The Red Heart

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  Maconakwa noticed her daughter watching the boy again, and this time not with sweet adoration, but with fear and pain. Much of the pain was in hands and feet that had nearly frozen that day, but much of it was heart pain. All the women and girls crouched or sitting in the big circle, watching the inner circle of ferocious warriors dance and scream themselves into readiness, knew that these dancers, who were their own sons or husbands or fathers or uncles or nephews, might be dead before the sun was up tomorrow.

  It was the women who bore and nursed the babies who would grow up to be fighters. The women had the most to lose when their boys and men went out to battle. That was why women in Council had a war vote. Sometimes the women would know that it was just the men’s indignation or foolish pride or hunger for reputation that made them want to go to war and risk themselves, and at such times the women would vote against fighting.

  But this time there was no question whether the warriors should go. The only question was whether it could be done, and how many lives it would cost.

  Maconakwa saw Wildcat, the mixed-blood named Richardville, who usually looked like a French white man instead of a Miami. Now his face was painted for war and he looked like a Miami warrior in the glow of the war dance fire. In the war council this evening he had suggested that the warriors should only block the army from leaving the country, and keep them encircled until Tecumseh’s force could come and help destroy them all. That sounded like a good plan, except for two bad possibilities: the soldiers might become desperately angry and start killing the hostages, and there might be another white army—another undetected army coming down from Fort Wayne, as one already had three months ago—which could get here before Tecumseh could. To prevent that, the chieftains and warriors had argued, the attack should be made now. And the people, being in a furious and vengeful state of mind, had agreed. So it would be before daylight, even in this bitter cold. No one had ever heard of battles being fought in such cold. It would be terrible.

  But the horse soldiers had chosen this bitter cold time to come here, and so it would be in the deep cold. There are so many ways to suffer and die in war, Maconakwa thought. This is just another. And in deep cold, wounds do not bleed as much.

  Yellow Leaf was swaddled and asleep in a brush lean-to. Maconakwa, chafing Cut Finger’s frostbitten hands, felt a presence and looked up. There stood the huge form of Palonswah the Miami war chief, with Deaf Man beside him. She had seen him earlier here and there, solemnly walking around the circle to talk to families whose men would be in the battle. He looked down at her and said in a deep, rich voice that she could hear even over the drumming and yelping:

  “Little Bear Woman, wife of my friend. You sit here with red hair shining in the firelight and your face so different from ours. You are thinking hard. I wondered, and came to ask: Are you thinking, these warriors go tomorrow to kill people of my race? I hope it is forgiven that I ask you that.”

  She peered up at him, watching the sparks of the bonfire swirl up beyond him, and thought of the soldiers. She remembered how they had looked this morning, their yelling faces and their helmets, the beard stubble on their pale jaws, and thought about the strange question Palonswah had asked. And she answered in truth:

  “I had no thought of that kind. Those soldiers are not my people. I have never known a people who could do what those men are doing. These Miami are my people.

  “And, friend of my husband, it is forgiven that you ask, but please never ask that again.”

  After the middle of the night the three hundred warriors and hunters, men and boys, left the war camp and started up the river path toward the soldier camp at the ruins of Silver Heels’ village. They dwindled from view into the frigid blue-gray night, their footsteps creaking in dry snow, the vapor of their breath freezing. They vanished beyond the leafless trees and bushes, into a silence still haunted by the pulse of drums and trilling of war cries. The high flames of their bonfire dropped lower and lower, to leave a huge, shimmering bed of embers still giving off smokeless heat under the piercing, clear stars.

  Maconakwa and Cut Finger, like many of the other homeless families, wrapped themselves together with the baby to share body heat, trying to keep warm in the heat from the embers which reflected off the ceiling of the lean-to that sloped over them, open side toward the heat. They were spent. They prayed fervently, then held each other and let themselves fall asleep for a while.

