Prelude to Glory, Vol. 9

by Ron Carter

  “The governor?”

  “Spent an afternoon with him.” Caleb glanced around the room. “Where is everybody?”

  Matthew hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Adam and John are delivering freight in Charleston. Jason’s at the bank. Pettigrew’s at home.”

  Caleb looked at Matthew. “Barbara and the children?”

  “Fine. Checked with them every day. Annalee cut two more teeth. Anxious to have you home.”

  Billy interrupted. “How is it down there? As wild as we’ve heard?”

  Caleb rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t know the words. I’ll make up my written report for Madison. You’ll read it all there.”

  “Lafitte,” Billy continued. “What have we got there?”

  “Two of them. Pierre, maybe thirty-six, and Jean, about thirty. Both capable. Dangerous.” He drew the document Jean Lafitte had given from his pocket and tossed it on the counter. “Jean Lafitte guarantees twelve slaves at four hundred dollars each within the next four weeks. I have to write a letter to Ingersol telling him that Boston Mercantile has decided against paying that much. How long do you plan to keep Boston Mercantile alive as a corporation? You invented it just for this trip to New Orleans.”

  “We’ll keep it as long as we need it to help Mister Madison,” Matthew answered.

  “Well, we don’t need it any more for now,” Caleb said. He hefted one suitcase onto the counter, opened it, and dug out the small metal box. “Here’s the cash. Get it in the safe. It’s all there, but there’s a story.” He pointed at the suitcases. “When I get home and unload these, I’ll get them back to Hickman.”

  Billy asked, “What’s the story? On the money box?”

  Caleb exhaled a huge breath. “Two men tried to steal it.”

  Billy saw it coming and was grinning as he asked, “Where are they now?”

  Caleb scratched at his chin. “I imagine they’re taking the wires out of that one man’s jaw about now. I don’t know if the other one can think straight yet.”

  Billy laughed outright, and Matthew shook his head ruefully. “Caleb, when are you going to. . . .” He did not finish the sentence.

  Caleb responded, “Well, now, don’t jump to any conclusions. I met them in the hall at the boarding house and they had the money box. We had a brief discussion. I got the money box back and they went to jail. Well, not exactly. They went to a doctor first, then jail. What would you have done? They had your money.”

  Matthew ducked his head to hide a grin and Billy laughed, then settled. “Did you have to buy the slaves?”

  “No. When they raised the price from three hundred to four, I told them I couldn’t do it without consent from Boston Mercantile. When I write to Ingersol, I’ll tell him the hard-headed Yankee businessmen that run Boston Mercantile—which is you two—won’t pay the higher price. The money’s all there except expenses, and there’s a list of what I had to spend.” He stopped for a moment to gesture. “Anything happening around here I need to know?”

  Matthew said, “No, business as usual.”

  Caleb grinned at them. “Then I think I’ll get on home to Barbara and the children. Tell mother I’m back safe. Good to be home.” He picked up the suitcases and walked back out into the sunlight and the dockhands and freight, worked his way west, and hailed a waiting hack.

  Notes

  The description of New Orleans in the time period in question, including the mix of Spanish, French, African-American, Native American, English, and American cultures, and many other nationalities, with the resulting new race called Creole, as well as the conditions in the streets, the cultural evolutions, the attitudes, the pirates, the black-market trade, and the wide-open auctions of slaves and all descriptions of merchandise taken by pirates on the high seas, is accurate. See Saxon, Lafitte, the Pirate, pp. 20–26. See page 23 for the list of stolen merchandise being sold in open auctions in the city, as set forth herein.

  William C. C. Claiborne, a Virginian, was the first American sent to become territorial governor and bring law and order to New Orleans. The conditions he faced are as described herein, and the letter mentioned in this chapter dated January 10, 1804, is quoted verbatim. Governor Claiborne’s wife was a beautiful Creole woman. See Saxon, Lafitte, the Pirate, pp. 22–23, 125.

  The Lafitte brothers, Jean and Pierre, are accurately described herein, as are their business affairs. Barataria is accurately described. See Saxon, Lafitte, the Pirate, pp. 3–11, 34–43.

