1824: The Arkansas War (58 page)

His mother was holding up pretty well, too. She had her own version of a battle shield.

“The truth is, Sheff, we’re doing better than we were back in Baltimore, with your father and uncle bringing in whatever they could. Which weren’t never much. So you just make sure when you can get about again, that you keep fighting for Arkansas. You hear?”

Cal McParland came to visit him later that day. He brought John Ridge and Buck Watie with him.

“Congratulations,” Ridge said immediately after walking into the room. “You heard about your promotion, I take it?”

“You’ll give him a swelled head,” Cal chided. But he was smiling as he said it. “Jumped him a rank, even.”

Buck Watie slid into a chair. “Gave you the Legion of Honor, too. Only one who got it except Captain Dupont.”

Cal laughed. “My cousin says the Laird got the idea from Napoleon, but he’s obviously going to be a lot stingier than the emperor ever was.”

Sheff had been wondering what a Legion of Honor was. For the most part, the Arkansas Army was patterned after the American, since that was the experience of most of its veterans. The American army didn’t have the custom of awarding decorations for valor or merit, as did most of the European armies.

But that thought was swept away for the moment. “How’s the captain doing?”

The good cheer left the room. Buck Watie shook his head. “Captain Dupont didn’t make it, Sheff. The Americans returned his body the day after the battle.”

“At least he didn’t die slowly from being gut-shot,” Cal added. “The Americans think he must have bled to death before the fighting was even over. From what I heard, our surgeon who looked at his body agreed with them.”

Well, that was something. Sheff had liked Charles Dupont, even if he’d found his heavy accent hard to understand sometimes. He’d been a lot less prone to judging people simply by skin color than most of the Creole freedmen from New Orleans were.

As a group, Sheff didn’t care for them much. Some of them had even been slave-owners themselves, and they still retained a lot of the attitudes. If they hadn’t been forced out of the city after the Algiers Incident, most of them would still be in New Orleans. As it was, they tended to cluster together in one part of New Antrim that people were starting to call the Creole Quarter.

But Sheff hadn’t really been close to Dupont, so there wasn’t any personal grief involved. Besides, he
was
still short of eighteen, and…

He tried to figure out how to ask without seeming full of himself.

Fortunately, Cal saved him the effort. “Yup. The Legion of Honor. The Laird established it right after the battle. Announced he would, before the day was over, even.”

“Established” was a word that seemed a little absurd if they only gave out two of them. But that mystery got cleared up by Buck.

“He also established what he’s calling the Arkansas Post Medal, and they’re handing those out like candy. Everybody who was there gets one, except the steamboat crews, and they’re complaining like nobody’s business.”

“Them!” Cal snorted. “They didn’t get within half a mile—not even that—of a shot being fired.”

He gave Sheff a big grin. “Don’t get your hopes up too soon, though. What I heard, it’ll be weeks before they can get around to actually making the things. There’s a big squabble over who gets the contract.”

That brought a little laugh to the room. The Arkansas House of Representatives was even more notorious than its American counterpart for the fervent dedication of its members to advancing the interests of their constituents. If anything, the House of Chiefs was worse.

The next half hour was spent bringing Sheff up to date on what had happened in the battle after he’d been taken out of combat. It was a cheerful discussion until Sheff asked about the Chickasaws.

His three fellow officers exchanged glances, their smiles either fading or seeming frozen in place.

“Well,” said Cal.

“That got a little sticky,” John Ridge added.

His cousin Buck gave him a glance that was at least half angry. The rest of it seemed derisive.

“You talk! We were the ones had to do the dirty work.”

John made a face. So did Cal.

“Give,” said Sheff. “What happened?”

Cal provided the answer. The first part, anyway. “They got really hammered in there, Sheff. Near as we can tell, half the warriors in the tribe died in the Post—they never had but a little over six hundred, to begin with—and a fair number got killed or badly wounded during the escape. So…well, by the time they could pull themselves together, the Laird already had their slaves in custody. By then, Houston was back with the Second Infantry. And—ah—he’d already moved over my battery and the others from the Third.”

“The women and old men raised Sam Hill, of course, but…” John Ridge shrugged. “Wasn’t really much they could do to stop him. Houston was in no friendlier mood than the Laird. Neither was General Ball, of course.”

They fell silent again. “So?” Sheff demanded.

Buck provided the rest. “So, the Chickasaw warriors finally got there and starting hollering and making threats. Real nasty threats, not just name-calling. And—” He took a deep breath. “We followed orders. Cut loose with both batteries. Canister—and we were targeting the Colbert clan.”

“The Laird told us to spare as many full-bloods as we could,” Cal added. “And we did. But they were pretty well mixed together, and canister’s what it is. There ain’t much left of the Colberts, I can tell you that.”

