7 The Wilderness Road

The army took up its march, advancing slowly and with pain. General St. Clair was borne upon a litter carried by four men, who were changed at intervals. He swore profusely, and so did his army. The scouts went ahead, and after them came the axemen, as it was necessary to cut a way through the forest for the wagons and the artillery. Behind trod the soldiers, grumbling; the volunteers as usual complaining of their food and pay, and the militia discontented with the military yoke.

Yet the forest was a noble sight. The grayness had left the air, and the ground was dry in the sunshine. The woods on this last day of October still glowed with much of Indian summer’s beauty. Beneath our feet the soil was deep, rich, and black. Game sprang up in front of us, deer rushed by, while squirrels chattered overhead on every bough. Any fool could see that it was a magnificent country worth fighting to gain or to keep. One’s spirits were bound to rise with such a prospect, and mine were no exception. Osseo and I remained with the column. Although we had received such small thanks when I went to the general’s tent that morning, my mind did not incline me to regret the experiment, at least for the present.

Captain Jasper Lee came up presently, riding a very fine horse. He asked me why I was not out with my rifle searching the woods for hostile Indians.

“General St. Clair did not choose to believe my narrative,” I answered,“and I suppose that the others take the same view of it. All of you are alike, and I do not care to make reports that nobody will listen to.”

He gave me a fierce look, but I repeat that we of the West are a very free people. Moreover, I had no mind to take impertinence from him.

“Mr. Lee,” he said, “you should remember that you are with us on tolerance.”

“General St. Clair needs all the men whom he can get,” I replied.

He did not reply, but, giving his horse a cut with the whip, rode to the head of the column.

We halted a little later for the noon rest, and when we started again General St. Clair swore with a point and vigour that I have seldom known surpassed. Sixty of the militia, taking advantage of the confusion at the dinner hour, had deserted, and were now well on their way southward and toward home. Redder than ever in the face with wrath, he instantly despatched one of our two little regular regiments in search of the deserters, against the protests of some of our officers; and, thus weakened, we continued our march toward the Indian towns on the Wabash through woods apparently as wide and pathless as the sea itself.

We heard shots late that afternoon, but it was only some of the scouts skirmishing with wandering Indians. One of our men lost his life, but an Indian was slain, and the officers seemed to think it a fair exchange. These officers, I will say, were a gallant set, brave and disciplined, but out of their element in the woods, and inclined to hold the foe too lightly. Some of the younger told me their hope of finding the savages this side of their towns, and I could only reply that our foes were evasive creatures, and quote our Western proverb, “All signs fail in dry weather,” which means that in midsummer the sight of clouds does not betoken rain, and if one saw an Indian now it did not indicate an Indian battle on the morrow; nor would it be wise to say that it did not—in truth, one could never know what the savages intended, their methods of warfare being most irregular.

Winchester was still with us, and, his turn of mind being philosophic, appeared not overmuch disturbed by his situation. He had a fine way of taking matters as they came, and concerned himself a great deal with the present, very little with the future.

“I scarce know what I ought to do, Lee,” he said to me. “My nation is at peace with these savages, and it is my business to trade for their furs. Luckily, I have done so well that I intended in any event to return to England in the spring. I expected to leave your army and go to Detroit, but I think that I shall postpone that trip until after the battle.”

While the army crept through the dark woods, Osseo said to me one day: “I go upon an errand for Lee, and perhaps I shall bring him news that he will wish to hear.” I divined his meaning at once, and I replied, “Osseo, no man ever had a better friend than I have in you.”

Then he slid away, his brown form blending with the brown of leaf and bush. In our ill-ordered camp he was not missed save by some of the old frontiersmen such as Joe Grimes, to whose questions I replied that he had gone to spy out the country, the excuse sufficing. I was sitting by the camp fire at dawn a few days later, when the figure of Osseo suddenly stood beside me as if he had risen like a mist from the earth. There was a light in his eyes, and I waited with patience, though with eagerness, until he should speak.

“I have seen the white maid,” he said, “and she is well though not happy. I was again Nokalis of the totem Cahenhisnhonen, of the tribe of the Mohawks, of the nation of the Iroquois, and I have been to the village of the Miamis, where Hoyoquim the Wyandot took the maid when he captured her, and where she is to be kept a close prisoner until after the fighting with the General-who-never-walks, when the Wyandot chieftain means to take her to his own village.”

