Part 7 (1/2)
CHAPTER XVII.
OUR HERO MEETS TEc.u.mSEH.
A few minutes only had elapsed when Elliott returned. The sentry's challenge caused Brock to look up from the table, littered with plans and despatches. Another figure darkened the doorway.
”This, sir,” said Elliott, ”is Tec.u.mseh, the Shawanese chief of whom you have heard, and who desires to be presented to you.”
The General, who had removed the stains of travel and was in uniform, rose to his full height, bowed, extended his hand and explained in manly fas.h.i.+on the reason for asking that the firing be stopped. The contrast presented by the two men was striking. The old world and the new, face to face--a scene for the brush of an impressionist. Brock, tall, fair, big-limbed, a blue-eyed giant, imposing in scarlet coat and blue-white riding trousers, ta.s.selled Hessian boots, and c.o.c.ked-hat in hand. On his benevolent face was an irresistible smile.
The Indian, though of middle height, was of most perfect proportions, an athlete in bronze, lithe and supple as a panther. His oval face, set in a frame of glistening black hair, shone like a half-polished copper relief. Overlooking the nose, straight as one of his own arrows, and from which some tinkling silver coins were suspended, a pair of hawk-like eyes, hazel-black and unflinching--in which the secrets of the world seemed slumbering--gleamed upon Brock. His dress, a hunting jacket of tanned deer-skin and close-fitting leggings. Fringed moca.s.sins of the same material, richly embroidered in silk and porcupine quills dyed in divers colours, encased his feet. The light from the open log fire flickered fitfully, half revealing the antlered heads of moose and caribou and other trophies of the chase that, hanging from the rafters, looked down upon the group, adding weirdness to the picture.
Brock briefly explained that he had come to fight the King's enemies, enemies who so far had never seen his back, and who were Tec.u.mseh's enemies also. ”Would Tec.u.mseh maintain an honourable warfare?”
Perhaps no eulogy of Brock was ever penned that so well summed up his qualities as did the terse, four-worded certificate of character uttered by the Indian before replying to the British general's appeal. Tec.u.mseh looked ”Master Isaac's” commanding physique up and over, over and down--Brock's caution as to waste of powder doubtless weighing with him--until eye met eye, and then, impulsively extending his thin brown hand, turned to his followers, exclaiming in tones of highest admiration:
”_This_ is a man!”
a.s.senting ”Ughs” and ”Ho-hos” followed in rapid succession, and in response to Brock's invitation the headmen, painted and plumed and in striped blankets, squatted on their stained reed mats and wild-beast skins on the ba.s.swood log floor. Questioned as to the nature of the country westward, Tec.u.mseh took a roll of elm-bark and with the point of his scalping-knife traced on its white inner surface the features of the region--hills, forests, trails, rivers, muskegs and clearings. Rough, perhaps, but as accurate, he said, as if drawn by a pale-face _teebahkee-wayninni_ (surveyor).
That night, after Tec.u.mseh's return, Brock again held council with his staff, proposing an attack on Detroit. Only one of his chief officers, the staunch colonial quartermaster, Lieutenant-Colonel Nichol, agreed with him. Colonel Henry Procter, from whom he had expected whole-hearted support, strongly objected. History teaches us that the conception of a daring plan is the offspring of great minds only. Procter was not of this cla.s.s, as his subsequent record shows. Some of our hero's critics have described his resolve to attack Detroit as ”audacious and desperate.” Isaac Brock was, of course, nothing if not contemptuously daring. The greater the difficulty that faced him the more was he determined to challenge the obstacle, that to a less confident man would have been rejected as insurmountable. He had, however, resolved and planned not only upon taking Detroit, but, if need be, the pursuit and capture of Hull's entire army, compelling him to either stand and fight or surrender. With habitual prescience he had weighed well the issues and chosen the lesser alternative. His own defeat and possibly his death, on the one hand, against the probable salvation of half a continent on the other. What true soldier could hesitate?
