1824: The Arkansas War

by Eric Flint

  He brought the glass down to examine the situation at the river. What was left of Crittenden’s army—still a good half of it, in sheer numbers—was now crammed along the bank, many of the men spilling into the water. The Arkansas regiments were still coming, ten paces at a time.

  The volleys were finally ending, though. Now, lifting the glass again, Taylor could see that Driscol had given the order “Charge bayonets.” The two regiments had their muskets in the proper position, the right hand holding the stock at hip level, the left keeping the barrel and the bayonet about chest high. The bayonet assault would begin momentarily.

  The charge itself was well executed, overall. A bit ragged, finally, but bayonet charges usually were. The emotion involved was intense, and much more difficult to control than ranked volley fire.

  The resistance put up by Crittenden’s men with whatever musket butts, pistols, knives, and sabers they had—and could bring to bear, so tightly were they crowded against the river—killed or injured some of the Arkansans.

  Not many, though, and almost none at all once the butchery began.

  Taylor stepped away from the firing slit and handed the eyeglass back to the aide.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Morton.”

  “You’re done with it?” Totten asked. “You’re welcome to keep it through to the end.”

  “No need, thank you.” He could have added and certainly no desire, but didn’t. The officers and men in the blockhouse might have taken that as a veiled insult, which it actually wasn’t. Taylor had no difficulty at all understanding why those men, most of whom were black, were watching the scene across the river with an intensity that bordered on fervor. Had they lost this battle, they would have been butchered or enslaved, their babes murdered, their womenfolk ravaged.

  No, he didn’t blame them. But he wanted no part of watching it, either.

  He decided to go below and find Julia Chinn and her daughters. The sight of those two fresh-faced girls would be good for him. He liked daughters, fortunately, since he had several of his own.

  Sheff would never be able to explain to anyone, afterward, the sensation that swept over him when he plunged his bayonet into the chest of his first victim. As strong as he was, despite his relatively short stature, the narrow triangular blade slid all the way through with no difficulty at all. Prying it out had actually been much harder.

  He’d had the time, doing so, to watch his opponent die. The face, its mouth contorted, eyes wide, had resembled nothing so much as the faces he remembered beating his father to death. Except the froth coming out of this white’s man mouth was bright red, and the eyes were filled with terror instead of glee.

  Welcome to your afterlife, white boy. The direction you’re headed is down.

  The sheer savage exultation of that moment was like nothing he’d ever experienced in his life. So grand, so glorious…

  And he never wanted to again. Some saner part of him recognized the abyss and dragged him away from it lest he follow his enemy.

  He slew two more, and probably a third with a strike of the musket butt to the skull. But that was done much as he’d fired the volleys. Effectively and well, according to his training. But what mattered was no longer him, simply the regiment and the victory.

  At the very end, he found himself using the bayonet—the threat of it, at least—to drive off some of the men in his squad. The killing was done, but they kept on.

  “Stop it, boys!” He shifted the musket to his left hand and dragged off one of his privates. “He’s dead, Adams. You just mutilatin’ yourself now. Obey me, damn you!”

  Fortunately, the Laird arrived then, and the pointless business ended immediately.

  Sheff took a few deep breaths and looked around. Now that it was over, he was feeling exhausted. Only the superb conditioning of the Arkansas Army’s training regimen was keeping him on his feet.

  Some killing was still going on, but that was being done by squads under the direction of officers or sergeants. No bayonet work—there was nobody left alive on the bank—simply shooting at enemies in the water trying to swim downriver.

  There was no room on the bank for Sheff ’s squad, anyway. He was more relieved than anything else.

  To his surprise, he saw the Laird was watching. Then, summoned him over with a wave of the hand.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You’re Parker, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. Sheffield Parker.”

  “One of Crowell’s so-called volunteers?”

  There seemed to be a twist in that craggy mouth, which might be humor. Hard to tell, though, as it always was with the Laird. He really was something of a troll.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Laird nodded. “If you’re willing to go career, I’ll give you a field commission. Right now.”

