Blood at Dawn Page 3

  Mistress Green, wrapped in a woolen blanket from either the night gear of Hardy or myself, was seated atop a fallen sycamore. She clutched the muslin sack in which Hardy toted his trail mixture of parched corn and lumpy brown sugar. Her jaws were grinding away with a seriousness that bespoke considerable hunger. My tin canteen rested against her hip on the log, wooden stopper hanging by its cord.

  “Pretty tasty, ain’t it now? You find the venison jerk, too?”

  She reached beside her feet and tossed me the longish leather bag. “I don’t believe I’ve ever been so famished,” she observed.

  I braced a leg on the sycamore, a position that allowed me to maintain a watch upriver along the narrow path of the trace. I chewed a strip of the smoke-dried meat and helped myself to some water.

  The mistress’s chewing halted. She swallowed and drank before saying, “I’m afraid I appear ungrateful without meaning to. I’m very sorry your companion was killed over me, and that you had to leave him unburied.”

  I didn’t doubt her sincerity. But mourning over Hardy wouldn’t start him breathing again or put him under the ground. And it was too late for any meaningless crying. “Can’t nothin’ help him now,” I concluded.

  She flinched at my bluntness, blue eyes softening. “He must have been a very dear friend.”

  “He was . . . that he was,” I admitted, wondering at the ease with which she understood so readily the way it had been with Hardy and me.

  I was suddenly afraid of tearing up in front of her. Locking my gaze on the trace, I hastily asked, “How’d the heathen lay their paws on yuh, anyhow?”

  She was a while answering, as if she was afraid of embarrassing herself. “I had gone into the woods to see after myself. They jumped me on my return. It was near noon, and nobody would have missed me for a spell. And given the horse and cattle lots that surround the fort, tracking after me would have been a fruitless venture, too much of a miracle for even Mr. Jacobs.”

  Relieved she had provided something else to talk about, I flashed her a brief smile. “That wouldn’t be Tap Jacobs by any chance, would it?”

  Her blue eyes sparkled. “It would be if your Mr. Jacobs is completely bald, combs his scruffy beard with his fingers every whipstitch, and can hold a pickle barrel twixt his knees without hardly trying.”

  She had described the aging border scout perfectly. “It’s the same Tap for certain. I bet he sought you out the first day he passed within a half mile of your supper fire.”

  Erin Green’s laugh was cheerful as swift water foaming around rocks in a brook. “Oh, Lordy, but didn’t he. My mama warned me your Mr. Jacobs is a hound whose nose never lifts from the scent once he sights a pretty face.”

  “Has he been too much of a bother?”

  “No, not really. Mr. Jacobs would never be insulting, ever. Sergeant Devlin wouldn’t allow such a thing.”

  I sipped more water. Apparently, there were those within St. Clair’s camp assigned to watch over Mistress Green. She was, most probably, the daughter of an officer of high rank with his family in tow, and as such, her safety would warrant the detailing of uniformed guards. Which also meant that it was only while answering the call of nature in private and not being guarded that she could have been taken captive. That quirk of fate and how it had eventually resulted in Hardy’s death brought my mind back to our present predicament. Much as I was enjoying our early-morning repast, my newly acquired charge was possibly in peril every minute till we drew up before the gates of Fort Hamilton.

  “What’s ahead of us upriver?”

  She picked her words carefully. “Dunlap Station is three miles from here. The station’s deserted, has been since last January when the settlers withdrew to North Bend on the Ohio. Beyond the station, there’s nothing but empty river bottom till we gain the fort.”

  “How far is Fort Hamilton?” I asked, wanting to confirm the distances Hardy and I had obtained in Kentucky were accurate.

  Again, Mistress Green pondered before speaking. “Our boat captain counted off nine miles from the station to the fort. But that was by water. He talked endlessly of an Injun path bordering the river along the eastern bank, where we stand, that shortened those nine miles considerably.”

  The question leapt from my mouth like an unanticipated spit. “Captain was a mighty friendly sort, I take it?”

  My nosiness perturbed her. A puffing of her cheeks preceded a lengthy sigh. “It was very hot while we were ascending the river. Sharing the cabin roof with Amos Stoddard was decidedly cooler.” Her head shook slowly. “As if I have to explain myself to you.”

