Altsheler, Joseph - [Novel 05]

by A Herald Of The West (lit)

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  AFLOAT ON THE GREAT KIVERS.

  THE forces of the West gradually assumed some sort of shape, and the farm lads composing them were divided into companies with officers who had been their com rades on the farms and whose military knowledge they justly despised. Some of us had uniforms, most of us had none; for arms we brought our own hunting rifles, and to these we added our own powder and lead, as the state could furnish neither. Not much of an arma ment, the trained soldier of Europe would say, but let it be remembered that above all others in the world, save our brethren of Tennessee, we knew how to shoot straight at the mark we wished to hit.

  One can not raise an army in a day, and though the messengers flew and the women, with that spirit which the women of the West have shown always, urged us on, the autumn waned and found us still in Kentucky and unready. All the land resounded with the note of prepa ration, but many of us had a terrible fear that we wou ld find the British, who could come an easy journey by sea in their big ships, intrenched in New Orleans, and several of us at last obtained permission to go south and join the Tennesseeans, who were sure now to start before us, though even after we joined them we would have to come back through Kentucky. In the beginning of November I bade my father farewell, received his command to con duct myself as a gentleman and a soldier, a command given in a low voice and with the moisture in his eyes, 292

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  and rode away to the southwest with a troop of my com rades to meet the Tennesseeans coming down the Cum berland Itiver.

  We rode fast under the gray skies of November and said but little, for I was thinking often of Marian and her answer when I came back again. Would I come back again, and if I came, how?

  We reached the hill country in the south of the State through which the Cumberland flows, and there, at a little landing in a wild and almost uninhabited country, found the two flatboats which had been engaged for us. We went upon these, without food and with scanty arms, and awaited the coming of the Tennesseeans.

  For two days we stayed there in the river in our boats, and the November rains came before the Tennesseeans; the skies, which had been dark and threatening when we started, opened and poured upon us one unceasing deluge, from which we sought to protect only our arms and am munition, for protect ourselves we could not. It was a chill torrent too, and as the raw winds of November drove it more fiercely upon us, some of us shivered in the grip of chills and fever, but none would leave the boats and stay. Luckily we had with us a good supply of the favourite beverage of our State, with which we fought the wet and the cold, and just before noon of the third day we heard the Tennesseeans coming.

  Though the rain was pouring upon their heads and the wind was cutting their faces, they were singing in the deep-voiced chorus of many hundred men one of their own wild backwoods war songs, and as they swept around a curve and appeared before us in a fleet of boats that cov ered the river almost from bank to bank they looked as wild as their song sounded. They had not been beautiful at the start hundreds of miles away in Nashville, and since then they had toiled at the boats and sat in the pouring rain until their own mothers would have taken them for savages. Many wore the original dress of the

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  wilderness hunter, the fringed buckskin hunting shirt, the 'coonskin cap, and the tasseled deerskin leggings, but here they were, bold of spirit and strong of body, em barked upon their voyage of two thousand miles to New Orleans, a journey almost as long as the English them selves would have to take from Europe and ten times more arduous.

  We took our places in line with them, receiving a Western welcome as we came, all the warmer for me be cause there in a boat in the second line I saw the faces of my old and true comrades, Mercer and Courtenay, and at the first chance we gripped hands again and told of our campaigns. They had been with Jackson through the Indian war, and then had come north, intending to join the army on the Niagara frontier, when the news of the expedition against New Orleans reached them at Nashville.

  " There'll be a great fight at New Orleans if we get there in time," said Mercer, " for remember it's Andrew Jackson who will lead us."

  Then he asked me about Marian, and I told him of her, and was sad a little while for him; though he did not know that I understood.