  Maconakwa dared not let herself sleep deeply because she knew that in this cold, feet could freeze, at the least, while at the worst one could slip off into the freezing sleep from which there was no awakening. Her husband had told her about the freezing sleep; once long ago on a midwinter hunt, he lost a friend to it and had nearly succumbed himself.

  This night she was awakened now and then by what sounded like a gunshot but was only a tree splitting from the cold, or by the movements of those who were too distraught to sleep and kept throwing wood on the embers to keep a blaze going. Thus awakened, she made sure Cut Finger’s feet were covered, and thought of Minnow and her daughter and prayed for them, and thought of her husband and prayed for him, and for War Chief Palonswah, who had asked her the strange question, and she prayed for him too. She would think, then, of where they would be by now, and try to envision the river path through their eyes. She knew the army had sentries out all night and people staying up to throw wood on their bonfires. She knew these soldiers would be suffering from the cold now, and perhaps sleepless fear, which they deserved for what they had done. Maybe they would be trying to rape the captives, but that was doubtful, the cold being this severe.

  She would doze a little, then wake and try to send the love of her heart through the still night to the heart of her husband, to warm him and encourage him as he crept toward the American camp. She would doze again, awakened by a sore hip or by stinging cold on her temple, and would remember the pleasure of Minnow drawing a comb through her hair—less than one day ago that had been, though it now seemed ages ago.

  Darkness had not yet begun to fade when the cold and hunger and hard ground convinced Maconakwa that any more rest was impossible. She got up stiffly, tucking the blanket around her daughters, and hobbled to the edge of the ashes where the great bonfire had been. Her feet and hands were so cold, so numb, that she wanted to wade into the hot ashes. Instead she set to work on the problem of how to feed these people. Women from Palonswah’s Town had brought up dried provisions the evening before, and kettles. Women and children crept out of their bedding and came close, and soon all the little campfires were surrounded by women and children and elders who hunkered, gazing stupefied into the flames or watching steam rise from kettles. They talked little. They shuddered with their blankets and fur robes pulled up over their heads, and rubbed their hands again and again in the fires’ heat. When they were not watching the kettles and the flames, they were squinting southward in the direction their warriors had gone, awaiting the sounds they dreaded and anticipated.

  All the hunters coming in the day before had brought only a turkey and two raccoons and a rabbit. They made barely enough meat to enrich the thin stews of dried squash, acorn meal, corn flour, root starch, and elm bark the women from Palonswah’s Town had brought.

  Thin as it was, this fare gave off aromas that made the hungry, chilled people drool. Maconakwa found herself also tantalized by another scent, one she had come to know from when she had dined at Little Turtle’s grand house at Fort Wayne. It was the white men’s brew called coffee. It was rare, but almost everyone had sometimes drunk it, thickly sweetened. Women from Wildcat’s Town were brewing it this morning. The refugees shuffled around the cookfires to get coffee and food. Most had lost their spoons and bowls in their burning towns, and had to wait to take turns with the tin cups some had brought, or eat from bark slabs. Maconakwa nursed Yellow Leaf as she and Cut Finger waited for the others to be fed. The dregs from the bottom of the kettle were delicious, but only a few sips were left, and the coffee was gone. She returned to snuggl
e with her daughters in their blanket and wait for day. No one knew what the day would bring, whether the army would remain in the valley or be driven out, whether the warriors would come back alive, so there was no use planning anything. With three hundred warriors gone to attack three times that many soldiers, whatever happened today could not be expected to end well.

  Maconakwa was gazing through the tracery of bare treetops toward the paling eastern sky, praying, when she heard the first gunshot, then a quickening sputter of faraway gunfire. Her heartbeat raced and she prayed still more intently that none of those would hit her husband. She remembered that the first time she had ever seen him, he was nearly dead with a bullet in his lung. Cut Finger’s eyes were open, full of fear, and Maconakwa tried to reassure her, saying, “It should not last long. They will just make a hole in one side of the soldier camp and bring out the captive ones.”