  The old Absinthe House existed in New Orleans, as did the blacksmith shop of the Lafitte brothers and their cottage. See illustrations, Saxon, Lafitte, the Pirate, pp. 65, 8, 17.

  Thiac, the huge African-American blacksmith and his part in the business affairs of the Lafitte brothers is accurately described herein. The tall, attractive, dusky-skinned woman described in the house of the Lafittes was named Adelaide Maselari, a woman brought with them from the West Indies. See Saxon, Lafitte, the Pirate, pp. 12–19.

  Caleb Dunson is a fictional character.

  Northeast Ohio Valley

  Mid-October 1808

  CHAPTER IV

  * * *

  Overhead, in deepening dusk, the night birds had begun their silent, impossible pirouettes, taking invisible insects on the wing. Squirrels and beady-eyed chipmunks with their winter hair coming thick had gone to their lairs in the trees to escape the razor-sharp talons and merciless beaks of great gray owls, and groundhogs had sought the safety of their burrows, away from the coyotes and foxes. In the far distance an owl spoke, and another answered. The crying of a great cat to the south came echoing, so close to the sound of a human baby that it could deceive experienced woodsmen. From the small streams and brooks that worked their way down through the countless mountain ravines and valleys to the great Ohio River, and from the bogs and marshes, frogs began their nightly songs.

  Eli Stroud, tall, built strong, prominent nose and chin, regular features, long brown hair with streaks of gray held back by a buckskin tie, glanced at the deep purple of the eastern rim of the world where the evening star was faintly visible in the dying light of day. He was clad in a buckskin Iroquois hunting shirt and fringed buckskin breeches that reached past his ankles, partially covering his beaded moccasins. In his right hand he carried a Pennsylvania long rifle. A rolled woolen blanket was draped over his left shoulder, tied end to end on his right side, just above the black tomahawk thrust through the broad leather weapons belt about his middle. A knife in a beaded sheath was under the belt on his left side. His powder horn and the leather pouch that held his shot and linen bullet-patches, and a small bag with cracked dried corn and chunks of dried fish and hardtack and salt hung on his left side on leather cords over his right shoulder.

  Frost had come early in the fall, turning the woods into reds and yellows beyond imagination. Eli felt the chill coming in the night air, and the thought came, more frost tonight. He picked a place near a small brook where the deer tracks told him the water was safe to drink, and with flint and steel from his shot pouch kindled a small fire. With his rifle leaning against a tree, he gathered boughs for his bed and spread his blanket, and was on one knee beside the fire picking dried fish from his food bag when the sound of the frogs upstream stopped, then began again, first one, then another, and then many. He showed no sign of concern as he settled cross-legged beside his tiny fire and broke the fish between his fingers and put the first piece in his mouth. He sensed a silent movement in the forest upstream, to his left, and then another to his right, but still he gave no sign as he continued eating.

  Scouts. Shawnee? Tecumseh’s?

  He finished the piece of fish, then for a time ground hardened kernels of corn between his teeth. In near total blackness he knelt beside the stream to dip cold sweet water with his hand and drink, then returned to the glowing coals of his tiny fire and covered them with dirt. With countless stars beginning to appear in the velvet blackness overhead, he unbuckled his weapons belt and reached for his rifle. For a long time
he sat on his blanket with his rifle across his knees and his tomahawk loose at his side, unmoving, head tipped forward as he concentrated on the sounds of the night, waiting for an interruption that would tell him a human being was moving nearby. There was no interruption. With the moon rising over the northeastern rim, he lay down on his side with his rifle at hand, covered himself with his blanket, and within minutes was in the dreamless sleep of one who had covered fifty miles on foot since sunrise in the dense forest.

  The morning star had faded and disappeared when he finished making a quarter-mile circle of his camp, rifle in hand, slowly picking his way through the knee-high forest undergrowth. Upstream he had found the bruised leaf of a wild cabbage and the faint impression made by a moccasin beneath it. Downstream were two moccasin imprints, close to the water.

  Two. Moving north. Their village or their camp—whichever it is—can’t be far. Tecumseh? Probably. With luck.

