From Sea to Shining Sea (13 page)

Not reining in for him, George spurred his horse harder and bore down on another fleeing Indian. He was vaguely aware now of the curdled war cries of the other men, of the noise of horsemen
coming down the other creekbank to cut off the fugitives, and of the popping of gunfire somewhere to his right. A gun discharged close behind him and a musketball hummed past his ear, an exhilarating sound, making him feel almost unbearably vital.

Now the brave running before him in the high grass was almost within arm’s length. George yodeled again and struck with a sidearm sweep that seemed to have in it all the power of God’s wrath. It met something, with such a jolt that he thought his arm would tear off. His charge had carried him to the creek’s edge, and here he wheeled and rode back into the cane, seeking the man he had just struck. He saw blood on his tomahawk and another whoop escaped from his throat.

The canefield was a melee of smoke and confused movement now. Cresap and his men were galloping back and forth, yelling, swinging sabers and tomahawks, or firing their rifles down into the waving tall cane. The smell of gunpowder rankled in the sun-heated, grassy-sweet air. George rode in among the others, crisscrossing the field, hungry for a glimpse of another human target. His eyes felt as if they would pop out and his whole body tingled in anticipation of quick steel or lead. His temples pounded with pulsebeats; he was pouring sweat.

There were no more Shawnees to be seen. They had vanished like rabbits in the tall growth. George could not find the one he had struck. Here was a trampled place in the cane, spotted with fresh bright blood; there lay a musket with a broken stock, butterflies tumbling over it.

He rode toward a place where several militiamen had dismounted and gathered. They stood in a circle around a dead Indian and watched one man make a circular knife-cut in the scalp and pull up on the hair. The Indian’s neck was half-severed, spurting blood, and as the militiaman tugged at the black hair it looked as if the head might come off before the scalp did. But now the bloody topknot separated with an audible
pop
.

George knew this was not the Indian he had struck, nor was it the one Cresap had slashed with that first saber blow. The man scalping this Indian knew it was
his
Indian; that was the unwritten rule. But the others now were free to take souvenirs. One sliced off an ear; another took another ear. One flopped the corpse over and cut the breechclout away and was starting to cut away the genitals when George turned away. His throat suddenly felt clogged. The men butchering the Indian were chuckling and talking and he did not want to hear what they were saying or see what they were doing.

In the first moments after the skirmish, George had been disappointed
that he had no scalp to claim; now he had seen a scalp-taking and he knew it was a thing he would never do. Now a great wave of weariness came through him, followed by burning thirst and a sense of disorientation. Suddenly he was almost sickened by the memory of the bloodlust he had felt. Cresap, who was reputed to have more than two dozen scalps to his name, was riding along the edge of the creek yelling angrily, trying to regroup his company. George realized at once that this letdown of discipline and vigor right after a fight could be a dangerous time. As for himself, he felt weak almost to the point of lethargy. He looked back at the group. One man, arms smeared with fresh blood, was standing waving a scarlet-dripping strip of skin a yard long. They were skinning the corpse now.

So this had been his first taste of mortal combat, his first real Indian fight. Four days ago near Wheeling, Shawnees had murdered two Virginian hunters, and these men had gathered under Cresap at the new fort to ride out and find the Shawnee party and take revenge. Now they had caught them here and run them down and scattered them; they had killed at least one, but it would take a long search in the cane to determine just how much revenge they had gotten.

By midafternoon they were sitting mounted before Cresap, ready to ride out of the creek bottom. One militiaman, who George knew was a boatwright by trade, sat slumped in his saddle, face white as paper and his shirtfront all bloodsoaked. George doubted that that one would make it back to the fort.

O
NE OF
C
RESAP’S LIEUTENANTS HELD THE END OF A ROPE
, the other end of which was tied in a slipknot around the neck of a slightly wounded young Shawnee brave, who had been found hiding among reeds in the creek. Probably he would not have been found if blood from his shoulder wound had not reddened the water around him. No one knew whose he was. He was not painted like the one George had struck; Cresap didn’t claim him, probably because he was such a wretch and looked no more than fourteen or fifteen years old.

This boy was their only captive. Blood tracks in the tall cane had indicated that two or three other wounded Indians had escaped into the creek, maybe to bleed to death or drown there; the rest of the war party, about sixteen of them, had vanished with no further trace.

