put Hervey in mind of Captain Peto, except that where at first meeting Peto had been guarded, distant, almost hostile, Power was open, warm and thoroughly engaging.
‘Captain Hervey. I am so glad we meet, sir. And sorry for its being two whole weeks after coming to my country. Sit you down!’
A vigorous handshake reinforced the welcome, and coffee, and applejack from the Power family’s farm, sealed it. ‘It’s a great privilege for me to have a troop of His Majesty’s dragoons at my disposal, Captain Hervey. Congress must be ruing their paring. But it is a good thing for our armies to be cooperating, at long last.’
Hervey said it was his privilege, too, but hoped it could be one without bloodshed.
‘I’m not happy with these Indian wars myself, Captain Hervey. I regret very much some of the excesses of my countrymen. Some of the nations have a right to feel aggrieved. Yet the settlement of this land is not something that any can now set their face against. That is the reality. From now on it should be the proper management of that inevitable fact — the westward progress of the frontier. I only wish we were managing it as well as you are in Canada.’ General Power offered him a cigar, and lit one himself.
Hervey lit his and made appreciative noises.
The general smiled with satisfaction. ‘Yes, best Havana. We had them brought from just across the water when I was in New Orleans, if you follow.’
Hervey did, but would not dwell on the notion. ‘And so the Shawanese, sir?’
Power sighed. ‘The Shawanese. God damn it, they can be as awkward as a bent nail. You know they believe the Creator is a woman? The “Finisher” as they call her. Well, they have a new prophet, related to Tecumseh, and he claims the Finisher has prepared a land of milk and honey for them near their brothers the Ojibwa and their cousins of the Six Nations. That means northern Michigan — and Ontario, for that matter. The trouble is, the department’s lost track of the main group altogether. They’re not even sure they’ve left the Indiana territory. If they’re making north on the western side of the lake, past Fort Dearborn,’ he pointed to the map again, ‘there are too few troops to hand to track them, let alone turn them back, and then they could come into the territory from the north — not easy, of course, but perhaps a sight easier than trying to run a line of blue in the south.’
‘What do you propose then, sir?’
General Power poured more coffee, and relit his cigar. ‘I don’t have you indefinitely: that’s a strong consideration. But as the thaw comes on, the rivers won’t be easy for the Shawanese to cross. I reckon two infantry companies could picket the gap between the Maxanic and the Raisin, and then if we cover the fords once in twenty-four hours we’d pick up a crossing. They’d never do it in less, not with the spring melts. And their ponies are grass-fed, so you shouldn’t have much trouble catching them on corn.’
‘We’re consuming that corn at a fair rate, sir.’
‘Yes, I know. My quartermaster-general’s working on it.’
Hervey thanked him. ‘Presumably the Shawanese can’t just wade anywhere?’
‘Indeed, no. They can’t all swim, and they won’t want to cross too close to the lakes for fear of running into folk, or of not leaving themselves room to manoeuvre if they’re discovered. I should like you to keep up your patrols along the Grand River for the time being, but be ready to move up to the Maxanic in strength. That just gives space to close with them before the country begins to open up.’ The general pointed on the map how they might have the run of northern Michigan. ‘I’ve taken several dozen Winnebago scouts onto the payroll, and I’m confident they’ll come up with something. The point is, if we can confront them in strength — overwhelming strength — they mightn’t draw a bowstring at all.’
Hervey said he would apprise Fort York of the intention in his next despatch.
General Power nodded. ‘I’m told your colonel is to visit, by the way.’
Hervey’s spirits fell. ‘I was not aware of it, sir,’ but he thought that sounded a little curt, and tried to seem more eager. ‘But I imagine he would wish to. He’s been in Quebec these past weeks.’
‘The Earl of…
Hervey put his pronunciation to right.
‘I should be very happy to receive him with full honours here — if he would like that.’
‘I believe he would regard that highly, sir’.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. BITTER COLD
Fires burned all about A Troop’s camp. They had buffalo-hide blankets and fir-frond beds, but still Hervey was cold. Nor was it a cold that bit at the extremities only, but one which rendered him sleepless and unaccountably fearful. He needed this sleep, for he had been in the saddle for the best part of three days since the alarm. How like the exercise on Chobham Common it had seemed when he had told his officers and NCOs of his design, and how different the reality was — the cold, and an enemy who thought in so alien a way, and who fought not as soldiers but as men desperate to preserve their very being. Here, on the shallow snow-covered hills of southern Michigan — a place he could only imagine might be pleasant without its white shroud — he felt for the first time an uncertainty in the outcome, for he could not take the initiative and he had never met his adversary before.
He felt the want of Serjeant Armstrong keenly, too. Armstrong, now also the father of a fine, healthy daughter, remained at Brownstown, from where the troop’s supplies, intelligence and orders came. Hervey would have trusted no other for the task, but he was paying the price. At that witching hour of night, when the wolf called — menacing now, where first it had been novel and diverting — Armstrong would have been about the place, cursing, sparing no one, just waiting for a dragoon to complain of the cold or use it as an excuse for some dereliction. In the end it was so much easier to be afraid of Serjeant Armstrong than something altogether unknown.
The Winnebago scouts had soon repaid the investment in them. They had told General Power that the Shawanese would pass around the headwaters of the Maxanic, and then of the Raisin, when the full moon next shone. It was now the night before that moon, but the sky was overcast and the dark was like the first quarter’s. The thaw had begun a week before, making the crossings treacherous and narrowing the Shawanese’s options, but three days ago there had been a sudden relapse into deep winter, with heavy falls of snow and then a fall of the glass so great that the surface of the snow was now frozen as one continuous sheet. Horses were losing condition rapidly. Their heads were frostcovered, their breath freezing even as it left the nostrils. Fetlocks became chafed or clean cut with every step through the ice crust, and a red trail had often marked their progress of late.
Hervey forced himself from his bed to begin a tour of the sentries. It would test all his skill in hiding his own dejection in this God-forsaken wilderness.
At Brownstown, Henrietta slept little better. Not for want of warmth or security, but because she had hoped so very much to see her husband that day. The ferry and sleigh ride from Fort Malden that morning had been pleasant, a pleasure she was not expecting to have again for some weeks. But, on arriving at Fort Brownstown, she had encountered Lord Towcester, and his mood had been extraordinarily malevolent — the reason for which she could only guess. He had ordered her to return to York at once, and, she recorded in her journal, in terms that overstepped any mark of a gentleman. When she had made to protest, he had pointed out that she was in military quarters and would hear him in silence.
He had even disbarred to her the ferry to Fort Malden, since he required it for his own purposes, he said. ‘You must take a sleigh to Detroit, madam,’ he had told her, ‘and wait on your husband in that place, or else cross there and wait at Malden. Either way, you shall not consume military supplies for another day more in this fort!’
Henrietta’s suspicions as to the cause of the earl’s ill humour, if correct, indicated that her initiative in writing to the Duke of Huntingdon had been speedier in its consequences than she had imagined. But she hadn’t the initiative here, and she knew she had little option but to submit to the lieutenant colonel’s will. She regretted its ill effects with Serjeant Armstrong, however. He had immediately declared that he would escort her himself to Detroit,
