1824: The Arkansas War (53 page)

He swept off his hat—a proper one, not that blasted fur cap—and waved it around.

“Come and get it, boys! Dinner’s on the table!”

CHAPTER 36

The first companies of the 3rd and 4th Regiments had just come out of Arkansas Post and were moving into position in support of the 1st and 7th when Harrison spotted the second Arkansas regiment coming forward.

He’d been expecting that, of course, and already had a battery of six-pounders in position to guard his right flank. He’d take casualties from the coming assault, but for once the Arkansans had been sluggish.

“Get up there!” he shouted at the two captains leading the companies emerging from the Post. He stood up in the stirrups and pointed to the battery. “Take position! They’ll be coming at our flank!”

It didn’t occur to him until after they passed by that he hadn’t inquired as to conditions within the Post itself.

Stupid. He might have a sally from the Chickasaws to deal with soon.

But, thankfully, it seemed there wasn’t much chance of that. The battle was finally turning his way.

“No, sir.” Captain James Franks took off his hat and wiped his brow with a uniform sleeve. That only replaced the sweat there with a smear of blood, because that whole side of his uniform seemed blood-soaked.

None of it his, apparently, judging from his demeanor.

“No, sir,” he repeated. “There isn’t much left, except a lot of bodies. I will say there wasn’t no quit in them. There’s probably two or three hundred live Chickasaws hiding out somewhere in there—the place is a maze—but they won’t be doing no sorties.”

There was a grim satisfaction in the words. The regulars had known of the Chickasaw reputation, and nothing that had happened in the two hours since the beginning of the assault on Arkansas Post had done anything to modify it. “No, sir. There won’t be no Chickasaws coming out of there until we let them out.”

Captain Franks was probably right. But Harrison had had to leave much of the artillery behind at the river, anyway, to guard against the steamboats that had finally appeared upstream. The same batteries could have two or three guns moved around to bear on the main entrance to the Post, as well as the breaches. If the Chickasaws did come out, they’d be met with a storm of canister.

Yes, indeed. The battle was finally—

“General Harrison!” He looked up, squinting to see who had called him. One of Arbuckle’s officers. Captain…Whatever.

“General Harrison!” The captain was pointing to the north.

Harrison looked.

“What in the name of…”

The Arkansas maneuver made no sense at all. That second regiment was staying much too far to the north, as if it were simply evading Harrison’s army. What was the point of that?

And they weren’t even developing into a line. Instead, they were—

What
were
they doing?

“Oh, how splendid!” Winfield Scott exclaimed. He was standing up in his stirrups. As tall as he was, that gave him quite a good view of whatever the 2nd Arkansas was up to.

Bryant was considerably shorter, to begin with. Perhaps more to the point, the incredible din of the nearby battlefield had left his mind feeling numb.

“What are you talking about, Winfield?”

Scott pointed. He was genuinely excited, Cullen could tell. Not even making the slightest attempt to hide it under a patina of calm professionalism.

“I’ve never seen one! Read about them, of course.”

The infernal cacophony had also left Cullen more than a bit irritable.

“What
are
you talking about?”

“It’s a French column, Cullen! Right out of the Revolution and the early days of Napoleon. Don’t think one’s been used in a battle in years.”

He might as well have been gibbering in Greek.

Well, no. Turkish. William Cullen Bryant’s grasp of the Greek language was actually rather good.

He’d never heard it spoken. But he could read it, of course.

“Oh, dear God,” Harrison whispered.

The bizarre formation finally made sense. That second Arkansas regiment was ignoring the American regulars altogether. They were sweeping around Harrison’s regiments, keeping just out of musket range, and going for the militiamen.

Who were—

“God damn those bastards!”

Who were almost half a mile downriver. Figuring they’d be completely useless in a close assault, Harrison had left them to their own devices while he handled the attack on Arkansas Post. Then, in the press of affairs and the chaos after the Arkansans launched their attack, he’d simply forgotten about them altogether, even though he’d originally intended to use them to reinforce the 1st and 7th. He’d simply been overwhelmed by too much happening, too soon.