  But it did not end. The gunfire kept sputtering, diminishing, rising like far thunder. The morning was so intensely cold that she wondered how a man could even load a gun without his fingers freezing, and the snow was knee-deep. If a man fell he might not even be found in the snow. She imagined Deaf Man trying to run forward through the deep, crusted snow. She knew how easy it was to see game or horses or people against a background of snow, how impossible it was to conceal oneself in white snow with no foliage. Glancing around this camp as daylight came on, she could see the outline of every person, every tree, within three hundred paces, and knew that the soldiers could see the warriors just that clearly. And the shooting just kept going on and on. Soldiers always had better guns and more powder and ball than Indians, so most of that, she could be sure, was the noise of soldier guns. Her fear mounted, growing more and more terrible, and now whenever the gunfire began to slacken, she feared it was because all the warriors were dead. But then she would hear a wisp of war-cry sound. Once, she heard through the gun noise a strange, clear voicelike sound. It was a moment before she recognized it as a distant bugle.

  It was a terrifying sound, even though so very faint. It was what she had heard loudly the morning before, when the horse soldiers came thundering through the town. She remembered that clearly, the sight of so many soldiers on horseback, a dark onrush across the morning snow. There are so many soldiers, she thought, even if our warriors do get inside and reach the captives, the army might just surround them and then they themselves might not get out. Or does the bugle mean the army charges this way?

  I am imagining every bad thing that could happen, she thought. Better things could be happening. So much shooting for so long—perhaps Tecumseh arrived this morning up there and is helping them defeat the Long Knife horse soldiers!

  I would rather be there with bullets whining around me so I could see and not have to imagine everything this way!

  She remembered the lead balls yesterday morning whirring by and chipping bark. It did not seem that the fear and desperation she had felt men were worse than this helpless wondering.

  And then she noticed that there was much less gunfire now. She could see by the brightness over the horizon that the sun would be up soon.

  There was only silence now. A single gunshot; two more; one more; none. She heard the bugle again, an eerie, distant song. Two more gunshots. None. None. She rose, knees hurting, to stand and gaze upriver, as if by standing and looking toward the sunrise, she might see better what had happened so far up there beyond the trees and snowy slopes and creek banks. Or just to be standing when whatever was to come would come.

  Everyone else was standing and looking in that direction.

  She trembled in the cold, exhaled frost and prayed and wondered, and the edge of the sun blazed through the winter-bare trees upriver, bringing pearly white light but no warmth.

  * * *

  Maconakwa was out in the deep snow gathering more deadwood for the fires when she heard the warriors coming back: crunching snow crust and low voices.

  They brought back thirty warriors from the battle to be buried. One of every ten had been killed attacking the soldier camp, and many others might yet die of their wounds. And they had fetched back also the ones the soldiers had killed and thrown in the river the morning before. She put her hand over her mouth. These were dead with honor, all brought back to be buried and mourned properly.

  The warriors had failed to get in and free the captives. The one blessing was that the soldiers had stayed there after the battle instead of pursuing them. “We killed many of them and wounded many more,” Deaf Man said. “They are hurt badly and suffering the cold. I do not expect them to come this way again. I expect they will limp off east to their forts and lick their wounds.” He was black with gunpowder and shaking hard, and his eyes were red. “They still have our people,” he went on, voice quaking. “There were too many soldiers with good guns, and they had stacked wood all around their camp to shoot from. We just could not get in. When day came, they bugled and rushed out on many war-horses and swept us before them.” He released a long, shuddering sigh and looked back along the line of horses with bodies over their backs. “We will have to burn the frozen ground to make graves.” Then he gazed at the wide circle of ashes where the war dance fire had been, and she knew he was thinking that the ground was already thawed there. The war party had started there and would end there for these.

  Maconakwa was thinking of Minnow, who, after all this, was still not here. Minnow and her daughter. And all those others still in the hands of the Long Knives.

  Maconakwa worked in the cold to prepare food and medicine and to comfort the ones who had lost warriors. The thin, frost-bright air was woven with keening laments.

