From Sea to Shining Sea (75 page)

George, for some reason, was not looking at the ranting chieftain. His eyes were on old Moluntha, then on the terribly scarred face of chief Buckangehela of the Delawares.

Now Ke-hene-pe-li-tha had put the war and peace belts on the table and was waiting for answer. William heard George say, “Firmly, Mr. Butler.”

General Butler, a solid, granite-faced Pennsylvanian, said:

“We will not rely on your word, as we know the Shawnee breaks his word.”

A subdued roar of fury filled the room. All the soldiers were fingering their flintlocks. General Butler picked up the white and red beads the chieftain had put on the table and said, “We will
not change our terms. And we will not accept these strings because you put them here in anger.” And he flipped them carelessly back on the table. The Indians growled at this treatment of their tokens, but still did not move.

And then, to William’s horror, George raised his swagger stick and, still staring into the eyes of Moluntha, swept the belts off the table. They whispered into a heap on the floor. William’s heart was slamming so hard inside his ribs he thought it would burst out. And he was thinking, George, you gone mad, brother? That’s too much!

But George had not finished. He stood up and, his steely blue eyes at last fixed on the bulging eyes of Ke-hene-pe-li-tha, he put his foot on the belts.

It ended the meeting. The Shawnees rose in a furious muttering and stalked out of the building into the cold air, followed hesitantly by the Delawares and Wyandots, who kept looking back dubiously at George. The soldiers eased down the hammers of their guns, which they had cocked when the Indians rose. All the Indians streamed out of the stockade and strode, almost running, toward their camp. “Cap’n Finney,” George said, “have every man ready to defend the walls. Don’t shut the gate. But be ready to.”

William looked wonderingly at his brother from time to time in the next hour as the other commissioners and the interpreter stood near him talking. And then Captain Finney came in. “Sir,” he said, “they’re back, and they beg another meeting.”

“Good,” George said, as if this were what he had fully expected.

This time the spokesman was old Chief Moluntha. His speech was short. He held a white belt in his thin, gnarled hand. “This,” he said, “is to do away with all our warrior said in heat. We wish your country to have pity on our women and children. We have named three chiefs to go and bring your prisoners. We have named five to stay as hostages until they come.”

George nodded and shook old Moluntha’s hand, then made a brief speech, thanking the older chiefs for their wisdom. Most of the white men were barely concealing their relief and their sense of triumph as the peace pipes were smoked. But George displayed no delight.

“I
T’S A FARCE
, B
ILLY LAD
,”
HE SAID THAT NIGHT AS THEY SAT
on their cots and pulled off their boots. “Even old Moluntha will live longer than this treaty.”

There were two vertical frown lines above his nose, and William realized that they were always there now.

When the candle was out and they were lying in the cooling dark of the room, the little hearth-fire making a glow among the rafter poles, William heard George turn heavily in his bedding, and then his voice came, as if he were talking to himself.

“On and on. Just one treaty and then another. It’s like old Chief Logan told me: it just can’t work. This continent’s not big enough. Everything that fire-eatin’ Shawnee said today is true, about the land, I mean. Sad thing: Old Logan died a drunk, because it’s too sorry a thing to bear.”

It was quiet for a long time, and then William asked, “What’s a body to do about it?”

It was another long time before George’s voice came again. “Y’ have to be true to your own people. But these savages, they’re as right as we are. Damn it. Have y’ever seen a finer people than these Shawnees you’ve met here?”

“No. Truly.”

“Well, someday soon, I fear, you’ll be fighting ’em, Billy. And then you’ll see how fine they really be. And how terrible. They’ve been pushed as far as they’ll be pushed. Congress expects ’em to believe its promises. Hell’s fire, Billy, I can’t even believe Congress my own self. I’ve got such a putrid taste in my mouth and such an empty feeling in my pockets from public service.” His voice trailed off. Then after a while he said:

“I’m talking too much.”

