Long Knife (65 page)

George was appalled at the task that was building for him. The numbers of enemy involved in those rumors could amount to two or three thousand, and their tactics would force him to be virtually in two places at once; his whole reliable force consisted of the one hundred fifty steadfast but unpaid and threadbare veterans under his direct command.

Any hope for his cherished offensive against Detroit had to be forgotten now. Nothing remained to him but to direct a desperate defense. He sent word for Montgomery to unpack and remain
at Kaskaskia to organize a defense there. George rushed completion of Fort Jefferson at the mouth of the Ohio and pondered over the defensive alternatives he would have.

Early in May the first direct call of alarm came down from Cahokia, the northernmost and thus most imminently threatened of the French Illinois villages; the huge enemy force was in the vicinity. Almost immediately followed appeals from Montgomery at Kaskaskia and Don Fernando de Leyba at St. Louis. His course was now obvious: the defense of the Mississippi outposts first, then back to Kentucky. His old energy seemed to flood back into him now that the decision was made, and leaving a modest number of defenders at the new fort, he boarded his new boats with a small company of his best frontiersmen for a one hundred sixty mile dash up the Mississippi to Cahokia and St. Louis.

Never in the last two incredible years had he headed to battle with such a sense of urgency. Not only were his hard-won gains of 1778 and 1779 at stake; also in immediate danger were his Teresa, his generous and vulnerable friend, Don Fernando de Leyba, and his younger brother Dickie, who was serving with McCarty at Cahokia.

Now I am afraid, George thought as his fighters strained their oars against the yellow-brown current, that Fernando will soon satisfy his eternal curiosity about the sensations of killing. I can only pray that he shan’t have been tested at it before I get there.

“Put some sinew in it, lads!” he cried. “You must admit it’s a lark after swingin’ axes and shovels!”

He was answered by a chorus of chuckles and groans.

L
IEUTENANT
C
OLONEL
J
OHN
M
ONTGOMERY AND HIS JUNIOR OFFICERS
met George on the wharf when he stopped his little convoy there. Montgomery gave George a bear hug, to the cheers of a crowd of French Kaskaskians who had gathered on the shore to see the return of their old benefactor, and in a moment Father Gibault broke forth from the crowd and trotted out on the plank landing to embrace George and kiss him on both cheeks. The priest’s gentle great eyes were brimming. “How long can you stay, my son?”

“Not at all. Only a look at the fort, and then on up to Cahokia and St. Louis.”

“Listen to them people whoop an’ holler,” Montgomery sneered as they went up the bank toward the fort. Flowers rained on them as they went up the street, and hands reached
out offering flagons of wine. “Couldn’t hardly extrack a crust o’ bread or pair o’ shoes out of ’em all last winter. But now’s th’ British an’ Injuns got their blood runnin’ yaller again, they like us a lot.”

“Never mind that, John. Bear in mind we promised ’em a lot of benefits that Virginia hasn’t been able to deliver yet. A main one being protection, and it looks as if we have our chance to fulfill that one now anyway. How’s their militia forming up?”

“They’re good. With nowhere t’ run to, I reckon they can be counted on.”

George gave Montgomery a hard look. “I hope you’ll improve that attitude, John. I can’t ever forget that sixty o’ these people marched with us to Vincennes last year. I can’t ever forget that.”

He met old campaigners he hadn’t seen in a year, and was embraced by many weeping and laughing Kaskaskians. He inspected the defenses of the fort, went into the old Rocheblave house and trailed his fingers thoughtfully over the waxed desk where he had written so many orders and vouchers and proclamations as the new conqueror of the Illinois in the summer of ’78. He went upstairs alone and gazed for a few minutes out of the bedroom window at the streets where the Kaskaskians had danced and sung and celebrated their deliverance on that long-ago July day. He looked down the street at Cerré’s house where he had first seen Teresa de Leyba and her brother.

In less than an hour he was back at the wharf and ready to continue upstream, convinced that Kaskaskia was as ready as it could be if the invaders got this far.

“My affections to McCarty and to yer little brother, fine one that ’e is,” said Montgomery.

