Panther in the Sky (37 page)

I am unworthy!

Weshecat-too-weh!

No, I am unworthy and weak!

Weshecat-too-weh!

Now he heard flintlock hammers being cocked all around him, and their sound squeezed his bowels and bladder even tighter. He clamped and squirmed to control them as the first of the Long Knife soldiers appeared in the thick leafless brush by the riverbank below, and his hand shook more violently.

Two horsemen passed below, veering to the left, their eyes darting everywhere. These two were dressed in skins and were lean and hard-looking. Probably these were advance scouts; Clark was known by now to be almost impossible to surprise because of the fringe of scouts he always kept far out on all sides of his army. Those who had just passed were strong-looking men, keen and hawk-faced. But at least neither of them was But-lah, the chief Long Knife scout. And they did not have dogs. And so they seemed not to have detected this ambush. The two rode on up the riverbank among the bare gray trees in the bottomland along the Mad River.

This morning Chiksika’s war party had gazed southward to see the enormous smoke clouds rising into the sky where Chillicothe had been burned down once again. There had been no fight at Chillicothe. Once again Black Hoof had abandoned the town and left it to the Long Knives. There had not been enough warriors to defend it.

This time he had also abandoned Piqua Town, and also the upper and lower towns where the Shawnees had wintered after Clark’s last attack. This year Black Hoof had moved his people far north and west, clear up to Wapatomica Town on the Upper Mad River, far enough, he hoped, that neither wing of Clark’s army could get there in this late season. And to keep Clark from getting to that final stronghold, Black Hoof had sent certain select warriors, like Chiksika and Stands Firm and Blue Jacket and Black Snake, to lay traps all along the Long Knives’ route of march, to ambush them, harass them, and then withdraw to ambush
them again and pull back again, to kill as many officers as they could until perhaps Clark’s column would become too long and disorderly to continue. It was the only kind of resistance the Shawnees had the resources to make anymore.

This was just such an ambush. Chiksika was in charge, and Stands Firm was his second. Now the white scouts had ridden past without detecting it, and soon the advance part of the army would emerge among the dry brown leaves and the gray tree trunks, and as many of them as possible should be killed, and then there would be fewer to fight at the next ambush. Along every river and across every trace between the Shawnee and Miami towns there would be ambushes like this, of a dozen or a score of warriors, who would do all they could to hinder Clark’s advance even though there was no chance of stopping it until Clark chose to stop. It would stop only when Clark should decide he had done enough to avenge the losses at Blue Licks.

Now Tecumseh sensed that Chiksika had moved and stiffened. He looked and saw him lay his cheek against his gunstock and close his left eye. Tecumseh looked out over the lichen-spotted boulder, his heart quaking and hand shaking and his sphincter tight, and saw the front part of the army coming, saw clothes and metal through the gray brush, mounted men mostly in tan and gray, with bullet bag and powder horn slings crisscrossing their chests.

“Metchi,
many!” Stands Firm murmured nearby.

“Shoot the officers,” Chiksika said softly. “Now!” And he squeezed the trigger.

The cracking guns and the smoke all around almost made Tecumseh dirty himself in that moment. His gunsight was on a whiteface when he squeezed the trigger, but he knew the gun was unsteady, and by the time he was groping for his powder horn to reload, the horsemen were already coming at a canter, yelling in bold rage and shooting. Chiksika gasped in pain, and Tecumseh in the edge of his vision saw him clap his left hand on his right shoulder. A rifle ball ricocheted off the boulder in front of Tecumseh with a deadly
spannnnng!
and his cheek was stung hard by stone grit, and the Long Knives were charging at him as if they had no fear.…

The next thing Tecumseh really knew was that he was squatting in a ravine emptying his waste on the ground, moaning like a hurt animal in his fear and shame, and that the shouting and shooting were still going on down near the river, and he was hearing in his head,
I am unworthy I am unworthy,
and he was wondering
how he could ever face his brother Chiksika again, if Chiksika still lived.
I am unworthy I am unworthy!

The worst of all possible kinds of shame was upon Tecumseh. He had lost control of his will and had just cast away his rifle and run blindly into the woods to do this on the ground, this which had seemed more important than living or dying or having honor. And now with shaking hands, and with tears wetting his nose and little strangled sobs in his throat, he was standing here in a stark woods pulling up his loincloth and tying the band around his waist and wondering whether Chiksika was alive and what to do now and wishing that that rifle ball instead of its rock dust had hit him. It was the worst moment he had ever had in his life, and all his tomorrows looked no better than what he had left in the leaves on the ground.

T
HERE WAS NO PUNISHMENT GIVEN FOR SUCH A THING
. C
HIKSIKA
and the warriors did not call him a coward or even look at him with contempt. In fact, they did not look at him at all. It was as if he were painted black for a Vision Quest. They had not been able to see him during the fight, so he must not really be, and so they could not see him now. It was worse than if they had looked right at him and said, “Tecumseh, you are a coward.”

Chiksika’s war party made no campfire that night. They made their cold camp on a rise of ground north of Piqua. They had no need of fire for light because the flames of burning Piqua Town lit the sky in the south.

Still no one said anything to Tecumseh as the night wore on. They dressed their wounds and ate cold jerky and then got ready to sleep, putting two men on guard and one near the horses.

Tecumseh lay, sick in his heart, looking up at the dull red fireglow on the underside of the low clouds, and felt as if he were alone in the entire world. He was exhausted by fear and remorse. He went to sleep wondering whether he would be able to redeem himself the next day if Chiksika made another ambush, but also wondering if he would be the same again and not be brave enough to redeem himself.

