Long Knife (37 page)

“My sentiments are now fixed in favor of the Americans. I will no longer pay any attention to the English, and will immediately cease taking any part in the war. You will please excuse me that many of my young men are now out in their war paint. As soon as they return, I will make them lay down their weapons, and not one of them shall again take up arms against you.”

“Good. You now see the truth. Understand, Mister Black Bird, that I do not blame you for receiving whatever presents
the British chose to give, but I think you know it’s degrading for you to make war as hirelings. Such actions are beneath the dignity of real warriors, and I suspect that’s why you’ve felt doubtful. I have respect for anyone who makes war against me on his own account; his scalp would be a great trophy. But the scalps of hired warriors would be given to the children to play with, or flung to the dogs.”

Black Bird accepted this with the guiltlessness of one who has just learned the error of his ways. He stood up, and the two came together to shake hands again.

“As I return to my people,” the Chippewa said, “I will tell the Indians of every tribe I meet what has passed between us, and tell them of the true cause of the war. I am sure that most of them will follow my example.” The chief paused and thought, then continued. “It would have a good effect among them if you would let me take one of your young men back with me, under my protection, to help me carry your message among those nations. It would give great weight to what I will say to them.”

“I will arrange that,” George said. “If I have your word that he will be under your protection.”

“You have my word, Long Knife. We shall view each other as friends from this day, and we shall keep a correspondence between us.” The chief remained solemn, not giving way to something so undignified as a smile, but he stood close and breathed easily and there was warmth in his eyes.

“I am happy to see this business end so much to your satisfaction and mine,” George said, warmly gripping Black Bird’s hand, “and so much to the advantage and the tranquility of both our peoples. I will write immediately to the governor of Virginia and tell him what has passed here. It will give him and all Americans great pleasure to register you among our friends.”

The conference with Mister Black Bird was thus concluded, with much dignified handshaking all around, and a modest quantity of rum decorously sipped. This man obviously was too stately to celebrate with the same sort of exuberance Big Gate had exhibited, a fact which Captain Bowman bemoaned, but the great Chippewa did seem reluctant to leave, and stayed on for several more days, visiting George at every opportunity, and holding long councils with the chieftains of other tribes as they arrived to meet the Long Knife. His influence invariably warmed them up for the treaty-making.

***

INDIANS CONTINUED TO TRAIL INTO
C
AHOKIA, FROM PLACES AS FAR
as five hundred miles distant, and the treaty-making wore on through late August and well into the cooling days of September. In the shade of the yellowing leaves on the huge elms, or in the main room of his headquarters on bad days, George recounted again and again, several times each week, his figurative account of the British-American conflict, so often that he felt that he could have recited it in his sleep. In five weeks at Cahokia, he signed treaties of peace with the Chippewas, the Ottawas, Potawatomis, Missisaugas, Winnebagoes, Sauk, Fox, Osages, Iowas, and Miamis, as well as various wandering sects and bands of those tribes. Each conference was almost an exact reenactment of all that had gone before, and each was concluded in the same satisfactory manner. George lay exhausted from talking almost every night, thinking or dreaming of Teresa and hoping for a pause in the ceremonies which would allow him to go back across the river and try to restore himself in her favor. Evening after evening he would lie in his bed and remember that awful moment when he had shot the rabbit and turned to find her recoiling in horror. In his imagination he saw her dancing on the arm of Lieutenant de Cartabona or heard her talking to her sister-in-law about the barbarity of “that American colonel.” Even if I had shot and killed an innocent man, he thought, I doubt I could more deeply regret squeezing a trigger.

But those fantasies were for the nights only. There was too much business to be conducted during the days. Hours not spent in council with the Indians slipped by in attention to the details of administration and supply and the enforcement of discipline. George realized that his only hope for hanging on in the Illinois, until such time as orders, money, or reinforcements might come from Virginia, lay in the strict subordination of his ragged little army. Thus he was, when not waxing eloquent for Indians, haranguing his soldiers on parade. With the greatest pleasure he would lecture to them on his resolutions, on the necessity of strict duty for their own preservation, on the importance of making a perpetually good appearance for the Indians, French, and Spaniards who kept them under such minute scrutiny.

