Long Knife (70 page)

George finished cutting the vines and floundered ashore. He picked up his rifle, gripped Harlan on the shoulder, meanwhile listening like a wild animal, his long nose pointing as he turned this way and that. “Listen,” he breathed. From downstream very nearby came guttural voices, then faint splashing sounds, either of wading or paddles. George pointed violently up the riverbank into the forest and, brushing over their trail in the slippery bank as well as he could, disappeared after Harlan and Consola into the woods.

He overtook them and led them at a swift, silent run through the forest, their water-filled moccasins squishing and slapping. Coming to the bank of a small tributary creek, he leaped into it. The others followed him, knee-deep, as he went downstream a hundred feet, tracked the other bank there, then waded backward into the stream again and returned eastward against the current.

They flitted up the stream a mile, emerged in a grove of hickories and plunged on at full tilt for another mile before drawing up to a halt, chests heaving, to listen for sounds of pursuit. There was nothing. Birdcalls, which had fallen still at their frantic approach, resumed all about.

Their wind recovered, they took up their less strenuous woodman’s lope. Throughout the morning they made their way eastward in a gradual climb out of the valley of the Tennessee, then trotted through forests and lush, flowery meadows through a gentle decline into the Cumberland Valley. They reached the Cumberland with two hours of daylight to spare, scouted quickly along the banks for Indian camps, found none, made another bound-log raft, and on the fourth morning of their trek crossed that river under cover of a steady rainstorm. Now the two major river crossings were behind them, and the greater part of their distance lay before them: two hundred more miles through the rolling, untracked Kentucky countryside on a northeasterly course. The next major river to cross would be the Green, about a hundred miles ahead. Drawing as much nourishment as they could from every scrap of jerky and crumb of corn, supplementing these now and then with berries and edible weeds and roots, they steeled themselves against the burning agony of fatigue and pushed on.

C
APTAIN
B
IRD ARGUED WITH HIS
I
NDIAN CHIEFTAINS, THEN
pleaded with them, then gave up in disgust. He sat back in his tent on the bank of the Ohio, a hundred miles above the Falls which were to have been his army’s first target, and resolved to let the Indians make their plans without him.

The Indians had received a report two days earlier that George Rogers Clark was already at the Falls of the Ohio, and flatly refused to go there. Henry Bird was certain that the report was erroneous, that Clark could not possibly have gotten there by the twelfth, the day of the report. Now it was the fourteenth. The Indians had vented the hot air of their blustery oratory for two days in council on this riverbank, wasting time, weakening their resolve, and in general depressing their purported commander a great deal. It was becoming apparent that they would prefer to make a foray instead against two populous but ill-defended settlements on the Licking River, Ruddle’s and Martin’s Stations, which were inhabited primarily by placid and industrious Pennsylvania Germans. Toward the close of the second day of their squabbling, the chiefs announced to Bird that they had agreed to go against the Licking River settlements instead of the Falls, and were ready for Captain Bird’s soldiers and artillery to lead them there.

“So you choose not to strike at the Falls, even though it would be a more important strategic move?” Bird said, just as sarcastically as he dared.

“What is the strategy of the Englishmen?” retorted the Indians’ spokesman. “On Licking River many Americans grow crops and drive game out of the sacred hunting grounds of Cantuc-kee. To stop this is our strategy.”

Bird turned his eyes to the three white men who had joined
his force with the Shawnees: Simon, James, and George Girty. Simon, short, black-haired, and black-eyed, seemed to be the most influential of them, and was, for that matter, perhaps the best interpreter and the most influential white man among the Shawnees. The Girty brothers had been adopted captives of the Indians since boyhood but, unlike many such adoptees, they would not remain submerged in the tribes and were constantly appearing on the margins of conflict, goading and scheming. All along the course of this expedition, Bird knew, they had kept exhorting the Indians to avenge the death of Chief Black Fish.

“Mr. Girty,” said Bird, “tell these people of yours that we are attacking the settlements as soldiers, not as a vengeful mob. We will force surrender, take prisoners back to Detroit, and not harm women and children. I must have them understand that this is a British military operation, and I will not lend my men and artillery to it except under those terms.”

