I nodded more than once and told him so more than once. Bear Watkins had served in army and militia commands both large and small, spilled his own blood as well as that of the enemy countless times, and survived. He had me properly scared, but not so frightened I would flee before the redsticks at the outset. He had taught me in short order what was required to make a soldier of myself, and for that I was most grateful.
Bear thumped my shoulder with a fist. “I set great store by you, Ethan. An’ thankfully, you ain’t nearly as thick twixt the ears as your Paw be,” he said with a wink. “Tap, where’s that whiskey? The evening’s not so late we can’t imbibe a hair an’ chew some of that jerk while we give our long guns their due.”
Bear also spoke last that evening, just before I entered Jared’s tent. “Fight first, love later, lad. A buried man ain’t much use to a woman, be he now?”
Part V
Blood at Dawn
Chapter 28
4 November
Six of the A.M.
Each minute of the brisk, star-blazoned night lasted an eternity. Despite Bear’s wise admonition, whether tossing and flopping in my blankets early on or later while stamping about guarding the horses in the numbing cold of the hours before dawn, my thoughts were entirely of Erin Green. And thinking solely of what I might possibly say to her that wouldn’t make of me a lust-driven oaf with neither brains nor manners was precisely what caused me to miss the most obvious of signs that something dreadfully out of the ordinary was unfolding all about me.
A half hour before dawn, fifes shrilled and drums rolled, but I barely heard Andy Young say beside me, “Reveille. Camp’s coming awake.” I continued to stare blankly across the dark waters of the creek while the troop shrugged free of their blankets behind us. All dragoons not on sentry duty then formed for morning parade, long guns held chest high. The terse comments of the reviewing Starkweather interrupted my silent reverie not at all. The captain then dismissed the troop for morning victuals, such as were to be had, sentries maintaining their posts till the troop sought their individual mounts after dining.
A sharp volley of musket fire erupted beyond the creek, far to our front, where the advance elements of the militia would be filling their bellies and warming themselves at their own morning fires. Distant yelling followed. “Damned undisciplined rabble,” Andy Young snorted. “Probably shot a buck deer by mistake.”
We were the dragoon sentries closest to the creek, and Andy Young, drawn by renewed though random musket fire, crept to the very edge of the near bank, which afforded him a view of the twenty-foot-high bluff bordering the opposite shore. I stood firm, rooted in my own private world of blue eyes, high cheekbones, and female lips full and red. “Mistress Green,” I practiced under my breath, “it’s a sincere pleasure to meet up with you again....” No, that wouldn’t do. Erin sounded so much more personal than the proper and formal Mistress Green. But did I dare greet her by her first name after all this while?
“Ethan!”
I ignored Andy Young’s beseeching call. The random shooting by the militia had ceased, their officers undoubtedly having reined in their misbegotten charges with dire threats of the whip or worse. Besides, trees on the bluff across the creek were beginning to stand out in the gray dawn light, and the banks of the stream were populated only with the usual details of levies and militia calmly retrieving piggins of drinking and cooking water.
But Andy Young took to shouting. “What’s that noise? It can’t be horse bells! Damn you, Ethan, wake the hell up!”
I finally came fully alert, for the ensign had never before cursed me. I turned my head and slacked my jaw to listen, noticing as I did so that the water bearers on the opposite bank of the creek from us were suddenly staring behind them. The noise Andy Young sought to identify rose in volume and seemed to be advancing rapidly toward us. A close listen lasting a mere second and I recognized the high, keening howl for what it was. My hair didn’t stand on end as some claim they experience when visited by acute fright, but my flesh crawled, a sensation much akin to having the point of a knife blade scrape across bare skin. I’d heard that same unearthly, wailing howl echo within the walls of our cabin as I waited at the top of the loft ladder with hatchet poised and waiting. I’d heard it again in the dark on the banks of the Great Miami. No sound ever emitted by a human throat was as utterly unnerving as the Shawnee war whoop.
“Holy Christ. It’s the Shawnee, hundreds of them,” I fair screamed at Andy Young, beckoning him to join me for a rush to Starkweather’s awning.