  He took a trout from the stream with his hands and within twenty minutes cooked and ate it, and hung his rolled blanket over his shoulder. Sunrise found him three miles farther north, walking rapidly in crystal-clear sunlight, rifle held before him, ready, eyes moving constantly, watching for sign on the ground, concentrating on all movement and sound in the forest. The sun had not yet reached its zenith when he caught a flicker in the thick trees to his left and heard something brush against the undergrowth. Minutes later he sensed movement to his right.

  It was high noon when the smell of cookfires reached him, and the two warriors who had been shadowing him finally showed themselves, one to the east, the other the west, both less than thirty yards away. They wore buckskins, and their hair was caught up in the swept-back pompadour of the Shawnee. Both men held their interval and said nothing, nor did he, as they moved on north.

  The laughter of children and the ringing of axes cutting firewood reached him through the trees, and then he was out of the forest, into a large grassy meadow that bordered a clear, small lake, mirror-smooth in the still calmness of the day. It was not a permanent village with a great longhouse and dwellings in orderly rows for many families. Rather, it was a temporary village, with one small central building where government affairs and worship were conducted, and several lesser dwellings set randomly about it. Women and children moved among stew kettles hung above small fires on black iron chains suspended from smoke-blackened tripods. Some women were swinging axes, and they stopped to stare at the rare apparition of a white man in native Indian buckskins as he came into view from the forest. Responding to the village chatter, old men wrapped in blankets stepped from the dwellings into the sunlight to study him. A few held weapons. The shouts of the children at their games quieted, and some of them ran to stand beside or behind their mothers, waiting for them to bark the orders that would send them running if the intruder was a foe. Half a dozen deer hides were randomly stretched and staked to cure in the sun, prior to being scraped clean of hair and worked until soft, to become shirts, leggings, and dresses. The thick, tough hide of a bull elk lay nearby, to be cut into soles for moccasins. Two deer carcasses hung head-down from tripods, ready to be cut into thin strips of meat and hung on racks to be dried for winter. The golden pelt of a cougar was pegged to the ground, drying to become a blanket for cold nights. A great fur from a black bear was also being stretched in the sun. It would be a bed against the freeze of winter. Village dogs roamed, some gnawing on bones of animal carcasses. The odors of wild meat and hides, wood smoke, and cooking food hung in the still air.

  Eli raised his hands to hold his rifle high above his head as he came on with the two scouts flanking him all the way. Women clad in one-piece doeskin garments that reached the tops of their moccasins, with long black hair braided down their backs, slowly closed in behind him, with the children following, intrigued, timid, wondering. He walked without hesitating to the larger building in the center of the clearing and stopped ten feet from the dark doorway. A man bent with age, and wrapped in a blanket, shuffled out into the bright sunlight. His face was craggy and pock-marked, and his long gray hair was in braids down his back. He stopped six feet in front of Eli and for several seconds silently studied him with watery black eyes. Many faces showed surprise as Eli spoke to him in the Shawnee dialect.

  “I am Eli Stroud. I come in peace.” He lowered his rifle. “I have traveled many days—to talk with the great Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa.”

  He had called the name of Tecumseh’s brother correctly, and he paused to let the startled expressions pass from the faces nearest him. Then he continued. “I come with a message from the American father far to the east. It is my hope that Tecumseh is in this village. I am honored if he will see me.”

  The old man answered in a voice raspy with age. The bitterness and hostility were like something alive.

  “I know who you are. I was at Fallen Timbers and saw you there. I was at Greenville with all the others. Wyandot, Ojibwa, Ottawa, Miami, Delaware, Wea, Potawatomi—and the rest—when the chiefs—fourteen of them—all signed the paper with your great white father and gave to him our land south of the river. The Ohio. I saw you there. We gave you our land. What did you give us in return? Trinkets and rum and the white man’s disease that killed many of us and left my face as you see it now. Marked forever with pits. I know who you are.”

  Eli answered. “If you were at Fallen Timbers, then you know that I did not take arms against your people. You know that it was I who stood between your people and the white people and that I tried to get them to sit down at a council of peace and come to a fair agreement regarding the land. Do you remember?”

