Many Sparrows

by Lori Benton

  The report of gunfire, distant but sharp, dispelled his drifting thoughts like mist before a gale wind. He strained his ears as its echo died away. Northeastward, he made it, upriver along the Ohio-facing ridges.

  He was out of his tent and running, rifle in hand, struggling to sling cartridge box and powder horn across his chest, even before the solitary soldier came stumbling into camp, his progress just perceptible in the graying dawn, frantic in his shouting.

  “Then the fog parted, and right afore us was a whole line of ’em, Colonel—Indians stretching far as I could see, coming on toward the camp.” The young private, Mooney, who’d been out hunting turkeys in the dark, gasped in air between the words. “One of ’em shot Hughey! Shot him dead, I think.”

  Colonel Andrew Lewis’s set expression didn’t alter at this news, the truth of which every officer who’d managed to assemble outside his tent had already surmised.

  “How close?” he demanded.

  “Still out past that big ridge, sir. Mile and half off but likely coming on fast behind.”

  Alphus, who’d scouted that land yesterday, had its lay still sharp in his mind. The high ridge to the east rose about a half mile from where they now stood, thickly wooded save where boney knuckles of stone protruded. It rose over two hundred feet, in some places its slopes almost vertical. At its foot, Crooked Creek made its meandering way to the Kanawha, coming down the low ground between the high ridge and two lower ridges to the west. Those ridges ran parallel to the Ohio. It would be along those the Shawnees were coming.

  Alphus said so but added, “Not fast. They’ll come on cautious now they’ve been seen.”

  “They mean to pin us in,” Colonel Lewis’s brother, Charles, in command of the Augusta County Regiment, said. “Here in the river fork. We cannot let them.”

  “We don’t know that for certain, sir,” said a voice behind Alphus. “Private Mooney couldn’t see the entire line. Could be just a skirmishing party.”

  Andrew Lewis raised a hand to halt the debate. “How many did you see, Private?”

  “Acres of ’em, sir. Thick as ticks on a dog.”

  Every man present drilled Private Mooney with a stare, likely thinking the same thing. Had it only looked to Mooney—shocked, affrighted, half-blind in the misted dark—like a full army of Indians?

  Andrew Lewis hadn’t the luxury of dismissing the prospect. He pulled a pipe from his coat and put it to his lips unlit. After a pause that seemed eternal, he ordered his drummers to beat “To Arms,” signaling the army to assemble. Then he gave his orders.

  Two columns would advance up the Ohio, a hundred men in each. His brother, Charles, would lead one, made up primarily of the Augusta County companies. Colonel William Fleming, commanding the Botetort County Regiment, would lead the other.

  Charles Lewis turned to find his captains, those who’d made it out of their tents—Dickinson, Harrison, Wilson, Skidmore, and Alphus Litchfield. “Choose you twelve, thirteen men each, whomever is awake and ready. We advance on Fleming’s right, a parallel course along those low ridges, aiming for the spot Mooney saw the Indians. Fast as you can muster!”

  Cornstalk’s plan had been to reach the lowlying land along the creek at the base of the high cliff, then spread out in a line between the rivers, cutting off escape for the Virginians. Scouts had returned to the chiefs in the night to inform them of where sentries were posted. Not a one had been detected. But no one had anticipated soldiers venturing out past the sentries before dawn.

  “Looking for something to eat besides beef and biscuits,” Jeremiah had murmured as, the element of surprise obliterated by a warrior’s shooting one of the soldiers, they’d listened to the panicked shouts of the other soldier and the crackle of his scrambling down the wooded ridge in the dark, diminishing into distance.

  There’d come a moment’s hesitation, a sense of the warriors around him hovering on the verge of turning heel and abandoning the attack before it had begun. At the crucial second, Cornstalk had spoken, and the word passed quickly along their ranks; they would meet the militia in battle even without surprise. Most of these warriors, save the very youngest, had hunted over this land countless times in their younger years, before the whites had pressed so far west. They still had the dark and the terrain on their side. And, with a little luck, they could re-create that surprise.