  I had me a calming sigh of my own. She had tolerated my poor manners from the beginning, and I didn’t need to foster trouble for Paw with any of General St. Clair’s officers, regardless of their rank. I vowed I would henceforth abide by my mother’s teaching: It cost nothing to be a gentleman in the company of ladies, and to act otherwise diminished not only the man but also his upbringing.

  Mistress Green didn’t appear put out that no apology was forthcoming on my part. The corners of her ripe lips did twitch, howsomever, hinting at a grin, as I suggested in a quieter, more respectful tone, “If you’re through dining, I believe we best be under way.”

  She came to her feet and peered in the direction of the horses, obviously appraising the bunch of them. “If we must flee, I want as much animal as possible beneath me. Would you please switch the dun mare’s saddle to the sorrel?”

  Admiring her knack for taking advantage of what was available to her, it was a chore I did gladly. When I led the freshly saddled sorrel forward, she was standing with the blanket she had commandeered tied ’round her shoulders. “I filled the canteen at the river and split the victuals equally twixt the cloth and leather bags in the event we are separated for any reason,” she announced, gifting me with the heavier leather pouch. “I’ll tote the canteen. You’re not armed; it’s not wise to kneel over water anywheres.”

  My only wonderment at her actions regarded the blanket wrapping her upper body, but I came to appreciate that as we started north along the Miami. Thickening cloud blotted out the sun, and the breeze possessed the sharp bite common to early autumn. The day would grow no warmer, and rain was surely in the offing, rendering horseback travel pure misery if your garments became wet and the wind blew cold and constant.

  The first few drops of rain commenced falling as we drew cautiously upon the scene of the ambush the previous night . . . and Hardy’s remains. I spent a half hour scouting our surroundings before determining no Injuns were baiting a trap with the body. On my orders, Mistress Green, a flap of her makeshift blanket coat now hooding her fiery hair, retained her seat atop the sorrel and continued the watch all about.

  Hardy had been scalped and robbed of weapons and accoutrements. Some might have left him to rot on the dank earth and seen solely to their ownselves. But I wasn’t cold enough of heart for that, thank you. I rooted my arms under his limb-flopping frame and carted him to where the willows grew thin, scooped a lean hole in the sandy loam with a flat slab of stone, and covered him with layers of dirt, rock, and driftwood. It was a damn shabby grave for a damn fine friend, and despite my resolve to the contrary, I sobbed through the most of it and particularly during the prayer I mumbled over the shallow mound at the finish. I left a hunk of myself in that grave with Hardy, yet I never believed it was enough to atone for my having triggered his demise.

  A somber Erin Green acknowledged neither my blubbering nor my tearstained cheeks. At my simple statement that I would shortly be ready to proceed with our journey, she discovered an undeniable urge to eyeball the horses whose lead rope she fisted, granting me a couple of unwatched minutes. I dried my face with a sleeve, primed the pan of my rifle with fresh powder, tied a cow-knee cover over the lock, plugged the weapon’s barrel with a carved round of cork, mounted Blue, and off we went.

  It proved a wet, gray, miserable morning. The rain started and stopped, matching the fitful breeze. We forded the Blue Rock an
d stuck to the bank of the Miami the three miles to Dunlap Station. The river circled westward in a giant horseshoe bend, and we cut across the shoe’s open end, a course that brought us close by the abandoned settlement’s main gate. Weeds swayed in the empty entryway.

  The stockade itself, a partial square of cabins anchored by three blockhouses, had garnered criticism from troops assigned to garrison duty there. After observing hounds leap from stumps to the outward-sloping roofs of the individual cabins, claw upward, and jump down inside the picketed walls, alarmed officers had raised the specter of painted Shawnee doing the same. The gaps left in the picketed walls connecting the cabins and blockhouses by sloppy erection had worried officer and soldier alike.

  But for all the military protests, these supposed weaknesses hadn’t fostered the station’s abandonment. The heavily maligned stockade had withstood a full-scale Injun attack 10 January 17 and 91. It was the loss of seventy-five cattle and fifteen hundred bushels of corn outside the pickets that had forced the settlers to concede they couldn’t survive so far above the Ohio till the redstick threat was thwarted forever.

