1824: The Arkansas War (48 page)

CHAPTER 32

Callender was inclined to give up. “There’s no chance she’s going to let them out on the floor, Sheff. May as well look for some other partners.”

Sheff was made of sterner stuff. Or maybe it was simply that his interest wasn’t exactly the same. For Cal McParland, the twin sisters were very attractive even if much too young. He’d enjoy spending an hour or two with Adaline, sure enough. He didn’t even have to guess at that. The weeks he’d spent in the care of Senator Johnson’s women before he finally recuperated from his wound had been quite pleasant, in that regard.

But he’d enjoy the company of other girls at the ball, also—with the added incentive that, just possibly, an older girl might have a more concentrated purpose in coming here this evening. They’d be in a battle very soon. Callender was feeling all of his mortality and the ancient urges that went with it.

Yes, Adaline was a very pretty girl, and quite vivacious. She was also only thirteen. Even leaving aside that dragon mother, Cal’s interest in her could only go so far. Three or four years from now…

Was three or four years from now. Cal might very well be dead in three or four days.

Sheff understood all that. He felt some of it, himself. But, for him, Imogene Johnson also represented something else.

He didn’t care about her age. Well, not much. A pity she wasn’t older, of course, but time would pass. That assumed he survived the war, but Sheff didn’t see any point in brooding on that. He would or he wouldn’t. If he didn’t, it was all a moot point.

But what if he
did?

In the months since he’d accepted the Laird’s offer of a commission, Lieutenant Sheffield Parker had come to be consumed by an emotion so exotic that it had taken him some time even to recognize it for what it was.

Ambition.

Not the cramped, stunted, freedman’s version of it, either. This was the great, vaulting, white man’s variety. The one that saw no limits between a man and what he might achieve, except the capabilities and determination of the man himself.

Sheff had spent weeks thinking about it, in the methodical way he did such things. He was not impulsive, the way his friend Callender often was. Perhaps that was the result of their different upbringing, perhaps simply a difference in personality, most likely both.

So far, he’d come to three conclusions. Two of them firm, the third…firming up quickly.

First, and most obviously, he needed to get an education. A real one, not the haphazard affair that a freedman’s son got in an American city like Baltimore.

Fortunately, the means for that were at hand. There were, by now, half a dozen missionary schools in New Antrim and at least three in Fort of 98. Sheff had already begun investigating them when—to his relief—the Laird made the choice unnecessary. Arkansas’ chief decreed that the army needed a school of its own, and he set it up within a week.

The teachers were all Christian missionaries, of course. But since the school was secular, most of the education concentrated on the practical business of reading, writing, arithmetic, and the like. That suited Sheffield just fine. He didn’t need Bible instruction. That was the one book in the world he already knew. Pretty much by heart, thanks to his uncle.

The school was military as well as secular, because the Laird also decreed that officers who attended it needed to undergo additional instruction as well. He called it an officers college and asked Major General Ross to oversee it.

Ross did more than that, actually. He was the college’s principal instructor himself.

Sheff liked Robert Ross, once he got the measure of the man. And Sheff had an admiration for the Laird that came very close to outright hero worship, and one for Charles Ball that wasn’t much the slighter.

So, inexorably, he’d come to the second of his conclusions. Ambition needed education as a means, but it also needed a channel to focus itself upon. In Sheff ’s case, that would be the army. The only other alternatives were politics and business, and Sheff didn’t think he had any particular aptitude for either. Or any real interest, for that matter.

But he thought he had the makings of a good soldier. And, for what it was worth—which was quite a bit—he had the encouragement of both Driscol and Ross to spur him on. General Ball had had complimentary things to say, also, which was something of a minor miracle.

So. Education, and a career. That left…

Sheff had no firm opinion of the customs that he saw emerging around him in Arkansas. He didn’t share his uncle Jem’s stern disapproval or his mother’s ambivalence. That was mostly because he saw the issue as being personally irrelevant.

Others could do what they chose. Sheffield Parker wanted to rise as far as he possibly could in this life. And, looking around him at the men he took for his role models, he saw one characteristic in common.

They were all married. Even Charles Ball, although his uncle would insist that the ceremony that had united him and the notorious Laveau woman was more heathen than Christian.

Patrick Driscol was married. Robert Ross was married. Sam Houston was a widower, now, but he’d been married. Nor was it a race matter. The two outstanding leaders of the Cherokees, John Ross and Major Ridge, were both married. So was Ridge’s son John—in his case, to a white girl he’d met while he’d been in the United States pursuing his education.

That was the way ambitious men conducted themselves in the United States also, he knew. Sheff couldn’t think of a single man of any prominence in America who wasn’t married, unless his wife had died.

So, he’d started turning his mind to that problem. No sooner had he done so than the figure of Imogene Johnson had come into very clear and sharp focus. Almost instantly, she’d gone from being a very attractive but too young girl to being something completely different.

The girl was
important.
A girl to
aim
for. Her father was a United States senator. She’d been raised in wealth and privilege, even if the privileges had been somewhat constrained by her skin color.

