Land of the Free

by Jeffry Hepple

  “What’s happened here? Who are all these people?”

  “They’re from Fort Sinquefield, a few miles north of here. Last week, Red Sticks led by Josiah Francis attacked the cabins of two families. They killed two men, twelve women and children. The next day, after the bodies were buried outside of the fort, the Creeks attacked some women that were washing clothes at a spring and killed one of the women and a militiaman that tried to defend them. It took the rest of the militia two hours to drive them off. The next day the settlers and militia abandoned Fort Sinquefield and showed up here.”

  “We need to hit the Red Sticks where they live instead of waiting around for the bastards to attack us,” Yank grumbled.

  “What can I do?” Claiborne asked defensively. “General Flournoy’s given me specific order that I’m not to take any preemptive action.”

  “I know, I know,” Yank said. “I’m just frustrated.”

  “So am I.” He waved his hand at the crowded fort. “These people have never heard of Major General Thomas Flournoy or the Seventh Military District but they do know me and they expect me to protect them.”

  “Well, when my father was in a similar situation he took off his uniform and became a spy. I think I’ll try that. At least we’ll know where they are and that might give us some time to prepare for future attacks.”

  Claiborne thought about it for a few seconds. “I think that’s a bad idea, Yank.”

  “Why?”

  “For one thing you’re not woodsy enough to go slipping around and sneaking up on Indians.”

  “I’ll have to learn then.”

  “You might want to take some of our Indian allies.”

  Yank shook his head.

  “Then keep your uniform on so our own people don’t shoot you.”

  September 23, 1813

  Fort Madison, Alabama Territory

  “They seem to be having some kind of religious holiday,” Yank said.

  “Good,” Claiborne was reading dispatches. “Hey, Yank. What was the name of that young navy officer that you gave the scar?”

  “Percy.”

  “Alexander Percy?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “He’s mentioned in dispatches for outstanding bravery in the face of the enemy. He’s a commodore now. The boy seems to have acted with real courage.”

  “He proved himself very brave when we met. I have seen him since and hold him in high regard.”

  Claiborne chuckled. “It seems that he also has quite a flair for drama.”

  “How so?”

  “He went all the way to Vincennes to present his battle flag to Harrison. Do you remember Bill Harrison?”

  “Of course. I’ve been up there to see him a few times recently. He’s built himself a mansion that he calls Grouseland.”

  “He’s come a long way since we all soldiered together.”

  “And he’ll go farther too. I wouldn’t be surprised to see President William Henry Harrison some time in the future.”

  “Ha. That’ll be the day. Right after President Andrew Jackson.”

  October 7, 1813

  Camp Blount, Fayetteville, Tennessee

  Yank was sitting with Colonel John Coffee in a grove of four huge oak trees watching the men arriving at the camp when a cheer came up from the men on the right. “That’ll be Jackson.”

  Coffee stood up. “Yup. That’s him. He’s got his arm in a sling.”

  “I’d be surprised if that arm’s ever any good again, but I’m glad he kept it.”

  “Thanks to you. I’d of let ‘em saw it off to save his life.”

  “With some men, if you take their pride, their life becomes meaningless. Andrew Jackson’s one of those men.”

  “That’s the same thing Rachel said.”

  Yank stood and saluted as Jackson rode in.

  “I bid you good day, Gentlemen,” Jackson said returning their salutes. “Colonel Coffee?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jackson struggled to hold the reins with the hand of his injured arm while he tried to take something from his pocket. “Just a moment.” He smiled and held out two small, silver, five pointed stars toward Coffee. “Congratulations, General Coffee.”

  “I don’t know what to say, General.” Coffee took the stars and looked at them.

  “Perhaps you could help General Coffee pin those on, Colonel Van Buskirk. I would like very much to do it myself but I don’t think I could manage it with this bad wing.”

  “I’d be honored.” Yank took the stars from Coffee then pulled the eagles off his collar.

  “If it was in my power, Colonel Van Buskirk,” Jackson said, “there would be stars for you as well.”

  “That’s kind of you to say, sir.”

  “Anything we should know about the goings on south of us?”

  “No. Sir.”

  “Any tactical recommendations?”

  “I don’t think this campaign will require any tactics, sir. The enemy knows we’re here and he’ll meet us on the march hoping to keep us out of his territory. All we have to do is keep going southeast and kill any Indian that opposes us.” He finished pinning on Coffee’s stars, stepped back and saluted.

  “Oh quit that,” Coffee said, blushing.

  “Are your men all here, General?” Jackson asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then I suggest you get them in the saddle. You will be our van.”

  “Yes, sir.” Coffee walked to his horse.

  “I’m sure that I don’t have to tell you to send scouts out well in advance of your main body.”

  “No, sir. You don’t have to tell me that.” Coffee mounted and rode out.

  Jackson looked around. “Can you help me down without making it obvious?”

  Yank pointed. “If you ride over to that stump I think you could step off and then I could lead your horse away and tie him up. How we get you off the stump is another matter.”