  Sheff ’s eyes widened. “Sergeant, sir?”

  The Laird chuckled. “I said commission, lad. Second lieutenant.”

  Sheff couldn’t think of anything to say. Except…

  “I’m just turned seventeen, sir.”

  “I figured. That’s why I’m making the offer. Any lad your age who can…Never mind. Let’s just say I couldn’t have done it at the age of seventeen. Find it hard enough at the age of forty-two. Which is why I’ll always be a sergeant and you’ve got the makings of an officer. So what do you say, Corporal Parker?”

  Now Sheff couldn’t think of anything to say at all. His mind seemed to be a complete blank.

  The Laird waved his hand. “All right, think it over. The offer will stand for a week.”

  He left then. Attending to whatever business a general attended to after a victorious battle.

  Once Sheff was sure his squad was settled down, he decided he had a bit of time for personal matters. He went looking for Callender.

  But Callender was gone. Struck down almost at the very beginning. Still alive, apparently, when two of his squadmates carried him off to be loaded into a boat and taken across to the Post. But nobody knew what had become of him since.

  “Oh, blast it,” Sheff muttered. He stared at the carnage all around him. The cleared south bank of the Arkansas River, across from Arkansas Post, was a slaughterhouse. Corpses or pieces of them everywhere he looked, mashed in with enough blood to make them seem like bits of meat in a stew cooked by the Devil.

  There were a few black corpses, here and there, that hadn’t been carried away yet. One white one, also in a green uniform. But nine out of ten—more like nineteen out of twenty—were white men. The same sort of white men who had terrified Sheff all his life until a short time ago.

  They’d never terrify him again, he knew. And realized also, with genuine surprise, that the main reason wasn’t really that he’d been able to kill them. It was because, now that he’d proved he could, he found himself a lot more concerned over the fate of a white boy who might be dead than he was over all the ones who most certainly were.

  His uncle Jem was still alive. Alive and uninjured, except for a small powder burn.

  Sheff found him on his knees, praying.

  Probably for deliverance, although he couldn’t make out the murmured words. And probably words from one of the Gospels, this time. The day had started as an Old Testament day, sure enough, but Uncle Jem was plenty smart enough to know that it was much wiser for a man to end it in the New. Probably for a black man, even more than for a white one.

  And, thankfully, Cal had survived, too, although Sheff didn’t find out until late in the afternoon, when his squad was rotated for a rest period in the Post.

  He found Callender in the mess hall, which had been transformed into an infirmary. He was lying on a blanket on the floor, there being no more cots available and—thankfully again—him not being one of the really bad cases.

  He’d suffered a flesh wound, which had torn through the muscles of his right arm but hadn’t broken the bone. That was something of a minor miracle right there. Sheff knew full well from the accounts of veterans that the .69- and.75-caliber
bullets used by most of the muskets on either side of the battle usually pulverized the bone so badly that the only treatment was immediate amputation. Cal wouldn’t even lose the use of the arm, he’d been told by the surgeon who’d given him a quick examination.

  On the other hand, he’d need to spend weeks in recuperation—and the Laird had a rigid policy that soldiers recovering from wounds would be billeted in private residences. He had some sort of peculiar detestation of army hospitals. Called them guaranteed death houses, from what the veterans had told Sheff.

  That posed a bit of a problem, though, since the whole McParland clan lived way up in Fort of 98. Too far for Cal to travel, for at least a week or two.

  The problem was solved almost immediately, once the surgeon came back through and pronounced Callender fit to be removed to a billet. For, as it happened, Senator Johnson’s folks had been gathered around him when Sheff arrived.

  He didn’t understand why. Couldn’t even really think about it, since he was too nervous about the one girl—that was Imogene, he thought—who kept her eyes on him the whole time. Real pretty eyes, hazel colored.