“Aye, John. Now you keep alert; keep scouts far afield, an’ make the most of this new morale. Seems it takes th’ worst to bring out the best, eh, John? And now I give you one special charge: Protect this priest with your life if you must.”

“On my word, George.”

“May I have a word with you, Father?” The priest strolled to the end of the wharf with him. “If we get through this, Father, I need to know if there’s a way under the sun for a Catholic lass to be married to the likes of me without losing her soul in the process.”

The priest tilted his head and clapped his hands together under his nose, all his deep smile lines tilting upward around his wide, loose V of a smile. “My son, I shall say this: In my years
in this wilderness, I’ve married children of Manitou to backwoods barbarians whose Catholic souls were so far buried in iniquity and sloth that I could scarcely find them. If I could not conceive some liberal way to bring two such pure and noble souls as yours and Señorita de Leyba’s together, I should think I had lost my craft as a minion of our Savior. Yes, George, we’ll find a way, or if there is none, make one!”

C
AHOKIA WAS BUTTONED UP FOR SIEGE WHEN
G
EORGE AND HIS LITTLE
band of reinforcements arrived there on May twenty-fifth, and the main enemy force was reported to be within a day’s river travel. His reunion with his old comrade McCarty and his brother Dickie was joyous but hurried. Advance parties of the enemy had already captured an armed boat from St. Louis with thirteen men, and had taken seventeen prisoners at the lead mines near Ste. Genevieve. The air was heavy with foreboding. McCarty had learned that the Ottawa chief Matchikuis, who was legendary for his daring capture of Mackinac in 1763 and now wore the red coat, epaulets, and title of a British general, was in charge of all the Indians under Emanuel Hesse. A French bushranger had recognized him and brought back that fearsome information. “So be it,” grinned George. “But he has never been up against the Big Knives, has ’e?” The officers smiled and nodded.

The fort at Cahokia was a minimal defense, but not badly situated to offer clear fields of fire, as it was not obstructed by town buildings as was Kaskaskia. George saw that McCarty had already had the great elms cut down, the two under which he had first negotiated peace with the Indians. Their obstruction of the view of the approaching enemy would have been dangerous, and now they lay on the ground, their sharpened limbs and branches pointed outward from the fort as part of a well-made abatis. George gazed over the palisade at them and recalled vividly that portentous occasion: the sunlight dancing through the canopy of leaves, the cool shade, the musk of the Indian crowd, the tobacco smoke of the peace pipes. He remembered the long table with the wampum belts lying across it, and Joseph Bowman sitting at the end of the table. Bowman, he thought, a sudden knot in his throat. Cahokia had been Bowman’s command and George wished with all his soul that that brave and capable man had lived to be here for its defense now.

Soon having heard all the intelligence that they had on
Cahokia’s defense and the approaching enemy, George licked his lips and announced:

“Gentlemen, in the remaining hours, I’m going over the river to St. Louis, to have a look at their defenses. Dickie, you’ll come with me, and I’ll take a squad of riflemen for our protection.” Several of the officers started and stood up, their mouths dropping open, and McCarty protested:

“George, no! In Heaven’s name, man, stay put! Forget the Spaniards! We got more’n we can handle right here!”

George buckled on his sword. “Mister McCarty, I won’t have you arguing with me.”

McCarty’s eyes blazed. “George, hear me, there’s too much at stake f’r you t’be dashin’ off t’ dally in th’ arms o’ yer sweetie!”

There followed a shocked stillness in the room and a few murmurs of agreement, and George barely constrained his fist as a curtain of red fury rippled through his brain. “I’m going to forget you made that remark,” he said in a low voice. “Do I have to remind you that without Governor de Leyba you’d have been starved out of this place long months ago? Now he’s sent for me and, by my honor, I go. You know how to fight Indians, all of you. De Leyba doesn’t. I’ll simply advise him, and be back here before anything falls on you. Take my word for it.” He winked then, and squeezed McCarty’s right shoulder with his right hand, and McCarty nodded in resignation.

“Get on with you then. I know we’re much beholden to ’im. Damn you, don’t get reckless. This whole territory’d cave in in a day if you was lost.”

“Then I shan’t be lost! Come, brother o’ mine, there’s some very kindly folk across the river I want you to meet.”

