Panther in the Sky (107 page)

On the second of those two days, some warriors who had been at Fort Malden came to the island and told Tecumseh that they had seen Procter from a distance, and that he had looked like a very troubled man. They had noticed also that some of Procter’s aides were making crates and carrying trunks and barrels at Procter’s headquarters.

A few days later, the British soldiers were seen taking apart kitchens and armories and offices of the fort and loading wagons. Tecumseh sent a messenger to Procter asking to know what had happened to the ships and for an explanation of the activities in the fort. Procter sent back no reply, but the messenger had noticed that he was still packing. Now it was plain that he was getting ready to flee.

The British had promised to help the red men regain their homelands, but now they were apparently getting ready to retreat farther and farther from the Indians’ lands. Tecumseh was growing hot and tight inside. He sent for Matthew Elliott and told him to go to Procter. “Tell the general,” Tecumseh said, “that if he does not give me the truth of what is happening, I will cut my end of the wampum belt, and the results will be bad!”

I
T WAS A FULL WEEK AFTER THE CANNON THUNDER ON THE
lake before old Elliott finally prevailed upon General Procter to meet with Tecumseh and his chiefs. They were to assemble at the big council hall at Amherstburg.

By this time Tecumseh was almost in a fury at Procter’s evasiveness. He had warned Procter in the past that if he ever lied to him, he would take his red men and abandon the British. Tecumseh had had enough experience with such evasiveness in his own brother to deduce that Procter was afraid to lie to him but also afraid to tell the truth.

In the vast hall with its vaulted ceiling, the hundreds of warriors and chieftains filled every foot of floor space, a colorful, agitated, murmuring mass of men. Officers of the militia and the Redcoat Forty-first Regiment stood along the walls.

Procter came in looking sullen, pale, and nervous. Many of the officers with him looked sullen, too. Their noses were in the air, and they would not look at Procter, so it seemed that even they were displeased with him.

Before the panorama of brilliant costumes and garish ornaments and intense, dark faces in the smoky room, Procter announced curtly that plans were being made for a withdrawal to someplace eastward, closer to the other wings of the British forces. He said nothing about the naval battle and made no further explanation. As his words were translated, the voices of the Indians began to rise, droning with consternation and anger in the great hall. Tecumseh rose and spoke loudly:

“Father, listen! Our fleet has gone out; we know they have fought. We have heard the great guns. But we know nothing of what has happened to our father with one arm. Our ships have gone one way, and we are very much astonished to see our father tying up everything and preparing to run away the other, without letting his red children know what his intentions are for them!”

He paused and stared at Procter while this was being translated into English and into the various tribal tongues. He saw that Procter’s face was sweaty and red. And he also saw some of the young British officers, who had been his comrades in some of the battles, nod their heads and look accusingly at Procter.

The Indians too were all watching Procter with clouded faces; many of them had already deduced to their own satisfaction that he was deceiving them and going his own way with no concern for their opinions or their welfare.

While Procter sat glowering at Tecumseh with his head back and his lips set thin, Tecumseh went on:

“You always told us to remain here and take care of our lands; it made our hearts glad to hear that was your wish. You always told us that you would never draw your foot off British ground, but now we see you are drawing back, and we are sorry to see our father running without even seeing the enemy!”

He paused again. The warriors were muttering their agreement, their indignation. Procter’s eyes were looking glazed; his lip quivered with the hint of a sneer. His face infuriated Tecumseh; this was like the expression that had been on his face while he had stood by and watched the slaughter of prisoners at Fort Miami, afraid to try to stop it. Procter was contemptuous of Indians but afraid of them at the same time, an attitude that insulted Tecumseh and every other red man who perceived it.

So now Tecumseh allowed himself to speak directly of Procter’s cowardice; he cared not at all how angry he made him.

“We must compare our father’s conduct to that of a fat animal, that carries its bushy tail high upon its back, but when frightened, he drops it between his legs and runs off.”

Laughter swept through the whole room when this was translated, and it was not just the Indians laughing but also the British officers around the walls. Several of the officers right beside Procter were biting their lips and flushing, trying to keep from guffawing. Procter’s face had darkened almost to livid, and he was shaking visibly, either from mortification or with his effort to contain himself. Suddenly Tecumseh overrode the tittering and laughter with his voice.

“Listen, Father! The Americans have not yet defeated us by land; neither are we sure that they have done so by water. We therefore wish to remain here, and fight our enemy if they should appear. If they defeat us,
then
we will retreat with our father!”

The warriors were very intent upon his words now; here their leader was contrasting their bravery with Procter’s cowardice, and they were stirred and proud.

Now Tecumseh reminded them of an English perfidy that a few of them were old enough to remember personally and the rest of them had heard of many times. “At the Battle of the Rapids in the Fallen Trees last war, the Americans defeated us, and when we retreated to our father’s fort at that place, the gates were shut against us. We were afraid that the same might be done here, but instead of that, we now see our British father preparing to
march out
of his garrison!

“Father! You have got the arms and ammunition which the great father sent for his red children. If you have an idea of going
away, give them to us, and you may go, and welcome. As for us, our lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. He gave to our ancestors the lands which we possess. We are determined to defend them, and if it be his will, our bones shall whiten on them, but we will never give them up!”

The warriors’ response to this was so surprising and menacing that Procter’s purpled face drained of color. Many of the warriors leaped to their feet, shaking their tomahawks at the British, their angry voices roaring to the high ceiling.