Simon Girty’s eyes looked straight into Bird’s, but it was as if reptilian eyelids had suddenly veiled them.

“I’ll tell ‘em,” he replied, then went away without telling them.

W
HEN
G
EORGE
R
OGERS
C
LARK AND HIS TWO COMPANIONS ARRIVED
at the Falls, identified themselves as white men and were admitted, they were astonished to see that the settlement was manned by scarcely more than its basic garrison. “Where in blazes are the people who are supposed to be gathering here to meet Bird’s army?” he raged.

The explanation was that much of the regional population was at Harrodsburg by the Kentucky River, milling about the newly opened land office where entries were being made on a million and a half acres of choice new Kentucky land. “They’re in a fever about it, sir,” said an officer of the garrison. “A call to arms is the last thing in their minds.”

Learning also that Captain Bird’s army had veered away from the Falls into the interior, George quickly outfitted himself in his old uniform, formed an escort, and set off on horseback for Harrodsburg, rankling with indignation over the greed and irresponsibility of these new immigrants.

Galloping into Harrodsburg at midmorning with his troop of old Illinois veterans, George was astonished at the appearance of boom-town disorder. A motley horde of men, in shabby velvet, homespun, Continental uniform remnants, and even some scarcely clad at all, milled around in the compound, lounged at
the gates, whooping, buzzing, trading pieces of paper. Many of them were roaring drunk, even though the sun was still over the eastern hills, blazing off the surface of the Kentucky River. The main part of this scruffy mob was concentrated around the land office. They scattered and stumbled out of the way as he rode among them to James Harrod’s house. Some in the crowd recognized him and shouted his name as he rode through, and for a moment his arrival diverted the attention of the land-office crowd. Then they turned back to their business.

Colonel Harrod, grown stockier in his prosperity and beginning to turn gray at his side-whiskers, met George with a mixture of joy and embarrassment.

“You do know that Henry Bird’s somewhere within a hundred miles o’ this place, Jim.”

“That I do.”

“Then why isn’t that crowd out there under arms, man? You’re the county lieutenant!”

“They won’t serve,” Harrod said, his eyes falling.

“Won’t
serve?” George exploded.

“They say they won’t defend a country where they have no land yet. They … they tell me your soldiers are paid to defend the state; let
you
do it …”

George’s fist pounded a cloud of dust out of Harrod’s desk. “Aye, by God, they are right about that! I’
m
the one that’ll do it! But my men are strung out everywhere from here to the Missipp’, hanging on by their toenails to this empire they’ve won! So now, Jim Harrod, I need more men to keep this Kentucky o’ yours together, and that rabble out there …” he flung his arm in the direction of the land office, “th … they are going to be a good part of it, if I have to shut down that land office to get their attention!”

“You really don’t have the authority to do …”

“Damn having the authority! I’ve had to make my own authority for two bloody mean years now and I’m an old hand at it. Come on. We’re going to walk over their right now.”

Harrod hesitantly got up and followed, not meeting the eyes of his own men or George’s officers as they filed out of the house.

George barged into the land office, followed by a cheer from some of the old-timers, shouldering aside several dickering newcomers who were between him and the land register. This official, a large, rangy, cold-eyed man with gray hair and bored-looking eyes, looked up from his table of deeds and papers to
identify the cause of the commotion. He saw the red-haired colonel standing there glowering down on him.

“Yes?” he said.

“I’m Clark. I’ve come to request in the public’s safety that you suspend the business in this place!”

“Ah, so you are Colonel Clark. Honored, sir. But I can scarcely close. There are claims in progress …”

George’s eyes narrowed. “I advise you to reconsider, mister, real quick.”

The hubbub in the room fell still as judges, claimants, and brokers became aware that something was happening at this table.

The register bowed his head slightly, smiled with his lips only, looking at George with annoyance, and shrugged. “I’m sorry, Colonel.”

“You’re saying no, I take it? Very well, then if you can’t suspend this business, I can!” Drawing his sword, he used it swiftly to sweep the documents off the table onto the floor. The register cringed before the blade, which George then immediately sheathed, turning to the men who crowded about.

