The Seekers

by John Jakes

  One coy hand partially concealed a dusky triangle, which the anonymous artist had detailed with the same attention to eroticism he’d given to the young woman’s somewhat sleepy eyes, her wide mouth and her large breasts, carefully reddened at the tips.

  The young woman in the portrait:—she could be no more than sixteen or seventeen—had a voluptuous, puffy decadence that disgusted Abraham even while it aroused him. As Stovall snapped the locket shut, Abraham offered the expected ribald compliment, then asked, “Is that your mistress, Lieutenant?”

  Stovall chuckled, using his amusement as a pretext to touch the back of Abraham’s hand. “A gentleman never compromises a lady by answering such a question, dear boy. It’s sufficient to say the locket was given to me by a charming creature who loves me deeply, and whose love is reciprocated.”

  Days later, Abraham brought up the locket in conversation with another officer. His scalp crawled when the officer identified the girl in the painting. “His mistress? Yes, he intimates she is. She’s also his sister, Lucy Stovall.”

  “Good Christ! I thought his remarks about a scandal in Baltimore were only boasts.”

  “To the best of my knowledge, I’m right in the identity of that pretty whore he carries around in his breeches. There was a scandal, and a juicy one. The girl’s married now, to some chap named Freemantle—Stovall fairly seethes whenever he mentions him. In case it’s not clear, Cornet, Stovall is a libertine of the worst sort. Don’t let him catch you alone! I understand his family’s damned rich, by the way. That probably helps buy official silence about his little escapades—”

  “And helps bribe recruiting officers to look in the other direction?”

  “And sign his papers in haste—yes.”

  After that, Abraham avoided the lieutenant, save for the one time he was unavoidably alone with him, and slyly propositioned.

  Stovall’s unpopularity was heightened by a condescending manner he displayed even to superiors—and to Abraham this morning. “Damned silly of you to run about pretending to be a bloody firebrand, Kent.” Stovall sometimes affected diction he imagined to be British; Abraham considered it a sign of Federalist leanings. “I’ve no desire to be potted by a bloody lot of howling heathen. Riding in the rear suits me admirably—”

  Abraham couldn’t resist a jab at the soft-featured officer. “Off the field as well as on, eh, sir?”

  Stovall colored, started to retort. MisCampbell’s shouted command distracted him. Stovall reined his horse around and repeated the order loudly, “For-aaard!”

  In a moment they were moving with a jingle of metal, a slap of leather, a plop of hoofs in the black earth leading to the slope that angled down into the cornfields. Abraham still felt foolish because of his comments to MisCampbell. Perhaps that was the reason he’d dared to jape at a senior officer.

  Why had he made those idiotic remarks about wanting to be first to charge the enemy? Was he secretly afraid he lacked courage? Yes, that might be the reason—

  But admitting it didn’t help his spirits one whit. A heavy lump had formed in his throat. Sweat continually blurred his eyes. Off to the far right, the Legion columns shimmered in the heat, their fur caps with different-colored plumes the only concession to military dress. Abraham felt heavy sweat on his chest and under his arms as MisCampbell led the dragoons down into the tasseled corn planted by the Indians.

  As he rode, Abraham’s thoughts turned inward again. He knew why he hoped to do well in the engagement. He wanted some record of accomplishment, however slight, from which to draw the strength of experience if and when he confronted his father in a much different sort of conflict.

  Once he acknowledged this in the silence of his mind, he felt a little better—though no less nervous. Guiding Sprite over the edge of the gentle slope, he noticed activity in a grove to the left. He saw General Wayne trying to lift his foot to his stirrup. Bending the flannel-swathed leg brought a grimace to Wayne’s face, then tears. Two servants rushed forward to boost him up. Abraham distinctly heard Wayne’s gasp of pain as he mounted.

  But once in the saddle, the general looked fierce and formidable. No trace of the tears remained. The hilt of his sword and the metal-capped butts of his pistols twinkled in the dappled sunlight of the grove.