William had been sleepy, exhausted by the strain of the day, but now his mind was in an uproar. He was only fifteen, but duty and love of country had always been of such importance in his family that one believed in them almost as one believes in the light of the sun. And now to hear his brother George, renowned as the greatest patriot of the family, doubting and speaking bitterly of his government even while risking his life to serve it, caused a strange, disturbing shadow in his mind.

Now George’s voice was saying tiredly in the darkness:

“Mark what I say. This is going to stick in the Shawnee’s gizzard. He’s going to forget this treaty like you forget a dream by breakfast time.”

Three weeks after the signing of the treaty, the five Shawnee hostages deserted. As they left the vicinity they kidnapped the wife and children of a settler near Fort Finney while the man was absent on a hunting party. The Indian War of 1786—actually the continuation of a war that seemed to have gone on forever—was begun.

George Rogers Clark was totally unaware of it. On his return
to Mulberry Hill from the treaty councils, he had fallen into a deep illness. “
Your brother George is with me very sick
,” John Clark wrote to Jonathan in March, “
his complaint being of such a nature as keeps us in doubt
.”

E
LIZABETH
C
LARK SAT IN THE PILLOWED ROCKING CHAIR BE
side George’s bed and looked at his gaunt, craggy face in the light of the single candle, and hoped he would not stir and go into a delirium again. She sat in dread of those, during her watches over him. Some nights he did not have them at all, or had them while Lucy or her mother were sitting up with him. Each of the females of the household sat a three-hour watch over him every night, except Fanny, who was considered not old enough to know what to do if he had a crisis.

And there was always a man up, too, either John Clark or William, or Bob Elliot, armed and going like a sentry through or around the house, because of the Indian raids. There had not been a raid on the Clark house yet, but on two nights there had been sounds of distant shooting and the red glow of fires visible from the upstairs windows. These things had been terribly frightening at first, but, as Elizabeth had learned to tell herself, one can grow accustomed to anything, and the stark fright of these long vigils had settled lately into a deep, edgy dread, only now and then leaping up as real fright when some night-noise in or around the house would make her ears prickle and her heart pound and her mouth dry up.

And so there had not been much sleep in the Clark house at Mulberry Hill for almost a month.

Elizabeth looked at the two points of candlelight, the real one and the one reflected on the window pane, and she thought about Major Anderson of the militia. She remembered detail by detail, emotion by emotion, as she had done a hundred times probably, the moment last Christmas Eve when, flushed from dancing, she had gone down the hallway to stand in the cool mud-room off the back porch. She had been standing there, of all places, in the dark amid the mud-and-wet-wool smells of cloaks and boots, when suddenly she had felt two hands on her shoulders. She had hardly started at the touch, because somehow she had thought, or had prayed, that he would follow her. And he had, silently he had followed her, and had put his hands on her shoulders.

Lord, though, she thought now, if that’d happen now since this Indian trouble, I’d have wet myself!

It’s a good thing Papa keeps the shutters shut nights, she
thought, or I’d be afraid to look at that window for fear of seeing Indian faces in it.

George groaned and made a gurgling sound deep in his lungs, and she looked at him. He had to lie propped up with pillows almost in a sitting position so he would not choke or strangle. When he was unconscious it was so much deeper than mere sleep that he could perish without waking himself up. She listened and watched until the sounds stopped, and his breathing was even, then she leaned back in the chair, carefully so it would not creak and frighten her.

Here I sit in a room with the man all the Indians are scared of, she thought, and I’m timid as a lamb in a wolf den.

I wonder whether the Indians know this is the house the Long Knife Chief lives in, she thought.

If they do, they must not know he’s dying, or they’d have fallen on us by now.

It’s a good thing the shutters are shut, she thought again. If some of them crept up on the porch and could look in and see the Long Knife Chief here in a sleeping spell, or when he’s thrashin’ around all sweat-soaked or whimpering with chills, or messing his bed … Merciful and Almighty God, what would become of Kentucky and us who live here!

