Long Knife (7 page)

They entered Major Clark’s room, where he dropped a towel in a basin of cold water, stripped off his shirt and began wiping his torso with the damp towel. The messenger was awed by the power and symmetry of the young frontiersman’s physique. As he toweled himself, the long muscles knotted and rippled, sharply defined by his leanness. He was deep-chested, small in the waist, with a thick, sinewy neck. Red hair lightly covered his chest and abdomen and forearms. Nell came in with two tankards while he was drying, and blushed mightily at the sight of him. Herring smirked as she went down the stairs.

“I do believe, Major, that the wench has some feelings for you.”

“Do you.” The major said only that, but a hard look that flashed in his dark eyes made the courier wish he had not made the remark. He found himself a little confused by this; the young officer seemed so affable, so sporting, hardly the sort to take offense at some harmless remark about a bawd. So Herring sipped his ale in silence for a while as Major Clark dressed in a clean linen shirt and red velvet coat which appeared to be fresh from the tailor’s. Herring took note that the only other garments that hung in the room were a long hunting coat and leggings of soft buckskin, decorated with colorful designs in quill and trimmed with fringe, and a wide-brimmed sweat-stained hat. These garments were redolent of wood smoke and old perspiration, and appeared to have been worn so long as to be permanently impressed with the shape of their owner. They imparted, somehow, an air of wildness and savagery to the clean, precisely civilized decor of this room in a Williamsburg inn.

Herring wanted to restore the amiable mood they had begun with. “Tell me,” he ventured, “what is it like out there in the Kentucky country?”

The major, buckling on his sword, paused and gazed westward out the window. After a while, he answered:

“If you can, imagine trees six feet thick, and leafage so dense overhead that the sunshine never reaches the ground. These from one horizon to the other. Can you envision oceans of cane and grass high enough to obscure a mounted man? Streams like crystal, and game so profuse that you could nearly shoot blindfolded and hit something? Earth so rich you have to jump out of the way after you plant a seed in it?”

Herring, man of the city though he was, thrilled at the thought of such abundance and at the hushed timbre of Major
Clark’s voice as he described it. The descriptions sounded like hyperbole, but the enthusiasm was genuine.

“That’s what it is like out there,” he continued. “But just now there is a bloodiness about it as would make your nape crawl. It’s a part of the day’s work to keep your scalp on your skull, and I am not exaggerating.”

He drained his tankard, took a tricorn hat from a box and put it on, then tucked a roll of papers under his arm and rushed Herring out of the room with him. “Now, then,” he said as they tromped down the stairs and out to the waiting carriage. “If the governor is going to help me tame that savagery out there, we mustn’t keep him waiting, eh?”

G
OVERNOR
H
ENRY, WIRE-FRAME SPECTACLES PUSHED UP TO REST
on the top of his head, raised his glass of port to touch the one he had poured for Major Clark. They drank, and sat down on chairs facing each other across the hearth.

“Your health is better,” said Clark.

“Much better,” said the governor, dipping his long nose into the glass, inhaling, then sipping.

“My father sends his compliments, and thanks you for your many past kindnesses.”

“Return my best wishes when you see him next,” replied Henry, who had served John Clark as a lawyer on several past occasions. “Now, I understand you have had a harrowing year since last we met, young man.”

“Any venture west of the mountains is harrowing in these times. We’ve done what we could in spite of that.”

“I’ve not heard the particulars of your journey back with the gunpowder. Only that your assemblyman Mister Jones was killed. Most regrettable!”

“Aye. Well, sir, we got the powder through, all five hundred pounds of it, and again I thank you for it. I doubt there’d be a white man alive west of the mountains by now had you not secured it for us. Anyway, with a certain amount of hardship we boated it from Pittsburgh plumb down the Ohio to Limestone. We were ambushed by Indians several times along the way, but no harm done that far. On Christmas Day, though, nigh Harrodsburg, going overland, we were set upon by another band. That was a grievous Christmas Day, indeed. John Gabriel Jones was killed, and within a few miles of home. Three others of the company, among them my cousin Joseph Rogers, were taken captive and we’ve heard no more of them.”

