Blood at Dawn

by Jim R. Woolard

  Paw was no more tolerant of Tap’s early morning carping than Bear Watkins. “Yeah, but the arses on you old goats are worn the same shape as the saddle. You can sleep for miles without losing your seat. Stifle your tongue and shuck into them breeches before you miss the breakfast victuals.”

  Captain Steddeman went to retrieve the pack trains and our horses. Private Oakley passed him at the stoop, inbound with a fresh kettle of burgoo. Served two meals in a row, hard biscuit and molasses rapidly lost its appeal. Black tea replaced the whiskey of the previous evening, sparking much comment by Tap who, one eye always on Paw, confined his displeasure to a series of rambling mumbles, the content of which not a soul could decipher. For all his complaining, the old scout, nonetheless like us, ate his plate empty.

  Paw knowing it to be the Sabbath, he led us in prayers of thanks before we rose from the table. Then dressed, fed, and proper with our Maker, we wormed the balls from our flintlocks and reloaded with fresh powder charges in barrel and pan, a necessary precaution since the rain had resumed after midnight and continued unabated. We sallied forth into the downpour, fully resigned to the discomforts of the long, wet ride awaiting us.

  Our order on the trail was the same, Paw in the van with the lead train, followed by Tap, Thaddeus, and Timothy with the balance of the horse strings, yours truly bringing up the rear on Blue. The Great Miami was running full twixt its banks, and our crossing was fraught with close calls and near accidents, but in the end we gained the far bank without losing a single packhorse. Our collective sigh of relief as the last animal fought free of the current could be heard over the moderate wind blowing from the southwest.

  We pursued the westernmost road of the two opened by the army before General Butler had switched strategies on his own volition and built just a single track. The rain tapered to intermittent drizzle late in the morning, too late to matter, as all of us except Paw in his canvas coat were soaked through the first few miles. Early afternoon found us in the gorge of Seven Mile Creek. We watered the strings there and nibbled on the nocake and jerk remaining in Tige’s pouches.

  Paw gathered us for a parley once the horses were watered. “If the last express from the north Captain Steddeman received was accurate, the army’s encamped thirty-eight miles ahead, erecting another fort of deposit. It’s anticipated the construction will take a week. We better plan right now how we can best reach their fort without our animals breaking down.”

  Paw rolled his eyes at the gray clouds flitting past overhead. “More rain’s likely, and loaded horses can’t go but fifteen miles a day in bad weather less’n they’re well rested and well fed. Fording the river tired these animals somethin’ fierce, and they can’t handle but eight additional miles today. And from here forward, the country’s pretty much grazed over, so we’ll halt and camp with some daylight still available to assist our forage hunting. That’ll leave us thirty miles from the fort, two days of travel. Mount up, gentlemen. If it isn’t too much bother, I wouldn’t hold prayers for dry weather against any man.”

  We must have prayed with Paw’s fervor and caught the Lord’s ear, for the rain halted shortly thereafter. We spent the balance of the afternoon traversing the broken country leading to the upper reaches of Seven Mile Creek in weather mild enough we shed our wet coats and dried out somewhat underneath in the warming southwestern breeze. Twice more we passed through sites of past army encampments, locations where the stench of discarded slops and slit trenches visited by hundreds of soldiers fouled our nostrils and urged us onward to escape the rank smell. By mere chance we crossed what I now called Erin’s Run and halted for the night along another small stream approximately two miles beyond the army camp at which I’d last seen her.

  Once memories started me thinking about her again, I couldn’t stop. I went through the evening chores—the dispersal of the pack trains within the small meadow adjoining our fire, the off-loading and hobbling of the animals, the gathering of firewood, the erection of our tents—in a numbing daze that inspired knowing winks and snickers among Tap and the wagoners. Busy inspecting the backs, limbs, and feet of his four-legged charges, Paw missed out on my bumbling, scatterbrained antics. That was most fortunate for me, as I would never have been able to adequately explain to him how his oldest son had managed to bounce off a tree butt with his arms full of firewood.