“How does she bear it?” I asked.

“She is brave,” he replied. “What tears she had to shed she has shed, for she does not weep now, but she sits in the prison lodge, and her face is ever turned toward Kaintuckee. Hope is still in her heart, because she believes that some one will yet come to save her.”

“And who is that some one, Osseo?” I asked.

“I did not get a chance to talk with the maid and tell her that I was not Nokalis the Mohawk at all, but Osseo, a friend, and so I can not say,” he replied. “But I saw her and I know that she does not despair. I saw too that she was beautiful, and I know also that if Lee should risk his life for her she is worth the risk.”

“You spoke truth there, Osseo!” I said to myself, and again I was tempted to leave the army, take the Indian, and seek a rescue at once. But upon cold consideration it seemed so vain a plan! With every warrior alert and watching for St. Clair, it would be impossible to enter their village. No, I must wait until St. Clair struck, hoping that the blow would serve Rose Carew as well as the nation. My mind reverted also to her father. I knew that many of his plans depended upon the success of this expedition, and while he loved his daughter—of that there was no doubt—he could not wholly forget them, even when she was in captivity. I wondered too what direction his ambition would take if we were to fail, and I was sure that it would carry him into some new channel.

Late in the afternoon following Osseo’s return I heard the forest calling; in truth, it had been calling all the day, but I would not heed its voice until then; I could not now resist the feeling that my place was out there among the trees and undergrowth, looking for our enemies, and not here in the close ranks, where I was of no more use than the merest lump of a soldier pining for his New York tavern and dose of gin. So I gave the signal to Osseo, who, while he was with the army usually waited upon my initiative, and shouldering our rifles we trickled quietly away from the column and into the dense woods. There we were quickly invisible, although we could yet hear the sound of the axes as the men cleared the road for the army and the crack of the whips as the drivers brought up the wagons.

Osseo’s eyes twinkled faintly as he looked at me.

“My friend Lee would not like to be a soldier and carry only a gun,” he said. “He would be a Long Knife. He wishes to be a general and swear at the men like the General-who-never-walks, and not be a soldier and have the general swear at him. My friend Lee is wise.”

“You speak truth, Osseo,” I replied, unable to restrain a smile at his discernment and dry comment. “I would rather be an officer any day than a private, but just now I would rather be here in the woods with you, neither master nor man, than be either.”

“The General-who-never-walks,” continued Osseo, “swears more every day, and also Manito has stricken him blind. Osquesont² flashes before his eyes, but he sees it not. Manito has stricken him deaf too. Annemeekee³ is in his ears, but he hears it not. The tribes sharpen Dayanoaqua,⁴ but the General-who-never-walks knows it not.

“It is true, Osseo,” I said.

“Wabun⁵” is whispering secrets in my ears, he replied, “and I tell them to my friend Lee.”

His tone now was not only earnest but warning. Osseo himself was fit to pronounce impressive words—a warrior over six feet high, as straight as the hickory tree, and as strong; a man of broad brow with the great width between the eyes that one often sees in the Northern Indians. He was always most scrupulous about his attire. Among the whites on the border, who are rather slovenly in dress, the same care would have been called dandyism, but with him it was merely pride and self-respect.

His blanket, partially folded across his back, and made of as fine a piece of broadcloth as I ever saw, was in colour a dark reddish brown. He wore one of the Iroquois frames over his head, and from the centre of it rose the eagle feathers, the special emblem of the Iroquois. I do not think he was an Iroquois, although he spoke their dialects perfectly, and he probably wore eagle feathers as a defiance. His deerskin hunting suit was also coloured a reddish brown, and was heavy with bead ornamentation. His rifle was silver-mounted and cost a pretty penny—I ought to know, as it was a present from me—his tomahawk had a highly polished horn handle, and the hilt of his knife was silver. In short, his dress was worthy of his figure and mien, and Osseo would have compared favourably in appearance with any of the world’s great men.

“What Wabun whispers to me,” he continued, “Kabibonokka⁶” also whispers, and it roars in my ears like Baimwana,⁷ yet the General-who-never-walks will not hear.

“Come, Osseo,” I said, “let us not lament. But you and I will do the best we can.”