  When the surgeon left, the other twin immediately piped up. A peculiar sort of imperious wail.

  “Mama!”

  Julia Chinn took a deep breath through tight jaws. Then, glared at Callender for no reason Sheff could figure out. Then, glared at him.

  “Oh, Hell and damnation!” she muttered. “Fine. It ain’t worth listening to it for the next God knows how long.” She looked back at Callender and gave him what someone as dumb as a carrot might call a smile. It was really just a baring of naked teeth.

  “Mr. McParland. I believe the lodgings Senator Johnson has reserved for us at the Wolfe Tone Hotel are reasonably spacious.” She was talking a lot more formal-like than she had been earlier, too. That was even scarier than the “smile.”

  “I therefore extend the offer to provide you with billeting in our rooms.” The smile vanished like dew under Sam Hill’s breath. So did the formal speech. “Only till you be strong enough to go to y’own folks, y’hear? Mind me, now!”

  She was even shaking her finger under Cal’s nose as if he’d done something wrong. Sheff was starting to wonder if the woman wasn’t a little off in her head, or something.

  “Sheff can come sing for him, too!” Imogene said brightly. “Pick up his spirits. That’s important, Mama, for someone’s been hurt so bad.”

  Julia glared at her. Then, swiveled her head and glared at Sheff again. That was about the most unfriendly look Sheff had ever gotten from anyone, except a white man in a killing mood. And he hadn’t done nothing!

  “Is there anything you can do besides sing, boy?” she demanded.

  Sheff thought about it. Well, tried to. Those hazel eyes made it hard to think. Blast it, the girl was only twelve!

  But it made a decision easy. Real easy.

  “Pretty soon I will, ma’am. I’ve been offered a commission in the army. So I’ll be an officer come next week.”

  For some reason—the woman really had to be a little crazy—that just made her glare even more.

  Imogene, on the other hand, was smiling so wide it looked like her face might split in two. Sheff had to remind himself—again—that she was way too young for him to be having any such thoughts like the ones his brain was skittering around like spit on a hot griddle.

  “Well, it’s all settled then,” Adaline pronounced. She was giving Cal a smile just about as wide. And, weak though he might be from blood loss, Sheff could tell that his friend’s brain was skittering around on the same griddle.

  “Oh, Hell and damnation,” Julia repeated.

  CHAPTER 19

  The confluence of the Arkansas and the Mississippi

  OCTOBER 6, 1824

  By the time their flatboat reached the confluence with the Mississippi, Scott Powers and Ray Thompson knew they were facing the most desperate situation either of them had ever encountered, in lives that had both been full of perils aplenty.

  To make things worse, the flatboat was under the control of a gang of seven men under the leadership of a fellow named Robert Lowrey. His lieutenant—using the term loosely—went by the charming monicker of Alfred “Two Bear” Decker. The nickname came from Decker’s immense size, but it could just as easily have been a reference to his intelligence.

  Or his disposition, which rivaled that of a grizzly with a sore paw. Before they’d gotten more than three miles downriver from Arkansas Post, Decker had killed one man in the boat by clubbing him to death. Why? Who knew? Apparently the man had made an offensive remark of some sort. Offensive, at least, once filtered through Decker’s mudflat of a brain.

  The second man he killed—a stabbing, this time—was at the command of Lowrey.

  Why? Who knew? Apparently the man had made an offensive remark of some sort. Offensive, at least, to Lowrey—who, if he was smarter than his sidekick, also seemed to have an even more tenuous grasp of reality.

  As he proved again, the moment the flatboat came into sight of the flotilla of Arkansas steamboats that commanded the confluence.

  They’d known of the flotilla already. Half an hour earlier, a small steamboat had come chugging back upriver, calling out a warning to the stream of crafts that were trying to make their escape into the Mississippi.

  “You cain’t get past ’em, boys!” shouted one of the men on the steamboat. “They got’s cannons and everything! Fuckin’ niggers are killing anybody they get their hands on!”

