From Sea to Shining Sea (61 page)

But no one noticed the sneeze because at the same moment another one of the awful cannonballs smashed through the log gate and the cannon boomed and everything and everybody in the fort, alive and dead, twitched and shook once. He heard outcries of more wounded warriors and heard broken wood creaking and rending and then falling with a thud just a few feet away. Then the Americans cheered the shot and Joe Rogers could distinctly hear one voice yelp, “Yow! Gate’s down! God damn!” It was a raucous, awful, profane shout, but it sounded like music to Joe: a white man’s voice, cursing triumphantly in English. His heart squeezed at the sound of it and although he had been a good, obedient Shawnee son for more than three years, since his capture on Christmas Day of ’76, he knew when he heard it that he was not really a Shawnee but a Virginian.

Now through the crashing and howling of battle one of the chieftains was shouting an order for the warriors to gather up their wounded and flee over the back wall of the stockade and try to retreat through the tall corn to the bluff above town. Joe
Rogers gave thanks to the Christian God he had always prayed to secretly, and prayed that when they were gone he would be kept safe and alive long enough to slip out of the wreckage and make a break for the white men’s lines. That would be the dangerous part, but he had rehearsed it in his mind all the last night, since he had learned that an army of the Long Knife Chief was coming toward Piqua Town. He had not been able to plan just when or how he would slip from the Shawnee lines, but he had determined that somehow he would find or make a chance during the confusion, and when those Virginians were within hailing distance, he would rise and reveal himself and go toward them with his hands held high, telling them in English that he was one of them.

Joe Rogers was scared of the risk of this, but he had put his faith in God and grown confident that he would somehow manage to be reunited with his people. It seemed in fact so much like God’s own design that the man coming to attack Piqua was his own Cousin George, the very man Joe had been serving at the moment of his capture; to Joe Rogers in his state of mind the whole remarkable coincidence had taken on a personal aspect. It was as if George were coming after all these years to rescue Joe from the plight he had put him in, as if that had been George’s one obsessive purpose since that Christmas Day. Joe knew better, of course, but nonetheless it had seemed that way to him, and he was so anxious for the imminent reunion that he could scarcely lie still here playing dead. But he had to wait for the right moment. His deliverance was so close at hand now that he knew it would be the worst kind of stupidity to get himself shot in the back by the Shawnees just at the moment when he could cross that desperate line back to his own people.

And so he forced himself to lie still as the fleeing warriors’ moccasins beat the earth around him, even as another cannonball smashed through the palisade and shook him and showered dirt upon him. He made himself lie still by listening for George’s voice, and by imagining their smiling reunion and the feel of George’s strong handshake and hug, and by thinking of all the wondrous things he would be able to tell George—and then his own beloved family!—about life among the Shawnees.

It had been a strangely good life, almost a period of enchantment, of acceptance and belonging and warmth, just as George had used to tell him about his time among the Mingoes. Joe had come to admire the Shawnees, for their good humor and their hardiness and their incredible courage and their complex codes of honor. And his body and soul would never forget the enveloping
love of the doelike girl who had been his wife since the springtime of the present year. But he was, he knew, a Virginian. He lay listening to the uproar of rifle fire and shouting and whacking bullets, trying to pick George’s commanding voice out of the distant din. Once or twice earlier in the attack he had thought he had heard it, but maybe only because he wanted so to hear it.

He knew it was Cousin George’s army. He had been hearing the Shawnees speak with awe about a white leader called the Long Knife Chief for more than a year now, and when the chiefs of other tribes had come back from the great councils with the Long Knife at Cahokia, Joe had learned then that the English name of the terrible white chief was George Rogers Clark. Joe had heard of the capture of the Scalp-Buyer at Vincennes a year ago, and then all through the last winter and spring there had been rumors that the Long Knife might yet come and strike the Shawnees for refusing to council with him. And then this summer Joe had heard time after time of the Long Knife Chief’s ominous deeds: He had built forts at the Falls of Ohio and at the mouth of the Ohio. And when the British at Detroit and Michillimackinack had sent a thousand Lakes Indians down the Illinois River to capture Cahokia and St. Louis and Kaskaskia, they had been defeated and routed by the Long Knife Chief, whom they had not even known was there. This seemed to be a chief who never slept, who always knew where his enemies were going, and who was there waiting when they arrived. Already it was said that some tribes would not join the British to go against places where the Long Knife might be. Joe Rogers the Shawnee had shivered with pride at the sounds of these legends when he had heard them, but had known better than to say it was his relative.