“Oh…Jesu—Sam Hill,” Sheff murmured, barely avoiding the blasphemy.

John Ridge’s face was stiff. “Sam Hill is right. My father’s furious. So’s Chief Ross, although he’s hiding it better. Even the Choctaw chiefs are hollering about it. The Creeks will be, too, soon as they hear.”

“Sure, and nobody likes Chickasaws,” Buck chimed in, “but…” He shook his head. “I did what I was told—well, watched, anyway—but I can’t help think the Laird’ll come to regret it. This could even start a civil war.”

Callender McParland started to say something but broke off before he got a word out. From the quick look he gave his two Cherokee companions, Sheff had no trouble figuring out what he’d been about to say.

So he went ahead and said it for him. He was too weak to summon up the energy to be diplomatic.

“Fuck the Chickasaws. And fuck the Choctaws and the Creeks. And—sorry, fellows—but if push comes to shove, fuck you Cherokees, too. You got Sam Hill’s nerve, as far as I’m concerned, expecting us niggers”—he rolled his eyes at Cal—“and some white boys to do your fighting for you while thinking you’ll keep us in slavery.”

Anger that had been quietly festering for a long time finally came to the surface. “Fuck you,” he stated flatly. “Learn to work. I’ve been working since I was ten years old.”

“Me too,” said Cal. “My family’s poor Scots-Irish—well, not poor any longer—from New York. We never owned any slaves. And sure as hell aren’t gonna start now.”

He gave Buck a look that had none of its earlier friendliness. “And I’d be real careful, was I you, Lieutenant Watie, making too many noises about ‘civil wars.’ You think we can’t do the same thing at Tahlequah we just done at Arkansas Post, best you think twice.”

So there it was: the threat naked and right out in the open. Strangely, perhaps, that was enough to start draining away Sheff ’s anger.

“Come on, now, Cal—there was no call for that. Buck was just expressing a concern. He wasn’t making no threats.”

Hastily, he corrected himself. “Any threats.”

Their voices had gotten raised a bit. You never knew. Imogene might be somewhere close enough to overhear. Worse, so might her mother.

Cal took a long deep breath. Simultaneously—it almost made Sheff laugh, watching it—the two Cherokees did the same.

They let it out at the same time, too. Then Cal said: “Sorry. Didn’t really mean it that way.”

John chuckled. “Sam Hill, you didn’t! Still…”

He sighed, and wiped a hand over his face. “The truth is, Buck and I don’t really disagree with you. And I already told my father so. Our newspaper will have some criticisms of the way the Laird handled it, I imagine, but we’re not going to make any bones about the rest of it. There’s no slavery in Arkansas—that’s established, right there in the Constitution—and since the Chickasaws sought refuge in Arkansas, they had to abide by Arkansas law. And the threats they were making went way beyond anything you could rightly call a petition in redress of grievances.”

Sheff ’s anger was almost gone, now. Enough, even, for him to play devil’s advocate. “Members of other Confederate chiefdoms
do
have the right to travel in Arkansas, with their slaves, without having them seized.”

“For no more than two weeks, without a permit,” Cal countered. “No way were all the Chickasaws—almost any of them, the shape they were in—gonna make it to Oklahoma in two weeks. And the chance that the Arkansas Chiefdom would have issued permits for a thousand slaves is exactly nothing.”

John shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. Nobody”—he managed a real smile, here—“not even us disputatious natural-lawyer Cherokees, thinks this is something you can settle in a courtroom. The Laird’s been pushing for this ever since he brought out that separate Arkansas flag. Pushing it harder than ever, after Houston arrived and made clear he’d back him. Sooner or later, something like this was going to happen, anyway. May as well be now—when everybody knows there’s another U.S. army sitting there on our northern border, and the second battle of Arkansas Post is fresh in everybody’s mind.”

He caught the look on Sheff ’s face.

“Oh,” Ridge said. “Guess you didn’t know about that, either, did you? The word just got to New Antrim yesterday.”

“There’s at least two regiments of U.S. regulars sitting on the Arkansas just north of the border,” Buck added. “They’re building a great big fort. Colonel Zachary Taylor’s in command.”

“They got us surrounded, in other words,” Cal said. “The stupid bastards.”

CHAPTER 39

Missouri Territory

J
ULY 29, 1825

Skeptically, Zack Taylor eyed the two men standing in front of him. “Explain to me why I should care in the least whether this Clark fellow stays alive or not.”

He waved a hand at the rise in the prairie, beyond which lay the bandit camp. “I’ve got three companies here. I’ll call for them to surrender, but…”

His shoulders shifted, too slightly to be called a real shrug. The movement was an accurate reflection of his attitude, which was that bandits were unlikely to just lay down their arms—and he was indifferent to the matter. With three companies of dragoons, he could afford to be.