The men, to his satisfaction, appeared to be sensible of the extreme delicacy of their situation, and seemed to derive from it a sense of special importance which inspirited them more every day. They answered him that they were zealous for their country and determined not to disgrace her through any sort of cowardice or misconduct, that they well understood their dangerous
situation, that only good order would be conducive to their happiness and safety. The men improved daily, and George began to sense before long that probably no garrison anywhere could boast of better order or a more valuable contingent of men.

There would be moments, however, moments of insight which would come in the midst of that satisfaction, when he would feel that he was holding up a whole shaky empire with nothing but the sound of his voice, nothing but the breath of his speeches.

A
S YOUNG PEOPLE DO WHEN CONFUSED BY THEIR HEARTS
, T
ERESA
de Leyba was beginning to feel personally responsible for the long absence of her beloved.

The young Virginian was beyond doubt her beloved. She had come to understand that after a fortnight of thinking about him by day and dreaming about him by night. She would lapse into reveries while lace-making, while reading, while practicing on her
guitarra
, while entertaining her two nieces, while dining with her brother and his guests, even while dancing or riding with Lieutenant de Cartabona, and in those reveries she would see that red hair, that straight back, those broad shoulders, those keen, dark blue eyes. She deliberately, time after time, envisioned his face as it had looked that night when he was transported by her music, or that morning when he had stood in his window looking down at her in the garden; when the face came unbidden it would be shiny with sweat and smudged with dirt, as it had looked when he appeared in the ballroom at Kaskaskia, or it would be sunlit and full of astonishment as it had been the day of the shooting match when he had heard her scream and turned to look at her.

The shooting of the rabbit did not matter any more; it is man’s nature, she realized, to kill game. What she now regretted was her reaction to it; she felt that her demonstration of horror and disapproval had driven him away and would make him stay away. She went over the scene every day in her thoughts, remembering his truly remarkable feat of marksmanship, recalling her foolish outburst, seeing the look of astonishment in his face, and the look of hurt in his eyes when she had pulled her hand back from his.

And now she felt that she would never see him again. Although Francisco Vigo and others came to the mansion almost every day with cheerful accounts of the Virginian’s success with the Indians just across the river, they never brought news that he planned a visit. Obviously he was very busy with the Indians. But Cahokia was not more than five miles away and still he had not come back to St.
LOUIS
. If he loved her, as she had presumed he did, surely he would have found the time to come across the river and pay a visit. She had heard her brother express the same dismay two or three times. “I am surprised,” he had said to Maria at the table, “that Don Jorge has not come back to see his good friends here! Ah, well,” he had sighed. “The requisites of duty …”

The nights were growing cool in the valley. Leaves of certain trees around the mansion were sere, and there was a dry haze that made the eastern bank of the river look light blue on sunny days. At night the campfires and council fires of the Indians would glimmer like warm stars on the horizon. Teresa would blow out her lamp, sit on the edge of her bed, look across at those points of light, and concentrate on the name of George Rogers Clark, as if by doing so she could cause him to awaken in his bed and think kindly, even yearningly, of her. Once she even heard herself saying aloud: “It is not really important, my dear, about the rabbit.”

“Our American friend,” Vigo told de Leyba one day while stopping by on departure to his Vincennes trading post, “plans to go back down to Kaskaskia soon. Much of his business with the Indians seems complete, and he grows anxious about having been away from the main body of his men for so many weeks.” Teresa, even though she had virtually given up hope of seeing him again, was stunned by this news. She dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a large napkin to hide her expression of alarm from the others at the table.

“What? Leaving?” de Leyba exclaimed. “Then, Francisco,
there is nothing for it but to give him an
express
invitation to come see us before he departs. When you go across …”

“Oh, but never mind that,” Vigo said, raising his hand and smiling. “He gave me this message for you.” He drew a letter out of his blouse.