The shooting resumed, and a virtual crowd of militia burst from the trees atop the bluff, in the main both hatless and weaponless. Consumed by fear and disdaining life and limb, they plunged down the sharp incline, falling, rolling, crawling, and scrambling through sucking mud, cattails, and bulrushes with the frenzy of fleeing, pain-maddened animals. Water spouted at their heels and, wheezing and gasping from shortness of breath, they escaped the creek and bolted into the ranks of the levy battalions trying to form into lines of defense against the screeching savages drawing ever nearer the far bank. I held fast long enough to witness the first of the painted heathens occupy the bluff the militia had so precipitously deserted, and indeed there were hundreds of Injuns in hot pursuit of the fleeing Kentuckians.
A ball whined past my ear, and I grabbed the sleeve of a stupefied Andy Young and pulled him toward the rear. The captain, I knew, would be looking for us to report to him. Flame lanced from the barrels of long guns along the bluff. A rippling crescendo of muzzle blasts swept along our side of the creek, and the boom of cannon shivered the air about us. Thank the Lord, we were returning fire.
Starkweather was aboard his sorrel, imploring the now-mounted dragoons to ignore the growing fight to our right and dress up their parallel lines. Jared waited before the captain’s awning, in his black fists the reins of Blue and Andy Young’s gray mare. We were most grateful the servant had already seen to their saddling and bridling. The ensign and I stepped into the saddle with diligent haste and joined Starkweather at the fore of the assembled dragoons. Bear and Tap were there, too, afoot at either stirrup of the captain.
Fear-crazed militiamen needlessly yelling the alarm flooded past our lines, craving refuge within the empty marquees of officers or beneath the beds of parked army wagons, and for the first time I feared for Erin Green. The repeated discharges of round shot and canister from the cannons raised an ear-splitting din and spawned a cloud of eye-obscuring smoke that enveloped the laboring artillerymen, then the levy battalions flanking them, then our position. Balls zipped past, not all from our front. “Hold steady! Hold steady!” Starkweather ordered, a command the sergeants repeated one after the other. The captain leaned sideways in the saddle to address Bear Watkins. “Your assessment, Mr. Watkins, if you please?”
Bear’s response was loud enough it carried above the roar of guns big and small. “By the circular spread of the shooting, the red enemy has surrounded our entire encampment. If’n I’m hearing correctly, they’re concentrating on the cannons.”
The raptly listening Starkweather jerked upright, and a gloved hand flew to his left cheek. He winced slightly and the leather fingers of the glove came away bloody at the tips. “Close, damn close,” he said as dispassionately as if he had observed a near miss of two stars in the night sky.
Starkweather’s attention clamped on Bear once more. “Mr. Watkins, please obtain orders for the troop from General St. Clair or General Butler. We shall hold the flank till you return!”
Bear promptly disappeared into the writhing smoke. An increasing number of bullets, buzzing like angry bees, zinged past me. First a private, then a sergeant of the front line clasped their chests and slipped from the saddle. A chestnut horse behind Tap whinnied and settled to its knees. Though I could see none of the enemy, I knew where they were. They were creeping forward from tree to tree and stump to stump, hidden from mounted riders by the natural cover of the terrain and the ground-hugging smoke from the can
nons and small arms. If we stayed stationary in the saddle much longer, we were in danger of being shot to pieces without ever shouldering our long guns.
Seven of the A.M.
Starkweather recognized our predicament. “Dismount! Horse holders to their duty!” He paused, granting the dragoons designated to control the horses time to gather the reins of those assigned to oppose the enemy from the ground, then shouted, “Kneel and fire at the ready.”
I stepped down from the saddle, proud that I didn’t entangle the long blade suspended at my left hip. Blue was led away, and I knelt quickly, thinking it would be safer once I presented less of a target. But my first peek under that lingering veil of smoke set my legs to begging, begging to flee, and I mean flee now!
Blossoms of expended gunpowder decorated every tree trunk, deadfall, and stump in sight. It was a severe strain to keep your legs still. And though I had just done so before dismounting, I couldn’t resist hurriedly touching each weapon and accoutrement on my person again, be it horn, shot bag, Starkweather knife, sword, or the very rifle clasped tightly in my left fist.