While patiently hearing objections, he brushed the most of them aside as mere flies on the wheel. Surely the way had been opened to him. The seized despatches had revealed the discord among Hull's troops and shown him that while the United States militia, the flower of Ohio and Kentucky, was of good material, the United States soldiers were not. He knew that the situation in Upper Canada called for extreme measures, and that the time to strike was now or never, for his scouts had truly reported that 350 United States mounted troops were pressing close upon his rear. They were, in fact, only a mile or two distant. If his own inferior force was outflanked, or his communication with the Canadian interior cut, it spelled utter disaster. He was in a wilderness without hope of reinforcements. As Colonel Ca.s.s, the United States commander, later reported to the President, Brock was ”between two fires and with no hope of succour.” Brock knew he must act at once or even retreat might be impossible. With inborn ac.u.men he saw at a glance the peril of his own position, and with cool courage hastened to avert it. He realized that upon the ”destruction or discomfiture” of Hull's forces ”the safety of the province depended.”
Brock listened closely to Procter's argument--by this time he knew, of course, that Hull's own line of communication with his reserves had been cut--then rising, when all who cared to speak had finished, he said: ”Gentlemen, I have definitely decided on crossing the river and attacking Fort Detroit. Instead of further advice I must beg of you to give me your hearty support. The general orders for to-morrow will be issued at once.”
This decision was typical of the man of action. ”Prudent only where recklessness was a fault, and hazardous only when hesitation meant defeat.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
AN INDIAN POW-WOW.
It was a picturesque council of white men and Indians that was held at dawn in an open glade of the forest. The fragrant odours of the bush mingled with the pungent smoke of the red willow-bark, puffed from a hundred pipes. Conspicuous at this pow-wow was Tec.u.mseh, who across his close-fitting buckskin hunting jacket, which descended to his knees and was trimmed with split leather fringe, wore a belt of wampum, made of the purple enamel of mussel sh.e.l.ls--cut into lengths like sections of a small pipe-stem, perforated and strung on sinew. On his head he wore a toque of eagle plumes.
”My object,” said Brock, addressing the Indians, ”is to a.s.sist you to drive the 'Long-knives' [Americans] from the frontier, and repel invasion of the King's country.” Tec.u.mseh, speaking for his tribesmen, remarked, not without sarcasm, that ”their great father, King George, having awakened out of a long sleep, they were now ready to shed their last drop of blood in that father's service.”
”The pale faces,” he continued, after an impressive pause--and the fire of his eloquence and his gestures swayed his hearers like the reeds on the river bank--”the Americans who want to fight the British are our enemies.... They came to us hungry and they cut off the hands of our brothers who gave them corn.... We gave them rivers of fish and they poisoned our fountains.... We gave them forest-clad mountains and valleys full of game, and in return what did they give our warriors and our women? Rum and trinkets and--a grave!... The shades of our fathers slaughtered on the banks of the Tippecanoe can find no rest.... Their eyes can see no herds on the hills of light in the hunting grounds of the dead!... Until our enemies are no more we must be as one man, under one chief, whose name is--Death!... I have spoken.”
Tec.u.mseh, it should be known, bore a personal grudge against the Americans, especially against the 4th Regiment, then in garrison at Detroit, the ”heroes of Tippecanoe.” This was a terrible misnomer, for under General Harrison, with 1,000 soldiers, less than a year before, they had taken part in the slaughter of Tec.u.mseh's half-armed band of 600 men and women on the banks of the Tippecanoe River, during that chief's absence with many of his warriors, and had laid waste his village. With a perhaps pardonable spirit of vindictiveness, such as is shared by both redskin and white man, the human-being in him thirsted for revenge.
Brock, perceiving Tec.u.mseh's sagacity and influence over the savages, invited the Shawanese and Wawanosh, Ojebekun and the other sachems, to a private council. Here he unfolded his plans. Before doing this he made it a condition that no barbarities were to be committed. ”The scalping-knife,” said he, ”must be discarded, and forbearance, compa.s.sion and clemency shown to the vanquished.” He told them he wanted to restrict their military operations to the known rules of war, as far as was possible under the singular conditions in which they fought, and exacted a promise from the lofty-minded Tec.u.mseh that his warriors ”should not taste pernicious liquor until they had humbled the Big-knives.” ”If this resolution,” remarked Brock, ”is persevered in, you must surely conquer.”
Brock's rapid ascendency over the Indians was astonis.h.i.+ng; they already revered him as a common father.