From Sea to Shining Sea (29 page)

Butler was two inches bigger in every dimension than even George. And he was handsome, though in a coarser way, with a jutting square chin, a long, bent-down nose that almost touched his lip, thick auburn hair, and skin so creased and permanently darkened by exposure that it looked like bootleather.

George introduced his men to Butler, then, while Butler was gutting the dead buck, explained the situation: the long-awaited gunpowder hidden at Limestone, the pursuing Shawnees. He
told Butler that four of his men, including his cousin Joe Rogers and Assemblyman Jones, had been too fatigued to keep up and had been left to rest at an abandoned blockhouse on the east fork of the Kentuck River while George and these two had continued on this way to get help from Harrod’s Town.

“This meat’s for Harrod’s Town,” Butler said, hoisting the eviscerated animal across his shoulders and tying its front and hind feet together in front of him. “I’ll come with ye.” He led them off in a southerly direction, and even though the buck he carried must have weighed nearly two hundred pounds, the other three men almost had to run to keep up with him.

J
OSEPH
R
OGERS FELT HE WAS CAUGHT IN A WHIRLWIND IN
the wilderness this Christmas Day. He was riding fast up the Licking River bank with eleven other armed horsemen. They were heading back up toward Limestone, with five pack horses to fetch the hidden gunpowder. Seven men had shown up at the blockhouse the day before, a hunting party led by the settler John Todd. Assemblyman Jones had talked them into going up for the cached powder. And now the band was thundering through the woods toward the Ohio, the cold wind making their eyes water, bare twigs whipping their frozen ears and cheeks as they plunged through thickets. Cousin George was going to be pleasantly surprised when this group showed up at Harrod’s Town with the powder; George was probably just now down there trying to organize a pack train. They’d likely meet on the trail someplace, those going north for the powder and these already coming down with it. A great Christmas gift for Kaintuck, and Joe Rogers was delighted to think that he would be one of the bearers. Meanwhile, it was all he could do to stay on the galloping horse in these woods, hanging on its back like a burr, his heart in his throat. He had, after all, come for adventure, and it was adventure he was—

The gray woods ahead suddenly sputtered orange sparks and puffed smoke. The horses reared, whinnying, stumbling, falling. The last thing Joe Rogers saw before his horse fell sideways was John Gabriel Jones pitching out of his saddle, blood spurting through the smashed left lens of his spectacles.

Joe thrashed in the snow and dead leaves, trying to get his right leg out from under the weight of his horse. His rifle had fallen out of his reach. He unsheathed his knife. Ahead, howling Indians came running through the gunsmoke. Around him lay struggling horses and groaning white men; behind him, the rest of John Todd’s men were galloping desperately back out of the
ambush, shouting curses and confused commands. Joe slashed left and right with his knife as two painted Indians loomed over him. Ruthless strong arms pinioned him to the ground and tore the knife from his hand. Elbows and palms smashed against his nose and eyes. He was dragged from under the horse, yelping in pain and fury. Yelling and running sounds swirled around him. Hoofbeats were fading into the distance. More blows made his ears ring and his brain flash, and treetops tilted against the sky. His clothing was being cut and torn from him and then his wrists were being bound, cruelly tight, behind his back. He blinked a curtain of flowing blood out of his eyes and saw a kneeling warrior slicing the scalp off of Assemblyman Jones.

The next thing Joe Rogers was aware of was that he was very cold, naked, sitting backward astride a trotting horse, his feet tied under it to keep him from jumping or falling off. On the next horse he saw the white backside of another prisoner. The horses were being led swiftly through the snowy woods, by a file of what seemed to be about forty exuberant braves with painted faces.

Joe Rogers felt like the sorriest excuse for an adventurer who had ever lived. He thought of the promises Cousin George had had to make to his father.

It was Christmas Day and Joe Rogers was sure it would be his last day.

G
EORGE, WITH
S
IMON
B
UTLER AND A LARGE MOUNTED
party from Harrod’s Town, rode up toward Limestone to get the hidden ammunition. On their way they met John Todd and the bandaged survivors of the Christmas Day ambush. Over a horse’s back hung the mutilated bodies of John Gabriel Jones and one of Todd’s men, named Graden. George sat listening to Todd’s report of the ambush and the ensuing fight with knives and tomahawks and rifles used as clubs, and then the escape of these few.

