just inside. Getting a foot, he jerked the sergeant out of his sleep, hearing him suspire loudly.

“Up!” George whispered sharply. “Get them up and out! Be quiet about it. There’s Indians outside the east window!” Instantly the room was full of rustling and excited whispering, the rattle of weapons, the thump of moccasins on floorboards. These woodsmen slept with the proverbial open eye, and could be galvanized into action without so much as a yawn or a groan. They were on their feet and bustling into his room when suddenly a shout split the night outside.

“Guard! Hey, boys! Injuns out here!” It was the sentry outside the south entrance. He was cocking his flintlock at the moment George and the sergeant threw open the door and sprinted
out past him and around the corner of the house. George saw the intruders flitting across the street into the shadows, going toward the river. The French volunteers now were pouring out of their house, filling the air with sonorous cries and the sound of running feet. In a moment the whole town was aroused, and the night was shattered by a ragged rattling of gunfire down by the riverbank. That ceased, and there followed a few minutes of voices, talking voices, no more yells, from everywhere in the village. Then a large group could be seen walking up the street. The sergeant of the guard held up a lantern, and in its feeble glow the body of men was brought up before George.

It was a band of Puans, an evil-looking roving party called the Meadow Indians, who had been encamped on the island in the Cahokia while one or two of their chieftains hung around the edges of the council. Now guarding them was a squad of the French volunteers, whose captain bowed proudly to George. Other Frenchmen, soldiers and Cahokian civilians alike, were filling the street, bearing torches and lanterns, chattering with animation. George could also sense a great stirring and murmuring from the direction of the main Indian encampment. The Puans stood, bound, disarmed, their eyes darting in the lantern light. The French officer began interrogating them in a very abusive voice, and they responded plaintively or angrily by turns.

“We caught them running down by the creek,
mon colonel,”
said the captain.

“They say they are innocent of any mischief, that they were fired upon by unfriendly tribes who crossed the creek. They say they were running from that, to get under the protection of our guard.”