It was better to think of Major Anderson, better to look at the two points of candle flame and remember Christmas Eve, than to look at George the way he was and get all shivery with dread, or all poignant with thinking how beloved he was and how awful a loss it would be to everybody, not just the family. She took another quick look at him and wondered how it could be possible that in the same family there could be one person too timid to look behind her rocking chair and another bold enough to throw sacred beads on the floor in a room full of warrior chiefs. William had told the family about that, over and over.

So she thought of Major Anderson’s hands on her shoulders, and remembered how in the cool mud-room she had felt his warm breath on her neck and smelled the wassail-bowl smell and how then he had said, “Miss Elizabeth,” so softly, and then had put his mouth to her ear and inhaled, a shuddering breath.

She shivered violently, just as she had then.

He had jumped back then, and stammered an apology for startling her—because he had mistaken her shiver for a start of fright.

And that had struck her so funny at the time that she had just burst out laughing, a silly, hiccuping laugh that had utterly disconcerted him. And he had said he was sorry, he felt like a perfect fool.

And then Elizabeth had said such a rash thing; it had just rushed out of her because of some giddy, loving rush of sympathy; she had said—Oh she could remember still exactly the words—she had said:

“Richard Anderson, sir, the very first time I laid eyes on you, I wanted to make you feel like a perfect fool! I wanted to grab your hat off and make you blush!”

Somehow those words had completely flustered him. He had stammered, “I … I … Wh …” and then he had turned and all but fled back to the ballroom, and had not spoken to her the rest of the evening, only blushing red on that princely visage whenever the dancing brought them face to face.

Ah, I handled that in a sorry manner, she thought now. She had seen the major three or four times since. Now that the Indians were ravaging the countryside, the militia were on the roads constantly, and often it was he who came to inquire whether General Clark was well enough to be moved yet, and to urge John Clark to bring his family and George into the safety of Fort Jefferson.

And still he would blush when he saw her, and she felt so sorry for him, and she prayed for a time when they might talk alone together, so that she could explain.

That time will come, she thought. I just know such things as are going to happen someday, and I know that once he’s no longer afraid I’m laughing at him, he’s going to say what he came out in that silly mud-room to say, and that is, that he loves me.

For a while she had thought that Major Anderson came by the plantation so often because of his unvoiced affection for her. But then one day she had heard him say to her father that everyone wanted George to take the leadership of the state militia again and do something that would put a stop to the Indian activity.

John Clark had flown into a rare state of temper at that.

“Mister Anderson,” he had said through tight lips, “my son has ruined his health and lost his fortune in serving this state, and all the reward he’s got is being slandered in Assembly! I doubt he’ll get up from that bed ever. But if he does, I pray you’ll all let him alone a while, and stop trying to thrust the sword of Duty into his hand, for it’s his nature to take it, even when he shouldn’t! Let him rest!”

Elizabeth looked at George now, at the massive forehead, the red hair, the sunken eyes, the great, long-fingered hands on the counterpane, and wondered whether he would ever get up. It all would depend on whether he wanted to or not. That, no one knew. Now he turned his head to and fro on the pillow. She could hear William
trudging up the hall, and upstairs the floor was creaking, her mother getting up to come and assume the vigil. Early birds were cheeping querulously outside. Outside the bullet-proof oaken shutters, she knew, the light of a spring day would be starting to pale the eastern firmament. Another night past and the Indians had not struck, and George had neither improved nor died.

She wondered whether Major Anderson was awake at this hour and whether, if he were, he would be thinking of her.

George gurgled deep inside. One of his hands flew up, then flopped down on the counterpane. And he said something that sounded like:

“Trees.”

He dreams of trees so much, she thought.

Why might that be?

I should ask him sometime, she thought.

And then tears welled up, stinging her tired, dry eyelids, when she realized that she might never get a chance to ask him.

E
LIZABETH AWOKE TO A BABBLE OF EXCITED VOICES, HER
heart pounding. Downstairs there seemed to be a score of voices crying incoherent words, shouting at each other, some wailing, and doors banging and footsteps thundering. They were all female voices, except for York’s. He kept yelling, “Oooooooh! Yes’m! Oooooh!” Somewhere else, Mary Elliot was screaming like a madwoman.