When he awoke before dawn the next day, he seemed still not to exist in the warriors’ eyes. The shoulder of Chiksika’s tunic was cut open and brown with blood from his wound. The wound was like a reproach. The worst part of what Tecumseh had done was to desert his beloved brother after he had been hit. But in spite of this, there was no scorn in Chiksika’s eyes, just a look of sadness. He said to Tecumseh:

“Ride to Wapatomica Town. Tell Black Hoof of our ambush yesterday and tell him we will try to do as well today, if the Long Knives continue to come on beyond Piqua Town, and that we will keep doing it as long as they come. And that if they turn and go back toward Kain-tuck-ee now, we will follow and try to kill them one by one as they go.”

Tecumseh nodded. He suspected that he was being sent back so that the warriors would not have to depend upon a coward in battle again. This thought nearly crushed his heart. And then he asked a question that he had been thinking of last night while lying awake looking at the red clouds.

“When I tell Black Hoof what we did, shall I tell him what I did?”

“Ask not me but yourself,” said Chiksika. There seemed to be a cold distance between them. “I,” said Chiksika, “will not tell Black Hoof. These warriors … I do not think they will tell him. After all, you are only a boy.”

Tecumseh looked down. It was terrible to be called “only a boy” by someone who had the day before called him a warrior. He looked up at Chiksika’s face and said:

“Tell me truly why you send me to Wapatomica. Are you afraid I will fail again? Or are you trying to keep me from harm, as you used to do?”

“To me,” Chiksika answered, hardening himself to say the cruelest thing he had ever said to his young brother, “it seems you do well enough at keeping yourself from harm.”

Tecumseh turned and ran to his horse. He sped away without looking back, thundering through the thickets so recklessly that the bare branches whipped him as if he were racing through a gauntlet.

H
E TOLD
B
LACK
H
OOF WHAT HE HAD DONE.

The great Chalagawtha chief said nothing for a while. Of course he had much else on his mind. But finally, when no one was close by, he turned his intense dark eyes on Tecumseh and said:

“Your father and I were together the first time he was in battle. That was a long time ago, in the war when the English and the Frenchmen fought each other.” He was still for a minute, and it seemed that perhaps he had mentioned Hard Striker only to add to Tecumseh’s shame. But then Black Hoof went on, looking not at Tecumseh but at the distant treetops. “The first time the white soldiers shot at your father, he ran away.”

Tecumseh’s heart was in a tumult now. He felt even worse, as if his father’s old shame as well as his own now weighed on his shoulders. Black Hoof continued:

“You did not know that.”

“I did not know it. Chiksika never told me that.”

“No. Chiksika himself did not know it. Chiksika was not there. Chiksika had not even been born. I was there. I saw it. It saddened my heart.”

Tecumseh could only look at the ground now. But Black Hoof’s rumbling voice said:

“From that time on your father was the bravest warrior I ever knew. I suppose he became a greater warrior than he would have been if he had not run away that first time. I have seen this happen with people who ran the first time.”

Tecumseh thought on this revelation for a while. He did not know whether he would ever recover enough courage to face an enemy without fleeing. But at least he knew now that it meant a coward at first was not certain to be a coward forever. Finally Tecumseh took a deep breath and looked at Black Hoof’s craggy face and said:

“May I ask you something, Father?”

“Ask me.”

“Did
you
ever run away?”

Black Hoof took a sharp breath. Then he said, his voice deep and warm:

“If you dare to ask your chief that question, you surely have some boldness in your heart.” He was quiet for a moment, then said: “I never ran away. Most warriors never do. But … but many times my feet have run forward when my heart wanted them to run backward. No, my son, I have never run away, but I have often been scared enough. No one is without fear. Not even Chiksika. But one can stay above his fear. That is what one must do. Maybe you thought you would have no fear in your heart, and you were defeated by discovering it there.”

“I do not know what happened,” Tecumseh said truthfully. He did not mention that about his bowels and bladder.

“Listen, my son. Most of what we learn is to keep us alive. Only one thing we learn is otherwise: to be brave in war. It is not hard to forget that one thing. Only remember this: When you are in war, then you must think first of keeping the People alive, and pray that Weshemoneto will help you in that. He does not like to hear a person pray for himself. But he answers prayers that are for the People.”

T
ECUMSEH THAT WINTER WORKED QUIETLY AT KEEPING THE
People alive. Once again the Shawnees were forced to live on the small portion of their crops that the Long Knives had not destroyed and in hastily made shelters far from their own towns. They moved into the edges of Maykujay Town, and Blue Jacket’s Town, and Girty’s Town, and Wapatomica, these being the only towns that Clark had not destroyed. The family stayed in Wapatomica Town. It stood on a plateau on the west side of the Upper Mad River. Above it was a high ridge with springs and below it the bottomlands. It was a good place for a town, but it was not a good place to be now. There was little game in the vicinity of these towns. Many of the old people were starving. Many mothers were so hungry they gave poor milk to their babies. The building and repair of
wigewas
was hard because winter is the wrong season to try to strip bark from trees.

And so Tecumseh, as if trying to redeem himself for his cowardice, which he perceived to have been a kind of selfishness, now gave almost all his waking hours to hunting and snaring meat, most of which he gave to families that had no hunters to provide for them or whose hunters were sick or unlucky. And the hides from the animals he killed he gave to the old people or the weak ones, who were poorly dressed for winter or who had gaps in their shelters. A hide could patch a bark hut and keep out some of the wind. The warriors had told no one about Tecumseh’s flight from battle, so nobody knew that he was trying to atone for a sin. He had always been thoughtful toward old and weak people. Now when he would appear at the lodge of an old grandmother and give her the first venison haunch or marrow bones she had seen for days, the old woman would not say to herself, “What has come over Turtle Mother’s son?” Instead she would say, “Ah, that one has always been so good a boy!”