Panther in the Sky (60 page)

“Woman, you chose me as your husband. I have tried to be a good husband. I have never hurt you, even when you were so insolent that another man would have beaten you. Our People need a women’s chief, but you are too selfish to serve them. For a long time you have shown that your heart is not with mine. Now you have shown me that you want to hurt me.” He paused, to let her deny this if she would. She simply glared, her lips drawn, and tried to shrug off his hands. He let her loose and stepped back. “This being so,” he went on, “I will spare us any more pain and anger. I give you whatever you want from this house. You are free to go. Since I am not the husband you want, I am not your husband.” And, with a long sigh both of disappointment and relief, he said, “I will still provide for our little boy. If you grow even too lazy to tend to him, I will put him in my sister’s care.” He stood staring at her firmly, showing neither his anger nor his regret. Her angry expression was dissolving into disbelief, as if she had thought he would take any abuse she gave and now had learned, too late, that she had pushed him beyond the limit. He said, “Tomorrow I will load horses for you and have someone ride with you to your Peckuwes on the Auglaize. You may explain this to people in your own way, but be truthful. As for me, I will not speak of it to anyone. It is just one of those lessons one learns as he makes the round of his lifetime.
We-pe-the,”
he said.

Go.

H
ERE IT STOOD
, T
ECUMSEH THOUGHT, STOPPING HIS HORSE
among the weeds and sumac and berry brambles and looking around, then down at the mound of ashes and blackened stones. Exactly here.

He dismounted among the scarlet leaves and dry weed stalks, his rifle in the crook of his arm, and knelt at the old fire-ring where he had warmed himself so many hundreds of cold nights in his boyhood. There was nothing left of the bark or poles of his mother’s lodge. They had long since rotted away into the ground. The lodge was whole and intact in his memory, every detail of it, but it did not exist here anymore. The air was hazy with woodsmoke, but no longer from the cookfires of old Chillicothe. The white farmers in this beautiful valley used fire to burn slash and to kill the big trees as they cleared land for their farms. In the distance Tecumseh could hear an axe chopping, and its echoes returned from the bluff beside the river. Years of rains had dissolved much of the ash in the old fire-ring and washed it down.

He picked up a stained, blackened shard, and he could remember the bowl it once had been, from which he had eaten a thousand times. And here was a piece of stag horn his mother had used to drive with a mallet to split firewood. There, where the little boys had slept, was pale bone: a copperhead’s skull that Loud Noise had found, treasured for years, then lost. It was packed full of dirt. Probably it had been pressed into the ground under the bedding long ago, then slowly uncovered again by rains after the
wigewa
rotted away. Tecumseh smiled wistfully, remembering how Loud Noise had cried and cried after its disappearance. It had been one of his shaman toys. I shall return it to him, he thought, palming it. Then he stiffened.

Someone was behind him. He heard leggings brushing through weeds. It would be a white man, of course. His nerves grew taut, and he prepared himself to move fast.

Turning his head slightly, he caught the figure in the corner of his eye: a man in a hat, perhaps thirty paces away. Pretending not to have seen him yet, Tecumseh cocked the hammer of his flintlock, easing it and muffling it with his hand. He calculated that if he whirled to his left as he rose, his horse would be between him and the white man. He tensed to jump up. But at that moment the man’s deep voice spoke: “Hello?”

The tone of the voice was pleasant, and Tecumseh knew that was one of the friendly words of the white man’s tongue. He paused, then stood up instead of jumping up, but when he turned, his rifle barrel was aimed at the man.

But only for an instant. The man held a rifle, too, but it was cradled in the crook of his left arm, and he was holding his right hand up, palm forward, the sign that he would not strike. Tecumseh uncocked his rifle, lowered the muzzle, and looked at the man, who was big and solid, a man in his prime years, with a rugged brown face. He was somebody Tecumseh had seen before, he was sure of that, someone he had seen long ago. If the man had been a red man, he might well have been a chief; there was something unusually strong and calm and wise about his face. This man did not look like Boone; his face was more round, chin more pointed, but there was something about him that seemed like Boone. He and Tecumseh looked at each other for nearly a full minute, and in that time Tecumseh put the face where he had first seen it: one of the scouts of Clark, riding past the ambush place, on the day when Tecumseh the boy had run from his first battle. The memory of that awful day whirled through his mind,
and he was surprised that he remembered a face from a moment like that.

Now the white man began moving his hands for a greeting in sign language. But Tecumseh said, “I know your tongue.”

