Long Knife (46 page)

The morning of the eighth began as had the day before, still drizzly and chilly, and the pace resumed as soon as there was enough light to see the way. The plain here lay flat as a tabletop and the water, with nowhere to run off, stood in sheets, looking like vast gray lakes, rippling in the cold wind, forlorn reeds and grasses sticking up above the surface. “Didn’t need t’ send the
Willing
around,” remarked Lieutenant Brashears. “We coulda sailed ’er right along th’ road with us.”

During the afternoon the sky cleared a little, and the air grew colder, a weak sun going down behind the marchers, but before sunset it clouded over and began drizzling again. The men watched their feet endlessly plashing through the shallow water, drops spraying ahead with each step. They plodded on that day for nine hours, gasping from cold and weariness. Every hour or so each soldier might feel a hand on his arm and turn to see the cheerful face of Colonel Clark or one of the captains beside him, asking how he was getting along. “No complaints, sir,” was always the answer, and the officer would trot ahead to pay attention to the next man.

“Jes’ take a look at that rascal,” said one private to the next, “don’t he know he’s doin’ three miles to our one with all that there runnin’ to an’ fro?”

“Yup. Does yer heart good, don’ it?”

They waded about nine leagues that day, and finally made camp on a small, wet rise which stood like an island no more than four or five inches above the surrounding inundation.

Captain Bowman entered in his diary:

Knowing that the ceaseless misery and monotony of these clammy, exhausting days surely must wear down the men’s will eventually, George took pains to see that every evening’s encampment should be entertaining enough that they would look forward to it with eagerness. They mustn’t fall to thinking in terms of two hundred miles or a hundred miles, he reasoned; they have to keep thinking in terms of this evening, this evening.

So the officers gave up their horses entirely to the hunting parties; and each day a different company would assume the duty of bringing in game. By turns, each company would kill and cook the food for the others, and invite the others to their feasts, and thus it became a friendly competition to determine which company could lay the greatest feast and stage the most uproarious entertainment for the others. Captain McCarty’s company one night held a war dance in the Indian fashion, which the woodsmen seemed to enjoy for its fierce irony. As the men whooped and cavorted around the roaring bonfire, one soldier threw off all his sodden clothes, sprang into the firelight, his skin fish-belly white and wrinkled from the days of constant wetness, and frolicked about in the sleet with exaggerated movements and obscene gestures, whooping, “Hay-
oooop!
Looky me! I’m Lord Hennery Hamilton th’ scalp-merchant! Yaaaaa-hooooey!”

The troops had forgotten what it felt like to be dry. Every day, besides the constant wading in standing water, they had to ford creeks which had overflowed their banks, often crossing in water to their chests, holding their precious powder horns and food pouches high over their heads. Thus thoroughly drenched by the icy water, they would wade on through mire and rain which gave their clothes no opportunity to dry. Only by their constant movement and the consumption of huge quantities of
meat could they generate enough heat from within to keep from succumbing to the penetrating chill.

On the afternoon of the tenth of February, in a chilling downpour, they came to the fording place of La Petite Riviere, and finding the water so high it was over their heads, they took axes from the pack animals and felled trees. The horses were unloaded. The men strapped their freight onto the trees, then hung onto them themselves to be carried across to the far shore. The horses were led into the water and swam across. So much strength was spent on this crossing that an early camp was made near the river. The men spent that night under an open sky, whipped with rain and high winds.

The next day a similar crossing had to be made at the flooded Saline River, further draining their energies. Truly restful sleep was impossible because of the incessant rain and cold; George, being stronger and more vigorous than most of his men, had only to heed the painful exhaustion in his own legs and the bone-shaking shivers to comprehend what they were suffering.

They went on in this wretched condition all the next day, crossing a plain that was flooded knee-deep or more for a seeming infinity. George sent the hunters out on horseback with little hope that they would find anything in this flood. He turned aside from the head of the column and watched the men come on. He was growing light-headed from cold and exhaustion, and the drab light played tricks on his vision. It was like watching a nightmare: the pewter-gray ocean of water with black tree trunks sticking up from it, here and there gray-green moss and patches of lichen on the tree bark; the woodsmen’s deerskins soaked black, their faces gray to white, lips and eye sockets bruise-blue, their whisker stubble wet with rain and snot, their red noses and knuckles providing the only color that indicated life in this dripping, hushing, flowing, gurgling universe.

And yet every one looked up at him and smiled or winked as
they slopped past gasping for breath. His heart clenched; he swallowed and blinked, then turned his face away from them and splashed forward to the head of the column again, shouting he knew not what phrases of encouragement, every muscle in his legs and torso protesting with a pain like a silent scream.

“Play,” he said to the drummer. The lad began beating a cadence. The troops picked up the cadence and began singing soon, a long trail of voices faint over the splash and squish of their marching.

George found himself gaining strength from it. He hoped the soldiers would too. But it doesn’t fill a belly, he thought.

Night came on before they found a place high enough to camp on, the rain still pouring and the wind growing colder. He began to worry that some of the men might actually perish this night from exposure; there was no sign of the hunters with their life-giving red meat. Fires burned low and smoky because of the wetness of the fuel, and seemed to give too little heat to dry clothing or reach chilled muscle and aching bone. The weather showed no sign of improvement and the army was, he estimated, still some fifty miles from its destination, with two major rivers yet to cross.

And if we do get there, he thought, it’s not to rest but to fight a battle.