  We regained the Miami on the opposite point of the horseshoe bend. Rain soaked my hat brim and shoulders. I ignored the discomfort and forged northward at a brisk, unrelenting pace. We could offer so little defense if attacked, I risked an ambush to make the most of the daylight.

  We forded what Mistress Green said was Banklick Creek, and the river angled to the northwest. At her insistence, we angled northeast and located without undue delay the Injun trail Amos Stoddard had boasted about during her earlier boat trip. The pathway was no wider than the width of my stirrups but easy to follow since moccasin-clad feet and the hooves of reined as well as wild animals, all marching single file, had beaten its surface bare of growth.

  It was well into the afternoon before I heard another peep from my female companion. “Mr. Downer,” she called. “I must dismount and stretch my legs, and we must talk.”

  That wasn’t unreasonable, what with the horses needing a blow, too. I chose to halt when the pathway dipped through an oval glade overshot with tall grasses. Once their lead ropes were lengthened, the horses lipped at the rain-moistened shoots with vigor. The mistress walked back and forth till the stiffness from hours in the saddle no longer cramped her lower body. Then she was ready to palaver with me.

  “We should swing to the east now, soon as we see the Miami,” she proclaimed with conviction.

  “And why would that be?” I inquired, sipping water from the canteen she shared with me.

  “Captain Stoddard said his Injun trail ran afoul of bogs and thick vines hanging from trees when it met the Miami again a few miles from the fort. He claimed the fastest way there was to turn east and travel the military road the general’s army built on their march from the Ohio.”

  There wasn’t any refuting what she proposed. She had so far remembered correctly everything the captain had told her, and I wanted to gain Fort Hamilton as quickly as she did. Beyond the Injuns, in the absence of hard frosts to date, Hardy and I had spent the previous night trying to sleep while we swatted mosquitoes like mad. I shook my head and blew air, recalling Hardy’s tall complaint that the skeeters along the Miami had wings big as hawks and could bite damn near as fierce. It would be right fine to spend the evening where it was safe enough from the redsticks to let the smoke of a fire keep winged night creatures at bay.

  My headshaking misled the mistress. “You doubt my word?”

  “No, not at all,” I answered, then drew a laugh from her, repeating the story of Hardy and the mosquitoes. “And if we don’t want to be carried off in the dark by those bloody buggers,” I continued, “it’s time to hurry along. If you need to visit the woods, do so, and we’ll go hunt up General St. Clair’s road.”

  Two miles to the east we popped from the trees onto the general’s road. Fifty feet in width, the rough track had been cleared by hand axes, and tree stumps, shortened just enough to allow wagon axles to pass over them, littered the brown mud of its bed. Cut timber bridged minor watercourses and the occasional spot of low, marshy ground. For the faster travel it permitted, the whole of the road was more dangerous to a horse’s legs than Captain Stoddard’s Injun trail.

  Picking a path through and around the lurking stumps, we pushed north without exchanging words. Mistress Green, riding beside me now, stood in her stirrups occasionally, anxiously scanning the horizon. I could sense her excitement at how near she was to her home fire and the company of those who loved her, a far turnabout from a few hours ago.

  It struck me then how much I would miss her company. But we were, in truth, an unlikely pairing thrown together for a brief while by pure chance. Erin Green was the daughter of an officer and I the son of a trader supplying the army. We belonged at opposite ends of the general’s camp, and I couldn’t imagine her not having numerous suitors of greater standing and means than Ethan Downer. And even if I could screw up the necessary courage to call on her, I wasn’t in the habit of courting disappointment.

  Though the breeze held steady, the rain had fizzled out, not that it mattered much, for we were soaked through to the skin. The afternoon light was growing dull when we spied black smoke against the gray sky. The mistress thumped the sorrel’s flanks with her heels and coaxed the riding stock into a faster walk. She surged ahead of Blue and topped the swelling rise separating us from our destination.

  I knew from her sudden backward tug on the sorrel’s reins that all was not as she expected. Blue drew abreast of her, and I had no difficulty discerning what was wrong. A prairie meadow of flattened grass hundreds of acres in length and width extended from the base of the rise below us to the Miami. On the closest bank of the river squatted the massive Fort Hamilton, an irregular stockade sporting four bastions and enclosing within its log walls a barracks for a hundred soldiers and numerous storehouses.