  Courtenay seemed to feel the same confidence in Jack son, and as they had served under him and knew him I began to share it. But we were consumed by a fear that we would not reach New Orleans in time, and an other and great trouble was added to it, for I soon dis covered that many of the men in the boats had no arms, not even a rifle, trusting that by some good luck they would find weapons awaiting them at New Orleans. Our commander, General Carroll, showed his anxiety in his face, but there was nothing to do save to press on with oar and paddle and current and stout hearts. The rain continued to fall from clouds unbroken by any shaft of blue; from horizon to horizon they rimmed us in, hosts of them, leaden and threatening, and we shivered in the

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  boats and lay upon our precious powder to keep it dry. The country was wild, sterile, and lonely, and for a day at a time we would see no house, only the dark river flowing on between sombre banks, with the leaden clouds stalking in unbroken regiments across the sky. The water turned from dark blue to lead and from lead to a reddish mud; and now came our compensation, for the peaceful Cumberland, flooded by the heavy rains, was changed to an angry torrent rushing on with doubled cur rent to the Ohio and bearing us at double speed upon its muddy bosom. We forgave the rain, for swiftness was what we wished above all things, and the wild songs of the woods were sung again.

  I dreamt a dream the other night, When all was still and clear, I dreamt I had a brand new coat Made out of daddy's old one.

  There was no sense in that verse, but it and other such were thundered out many a dark and rainy night as we swept along on the muddy current of rushing rivers. On we went to the north and west across the whole State of Kentucky, and then the stream of the Cumberland bore us into the greater Ohio, and the Ohio took us up and carried us on now to the southwest through rich, flat country, and then into the still greater Mississippi, the Father of Waters, now a vast, muddy ditch, flowing be tween low, soft banks at which the water is forever eating.

  The sun came out here, after days of rain, and, clear and brilliant, shone down upon us. The crisp coolness of early winter drove away the fever and the sick rose from their beds, mostly a blanket on the boat's bottom. But despite the sunshine we floated on through a gray and gloomy country. The banks of the Mississippi below the mouth of the Ohio are not beautiful, with their ragged fringe of bushes and trees and their ugly muddy colour, and the stream itself, a vast expanse of thick

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  viscous chocolate fluid, offers no charm save, that of som bre grandeur. From these miasmatic banks and marshy bottoms the houses flee, and the flowing river took us through the lonely wilderness. As we went on the wilder and more desolate it grew, and, in truth, we would soon be crossing the immense region uninhabited save by a few hunters and Indian traders which stretched between Ten nessee and New Orleans. We were Argonauts going to meet a certain foe.

  On the second day after leaving the Ohio Courtenay and I were in a boat in the front line, and he suddenly raised his voice and sang out like a sailor:

  " Sail ho! "

  Far ahead of us, in the middle of the stream, floated a clumsy vessel which looked like a rough imitation of the ark of the Scriptures a wide, awkward boat, its decks covered with a board roof. It seemed to be lumbering along in the trough of the stream without any definite course, like a drunken man who does not know where he is going.

  " A prize! " shouted Courtenay. " A prize for the Captain Kidds of the Mississippi! "

  The men in sport took up the cry, for we were young, most of us, many mere boys, and some remarked that the ark must be loaded heavily as she lay deep in the water. The general or
dered two or three of our boats to use all the sweeps and paddles available and overtake the strange vessel and see what it was, a command which we obeyed with alacrity, since a chase was an event on those lonely waters.

  The prize did not seek to escape us, and when we overhauled her we found that the term we had applied in jest was as true as man ever spoke. A prize she was, the prize of all prizes for us, for she was loaded down with rifles, muskets, and ammunition destined for our forces at New Orleans, shipped at random and without any definite instruction by some lazy State official after the manner of

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  our State officials. One universal shout of joy went up from that little ragged army of floating backwoodsmen, and the whole of the cargo was divided among them, giving every man a rifle or musket and plenty of powder and ball, with a quickness that would have shamed Cap tain Kidd aboard the richest treasure ship that he ever took. It may be that our capture of that ark saved but of that hereafter.

