The boy shook his head. “No, sir.”
Laughter felt good, a wonderful release, and Houston pointed at the trail that led to the cabin. “Don’t worry. Just be gentle with your mother. It is harder being a mother, Son, than it is being a father. Remember that.”
“I’ll try.” He thrust out the little saber that Houston had given back to him when they left the house. “Here. Hold this. I’ll fetch the poles and bait.”
Houston took the toy he had carved, and watched his son hurry off the beach and dash for the house. How small the saber looked in Houston’s hand. He remembered holding a larger one, a real one.
Chapter Seventeen
Horseshoe Bend, March 1814
The Indians called this place To-ho-pe-ka, a bend in the Tallapoosa River that had created a hundred-acre peninsula filled with briars, brambles, gullies, snakes, mosquitoes and—now—hundreds of Red Stick warriors.
Houston fished out a rag to mop sweat off his face. March was supposed to be spring, but there was no spring in Alabama. Just hell.
The Cherokee named Gunter, one of General Coffee’s scouts, ran in a crouch, water dripping from his buckskins and his black, braided queue. Houston had known Gunter, of the Long Hair Clan, for years, as far back as when Houston ran away to live with the Cherokees. The Indian stopped, gestured toward the Tallapoosa, and spoke in Cherokee.
“The canoes of our enemy,” Gunter said, “are gone. They cannot escape.”
Houston thanked his old friend. “I will see you later,” he said.
“It is my strongest wish. That means you will not be dead.”
“Nor will you,” Houston said.
“That …” the Cherokee grinned, “is my strongest wish. I was mistaken. Seeing you alive at the end of this day is my second wish.”
He wanted to laugh, but Houston could not bring himself even to smile. Fear had taken root, and he had never known fear—at least not this kind of fear. What if he showed yellow, turned and ran? What if he just didn’t do anything … important? After muttering a Cherokee blessing, he left the edge of the river.
A full year had passed since he had joined the army. He touched the ring on his pinky finger, and stopped to wipe the sweat from the palms of his hands. The damned hands would not stop sweating. So much had happened, and so quickly.
* * * * *
He had enlisted as a private. By the end of the first day, he had been made a sergeant. He had enlisted in the Seventh Infantry, but that had been merged into the Thirty-Ninth Infantry, and Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Hart Benton had taken notice of him, and promoted him to ensign. Now, Houston held the rank of third lieutenant. Also, he joined to fight the British, but soon would engage in battle against the Creek Indians. A short while ago, he thought no one could command an army better than Colonel Benton. Now he worshipped Major General Andrew Jackson.
Tecumseh of the Ohio region had been stirring up trouble, and had brought that trouble to the South, persuading the Creeks to join with the British and kill Americans. Back in August, the Creeks had burned women and children alive in a massacre at Fort Mims. Jackson had been put in charge to make the Red Sticks pay, but his command was made up of a bunch of backwoods volunteers who knew nothing about discipline or taking orders. So Jackson had requested real troops to assist him, and the Thirty-Ninth Division had been ordered to Fort Strother.
Houston would never forget his first sight of General Jackson, that wild growth of untangled hair, the lean face, and the ferocity of his eyes. The general had been holding a burning match over a cannon’s fuse, and the cannon had been aimed at his own men.
“You’re hungry. I’m hungry!” the lean man with a demon’s eyes had roared. “But I will share with you what I have.” The left hand had reached into a pocket in his jacket, and had brought out a handful of what looked like acorns. “But you want mutiny, and this is what you shall reap.” The hand holding the match had lowered closer to the fuse. “What shall it be? Do we fight the savages and avenge the loved ones you have lost? Or do we fight amongst ourselves?”
A moment later, the ragtag group of militia, in calico, hunting frocks, and battered caps, had dispersed back to their tents and fires, and General Jackson had raised his match and blew it out.
“That took gumption,” Houston had whispered to Lieutenant Newell Graham.
“He’s tough, Sam,” Graham had whispered back. “Tough as a piece of ol’ hickory.”