“Ah, that’s a sad thing.”

“That hurt me deep, sir; I had persuaded him to join our party.”

Governor Henry studied Major Clark, who was frowning into the dregs of his port, the left side of his face ruddy in the glow of the fire. The governor felt a rush of sympathy and admiration for him. Then the youth swigged the rest of the port, worked it over his tongue, swallowed, and returned his gaze intent to the governor.

“Anyhow, I organized a government for Kentucky, as I wrote you, and made military discipline for its defense. Made as my captains four of the keenest Indian fighters as ever slipped through the woods. Daniel Boone, Jim Harrod, John Todd, and Ben Logan. What men! By God, sir! But by spring, as you know, the Indians resumed their raids across the Ohio in big bands, led and outfitted by the British. Hamilton at Detroit is supplying ’em with scalping knives and paying a bounty for all the scalps and captives they can get.”

The governor nodded and stared grimly into the fire.

“Since then,” Clark continued, “it’s been pretty much one routine, defending our forts against siege, getting what food we can, chasing Indians about the woods—or being chased by them—dressing our wounded, and burying our dead; that seems to be most of our business. Them able to bear arms are spread so thin among the settlements that even the ladies sometimes have to spell them at the firing ports. Disease takes as many as the fighting, though, cooped up as they are in those stockades with their animals. And not able to get out and plant or harvest, why, you can imagine they’re on rations not fit for a rat. But get by they do, and live a life while they’re at it. You’d be astounded at some of the tales. Why, a fellow was killed and scalped one day in March, and his widow was married up a month later by a gent whose own wife had been massacred some short time previous … Boone’s leg was broken by a bullet in a raid outside Boonesboro, but a big free scout named Simon Butler—mark that name well—toted him into the fort with them at his heels …

“Now that’s the Kaintuck as it is today, and to defend it long with those few men as we have is desperate at best. If John Bowman hadn’t arrived with that company of militia you sent, I couldn’t have left to come here now. Settlers are returning back over the mountains in numbers, and that hurts us sorely.
Part of my way back this journey, I escorted a party of seventy-six, besides women and children.”

Governor Henry was nodding gravely, his lips compressed in a thin white line.

“You know as well as I do, Governor, we have to keep strong settlement out there to keep the British and their Indians off the back door of the colonies,” the frontiersman went on.

“I do. I do.”

“That country has to be kept secure.”

“That I know, too. I marvel at those that stay. But now, George, I know you, and I know you don’t come and get a man’s ear merely to lament a situation. You’re here to suggest some remedy, I presume.”

“Correct, Excellency,” said Clark with a sly grin.

“Very well. I’m receptive to hearing it. Mind you, I can make no promises. Virginia’s picking her own purse and getting naught but lint.”

“You’ve read my letter, about what my spies learned of the enemy post at Kaskaskia on the Mississippi …”

“Yes. And your somewhat incredible notion of invading it.” The governor shook his head, looking into his wineglass.

“Not so incredible as it might seem, though, precisely because
they
would think it incredible. They expect no offensive from us there, and their defense is lax. Most of its British garrison is habitually up at Detroit. Rocheblave commands the place with a collection of idlers, Creoles, and scoundrels, and they themselves are some disenchanted with the British rule. Our risk in taking it would be small, compared with the amount of mischief we could stop by doing so.”

“Go on. I am still listening.”

“Rocheblave, as the functionary for General Hamilton, gives presents and bounties to the Indians thereabouts, and incites ’em to raid our settlers in Kaintuck. And Kaskaskia has cannon to control that part of the Mississippi against any communications we might desire, and at the same time hold it open as a supply route for the British at Detroit and the Wabash posts …”

Governor Henry raised his hand. “One moment. I respect your appraisal, both of Kaskaskia’s importance, and of its vulnerability. But my doubts arise from our own circumstance. Such an expedition would require—what? Seven hundred? A thousand men?”

“Five hundred would suffice, I think. At the very least.”