  Cornstalk had led them forward, along with Nonhelema and his captains, Puckeshinwah, Blue Jacket, and the rest, each commanding a unit of warriors, leaving some in the rear as reserves. Some units took position on the low ridges, burying themselves in leaves or finding concealment in logs or behind trees. Others sought the low ground where the creek flowed, at the base of the steep-faced ridge, in an attempt to get round the soldiers if possible and block their retreat up the Kanawha Trail.

  Jeremiah and his brothers had started out on the easternmost of the low ridges, crouched in hiding as darkness began to lift, listening long after the cries of the man they’d surprised fell silent.

  Then had come the beating of drums and, with the dawning of the day, a column of soldiers creeping up the wooded ridge through the mist as the sun crested that highland to the east.

  At first their ambush seemed to work with surprising effect, as if these Virginians had forgotten the manner of Indian warfare and expected to meet an orderly line of warriors waiting in the open to be shot at. The Shawnees’ first volley, fired after springing out of cover, had so stunned the Virginians that the Indians had time to reload for a second firing before the militiamen scattered for cover.

  More gunfire, attended by the tremolo screams of warriors, erupted to Jeremiah’s right, over a hundred yards away; there’d been a second column of Virginians creeping along that ridge nearest the river.

  Now powder smoke drifted with the rising mist. The yellow-leafed earth was spattered red with gore. The Virginians were firing back, though not all together, not by command. Man by man, each side sought for targets among the shadowy wood, beginning to blaze with morning’s advance. Soldiers and warriors sprang out of hiding to take a shot, then dove back to reload before an enemy could overrun his position. As was their way, the Shawnees targeted first the commanding officers whenever powder smoke cleared enough to see. They were not hard to pick out. They were the ones standing up and shouting.

  One or two voices doing most of the shouting made it clear whomever was still alive among their officers was trying to form a battle line. If there was a line at present, it was like a snake in its death throes, writhing across the broken landscape, pushed ahead by the Virginians or pushed back by the Shawnees.

  The din of gunfire and screams rang in Jeremiah’s ears as he discharged his rifle, then ducked back beside Wolf-Alone to reload.

  Wolf-Alone fired, then he and Jeremiah switched places.

  “See the log with the moss thick on top, red leaves piled below?” Wolf-Alone asked as he ran the ramrod down the length of his rifle barrel and yanked it free. “Down the slope ahead of us. Long Knives lie behind it. Three, I think. One is wounded. I do not think I killed him. They have seen where we hide.”

  “I see it.” Powder smoke had drifted between the log and their position higher up on the ridge, acrid in Jeremiah’s nose, stinging his eyes, thin enough to make out the log but barely. He waited, darting looks from behind the tree, making sure no soldier was rushing their position or creeping in for a closer kill.

  In the near distance, lost from view in the fiery foliage, he could hear the high, strong scream of Nonhelema fighting, nearer still the commanding voice of Cornstalk exhorting the warriors to be strong, to press their advantage. That voice had seemed to be everywhere as the morning and the battle advanced, moving from ridge to ridge, always exhorting, lending courage, giving direction.

  Indeed it seemed the Virginians were being pushed back toward their camp. The Shawnees had gained the ground where the first of them had fallen, and more ground besides.

  Just as Jeremiah dared hope it would be a swift v
ictory for the Shawnees, the Virginians were no longer falling back but holding strong. Even when they were shot and killed, their numbers seemed to increase.

  “They’ve sent reinforcements,” Jeremiah shouted to Wolf-Alone beside him and to Falling Hawk crouched behind a stump off to their right.

  Falling Hawk didn’t hear what he’d said but, apparently thinking it something important he should hear, broke from cover and sprinted across an open space between them.

  He almost made it before a musket ball took him in the shoulder, spun him hard, and knocked him to the churned leaf mold, sprawled across the body of a Virginian killed in the first volley and scalped.

  He didn’t get up.

  “Shoot at them, brother!” Wolf-Alone shouted.