* * * * *
Now Houston found the general and saluted. Jackson stared coldly.
“The Cherokee scouts have removed the canoes to the far bank, sir,” Houston reported.
Jackson nodded and turned to another Indian scout whose spear had been adorned with a long white handkerchief.
“Take a message to their chief,” Jackson said. “Tell him to send his women, children, and old men across the Tallapoosa. Tell him he has one hour. Then we shall commence the attack.”
The Indian’s head bobbed, and he disappeared.
Houston stared ahead. It had taken the army ten days to cut through the brush and cover the distance between Fort Strother and the bend. During that time, the Creeks had built long, wooden breastworks. Back along the riverbank, Gunter had told Houston that he estimated between eight hundred and a thousand Creeks waited for Jackson’s army.
Houston tried to control his breathing, his racing heart.
“Prepare the cannon for the assault,” Jackson told one of his officers.
“Cannon will do no good, General.” Houston didn’t even realize he had spoken until he saw Jackson’s cold eyes boring through him.
“Explain yourself!” the general barked.
Somehow, Houston found enough saliva in his mouth to answer. “Those are green logs, sir. Likely, the balls will just bounce off them. Like the British balls did at Fort Moultrie in Charleston during the Revolution.”
“You are a student of war, Mister …?”
“Houston, General, Sam Houston. No, I’m no student …” He found himself grinning for some damned reason. “Of war or anything much. But I’ve read a mite.”
“If our cannon fail, then the savages shall taste the steel of your saber, Lieutenant. To your post, Mister Houston. You have an hour to pray.”
* * * * *
Cannons roared. His ears rang. Smoke burned his eyes, his lungs.
“Is that the redoubt burnin’?” someone in the ranks asked.
“Be quiet!” growled Major Montgomery, standing to Houston’s left.
“No, fool,” came another comment. “It’s like Gen’ral Jackson tol’ us earlier. We’ll have to put the redskins under with ball and bayonet.”
“I said, silence!” the major shouted.
Beside Houston, his good friend from Maryville, Henry Morris, whispered, “You scared, Sam?”
He could only nod. There wasn’t enough spit in his throat to allow him to speak.
The smoke, Houston knew, did not come from the redoubt, but beyond that. The Cherokees had fired many of the Creek huts. Bullets sang through the forest, and arrows whistled beneath the high limbs of the pines. Enemy marksmen kept the artillery crews hugging the ground, and, as Houston had expected, the leaden balls merely bounced off the logs of the formidable breastworks. He started sweating again, and not just his hands. He ran a coarse tongue over cracked lips.
Major Montgomery raised his saber. To his surprise, Houston found that he had enough strength to lift his own. The drummers began tapping.
“Charge!” Colonel Williams bellowed.
To his right, General Doherty shouted the same orders to his Tennessee boys.
Houston didn’t know if he had actually yelled, or just opened his mouth, but he was moving toward the log barrier, flinching as bullets zipped past him, then no longer reacting, no longer even afraid.
The breastworks came into view, dis
appeared behind clouds of white smoke. Lead balls tore off his hat, clipped his coattail, grazed his side. He smelled sulfur. Or was it the doors to hell? No longer did he hear the musketry behind him, the screams of men, the drums, his own voice.
Creeks appeared, firing arrows from bows, bullets from muskets. Others charged out of the breastworks with tomahawks. He thrust his saber, realized that he had just gutted an Indian warrior, then kept walking, then standing at the wall of logs.
After dropping his saber, Major Montgomery pulled himself to the top of the palisade. Drawing a pistol, he aimed beyond the logs and fired. He slipped, came back up, and turned, waving the empty pistol over his head. “Follow me, boys! Fol—!”
Then he fell backward, landing in the pillow of leaves and pine straw. Houston blinked. “Major?”
Lemuel Montgomery did not respond, simply stared up in Houston’s direction, his eyes unblinking. A moment later, Houston realized that the top of the major’s head was missing.
Shock snapped him out of whatever had been controlling him. He screamed, “Follow me, men!” He climbed over the logs, dropped below into an angry sea. The saber slashed. A warrior tumbled past him. He heard the oaths he swore, the screams of men, the clangs of tomahawk against musket, sword against spear.
