Charcoal Burner stayed near the army’s camp until nightfall, moving from one sheltered place to another, observing everything, hearing the snatches of voices, singing, and laughter in the hush of the wind, sending his scouts all around the camp or back to Prophet’s Town to report on the army’s doings. Finally he himself went back to hear what the chief warriors would be saying in their council about this army whose bonfires glowed within sight of the holy town.
He found them in the council lodge, in a semicircle in front of Open Door, urging him to do something to protect the women and children. They were making all kinds of suggestions. Some were in favor of moving the whole population away up the Tippecanoe under cover of darkness; others recommended that Harrison be seized and stabbed during the parley the next day.
Open Door sat with his cloak drawn over his shoulders, his face set hard and stern to conceal the doubts and fears that billowed inside him. As if to forestall a need to decide, he asked Charcoal Burner to tell everything he had seen of the American camp.
It was apparent that the Long Knife general was very alert, Charcoal Burner told them, and he described the thoroughness with which the defense had been put up even though tomorrow was to be a peace parley day. White Loon, a Wea warrior chief, seized on that and expressed his fear that the white men had built no barricades because they had come here to attack in the night, not to defend themselves. “They will come out of their camp in the night and fall upon our town!” he cried. “Why else would they not build barricades when they are so close to us? Would white men dare to sleep without a fence around them? No! They mean to come and kill us in our sleep!”
“We must strike them in the night, or they will strike us,” insisted the Kaskaskia war chief, Stone Eater. The Winnebagoes in one excited voice agreed. They were infuriated by the threat these Americans were posing to their families, who had traveled so far to be safe in this holy town under Weshemoneto’s cloak. “Though the Great Good Spirit has let the Long Knives come this far, he will not let them destroy us,” said Wood, another war chief. “Father, you said we will always be safe here, that no one can hurt the town. You told us that anyone who tries to hurt your people will die or go crazy.”
“Yes,” Open Door said in a strange voice. He seemed to be seeing something far away. He was not slumping as much as he had been, and there was a keen edge on his eye now. “Yes, that is what I said, and what I say is true.” He was thinking now about that vision he had had, of the soldiers lying dead or crazy in their blankets, of Harrison being stabbed in his bed. He turned his eye upon Charcoal Burner and said, “In that army camp, you saw Harrison’s tent so that you are sure of it?”
“Yes.”
“How does it look?”
“A white tent, larger than the others, held up by a pole in the middle.”
“And is it among trees?”
“There are large oaks nearby.”
“Are there soldiers near it?”
“As I saw, from far away, there were horse soldiers camping on two sides of it and walking soldiers everywhere else. It is in the middle of hundreds of soldiers.”
“And,” Open Door asked, “the tent is in firelight?”
“Their entire camp is full of great bonfires to keep them warm.” Charcoal Burner wondered what was the reason for these questions. He had already said these things. But he could see that the look in Open Door’s face was changing from fearful to sharp. He was quiet, thinking.
And now into the stillness, White Loon spoke. “Since our father tells us they cannot hurt this town, then their coming here means that Weshemoneto has delivered the white men soldiers into our hands. They have come to our town but cannot hurt us, and so it must be that he means for us to kill them here!”
“They are forbidden by their own treaties to be here,” said another deep voice, “and so they must be punished for coming. I, Stone Eater, say we must strike them tonight while they sleep, for I fear they mean to do that to us.”
“No!” Charcoal Burner cried. “Do you forget what your leader Tecumseh told you? We are not to fight Harrison!”
“Tecumseh is not here, and Harrison is,” retorted Stone Eater. “If Tecumseh were here and saw Harrison’s fires so close, he would say, ‘Kill them!’ ”
“No! He would not!” exclaimed Charcoal Burner. “He would have bad us move out of their way before they got so close!”
“I”—Open Door’s voice suddenly overrode this argument—“I, Tenskwatawa, am the leader of the People. It is unfortunate that my brother Tecumseh is far away. But I am the leader in this place! And the Great Good Spirit has told me what must be done. It is true that he has delivered the Americans into our hands. Look at their camp! They are in the open, with no fort to hide in. They have not even built barricades. They are surrounded by darkness, and are lying blind in the heart of my country. We know this land, and they are strangers in it. Not even St. Clair so long ago was in such a sorry circumstance as Harrison has put himself in this night. My children, listen well to me, for I tell you now what the Great Good Spirit has shown me we must do! Listen:
“Some one of our warriors will kill Harrison in his bed, this night!”
Suddenly they were all still, listening, astonished, their eyes ablaze.
“He is to die with a knife in his heart,” Open Door said. As he talked, his speech growing rapid now, he was pulling his string of beans through his palm, and his eye was closed. “I have been shown this, in a clear light. Who among you has a knife with a handle of horn?”