  “I think I can manage that.” He moved his horse closer to the stump, put his left foot on it, swung his right leg over the saddle horn and stood up as Yank took the horse and tied him beside his own. Jackson lowered himself to the stump and dangled his legs. “Not bad. I’ll just have to hope I can find a stump when I need it.”

  “Some generals I’ve known stand in a wagon bed to be heard when addressing their troops. You might try to think up something stirring to say every time you need to dismount and I’ll tell your aides to make sure there’s a wagon near by.”

  “I always have more than enough to say but I don’t have any aides. I suppose I should pick at least one.” He looked around. “But where are my officers?”

  “Colonel, I mean, General Coffee told them to keep their distance until they heard officers call. The bugler is right over there.” He pointed.

  “Coffee was afraid I’d embarrass myself.”

  “Yes,” Yank agreed.

  Jackson chuckled. “That’s what I like about you. You never try to sugarcoat anything.”

  “That’s only because I’m not clever enough.” Yank was watching Coffee’s brigade. “General, unless you have an objection I’d like to be with the van.”

  “I have no objection, Colonel. And to be sure that we’re perfectly clear, I have absolutely no authority over you.”

  “I doubt that technicality will ever present itself, General. Do you want me to stay until you can choose your aides?”

  “No, thank you, Colonel. I have a pretty good idea of who I want.”

  Yank untied his horse and swung up into the saddle. “I bid you good day, General.”

  “And to you, Colonel.”

  Yank kicked his horse and galloped after Coffee.

  October 13, 1813

  Huntsville, Tennessee

  After a report of many Indians approaching proved to be false, Coffee had taken a position on a bluff overlooking the river to wait for Jackson and the main body.

  Yank, a regular U.S. army officer among the Tennessee Militia, had no officia
l duties so he had fallen into the habit of scouting on his own. Coffee, in spite of his size and bravery, was a cautious man at his core and he assigned a private from the Second Regiment Volunteer Mounted Riflemen to ride with Yank. At first Yank ignored the boy, resenting the intrusion, but the young man’s constant good humor, courage and willingness to do anything that Yank might attempt soon won his favor.

  “Colonel.”

  “What is it, Private?” Yank was on the riverbank, a mile below Coffee’s camp, standing in the stirrups and peering through his telescope at a plume of distant smoke.

  “General Jackson and the main body’s a’ comin’.”

  Yank lowered the telescope and turned to look. “Where?”

  “Yonder.”

  Yank shaded his eyes and looked where the rifleman was pointing. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Look where the sky touches the land. See how it’s sorta brown? That’s their dust. I make ‘em eleven miles out. Should be here before dark.”

  “Eleven miles?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Not ten miles or twelve miles?”

  “No, sir. Eleven.”

  Yank took out his watch and checked it. “Well, Private Crockett, we’ll time them and see if you’re right.”

  “Okay, sir.”

  “How long did you enlist for, Private Crockett?”

  “Sixty days, sir. But I reckon I’ll stay ‘till we whup these here Red Sticks.”

  “That’s very magnanimous of you, Private.”

  “Magna- what, sir?”

  “Magnanimous. It means generous. You do know what generous means, don’t you, Private?”

  “Yes, sir. I know that one.”

  “What kind of education do you have, Private?”

  “What kind?”

  “How long did you go to school.”

  “Oh. Nigh on to a week, as I recollect.”

  Yank stifled a chuckle. “That long?”

  “I would of gone longer but there was this fella that was always pickin’ on folks. What’s that you call a fella what does folks that a-way?”

  “A bully?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s the word.”

  “So the bully kept you from staying in school?”

  “You could say that, sir. I whupped the tar outta him, then the teacher, he wanted to whup me, so I hid out from school ‘till my Pa found out. Then Pa was gonna whup me for skippin’ school, so I just give it all up and lit out.”

  “You ran away from home to avoid punishment from your father?”

  “Yes, sir. You got no idea how bad of a whuppin’ I would of got if’n I hadn’t of skedaddled.”

  “No, I dare say that I don’t.” Yank scanned the horizon. “What did you do after you ran away from home?”

  “Just traveled.”

  “For how long?”

  “About three years.”

  “How did you make a living?”

  “Do what, sir?”

  “How did you buy food and clothes?”

  “Oh I didn’t buy nothin’, sir. Sometimes I traded pelts and meat for lead and powder and such as that. But mostly I just took what I needed from the woods.”

  “They say you’re the best shot in your regiment. Did you learn to shoot when you were living off nature’s bounty?”

  The young man cackled. “There you go again with them fancy words, sir.”

  “How did you learn to shoot so well, Private?”

  “My Pa give me a rifle when I was about eight years old and he’d whup me if I wasted any ammunition.”

  “Do you have siblings, Private? Brothers and sisters, that is?”

  “Eight, sir. I’m number five. Can I ask you a question, sir?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Well, I know that since you’re a officer and I’m a private that I gotta call you sir or colonel.”

  “Yes. That’s called military courtesy.”

  “Do officers have to do the same?”

  “Yes. I have to call my superiors sir or address them by their rank.”

  “What about other folks. The ones that ain’t superior?”

  “What do you mean, Private?”