  The redstick threat notwithstanding, Paw risked a sizable fire to dry clothing and skin on the outside as much as possible and fill the belly on the inside with something warm. Tige had packed tins of salt pork and small leather bags of ground meal. The first boiled in a small kettle, and the second, mixed with water and salt, kneaded into johnnycake, and baked in hot ashes, tasted grand. Course, I allow the hot tea laced with whiskey may have heightened our appreciation considerably.

  Victuals bolted with dispatch and clothing warmed through if not dry, Paw assigned the first round of night guards, then insisted the rest of us dampen the fire and seek our tents. Rain, a steady downpour that showered our tents with falling leaves as well as water, commenced after midnight, and with that event, wild dreams of Erin Green that made no sense then or later disrupted my sleep. I tossed and turned like an empty keg trapped atop a churning sea. I came awake at Paw’s morning call feeling I hadn’t rested a wink.

  “Lad, we catch up to St. Clair’s miserable excuse for an army,” Tap said from alongside me, “visit that gal straight off an’ settle things with her one way or the other. Much as I prize our friendship, I’m too old to be pounded to death in my sleep.”

  I went sheepishly forth into a dawn bereft of rain but weak of light and choked with fog. If Tap knew of whom I dreamed, I wondered what craziness I had spouted aloud during the night. By the finish of a cold, hasty breakfast, the morning tent striking, and the reloading of the packhorses, I was for my own safety as well as those about me vowing that I somehow had to buck up the strength to keep Erin Green from haunting my every hour. The necessity of my doing just that became more urgent with Paw’s terse instructions for the day. “Tap, take the rear in place of Ethan. Ethan, you lead the second string behind me. Let’s move out, gentlemen.”

  The others accepted the change in our order of travel without comment. But it left me pondering a serious question: Had I been mistaken? Had Paw observed my ridiculously stupid encounter with the tree butt the previous evening? That possibility weighed heavily on me the next two days. Paw discerned much from little, and the last thing I wanted on God’s earth was for him to decide I couldn’t be trusted to share his company. I had no desire to forever be a boy in the eyes of Caleb Downer.

  We rode St. Clair’s military trace northwest the whole of the rainless, cheerlessly gray morning. The ground leveled each mile into gentle swells defined fore and aft by small streams. The underbrush within the timber flanking the road disappeared, and the southwest wind sheared leaves from towering oak, ash, walnut, sugar tree, and beech of a seemingly boundless number. The rich soil of the open woods drew approving comments from Paw seconded roundly by the wagoners. Even the chore-hating Tap crowed during a blowing of the horses how “country like this could lead a man into settling on one porch with the same woman in his bed till kingdom come.” Such an out-of-character sentiment from the skirt-hungriest scout west of Fort Pitt so astounded his listeners we simply walked away with brows arched and heads shaking.

  The clouds thickened, and the rain and the wind, strong as in the night, resumed in the afternoon, pelting us with swirling leaves. The leaves already covering the muddy road, deepened by the fresh overlay, slid beneath the weight of striking hooves on uneven ground, adding to the burden of the pack animals and slowing our pace. Wet and soggy everywhere once more, it was extremely difficult not to at least shout curses at the elements with raw abandon. But the sheer will of Paw discouraged such useless outbursts. Backside ramrod straight and never glancing backward, he led us upcountry like the sun was shining. And damned if any of us in his wake were about to suggest we stop for any reason less’n a horse dr
opped dead in his tracks, and maybe not even then.

  Late in the afternoon we crossed a stream of fifteen feet. On the far bank a pole and bark lean-to, the roof in a state of tattered collapse, stretched twixt two beech trees. Paw pointed with a jabbing arm as he passed. Understanding its significance, we each in turn took a long gander as we came abreast of what was obviously the first Injun camp sighted by St. Clair’s forces, enough of a rarity in itself that the rotting structure had been left undisturbed by all concerned.

  The sighting kept us on the alert the last miles we traveled 17 October, for several additional Injun campsites, complete with stone fire rings, sided the roadway, clearly establishing that the St. Clair trace paralleled a redstick path of some history. With the rain and wind finally abating, near dusk we crossed another fairly wide stream, and Paw halted for the night beside the largest Injun camp we’d seen yet. Facing back down the line of horses, he announced, “We’re between army encampments with good water. We’ll have to scavenge for forage, but there must be a prairie nearby for the redsticks to camp here so often. Stand down and let’s look about in pairs. Ethan, you stay with the animals.”