“This court is closed,” he bellowed. “There’ll not be one deed signed while Kentucky is endangered. Out, all of you, out! Get into that yard there and hear me!”

He herded them all out of the building and soon stood on the stoop of the building, as if on a dais, glowering over his unsettled audience. They had come to the land office this morning preoccupied with claims, rights, profits, and grudges, all their myriad self-concerns, but now everybody in Harrodsburg, those who had known him for years and those seeing him for the first time, were attentive to the same thing: the urgent and severe force of his presence.

“Now hear me!” he shouted, sweeping a pointed finger over the crowd. “This land office for this moment is nothing. You may have deeds in your pockets and no scalps on your skulls this very week, unless you put aside your private greed and behave like principled men! Open your eyes, damn you! Or you’ll have nought but a title to your own burial plot. But the Shawnees won’t even respect that! Rather they’ll leave you lie to stink and feed the buzzards!

“Now, listen. I give you no choice: you will stand and fight for this place. And I do mean
no choice!
I’ve put pickets on the Wilderness Road to turn back any craven who tries to flee out of Kentucky. Look about you! I have men here who marched
with me and
won
this land you’re dickerin’ over. They’re right among you now—d’you know the man at your shoulder, eh?—and they have my order to stop any able-bodied man from leaving! I tell you, there’s honor in fighting alongside those boys, and a lot to learn. If you refuse to serve, then, by your leave—or
without
it—we’ll at least put your horses in the service and take your guns and ammunition to put in the hands of braver boys—ten-year-olds, maybe, who haven’t yet learned to put avarice over honor!”

He paused and studied the crowd. Many looked sullen, some scared; here and there in the mob stood lean men with familiar faces, with hunters’ eyes and vulpine grins, old campaigners leaning on their rifles, delighted with what was happening here.

“I reckon I’ve made my intentions plain,” George continued. “Anyone too dense to understand what I say would be of little use to this country. As of now, this land office is a recruiting office …”

Suddenly the crowd’s attention was distracted by hair-raising sounds coming from the fort gate behind them: women wailing, and the throaty, tearing, sobbing cries of some tormented creature.

The women led him in through the gate: a straw-haired boy of fifteen or sixteen, the front of his homespun clothing spattered with blood and smudged with mud and soot. His scraped, bruised face was distorted beyond recognition by agony, his nose drained into his hps, his lips onto his chin. The crowd parted as the women led him to Colonel Clark, supporting him by his arms as his legs wobbled and threatened to buckle.

The boy slid to the ground before George, and sat there snuffling and gagging, trying to talk but totally incoherent. But the women, all trying to talk at once, told what the boy had said to them, and it sent a shock through the crowd:

“He run all the way here! Ruddell’s Station was massacred! Shawnees and Redcoats by the hundreds! O, Gawd, Gawd! He’s the only one got away, the rest is took! His whole family! Almighty help us!”

The boy, who had fallen apart upon reaching the safety of Harrodsburg, was soon calmed enough to sit on a bench in the land office and relate what had happened.

“Thursday,” he whimpered. “A guard called down from the wall … We looked out … They was hundreds, hundreds out there … They shot a cannon at us … It busted open a blockhouse. Mr. Ruddell he waved a white flag … Went out to talk
to three redcoats on horses … They said surrender to King George and the womenfolk and chillun could come here safe … Mr. Ruddell he says yes …

“But when the gates was open, the Indians run in yellin’ … They kilt ladies an’ babies … with their tommy hawks … sculped ‘em. Miz Ruddell had her boy baby … Indian grabbed ‘im an’ thrown ‘im in a fire … She jumped for to save ‘im, an’ they kilt ‘er and thrown ‘er on th’ fire too … They sculped Mr. Ruddell when he run to help ….

“They kilt maybe twenty ‘fore the British officer could stop ‘em … He called ‘em cowards. Made ‘em promise they wouldn’t murder at Martin’s Station … Lines us all up to march … But them too sick or old or little to walk was … was just kilt standin’ there an’ sculped an’ left to rot …”