Eagle's Cry

by David Nevin

  Andrew was coming to his point, and now she saw that leaving wasn’t the issue. He wanted to sell their holdings, some forty thousand acres out to the west they’d collected so painfully, and clear their debts. She nodded, liking talk of clearing debts. And then … did she remember that tract they had over by Stone’s River? How choice it was: 450 very favorable acres with two log blockhouses, holdover from the old days but still in good shape; with a minimum of fixing they’d be—

  She stared at him, the place emerging from memory, blockhouses like what her father had built so long ago. Ma, God rest her soul, had done well there after Pa was killed. Blockhouses were warm and comfortable, the top floor bigger than the bottom so that in an attack you could fire down as well as out, and she’d smelt the powder smoke in their blockhouse more times than she wanted to remember. The screams and shrieks and war cries of painted men come to kill them, terror gripping her throat like a strangling hand, men slithering close like snakes with murder in their faces. She shuddered. If she lived to ninety, she’d never forget that terror, her throat tightening at the very sight of an Indian. Back in those not so long ago days where she and Andrew had started, in the log-walled compound where he’d looked at her that day and she’d felt it all through her body, and the next time she’d seen him she’d smiled … .

  So he came to his point. He wanted to sell Hunter’s Hill, clear the last of their debt, and live on the smaller property. Yet something was missing and she waited and then the answer to her last question came with the name he proposed for the new property: The Hermitage. It would be a refuge; it would protect them, it would draw him back from all his wild wanderings, back to her where he belonged.

  “And,” he said, “we’ll clear the decks for action.” He meant against the Spanish, and she felt a shiver of apprehension. But whatever happened then would be later, not now.

  She stood and put her hands on his shoulders. “All right,” she said.

  “They say the militia election’s set for February,” Jack Coffee said. “Conway’s stepping down—seems he ain’t well. Some of the officers are talking you up for major general.”

  “Well, we want to be a mite cautious there,” Jackson said. He was saddling the bay mare; he and Jack were going to the store to meet their factor who’d come up from New Orleans. Rachel had kissed Jack’s cheek and gone inside.

  Jackson was proud of the calm in his voice, for in fact the very idea set off a flash of desire. The notion that destiny had singled him out for great things made him sound like his head was too big for his hat, but it was true just the same. It burned in him like those rockets he’d read about in the French wars, white heat, tail of flame, riding mind and heart. Felt destined, and not just in Tennessee, either …

  The military was his answer. He liked action, knew his own mind and didn’t hesitate; something needed to be done, he’d issue the orders and lead the charge. Men had always been willing to follow him. Major general, Tennessee militia, would be just right; but that didn’t make it easy.

  Jackson’s mind was ablaze when they rode out, which didn’t prevent an appraising look at his acres, fields in dry stubble after the harvest, corn stalks to be gathered for fodder, cows grazing comfortably in the far pasture, fruit trees strawed for winter. A promising colt galloped along the rail fence as if it wanted to race; a good sign, horse that wanted to run.

  It was a fine place and he hated to let it go, but it was time. That clearing the decks business, he hadn’t meant to say that, though the truth does have a way of popping out. But he was always careful of Rachel. They had paid a heavy price for what would have destroyed people of less strength. His natural instinct to fight had sharpened to what in calm moments he could see was a sort of mania. And her wild discomfort in his absences was sort of a mania too.

  But trouble was coming, and if it didn’t come on its own he might make it himself. It was no time to be overextended, debt leaving a man vulnerable, for with this Spanish pressure, sooner or later things would pop like a stopper from a bottle left in the sun. Settlers were pouring westward, over the Cumberland Gap, down the Ohio from Pittsburgh, new state of Ohio demanding admission. Vast new areas were being broken to cultivation as Indian titles were extinguished by treaties that, right or wrong, probably would soon be violated.

