That night, Little Turtle’s warriors built big bonfires on the river side of the town, then made an ambush line behind the fires. Soldiers coming to the river and seeing the fires would think that the people of the Kekionga villages were unaware of the army’s approach. With so few warriors against such a large army, Little Turtle had to make tricks, and this was to be his first trick.
Good Face, with the women and children and old people, headed north away from the towns in the evening. They led pack-horses, and every woman carried a load of food on her back, almost as much as a horse could carry. Even bone-sore old people like Tuck Horse and Flicker shouldered as much as they could bear.
That night they had to stop often to rest under autumn stars, and they looked back toward Kekionga, that place they had thought would be safe from any army. Good Face was thankful for the night silence, knowing that no shooting had started yet to endanger her beautiful husband.
Then the soft voices would come urging along the line, and they hoisted their heavy loads and moved on, in the darkness smelling the woods, smelling the horse droppings and sweat, smelling the precious corn and beans they carried.
They stopped again after the middle of the night, and it was then that the sputtering sound of gunshots and a drone of faraway voices rose in the night behind them. Good Face felt her heart race, and her mouth was dry with fear. But soon all fell silent.
They went on as daylight paled, then all that day, crossing into the Eel River valley. They stopped at dark that night. The sky in the south was full of red smoke. Town Destroyers and corn killers had again entered the country. Winter would come soon, and the shelter and crops of Kekionga were turning to ashes.
And somewhere down there, Good Face knew, either dead or hurt or in danger even at this moment, was Like Wood, the loving and handsome man who had won her with a flute song and brought her the greatest hope and pleasure she had ever known, or even imagined. She stood with her old parents, gazing at the red glow above the treetops, and it reflected in their eyes when they looked at each other.
“That army probably will keep coming on,” Tuck Horse said. “They know there are more towns up here to burn. They won’t stop coming until they are given a beating. But Little Turtle has too few warriors to give them a beating. I fear we will have to keep moving on.” He sighed. “Why was I not born in the good days, before the wapsini first put his chair on the shore of Turtle Island?”
The next morning the families moved farther along the river. When they looked back, there was always smoke billowing up.
As they moved along the trail, they saw a small force of warriors going down toward the enemy. “Wehlee heeleh!” Tuck Horse exclaimed. “Hunters have heard the shooting and are going there! May many more do so!”
The next day, as the families were moving down the Eel River path, something happened not far behind them, something they could only hear through the woods and see nothing of, but something so terrible that instead of running in fear from the noise of it, they all stopped and turned to listen in fascination.
So many guns were shooting at once that their noise rolled like thunder for a while, and then as they diminished to single bangs and flurries of shots, a shrill pulsating wail of many voices rose, so many war trills they sounded like a shrieking wind, rising and descending and rising again. Good Face looked at the craggy visage of Tuck Horse, and even though he did not say anything, she could tell that he liked the sound of it; inside their wrinkled sockets his hooded eyes were guttering like an eagle’s and his lips were drawn back in a frightening expression that could have been a snarl or a grin. The breeze was stirring his silvery hair. After listening long and standing tense, he at last opened his clenched jaws and emitted a sound like the hiss of a snake. She had never seen her old Lenapeh father look truly fierce before, and it was enough to make her shiver because she knew he was pleased with the killing going on back there.
It seemed a long time before all the banging and shrieking and yipping stopped. Then, not knowing what had come of it all, the old ones and the women and children lifted the bags and baskets of corn they had set down and resumed their way down the riverside path, talking fast and low to each other, looking back often to see if a messenger would come and explain something, or whether Long Knife riding soldiers might yet come storming down the path after them. Good Face staggered under her load, a blanket so full of corn ears that she had just been able to tie its corners together. It was heavy and awkward, always shifting its shape, the knots always digging into the flesh of her arms where she had thrust them through to sling the blanket on.
But even heavier than her load, and growing just as relentlessly heavier, was the thought of the shooting she had heard: How could anyone in it—such as her beloved husband Like Wood—not have been killed?
The evening turned cold as soon as the sun went down, but the refugees were afraid to build fires by which the Long Knife soldiers might find them. And so they huddled together in the darkness and shivered, because all of their blankets and hides were full of the corn and beans they had saved. Good Face wanted to untie her blanket, pour the corn out, and wrap herself for warmth until morning, when she could fill the blanket again. That made perfect sense to her. But she did not because if the soldiers came and they had to flee, the corn would be left on the ground. Someone later might then go hungry. Flicker had taught her that one does not do something selfish at the expense of the others. And so she shivered in the cold autumn night air and prayed for the safety of her warrior husband and all the other warriors who were back there prowling the edges of the army. She knew that Like Wood, if he still lived, was also out in the cold night without a blanket. In fact, when she last saw him, he was wearing nothing but breechcloth and leggings. And, like her and all these women, children, and elders with her, he would be very hungry. He had taken a pouch of cornmeal and maple sugar into battle with him, but that would be gone by now.
Here we are laden with food, and no way to cook, she thought.
