From Sea to Shining Sea (79 page)

In the deep, cool shade he could see no sign of George. Then he saw his horse, standing riderless. William rose in his stirrups and peered around in alarm.

Then he saw his brother, silhouetted against the river.

George was on his knees in the grass. His sword was jabbed into the earth in front of him and his hands were clasped over the hilt and his forehead was on his hands. He was all right after all. He was praying. Praying men don’t kill themselves.

William turned his horse and walked it silently back out into the sunlight. In a few seconds George rode out. His face was drawn and grim, but more composed now. “Let’s go up, Billy.” His voice was low, but the tremor was gone out of it. William still could not think of anything proper to say, and his own bewildered dumbness convinced him that he was still a boy, that manliness required more than just the size and strength to swing a sword; it required the wisdom to say right things.

George rode so slowly that William could feel his reluctance to face the rest of the army after this disgrace. The seven hundred militiamen of Fayette and Jefferson counties were in a large ring around a field table. Several captains and majors stood with Todd near the table. Todd saluted as George rode in with William behind him. George saluted and stopped, but did not dismount.

“Colonel,” he said, “I want you to put it to all these people whether they’re still with me or not.”

“Yes, sir.” Todd turned and bellowed: “Every man who’s still with General Clark step forward and say aye.”

The whole circle, to a man, surged inward with a deafening roar.

Todd looked up at George and saw tears running down his cheeks. William, a few yards back, had to bite the insides of his lips to keep from crying.

“Sir,” Todd said then. “Some of the men have already begged permission to go after the deserters and force ’em to come back.”

That so moved George that he was speechless for several more seconds. Then he smiled through his tears and answered, “That’s like music to me, Mr. Todd. But o’ course”—he swallowed—“we can’t have two Kentucky armies fighting each other ten leagues from the enemy. We’d best council on what to do. We’re up a creek, frankly. We’ve got but half an army here. The savages are three to our one now, and defending their own ground, they’d fight like furies.” He dismounted. “Let’s talk, gentlemen.”

A
BOUT HALF THE SENTIMENT WAS FOR GOING ON TO ATTACK
the Indians, even with the reduced force. But the chances of succeeding in that—even surviving it—were finally deemed too slim, and the vote was to return to Vincennes. And so they rode and marched out of camp at midday, not toward the enemy towns but away from them, following the messy trail of the deserters, every footprint, every gnawed bone, every cast-away bag or keg, every fly-blown turd or scrap of refuse along the trailside a reminder of the morning’s disgrace. For the first two hours of the ride, George slumped in his saddle, the unfamiliar weight of failure feeling like a boulder on his back. He looked up and listened only when scouts came in to tell about Indian signs. The Kentuckians were being followed and watched by a few Indians, twenty scouts or so. But there was no large force anywhere near. George thanked them and led on, still thinking of the awful sight that morning of the deserters’ backs going down through the trees in their cloud of dust, and the pack horses. He thought of the spectacle as it would look through the eyes of those Indian scouts, and thought of the report, the astonishing report, that they would carry to Little Turtle and Pacane and the other chiefs—the Shawnees too probably were among them by now, after all that delay—the astonishing report that Long Knife’s army had come within a day’s march of the battlefield and then had turned back. That’ll puzzle them for a while, he thought. Worse, forbid it Heaven, they’ll learn about the mutiny!
Long Knife
, he thought. He had fought and schemed and suffered for eight years for the Long Knife’s reputation. But he knew how fast fame can blow away once a warrior has suffered a defeat or turned from a contest. Again he saw through the Indian scouts’ eyes, saw these 1200 Kentuckians going back whence they had come. He tried to imagine Little Turtle receiving this
news. He could remember the chief’s candid, intelligent face. He tried to imagine what the chief’s keen wit would make of it.

Soon George was stroking his jaw thoughtfully. He was not used to thinking defeated, and knew that if he did give this all up, the tribes would plunge into Kentucky with magnified boldness. While he was here in their territory, surely he could do something. He had sent war belts, but then had turned back before battle. Incomprehensible! He thought of Pacane taking the red belts, he remembered Pacane’s appeal for peace, which he had spurned as insincere.

Suddenly, he sat straighter in his saddle, his brow knit in concentration. A notion had begun to gleam like a coal in the dark ashes of his despair. He had begun thinking of Pacane, of white-beaded peace belts. And it was starting to come together in his mind; the coal of an idea was being fanned into brightness.

“Colonel Todd,” he called back, suddenly turning in his saddle, “have the troops look sharp! Get up a song.” And soon they were swinging and singing down the bank of the Wabash, looking not at all like a retreating army, teaching each other bawdy verses they knew to “Yankee Doodle.”

William kept glancing out of the corner of his eye at his brother, who, though his face was still pained and solemn, was concentrating on his thoughts and now and then showed a wry smile. George was up to
something.

V
INCENNES WAS IN A STATE OF ALARM
.

The Kentucky army they thought had come up to scatter the nearby Indian confederacy had instead come straggling back, half of it, an unruly mob demanding food. Then, learning that the general was close behind them, they had headed out in small
groups bound for home. Few of them wanted to be around when he got there.