Teresa, he thought suddenly. Are you still alive in this same world with me?

A shout sounded in the darkness. “Buffalo!” cried the voice. It was the hunting party. “Hey boys! Enough steaks here t’ feed a thousand! Come on, boys!”

The wild-eyed horses emerged into the flickering fire light and smoke; their riders jumped down and began throwing off great red bloody haunches and briskets of meat they had strapped on behind the saddles. The camp had come back to
life, roaring with laughter and war whoops, oaths in English and French. In moments the smoky wet glade was full of the maddening aroma of searing meat, the sizzle of dripping fat, and the almost delirious jabber of men on the very brink of anticipation.

They wolfed the meat half-raw, gorging themselves, their chins and hands shiny with grease. They clamored for the fat-riddled meat of the buffalo humps instinctively, knowing it was the best fuel for their clammy bodies. George ordered rum broken out.

The orgy of feasting subsided after a few minutes, and soon the entertainments began again, rowdy, boastful, punctuated by mighty belches, and George stood back, watched these great childlike celebrants, who had seemed near death an hour before, now cured by the miraculous medicine of full bellies. He grinned and watched them caper and shout, the warmth of life beginning to steal through his veins again, as the ruddy light of the fire illuminated the tree trunks and leafless branches overhead. He squinted into the high treetops, at the rain that came spitting into the fireglow, sniffed the wet and smoky smells, listened to the fine manly voices. There was a great knot in his throat.

Dear God, he thought. Thank thee for this thy bounty.

A few hours’ strenuous marching in sleet on the morning of the thirteenth of February brought the troops to the bank of the western branch of the Little Wabash. Here, according to maps and scouts, the two branches of this tributary ran parallel to each other some three miles apart. From the heights of one to the heights of the other was about five miles, and George saw, with a sinking heart, that the entire distance was under muddy, flowing water. The forests throughout the valley stood two to four feet deep in muddy flood. Bits of wood debris and rafts of spongy, half-melted ice moved slowly downstream among the trees.

Faith, he thought. We’ve got to cross this flood just to reach two greater rivers and then cross those. Is this possible?

He had the companies make camp on the height and set about entertaining themselves, so that they might not think about what lay ahead. His officers looked at him with eyes full of doubt, but he said nothing to them, and walked to the edge of the flood alone. He stood there for a few minutes, looking at the awful sheet of water.

“Come, man,” he murmured finally. “You’re doubting.”

Afraid to hear a word from his officers for fear they would shake what little resolve he had left, he went back to the camp, ordered a party of men to get axes and adzes, and led them to a great poplar that stood on the shore. “Drop that tree,” he said, “and hollow out a pirogue. We’ll need it to scout up the easiest way across this puddle, boys.”

Two men stood on opposite sides of the tree and, alternating their strokes, began cutting. The trunk was four feet thick. Two more men went to the tree to spell the workers. The axes chunked rhythmically for the greater part of an hour; then there were shouts and the rattling crash of branches, and a thump which made the soggy ground quake in the camp. The chopping then continued on the fallen trunk as a section twenty feet long was cut away. Soon the men had that section on blocks, and a team of four, wielding pikes and adzes and broadaxes, were removing the bark, hewing away the upper curve of the trunk and hollowing the log. A floor of fragrant yellow chips and shavings began to build up on the wet black ground.

George walked about in the camp, sat now and then to confer laconically with the officers, paced to the river’s edge and looked across the expanse of water, then returned to the camp. A haggard woodsman, leaning against a tree near one of the campfires, looked at him and smiled. “Colonel, suh, be we lost?”

“Nay, Oreer. Not lost. Not a bit of it.”

“Well, suh, if we do git lost, you can use me t’ git th’ bearin’s. I got moss growin’ on m’ north side!”

The men around the fire laughed. George grinned. “So I see. We’ll refer to you then, Oreer, if we do get confused.”

Night was coming on. George ordered a fire built near the workmen so that their hewing could continue until late.

Captain McCarthy came and squatted near George to watch the workers. “Dunno, Colonel,” he said. “One pirogue t’ ferry a regiment. That be a slow process.”

“We’ll use her for scouting, mainly,” said George. “We’re going to have to wade most of that, and just ferry over the channels when we find ’em. Maybe send ’er downriver to find the
Willing
. We could sure use her right now.”

“Aye. Them rivers scares me, George, runnin’ fast like that. Don’t reckon they’s ten men in th’ bunch as can swim. Even if they could, their gear’d drag ’em under.”

“Come on now, Dick. We don’t need dubious talk. This water’s just a little diversion for these boys.”

“Right y’ are. Sorry, George.” McCarty got up and walked away.

13th—Arrived early at the two Wabashes altho a league asunder they now make but one—We set to make a Canoe
.

The chunking and ringing of the tools resumed early the next day. The troops stayed in camp, resting as well as they could in the rain and mud. Hunters were out all day but found little because of the flooding. Game had gone to higher country. Now and then George would find a man standing on the bank looking out over the flood, condensing breath drifting from his mouth like smoke in the dank air. He would joke with such men and turn them back toward the camp. He didn’t want them spending too much time considering it.

But he could imagine the thoughts going through their heads as they watched the water. Likely some of them were aware that once across these rivers, any hope of a retreat would be done away with. Once across this, he thought, they’ll likely be happy to go forward and risk anything rather than suffer again what they’ve already experienced.