“And how much provision? How much artillery? How many
boats? Horses? Perhaps we have all got unreasonably encouraged about the war, since Saratoga. You know, I presume, that Virginia is hard pressed—nay, unable—to spare men or goods, even
shoes
, for Washington, who’s wintering at a place in Pennsylvania called Valley Forge. Why, his own army is starving and naked. As I see it, moving against a fort no one ever heard of, nearly a thousand miles away, would require not only more men and matériel than we could justify, but more than we
have.”

“But to capture that country with a small force now would cost a fraction of its next year’s defense if we don’t.”

“I wonder if you heard me,” Governor Henry said. “It’s not that I don’t like your plan. It is simply not possible for Virginia to provide for it. The Assembly would never authorize the diversion of such a force.”

The frontiersman sat back in his chair for a moment, and the governor imagined he could actually see a rapid series of calculations pass behind the glittering dark blue eyes.

“That being so,” said Clark, suddenly leaning forward in earnest again, “militia should be raised just for the duration of such a campaign. They should be woodsmen for the most part. Hunters. Swift and quiet. It requires little to equip such a man for a campaign of, say, forty days or thereabouts. That, sir, with a few boats and some ammunition, would be enough, and it would not draw off much from your eastern war here. As for the Assembly, they need only be told that it’s for the defense of Kentucky, not for an offensive so far afield. For that matter,” he added, “I’d fear for the secrecy of any mission that had to be voted through a legislative body.”

The governor nodded at the astuteness of the remark. He sat now leaning forward, an elbow on his thigh, chin in his left hand, index finger laid over his mouth and the end of his nose, tapping one foot on the floor, and stared with his ever-fierce eyes at this audacious youth. Three words Clark had said kept sounding in his head.
Woodsmen. Swift. Quiet
. The governor realized that Clark was talking about warfare in the Indian fashion. And as he looked at the young man’s hard, lean form and eagle’s visage, he imagined a long file of such tall men in buckskin slipping silently through wilderness shadows, all their provisions on their backs, long rifles at their sides. The governor got up from his chair suddenly and began to pace, head forward, lips pursed, hands clasped behind his back.

For a long time Governor Henry had been encouraging General Hand, the commander at Fort Pitt, to launch an offensive
westward. Such an expedition, if done in the orthodox manner, would be ponderous, with cannon, with baggage convoys, with livestock led along to be slaughtered for meat … A slow affair, costly, almost impossible to do in secrecy … But this, now …
Woodsmen. Swift. Quiet
.

The governor turned back toward the hearth, and rubbed his hands before the fire. “George,” he said. “Have some more port. Then let us spread your maps on the table here. I should like to be made familiar with your whole conception before we broach it to Tom Jefferson and the others.”

Clark rose, lithe as a panther, smiling but careful not to seem exuberant. Good, he thought. And Jefferson will see it my way, I am sure.

He knew both of them were thinking of those lands above the Ohio, originally Virginia grant lands left under British control by the French and Indian War.

They’ll agree to any campaign which might strengthen our claim to that, he thought. “Thank you, Excellency,” he said, tipping the decanter over his glass. “Let me show you what I have in mind …”

G
IVING HIS CLOAK TO A SERVANT AT THE DOOR OF THE GOVERNOR’S
residence, George was ushered into the drawing room. He was surprised to see there all four of the men who had carried his appeal to the Privy Council. He had met frequently and in secret with one or two of them at a time since his first discussion with Governor Henry almost a month earlier. Now, they were all here gathered around the sideboard and there was an atmosphere of subdued excitement in the room. They all stopped talking and turned cheerfully to him with raised glasses. Jefferson, his boyhood neighbor, immediately proposed the toast.

“Gentlemen! To Virginia’s westward blade!”

“Well said!” cried George Mason, eyes twinkling as usual at the sound of a good phrase.

“To Colonel George Rogers Clark,” said George Wythe. “May his name become the bane of Henry Hamilton.”

George laughed, and feigned surprise. As he had expected, then, it obviously had been approved. “What is that ’Colonel’?” he said, as he accepted a glass and their handshakes.

“Why, George,” said Governor Henry, a smug expression on his face, “who else should lead this expedition but its original advocate? The colonelcy comes with your orders.”