  Whether assigning me the least dangerous task of overseeing the horses was another example of Paw not trusting me or simply a figment of my imagination, I didn’t while away the time lolling about. I had one horse string watered when Paw and Timothy appeared from upstream. A sharp whistle from Paw summoned Tap and Thaddeus from downstream.

  “Goodly meadow sixty yards upstream with enough grass to halfway feed the horses,” Paw stated. “We’ll camp there and chance a fire for a couple of hours. You haven’t noticed, the air has a bite now and smells of rain soon. We best not waste a minute.”

  It was as mean an evening as we’d experienced since departing the Ohio. A horse string spooked during their hobbling, Tap guessing it was bear stink that set them off, and it was well after dark before we had all the animals off-loaded and hobbled, a fire ignited, and our tents staked. The evening meal came off without incident, but at midnight a northern wind bared its teeth and spat rain that changed swiftly into hail. Having just relinquished the guard to Timothy, I ran through a shower of frozen pellets the size of buckshot and dove into the tent I shared with Tap.

  My sudden entry awakened the old scout. He listened to the hail peppering the canvas above his prone body, shivered, and burrowed deeper beneath his blankets. “Jumpin’ Jesus, wet I can stand. But I can’t bear freezin’ my arse day and night, too.”

  I slipped down next to him and snuggled up to my flintlock, wondering if Erin Green was warm and dry this particular night. Steady rain replaced the hail, and I lay awake, remembering the beauty of her as she lunged from the run to escape the prying Hookfin and me. We would arrive at the army’s new fort of deposit tomorrow, and my longing to see her again was greater than ever, forcing to the fore the old nagging worry she would refuse to even speak to me. Or perhaps Sergeant Tor Devlin would dictate I wasn’t permitted anywhere near her. I fell asleep cursing Gabe Hookfin with renewed vigor. Damn the skinny beanpole and his interfering, anyway.

  By dawn the heavy wind and rain had blown eastward, leaving high clouds and a dying breeze out of the northwest. Our fourth consecutive meal of boiled pork and johnnycake, whether hot or cold, lost its appeal as had Private Oakley’s burgoo. Tap’s and the wagoners’ solution to the growing dullness of fare was to nibble at the leftover pork and johnnycake while gulping large slugs of whiskey. According to Thaddeus, such manly slurping required innards of iron. Ignoring his blustering challenge, I stuck with water from my canteen. Paw did likewise.

  We were under way shortly after daybreak, and it pleased me that Paw, without any explanation, assigned me to the rear for the final day of our northern trek. “Stay alert. These animals are footsore and underfed. We aren’t patient with them, the weaker ones will falter on us.”

  The miles passed without incident till we spied the first of the bloated horse carcasses that suddenly littered the edges of the roadway. Toting animals perished rapidly if worked day in and day out without adequate nourishment, and a paucity of sufficient forage exacted a terrible toll. A few of the dead beasts bore the brand U.S. Army on their hindquarters; a greater number did not, which identified them as contractor horses in the care of Valentine Dodd.

  Of greater import to the finishing of our trek was the huge swamp that blocked our path in the afternoon. Weak sunlight reflected from standing pools of brackish water that soured the air, and dying trees listed in all directions. Had autumn frosts not killed the skeeters and deerflies that swarmed such sunken prairies during warmer months, we would have been eaten alive in broad daylight. Hoofprints in the glistening black muck leading to a water-filled hole formed by the belly of a mired horse showed the folly of trying to cross the swamp by a direct route.

  Our initial fear we might have to travel extra miles skirting the sunken prairie was dispelled by the discovery the army had located dry ground but a quarter mile to our right. Once we had the train strung out along that safe passageway, we rested and inspected our strings before continuing. Tap stood watch while Paw and the wagoners helped me halve the loads of six animals that were beginning to tire and stumble, sure signs of sore shoulders and lameness. We split the additional burden equally among the strongest of the other horses. Then, after downing the last of our whiskey, we set off on the final leg of our trek, my mind already far ahead of the plodding pack train.