Henry Morris rammed the barrel of his musket into a port hole, pulled the trigger, withdrew the musket, swung it like a club as a Creek came at him. Houston turned, brought the saber up, saw another Indian run into it. Closing his eyes, he held his breath, and felt the rotten breath of the Creek in his face. His eyes opened to find the Indian just inches from his face, blood leaking from the corners of the man’s lips. Houston backed up, ripping the saber from the man’s breast. The dead Red Stick tumbled onto a pile of dead men, white and red.
Rage controlled him. Again, he raised the bloodstained saber. Henry Morris climbed over the logs. “Give them hell!” Houston shouted, and suddenly grunted. The saber left his hand, clanging as it fell onto a musket near a dead warrior. Houston tried to step toward the musket, but his leg would not move. Looking down, he found an arrow sticking out of his groin, on the right side. He gripped the shaft, tugged. The arrow did not budge, but an intense pain shot through him, and he laid back, staring up at the tops of the trees, a smoke-filled sky.
The dead served as his bedroll and pillow. He tried to sit up, but the pain rocked him to his back. His throat begged for water. Maybe he begged for death. His head turned, and he saw Henry Morris.
“Henry,” he managed to whisper. “Help get this damned arrow out of me.”
Morris did not answer. A spear stuck out of his friend’s chest.
A warrior came at him. Houston reached for the saber, but couldn’t find it. He gripped something, tossed it. A damned pine cone bounced off the brave’s thigh, before a crimson geyser erupted from the charging Creek’s throat, and he slammed against the wooden barrier.
Sitting up, looking around, then seeing the flintlock pistol in Morris’ waistband, Houston reached over and jerked it out. The pistol bucked in his hand, and he tossed it aside, made himself stand. He searched for a weapon, and, finding nothing, he pulled the lance from Morris’ dead body, and drove it into a charging warrior. The Indian fell back against the log wall, now slick with blood, and slid down into a heap, resting against dead soldiers, dead Creeks.
* * * * *
“Damnation, Sam!” Lieutenant Newell Graham knelt beside him, his face blackened by powder and grime. Graham’s big hands gripped the shaft of the arrow. His eyes showed fright. “Does that hurt, Sam?”
“Hell, yes, it hurts.” Houston spit out both words and phlegm. “Get it out.”
Graham had turned away. “Injuns are runnin’. Got ’em on the run.”
“Pull that damned arrow out!” Houston realized his left hand gripped the saber. Somehow, he had found it, but he did not remember when. “Pull it out, Newell!”
Newell Graham suddenly sprang to his feet, and he snapped a salute as a lean man with wild hair and an iron face reined in a horse the color of midnight. Part of the breastworks had been torn down, and soldiers were pouring in through the opening.
“General Jackson,” Graham said, “the Creeks have fled.” Graham moved his arm. “Taken up in that redoubt over yonder in the woods.”
“Finish them, Lieutenant,” Jackson ordered, but then he paused as he stared down at Houston. The general’s eyes, which had reminded Houston of a buzzard’s, softened. “Your day is done, Mister Houston. Get back to the surgeons. That is an order.”
Houston watched the black stallion carry Jackson away.
“Sam,” Graham whispered when Jackson had disappeared, “I got to go. Can you get to ’em sawbones?”
The word sawbones sickened him, petrified him. Houston raised the saber. “Just pull that damned arrow out, Newell, before I chop your fool head off.”
Newell Graham tugged again, and Houston cried out, blinked back tears, and ordered his friend: “Again … again … get it …”
The barbed arrow ripped out flesh, and blood gushed as Houston sank back against the logs.
“Oh, hell!” Graham yelled, and Houston slipped into a world of blackness.
* * * * *
Awake, he bit his lip, and dug fingernails into his palms, anything to stop himself from passing out again. He desperately sought Newell Graham, but found only rows and rows of writhing, bleeding soldiers. A shadow crossed Houston’s eyes, and he recognized the bearded, bespectacled face of Major Carroll Player, regimental surgeon.