“What do
you
care, for that matter? The reward—both of them—specify ‘dead or alive.’ I’d think ‘dead’ would make things easier for you.”

The man on his left—that was Ray Thompson—shook his head.

“It doesn’t work like that, Colonel. Sure, and the reward poster
says
‘dead or alive.’ You believe that, you believe in paradise on earth. What’ll really happen—”

His partner chimed in. “You bring in a dead body, the man offering the reward will look at it, shake his head, and tell you it’s the wrong man. Dancing with joy the whole time. And how are you going to prove otherwise? Seeing as how your principal witness to the contrary is dead, on account of you killed him.”

Scott Powers, that was. Taylor remembered them both quite well. The two scoundrels had had the effrontery to claim that the meat they’d try to fob off onto Cantonment Robertson’s commissary hadn’t really been wormy. Just “prespiced,” in the Louisiana custom. To this day, Zack didn’t think he’d ever encountered more bold-faced liars in his life.

He hadn’t run into them since, but he’d almost had the two arrested, just on general principles, when they arrived in his camp a few days ago. But eventually he’d agreed to come look for himself. There was no good reason not to, after all. It was less than a three days’ ride, even for a sizeable force of dragoons, and until he heard what had happened to General Harrison’s first thrust up the Arkansas River Valley he’d had to bide his time in Missouri Territory anyway. If Mrs. Houston’s murderer was within his grasp, he had the duty to seize him. Besides, he just couldn’t figure out any way—any reason, rather—Thompson and Powers would be lying about this matter.

Taylor still didn’t know if Mrs. Houston’s killer was in that camp. But that it was a bandit camp, he didn’t doubt at all. There was no reason in the world for white men who weren’t bandits to be camped out here like this. Not to mention still be sleeping this late in the morning if they were doing honest work. The sun had come up over an hour earlier.

“The two of you are experienced bounty hunters, I take it?”

Thompson looked more shifty-eyed than ever. Powers just grinned. “Not exactly, Colonel. Be more accurate to say ‘experienced bounty.’ But we know what we’re talking about.”

He pointed a thumb toward the hidden camp. “Anyway, that’s why we need Clark alive.”

Taylor’s patience had run out. “Fine. But you’ll have to figure out how to do it, because I’m not about to risk any of my men for the purpose. I’ll give you ten minutes to get into whatever position you think might do the trick for you. After that, I’m calling on them to surrender—and if any of them so much as wave too hard, I’ll have ’em all shot down.”

“Ain’t this a mess?” Ray grumbled, nine minutes and maybe fifty seconds later. They’d found a place to wait in ambush in some switchgrass on the opposite side of the bandit camp. It was a good hiding place, sure, but switchgrass was no fun at all. It was almost like hiding in a thicket of razor blades.

“Shut up,” Scott hissed. “It’s worth ten thousand dollars.”

“I think there’s a
snake
somewhere in here.”

“So bite him if he gives you any trouble.”

“I hate snakes, you know that. What if—”

He was interrupted by the sound of distant shouting. He and Scott were too far away to make out the exact words.

It didn’t matter, though. He’d heard words spoken in that official tone of voice often enough to know the gist of it.
We’re the law and you ain’t, so give up or we’ll shoot you dead and not even have to skip lunch on account of it.

Not five seconds later, the camp burst into activity, men spilling out of their bedrolls and running every which-a-way. Most of them were pulling out guns, and two or three of them were shooting at nothing.

The idiots. Ray and Scott could only hope that their quarry was at least a little smarter.

The company Taylor had had hidden behind that rise came over it, just as crisp as you could ask for. Up came the muskets, and a volley went off. That took down at least three bandits. The rest started veering north, but another company was in front of them, and another volley went off.

This was about as uneven a contest as you could ask for. If their quarry was in that pack of dumb yahoos, he was a dead man, and they’d just have to hope Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay were more honest than most reward-posters. Given that one of them was a U.S. senator and the other was president of the whole country, Ray thought that was about as likely as getting a royal flush in an honest game of poker.

“Somebody’s coming,” Powers murmured. “Over there.”

Ray followed the direction of Scott’s little nod. Sure enough. Somebody was moving through the bluestem grass that covered most of the area. The stuff was tall enough for a crawling man to stay out of direct sight, but not so tall that his progress couldn’t be followed by watching the grass move, if you were looking for it.

“Two of ’em, I think,” Powers added.