“And my cousin Joe,” he interrupted. “Where’s he?”

“We couldn’t find ’im. Just some of his clothes.” Todd’s gaze dropped.

George worked his jaw muscles mightily. He was seeing Joe’s cheerful, round face and his fair Rogers hair. He remembered the guarantee he had given Uncle George. Then he made his eyelids hard, and said, “Pray those Shawnee haven’t wrung out of ’em anything about that powder. Let’s go look.”

All the way up toward the Ohio he had to make himself stop seeing images of Joe being tortured in the ways he knew Shawnees did such things.

The powder was all there where they had buried it. They
loaded the precious kegs one by one onto the pack horses, while Simon Butler stood at the top of the cliff watching for Indians. Jim Harrod rode alongside George as the last keg was being loaded. He put a big hand on George’s shoulder. Harrod’s eyes were glinting. “Boy,” Harrod said, “this stuff’s the salvation o’ Kentuck. Thankee.” His hand tightened. “Thankee,” he said again, and then rode off.

T
HERE WAS JUBILATION IN
H
ARROD’S
T
OWN WHEN THE POWDER
was brought in. Harrod made a speech and ordered a barrel of whiskey opened. George supervised the division of the powder supply among the few remaining settlements. Soon afterward, a courier came from Fort Pitt. Harrod assembled the townspeople for another meeting. He stood George up beside him and said:

“This word came today. The Assembly declared Mister Henderson’s land company illegal. They made Kentuck a county.” The crowd of red-nosed, muddy-footed listeners in the room began to grin and buzz. Harrod held up his hand. “That means,” he went on, “we got power to have a government, and raise a militia for defense. And,” he added, throwing a heavy arm over George’s shoulders, “you folks all know Mister Clark here, our assemblyman. You’ll be glad to know he’s a major now as well, and he’s in command of the Kentuck militia. And his headquarters will be right here in my town. I don’t know about you folk, but that makes me feel god damned good!”

The room shook with yells and whistles and stomping, and the settlement that night consumed another barrel of whiskey. And George Rogers Clark, just lately turned twenty-four, came to be called not just Assemblyman Clark and Major Clark, but the Father of Kentucky.

That, George thought, looking at the handbill, won’t apply to
many. Those who are still here aren’t the deserting sort. But this should discourage any who might.

There weren’t many still in Kentuck. The settlements of Leesburg—which George had laid out, it seemed now, so long ago—and Danville, and McClelland’s and Hinkson’s stations, had been abandoned. Even brave Benjamin Logan had closed his little fort and had brought his folk—about twenty men and their families—to Harrod’s Town.

Now there were only two settlements still occupied in all of Kentuck: Harrod’s Town and Boonesboro, fort towns within twenty miles of each other on the Kentuck River. Between them they could muster barely a hundred fighting men, three-quarters of whom manned the bigger and stronger fort at Harrod’s Town. The whole population of the new Virginia County of Kentuck had been reduced to about three or four hundred stubborn souls. There were more women, children, sick, and wounded in the two settlements than there were able-bodied men. All these had to be fed, but almost any venture outside the palisades for meat or corn resulted in more dead and wounded defenders. Cattle and pigs the Indians had not yet killed or stolen were brought inside the walls, where they made filth and added to the crowding.

Thus the year 1777 had opened. Kentuck was overrun with larger bands of warriors, better led and equipped than they ever had been. They had good English guns and plentiful English ammunition, warm blankets of English wool, and scalping knives of English steel. They left printed English handbills at the sites of their attacks: leaflets printed at Detroit, offering reconciliation and security to any who would abandon the Rebel heresy and come to live as good, loyal subjects in British Canada. The Indians were being paid handsomely for scalps and prisoners taken west of the Alleghenies. It was terribly plain that Kentuck was now the Revolution’s western front, and that the British meant to sweep all the settlers out of the western lands. In a short time they had driven thousands back over the mountains and forced the rest into these two little fortified settlements. The new county was under siege, and Major George Rogers Clark found himself in charge of the hopeless task of holding it. Simon Butler came in from a patrol one day with the news that he had seen Black Fish, one of the most able of all Shawnee warrior chiefs, encamped near the Ohio with a very large body of braves. Now that the smaller bands had scoured the countryside of isolated families and small outposts, it was almost certain that they were being combined into a force of several hundred, which
Black Fish would throw upon these last two islands of defense: Harrod’s Town and Boonesboro.