  Well, wrong, he’d agree to that, but the treaties made promises that there wasn’t no way of keeping. Can’t keep settlers from coming on for good land lying fallow. Yes, it was hunting land for Indians, but could you really keep land open for naught but hunting with settlers coming over the Cumberland Gap in ever greater streams?

  The Indians whose wild attacks at dawn had driven them into blockhouse walls in the old days were mostly gone now, gone south, down to Alabama country where there was still plenty of hunting range. They brought in pelts from time to time, and he traded with them and liked them well enough. They liked to laugh, and sometimes they made him laugh too. But friendly as they could be when well separated, there’d been too much killing on both sides, too much hatred deep ingrained. Man with any experience in the West saw an Indian, he remembered his own brother killed when just a boy, his auntie wearing a bonnet day and night after the Indians took her hair, and she thanking God every day she survived at all. No, settlers coming was the way of the West, and Jackson’s own experience with roving war parties told him settlers and Indians would never live together without trouble.

  The road was deep-rutted clay, the horses daintily picking their way. Presently it plunged into a mile of dark woods, hickory, mostly, with a good sprinkling of chestnut and some poplar. It was natural ambush country. He didn’t expect trouble, but he eased his pistol and made sure the carbine in the boot was clear. He saw Jack touch his own pistol.

  Once it had all been forest like this, settlers downing a few trees for room to scratch out a cornfield and living mostly on game. Now countless fields like his own funneled produce down the river; fifteen years ago a half-dozen flatboats made the run but near five thousand had gone last year. The river opened the world to the American West. The Spanish were crazy to think they could stop this flow like corking a bottle.

  Jackson was some disappointed in the new administration. He was a Democrat to the core and had been ready to march when the Federalists backed down. But since then you couldn’t hardly tell that a new philosophy had come to town. Same old business, so far as the frontier was concerned. Whatever happened to that 1795 treaty with Spain? The Spanish took years to vacate treaty lands and still closed the river whenever they felt like it. Any pissant official could hold you up for days, and you had no recourse. It was all international too, Spain still dreaming of peeling off the American West into a neutral buffer state supported by the Spanish crown. Maybe something was in planning up to Washington, but if so they were taking their time. Still, that little Madison was tougher than he looked and was a friend of the West; he’d stood shoulder to shoulder with Jackson when Tennessee was fighting for statehood in the Congress. So there was still hope.

  But Tennessee was the closest place to New Orleans, and Jackson figured that put it on the front lines. If the United States took action, it would call on Tennessee; if it didn’t, Tennessee might take action and call on the United States. Find out if they had any guts in Washington … .

  He needed that major generalcy in short, but John Sevier stood squarely in his way. The bad blood between them went back six years. Sevier had commanded Tennessee militia for years, he the hero of King’s Mountain, won the Revolution, and so forth, long, long time ago. But then he was elected governor and that threw the militia post open and Jackson stood for election. He was twenty-seven years old at the time and that looked plenty mature and seasoned to him. But Sevier had taken offense at his youth, it seemed. He’d jumped all over Jackson, said he was young and callow, and labeled him an upstart because he had no official military experience, though he’d led the boys into the deep woods on plenty of retaliatory raids to teach Indians they couldn’t just raid set
tlers whenever they wanted and he’d never lost a man. But Sevier, he just acted the dog in the manger, no other word for it. He put up a nonentity, George Conway, amiable but no military flair and no national view. Figured that would leave old Sevier himself still Mr. Tennessee Military. Governor wasn’t enough, you see. Like he owned the military. Finally he’d made it a test of his own reputation, and Jackson went down to humiliating defeat and that sort of treatment don’t sit well. Jackson wasn’t done with Sevier, not by a long shot.

  Rachel said it hit pride harder than reputation. Maybe, but it was different now. He had made himself a power in West Tennessee and to be brushed aside again would be dangerous and perhaps even fatal to his hopes. Yet it was a tricky election, with scarcely a hundred senior officers voting and their interests sharply different from those of the people at large.

  It was a time to think carefully.