George, immediately on his arrival, occupied the old fort, summoned Major LeGras and went into a secret council with him and Levi Todd and a few of the faithful officers. William stayed by him as his aide and messenger, and at last it became evident what George had been plotting during the march. “Sometimes, Billy, there’s nowt to do but bluff. Now I reckon I’ve won as many contests that way as I have by force, and it might work again now.”

William listened in amazement as George dictated a message to be taken to the Wabash tribes.

And then LeGras dictated his own letter to the tribes, a totally separate document:

So that’s it, William thought. They’re to believe
this
is why we turned back!

And now he understood why George had wanted the army to return with such a demonstration of spirit.

When the interpreter had left with the messages, George got about the business of establishing a garrison at the fort. He was able to keep only 140 men; the rest had to return to Kentucky for harvests. He sent a letter to the governor of Virginia demanding an investigation of the mutiny, and suggested that Todd also insist on it. “There’s going to be lies and excuses thick as a bee swarm when those Lincoln County boys go slinkin’ home. They’ll try to fault me as a bungler and a jug-sucker, as they used to whenever something went wrong in the war.”

Word came to Vincennes in a few days that Colonel Logan’s expedition against the Shawnee towns had been a success—of sorts. With most of their warriors gone to join the Wabash confederacy, the towns had been defenseless against Logan’s 790 horseman. One of the militia leaders, a Colonel Kennedy, had chased down seven fleeing squaws and hacked them to death one by one with his broadsword. The good, ancient chief Moluntha, having surrendered and holding the Fort Finney treaty to his breast, had been tomahawked between the eyes by Captain Hugh McGary.

It had been a disgraceful performance. But Colonel Logan was boasting of it, as it had destroyed more than 200 of the Shawnees’ dwellings and virtually all their winter food supply. That would put the Shawnee nation out of the warring business for the rest of the year. The barbarous acts would further harden the Shawnees’ hatred against the Kentuckians. But at least the eastern theater of George’s strategy had worked: the Shawnee
warriors, on hearing of the raids, had turned away from the Wabash confederacy and hurried back to their own ravaged country. That would have disappointed Little Turtle and perhaps would make him a little more susceptible to the audacious bluff that George and LeGras had prepared. “We’ll all be on tenterhooks here till their answer comes,” George told William. “But we’ll be too busy to worry. What we’ve got to do now is make some way to support this garrison here.” Winter was coming on. George appointed a commissary officer. He sent a request to the French in Kaskaskia and Cahokia for flour. He sent a letter to Benjamin Logan asking him to impress food and clothing from the Kentucky counties for the outpost at Vincennes. But he saw little hope of obtaining anything soon, if ever, by those measures. And so he turned to an expedient closer to hand.

Lying at wharf in the low water of the Wabash just below Vincennes was a large Spanish row galley, full of rum, clothing, shoes, ammunition, and merchandise. The cargo had been brought up from New Orleans for a Spanish trader named Bazadone, who had set up business in Vincennes, and who was suspected to be supplying ammunition to the Wabash tribes. Bazadone did not have a passport to trade in this country. Furthermore, his presence was an affront to both the French and the Americans, whose own trade down the Mississippi had been totally blockaded by the Spanish at New Orleans.

Because the Spaniard was trading without authorization, it seemed that the garrison commandant could, by military law, appropriate his cargo. So a court-martial was convened, of four captains who knew the law. Bazadone was questioned under oath, and when he admitted that he was trading without passport, the court ordered his goods confiscated, and put in the commissary store to be issued directly to the troops or auctioned publicly, with proceeds going to the support of the garrison. After studying the ruling and being satisfied that it was not irregular, George signed it. Bazadone, squealing protests through his black beard and yellow teeth, was given a receipt signed by General Clark, relieved of his goods, and advised to leave. “That,” George told William, “is how ye may have to support your troops sometimes, when your government is far removed or little concerned. I know it looks somewhat like robbery, but it’s legal. I know one thing: it would be morally worse to dissolve the garrison for want of supply and leave this town at the mercy of the tribes. Now, Billy, such proceedings do leave a polecat taste in my mouth, and I’m going to wash it out with a sip o’ Spanish
taffia, of which we seem to have acquired several hogsheads. Would ye care to join me in my quarters?”

“I sh’d be delighted, Brother Long Knife. This soldierin’—if that’s what we’re doing—does tend to parch a man out.”

George drank and talked cheerfully enough for a while. But after a few drinks of rum, he revealed to William that the day of the mutiny had been the worst day of his life. “When a disgrace like that happens,” he said, “y’ start losing your name. And by God, my name is the main thing I’ve got! D’ye know, there’s rumors back East that I’m not competent. That I like this stuff too much. For the life o’ me, I can’t trace the rumors. But my name’s shrinking back there.”

William was ill at ease with such discouraging talk, which was not Clark-like, and even less like George. Wanting to turn him away from it, he said, “I thought I’d turn over when ye told those fifteen hundred Indians to come down and talk peace or else, and here’s us in this ol’ rickety coop outnumbered ten to one! You really do be some snorter! They’ll come, won’t they?”