And then three days ago the warning had flashed through Piqua Town that the Long Knife Chief was sweeping up through the Shawnee towns, burning them and destroying their crops, to avenge a massacre of a white men’s town on the Licking River one moon ago. Piqua had been put in a state of defense, all its women and children and old people sent away deeper into the Shawnee country for safety. It had been determined that the braves would hold Piqua for as long as it was possible, but that if defeat became fully apparent, the hidden route of escape through the bluffs would be used so that the survivors might live to fight another day.

And then this afternoon the Long Knife’s army had crossed the Mad River a mile below Piqua Town with their brass cannon,
and through the afternoon they had driven the braves back and back through wooded hills and across grain fields and gardens and finally through the town itself and into the shelter of this triangular log stockade they now were blowing apart. Already perhaps fifty to eighty braves had died, and now there was nothing for the rest to do but retreat through the bluff, and they were doing that now.

Joe Rogers, being a white man by birth and never tested before in battle against the whites, had not been sent to the outer defense. He had been in the village and then the fort all day, listening to the sounds of battle coming closer and closer. And when at last the white army had set up its lines on the slope opposite the stockade and brought forward its cannon, Joe still had not been put in a position of having to aim a gun at them. At the first cannonball’s impact, Joe had fallen to the ground with a dozen others, many of whom had not been able to rise again. And Joe had stayed down, playing dead, scarcely breathing, waiting, seeing this as the opportunity he had begun to think would not come.

Now most of the Indians were out of the stockade or going over the far wall into the cornfield; Joe peered out under his arm and saw that the only ones still near him were the dead ones. Slowly he raised his head and saw that there was no one between him and the stove-in palisade to his left. Outside the wall there was low brush and weeds. If he could get out of the stockade through that breach in the wall, he would be on the opposite side of the stockade from the fleeing Shawnees! Then he could make his way under cover close enough to call to the white troops! This was the chance he had prayed for. His Christian God still heeded his prayers.

Joe Rogers gathered his muscles like springs and then leaped into a crouching run and dove out through the hole into the weeds. The whites’ fire was still peppering the stockade, but the cannon seemed to have stopped firing. Joe crawled fast on elbows and knees through the weeds until he was well away from the stockade and then stopped and lay, panting, looking all around. Apparently no one had noticed his flight. By raising his head slightly he could now see the rise of ground from which the army had been firing. The forward slope of it was covered with the tawny forms of dead and wounded braves who had been shot during one last rush to repel the white men. And the whites, apparently beginning to realize now that no fire at all was coming from the stockade, were beginning to rise, some coming down the hill to take scalps from the fallen warriors. Now there
was no more gunfire from either side, only a lot of triumphant shouting and yodeling from the troops.

And now above those voices Joe heard it, and he knew it was true this time: there was Cousin George’s voice!

Joe rose to his knees, heart pounding, looking for George. He saw him then, saw him standing near a great warhorse, swinging a saber back over his shoulder in a summoning motion, bellowing in his deep voice for the scalp-takers to get back in ranks. In the glow after sunset there he stood, now in an indignant rage, roaring, “GET BACK HERE, DAMN YOUR EYES! Cap’ns! Round up those blood-suckin’ fools or I’ll drag ’em back myself, by their necks! BACK HERE! FALL IN! By damn, no army of mine turns mob on me! That fort could still—”

Joe felt himself swell with happiness at the sight and sound of that great, roaring relative of his, whose voice when he was in a temper could be heard clearly all over a battlefield. It was the happiest moment in Joe’s life. After these years his love and admiration of Cousin George Clark swept back into him, whole and entire, George Clark who now was coming down the slope in long strides himself, still bellowing, coming to reform his disorderly Kentuckians. His own cousin, miracle of miracles, now but a hundred yards from him and not a living Indian in sight to prevent their reunion.