Then a runner came. What he had to tell made the People laugh and shout. Three hundred of the Long Knife soldiers, coming this way, had been ambushed by Little Turtle and a hundred warriors. It was the battle they had heard. About seventy of the soldiers were killed and the rest fled toward the Maumee Sipu, where the main part of the army was still burning towns and crops.
Now it was deemed safe to build fires for a camp and prepare something to eat. The runner said the People should stay here, not go back toward Kekionga, because most of that large army was still there below and surely more riding soldiers would be sent out to fight. If they did, Little Turtle meant to surprise and kill more of them. This runner was a Miami, and did not know Like Wood or any Lenapeh warriors or if they were safe. A few warriors—six or seven—had been killed or badly wounded, but he did not know whether any of those had been Lenapehs.
And so again Good Face had to try to rest with that great doubt tormenting her.
The next day passed quietly. The sky in the southeast was gray with smoke, but so few guns were heard that they might well have been just hunters killing meat for the army. Some of the Eel River Miamis came up the stream bringing cooked food, and some blankets and hides, and helped the elders and children make lean-tos and brush shelters. Much of the day was spent shelling the salvaged corn, making it less bulky to carry, and the cobs were burned for fuel, while some of the girls were put to work under Flicker’s supervision to braid cord from corn shucks. It was wonderful to have cord again. It was useful at once for making shelters and for tying up carrying packs and bundles for their great loads of food.
And so, by the time night fell again, this crowded camp of refugees from Kekionga beside the Eel River had begun to feel something like a community, although much of their quiet thought and yearning was still directed southwest toward their great town, where the sky continued to glow with fire smoke, and where they had sons and brothers and fathers for whom to pray.
The sun had just lit up the yellow t
reetops the next morning when a brief sputter of distant gunshots caused the wakeful to raise their heads and listen thoughtfully. And then when the sun was less than halfway up the sky, a closer, louder storm of shooting brought all the people to their feet. It was not as close as the other battle had been, but the gunfire rolled and rattled on and on, and as before, the war cries wailed on and on.
Eventually it dwindled to silence. And then for a long time the people simply waited, the dappled fall sunlight trembling in a breeze, the clear water of the little river flowing by, and they wondered, and they prayed.
The Long Knife army was gone at last.
It had been in the Maumee country almost a week. It had worked very hard to destroy everything, and had succeeded. It burned five towns of the Miami, Shawnee, and Lenapeh. It dug up the food caches, cut down all the vast cornfields and made mountainous piles of corn and beans and vegetables, hay and fence rails, and burned them to ash and char. It looted and burned the trading store. The whole valley smoked for days afterward, and whenever a breeze blew, black and gray ashes swirled up and then drifted down.
And yet the People were fiercely proud. They felt that Little Turtle and his warriors had defeated and driven off an army ten times their number. In two ambushes they had killed almost two hundred soldiers and wounded many more. They had so frightened the Long Knife general that instead of retaliating with his main force, he turned it south and fled to the O-hi-o. It was not likely another Long Knife army would dare come here again, and it was certain that if Little Turtle ever had all his thousand warriors on hand, instead of the two hundred he had had available, no wapsi army could ever set a torch to a single Kekionga building again. Kekionga was a good place, a great Miami town. It would be rebuilt. And crops would grow even better next year because of the burned ground and the ashes.
Thirty warriors had died in driving out the army. They were mourned and buried and honored. Many lay wounded, being healed and honored by the women.
In the eye of this whirlwind of emotion, Good Face quietly thanked the Creator over and over. Her husband had not been hurt.
Tuck Horse surprised his family. He came from a meeting of chiefs and elders, some of them Midewiwin probably, and announced that it was time to leave the ashes of Kekionga and go back to the Niagara country for the winter, or longer. He said the defeat of the Long Knife army here might mean the Lenapeh could now return to their homelands, and he wanted to learn for himself whether it was so. And he had it in his mind that it would be easier to feed his family back there, the Town Destroyers having burned all the food here. Though he was too old to hunt well, he could still make chairs to sell at the trading posts, as he had in the old days. With money from chairs, he could buy replacements for some of the things the soldiers had destroyed here.
Those were all his good reasons for making such a long journey. There was another reason he did not talk about to his family, but Good Face’s husband knew it, and he told her. Little Turtle and the other leaders here needed to know what was happening in other places, and so they were sending spies out in every direction. These spies had to be people who would not arouse suspicion. An old craftsman and trader like Tuck Horse could go anywhere with his family and seem harmless. He knew Midewiwin everywhere, had wisdom and long memory, and knew many languages. He could observe and then reliably relate what he had seen, and could also carry messages. Like Wood said, “A great war chief must be like an eagle, seeing over all the land. Since he cannot go everywhere on wings and look down with his own eyes, he uses the eyes of his people and his friends who go everywhere. The eyes of your father can be trusted to see and know.”
Like Wood was lying beside her with his cheek propped on the heel of his hand, in the faint glow from the dying night fire in then-shelter, a hastily built lean-to, a temporary home so close to the charred ruins of Kekionga that the smell of ash was always strong. The Miamis had already begun rebuilding good wikwams, but the family of Tuck Horse would not need one this winter because they would be on the old trail to the east. Good Face could remember all those long travels from her girlhood, and although she was reluctant to go so far again, she was also eager to see the places of her memories: the waterfall, the hills, the long beaches.