“Draw bead!” Starkweather bawled, urging us into action.
Personal dangers forgotten for the moment, I cocked my rifle, swept the barrel level, tugged the butt plate tight to my shoulder, and nestled my cheek against the smooth wood of the stock.
“Fire when ready!”
Instantly, rifles cracked to both sides of me, a startling development since, try as I might, I couldn’t discern enough of a single solitary redstick to shoot at, leastwise not with any hope of success. When I did see any beadable hunk of him, he was lifting from the ground or stepping from behind a tree to advance against us, and his movements were completed so rapidly and furtively I could glimpse but the briefest flash of painted skin and roached topknot.
Gritting my teeth to keep fear at bay, I reverted to Bear’s teaching and sought instead of bodily parts the black barrels protruding beneath those gray puffs of expended powder. I missed my first shot, but it repeated a telling lesson: Locate the enemy barrel, then patiently wait for it to fix on a target, for as Bear had preached, the skulking Injun exposed himself the most as he froze just before pulling the trigger.
Action bred resolve, and not worrying about hits or misses, I methodically poured, balled, rammed, primed, cocked, beaded, and fired. My shoulder came to ache from the constant slam of the recoil, but it was a welcome hurt, for it signaled I wasn’t yet counted among the dead, the wounded, and the dying.
Moans and pleas for help told of felled comrades to both sides of me. The neighing and thrashing at my backside told me the redsticks had no compunction about mercilessly killing the horses of their hated foe. The relentless enemy shunned his own losses and crept steadily in upon our position. Despite our stout resistance, there was no denying the obvious: We were suffering heavy casualties, and less’n we regrouped, we were certain to be overrun, and soon!
About then, fingers gripped my upper arm and Tap said, “Get ready, lad. Bear’s back, an’ Colonel Darke’s preparin’ a charge an’ we’re to be part of it.” The captain’s voice rang out immediately thereafter. “Horse holders to the front! Dragoons, continue firing! Horse holders to the front!” he repeated. I fired twice more before the captain shouted, “Dragoons, cease firing! Stand and mount!”
I reloaded, came erect, and spun about to encounter not a horse holder but Bear with Blue’s reins in tow, along with those of two other horses. He scowled at Tap. “Yuh can’t run a lick, so yuh best ride. Yuh need a hand up, yuh bowlegged goat?”
With a snort of disgust, the old scout crouched and, defying his age, jumped astride with the litheness of the mistress. “Match that, Hair Man!” the incorrigible Tap challenged with an immense grin.
Simply thinking of Erin provoked a new rash of worry, worry greatly enhanced by the discovery that from horseback large contingents of howling savages could be spotted besieging the middle of the army’s lines behind which the noncombatants had slept the previous night. I maintained an unyielding grip of iron on Blue’s reins and cursed the oath that kept me from rushing to her aid. Damn my willful soul to hell, anyhow.
The remaining members of the First Dragoons, Captain Starkweather, and Ensign Young in the van, followed by Bear, Tap, and me, then the rest of the troop, angled southwest to join with Colonel Darke and rescue the army’s beleaguered left flank. The Injun advance had almost reached the mouths of the cannons anchoring Darke’s rear echelon. Three hundred levies and regulars were massed and waiting. They parted ranks, and we galloped through, brandishing tempered steel now instead of long guns. After us flowed the massed levies and a spate of regulars, the regulars brandishing additional steel: fourteen-inch bayonets slotted onto the muzzles of their muskets.
The savages, having no taste for greater numbers, flying hooves, curved swords, and the equally dreaded infantry bayonet, took to heel. The First Dragoons pounded across a small run and pursued them toward the sparse timber flanking the creek. There the bravest of the redsticks made a stand, trying to slow our charge. A ball twanged metal on my helmet. Caught up in the pure excitement of the chase, I spurred Blue, and we sped into the scanty trees. A Shawnee rose before me. I slashed at his painted skull, but the wily devil proved no helpless bag of straw. He parried my blow with the barrel of his musket, nearly tearing my fingers from the hilt of my blade as Blue swept past him. Then Blue was leaping from the high bank of the creek. We hit the shallow water with a mighty splash, the gelding landing on his hooves without stumbling or falling, and at a flick of the reins, he was in motion again.