  “What I hear,” Jack said, as if unburdening himself, “is that Sevier plans to run his ownself, now that his three terms as governor are over. Wants his old job back.”

  That was bad news—for Jackson and for Tennessee. Things were hotting up, and it would be at the national and international level. But Sevier couldn’t see an inch beyond state borders. Jackson’s vision was broad and sweeping; he was an American and his country was in danger. And Sevier was old, way up in his fifties someplace, and soft from sitting around for years being important. A day in the field would probably finish him. He would be a critical mistake for Tennessee. Reputation only carries you so far.

  But he was still formidable. And there are many ways to serve; could Jackson risk a destructive defeat?

  “Drover come in from Louisville yesterday says the talk there is same as here—Spanish gonna close the river again.” Jack said. “Seems they figure if they punish the West, the old Spanish conspiracy talk in Louisville may get going again—split the Union talk.”

  “Bastards!” Jackson cried. “I hate that conspiracy mouthing.” Before Kentucky and Tennessee were admitted, some of the boys flirted with Spain in hopes of getting the river open; but now talk of separating the West on behalf of Spain was treason! Leave it to him and he’d string a few of ’em up to a stout oak limb and put an end to such chatter. He had his suspicions that that scoundrel General Wilkinson was peddling the same dream to the Spanish, knave selling his country for gold. By God, he ever got a chance to prove it, he’d have the fat general dangling from the same limb!

  Jack grinned. “Good thing you don’t talk that way from the bench.”

  Jackson calmed. The outburst had done him good. “They hear it with the bark still on in my court,” he said. “But I’ll tell you, Spanish close the river, never mind separating from the Union. We’ll go down and separate Spain from New Orleans. Throw ’em in the sea, by God, let ’em swim to Cuba!”

  “So,” said Jack, “I guess that election matters, don’t it?” Jack didn’t say a lot but he was a pretty smart fellow.

  “I’ll think on it,” Jackson said.

  Daniel Clark was the merchant capitalist of New Orleans, and every year he sent a factor north to Nashville and on to Louisville and Cincinnati, lining up cargoes for the seagoing brigs that came up the Mississippi. The factor this year, whose name was Umbrick, proved to be a laconic fellow with a gotch eye and Tennessee in his voice, probably a flatboatman who’d found a home with Clark. He was explaining what Jackson already knew, that Clark was the soul of honesty but no one could guarantee that any shipment would get through. They would take all Jackson could send, but he would send at his own risk, not their problem until it cleared the Spanish and was in their hands.

  That alone told you how outrageous the Spanish really were, and there was plenty more in the way of outrages. You’d think a fellow as smart as James Madison could grasp the peril of the Spanish thumb on the western jugular.

  “Carl Mobry died,” Umbrick said. “Word come awhile back.”

  Jackson was sorry to hear that. He’d been shipping with Mobry for years and liked him personally. He was square. Umbrick said he’d gotten heavy, which made Jackson think of Rachel pressing her hand to her chest. Sometimes her heart went to fluttering something fierce and she was getting heavy too, though she struggled with it.

  After a bit of polite palaver, Jackson asked what this would mean to his goods.

  Umbrick shrugged. “I understand his widder woman plans to run the company.”

  “A woman? I don’t know …”

  “Me neither. She’s a New Orleans girl, relation of old Dan’l somehow. I understand she’s coming down. But I can find you a different shipper.”

  “Sounds like she’s got guts,” Jackson said. Rachel was all courage and ran things perfectly well. “I’ll give her a try,” he said. “but she’ll have to be tough.”

  “You bet, what with the news. You hear the French are coming back? Taking over Louisiana?”

  “French! What the hell are you talking about?”

  “They say Spain has done signed a secret treaty to give Louisiana back to France.”

  “That’s supposed to be for sure?”

  “Hell, nothing’s for sure in New Orleans. Rumors every day. But a lot of folks are listening to this one.”

