Listen, the Drum!: A Novel of Washington's First Command. Robert Edmond Alter
Washington offered his hand to Chief. “Chief of Nothing, I wish you my best.”
Chief nodded eagerly. “Fine,” he said, “fine. Any time ’tall!”
Shad and Matt waved a final time as Gist, the major and Half King vanished into the forest. Matt shouldered his musket with a sigh.
“He’s a fine man. Wonder if we’ll see him again?”
Shad shook his head. “Tain’t likely. Williamsburg’s a far stretch from Harrisburg. C’mon, let’s stir up Murder Town.”
The Mingo village nestled lonely in a shallow cup formed by three small hills. It was disorderly and laid out without meaning as many Indian towns are. A bark hut—a wickiup, Shad called it—sat in the center of the communal clearing, and around it and scattered off into the trees stood the tall conical tepees.
The three hunters slipped silently along the fringe of forest, skirting the eastern edge of the village. At the signal from Chief they discharged their muskets over the town, Chief letting out an ear-splitting war cry, EEE-YUUU! and Shad bellowing, “Hi-Yi! Try catchin’ us, you eight-toed bug-eaters!”
Then they took off swiftly for the woods, knifing due east toward the Allegheny, leaving cries of rage and confusion behind, as the Mingoes came pouring out like irate bees from a kicked hive.
Shad chuckled as they ran. He looked back over his shoulder and called to Matt. “Chief’s sore ’cause we didn’t give him no time to put on his war paint!”
“Save your breath for running!” Matt answered. He felt confident that Chief would lead them safely through the night and away from the Mingoes, but he knew he would feel a whole lot better when they had escaped the goshawful land of bogs and thicket tangles with their unnerving aptitude for tearing at a man’s clothes and eyes.
With black night came the snow, a smothering, strangling universe of snow, turning the icy forest into a whirling world of white crystals. It filled their eyes, their mouths, clogged their nostrils, froze to their muskets, slipped down their necks and up their sleeves.
Chief called a halt and turned back to inspect their vanishing trail. He grunted his satisfaction and Matt sighed with relief. The chase was over. The three hunters huddled together and Chief jabbed a finger first in Matt’s chest and then in Shad’s.
“You,” he said to Matt. “Shad.” He turned the finger to his own chest. “Chief. Fine! Say good-byes. You, Shad, go home. Plenty skins, plenty furs. Fine! Chief go now too. Good-byes!”
Shad grinned and, taking Chief by the shoulders, gave him a playful shaking. “All right, you old bug-grubber! We’ll see you next fall.”
But Chief shook his head. “Sooner, sooner, Shad. Much trouble come. Spring, spring, Shad.” He turned and looked off at the whorling night as if studying it for signs, or listening for words that were beyond the kin of the two white hunters.
“May. May, Shad,” he said suddenly. “Maybe sooner. Good-byes!”
The two young men watched the old man hunch off into the falling screen of snow, and Matt impulsively called, “Be careful, Chief!”
And Chief’s distant reply whispered back to them from beyond the ghostly shoulder of night. “Any time ’tall. Fine!”
Shad chuckled, taking Matt by the elbow. “Know what he’s up to now? He’s gonna cut back on our trail and see if he can’t pick himself up some trophies—Murder Town trophies. That old bug-eater. He’s still sore about that Abenaki scalp he had to pass up.”
“Why do you call him a bug-eater?” Matt asked.
Shad’s beefy face expressed surprise. “Why, ’cause he is one, that’s why! I wouldn’t never mention it around him ’cause I ain’t gonna hurt his feelings if I can help it. But one summer I spent some time with them Laurel Ridgers and I seen ’em eatin’ snails! And snails is bugs. C’mon now, Matty. If we’re lucky, maybe we can get across the Allegheny River tonight.”
But he stopped suddenly, grabbing Matt’s arm again, cocking his head back and to one side. “Listen—”
Faintly, as though it were a phenomenon of the whirling snow, Matt heard a soft pulsating, a distant disembodied beat. It seemed to reach endlessly across the snow-clogged night to touch them with its insistent throbbing.
“Drums,” he murmured. He looked up at Shad. “War drums?”
Shad shook his head, his fat face twisted with concern.
“No,” he said softly, “not quite. But it’s the closest thing. It’s kind a hard to explain, it’s a feeling more than a message. It’s a warning drum, a trouble drum. It says: look out—men are going to die.”
3
THE WARRIORS
The long, cold, monotonous weeks of January and February passed fitfully for Matt. Always there were rumors of war and threats of war and talk of punitive Indian raids along the fringe settlements and tales of the French army that was manning itself in Canada. Yet there was never anything definite, and nothing was decided. The entire country seemed to be suspended in buzzing indecision.
The snow left the ground grudgingly, and Matt spent more of his time than his father approved of standing at the stockade gate watching the turnpike that ran to Northumberland, waiting for the latest postrider.
Shad had been gone for weeks, off on one of his many mysterious errands, and he had returned only once in the beginning of February—on a horse that he said he had “found somewhere up the road.”
He had remained one night with the Burnetts and was off again the following morning, saying, vaguely, that he had to “see a man about a horse” down at Wrights Ferry, “or somewhere near there.” He had, he said, news of Chief, and also of the young major they had met in December near Murthering Town. Taking first things first he told Matt that Chief had been reinstated in his tribe.
“That old bug-eater!” he bellowed. “Know what he done? He was rootin’ around one day near a settler’s cabin and just accidental-like stumbled over an oil lantern. The lantern, you see, wasn’t in the cabin when Chief bumped into it, but sort a sittin’ on a stump near the chicken pen, and Chief, fearin’ it might get busted out there by its lone, took it along with him. Well sir, he took it clear back to Laurel Ridge and presented it to the ne Shadodiowe’go’wa—medicine man, to you. Didn’t them Laurel Ridgers go crazy when they seen it all lit up? Hi-yi! They almost made Chief a sachem. ’Course, ain’t no way of tellin’ what them Laurel Ridgers will think when that lantern runs out a oil and Chief ain’t got no more to refill it with; but till it does, he’s set!”
Things, he said, were happening down in Williamsburg, but just what he wasn’t sure. No one was sure. St. Pierre’s letter to Governor Dinwiddie had been a refusal to withdraw, and Dinwiddie had written King George, asking for orders. The King had notified Dinwiddie that he must at all costs push the French back, but had been lax in sending funds to outfit an expedition.
Dinwiddie, in desperation, had ventured to order a draft of two hundred men from the Virginia militia, and Washington was to have the command. He had also sent messengers to the Catawbas, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Iroquois, inviting them to take up the hatchet against the French. As usual, no word regarding their decision had been heard.
Next, Dinwiddie had written urgent letters to the governors of Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, Maryland and New Jersey, begging for contingents of men to be at Wills Creek by March at the latest. But again no action had been taken because of the lack of funds.
“But, Shad,” Matt cried, “when will they take definite action?”
Shad tossed his hands into the air helplessly, letting them fall where they would.
“Dunno, Matty. But I can tell you this, if them governors and that fat King don’t shake a leg