A Flight of Arrows (33 page)

While he made camp with Ahnyero and others—among whom he was pleased to find the Caughnawaga Louis Cook, whom he'd last seen at Oswego—Two Hawks learned the reason for this scattering. Many of Herkimer's Tryon brigade had come long distances from their farms to muster at Fort Dayton. Already worn from travel, unaccustomed to marching in the heat with heavy packs, many had fallen out and pitched camp where they halted. Only the head of the command and the main column had reached Oriska.

Uncertain if these farmer-soldiers would prove equal to the British
he'd seen at the fort—not to mention Thayendanegea's warriors—Two Hawks left Ahnyero's fire and made his way toward the militia clearing, situated across a narrow ravine. On his way he spoke to Honyery Doxtater and his wife, Two-Kettles-Together, who had made it through with old Skenandoah. He shared word of Stone Thrower, how he'd gotten inside the fort. In turn he learned the militia officers had sent runners ahead to Stanwix requesting Gansevoort send out a sortie to them if the sound of battle was heard on the morrow, and to fire the fort cannons three times when the message was received.

It was full dark before he descended the ravine, picked his way across a runlet at its foot, then climbed up through trees to the other side. No sentries challenged him.

Across the clearing, a large tent stood. Two Hawks supposed it belonged to the general over them all, Nicholas Herkimer. A few more makeshift canvases had been raised, but most of these men would sleep on the open ground.

Passing along the edge of shadow, Two Hawks studied these men slung with powder horns and shot bags, sitting in the smoke from their small fires to discourage mosquitoes. Not one dressed exactly like another. Some wore tailed coats and waistcoats, their heads topped with fine cocked hats. Many were clad in fringed shirts of rough cloth or deerskin, floppy hats stuck through with feathers, moccasins on their feet. Most were armed with muskets, a few with rifles, their belts thrust through with bayonets, hatchets, knives, and pistols besides.

The camp was subdued. No music, no singing, no laughter rang out. There was only the clank of a pot, the chop of an ax, the hiss of water on embers, low voices conversing about food or gear. Already some slept, rolled in blankets or laid out in trampled ferns.

He wasn't the only Indian come over to the neighboring camp. Some Oneidas were friends with men here or had traded with them. A few were
related through the marriages of sisters or daughters. As he would one day be, Heavenly Father willing.

Since leaving Kanowalohale, he'd tried not to think of Anna Catherine. Not too much. A warrior kept his head clear for battle. But he couldn't stop the upswell of longing to be with her, living in peace. Many branches still strewed the path to that place and time. Her father. His brother. This war. His life had become a blowdown of timber, something waiting to trip him up whichever way he turned.

He supposed that was true for all these here. Around him at the fires were men who called themselves Germans going off to fight Germans in the army of St. Leger. Men who once called themselves Englishmen going to fight other Englishmen. Oneidas going along to face Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas.

Me going to face my brother
.

Stopping short, Two Hawks reached for a nearby tree, its trunk smooth beneath his hand. Of course he'd had the thought before. He'd often hovered round it as he did these white men's fires, but until this moment he'd managed not to stare it straight on. Now all he could do was pray.

Let me find him
—
but not at the end of my gun barrel
.

August 6, 1777

Oriskany Creek

T
he sun was rising toward another sweltering day. In their camps, warriors and militia had risen and readied themselves…still no distant blast of cannon came rolling over wood and ridge. Across the ravine in the soldier camp, General Herkimer argued with his battalion colonels over what to do. Two Hawks knew it. So did everyone with ears.

Militia companies had straggled in since before dawn. Some waited on the road, ready to march. Others crowded into the clearing, within hearing of their commanding officers' rancorous words over whether to wait for the fort cannon's firing or push on regardless. Herkimer wanted to wait. Most of his colonels wanted to hurry forward.

They should send us to scout while they decide
. Two Hawks was about to voice the thought to Ahnyero when a soldier arrived to say the scout was wanted by the general. Ahnyero hurried away.

Two Hawks settled by the fire's ashes and checked the powder, shot, and flints in the bag he wore at his side. Except for the bag and his weapons, he was stripped to breechclout and moccasins. Nearly all the warriors around him were painted red or black, the colors of strength and power. Two Hawks wasn't painted. He intended more than fighting this day, more than standing between this enemy and those they threatened. Despite his father's instruction, he meant to find William, if William could be found. Whether his brother would recognize his likeness in Two Hawks's face, now his head was shaved, was doubtful. If he painted himself, there was no hope of it.

He leapt to his feet at Ahnyero's swift return. On the road, dust was stirring. The militia column had started forward. Still he blurted in surprise, “They go ahead?”

Warriors and sachems gathered around to hear the answer to that question balanced on all their tongues.

“They called that one who leads them
coward
, those colonels,” Ahnyero said, still catching his breath. “For wanting to await the signal, they all but called him traitor. Herkimer lost his temper. He bid them march.”

“He sends no scouts?” Honyery said in disbelief.

“Too many of them do not trust us, brothers. I am sad to say it. But that doesn't mean we must hang back. You,” Ahnyero said to one standing by, “come with me. And you.” He chose several more warriors. “Thayendanegea knows these hills. There will be ambush waiting. Let us keep these ones from blundering into it if we can.”