  Abraham coughed in the dust raised by Stovall’s gray just ahead. He felt a sudden pride in serving with Anthony Wayne. If he were to die this morning, at least he wouldn’t be dying for a coward or an incompetent—

  Or a sodomite, he thought, making a disgusted face as Stovall wiggled his fat rump in his saddle and complained loudly about the heat.

  ii

  The sun climbed higher as they advanced. Stovall owned a precious wilderness rarity, a pocket watch with a cheerfully painted sun face on its dial. He kept close track of the time.

  Eight o’clock.

  Nine o’clock.

  Nine-thirty—

  Lulled by the rhythm of posting, Abraham grew drowsy in the heat. Sprite’s flanks glistened with lather. He and the mare—in fact all of the dragoons and their horses—exuded a stench that grew riper with every passing moment.

  Ahead and to the right, half the Legion had already vanished into a line of trees running at a right angle between the woods on the far left and the river. The trees, a living wall that hid all the terrain beyond, marked the end of the corn bottoms. As the Legion foot disappeared into the dark green gloom, MisCampbell called a halt.

  The dragoons reined their horses. General Wayne and his command staff cantered past on their left, soon gone into the trees after the others. Lieutenant Stovall tugged out his pocket watch again.

  “Ten o’ the clock. The hostiles must have turned tail. Suits me perfectl—”

  Abraham stood up straight in his stirrups as Stovall’s sentence was punctuated by a rolling thunderclap of sound from the other side of the line of trees. Frantic orders rang along the end of the column of foot. The last of the infantrymen plunged into the woods at quickstep. Abraham saw smoke rising above the trees, but those same trees barred the dragoons from seeing the source of the firing.

  “Turned tail?” a dragoon jeered at Stovall. “Doesn’t sound like it!”

  “No, I don’t imagine Mad Anthony ordered musket practice just to while away the time,” said another. Stovall jammed his watch back in his trousers pocket, looking petulant.

  That muskets by the hundreds were exploding beyond the trees was not in question. But suddenly a new sound was added to the din: massed voices—yells—of infantrymen charging.

  A third sound made Abraham’s scalp prickle. Wild, ululating yells that could only come from the savages entrenched in the fallen timbers. The battle had been joined—

  A horseman burst from the trees, galloping straight toward MisCampbell. Bringing orders? So it appeared. Abraham’s belly knotted. His palms turned cold despite the heat.

  MisCampbell conferred with the arriving officer, then stood in his stirrups and drew his saber.

  “Listen to me!” he shouted, pointing his blade at the river. It shone like a brass mirror now that the mist had burned away. “There’s another cornfield along the bank beyond those trees. We’re to advance, drive into the enemy’s left flank and turn it that way—” In a shimmering arc, the saber flashed toward the forest on Abraham’s left. Smoke rose from its depths too. More muskets crashed. The Kentuckians had engaged.

  MisCampbell bent to listen to the courier again. Then: “The foot’s already in trouble among the fallen trees. So once we’re in there, formations be damned. Just kill the red whoresons.” Up went his saber, then down. “For-aaard—!”

  The dragoons thundered toward the trees nearest the river. Abraham breathed loudly through his mouth as his rump bounced up and down in the saddle. Sprite’s plaited mane stood out in the wind. She seemed eager to run—

  MisCampbell plunged into the trees, a gloomy place made gloomier by drifting smoke. Above the drumming of hoofs Abraham once more heard sounds on his left. Muskets. Men shouti
ng and cursing in English. Other voices screaming in tongues he didn’t understand—

  The line of trees was not deep. MisCampbell’s men rode through in a matter of a minute or so, bursting onto level ground thick with ripe corn that grew nearly to the water’s edge. The world seemed to race by as Abraham’s mare carried him from semidarkness to blinding sunlight. He gasped at the incredible scene of confusion and carnage on his left.

  A vast area of the bottom was covered by the immense trunks of uprooted trees, some nearly rotted away. Here and there, two or three of the storm-blasted trunks lay across one another, creating natural barricades six to eight feet high. Among this titanic natural wreckage, men struggled; men with white skins, and others much darker—

  Abraham saw bayonets flashing as whole squads clambered over the huge horizontal trees, saw red faces contorted in rage, red hands swinging war clubs and tomahawks and even firing muskets. The Legion and the Indians fought hand to hand in near-total disorder—

  At least a thousand to fifteen hundred men were battling, Abraham guessed. He was barely able to hear MisCampbell’s bawled orders in the din. Past the fallen timbers, the smoke thickened above the woods where the Kentuckians fought.