Joe leaped up from his hiding place in a mad rush of joy and sprinted toward him, yelling, “COUS-IN! COUSIN! IT’S ME! IT’S ME!” It was wonderful to be yelling words in his own tongue, wonderful to be alive, wonderful to be running full tilt across a meadow slope toward the best friend he had ever had. “GEORGE! IT’S ME! JOE!”

He was too ecstatic to notice the several startled Virginians who stood up near their commander and raised their long rifles to protect him; he was too overjoyed to remember that he was dressed like a savage, and too excited to think of what he had intended to shout. All he could see was George’s face frozen before him in astonishment.

The bullets all hit Joe in the chest almost at once.

George shut his eyes and groaned. He had recognized Joe just at the instant the rifles crashed. He opened his eyes and saw his young cousin now tottering backward, face amazed, mouth still working, and groaned again. “That’s Joe. God, how—”

When he reached him, Joe was lying on his back, terrified eyes rolling, blood welling from his mouth, freckled bare chest punctured in half a dozen places with ugly, puckered holes.

George knelt beside him and slipped an arm under his shoulders and raised him enough that Joe’s dying eyes could look at him. Joe was trying to say something, but whenever he formed the first word he would have to stop and swallow blood. His eyes were glazed, then sharp, then glazed, then sharp. George felt the Rogers blood soaking hot through his sleeve. “Joe,” he said, “why didn’t you get away from ’em sooner?” He didn’t expect an answer. It was a question addressed to fate, not really to Joe. He thought now of the Rogers family, his mother’s family, that wonderful family so like his own, and of Johnny Rogers and of Uncle George, of Auntie Frances. Standing behind him and looking over his shoulders were his own men, those who had shot the oncoming figure to protect him, and they saw that the dying youth had copper hair, like their colonel’s, and they were exclaiming that it was a white man.

“What, Joe?” George groaned, hot tears running down his cheeks and off his nose as he watched his cousin work his bloody mouth.

“I … nnng … Vir … nng … Virginian …”

And then the body in George’s arms sagged down, and their reunion was over.

T
HE
WAR
WAS
OVER
AND
ALL
OF
HER
HEROES
WERE
HOME
,
ALL
except Dickie, who was still out West. Ann Rogers Clark came down the stairs slowly, paused in the hallway a moment to take two deep breaths and wipe her eyes with a kerchief, then braced herself and went toward the library, where she could hear the menfolk talking loudly. From the nursery upstairs came a child’s yelp, then Annie’s voice, and then a baby started crying. Mrs. Clark stopped and looked up. The baby’s voice dropped off to little sobs and then was still, and Sarah’s voice was softly lullabying, so Mrs. Clark went on down the hall to the library door.
She rapped with her knuckles at the open door and when they turned toward her, she said:

“Johnny’s awake now. Ye might go up and tell ’im the news. But don’t get ’im overly stirred up. And keep those voices down, if you please; th’ house is full o’ babies.” She compressed her lips, then opened them with a little smacking sound, shaking her head. “Seems this house always is.”

They got up, laying down their pipes and brandy glasses, glancing seriously at each other. They knew the meaning of her feigned gruffness. It meant Johnny was worse. Lately she had taken to disguising her anguish this way. John Clark squeezed her hand as he went past her into the hallway. George looked into her red-rimmed eyes as he went by, and frowned. Jonathan put a hand lightly on her shoulder. Edmund murmured something inaudible to her. Bill Croghan remained seated on the edge of a chair near the hearth, and she told him: “You can go up, too. Y’re one of ’is brother soldier-boys.” He rose to follow them, and for a moment the hallway was filled with broad backs, gold braid and epaulets, tromping boots, and the reek of tobacco smoke and brandy that eddied out of the library after them. “It smells like hellfire and brimstone in here,” she called at their backs. And as they went up the stairs she went into the room, fanning her hand before her face, and opened the windows. Then, blinking, holding both hands clasped before her stomach, she went aimlessly around the room for a few seconds, and finally sat down in the chair her husband had occupied. His pipe lay in a brass bowl, still smoking, and his glass of liquor was beside it.