  “I remember that the white men would not council. Instead they shot at us. If you did not shoot at us, I did not know that.”

  “Tecumseh knows. You will ask him. With great respect I ask if he is here.”

  For a long time the old, watery, black eyes peered up into Eli’s face before the answer came. “He is here. Inside.”

  “Will he see me?”

  “He will. We have known of your coming for many days. Ojibwa and Miami messengers said you have visited their camps inquiring of many things. You inquired to find Tecumseh. We sent scouts to find you and protect you until you arrived.” The old man turned and gestured. “Tecumseh is inside, waiting. You will follow me.”

  He turned on his heel and Eli ducked to follow him through the doorway into the dimness inside the windowless building. A fire burned in a pit at the center of the room, with the smoke rising in a straight line to disappear through a hole cut in the roof. Eli handed his rifle and tomahawk and belt knife to a man standing beside the door, then faced four men seated cross-legged on thick pelts of forest animals and waited while the old man took his place among them. They were dressed in fringed buckskins that were decorated with quills and beadwork and had blankets gathered about their shoulders—crimson blankets supplied them by the British. Half a dozen other men stood in the gloom away from the fire, near the walls, motionless, watching and listening. The only light in the room came from the doorway, the fire, and the single shaft of sunlight streaming through the hole in the roof, partially blocked by the escaping smoke.

  The man in the middle of those seated stood and faced Eli. Tecumseh was slender, of average height, with coppery skin and a sharp face and piercing black eyes. His nose was long and pointed, as was his chin, and his voice was high and resonant.

  “Eli Stroud. Informants told me of your coming many days ago. I sent two of my warriors to protect you. You are welcome here, but you have no promise of safety outside my camp.”

  Eli nodded. “I understand. I thank you for your protection and for allowing me to speak to you.” He peered down at the man on the right of Tecumseh, still seated. “I am honored that your brother has joined in this meeting.”

  Tecumseh glanced down at his brother, who briefly bowed his head to Eli but said nothing, and Tecumseh spoke. “Tenskwatawa. The Prophet. You will remember the method by which he earned his title, ‘The Prophet’? Two summer
s since?”

  “I remember.”

  Tecumseh referred to the strange, startling event that had established him as a great leader of his people, and his brother as a great religious mystic who could command the sun and the moon and stars. It occurred two years earlier. William Henry Harrison, then the American governor of the Ohio Territory, was mortally afraid of Tecumseh, whom he saw as a threat and considered the greatest living Indian on the American continent. In a desperate effort to discredit Tecumseh, along with his brother Tenskwatawa, Harrison had thrown down a challenge. If Tecumseh was as powerful as his reputation implied, he could make proof of it by commanding the sun to stand still and the moon to change course. If he failed, they would be revealed for the frauds they were. It was known that Tenskwatawa had, to that point, lived the life of a wastrel, given to drunkenness and depravity. Governor Harrison saw no way his scheme could fail. But what he did not know was that many American scientists, and many Indians who had studied the heavens, were aware that an eclipse of the sun was to shortly occur. With that knowledge, Tecumseh accepted Harrison’s challenge. He privately tore into his brother, condemning his profligate life, forbidding him the evils of rum and alcohol, ordering him to mend his ways or suffer exile. He carefully and patiently trained him for a performance that was calculated to utterly destroy the credibility of Harrison, and sent word to everyone within fifty miles of the coming event. On June 16, 1806, a great audience gathered. At the right moment, Tecumseh produced his brother in the center of the huge gathering, and, true to the training by Tecumseh, Tenskwatawa raised both hands to the heavens, threw back his head, and shouted to the sun, “I command your light to dim. Let darkness fall on this land for a time! Let it begin NOW!”

  The eclipse began and gradually the northeast American continent fell into a twilight as though in obedience to the command of Tenskwatawa. Wailing broke out among the awe-struck audience, both white man and Indian, and they stood frozen, terrified that they were doomed! The eclipse began to diminish and again Tenskwatawa raised his arms and shouted, “Let your light return to save our land!” Minutes later the country was once again in full sunshine.