  “They go away, the Long Knives,” said a messenger who had ridden down in the afternoon to report what the scouts had seen. He described what the soldiers had done.

  They had bandaged their wounded; they had medicine men with them who wore black clothes. They made litters to carry wounded soldiers on between horses. They buried the dead ones in the floor of a big ruined building, and then burned the rest of the building down to hide the graves. Then they formed into lines, many of the soldiers leading their horses instead of riding them, and opened a place in their breastwork to go out through, and started upriver along the Mississinewa Sipu toward the mid-morning sun. They had flankers riding along the outside and herded their captives along in the middle.

  “E heh,” grumbled Palonswah. “By that direction they must be going to Greene Ville, not to Fort Wayne. Perhaps they know already that Tecumseh is on the Wabash Sipu and they are afraid to go that way and be caught by him.”

  “By their tracks through the deep snow from yesterday,” the messenger said, “we believe Greene Ville is where they came from to attack us. They seem not to be Fort Wayne soldiers. And the one, Harrison, is not their leader. It is someone we do not know.”

  “Harrison is a general of bigger armies now,” said Palonswah. “Now that Tecumseh and the British have captured Detroit, now that Mackinack and Chicagou have fallen to Tecumseh’s allies, Harrison will be too busy preparing against Canada to ride with town burners like these. But know surely, Harrison sent these!”

  “Then we will have no chance to shoot him?” a chieftain asked.

  “Those who join Tecumseh might get such a chance. And I believe Harrison by his deeds has driven many of the neutrals and many of his own allies to join Tecumseh.”

  Palonswah mused, very grave: “One day sometime, Tecumseh will meet Harrison in battle. E heh! That is a destiny one can see. Even we who had smoke in our eyes and did not heed the quaking earth and the two-tailed star, even we can now see his destiny is to face Harrison.”

  On the second day after the battle, a scout who had been trailing the army walked in, hooded in his blanket, leading his horse. Slumped forward in its saddle, in her own tattered blanket, was old Acorn Top, so weary that she could barely hold herself upright. Maconakwa’s helpers carried her into shelter, fed her meat broth and rubbed her hands and feet, and wrapped her in hides and blankets.
They looked at her and wondered how she could be alive. Maconakwa gazed at her and remembered how she had helped her with the village people after the first earthquake. Acorn Top recognized Maconakwa and tried to answer her questions about what had happened.

  “I was prisoner of the horse soldiers.”

  “How did you get away from them?”

  Acorn Top croaked and wheezed, “I fell. They had their own … freezing feet and faces. Just went on.”

  “How did you keep from freezing to death in the night, Grandmother?”

  “What is there to freeze? I am all bones.”

  “Grandmother, I want to ask you about a hostage called Minnow.…” But Acorn Top was slipping into sleep, and didn’t answer.

  The scout who had brought her back was warming himself at a fire, and Maconakwa went to thank him. With his blanket hood thrown back, she could see it was the young man Brouillette. She squatted by the fire and told him her name.

  “E heh. I have seen you at Council,” he said. “You are Deaf Man’s wife, eh? You have a daughter, I think. And a baby.”

  So he had indeed noticed Cut Finger, even as she had noticed him. Maconakwa nodded. “We saw you there too. It was at Spring Council when Tecumseh spoke. You are Brouillette, eh?”

  “I am Jean Baptiste Brouillette. My true name is T’kwakeaw.”

  T’kwakeaw. Autumn, that meant. She liked it that he called his Miami name, not his French one, his true name. His deep eyes, almost black, were not sparkling and merry as before. She thanked him for bringing Acorn Top back. “She might live. Tell me how you found her.”

  “She was lying in the snow, a little way off the wide track the horse soldiers trampled in the snow along the river. We passed by her unseeing in the evening, perhaps. We rode back past without seeing her again that night when we sought a campsite away from the soldiers. Then we found her this morning as we rode forward again to trail the army as it moved on. She looked so much like old sticks, we saw her only by bright morning.”