  The meadow and the fort were as Mistress Green had anticipated. It was the emptiness of the vast meadow that caught her by surprise. Rowed tents, parked wagons, picketed horses, herded cattle, countless cooking fires, and perimeter guard details should have filled it end to end. That was, if St. Clair’s army had still been encamped in and about the fort.

  The mistress slumped in her saddle.

  “Damn it, they’re gone,” she cried. “They’re gone!”

  Chapter 3

  Early Evening, 4 October

  Tossing me the lead rope of the horse string, the mistress kicked the sorrel into a gallop, descended the slope of the rise, and raced for Fort Hamilton’s main gate, which was at the moment hard shut. I followed at a walk, marveling at the sheer size of what St. Clair’s soldiers had built. The structure before me dwarfed Dunlap Station, even Kenton’s below Limestone. Without a precise count, I guessed the doubled row of pickets forming the five walls of the irregular square, each exceeding fifteen feet in height, numbered two thousand. The sweat and toil expended to fell, trim, and drag the thick posts into position with oxen, then stand them in place in freshly dug trenches in just two weeks, numbed the mind. And all the while, still others were fetching additional logs in the same manner and laying the walls of the bastions, the barracks, and the storehouses. It seemed likely the general’s forces, exhausted as they surely had to be, were glad to return to the less arduous chore of going on the march in hopes of finding some redsticks to fight. Carrying a musket beat the wielding of an ax every day of the week.

  The gate of the fort cracked open with me still thirty yards away. Loud voices perked my ears, and I rode upon a most unusual scene. A pimply-jawed guard wearing the unadorned uniform of an infantry private was arguing with the mistress. “Don’t give me any of yer sass, Erin Green. The whole army marched this morning an’ yer maw was right behind ’em liken she an’ the rest of her kind always be.”

  The red spreading on the mistress’s cheeks matched that of her hair. “Rupert Lawson, you mind your tongue or Sergeant Devlin will cut it plumb from your miserable mouth, I swear!”
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br />   “Not anytime soon, he won’t, an’ maybe he’ll be back an’ maybe he won’t,” the private countered. “So I’ll say again, thar ain’t no need to bring any officer runnin’ to answer the fool questions of Molly Green’s daughter.”

  Gate guard and female stared like fighting bull elk preparing their next lunge at each other. There was much here I didn’t know, an antagonism twixt the two of them lingering from some past disagreement. Rupert Lawson’s neck was stiff as that of a spurned lover, and the mistress would never forgive his public sullying of her mother, whatever the cause or reason. Believing it a dispute they couldn’t settle by themselves, I intervened, but carefully. I didn’t intend to interfere with a soldier doing his duty and perhaps spend the night under arrest.

  A light jab of my heels, and Blue stepped alongside the sorrel. “Good evening, Private Lawson.”

  For the first time, he acknowledged my presence. He pivoted on his heel and squared his shoulders in my direction, musket slanted across his chest. “And who might yuh be? Kentucky militia?”

  It was a solid guess on his part. The boys from south of the Ohio joining St. Clair’s campaign were prone to dress similar to mine—flop—brimmed hat, walnut-dyed hunting frock, full-length woolen breeches, leather leggins, and center-seam moccasins, as well as weapons—either long-barreled rifle or musket. And every solitary Kentuckian despised walking if any animal with four legs was available.

  “No, I’m not militia,” I responded. “I’m Ethan Downer, and these horses are for General St. Clair’s staff.”

  The private’s lips curled in a smug grin. “Yuh wouldn’t be kin to Caleb Downer, the trader who supplied us them axes that bent up like dumplings, would yuh now?”

  I bit my tongue enough it hurt. Rupert Lawson was pushing the bounds of discourtesy to the edge of the cliff. I shifted my weight in the saddle, waiting while my flaring temper winked out. Once I had as tight a grip on it as I did on Blue’s reins, I spoke in a firm, even voice. “Private, till late last night, this young lady was held captive by the Injuns. In freeing her, I lost my best friend and six horses. I’ve already said these remaining horses are for General St. Clair’s staff, and since we’ve ridden all day in the rain to get here, perhaps you’d better summon your commanding officer.”