“Take me with you.” Two Hawks grabbed Ahnyero's arm before he stepped away, but Ahnyero shook his head.

“It is a bad feeling I have about this day. You stay back with these soldiers, flank them if you will, but do not come ahead.”

Two Hawks clenched his jaw, sick to his marrow of being pushed aside out of danger. Then he looked into Ahnyero's eyes and knew there would be danger for all today, no matter where they met it.

Ahnyero grasped his arm in farewell. “Listen for my voice. If there is ambush, I will not be silent about it.”

The warrior-blacksmith took up his shot bag, slung his rifle at his shoulder, and ran to join the scouts hurrying to get ahead of the militia column led by the insulted General Herkimer astride a white horse.

William had passed half a mosquito-bitten night dozing in the position he'd taken up with the rest of the company. Morning brought light enough to see
beyond the beech tree he'd leaned against and a climbing heat that already had him sweating through his coat. The uniform green of the Royal Yorkers made for decent woodland concealment, but the wool was stifling.

He washed down stale bread with a swig from his canteen, as did the rest of Watts's marksmen staggered out to either side of him along the ridgeline. On his left was young Robbie MacKay, with whom he'd been paired to fire since Sam's desertion. The lad was visibly trembling.

A corporal came by to inspect their readiness and collect knapsacks to convey to a site for safekeeping through the coming fight. William checked his flint, priming, cartridges, saw Robbie did likewise. They were perched some forty yards up a slope thickly wooded and choked with brush. Below and to the east ran a wide ravine with a shallow stream at its center. William couldn't see the road that climbed out of the ravine, ascending a ridge to the east, but knew what lay beyond that rise of land studded with hemlocks. Word had spread of the ambush conceived by Joseph Brant and the Seneca war chiefs, Cornplanter and Old Smoke. Yet another ravine lay beyond that ridge, a boggy creek at its bottom. The road from the east crossed the swampy ground on a causeway of corduroy logs, then climbed the dividing ridge, a passage no army traveling with cumbersome baggage wagons could negotiate with speed.

Before dawn, Cornplanter and Old Smoke had arrayed their Seneca warriors across both slopes of the western ravine, while Brant took his Mohawks east of the dividing ridge. Once Herkimer's regiments were over that ridge and down the other side, it was there in the western ravine, some six miles from the fort, the trap would be sprung. There the Royal Yorkers must halt the brigade's march, while Brant and his Mohawks cut off their retreat and the Senecas and rangers swarmed down upon them from both sides.

Most of the marksmen lay in wait on higher ground, while the Indians concealed themselves within the lower trees, ready to rush the rebels after the first volley of fire. William knew they were there but couldn't see
them. He'd memorized the few square yards he could see. The mottled trunk of the beech. Trampled moss and ferns around its base. The debris of beechnut shells where some small animal had made a repast. Beyond that, he was as blind as the rebels coming up the road would be should they scan the slopes to either side.

He waited, sweated, anticipating the first sign of the rebel vanguard coming into sight, heat dulling his thinking despite the quickened current of his blood. Impressions of his surroundings penetrated in fragments…the rising tension of his fellow Yorkers, reddened faces glimpsed through summer foliage; a muffled cough; a curse; the whine of mosquitoes; the drone of flies.

At some point, he realized the morning, though warming, was no longer brightening. He gazed upward through spreading branches. The overcast had thickened, darkened, though he'd heard no thunder. A murmur reached him on the still air, a voice praying: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name…”

In that singular moment, knowing he might well be drawing his last peaceful breaths on earth, it came to William with clarity and a longing that wrenched his gut; he knew what it was he wanted. A father, one who would never betray him. Maybe that father existed only in Heaven, not on earth, but he wanted to survive this so he could find it out.

Help. Please
. A pathetic prayer, but it was the best he had and
for all the love
what was taking this Herkimer so long? Had the ambuscade been detected? Were they being flanked by the rebel militia even now, about to be the ones taken unawares?

A few yards off, someone raised the very question, sharp with the unbearable stretching of nerves. Someone else told him to shut it. Then like a heralding breeze, word came rippling along their hidden ranks. A vanguard of scouts ranging ahead of the column, pausing to drink at the stream farther back along the ravine, had been taken out with silent arrows, their bodies dragged into the brush. Oneidas.

The air was heavy, still, as if the life had been sucked out of it. William gripped his musket as he strained to catch movement, some sign of Herkimer's advancing column. Eerie silence cloaked the ravine, save the faint chatter of the stream and the buzz of insects…which became the buzz of voices, swelling louder, and the tramp of feet, the clank of metal, the creak of leather.

William waited for Watts's signal.

At the popping of muskets, he nearly jumped straight into the air. Startlement erupted to his left and right, followed by bewildered questions. The rebel column wasn't yet in sight. Had the trap been sprung too soon?

Before the shots finished echoing, trilling screams filled the air. The Indians were rushing into battle. Shouts and the crack of firearms clashed. Then Captain Watts was shouting, “Forward and hold the road!” and William was out from behind the beech tree, skidding through the brush, hurtling down the slope, beside him the frightened blue of Robbie's eyes.

They burst from cover, running toward the smoke of battle where one resonant, commanding voice could be heard above the din.