Most had British steel knives with red wooden handles. But several warriors raised their knives to show the handles of horn, and both Stone Eater and White Loon were among them. A peculiar light was beginning to show in their eyes now. Perhaps one of them would be the one who was to kill Harrison the land stealer, Harrison the invader. What fame there would be for the warrior who did that! But now Charcoal Burner interrupted again:
“Harrison sleeps among a thousand soldiers, if he sleeps at all! No one could get to his tent! I have seen their camp!”
“Brother,” growled Wood, “you have seen only what your eyes showed you. Our father the Prophet has seen what the Master of Life showed him.”
“I am a holy man, not a warrior,” Open Door said now in that extraordinary voice he used in his sermons and his great pronouncements. “I cannot plan a battle. I can only give warriors the guidance of my vision, and the blessing and protection of the Great Good Spirit. I am not a warrior, but I am aware that no single warrior can penetrate a thousand soldiers to stab their commander. But! However many warriors it would take to force their way to Harrison’s tent, it would take only one knife to go into his heart!”
“Listen,” the warriors began hissing to each other. “Hear him! He says it can be done!”
“No!” Charcoal Burner cried again. His eyes burned on Open Door’s profile, but the Prophet would not turn to look in his eyes. White Loon said to Charcoal Burner:
“Brother, do not be afraid of the white men who can shoot squirrels from horseback. They will be in their blankets, not on their horses.” Some of the warriors snickered cruelly at Charcoal Burner. White Loon went on: “They are calico peddlers! Their hands are soft! They are afraid! Maybe their commander is brave, but he will be dead!”
“Yes,” Open Door cried. “And the soldiers will not be able to defend him. You will find them dead, or crazy! I have seen it, I tell you! Make your plan! Let me hear how you would go into the army camp and kill him.… Wait!” He turned to Charcoal Burner now and said, “Shabbona, are you with me, or against me?”
“Father, you know I counsel against this. But what is decided, if I cannot stop it, I will help you. But I wish you would listen to the words your brother told you before he went away.”
“Charcoal Burner is with us, and I rejoice,” Open Door told them, “for he is one of the best among us. Now, my warriors. We have a sacred duty given us by the Master of Life. Let us hear how it is to be done.”
&nbs
p; CORPORAL STEPHEN MARS WAS AWAKENED BY A HAND ON his shoulder. He was groggy; his limbs were numb; it had taken him two hours to fall asleep despite his fatigue from the march and camp building. The cold, the dampness of his clothes and blanket, the tiny attacks of fleas and lice in the few warm parts of his body, and the necessity of sleeping in full uniform on the hard ground with his hard, knobby rifle for a bedmate had combined with the awful anxiety of being camped in the open one mile from a town of hostile savages and one hundred fifty miles from home to keep him wretchedly, nervously awake until he finally had dropped into a fitful sleep. Now, feeling weak, exhausted, and above all vulnerable, he was being awakened to go outside the firelight into the black, drippy woods and stand there on guard against Indians.
Even while riding in broad daylight, well fed and well rested, on a strong war-horse with a thousand troops around him, Corporal Mars had not been as fearless as he felt he should be. But these next four hours would be, he was sure, the worst test of his private courage he had ever faced or ever would. He was sure it would be, and his dread was so deep and dark that had he not been in the middle of Indian country he might have considered deserting rather than go on guard duty. But there was this to do and no way out.
A few minutes later he was outside the glow of the firelit camp, standing in pitch blackness with his back to a tree trunk, rifle under his cloak to keep the drizzle from wetting his powder, listening with all his might for rustlings or breathings he prayed he would not have to hear. He was outside the northwest corner of the encampment. In front of him, although he could not see it, was the forest. Off to his left he could hear the monotonous trickling of the creek that ran under the bluff. In a way he was glad of the creek’s noise; he probably would have been even more scared in a total silence. But on the other hand, sometimes it would override some tiny, stealthy noise he would think he was almost hearing, and then its trickle would be infuriating and frustrating as he tried to penetrate it for the frightful little sound. A possum could sound like a band of sneaking savages, and vice versa. It was better to hear nothing at all. But on the other hand, if there were a noise, he had sure as hell better hear it.
Mars was a member of Captain Geiger’s Kentuckians, from Jefferson County near Louisville. He knew that this angle he guarded so blindly was considered a part of the rear line, the front line being the part that faced the redskins’ town, and he was a little grateful for that. But would the redskins consider it that way? Had the governor told them that was the side they should sneak up on? No. But it would be almost better to be over on that side, he thought. At least I’d be looking over grass and could maybe see a dang Injun if one come a-creepin’ along. But how am I supposed to see anything here, where everything’s all uneven and everything’s a little blacker than everything else? Had that comet thing for a bit of light when we started. But these dad-blame rain clouds …
Now and then he turned around to look back toward the dim fireglow of the encampment as if to reassure himself that it was still there, that he was not alone in an unlit, dripping universe. He could see, or thought he could, the white peak of General Harrison’s tent away back there beyond the branches. Wisht it was him, he thought, havin’ to stand out here all stark alone. It’s him brought us here.
Then he quit looking back because his eyes would have to adjust to the pitch blackness again. Besides, whenever he moved, his clothes made brushing sounds that spooked him.