Procter waited for the din to subside, then rose, saying only that he would answer in another council, and hastened out a nearby door with Tecumseh’s anger drilling into his back, palpable as an arrow. Procter’s own officers were confused and awkward, torn between their desire to jeer him and their fear that the hundreds of aroused warriors might simply rush at them; some of the officers were standing there applauding Tecumseh while others were sidestepping out of the council hall with tears in their blinking eyes and their chins jutting. It was left to old Elliott to try to restore order in the echoing hall.

So Procter still had not answered, but now there was no doubt in Tecumseh’s mind. The British ships had surely been sunk.

Now how could there ever be a hope of carrying the war back into the homelands in O-hi-o?

T
HE NIGHT SKY WAS FULL OF RED SMOKE.

Star Watcher and Open Door stood together, their faces lit by the glow of the burning shipyard and the fort. They stood at the roadside and looked back at the fires while heavy-laden wagons trundled and groaned past, going north on the river road. It was the same road where Tecumseh had ambushed the American army at the beginning of this war, to save Fort Malden from the Redcoats; now, fourteen moons later, the Redcoats themselves
had set it on fire and were fleeing from it without an enemy in sight. Nearby stood old Colonel Elliott, his eyes glinting with tears in their wrinkled sockets. Elliott had labored in his old age to build an estate here, and now it would be lost, a ruin. He had helped the Shawnees for as long as they could remember, but now there was nothing they could do to help him, and this made a deep ache in Star Watcher’s heart.

The shipyard had been burning like a forest fire all day. The unfinished ship hulls burned with roaring flames that leaped and spiraled a hundred feet high. As their sheathing burned through and fell off to reveal the curving rib timbers, showers and swirls of sparks rose into the lurid smoke and brightened it to yellow. The stacks of oak logs and hewn timbers and planks looked as if they would burn forever. They would burn, then shift and settle and rumble, and the flames would lick higher. Masts and wooden derricks and gin poles flamed like standing torches; when their stays burned through they fell,
whooshing
and banging, sending up still more eddies of sparks and setting roofs and shacks and lumber on fire.

After he had ordered the shipyard set afire, General Procter had finished packing everything from Fort Malden, and then the fort too had been set ablaze. The old, dry, wood-shingled roofs flared up so fast, they were almost like explosions.

A company of the Forty-first Regiment Redcoats now tramped by, part of the rear guard for the wagon convoy, and their coats were garish in the firelight. Many of their uniforms had black holes in them where sparks blown by the lake wind had fallen on the soldiers. The soldiers’ eyes glinted with fireglow as they glanced at Star Watcher and Open Door.

Now Open Door cried out in his piercing voice, and the Indian families began filling the road behind the Redcoats, hundreds of women and children and elders, carrying bags and kettles and babies, leading horses that carried packs or pulled pole drags. Bent-backed old women limped by, leaning on staffs.

Once again the Indian families were fleeing in the fire-reddened night, refugees from invading Long Knife soldiers, and Star Watcher remembered the many times before. But this time they were not in their homeland in the O-hi-o country, but in Canada, far from old Chillicothe and Piqua and Maykujay Town, far from Tippecanoe and going still farther into an unfamiliar land, following the British, who had promised to protect them and help them regain their homelands but who instead were being protected by
the red men—and fleeing from an enemy that was not yet even in sight.

Open Door, his chest aching with sadness and his mouth tasting bitterness, nevertheless smiled and spoke reassurances to his People as they went past, those who did not make war but who were always its sorriest victims. “Be strong,” he said. “The Great Good Spirit favors our People; all will be well. Follow the Redcoat soldiers. You will go to a safer place. All will be well. Colonel Elliott will feed you, as he always has done. All will be well, Grandmother.…” With a pang in his heart, he remembered how it had been to comfort the People. He glanced at his sister, who was saying the same reassurances. Tecumseh had put them in charge of caring for the refugees and keeping them from straggling too far behind the retreating Redcoats. It would be a heavy and sad burden for them, but the kind of burden they had been carrying for years—the care of the People.

Another wooden roof in the fort caved in, sending up another tower of fire to show them their road.

T
HICK
W
ATER COULD FEEL IN THE WIND THAT MUCH RAIN
was coming. He frowned and pulled his blanket closer around his neck, shifted his tired body in the saddle, and sighed. Another wet autumn was coming, and once again the People were homeless.

To warm his heart then he turned his thoughts to his beautiful wife and children. They at least would be sheltered, though probably hungry, in the Wyandot town on the other side of the great lake. How good it would be to have a time of peace and live with them close to the cookfire, to sleep with the embers warming him on one side and her body warming him on the other.

But Thick Water’s duty, by his own choice, was here. Tecumseh sat on his horse a few paces away, between Elliott and Withered Hand, on the road above the smoking ruins of Fort Malden, watching Harrison’s huge army come ashore from their ships. The American fleet was large now; it included the ships that Perry had captured from One-Arm Barclay. To guard Tecumseh was Thick Water’s self-appointed duty, it had been for many years, and from that duty there came another kind of inner fire. But protecting Tecumseh had always been a difficult duty, full of hardships and dangers, and it was especially so now. Reluctant to retreat, Tecumseh seemed inclined to prowl the very edge of peril. The Redcoats and the warriors and the refugees had long since gone, up the river road to Sandwich Town, then east toward
the river Thames, destroying bridges behind them. But Tecumseh lingered miles behind the retreat, choosing to watch the approaching Long Knives from barely a gunshot away, always looking for a sight of Harrison.