De Leyba broke the wax seal and read silently for a moment, a smile dawning on his face. “Good! He plans to come here the day after tomorrow, before sailing for Kaskaskia. Look, Teresa, he sends you his affectionate regards, and you, Maria, and the children …” He passed the letter around the table, winking at Vigo and indicating Teresa’s sudden high color by a tilt of his head. She held the letter a moment as if touching its writer, and looked hungrily at the handsome, cursive script with its sure flourishes and that bold, flaring horizontal stokes at the end of each sentence. She noted with a self-conscious, foolish rush of pleasure the very large and ornate initial with which he had written her name.

“Oh, my,” she laughed, reluctantly passing the letter along to Maria, “I had feared he was displeased with me.”

“Child!” Vigo exclaimed. “How could he be? Why, on the contrary, whenever we speak of you, his eyes grow haunted and veer in this direction! Ha, ha! Fernando, what think you of the silly doubts of young lovers? Ha, ha! Teresa, my dear, he thinks it’s
you
who are displeased!”

She put her hand on her bosom. “Has he said that?”

“Not in words,” Vigo replied. “But with a face full of fretfulness.”

Her laughter trilled, then ended abruptly. “But no. Now you’re being fanciful. You’re only teasing me. And how can you say … ‘lovers’?” She was blushing mightily now.

“Pardon, my pretty,” he said with a mocking bow. “A slip of my tongue perhaps. But now, my dearest friends, I must say
adiós
. I wish I could be here for your reunion with the Virginian, but I shan’t return from Vincennes, I expect, until winter.”

“Farewell,” de Leyba said, rising, then added, with a laugh, “… Don Cupid.”

A
BLOOD-RED LEAF TUMBLED DOWN TO MEET ITS UPTUMBLING REFLECTION
on the pond’s surface, and the reflection broke apart in tiny ripples. “Sweet gum,” George said. “They always color before anything else. But to be falling so soon! I expect we’re in for a hard and early winter.”

“But a peaceful one, I hope,” said de Leyba.

“I pray,” said Teresa. She watched the leaf move slowly like a red sail toward the other side of the pond.

“As do I,” George agreed. “And I’ve done everything in my power to assure that, God knows.”

The trio turned away and strolled back to their horses. The sunlight was warm, the air cool. Long fine grass, bowed like waves of fading green, rustled under their feet. George walked slowly, looking down, watching with dumb wonderment as the toes of Teresa’s tiny shoes poked forward alternately from under the hem of her riding skirt. He had never seen such small feet except attached to children, and a strange pang of tenderness made tears start to his eyes.

They took up the reins. The horses each ripped one last bit of grass from the ground as they raised their heads, and chewed. George’s horse nuzzled the breast of his blue uniform coat and whickered softly. George stroked its powerful neck, smelled its sweet moist breath, and gazed at Teresa, who held her animal’s rein in one small hand and drew a glove onto the other. At the sight of her hands, he felt the pang again. She looked at him and saw it in his eyes and felt the same. Don Fernando bent and cupped his hands to give her a step up into her saddle, but she was looking at George and didn’t notice.

“My good friend,” George said suddenly to him, “I’m sure you have pressing business, and you needn’t spend your time wandering about with us. Why don’t you go on, and we’ll ride in shortly …”

“Why, I wouldn’t hear of it!” the Spaniard exclaimed cheerfully. “How often do we see you? I have nothing more important to do, Jorge, I swear. Come, Teresa. Step up.”

She put her foot in his hands and swung nimbly up onto the sidesaddle, where she sat smoothing her skirts and looking down with bemused resignation at George.

George sighed. He had been dropping hints and suggestions all afternoon, but de Leyba seemed oblivious to such cues, and blandly, innocently, continued to bless them with his cheerful presence.

It’s their custom, George reminded himself for the tenth time, stepping into the stirrup and swinging up onto his saddle. He looked at Teresa, at the wry little smile that was beginning to pucker her lips and dimple the corners of her mouth. And she, he thought, of course understands it better than I.