She asked him: “Do you suppose the great Erie Water will seem as big to us now as when we crossed it as children? I have noticed that some places seem smaller when one goes back to them after a long while.”
He smiled. “A water you cannot see across will still seem just as big, I am sure. You can tell me how it will have seemed when you come back, my wife.”
For a moment she thought she had heard him wrong, then with a prickly flood of fearful sensation she rose on her elbow to search his eyes with hers. “Husband, you say you do not come with us?”
He stroked her bare shoulder. “Soldiers of the Long Knife army might yet come back to avenge our victory. The war chiefs ask that all of warrior age stay near. It is my duty as a warrior to be here if the Town Destroyers come again.”
She bit inside her lips and blinked against tears, and through her head raced notions of how to avoid such a long and far separation from this beautiful man who was her passion. “I could … I could stay here with you, then, my husband. I could build us a good wikwam to keep us warm in the winter. I should not go east anyway, where the wapsi perhaps still look for me!” His face was swimming in the tears that she could not blink away. He rolled her onto her back and hovered over her, looking down on her with tender sadness in his eyes, a trace of a smile on his lips, but slowly shaking his head.
“Your old parents cannot travel so long and hard a road without your help. And because they will be spying on the wapsituk, there will surely be times when they will need your ear for that language.”
She was shaking her head, trying not to show the weakness of her heart by sobbing aloud. “My husband, that is no reason. I hardly remember that language at all! I want to stay with my husband! My need for you …” She remembered the terrible unknowing when he was fighting the Long Knives within hearing distance of the gunfire; to be as far away as the other end of Erie while he might be fighting again to defend Kekionga, that would be more terrible an unknowing than she could bear!
But it would have to be, she realized finally. It was for the good of her old parents and for the good of the People. And so with a heart full of sadness and dread, she quit protesting. In the last glow of the campfire, he placed himself upon her and she opened herself to him with great pleasure and deep sadness.
Three days later she was in a log canoe with her old father and mother, yellow leaves spilling from the treetops in a cold autumn wind from behind them, the leaves falling to float on the clear green water, the canoe and the leaves sliding down the Maumee Sipu toward the Erie lake, her husband the warrior remaining behind while they started the long eastward journey that would separate her from her husband’s warmth for a whole winter.
And then in a few more days they were on the deck of a small French sailboat with ten other passengers, Indian and white, speeding on the wind over the vast blue water toward the far end of the lake, the great white winglike sail booming and ruffling and the ropes and wood creaking, the deck slanting underfoot, wind moaning, waves bashing. What a thing a sailboat was, such a thing as she had long ago seen afar on the horizons of this lake! What a thing a sailboat was, and how exhilarating it was to ride in—until she began feeling dizzy in her head and unstable in her belly.
From that time on she was almost always hanging over the side, clutching the wooden rail and tarred ropes, vomiting even when there was nothing to vomit, strings of slobber from her mouth curving away in the wind, to be lost in the racing foam below. Sometimes she was sprayed not just by the lake water, but by the vomit of other passengers next to her at the gunwale. Everyone was sick except Flicker and the French sailors of the boat. This time Flicker had with her none of the medicine she had given to quell the sickness in the canoes so long ago. The old woman just sat with her b
lanket hugged around her as if holding her guts in place and refused to get sick. The Frenchmen laughed and joked in their strange language and worked their sail ropes, the smell off their filthy bodies making Good Face sick again every time she thought she was getting better.
With such misery, she sailed away from her husband, and if her heart was aching, she was now too sick to notice it.
CHAPTER TEN
March 25, 1791
Wilkes-Barre
Ruth Slocum, feeling the ember of hope begin to glow again for the first time since the prisoner exchange had dimmed it two years ago, sent her sixteen-year-old son Isaac riding to fetch Giles and Will. Then she began pacing, rubbing the arthritic knuckles of one hand with the palm of the other, constantly stopping at windows to look for their return. She saw her face reflected in the pane of a cupboard, and smiled at the anxiety in it.
After a dozen years, one’d think thee’d learnt a little patience, she thought. What’s ten more minutes of them getting here, after all this eternity?
They came trotting, not galloping, she noticed, down through the stark bare hills where hardly anything had yet begun to show green. There were more houses along the river course now than trees. For a moment she remembered how her husband Jonathan had looked riding down from there—so much the way Giles looked now—but always when he had started down that slope, he emerged from woods. There were no woods anymore, and even the stumps were just decaying, misshapen lumps amid the overgrazed grasses of the slope. All the woods for miles around had been cut both for building and for charcoal-making. Even though Ebenezer could sell his anthracite coal to the forges as fast as he could mine it out, most of the smiths and forges were accustomed to using charcoal. The tarry-smelling smoke of charcoal pits was a constant miasma in the valley lately. It was not the beautiful place it had been a mere decade ago, but the important fact seemed to be that people were prospering here, and the Slocums, due to their early start, were prospering even more than most.