“So I have heard, George,” said Richard Clark, adjusting his sword and moving with a sureness that looked like a copy of his brother’s. “So I have heard, and I’d be delighted.”

T
HE SIGHT OF THE DE
L
EYBA ESTATE WRENCHED
G
EORGE’S HEART,
not because it looked so familiar, but because it looked so different: It had been turned into a fortress. The high stone walls in whose shadow he had courted Teresa a year ago bristled with the muskets of militiamen. Outside the walls were entrenchments, their raw red earth marring the emerald grasses, and these diggings also were occupied by a mixture of Spanish soldiers and armed villagers. George surveyed the arrangements as he and Dickie galloped up, and he was pleasantly surprised. The primary weakness he saw was that no part of the barracks wall could be covered by fire from any other part, and, once through the trenches and reaching the wall, an enemy could begin breaking through it with impunity.

Inside the house of his tenderest memories George found an even more poignant scene. The place was swarming with Spanish and half-breed soldiers, short in stature, swarthy, their skin shiny with sweat and oil, their gaudy uniforms dingy and faded. They chattered in their incomprehensible tongue and made an effort to prevent him from entering the house until he and Dickie grasped their muskets and shoved them aside to enter the great oaken front door. There in the foyer George was confronted with a familiar face, a handsome goateed face whose expression flickered for a moment between gladness and disdain.

“Ah! Richard, may I present Lieutenant Francisco de Cartabona,” said George. “Señor, my brother, Lieutenant Richard Clark of the Virginia militia.” The two nodded, de Cartabona taking his intense eyes off George’s face only long enough to make a momentary appraisal of the young man. He’s still hostile, George noted.

From the interior of the house, which had glowed gracious and enchanted in his memory for the last year, came dense, unfresh smells and a cacophony of distressful sounds: the squalling of infants, lamentations of women, groans, and an undercurrent of sobbing and praying. All the fine pictures and sconces and tapestries were gone from the walls and mud was tracked all over the board floors. Stepping into the ballroom, where he had so long ago danced amid the glitter of chandeliers and silver and listened to Teresa’s exquisite recitals, George was stunned to see it had been transformed into a refugee camp of women, children, old people, shabby baggage, and even goats and chickens. The people lay about on filthy litters, sat with their backs against the walls, strolled about, nursed the infants, prayed, or held each other and gazed about disconsolately. He glanced over this abject scene, sensed the terror of these people, remembering the awful, fetid crowding of people and animals in the little Kentucky forts during the incessant Indian raids of 1776 and 1777, and his old fury against the British policy of waging war with Indian mercenaries was greater than it had been since his defeat of Hamilton. “It is my honor,” de Cartabona said, “to protect these helpless ones if the enemy penetrates the walls.”

“A task to break your heart, I know,” said George, and de Cartabona’s haughty face softened for an instant at these words of compassion from the man he so hated and feared.

George was searching the room and the hallways. “You are looking for his Excellency,” de Cartabona ventured, with a bitter half smile and no mention of Teresa.

“I am. And the señorita …”

“This way.”

In the study they found Fernando de Leyba sitting behind his desk, alone, his face in his hands. Their entrance startled him. When he looked up, bewildered and disoriented, not at first recognizing him, George was appalled at his wretched appearance. It was incredible that one year, even such a grievous one as de Leyba had endured, could have wrought such change in a man. His eyes were red-rimmed and sunken, their sockets deep and gray-brown like bruises; his face was blotchy and pasty, his cheeks sunken and unshaven; he looked as cadaverous as some of George’s men had looked after their arrival at Vincennes. His lower lip hung slack like an idiot’s as his mind reached to recognize these intruders.

Suddenly he lurched to his feet, his eyes filling with tears,
and stood swaying. “Don Jorge, dear friend!” he cried, and George saw with a shock that this once-elegant wretch was not only very sick but quite drunk. De Cartabona had quietly backed out of the room and closed the door as if to avoid looking at him. Don Fernando staggered out from behind his desk and threw himself into George’s arms, sniveling and moaning.

“Nombre de Dios!”
he strangled. “Forgive, amigo, that you should see me brought so low! I think I am at the end of my string …”