  Screaming commands, MisCampbell turned the column’s head, charging the dragoons left toward the nearest uprooted trees. As Abraham pulled his saber, Stovall swung left in turn. Abraham followed—and got a horrifying view of hard-planed, reddish-brown faces waiting behind the natural fortifications; faces marked with slashes of yellow and vermilion.

  Heads shaved save for single oiled scalplocks trailing down their necks, the Indian defenders—of what tribe, Abraham didn’t know—raised muskets and aimed at the attacking cavalry.

  Abraham bent low over Sprite’s neck. He realized the dragoon formation would disintegrate the moment MisCampbell reached the first great trunks. So he chose a route for himself: a natural lane between two destroyed trees. The lane angled away to his left. Riding hard, he turned Sprite in that direction.

  The smell of powder was chokingly strong. He heard the Indian muskets erupt, raised his head just a little as a sheet of flame leaped out directly in front of the first dragoons. MisCampbell’s chest seemed to cave in, the white of his linen shirt stained with red blotches as several balls struck him at once. He pitched from his saddle, trampled by his men galloping behind him—

  Then the first riders were into the trees, each man charging in a different direction, choosing his own enemy. Never before had Abraham heard such noise: the muskets blasting; the American foot soldiers grunting and cursing as they clambered over the tree trunks; the earth-shaking hoofbeats; the war cries of the Indians—and the shrieks of men on both sides dying of a ball or a bayonet or the blade of a scalp knife—

  Abraham’s mare dashed into the head of the lane he’d picked out. Stovall was racing down the same lane directly ahead. Sprite’s flank scraped one of the tumbled trees. She almost fell. On the far side of the tree, two clouted Indians struggled with an officer of the Fourth sublegion. The man was fending off the savages with thrusts of his spontoon.

  Abraham reined in, reached across the trunk, hacked down and sideways with his saber. The blade struck flesh. With a kind of hypnotic fascination, he watched the brave’s neck spout blood over the beleaguered officer. The American took the hideous drenching—and grinned.

  The other Indian tried to scramble away over the next tree. The officer ran him through the back with the long spontoon. Abraham’s bowels felt watery as he nudged Sprite ahead, the dying Indian’s cries of agony loud in his ears.

  Abruptly, on his right a brave leaped to the top of another fallen tree. Abraham realized the warrior must have been crouching down—awaiting a victim. The Indian was tall, in his late twenties, with a distinctively handsome face and baleful eyes. He swung his spiked war club straight at Sprite’s neck.

  Abraham jerked the rein savagely. The mare reared, front hoofs tearing at the sky. The spike missed her by a fraction.

  Sprite came back to earth with a terrific jolt. The Indian found a new, more convenient target: Lieutenant Stovall. A few yards ahead, his gray’s front hoof had caught in a tangle of exposed roots. The Indian ran gracefully along the tree trunk, leaped as Abraham shouted:

  “Stovall! Behind y—”

  Stovall took the spike of the war club in the nape of his neck. He screamed a name—Lucy, Abraham thought it was—as he slumped over. His corpse bounced in the saddle.

  Abraham kicked Sprite ahead, hatred dizzying his mind. Stovall was a despicable young man. But he was also a United States soldier, and he had been foully murdered. Holding his seat by clenching his knees against Sprite’s heaving sides, Abraham jerked out one of the dragoon pistols and fired.

  When the smoke cleared, Abraham saw the Indian laughing at him from the other side of Stovall’s horse. Fresh blood stained Stovall’s shirt where the pistol ball had struck. The Indian had maneuvered Stovall’s corpse as a shield.

  Eyes guttering with hateful mirth, the Indian reached up as Stovall’s boots came loose from the stirrups. He tangled his fingers in Stovall’s blood-slimed hair, jerked, flung the body on the ground. In a moment the Indian was mounted and riding away, bent close to the animal’s neck as he beat the gray’s ribs with moccasined feet. Abraham pulled his other pistol, shot—but the fleeing savage was already out of range.

