1824: The Arkansas War

by Eric Flint

  But that thought led to a place Julia Chinn never wanted to go. There were limits. Whatever else, there had to be limits, or there was no point to any of it. She might as well sell Imogene to a slave brothel right now. Or herself, for that matter.

  Sheff ’s mother arrived shortly thereafter. She was all solicitous concern, fussing over him, but Sheff thought that was mostly her way of handling the grief caused by her brother’s death. Sheff was still trying to come to grips with it himself.

  It was hard. He still had that iron shell around him. The battle shield, he’d come to think of it. As useful as it was—indispensable, perhaps—it was now getting in the way of normal emotions. He was pretty sure he’d have to be careful about that. Taken too far, or too long, it could rub a man’s soul so hard it became just a callus.

  But he wasn’t ready to deal with it yet. So, the two hours his mother spent in the room before she had to go home were mostly taken up with practical concerns.

  There, fortunately—in a horrible sort of way—his uncle’s death had eased the strain.

  “The bank says it’s canceling the loan outright,” his mother said quietly. “On account of Jem. Well, your uncle’s part, anyway. We still got to pay yours off. But Mr. Crowell told me they’d take your service as being complete. So there won’t never be no interest.”

  Sheff knew the bank had adopted a policy of canceling any loans secured by a soldier’s pay in the event the soldier died in the line of duty. The chiefdom’s legislature was also talking about providing some subsidies for widows and orphans, but Sheff didn’t think anything would come of it. Arkansas was actually thriving, economically, on account of all the new construction and manufacture. The war hadn’t even put a dent in it—probably stimulated it, in fact. But wages were very low, with the constant influx of freedmen, and there just wasn’t that much money to throw around.

  Still, between the increased pay that would come with his promotion to captain and the work his mother got as a tailor, they should manage. She was paid a real tailor’s wage, too, not the much lower rate most girls got in the garment manufactories. He was pretty sure they’d even be able to let Dinah keep going to school instead of her having to go to work in the shops.

  His mother was holding up pretty well, too. She had her own version of a battle shield.

  “The truth is, Sheff, we’re doing better than we were back in Baltimore, with your father and uncle bringing in whatever they could. Which weren’t never much. So you just make sure when you can get about again, that you keep fighting for Arkansas. You hear?”

  Cal McParland came to visit him later that day. He brought John Ridge and Buck Watie with him.

  “Congratulations,” Ridge said immediately after walking into the room. “You heard about your promotion, I take it?”

  “You’ll give him a swelled head,” Cal chided. But he was smiling as he said it. “Jumped him a rank, even.”

  Buck Watie slid into a chair. “Gave you the Legion of Honor, too. Only one who got it except Captain Dupont.”

  Cal laughed. “My cousin says the Laird got the idea from Napoleon, but he’s obviously going to be a lot stingier than the emperor ever was.”

  Sheff had been wondering what a Legion of Honor was. For the most part, the Arkansas Army was patterned after the American, since that was the experience of most of its veterans. The American army didn’t have the custom of awarding decorations for valor or merit, as did most of the European armies.

  But that thought was swept away for the moment. “How’s the captain doing?”

  The good cheer left the room. Buck Watie shook his head. “Captain Dupont didn’t make it, Sheff. The Americans returned his body the day after the battle.”

  “At least he didn’t die slowly from being gut-shot,” Cal added. “The Americans think he must have bled to death before the fighting was even over. From what I heard, our surgeon who looked at his body agreed with them.”

  Well, that was something. Sheff had liked Charles Dupont, even if he’d found his heavy accent hard to understand sometimes. He’d been a lot less prone to judging people simply by skin color than most of the Creole freedmen from New Orleans were.

  As a group, Sheff didn’t care for them much. Some of them had even been slave-owners themselves, and they still retained a lot of the attitudes. If they hadn’t been forced out of the city after the Algiers Incident, most of them would still be in New Orleans. As it was, they tended to cluster together in one part of New Antrim that people were starting to call the Creole Quarter.

  But Sheff hadn’t really been close to Dupont, so there wasn’t any personal grief involved. Besides, he was still short of eighteen, and…

  He tried to figure out how to ask without seeming full of himself.

  Fortunately, Cal saved him the effort. “Yup. The Legion of Honor. The Laird established it right after the battle. Announced he would, before the day was over, even.”

  “Established” was a word that seemed a little absurd if they only gave out two of them. But that mystery got cleared up by Buck.

