1824: The Arkansas War (34 page)

He stopped the hair-ruffling and slapped the paper back on the desk. “So let me ask you. A gang of white criminals breaks into a black man’s home, starts stealing everything he owns—which ain’t much—and sets to raping his womenfolk in the bargain. So he shoots them dead, like any man would do who was worth his salt. Am I supposed to demand that
he
gets arrested and punished? Just because he’s black?”

He was back to glaring. “Well? Answer me. Am I?”

After a moment, everyone looked away.

“What I figured. Be damned if I will. They want Old Hickory, I aim to give ’em Old Hickory. Right between the eyes.”

Thankfully, the Capitol was only a hundred yards away. For all her determination and teasing, Sam could tell that his wife was tiring. Plowing through mud was hard enough for a big man like Sam. He could just imagine how a mile of it would exhaust a small woman like Maria Hester.

Coffee had been watching Jackson closely through his little peroration. When it was done, he chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” the senator demanded.

“You are, if you want to know the truth. Sam Houston’s still sticking in your throat, isn’t he?”

Jackson glared at him. “I kept that promise, and it’s done. Told him so myself.”

“Yes, I know. So what?” Coffee didn’t flinch at all from that blue-eyed fury. Worst thing you could do around Andy Jackson.

After a few seconds, the glare started to fade. After a few more, Jackson even started chuckling himself.

“Blast that youngster,” he muttered. “Still worse, once he named his firstborn after me. Now that the kid’s old enough to talk, he calls me Grandpa. Damn little conniving clever politician like his daddy.”

He yanked out the chair and folded himself into his seat. “Yes, fine. I suppose so.” He stuck out his bony finger, like a gun. “Not that I didn’t mean it when I said I had no use for Houston’s fancies. Still.”

Coffee understood. “You said he’d turn down the rose of fortune when you offered it to him. And you were right. He did. Proud as a peacock you were, afterward.”

“I sure was. Proud of both of us. Him for turning it down, and me for knowing he would and knowing why.”

He swiveled his gaze toward the other men in the room. “Do you understand, now? We’ve talked it over, like we always do. But the decision’s mine, and I’ve made it.”

He’d never lowered the finger. Now, the bony weapon pointed to the newspaper. “There’s my rose of fortune, gentlemen, that you’re waving under my nose. The answer’s no. We’ll go into the president’s house through the front door, or we won’t go in at all. Let Henry Clay sneak himself in through the servant’s entrance if he wants it that bad.”

The steps of the Capitol were a blessed relief from the mud. As soon as they reached the top of the steps, Maria Hester crouched and began opening her bag.

“No way I’m going in there in these filthy things.”

Sam smiled.

“Colonel Houston!”

He turned, still smiling, but the smile faded almost immediately. The man coming up the steps toward him had no friendly look on his face. As much of it as Sam could see, at any rate. The fellow had a broad-brimmed hat to go with a long cloak. He looked positively conspiratorial, like something out of a cheap stage performance.

“May I help you, sir?”

“You were born in Virginia, am I not correct?”

Coffee nodded. Whether because he agreed with Jackson or not, he didn’t even know himself. But that wasn’t the point, in the end. You could always trust Andy Jackson. Not to be right, necessarily, but to be Andy Jackson. For Coffee, that was good enough.

Judging from the nods that went around the room, the other men had come to the same conclusion.

“All right, then,” said Eaton. “We’ll almost surely lose this election. But there’s 1828 to look to.”

“Clay’s sure to go for two terms,” cautioned White.

Overton started to say something, but Jackson cut him off. “He’ll
try.
Whether he can do it or not—”

A loud clap coming from outside interrupted him. Jackson’s head twisted around to the window. “That was a gunshot.”

Sam never went armed in the streets of Washington. Now he was half regretting it. He was fully regretting not having accepted Chester’s offer to come along. This man—

“I asked you a question, sir!”

“And did so most uncivilly,” Sam snapped back. “But the answer is no secret. Yes, I was—”

“You are a traitor, then!”

“Sam!” Maria Hester shrieked.

A pistol was coming out from under the cloak. Sam started to lunge for him.

Maria Hester came up from her crouch, wildly swinging her bag. The fancy shoes she’d gotten half out went flying, one of them into the man’s face.

He flinched. The pistol went off but missed. Sam smashed his face with a fist. It was a big fist, and Sam was in a fury. His assailant’s lips were shredded against his teeth, and some teeth went skittering down the steps. So did the man himself, his hat coming loose and his cloak swirling like a blanket.

Sam started to follow. He was going to beat this bastard into—

“Sam…”

Overton was the first one at the window. “Oh, dear God,” he said.

By the time Coffee and Jackson and the others came out of the Capitol onto the steps, Maria Hester had bled to death. The shot that Sam thought to have missed had struck her instead, severing the big artery under her arm. Coffee couldn’t remember the name of it. But he’d seen men die on a battlefield from just such a wound.

Of the assailant there was no trace, beyond spots of blood and broken teeth. Houston had, understandably, paid the man no further attention once he realized his wife had been shot.

“Put a five-thousand-dollar reward out, in my name,” Jackson ordered. His face was pale as a sheet, and he was trembling with rage. “Dead or alive.”

Coffee nodded. Medical orderlies had arrived by now and were tending to Maria Hester. To her corpse, rather. Or trying to. Houston was still holding her body, his face blank. His own clothes were soaked with her blood, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Anything else, immediately?”

“Yes.” Jackson swallowed. Just a reflex, to control his fury. This was no feigned Andy Jackson tantrum, either. Coffee knew the signs. This was the real thing, the rage of a man famous all over the frontier for his capacity for violence.