Some men of the company wanted to try to pick up the Shawnees’ spoor and hound them on down the river and kill the rest of them.

“That’d be a fool’s errand,” Cresap snarled. “We’ve no surprise left. They’d ambush us till they had us all.”

It had been a remarkable lesson to George. All that shooting and shouting and bloodlust and bewildering haste, though it had seemed a battle in the full sense of the word, had had hardly any more result than a boar hunt.

The men were not satisfied. With that democratic spirit of frontier militia, they now proposed that Cresap lead them on some more fruitful raid before their return to the Wheeling settlement. They wanted more scalps than this one; they wanted to frighten all the Indians of the region back into peaceful submission. They were not interested in any distinctions between tribes; they wanted simply to kill Indians until no more Indians would dare kill Virginians. They knew that Michael Cresap hated Indians and that he knew how to kill them.

“There’s a big Indian got his camp up at the mouth o’ Yeller Creek,” said one of the men. “Wouldn’t be out of our way t’ go git him.”

George’s scalp prickled.
Yellow Creek
. He realized the “big Indian” the man was talking about was Chief Logan. He opened his mouth to protest, but Cresap spoke first.

“No, by God, not that one. Hurt him and ye’d start a war.” George was surprised, and relieved. So there was more to Mike Cresap than just the blind-mad Indian killer.

“There already
is
a war, Cap’n,” said one rifleman, a burly roughneck named Jake Greathouse, whose cabin and trading post were just across the river from Logan’s camp. “Ye read what th’ governor said.”

“Where he sits in Williamsburg, His Ludship don’t know much,” Cresap said. He glanced around the semicircle of horsemen, the hunters, boatmen, carpenters, farmers and adventurers who were, for the moment, warriors. Two days before, in the fort at Wheeling, they had planted a war post, in imitation of the Indian manner, struck it with their tomahawks and performed a war dance around it. They had read Governor Dunmore’s proclamation and danced around the war post. Such dancing seemed to have the same effect on white men as it had on Indians; they were still up on a mood of that and did not want to hear peaceable reasoning right now, especially not from Cresap. But he said, removing his hat and wiping his sleeve over his forehead:

“Listen to me, damn yeh! Y’ came to me, ’member, and asked me to lead this company. While I’m a-doing it, we won’t strike Logan. I don’t like that uppity chief any more’n you do, but we won’t strike a friendly camp and that’s all I’ll say on’t.” He glared
around. His face was shiny with sweat and the oil of long-unwashed skin. His dark hair was matted and flecked with chaff. His hard jaw was stubbled and the pores of his nose were black. There was dried Indian blood on the right sleeve of his hunting shirt.

George wanted to speak up. He had no particular authority in the company, no rank. Most of them didn’t even know he was the man who had built their fort. Nevertheless, he spoke now.

“I know the Mingoes in that camp. I’ll tell ye this, there’s some o’ you and your families might be long dead but for Chief Logan.”

“Who the hell are you?” someone muttered. George ignored that and pointed at Greathouse. “You,” he said, “you know Logan’s a friend. Tell ’em.”

Greathouse looked around at the eyes on him, uncomfortable. Then he sneered. “I know he’s
your
friend, Clark. But I ain’t no Indian-lover.”

A flash of fury reddened George’s vision. But he clenched his jaw.
Red hair’s no excuse for tantrums
, he thought, and kept still. He saw Logan’s fine, thoughtful visage for a moment in his mind’s eye and wanted to say more for him. But he knew he would do no good arguing for him against this belligerent lout, especially in the midst of these men’s war-post sentiment.

“That’s all, then, boys,” Cresap said, giving George a curious, sidelong look, as if appraising him. “Got enough daylight to get halfway back to Wheeling. Let’s ride.”

Someone drew abreast of George as the column of horsemen twisted through the woods. George got a whiff of whiskey, which brought him out of his battle reverie. He looked aside and saw a barrel-chested man of perhaps fifty, with grizzled, unruly whiskers and merry eyes and a brilliant grin. The man winked at George and proffered his flask. George thanked him and took a swig of the powerful stuff, which burned all the way down. “Thankee, Mister …”

“Helm,” said the man. “Len Helm, that’s who I am. Fauquier County. Y’re a mean rider, son, and a smart head, too. Any time y’re thirsty, why, just holler.” He winked again and raised the flask in a salute, then dropped back. George grinned, feeling better, and repeated the name once in his mind. Len Helm. Then he thought back to Logan the Mingo and his family. It seemed a good idea to go and visit with him, to let him know he was in danger.