  Then forward we went, now fully armed and lighter of heart, on our long journey to the South. We passed the mouths of great rivers, flowing from western regions, which no white man had yet entered, and from the east ern shore, too, stream after stream emptied its torrent into the yellow Mississippi. All were in flood, swelled by the winter rains, and the Mississippi, also, rose with their tribute and overlapped its low banks. Sometimes in the swampy country it spread away to the right and left for miles, until on either side we could see no shore; then it flowed between the soft mud hills again and at night in the darkness we could hear the chunk, chunk of tons of earth falling into deep water as the hills, eaten away at their base, tumbled into the river; then the day would come again and the sun would shine over a yellow, muddy sea, sometimes half covered with bush and trees and roots and other debris, brought often from the mountains thou sands of miles away. But the current always carried us on t oward New Orleans, and we spent part of the days now drilling on the barges and flatboats, forming in little companies and learning how to present our rifles and fire at the word of command.

  As we swept Southward the air grew warmer, though the winter was advancing and I perceived now that we were approaching a semitropical region. The vegeta tion, the colour of everything changed. It was no longer the stern north of a Kentucky winter, which is southern only by comparison with the States farther north, and we were fast approaching the sunny lands of the Gulf coun- 20

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  t

  try. Some scrubby trees on the banks of the river were pointed out to us as orange groves, and we saw, too, the live oaks, the clinging moss, and the slimy cypress, proofs of a warm South.

  But still there was no news; the world had closed be hind us and was unknown before us. We could only guess, until far down in Louisiana we saw a man in a boat fishing near the shore. He was not disturbed by our approach, and did not rouse himself from his half sleep as one of our arks was turned toward him.

  " Hallo, there! " shouted the biggest of our Tennes- seeans.

  "Hallo yourself! What do you want?"

  "Are the British at New Orleans?"

  " Yes."

  A chill, a deadly paralysis, fell upon us all. We had come nearly two thousand miles, only to be too late, to find the British already in New Orleans.

  " Keep on! " suddenly said the fisherman, dropping his line back into the water. " The British are at New Orleans before it, but not in it. Go on. Andrew Jack son is waiting for you! "

  Again the thundering cheer of two thousand men rose as it had risen when we overtook the boatload of arms, and without another word we turned once more toward New Orleans and pushed on, oar and sweep aiding current.

  CHAPTEE XXVII.

  THE WAY OF ANDREW JACKSON".

  WE arrived at the levee in New Orleans on a cool day in the middle of December after more than a month upon the rivers, and I looked with the keenest interest at this old French-Spanish city, but a few years ours and still foreign, for now I had made the semicircle of our great towns from Boston in the Northeast to New Or leans in the Southwest, and all had been much alike, ex cept this, which was different and new to me in every thing. I saw before me a broad levee shaded with trees, with the great cross of the cathedral showing beyond, while along the river front rose handsome houses, homes of brick, some several stories high and standing in gar dens surrounded by high stone or concrete walls with iron lattice gates. It was green and fresh with the roses blooming in winter, and the houses and the foliage and the perfumes were very welcome to us who had spent many weeks upon swollen and muddy rivers.

  There came to meet us a great crowd, dark in com plexion, clothed in bright colours, and talking much in foreign languages, and though their speech was strange, the accents were warm and friendly, and we knew that we were welcome. It was the Creole population, the de scendants of the French and Spanish, with their many mixtures, who bore themselves in the defence in a man ner worthy of the French of Henry of Navarre and the Spanish of Gonsalvo de Cordova. "We were not a pretty lot, brown as Indians, in wild attire and plastered with

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  the mud of the Mississippi, but they received us as if we had come in brand new uniforms covered with gold lace and with bands playing, and our hearts grew warm.