“Ah!” The man’s face brightened with a strong, gap-toothed smile. Then he came to Tecumseh and extended his right hand. Tecumseh did not take it and still showed nothing in his face. The white man lowered his hand, but despite this rebuff kept a pleasant expression and said, “My name is Galloway.” Then he raised his hand again, to sweep it over a part of the overgrowth that had once been Chillicothe, and said, “This is my land.”

“Ga-lo-weh,” Tecumseh said. Then he pointed over the same field. “My name is Tecumseh. This is
my
land.” And he smiled, his teeth a startling white in his russet face. It was a brilliant smile, but the eyes were not smiling. Though this white man made an admirable impression and seemed unafraid, he was, after all, a white man, specifically one of the old invaders, and he had been audacious enough to call the old Shawnee homesite
his
land. He could not have said a worse thing to Tecumseh at any time, and particularly now, when Tecumseh had just been revisiting the old town in his soul.

Perhaps the man realized it now; his eyes fell for an instant, and he bowed his head slightly. He said, “I am sorry, Tecumseh.” The man looked him in the eyes, then let his gaze wander over the field. “It was a beautiful place for a town, a beautiful town. I’m sure you were sad to leave it. I came back because I had never seen a better place.”

Tecumseh looked hard into the man’s eyes. “You saw Chillicothe sometime before.”

The man sighed, and there was long remembering in his eyes as he looked. Then he said, “Do you know the name of Clark?” He saw the Indian’s eyes flash, the single curt nod. Tecumseh picked up the explanation and finished it:

“You were one of the scouts in front of Clark.”

The man’s blue eyes widened in surprise. “Yes. In eighty-two, the second time he came here. How did you know?”

“Once you rode past my gun. I could have shot.”

“Thank the Lord ye didn’t!” He was still for a moment, then said, “Your people had left the town burning.”

“Yes. Cata-he-cassa.”

“Cata-he-cassa?”

“Black Hoof. Was chief in that time. Said burn towns.” Tecumseh had not spoken the white man’s tongue for several years,
since Big Fish had left, and it was hard to remember some ways of saying things. Now the white man replied:

“Black Hoof. Yes. He is still your chief, isn’t he?”

“Not my chief. For some Shawnee, Black Hoof is chief. For the others …”He touched himself on the chest. “Tecumseh chief.”

“Ah, I see,” the white man said, obviously intrigued by this statement. “Then you don’t live at Wapakoneta?”

“That way, far,” Tecumseh said, pointing west. Then he decided he was telling more than he needed to tell this white man.

“Well, then,” Galloway said, “if you came a long way, you might be hungry? Thirsty? My house is over yonder.” He pointed toward the yellowing woods, toward the river. The axe was still striking wood there. “Would you come to eat with my family?”

Tecumseh hesitated. It was hard not think that he was talking with an enemy, and the enemy was inviting him to come into his lodge. But finally he said, “Tecumseh might. When will Ga-lo-weh’s family eat?”

A smile spread on the white man’s face. “Before the sun goes down. You’ll hear a bell.”

“Bell?” Tecumseh remembered bells, little brass or bronze or iron bells the traders sold, to hang on horses’ necks or on dancers’ legs.

“I’ll ring a bell to call my sons in from work, and then you come, if you will. I’ll be proud to have you at table. I’ll be proud to have you meet my family.” He paused. “If your family’s with you, bring them.”

“No family of Tecumseh.” With a twinge of remorse, he thought of She-Is-Favored and the baby Cat Pouncing. But he did not mention them.

“Please do come,” Galloway said, and he extended his hand again.

This time Tecumseh took it, and in spite of himself he liked its warmth and strength.

F
OR THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON
, T
ECUMSEH HAD SAT
among the trees on the riverside, studying the house of the man called Ga-lo-weh. It was a strong house of thick, hewn logs, two stories high. The house stood a few hundred paces from the river, in a clearing studded with tree stumps. Tecumseh had seen a woman come out of the house once and carry a pail inside. He had seen a tall, muscular boy come in from a field south of the house, carrying an axe. The boy had put the axe down. Then he
had gone down the path to the river’s edge and washed himself and returned to the house and gone inside. Two or three times a little yellow-haired girl of about six or seven years had come down from the house to fetch water. One of those times she had been singing, and Tecumseh had heard her voice faintly over the distance. Tecumseh had watched the house so carefully because he was having a very hard time deciding what to do about Ga-lo-weh’s invitation.