Player packed the hole in Houston’s groin with wads of cotton soaked in turpentine and rum. The surgeon might well have filled Houston’s leg with fire. Finally, the doctor wrapped a silk rag around the wound, tying it off on the inside of Houston’s right thigh.
“That’s all I can do for …” Player began, but Houston did not let him finish. He pushed himself to his feet, used the saber as a crutch, and moved toward the sound of the guns.
“Confound it, Lieutenant!” the doctor thundered. “You shall bleed to death!”
* * * * *
Cannon had been rolled toward the river, and now blazed at a Creek fort, with a roof of logs and walls seven feet high. These balls bounced off the wooden fortress as they had against the breastworks.
Houston watched from underneath a tree, much of its bark shot away during the battle. Newell Graham brought him a ladle of water, and Houston drank greedily. Sweat soaked Houston’s uniform.
Exhausted soldiers knelt, sat, lay on backs, stomachs, or curled up like infants. At length, the cannon fell silent, and General Jackson walked up and down the lines.
“We have asked the damned savages to surrender, and they have replied with nothing but scorn. Night will be falling soon, and we have not marched this far to watch the murderers of your mothers and sisters and aunts and nieces slip away in the darkness. Who will volunteer to lead the charge? Who desires the glory of this day? Who amongst you is a man?”
He wanted to just sit there, yet he heard not Jackson’s words, but his own, boasting to Maryville’s village men: “You don’t know me now, but you shall hear of me.”
Pride, not bravery, not even the challenge from General Jackson, caused Houston to push himself to his feet with his saber. The frog-sticker slipped from his grasp, and landed on the ground. If he tried to get it, he would fall back down, and would not be able to rise again. Newell Graham watched, his face in wonder and shock. Houston turned away and limped past the men who barely glanced at him. Stopping at one soldier he did not know, Houston held out his arms.
“Your musket,” he pleaded in a cracked voice. “Please.”
Without a word, the soldier handed the musket to Houston. Taking it, Houston walked on, stopping only for a minute to study the redoubt that was smoking from some of the cannon shots. He knew there were Creek Indians moving behind the walls.
C
ocking the musket, he yelled, “Follow me! Give them hell!” Then he stumbled down the incline toward the fortress.
The Red Sticks let him come. Within musket range, Houston fired. Unable to reload, he somehow found enough strength to raise the long gun over his head. He staggered on. Then a blow to his right shoulder dropped him to his knees, and almost simultaneously his right arm seemed to shatter. Gasping, he turned back and yelled, “Charge, boys! Charge!”
Another bullet clipped a lock of his hair, and he blinked, suddenly understanding.
He had led the charge … but no one had followed.
An arrow zipped between his legs, and he rose. Staggering back up the ravine, dragging his throbbing, bleeding body, watching his fellow soldiers stare at him with open mouths and hollow eyes. Newell Graham and General Jackson’s orderly rushed down the last twenty yards, each grabbing one of his arms. Then Houston closed his eyes and fell once more into that bottomless void.
* * * * *
When he woke in the gloaming, smoke burned his eyes. He lay in a tent, men all around him groaning, some praying, some begging, a few screaming, many dying.
Bile rose in his throat as he made himself look at the sheets covering his body. A heavy sigh of relief escaped when he saw that he still had both legs. His right arm and shoulder throbbed. But nothing had been amputated … yet. He might die whole.
Doc Player, his face even more haggard, set a black satchel on Houston’s bed, opened the case, and reached inside.
“Your groin is a bloody mess. We managed to take the ball out of your arm, but the one in your shoulder refuses to budge,” the major said. He withdrew a pewter flask. “If you live through the night, they will take you to Fort Williams. If you survive those sixty miles, you will at least find comfort at the fort. I will send word to your mother in case she wants to bring your remains to Maryville.” He offered the flask. Houston just blinked. “Whiskey will ease some of the pain. But not all,” Player explained as he leaned the flask against Houston’s side.
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