  When we disembarked from the boats we fell into line and marched away to our quarters, glad to feel our feet upon earth again, though it is none too solid at New Orleans. Some of the handsome Creole ladies waved fans and bouquets of flowers at us from their little bal conies, and more than one lank six-foot Tennesseean tried to smile back, but grinned. The Lord knows we were not beautiful, but we did the best we could, and surely woman can ask no more. One of our men had his eyes on a black-haired girl just peeping over the top of her fan when some one on the sidewalk called out to him:

  " Keep in your place, you there! Attend to your duty! You've come for fighting, not courting! "

  I saw well the officer who called out, for he was not six feet from me, a tall, thin old man, with a long, sharp face, over which was spread a network of seams and wrin kles, with a deep cut, as if from a sword, nestling on one side. His chin projected, his complexion was sallow, and a little leather cap did not conceal the mop of iron- gray hair which rose up straight and threatening on his head and seemed to match the fierce bright eyes shaded by heavy brows. His clothing was mean and faded a short, blue Spanish cloak, tight trousers of which I would have been ashamed, they were so frayed and worn, and high-top boots, rusty and covered with mud.

  The Tennesseean who had been rebuked was angry. Every Western man is as good as the President and does not like to be abused, and he was about to reply in a man ner that would not have been polite, when Courtenay jerked him by the arm and whispered:

  "Hush! Not a word! That's General Jackson! "

  When the general came the next day to see his " boy heroes of the Creek war," as he called Mercer and Courtenay and the others who had been with him in those

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  campaigns, I was presented to him and at once submitted to the charm and courtliness of his manner, which were so marked, despite his backwoods appearance, as every one who knew him will testify. I am not an unqualified admirer of General Jackson, and I was always for Clay instead of Jackson for the presidency, as I do not believe in electing soldiers to a civilian office, but I think that he represented some of the strongest, sanest, and most moral elements in our population, and at New Orleans he was the right man in the right place alert, far-seeing, and with the will of the great Napoleon himself. He treated me with much consideration, and asked me some ques tions.

  " You were at Washington, Lieutenant Courtenay tells me," he said. .

  " Yes, I fought there."

  " You fought there! I understand there was no fighting at Washington; all running."

  " I stayed with Barney's marines."

  " They did their duty. I hope that all of us here
may do as well."

  With that he dismissed us, and we used a little leisure to wander over the strange, mossy, and beflowered city, with its high-walled and window-barred houses, and to make friends with the lively Creoles and San Domingans who were to fight by our side. But this had to be done quickly, for the British threat was growing more ominous. Their fleet lay at the entrance to Lake Borgne, which is northeast of New Orleans, and a powerful force of barges and launches crossing the lake had already destroyed our six little gunboats in a desperate fight, in which our men, though defeated by overwhelming numbers, be haved with a courage and tenacity which had shown the British that though it was but a few miles to New Or leans it was a long road to travel. But we in the city, who knew the slenderness of the defences and how few were the soldiers, scarcely dared to hope. Coffee's men

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  were there, the eight hundred Tennessee Indian fighters whom Jackson had summoned at the first alarm from the Indian country, coming eight hundred miles without a stop, the last hundred and fifty, from Baton Eouge to New Orleans, in two days, a record which, I think, has not been equalled even on the open fields and hard roads of Europe; but even these and Carroll's Tennes- seeans and the Creoles and the San Domingans and the French refugees and the free blacks made but a few thousand badly armed men against the magnificently equipped fleet, with its twenty thousand soldiers and sail ors, which the British had at the entrance to the lake or on it. So I prayed now in my heart for the Kentuck- ians who were afloat somewhere on the Mississippi, and the general swore at their tardiness with violence and pro fusion, for he was a very proficient man with oaths, which, I have heard from many authorities, are quite as effective in war as prayer. But neither oaths nor prayers brought the laggard Kentuckians; the muddy river flowed past, but no soldiers came on its current, and there was abuse of my Kentucky brethren, to which I listened not always in silence, for I knew that if they were slow it was not their fault, and I reminded those around me that in all the war Kentucky had given her blood more freely than any other State.