  Assured Jeremiah would do so, he lunged from cover to grasp Falling Hawk by the ankles and dragged him behind their tree, while Jeremiah aimed at the crown of a hat poking above the log down the ridge and fired. He’d his tomahawk in hand, gaze darting about in case other soldiers had them in their sights. Then Wolf-Alone was back behind their tree, laying Falling Hawk down, crouching to reload; Jeremiah did likewise before he looked to see if Falling Hawk lived.

  Of the Augusta County officers who had advanced in the first column, few were still able to command. Colonel Charles Lewis, shot early on, had retreated back to camp with help. Dead or living now, Alphus didn’t know. Of the captains accompanying the column, Wilson was dead, Dickinson and Skidmore wounded. Harrison was alive somewhere off to his right along the ridge, from whence his bellowing could now and then be heard.

  Alphus had struggled to wrangle the men around him, most belonging to other companies, and direct them in the fight. When attacked from the front, they were meant to wheel forward, each file away from the other, to form a line at the fore of the column—an impossible maneuver once every man dove for cover under the Indians’ fire. Many thereafter refused to obey his command, either to advance or form any semblance of a battle line—either from stubbornness or loyalty to their captains lost in the confusion, wounded or dead. Some out of abject terror had refused to fight at all, crouched in cover like frightened rabbits. Others had turned tail and fled back to camp at the first volley.

  Along with Harrison, Alphus had cursed, exhorted, threatened, and somehow managed to stay alive and unscathed through the initial clash and beyond, when most of the men recovered from shock and began fighting like frontier Virginians, picking their Indian targets from behind trees and logs and making their shots count, giving ground only when too hard pressed, taking it back where they could.

  Thin face streaked by powder smoke, young Geordie Reynolds had stuck to Alphus’s side since Lieutenant Tom Woodbane fell. True to the promise he’d made the boy’s mother, Woodbane had shoved Geordie from the path of two musket barrels aimed at the lad. The first ball clipped the boy’s shoulder and embedded itself in a stump. The second had taken Woodbane through the neck.

  The graze hadn’t slowed the lad. Nor had the shock of Woodbane’s death. He’d hardened that stark, dirty face and was reloading and firing his rifle with cold accuracy, teeth bared in a rictus of rage and grief.

  Alphus thrust his own grief aside, having no thought to spare beyond the crises of the second. This was no skirmishing party but a full-on army of Shawnees, and they weren’t fighting in their usual manner—a hard strike and a hasty retreat. They were dug in along the ridges, down in the bottomland too, not just holding their ground but pressing their assault.

  Leaving their dead behind to be scalped, the Virginians had given ground. Some four hundred yards of it by Alphus’s estimation.

  More of the screaming devils kept coming, yet even the shouts and yips and ululations one would expect from such a force seemed subdued. Alphus sensed their intent not simply to harass and intimidate but utterly annihilate the whole of the Southern Army, to break through their line and overrun the camp and slaughter them to a man.

  But thanks be to the Almighty and Colonel Lewis, reinforcements were streaming in and they were able finally to push back, at least here on the ridge where Alphus commanded.

  To his relief, some of the reinforcements were of his company, ready to obey. He ordered them to fill any spots where men had fallen, then caught sight of another encouragement—over to their left the Botetort men had regained better order, creating a rough but discernable line, the near end of which Alphus glimpsed through the trees.

  “We got help now!” he shouted to any near enough to hear, wishing he could project his voice like the Indian he’d been hearing all morning from across the battle line, higher up on the ridge, moving from place to place. Always shouting the same words. He wondered what they meant when he’d time to think of such things and who it was shouting them. Then a painted face would show itself, aiming a rifle his way, and he’d have no time for idle speculation.

  “I see ’em, sir!” Geordie exclaimed at his side, craning his neck along the ridgeline. “Botetort men?”

  “Right. Others coming up behind from camp. Make your way back out of this now, if you want.”

  Through its mask of grime and blood, the boy’s expression darkened. “No sir! I’m gonna fight long as there’s redskins to kill. Woodbane…”

  He choked on the name and said no more.