It required no close search now to find the Indian trails. We crossed and recrossed them at every turn, mostly those of small parties, of a half-dozen warriors or so, but in two or three instances larger bands of twenty or thirty. I saw the truth of Osseo’s metaphorical assertion that every wind brought the sound of the savages sharpening the scalping knife. But another simile also occurred to my mind: our army was like a huge and unsuspecting dragon-fly, around which many fierce little spiders were cautiously weaving a web.

“How far is it to the Miami villages, Osseo?” I asked. The Miami villages were our immediate destination.

“Lee and I could reach them in the space between two morning suns,” he replied, “but the General-who-never-walks will need ten.”

I made a calculation based upon this report, and found that the distance was about sixty miles. Ten days was a long period for our army, which, bad now, was declining in quality, and, moreover, winter was coming apace. Men with such soft bones as our city troops could not stand the fierce cold of these Northwestern forests.

We continued our circuit around the camp, meaning to return to it about halfway between midnight and sunset, but just as we were preparing for the homeward journey we crossed a new and decidedly fresh trail. We turned aside and followed it a few hundred yards, when both Osseo and I sank to the earth as if we had done so in response to some preconcerted signal.

A little more than rifle shot in front of us was a glade with a hillock in the centre. A half-dozen warriors watched at the edges of the glade, but it was not they who drew our eyes; instead, they were fastened upon a group of men standing upon the hillock.

“The war chiefs!” said Osseo. “Even now they look at the camp of the General-who-never-walks.”

A great tower of smoke rose above the trees in front of us a half mile away, marking where the army lay, and upon this smoke the eyes of the eight men who stood on the hillock were intent. It was the second time in the last few days that Osseo and I had come upon an Indian council, but the second assembly was evidently more important than the first, and we could not now creep within hearing distance.

The chiefs were of different tribes. I recognised even at the distance Hoyoquim the Wyandot, often called Black Eagle, the captor of Rose Carew, and there too was Mechecunnaqua, or, as the whites knew him, Little Turtle, the famous war chief of the Miamis, now the head chief of the whole Northwestern Confederacy, and chiefs of the Ottawas, Pottawatomiea, Delawares, Shawnees, and others, not excepting a leader of the Chippewas from the far country beyond Lake Superior. Little Turtle pointed occasionally toward the smoke of our camp fire, and so far as I could judge he was the principal speaker, as became his position at the head of the confederacy. He raised his tomahawk presently, and with it threatened the distant smoke, making the motion of a blow. All in turn did likewise. Then they stepped from the hillock and they and their guards faded away in the forest. I said to myself that the battle could not be far off, but Osseo and I returned to camp without comment to each other upon what we had seen. I did not offer a report, as I knew I was a discredited witness, but the other scouts were bringing in news of the same character, and I felt that what we had seen was not lost.

I lay down to sleep a little later, not having closed my eyes in forty-eight hours, and was soon in slumber-land. The next day was gray and wintry, a slight snow falling and the cold increasing so much before night that ice formed on the little pools of water, standing here and there in the forest, and the dead leaves fell in showers. But the rotting army still dragged its slow and painful length through the dismal forest, and the second evening thereafter encamped on the eastern bank of the Wabash River, now but a baby stream fifteen or twenty yards wide, where most of the soldiers—horse, foot, and artillery—were jammed together on a little plateau, although the militia went in camp some distance beyond the stream.

The night was wintry cold, fingers were chilled when they touched the metal of rifle or cannon, and the men shivered as they hung over the smoking fires. There had been no skirmishing between the scouts and Indian parties since morning, and the silence of desolation hung over the forest, where the leaves were still falling in showers. Never before had the army felt so lonely and so far from the haunts of men. The cold crept into the marrow of the soldiers, and the dwellers in cities looked fearfully at the solemn woods.

I had been all day, and most of the night before, in the woods seeking Indian sign—and finding plenty of it—and night being at hand, I was worn to the bone. Despite the coldness with which I was received, I made one or two additional reports to General St. Clair, which were received with but little comment, and if I needed further proof it became fully evident that he reposed much faith in his own foresight and judgment. Saying no more, I crossed the shallow river, and joined Osseo with the militia, who were in advance.

I was too tired to do scouting work that night, and, lying down near Osseo before one of the fires, I soon fell into a deep sleep.

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