Chief Logan looked intently at George across the small fire that burned in the center of his lodge, and the lines around his
mouth were deep and drawn. Logan had noticed his young friend’s unusual solemnity all evening, and understood that it must have to do with the clashes between the Virginians and the Shawnees that had erupted so frequently this spring along the border. Logan dreaded the things they might have to say across the grain of their friendship. The piping of tree toads came in from the darkness and filled the silences. Logan’s sister had fed the men a large platter of soft hominy flavored with wild mustard and wild onion and strips of smoky-flavored meat. One of Logan’s brothers, a handsome, quiet chieftain who revealed neither the charm nor intensity of Logan, sat at the third place by the fire, his eyes shut so it was not clear whether he listened or dozed. Opposite him was Logan’s brother-in-law, equally somnolent. George suspected that they found it easier to retreat into this sleepy attitude than to deal with the presence of a Virginian in the lodge in these times. Logan’s sister, beautiful and serene, huge with child, now sat on a mat in a shadowy corner of the lodge, illuminated by an oil wick in a geode bowl, eating hominy with a horn spoon. The gathering was like so many George had spent in Logan’s village the year before. But then they had talked about all manner of things in the world; now they said little and seemed to wait for each other to begin the discussion of unpleasant news. Logan lit and passed a pipe, and when they all had smoked, George said:

“The anger of our peoples puts shadows on our friendship.” Logan nodded with a forlorn smile and George continued: “You know of the murder of the two Virginians last week near Wheeling?” Of course Logan knew. Everything came to his ears, as he was a bridge between the races. He nodded, but a narrowing of his eyes showed that he did not like George’s choice of the word “murder.” George went on. “You know that Captain Cresap caught the Shawnees at Pipe Creek two days ago and avenged them?” Logan knew this too. His eyes flashed at the name of Cresap. His brother and brother-in-law stiffened, and opened their eyes at the sound of the name. “Did you know,” George went on, “that I was among the men who rode with Cresap that day?”

Logan’s eyes widened with surprise and displeasure, but only for an instant. “I did not know.” He looked down into the fire. “What I foresaw seems to come closer to us, the time when we will have to face each other over the fires of battle instead of the fire of the lodge.”

“I hope never. But I had rather tell you I rode with Cresap than have you hear it from someone else.”

Logan nodded, grim but assenting. “I pray that your heart will never chime with that of Cresap.”

“I came to warn you that some of Cresap’s men spoke of raiding you here. Whether you believe this, Cresap said no. In that, my heart did chime with his.”

“It was not his heart but his head that said no. He would be glad to kill me, but he is no fool.” Then Logan looked at George and sighed, and said, “I wish you were not a Virginian.”

In the past year, Virginians had pushed as far down the Ohio as 350 miles below Fort Pitt. The tribes saw Virginians clearing land and killing game deep in the sacred hunting ground of Cain-tuck-ee. The chiefs were beginning to see too that this intrusion could drive a white wedge between the Algonquian peoples north of the Ohio and the Cherokee, Creek, and Choctaw nations of the south.

“I have listened to the talk of the chiefs,” Logan said. “Some of them say that every Virginian found in the valley of the Beautiful River should be killed. Most of the nations would want to keep peace with you if you would stop coming to draw the lines on the land. But the Shawnee nation does not even pretend to care for peace anymore.

“You, my friend, came to warn me for my safety. I return the favor. I tell you that Virginians are in danger. Not from Logan, but from others. As your brother, I ask you to guard yourself.”

They fell silent and gazed at the coals. They were heavy with resignation over the inevitable hostility between their peoples. It made it hard to talk of the lands and skies and spirits as they had used to. War was in the air. Militiamen had been ordered by Governor Lord Dunmore to garrison the forts, and the great runner Daniel Boone had been sent out among the settlements to summon all subjects of Virginia back across the mountains. George remembered what his father had said about the frontiersmen’s land claims. An Indian war would be a good excuse for the Royal Governor to nullify all the holdings of his troublesome backwoods subjects. George could sense the craft of His Majesty’s ministers at work. But that was all so vague and distant. And George was, after all, still a loyal subject.