  The kid had hunted squirrels since he was big enough to tote a rifle. Though he’d wordlessly taken over Woodbane’s guardianship of the boy, at times it felt to Alphus as if Geordie Reynolds was guarding him.

  “All right.” He’d no idea how much time had passed since Private Mooney came rushing into camp. Felt like hours, though he thought it still morning.

  Something was changing now. Indians to their left were falling back before the press of reinforcements sent up to the Botetort column. Virginians rushed the incline, up into a newly vacated hollow choked with wounded.

  Fire, reload, move from tree to tree. A slow but dogged pursuit.

  Soon the Indians in front of Alphus seemed likewise to be giving way. But he was cautious. He’d known Indians to feign retreat to lure unwary soldiers too far, then surround and slaughter them.

  Alphus took a chance and advanced several yards up a leafy slope, Geordie on his heels. They reached a moss-covered log high enough to hunker behind once a couple of dead soldiers were pushed out of the way.

  One of Skidmore’s company joined them. Between them Geordie settled in, panting for breath.

  “What’s happening now, Capt’n?”

  “Lord only knows, but Colonel Lewis is doing something right.”

  The firing directly before them had tapered off, but he could still hear fighting ongoing to left and right. It was only a momentary lull, however, before a rush of warriors had them firing fast and ducking to reload.

  He’d never known Indians to press an assault with such tenacity. For hours it went on, the sun climbing high, making streaks through the fiery woods that half-blinded men trying to spot their enemy darting through the trees, using the light to their advantage.

  No matter how quick or clever, the Indians revealed themselves each time they fired by a spurt of flame and smoke. Then a dozen Virginia marksmen took aim, needing but a hand or foot to make a target. Protected by the covering fire, a few braver souls darted or crawled forward to where the musket had flashed and finished off whomever they found lurking behind tree or log.

  The battle line in its coiling throes had gradually pushed back northward after that initial loss of ground; the Indians were falling back, but every yard of ground they gave came at a cost in Virginian blood.

  Shouts came along the ridge to Alphus’s left. Captain Evan Shelby, commanding the Overmountain Wataugans, had come up with more men and was taking command of the field, bringing the Augusta County men into his line.

  Hailing him, Alphus rallied those men still following him, Geordie at his side, as Shelby himself came darting through the wood to hunker behind their log.

  They were, Shelby informed him, fighting from the Ohio River
eastward all the way to the flanks of the high ridge. They’d enough men in the field to hold the line, but while the Botetort companies were pushing the Indians farther along the western ridge, there on the next ridge over the Indians had again become entrenched; the opposing lines had drawn near each other, near enough to hear individual voices.

  And there was that clarion call Alphus had heard intermittently throughout the battle, still shouting strong. A yard to his right, crouched behind a thicketed stump, a Wataugan private inquired of that voice and what it was saying.

  “Be strong,” another said. “Be strong. That’s what.”

  Another Indian voice rose, nearer, taunting. This one spoke in English, epithets his only vocabulary in that tongue apparently.

  Others in the enemy ranks took up the same taunts, here and there a warrior brazenly showing himself to the Virginians less than twenty yards away.

  Off to Alphus’s right a warrior came screaming straight at the gun barrel of a militiaman who couldn’t load in time. He whipped out his belt ax and met the warrior’s attack. Alphus caught but a glimpse before another warrior rushed him in like manner.

  For some time after, it was a jumble of ducking and scrambling and hacking, the smell of blood and leaves and earth, of flesh and sweat and gunpowder. The screams of dying men and those doing the killing. The fierce features of savages and the blades of their tomahawks and the spiked ends of their clubs.

  From the corner of his eye he was keeping track of Geordie, but the lad was holding his own, fighting viciously.

  Woodbane would’ve been proud.

  Alphus emerged bruised, bleeding, and half-dazed to find Geordie alive still, having killed three more Indians to Alphus’s two. The battle at that point had become a scattering of individual combatants, as Indians and Virginians raced each other to reload or prevailed over each other by strength, speed, or plain ferocity.