Ray thought he was right. He gauged the course of whoever it was crawling through the grass, maybe forty yards off, and the pace they were making. Another volley went off while he did so. He could hear men shouting and screaming in the distance, but he ignored all that. The bandits who’d been caught in the camp were as good as dead. Taylor wouldn’t be taking any prisoners, given that they’d put up a resistance. Such as it was.

So he and Scott might as well assume that Andrew Clark was one of the two men making their escape. There was no point in doing anything else.

“Fancy or not?” Scott asked.

Damnation, there
was
a snake in here. Ray could hear it slither.

“Fuck ‘fancy.’ I can run if you can’t.”

He was out of the switchgrass and running toward the quarry not two seconds later. It didn’t occur to him until then that maybe the soldiers off in the distance would take
him
for a bandit.

But he ignored the risk. The range was long for muskets, and he really hated snakes.

He could hear Scott pounding behind him. As ambushes went, this one was about as crude as you could ask for.

The men in the grass heard them once they were halfway there. They rose up, each holding a pistol.

Sure enough, one of them was Clark. The other was Scott’s erstwhile friend.

“Erstwhile” being the operative term, Ray stopped and shot him when he was ten yards off. The man returned fire—tried to—but his gun didn’t go off.

Ray’s shot hit him somewhere in the ribs, turning him. Scott’s following shot hit him in the upper arm, knocking him down.

They each had two pistols, the second of which they brought to bear on Clark.

“You’re under arrest!” That came from Ray’s partner.

Clark fired his pistol. Scott yelped, clutching the top of his shoulder. Too angry to think straight, he fired back. His returning shot must have come within a hair of Clark’s head, judging from the way the assassin flinched.

“We need him alive!” Ray shouted.

“The bastard hit me! He couldn’t hit Houston right in front of him—but he hit
me.
”

“So what?” Ray might have had some sympathy, except it was obvious Clark’s bullet hadn’t done more than graze Scott’s shoulder.

The assassin was now trying to reload, not paying any attention to Ray at all.

Ray shook his head. “Andrew Clark, you are one dang fool.” He stepped forward a few quick paces, leaned over far enough to move the grass aside, aimed, and fired.

The shot was perfect, right through the top of Clark’s Blucher half-boots. Probably blew off a couple of toes. He wouldn’t be making any escape, for sure—and he wouldn’t bleed to death, either.

Clark screeched and threw up his hands. The pistol he’d been reloading sailed off somewhere. He stumbled backward and fell on his butt.

Up close, with Clark howling the way he was, Ray could see the scar where Houston had split his lip pretty badly. At least three teeth were missing, too.

No reason not to subtract a few more. Ray kicked him in the face, twice, and then clubbed him with the pistol butt. That ought to do it.

“You stinking bastard!”

Looking over, he saw that Clark’s companion was still alive. In fact, he’d levered himself up on the elbow of his uninjured arm.

Which was his left arm—and he was left-handed. In that position, he couldn’t fight a kitten. The world was full of dang fools.

By then, Scott had retrieved the man’s pistol and was working at it. “Sorry ’bout that, Eddie,” he said, “but ten thousand dollars is ten thousand dollars.”

“You stinking bastard!”

Scott flipped up the frizzen and shook his head. “You got some dew in the primer. You should’ve watched for that, this early in the morning, crawling through grass like you were doing.” He scraped out the powder and reprimed the pistol.

“I’ll kill you, you stinking bastard!”

“Oh, Eddie, that ain’t likely at all.” Scott cocked the pistol and shot the man in the head. At that range he could hardly miss, and he didn’t.

He looked up at Ray and shrugged. “Sorta hated to do that, him being a friend of mine and all. But Eddie always was the unforgiving sort. I don’t feel like having to look over my shoulder all the time, the next twenty or thirty years.”

That was the main reason Ray and Scott had been partners for so long. They were both reasonable men, neither one of them given to silly fancies that might strain the relationship.

By the time they got back to the fort, three days later, word had arrived about Arkansas Post. The news was on the scanty side but enough for Taylor to know that he wouldn’t be marching into the Confederacy any time soon. Victory or not—and Zack was sure that was a formality, in this instance—any army that had been battered that badly would need months to recuperate. Harrison wouldn’t be moving out of the Post until winter came, and then he might very well decide to wait for spring. He’d need reinforcements—lots of them—before he could even think of marching upriver on New Antrim.

That meant Zack was effectively stymied also. The Confederates had the advantage of interior lines. If he and Harrison didn’t move together, the enemy could simply switch forces back and forth between their southeastern and northwestern fronts.

He took it philosophically enough. Zack had never thought this war would be over quickly, to begin with, and he’d had years of experience on the frontier. Just another six to twelve months ahead, building another fort and keeping his men in fighting condition. Nothing he hadn’t done many times before.