A drop of rainwater, falling from a twig onto dead leaf, made him start, his heart slamming, and for a while his fright made him keep watching a place of extra-black blackness that had seemed to shift. But since he couldn’t really even see it, how could he see if it had shifted? He shivered. His feet were wet.
And then a hushing sound grew louder, blotting up the trickle of the distant creek, and cold rain began going down his collar.
Ungodly damnation! he thought.
And then he thought that a profanity like that, at a time when he needed all the Almighty’s help he could get, might tempt disaster.
Lord, forgive me for cussin’. Lord, help me get through till daylight, and I swear I’ll never say another cuss word. Lord, please make sure all them Injuns are sound asleep over in their town. See to it they got enough sense not to be a-sneakin’ around in cold rain. Lord, keep all redskins at least a mile off from me till daytime, and I promise I’ll be your pious and dutiful sarvant all the rest of my natural days.
But Lordy, Lordy, he thought after a while, wouldn’t it pride me to fetch home the scalp o’ one o’ them goddamn heathens!
DRAPED IN A LONG FUR ROBE, HEAD COVERED BY THE CROWFEATHER cap with its outstretched wings, Open Door dismounted, handed the reins of his horse to one of his bodyguards, and walked carefully down the prairie path through the rainy darkness toward the cliff’s edge. Weshemoneto was guiding his steps, but he went very slowly. When he felt the bare rock instead of grass under his feet, he knew he was near the edge of the cliff and stopped. He could not see the drop-off below but could feel the space of it, could hear the rain in the treetops below.
Two hundred feet down and two hundred yards to the southeast, he could see the glow and twinkle of the many bonfires in Harrison’s camp. They were still burning high, despite the hours of rain and drizzle; the sentries must have been fueling them throughout the night. Good. It was as he had prophesied. There would be light in the enemy camp for his warriors to see by, as he had told them there would be. The sky in the east had not yet begun to lighten; on a rainy morning like this in this season there would be nearly two more hours of darkness, and the watch soldiers would not be able to see the warriors who were now stealing in on all sides.
Open Door tried to discern Harrison’s tent in the glowing camp below, but it was hidden by the screen of bare branches.
There was not a sound above the hiss of the rainfall, the whiff of the cold wind, and the gurgling of water down the rivulets of the bluff and the creek below, not a sound to hint at the movement of nine hundred warriors through the valley. Open Door thought of them, his hardy and courageous young men slithering like snakes through the marshes and meadows and wet woods everywhere down there, closer and closer to the soldier camp, and his heart ached with concern for them. He gripped his medicine fire stick in one hand and his sacred beans in the other and put his head back to pray silently for them, to draw down from above the clouds the protection of Weshemoneto; he could feel the clean cold rain on his face, and his soul, like an opening bellows, drawing downward the power of heaven. His years of doubt were over. At last, as the planning of this holy war had begun in the council lodge a few hours ago, Open Door had felt the power returning to him, and he had begun to see everything that would happen. The entire attack had been planned upon his visions. Through the night the chief warriors of his united tribes had talked over the details of the attack, their confidence of victory growing, and then all the warriors had gathered, painted and armed, some with guns but many with the Indians’ own silent and blessed weapon, the bow, and with their tomahawks and clubs, spears and knives; they had gathered in a dimly lit clearing invisible to the Americans, and he had blessed them and told them the Master of Life would protect them. Most of the soldiers would be still in their blankets, dead or crazy and unable to resist. They would be blinded by the darkness in which the Indians moved, but the bonfires in the camp would be like a sun to show the warriors their helpless enemy. The white men’s guns would be useless because Open Door would send rain and hail to dampen their powder, but with Weshemoneto’s help and their own prudence, those warriors using guns would have dry powder. And of course those using bows would not even have to think of keeping powder dry. He had told them that the Master of Life had given them medicine this night to gain a great victory over the Americans. The medicine would spread confusion in the Long Knives’ camp, and even those who could get up from their blankets would fall in a stupor.
But the most sacred duty to be performed in the attack, that which would assure the vic
tory, had been delegated to a hundred warriors under Stone Eater and White Loon. This hundred would steal up from the woods at the creek’s edge, the most lightly guarded side, to the northwest edge of the camp, as close as they could get to Harrison’s tent, even past the sentries if they could, and at the sound of a deer-hoof rattle they would rush through the sleeping Americans, killing them as they went, straight to the door of Harrison’s tent, and they would kill him. All these hundred were warriors with horn-handled knives. If they were discovered before they penetrated the lines, they would give the war cry, and all the other hundreds encircling the camp would take up the cry and attack all around the army camp. In the chaos this would create, the chosen hundred would be able to pour into the heart of the camp and kill Harrison. “In case Harrison might already be awake and moving about in his camp,” Charcoal Burner had said, “he rides a light gray horse. My scouts could have shot him from his saddle twenty times, except that we were not supposed to provoke.”
Panther in the Sky Page 70