But the latter, from Sheff ’s viewpoint, was what made the whole thing thinkable at all. John Ridge had married a white girl, and from what Sheff could determine the marriage seemed to be working out quite well. But Sheff couldn’t even contemplate the idea, leaving aside whatever social barriers he might encounter. The idea of a white wife just made him nervous.

Imogene, on the other hand…

“Come on, Sheff.” Cal jogged his elbow. “Let’s mingle a bit.”

Sheff made his decision. You couldn’t be an officer unless you were bold, after all.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “But you go ahead if you want to.”

With no further ado, he headed for Julia Chinn and her daughters, seated against one of the walls of the great hall. Behind him, he heard Cal mutter something. He wasn’t sure, but he thought it had been “Damn hero! You’ll get us both killed in action.”

Sheff had to consciously restrain himself from adopting a quick march pace. It wasn’t easy. By now, that had become his ingrained habit whenever there was something urgent and pressing to be done. He knew that Robert Ross was still critical of many features of the Arkansas Army, especially its small officer corps, but the one thing he would allow was that it was probably the best disciplined and best trained army in existence, when it came to a sergeant’s basics. Certainly on this side of the Atlantic.

Imogene spotted him almost immediately. With a new feeling—plain warmth, instead of nervous excitement—Sheff realized that was because she’d been keeping an eye on him since the ball started. He didn’t begin to understand why the girl was interested in him. But that she was, he was now quite certain.

In the uncanny way the two had, her twin’s sudden interest registered on Adaline within a couple of seconds. Now she, too, was watching him come closer. Or, more likely—he thought he could hear Cal’s footsteps behind him—his fellow officer.

After a moment, Adaline’s gaze began sliding off and then back again, in the awkward way a thirteen-year-old girl tries to act demure in public.

Imogene didn’t bother. Her eyes remained fixed on Sheff the whole time. So did the big smile on her face.

By the time Sheff was within twenty feet, their mother had spotted him also. The expression on her face made it clear that he was about as welcome as a tornado.

Fortitude, fortitude. He kept advancing fearlessly.

“The girls will not be dancing, Lieutenant Parker,” Julia Chinn announced as soon as he came up. She stated the sentence with the same firmness a granite boulder might announce it was a real, no-fooling rock.

“Oh, certainly, Miz Julia. They’re still a bit young for such carryings-on.” He was quite proud of the smooth way he said that. Not a single stammer or waver anywhere in it, even with his hands properly clasped behind his back. “But it occurred to me you might need some refreshments by now, and—”

He nodded toward their chairs. “If you relinquish these seats, you’ll never get them back, with this mob.”

He said and did all that smoothly, too. With just the right smile: slight, sophisticated, relaxed, at ease. Fortunately, he’d had a better role model for such business over the past few months than he’d ever had in his life. Major General Robert Ross did
everything
with style, and he made it a point to correct his students’ manners if they lapsed—which they often did—into the sergeants’ ways of the older officers of the army.

He’d heard the Laird grumble once that Ross seemed determined to produce a pack of young officers who acted for all the world as if they were English gentry. Which he thought absurd, given that all but seven of them were black. But on this subject at least, Sheff was firmly in the British general’s camp.

Julia Chinn was staring at him. The hostility was still there in full force—it didn’t even lessen when Cal showed up alongside Sheff—but she now seemed a bit startled, also.

“I
am
thirsty, Mama,” Imogene said.

“So am I. And you were just complaining about it yourself,” her twin added.

Chinn glanced at the girls. Then, at the long table at the far end of the ballroom where the drinks were being served.

“Well…”

She rallied for an instant. “I’m not having these girls touching any liquor! Certainly not the blackstrap and applejack they’re serving over there. No wine, neither.”

“Of course not, ma’am.” Cal unclasped his hands and motioned toward the table with his right. “But I believe there’s some apple cider available, as well as tea. And I can probably rummage up some tea cakes, as well.”

“I
am
a little hungry, Mama,” Imogene immediately piped up.

The refrain from Adaline followed as smoothly as if they’d rehearsed it: “So am I. And you were just commenting yourself—”

“Enough!” Chinn nodded abruptly. “Very well, then. Some tea and cakes would be nice. And, ah, thank you, Lieutenant Parker. You as well, Lieutenant McParland.”

Once the refreshments were brought to Julia Chinn and her daughters, Sheff didn’t try to dawdle in their company for more than a reasonably gracious minute or two. Just an officer and a gentleman, doing his duty. If he’d learned nothing else from Robert Ross over the past few months, he’d learned the difference between a battle and a campaign, and a campaign and a war.

This was a campaign at the very least. He hoped he could avoid an outright war.

“You’re still plotting, aren’t you?” Cal grumbled after they left.

“Yes.”

Sheff kept an eye on them throughout the next hour, maintaining proper position. Once he saw that Julia was finally taking the girls out of the ballroom, he moved to intercept them just outside the hotel. By now, Callender was no longer with him. He’d gotten distracted by the dancing, followed by a friendly argument with another artillery officer. The sort of argument that two young men get into, neither of them knowing much concerning the subject they were debating and both of them absolutely certain they were correct. A complete waste of time, so far as Sheff was concerned.

He emerged out of the shadows just as the Johnson women came off the veranda onto the street.