To prepare for a siege, George led a heavily armed company of two dozen riders, with pack horses, on a week-long sweep through the abandoned settlements, to forage corn and anything else edible that might have been left behind, as well as flax and hemp. They rode hard and fast through the cold and rainy weather, and found that there was very little the Indians had not looted already. Indian signs were everywhere among the bleak and sodden hills and valleys.

The riders got back to Harrod’s Town on the eighteenth of March. They were scarcely inside the gates before the Shawnee horde rushed the fort from all sides.

They came howling and yipping like wolves out of the woods and across the clearing, sprinting toward the palisades, diving behind stumps for cover, peppering the stockade walls with musketballs, sprinting and diving again. They were using covering fire in an intelligent way to get across the open ground and close to the fort, and were shooting as if they had unlimited ammunition. George barely had time to form a defense.

Inside the compound was pandemonium. Panicky livestock milled in the mud and manure, getting in the way of the riflemen. George, racing from one blockhouse to another, skidded on one steaming-fresh cowpat and almost fell, then was nearly bowled over by a squealing, zigzagging sow. “Harrod!” he bellowed. “Get these infernal animals penned up! I can’t fight Indians and livestock too!” Harrod dispatched a herd of boys to herd the animals, and for a few more minutes, until they had accomplished the roundup, the commotion was twice as bad: the
whack-whack
of lead hitting the logs, the ceaseless yipping and gunfire from the Indians outside, the squealing and lowing and neighing of animals and shouting of riflemen and the yelping and wailing of women and children, the shrieking of terrified babies from inside the cabins, the whisper of Indian bullets overhead, the fluttering rush of fire arrows arcing toward the fort, the cracking
thuds
of the defenders’ rifles, the dense, eye-stinging smoke of gunpowder and burning oak.

The defenders were shooting well, though; George had organized them into squads that took turns firing from the portholes and reloading, while women hurried from hearthside to gun ports, fetching hot lead in skillets, and the Shawnees were unable to reach the walls yet through such steady and accurate fire.

The battle had held this way for about an hour, under a fast-moving cover of darkening clouds, when a stinging, drenching
downpour of cold rain suddenly came hissing across the clearing. It extinguished a stubborn roof fire. The Indians paused where they lay, and their firing slacked off. In the distance near the edge of the woods, George saw a chief on a black horse riding the periphery, yelling in a voice powerful and clear even at this distance of two hundred rain-filtered yards, calling back his warriors. That, George was sure, was Black Fish—obviously a foe to be reckoned with.

And after another five minutes there was not a live Indian within sight of Harrod’s Town. The Shawnees in withdrawing had gotten all their wounded away.

The only white casualty of the fray was a married man, Hugh Wilson, who left the fort too soon after the battle. He was killed and scalped a half-mile from the stockade when he went out before nightfall to scrounge for Indian souvenirs.

T
HE BITTER RAIN THAT HAD CURTAILED
B
LACK
F
ISH’S ATTACK
continued for ten days, becoming as much a curse as it had been a blessing. The ground inside the palisades was a chilly, stinking, churned, knee-deep soup of mud and animal waste and human excrement. It was constantly being tracked into the buildings. There was a damp chill in every room, firewood being wet and scarce, and everyone was sniffling and shivering. Many of the children lay all day wrapped in damp bedding, feverish and chilling by turns, and everyone was weak from dysentery brought on by bad drinking water, musty corn, and tainted, half-cooked pork fat. Even such a crack hunter as Butler would come in empty-handed most days; Black Fish’s braves, still roaming the vicinity of Boonesboro and Harrod’s Town, were killing whatever game had not been driven out by flooding rivers.