  Soon the Indian was gone in the smoke. Abraham rode past Stovall’s corpse, unable to look at it. Vomit filled his throat. He swallowed several times and that way kept from getting sick. But nausea still churned his middle.

  Pistols empty, he had only his bloodied saber for a weapon—and precious few enemies to use it on, he discovered. The Indians had withdrawn from the immediate area. In fact, as he reined in again, he saw scores of them retreating in a frantic scramble through the timbers at the far side of the battleground. Legion soldiers with bayonets gave chase, stabbing the fugitives in the back or shooting them.

  Abraham began to shake. He controlled the violent trembling only with great effort. He’d been in combat five minutes or a little less, and already the field was clearing. As he scanned the tumbled trees, he realized that the cavalry charge against the Indian flank had been largely responsible for the sudden retreat. Wayne’s strategy had been sound after all.

  He heard a lieutenant calling for the dragoons to assemble in a relatively open area a short distance away.

  He spoke to Sprite to send her forward. The firing was diminishing quickly, but great blue layers of smoke still lay over the blasted trees. The grotesque and gory bodies of Americans and Indians were hideous to look upon.

  As Abraham rounded the split end of a rotting tree, he heard a muffled groan, glanced down—

  He saw an Indian, hardly older than he was.

  Hunched over in pain—gut-shot—the young brave stared up at Abraham’s bloodied sword, expecting death. Abraham’s eyes locked with the brave’s. Agony and humiliation filled those eyes, but no hatred. The Indian was dying.

  Abraham had no stomach for administering a final stroke, merciful or otherwise. He rode on. The young warrior began to chant, a mournful, singsong melody. A death-litany—?

  The sight of the dying warrior lingered in Abraham’s mind, sad and ugly. He felt ashamed as he remembered his foolish bravado earlier in the morning. To take pleasure in the death and suffering of battle struck him as inhuman, no matter how important or righteous the cause of either side seemed. He was oddly proud of having survived the short but fierce engagement. Yet at the same time he was sickened and shaken by everything he had seen and done.

  iii

  The battle along the Maumee was won in under half an hour. It was won by superior numbers and, specifically, as Abraham had suspected, by the dragoon charge against the Indian flank. When Abraham rejoined his troop, he found that seven or eight men he knew well had died somewhere in the fallen timbers.

  Not long afterward, he and the other dragoons found themselves in high grass overlooking a
stockade beside the river. Above the fort, a British flag flew.

  Closer to the hilltop position, McKee’s trading station stood among a collection of deserted Indian huts and lean-tos. One of the men in Abraham’s troop pointed in surprise. “Stripe me if the yellow British ain’t going to keep the damn gate shut.”

  He moved forward for a better look. About two dozen Indians, most of them wounded, were howling and beating on the entrance to the log fort. Red-coated sentries on the ramparts motioned for them to go away. That set the Indians to howling all the louder. Abraham recognized one of the angriest fugitives.

  “See that one who’s bloodied his hands hammering the gate?” he asked the officer beside him. “Unless my eyes are tricking me, I came close to killing him back in the timbers.”

  The bedraggled officer answered, “Don’t you know who that is?”

  Abraham shook his head.

  “A scout pointed him out to me. He was fleeing like the very devil. On horseback.”

  “But who is he?”

  “The Shawanese, Tecumseh. One of Blue Jacket’s hottest bloods.”

  “I’m sure he’s the one I shot at—”

  “And missed, obviously.”

  “Yes;”

  “Too bad. A ball in his brain would have saved every white man on the frontier a mighty lot of grief.”

  Hardly hearing, Abraham continued to stare at the appalling sight of the allies of the Indians refusing them sanctuary in the fort. Presently the enraged braves slipped out of sight in the woods beyond the log stockade. Wayne had passed an order that they were not to be fired on.

  That angered a great many of the Americans. Abraham felt only a profound sense of sorrow. The tribes of the Ohio country might be enemies, but you could only pity men whose pretended friends abandoned them in such fashion.