  “He also established what he’s calling the Arkansas Post Medal, and they’re handing those out like candy. Everybody who was there gets one, except the steamboat crews, and they’re complaining like nobody’s business.”

  “Them!” Cal snorted. “They didn’t get within half a mile—not even that—of a shot being fired.”

  He gave Sheff a big grin. “Don’t get your hopes up too soon, though. What I heard, it’ll be weeks before they can get around to actually making the things. There’s a big squabble over who gets the contract.”

  That brought a little laugh to the room. The Arkansas House of Representatives was even more notorious than its American counterpart for the fervent dedication of its members to advancing the interests of their constituents. If anything, the House of Chiefs was worse.

  The next half hour was spent bringing Sheff up to date on what had happened in the battle after he’d been taken out of combat. It was a cheerful discussion until Sheff asked about the Chickasaws.

  His three fellow officers exchanged glances, their smiles either fading or seeming frozen in place.

  “Well,” said Cal.

  “That got a little sticky,” John Ridge added.

  His cousin Buck gave him a glance that was at least half angry. The rest of it seemed derisive.

  “You talk! We were the ones had to do the dirty work.”

  John made a face. So did Cal.

  “Give,” said Sheff. “What happened?”

  Cal provided the answer. The first part, anyway. “They got really hammered in there, Sheff. Near as we can tell, half the warriors in the tribe died in the Post—they never had but a little over six hundred, to begin with—and a fair number got killed or badly wounded during the escape. So…well, by the time they could pull themselves together, the Laird already had their slaves in custody. By then, Houston was back with the Second Infantry. And—ah—he’d already moved over my battery and the others from the Third.”

  “The women and old men raised Sam Hill, of course, but…” John Ridge shrugged. “Wasn’t really much they could do to stop him. Houston was in no friendlier mood than the Laird. Neither was General Ball, of course.”

  They fell silent again. “So?” Sheff demanded.

  Buck provided the rest. “So, the Chickasaw warriors finally got there and starting hollering and making threats. Real nasty threats, not just name-calling. And—” He took a deep breath. “We followed orders. Cut loose with both batteries. Canister—and we were targeting the Colbert clan.”

  “The Laird told us to spare as many full-bloods as we could,” Cal added. “And we did. But they were pretty well mixed together, and canister’s what it is. There ain’t much left of the Colberts, I can tell you that.”

  “Oh…Jesu—Sam Hill,” Sheff murmured, barely avoiding the blasphemy.

  John Ridge’s face was stiff. “Sam Hill is right. My father’s furious. So’s Chief Ross, although he
’s hiding it better. Even the Choctaw chiefs are hollering about it. The Creeks will be, too, soon as they hear.”

  “Sure, and nobody likes Chickasaws,” Buck chimed in, “but…” He shook his head. “I did what I was told—well, watched, anyway—but I can’t help think the Laird’ll come to regret it. This could even start a civil war.”

  Callender McParland started to say something but broke off before he got a word out. From the quick look he gave his two Cherokee companions, Sheff had no trouble figuring out what he’d been about to say.

  So he went ahead and said it for him. He was too weak to summon up the energy to be diplomatic.

  “Fuck the Chickasaws. And fuck the Choctaws and the Creeks. And—sorry, fellows—but if push comes to shove, fuck you Cherokees, too. You got Sam Hill’s nerve, as far as I’m concerned, expecting us niggers”—he rolled his eyes at Cal—“and some white boys to do your fighting for you while thinking you’ll keep us in slavery.”

  Anger that had been quietly festering for a long time finally came to the surface. “Fuck you,” he stated flatly. “Learn to work. I’ve been working since I was ten years old.”

  “Me too,” said Cal. “My family’s poor Scots-Irish—well, not poor any longer—from New York. We never owned any slaves. And sure as hell aren’t gonna start now.”

  He gave Buck a look that had none of its earlier friendliness. “And I’d be real careful, was I you, Lieutenant Watie, making too many noises about ‘civil wars.’ You think we can’t do the same thing at Tahlequah we just done at Arkansas Post, best you think twice.”

  So there it was: the threat naked and right out in the open. Strangely, perhaps, that was enough to start draining away Sheff ’s anger.

  “Come on, now, Cal—there was no call for that. Buck was just expressing a concern. He wasn’t making no threats.”

  Hastily, he corrected himself. “Any threats.”