  “I mean do you have to call me private?”

  “Would you prefer something else? General perhaps?”

  “No, sir. I was thinkin’ that if it was okay, I’d rather be called by my name.”

  “Private Crockett?”

  “Davy, sir. That’s what folks have always called me. Davy Crockett. Not Private Crockett.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, sir, I’d surely be obliged.”

  Yank stood in his stirrups. “Do you see that flock of turkeys, Davy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Yank pulled his rifle from the scabbard. “How far are they?”

  “Umm, three hundred yards and a bit.”

  “Can you hit the one on the left?”

  “Yes, sir.” He pulled his rifle.

  “We’ll have to fire together or they’ll fly away.”

  “Yes, sir. Count to three.” He looked at the trees to check the wind.

  “You have to try to hit your bird in the head so it doesn’t spoil the meat.”

  “I know, sir.”

  “One, two, three.”

  Both rifles fired and what seemed a long time later, two birds fell as the flock took wing.

  Yank waved at the sentry on the bluff to let him know all was well then began to reload his rifle. “Good shooting, Private. I mean, Davy.”

  “You ain’t so bad yer own self, sir.”

  “Do you know how to quick load a rifle?”

  “Yes, sir. But not quick enough to shoot no second turkey.”

  “Pity. Two turkeys will hardly provide a taste for twenty-five hundred men.”

  “We could shoot us a couple o’ them wild hogs we seen and them that likes pork would leave the turkey for them that likes turkey.”

  “If life were only that simple.”

  “Sir?”

  “Twenty-five hundred men consume ten wagon loads of food every day. That’s a thousand bushels of grain and twenty tons of meat per week.”

  “Laws.”

  “Not to mention a thousand gallons of whisky and several hundred pounds of miscellaneous provisions.” Yank put his rifle away. “Are you ready, Davy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then we’d better go get our birds before the scavengers do.”

  They rode out toward the field.

  “Are we runnin’ short of food, sir?”

  “Yes. But you’re not to mention that to anyone, Davy, or panic will spread and we’ll start having desertions.”

  “Why don’t the government send us more?”

  “Well, it seems that the main problem is that Tennessee River is too shallow for the supplier’s barges.”

  “How much meat per day is twenty tons per week, sir?”

  “About two and three quarters.”

  “Tons?”

  “Yes. Two and three quarters tons per day.”

  “That’d be a passel o’ squirrels.”

  “It would be indeed. Even if we recovered all the lead we don’t have enough powder to kill that many squirrels.”

  “Reckon there ain’t that many squirrels in all of Tennessee no how.”

  “Probably not,” Yank agreed.

  “Out west, where the buffaloes roam, two and three quarters tons o’ meat wouldn’t be no kind o’ problem.”

  “No.”

  “Guess we won’t have no trouble fightin’ them injuns when we go way out west then will we, sir?”

  “No. From what I’ve seen, they’re nowhere near as difficult to fight either. Not until some fool gives them guns.”

  “You been way out west, sir?”

  “Only as far as the Rockies.”

  “Have you been to Texas, sir?”

  “Yes. And a more Godforsaken place I’ve never seen.”

 
; “I’m gonna go to Texas some day.”

  “It’d take a damn good reason to ever get me back there.”

  October 23, 1813

  Thompson’s Creek, Tennessee

  Yank handed his reins to Private Crockett and made his way through the confusion of fortification construction to where Coffee was waiting to talk to Jackson. “Welcome back, General.” He offered Coffee a salute.

  “Thank-ye.” Coffee gave him a nod. “What’s all this?” He waved at the new fortification.

  “Fort Deposit,” Yank answered.

  “What?”

  “General Jackson’s decided to establish a depository for supplies here and he’s building this to defend them. He’s decided to call it Fort Deposit.”

  Coffee resisted the impulse to laugh.

  “Did you find Black Warrior?” Yank asked.

  “Yes I did,” Coffee replied. “‘Had to chase the bugger clear to his home town.”

  “And?”

  “Kilt him and about half his warriors, burnt down his town and another one nearby, then collected up about three hundred bushels o’ corn.”

  “That’s a long march all the way to Black Warrior River and back.”

  Coffee nodded. “I figure we covered about two hundred miles in the last twelve days. What’s been happenin’ here? I come near losing’ y’all in them mountains.”

  “We’re headed for the fort at Ten Islands of the Coosa River. A brave that Private Crockett and I were chatting with told us that the Red Sticks were amassing near there.”

  “You’ve been movin’ at a right brisk pace.”

  Yank nodded. “Jackson marched twenty-two miles in one day then held up here hoping the supply boats would show up before we had to leave the River.”

  “How much longer is he gonna wait?”

  “As soon as Fort Deposit’s finished, we’ll move out. My guess would be tomorrow.”

  “How bad is it? The food, I mean.”

  “We have about two days worth of bread and maybe six days of meat with fifty more miles to Ten Islands. I’d suggest you avoid the subject when you talk to the General, if possible. He’s written to everyone he knows and he gets bitterer every day that no supplies turn up.”

  “How’s his arm?”

  “Bad but he hides it well.”