It was the opposite creek bank, not the enemy, that foiled our charge. We cursed and ranted and spurred, but our mounts couldn’t overcome its cloying mud, thick bulrushes, and tangling underbrush. Sucking wind at every stride, the levies and regulars under Darke’s command forged ahead, clawed their way up the bluff bordering the creek, and continued the pursuit.
His sorrel bucking and lunging, the captain escaped the clutching underbrush and herded the troop, clanging and clattering, into the narrow rocky wash at the base of the bluff. Tap, Bear, and Andy Young had, like me, survived the charge unscathed. But six horses with empty saddles wandered the creek bed, and my quick survey of the mounted dragoons surrounding me established the true gravity of our losses, thirty-two of fifty-eight effectives since the Injuns had won the bluff looming over us.
Our respite from the rigors of the battle lasted but a few deep breaths, for heavy, sustained shooting and wild whooping broke out in the direction of the army’s rear echelon. Starkweather’s sudden grimace indicated he understood as I did that our charge had carried too far. We had unintentionally granted the Shawnee not spooked by our horses the opportunity to assault full bore gravely weakened companies lacking both discipline and courage.
The captain stood in his stirrups. “Mr. Watkins! Ensign Young! Inform Colonel Darke we are returning without delay. Dragoons, after me in columns of two!”
I confess I was selfishly pleased with the captain’s decision. If the Shawnee penetrated the rear echelon, Erin and the noncombatants were in mortal peril. That familiar gnawing worry threatened to twist my innards into knots. I spurred Blue forward and crossed the creek flush with the rump of the captain’s sorrel.
My worry was well founded. We emerged at the gallop from the sparse timber shielding us from the army’s hollow square and were thoroughly sickened by the appalling carnage wrought by the diabolical Shawnee in twenty short minutes. Uniformed bodies with skulls so freshly scalped they steamed in the chill morning air sprawled everywhere, their severed limbs and organs mere splatters of blood and gory slop. The members of the artillery unit, slain to the man, lay like heaped cordwood around their silenced cannons. Dead and wounded deliberately thrown into breakfast fires burned sluggishly, giving rise to a horrible stench that gagged me anew. At closer range, Injuns could be seen running amok behind the breached lines of the rear echelon, wielding tomahawks and knives dripping with red. Female sc
reams intermixed with the triumphant scalp hello of the savages drifted from the wagon yard, and I was suddenly terribly afraid Erin had already met her demise.
Starkweather, splendid uniform still miraculously free of dirt and blood, took it all in as did those galloping behind him. He never drew rein. Sword held high, he rode smack through the shattered lines of the rear echelon, yelling over and over, “Roust the red bastards, dragoons! Roust them and kill them!”
I veered toward the closest wagon. I screamed Erin’s name, but anticipating no response, craned my neck right and left, searching for her. Blue’s shoulder knocked an Injun aside. I slashed at the next and felt the solid impact of cold steel and enemy. I saw long, flying hair and a streak of white, reined Blue sharply about, and surged after what I believed was a fleeing female.
Blue shuddered violently and faltered. He regained his stride, blowing heavily through his nostrils. Then his legs deserted him. I felt him going down and kicked free of the stirrups. The gelding hit nose first. I loosed the reins and went sailing, struck ground hard as stone, and skidded sideways. I covered my head with my arms, but the back of my helmet slammed into the wheel of a gun carriage and I drowned in blackness.
Eight of the A.M.
I awakened to discover a pair of hazel eyes studying me. The brow above the unblinking eyes was reddish brown and coarsely grown. Runnels of dried blood drew my gaze upward to an oval of pink-tainted bone swarming with gnats. My innards roiled. I was staring at a white man who had been killed and scalped. I looked down and away to keep from retching and made an even more revolting discovery: There was nothing attached to the beard the color of the brow. The head had no body. Though it was unnecessary, I grabbed my chest and tried my legs to make certain I was in one piece. That done, I rolled away from those staring hazel eyes and peered out from beneath the transom of the gun carriage.
Blood at Dawn Page 31