Naturally, the wretches hadn’t come to his aid on their own. If he knew militia officers, they’d have been dancing back and forth trying to decide what to do and spending most of their time quarreling with each other.

Well, they weren’t going to have to decide anything, any longer. The Arkansans were going to make the decision for them.

For one tiny moment, before he suppressed it, Harrison found himself hoping the Arkansas maneuver would succeed.

At least it meant he could concentrate on fighting that one Arkansas regiment that had been gutting his army from the first moment of the battle. If nothing else,
they
would go under.

Sheff was still unhurt, but by now he was in command of the regiment’s entire right wing. Anchored against the side of the Post the way they were, those companies had been unable to maneuver at all. Nor did they have any artillery support, as the left wing did. It had just been simple, straightforward, volley against volley. Moving closer and closer, until the distance separating them from the nearest American regiment was less than thirty yards.

“Reload!”

He wasn’t ordering any further advance. Not unless the left wing came forward and Colonel Jones ordered a bayonet charge. Which Sheff didn’t think was likely at all. The Arkansan and American lines had met at an angle. By the Post, not more than thirty yards separated them, but the distance between the Arkansan left and the American right was still almost a hundred yards. That enabled the Arkansan artillery battery positioned on the far left to bring what almost amounted to enfilade fire on their opponents.

Sheff didn’t know whether it had happened by pure accident or by conscious design on the colonel’s part. Either way, in effect, he’d used the companies on his right—Sheff ’s among them—to pin the Americans while the companies of his left and the artillery pounded them into pieces. Much the way a barroom brawler might use one hand to hold his opponent while he flailed away with the other fist.

It wouldn’t have worked if the Americans had had guns of their own to bring counterbattery fire. But they didn’t. Sheff was guessing, but he was pretty sure the American guns were still stuck in front of the Post or by the river, guarding against a sally by the riverboats upstream.

As battle tactics went, this one was dandy. But it was rough on Sheff ’s people.

“Fire!”

The musket volleys were starting to get a bit ragged, as many casualties as they’d suffered. But not as ragged as the ones coming in return. Sheff was impressed that the one American regiment was still fighting at all. Tough bastards, for sure.

Sam joined up with Colonel Street after the 2nd Regiment had bypassed the U.S. forces tangled up at the Post and were heading straight for the militias. He’d bided his time, since he wanted to gauge how well the militia commanders would handle the sudden crisis they’d found themselves in.

Just about as he’d expected. Officers running back and forth, shouting orders most of which countermanded one another. The men, for their part, doing whatever struck their fancy.

Some of them had formed a line. Not much of a line, but a line. They’d even gotten two of their four-pounders into something that approximated a decent position.

Approximated, no better. The guns weren’t far enough forward. That was typical of militia artillery. It took experience and confidence for artillery crews to be willing to position themselves far enough in advance of their infantry to do much good. Militias could almost never manage the thing properly.

Sam couldn’t really blame them. Not only did the gun crews need to be confident that they had the skill to pull their guns back into the shelter of the infantry in time; also they needed to be confident that the infantry would be there to shelter them in the first place. More often than not, militia infantry would break, leaving the artillerymen they were supposed to protect high and dry. Ten years earlier, some of the men who were now serving in the Arkansas artillery had been cursing militiamen who’d left them exposed to the mercy of British regulars at the Battle of Bladenburg.

Another chunk of militiamen—several chunks, rather, and big ones—were obviously making preparations for a hasty retreat. “Rout,” to call things by their right name.

Those were the complete idiots. They
had
to be idiots. There were two thousand Choctaw warriors out there, and at least two hundred men from Brown’s Raiders. They’d been lying low, as instructed. But if the militiamen broke and ran, they’d be like rabbits at the mercy of predators.