  Five miles later, we gained the upper perimeter of the swamp. The St. Clair trace ran true north a mile from that point before disappearing over a gentle ridge of high ground. A hovering cloud of rising smoke, bright gray in the shine of the setting sun, signified the precise location of the general and his army beyond the ridge. Our trek was nearly at an end.

  It was all I could do not to race past the plodding horse strings. But I gripped Blue’s mane with both hands and held my place at the rear. Patience was what was needed, not brashness. I had no solid feeling as to Paw’s true sentiments regarding Erin Green. He recognized her by name as the camp girl whose rescue resulted in the death of Hardy Booth. I couldn’t fathom how he might react if he learned I intended to call on her seriously. Perhaps he would have no objection. Perhaps he would heat up like a blazing stack of hay. So it seemed the safest bet to bide my time and wait till the flour was delivered and the horses tended. Maybe after that I could somehow finagle a way to visit the Green camp without rousing his suspicions.

  Past the bloated bodies of still more dead pack animals Paw halted our strings on the crest of the ridge separating us from St. Clair’s forces to study the army’s current encampment. The general’s newly constructed fort of deposit centered a swell of ground that descended in a series of small knolls to open prairie on the east and west. Bastions protected three angles of the fort’s horizontally laid walls. A two-story blockhouse occupied the northeastern corner. Smack in the middle of the whole shebang sat a squat powder magazine complete with an underground entryway shielded at top, bottom, and side by thick logs.

  Precise rows of regimental tents lined the general’s trace plumb to the fort’s main gate. Cavalry flanked the tent lines, and beyond the cavalry, horse and bullock herds filled the eastern and western prairies. Parked supply wagons and irregularly placed tents belonging to Kentucky militia occupied the immediate ground directly below us. My heart hammered with excitement, but try as I might in the dwindling daylight, and I tried desperately hard, I couldn’t pinpoint the whereabouts of Molly Green’s cart amid the confusing welter of supply wagons, militia tents, and cooking fires at our feet.

  We went down the far slope of the ridge at a steady walk. Members of the militia saw us before we reached the nearest of their tents, and the news a pack train was arriving spread ahead of us like a breaking wave of seawater. Kentuckians in varying states of dress flooded from tent and fire to watch us pass by.

  More than a few cheers rang forth. Howsomever, a greater number of the militiamen made no attempt to
hide their dislike for contractors whose tardiness had allowed the entire army to be shorted of the daily flour ration.

  “You ninnies deserve the noose, by damned!”

  “Bloody buggers! Yuh shouldn’t be paid for nothin!”

  “Yuh bastards ought to bake bread for us fightin’ men!”

  Anger stirred my blood and clogged my throat, the heat of it hot on my cheeks. But much as I wanted to lash back with tongue and fist, I ceased searching left and right for the Green cart and kept my eyes where Paw did—directly forward, and my jaws in the same position as his—tightly clamped. I learned an honest, bitter lesson that October evening. Failing to meet your responsibilities in a timely fashion courted the disdain and rancor of those you served, and those you failed were mighty unforgiving.

  The thousand-yard ride seemed miles long. We fared little better coursing twixt the rowed tents of the regulars and the levy regiments. It was full dark when we thankfully drew up before the open gates of the fort. Paw exchanged greetings with a sergeant, and we were waved inside. The gates closed behind us, and soldiers detailed to guard duty helped off-load and stack the flour in a log hutment east of the powder magazine. Paw rode alongside the emptied strings and rose in his stirrups. “The sergeant says Val Dodd’s camped on the western prairie along the creek. We’ll unsaddle the horses there. After me, and quickly. The disgruntled will be storming the gates.”

  The gates opened, and sure enough, officers and their angry charges were massing outside the main entryway. We kicked and goaded liveliness into animals dead tired and took leave of the gathering mob close onto the south wall, enduring a parting round of jeers and insulting gestures. The darkness of the western prairie was most inviting.

  Paired sentries both afoot and on horseback guarded the army’s baggage horses and the pack animals remaining in Val Dodd’s train. Under a feeble moon, we identified ourselves to the commanding officer of the sentries and presented him with the hobbles fashioned days ago in Cincinnati. We received in return enough gathered grass to passably feed our unsaddled packhorses. Exhausted as they were, we had no worry our strings would stray far before daylight and let them drift unhampered. Our personal mounts we hobbled.