  Jackson pondered on that after Umbrick left. It did make kind of an awful sense. New Orleans was French through and through. France had owned it for a hundred years till England took it in the French and Indian War forty-odd years ago and gave it to Spain. The dons hadn’t yet made a dent in its Frenchness; you met a New Orleans man, he couldn’t wait to tell you he was French, not Spanish.

  Until now, at least, Jackson had admired Napoleon for his military manner and his decisive use of force, to say nothing of the fact that he was fighting the British for whom Jackson had no affection; but now, by God, the man was beginning to resemble one of those octopuses they said would come out of the sea and wrap themselves right around a ship and carry it down. He’d fought the continent to a standstill and was building up his forces for more. And you could figure losing Louisiana even forty years ago would be a burr under such a man’s saddle. Big men think about righting national wrongs, and Napoleon was big.

  France astride the western jugular …

  “That could be a disaster,” he said.

  Coffee grunted agreement.

  The thing was that while the Spanish made trouble, they actually were weak. Their colonial army was small and scattered thinly along the river clear to Saint Louis. A brigade of Tennessee militia could deal with them, though it would make a hell of an international fuss. But France was a major power and had been victorious all over Europe. Napoleon’s blooded troops wouldn’t worry about a Tennessee brigade.

  “The French get in solid, we’ll never get ’em out,” he said. Clouds had been building. A cold rain began, and they went inside the log store. The river had turned slate gray, matching his sudden turn of mood. “We’ll have to fight if they come. I mean, really fight. Have to get the nation behind us.”

  He sat in a wooden armchair, stretched his feet toward the fire, and stuffed an old cob pipe. When it was drawing right, he lighted it with a glowing coal and filled the room with fragrance. Napoleon astride the American West’s lifeline? If it proved true, it would be fatal to the future. Tennessee had to get ready, and that meant that he had no choice.

  “I think I’ll throw a Christmas barbecue,” he said. “At the new place. Butcher two or three steers and as many hogs and get ’em on the slow fires. Kegs of beer, plenty of whiskey punch. We’ll lay down a floor and get the fiddlers in and have a dance, Rachel’s choir for some good gospel singing. No preaching though. I’ll invite all the voting officers, them and their ladies, we’ll put them up all around, and we’ll have one hell of a party.”

  He pointed his pipe stem. “And before they get too far gone, I’ll talk to ’em. Tell ’em about the French and what that means if it happens and where the nation stands in the world and Tennessee stands in the nation. I’ll show ’em we’re on the front lin
es, and the day will come when the whole country will look to us to lead the way. Show them what will happen to them and their farms and their families if this comes and we knuckle under and let it stand.”

  He nodded to himself, mulling this over, liking it. “Now,” he said, “old Sevier don’t talk like that. I’ve heard him. His vision is about to the end of his thumb. He’ll tell them how he won the revolution at King’s Mountain and how he loves Tennessee and they ought to vote for him ’cause it’s his right.”

  He was up and pacing, the excitement of it fierce in his blood.

  “But I’ll be telling them about real things, and I believe they’ll listen. I can beat Sevier, and by God, I’m going to do it!”

  And he had a secret weapon he might use, but he didn’t tell Jack about that.

  19

  NEW ORLEANS, FALL 1801

  The Cumberland Queen lay on the hook at English Turn, the great looping bend in the Mississippi some twenty miles below New Orleans that vessels could take against the current only when the wind was right. Danny Mobry stood at the taffrail watching mud brown water suck at the stern with an insistent chuckling noise as brown pelicans wheeled and plunged to snatch fish from the water. The Queen had been on anchor four days, no sign of the wind changing; a dozen ships were anchored within view.

  Danny had heard of English Turn all her life; legend said it was so called because in the days when the French still ruled the Mississippi, a British warship poked its way that far up the river. Frenchmen in pirogues appeared and told the English captain that he couldn’t get through, and if he did, shore batteries would blow him apart. So he turned and fled the hundred miles back down the river to the sea, while the French chuckled. New Orleans loved that story. But then, New Orleans was definitely, certifiably, everlastingly French.