  Lowrey had ignored the warning and kept going. Being honest, neither Powers nor Thompson had blamed him at the time. What was the point of going back upriver? They were butchering everybody up there also. Besides, the Mississippi was a big damn river. Surely—at least with some luck—they’d be able to get past a couple of steamboats being run by illiterate negroes who thought a wrench was a funny-looking hoe.

  But now that they could actually see the Arkansans’ flotilla, Thompson and Powers immediately recognized the mistake.

  Just for starters, there were five steamboats, not the two or three they’d expected. The Arkansans must have captured prizes and turned them into jury-rigged warships. Five steamboats were more than enough to cover a river even the breadth of the Mississippi. For a second thing, sure enough, they had cannons.

  Quite a few of them, too. Peering past the monstrous figure of Two Bear in the prow, Thompson and Powers watched as two of the enemy vessels converged on a keelboat and pounded it into a wreck in less than two minutes.

  And, sure enough, men at the guardrails of the steamboats were shooting anybody who went into the water. A goodly number of the men doing the shooting were white themselves. Where in Creation had they come from?

  Finally, if those boats—not to mention the cannons—were being crewed by illiterates who had no idea what they were doing, there sure wasn’t any sign of it.

  “We’re fucked,” hissed Powers, slumping back into the bench they’d taken at the very stern of the boat, to get as far away from Lowrey and Decker as possible.

  “What do you want to do?” asked Ray. He kept his voice as low as Scott’s, not wanting the maniacs running the boat to get it into their heads they had mutineers to deal with.

  Thompson’s eyes scanned the riverbank. At least Lowrey had had enough sense to stay closer to the northern than the southern shore. By now, the south shore of the Arkansas was practically crawling with Cherokees and Creeks, coming down from the massacre at the Post and looking to add to it as best they could.

  “We could slip over the side and make it to shore,” he whispered. “Can’t be more than fifty yards.”

  “And then what?” Scott demanded. “What’s the point of being stuck in Arkansas, with no food and no horses, the clothes on our backs, and—” He checked his pouch. “Hardly any shot or powder left. Unless you got some I don’t know about.”

  In point of fact, Thompson’s pistol—he’d dropped his musket in the panicky flight to the boats—had the one shot l
oaded, and that was it. He was out of ball and powder altogether.

  “And then what?” Scott repeated.

  Ray had no answer. True, the Arkansans might not extend the pursuit to the north bank of the river. Given the maniacal way they’d conducted themselves thus far, though, he rated the chances of that somewhere a long ways south of winning a horse race with a cow. But even if they didn’t, that still left the prospect of trying to get through rough country to St. Louis, or at least the nearest settlements in Missouri. With no food, no mounts, and hardly any ammunition.

  The smartest thing left to do, of course, would be to wait until nightfall to try to run past the blockade at the confluence. But sundown was still a good two hours off, and Thompson was glumly certain that a man like Lowrey didn’t have the patience.

  Sure enough. “Let’s go, boys! Throw it into those poles! Them niggers cain’t shoot straight nohow!”

  Thompson wondered, given the day just past—not to mention the sight of another keelboat being ripped to pieces by the cannons up ahead—if he’d ever heard a more idiotic statement in his entire life.

  They were dead meat. Especially once they got into the Mississippi where the steamboats were cruising. Poling down the Arkansas was possible, most places. Poling down the Mississippi was chancy. They’d have to unship the oars.

  All one of them. Two Bear had shattered the second one during the first killing. Nobody knew what had happened to the other four that should have been on board.

  Dead fucking meat.

  “Pole, boys, pole!”

  Any second, Lowrey was going to look around and see that neither Thompson nor Powers had joined in the poling.

  There was only one chance, slim as it was. Thompson had half considered it earlier, on the assumption it was each man for himself, and too bad for Scott. But now, seeing the relentless way the Arkansans were continuing the slaughter, he realized the only chance at all would depend on including Powers.