Now the man came in from somewhere. He too went to the river’s edge and washed his face and arms. Then he went up into the house, and after a while he came back out and put his hand under the iron bell and made it clang. The noise startled Tecumseh and hurt his ears. It did not sound like the little bells of the traders. It had a loud clang, which rang on in the ears after every stroke. Tecumseh winced at its harsh noise. But he could understand the use of such a strong iron voice. Surely it could be heard for miles.

Before long, then, three more boys came in from the distant fields, carrying tools. The youngest of them seemed no more than ten, but he looked as if he too had been working very hard. On a breeze Tecumseh could smell meat cooking.

All the afternoon, Tecumseh had been thinking that he should not go and eat with the white people, who were here, wrongly to Tecumseh’s mind, on Shawnee land. In earlier days, in the south with the Cherokees, he had watched families from cover like this, and sometimes he had shot the men and boys, and then with the warriors he had gone down and killed their cattle and taken their horses, and set fire to their houses, and tied the terrified women up and taken them to the Cherokee towns. It was strange to be watching them like this and not attacking. These people were intruders not on the distant lands of his Cherokee brothers, but on the very land where his own town had stood. This very man had been one of the scouts for the dreaded Long Knife Clark. This man had had a part in the destruction of Chillicothe and Piqua. Tecumseh was now the chief of the Shawnees who were still hostile to the Long Knives, and he wondered why he even considered going to their house to eat. And yet …

And yet, now for the first time in many years, the smell of cooking and the sounds of family voices, singing and talking, drifted over the vacancy where Chillicothe had been. This man and his family were making lives and foods grow here. This man Ga-lo-weh seemed somehow to believe that he had a right to be
here and thus was not doing wrong in his own mind. It was therefore hard to blame him as a man.

Now the man appeared in the doorway of the house, his face ruddy in the late afternoon sunlight, one hand on either side of the jamb, looking around slowly. Tecumseh knew the man was looking for him. The man really was expecting him to come.

After a while the man shook his head and went back into the darkness of the doorway. Tecumseh withdrew to the thicket where he had tethered his horse and swung onto its back. He kneed the animal and rode westward into the woods, away from the log house, relieved that he had not gone there but for some reason a little sad, a little lonely, even.

He was not far into the woods when he heard the bell again.

And he knew that the man Ga-lo-weh had rung it for him.

Tecumseh reined in his horse. He gave a little puff of air out through his nostrils, both a sigh and a voiceless laugh, and shook his head.

Then, to his own surprise, he turned the horse and rode back toward the log house.

T
HE WHITE WOMAN AND BOYS AT FIRST WERE WIDE-EYED
with awe and seemed frightened. They hung back behind Ga-lo-weh as he told Tecumseh their names. The oldest son was named George, after his grandfather, the second James, after his father, the third William, and the fourth Samuel, after other relatives, and the yellow-haired girl was named Rebekah, after her own mother. She was missing some front teeth. Except for her father, the girl was the only one of the family who did not seem to be afraid of Tecumseh. She simply stared at him, her sky-colored eyes full of admiration. Tecumseh repeated each name and smiled as the introductions were made.

James Galloway seemed very proud to have brought a genuine Shawnee chief home to supper. He was making quite an impression on his family. They had seen Indians before, of course. Formerly from Pennsylvania, they had settled in Kentucky during the war. They had never had a chief as a guest, however, nor seen one who gave such a pleasing impression or one of such graceful power. His tunic and leggings were of clean, soft, fringed deerskin. His moccasins and the edging of his breechcloth were decorated with delicate quillwork in red and white. These garments had assumed the shape of his physique, so the depth of his chest and muscularity of his shoulders were very evident to these people who did their work by muscle. Now just a little over thirty,
Tecumseh was all force and dignity. His hair, unbraided, parted in the middle, raven black, hung to his shoulders. Around his head he wore a red silk band, on whose left side was attached a swiveling bird-bone socket into which a single eagle feather had been inserted. In the septum of his nose was a small silver ring from which hung three tiny silver crosses; to this little piece of jewelry the family’s eyes kept straying. In his simple but beautiful garments, with his erect posture and candid gaze, Tecumseh looked to these people as graceful and elegant as a lord. James Galloway’s father had been Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly, so he and his wife were familiar with fancy and important men, but no one in their memory, in velvet or lace, had so drawn the eye. Except for a crooked thigh that made him look a little bow-legged, this Shawnee was perhaps the most beautiful specimen of a man the family had ever beheld. And there also hung about him the aura of the dangerous savage. Sheath knife and blood-darkened war club were part of his costume. He was of another world, heathen and frightening.