  Their voices had gotten raised a bit. You never knew. Imogene might be somewhere close enough to overhear. Worse, so might her mother.

  Cal took a long deep breath. Simultaneously—it almost made Sheff laugh, watching it—the two Cherokees did the same.

  They let it out at the same time, too. Then Cal said: “Sorry. Didn’t really mean it that way.”

  John chuckled. “Sam Hill, you didn’t! Still…”

  He sighed, and wiped a hand over his face. “The truth is, Buck and I don’t really disagree with you. And I already told my father so. Our newspaper will have some criticisms of the way the Laird handled it, I imagine, but we’re not going to make any bones about the rest of it. There’s no slavery in Arkansas—that’s established, right there in the Constitution—and since the Chickasaws sought refuge in Arkansas, they had to abide by Arkansas law. And the threats they were making went way beyond anything you could rightly call a petition in redress of grievances.”

  Sheff ’s anger was almost gone, now. Enough, even, for him to play devil’s advocate. “Members of other Confederate chiefdoms do have the right to travel in Arkansas, with their slaves, without having them seized.”

  “For no more than two weeks, without a permit,” Cal countered. “No way were all the Chickasaws—almost any of them, the shape they were in—gonna make it to Oklahoma in two weeks. And the chance that the Arkansas Chiefdom would have issued permits for a thousand slaves is exactly nothing.”

  John shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. Nobody”—he managed a real smile, here—“not even us disputatious natural-lawyer Cherokees, thinks this is something you can settle in a courtroom. The Laird’s been pushing for this ever since he brought out that separate Arkansas flag. Pushing it harder than ever, after Houston arrived and made clear he’d back him. Sooner or later, something like this was going to happen, anyway. May as well be now—when everybody knows there’s another U.S. army sitting there on our northern border, and the second battle of Arkansas Post is fresh in everybody’s mind.”

  He caught the look on Sheff ’s face.

  “Oh,” Ridge said. “Guess you didn’t know about that, either, did you? The word just got to New Antrim yesterday.”

  “There’s at least two regiments of U.S. regulars sitting on the Arkansas just north of the border,” Buck added. “They’re building a great big fort. Colonel Zachary Taylor’s in command.”

  “They got us surrounded, in other words,” Cal said. “The stupid bastards.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Missouri Territory

  JULY 29, 1825

  Skeptically, Zack Taylor eyed the two men standing in front of him. “Explain to me why I should care in the least whether this Clark fellow stays alive or not.”

  He waved a hand at the rise in the prairie, beyond which lay the bandit camp. “I’ve got three companies here. I’ll call for them to surrender, but…”

  His shoulders shifted, too slightly to be called a real shrug. The movement was an accurate reflection of his attitude, which was that bandits were unlikely to just lay down their arms—and he was indifferent to the matter. With three companies of dragoons, he could afford to be.

  “What do you care, for that matter? The reward—both of them—specify ‘dead or alive.’ I’d think ‘dead’ would make things easier for you.”

  The man on his left—that was Ray Thompson—shook his head.

  “It doesn’t work like that, Colonel. Sure, and the reward poster says ‘dead or alive.’ You believe that, you believe in paradise on earth. What’ll really happen—”

  His partner chimed in. “You bring in a dead body, the man offering the reward will look at it, shake his head, and tell you it’s the wrong man. Dancing with joy the whole time. And how are you going to prove otherwise? Seeing as how your principal witness to the contrary is dead, on account of you killed him.”

  Scott Powers, that was. Taylor remembered them both quite well. The two scoundrels had had the effrontery to claim that the meat they’d try to fob off onto Cantonment Robertson’s commissary hadn’t really been wormy. Just “prespiced,” in the Louisiana custom. To this day, Zack didn’t think he’d ever encountered more bold-faced liars in his life.

  He hadn’t run into them since, but he’d almost had the two arrested, just on general principles, when they arrived in his camp a few days ago. But eventually he’d agreed to come look for himself. There was no good reason not to, after all. It was less than a three days’ ride, even for a sizeable force of dragoons, and until he heard what had happened to General Harrison’s first thrust up the Arkansas River Valley he’d had to bide his time in Missouri Territory anyway. If Mrs. Houston’s murderer was within his grasp, he had the duty to seize him. Besides, he just couldn’t figure out any way—any reason, rather—Thompson and Powers would be lying about this matter.

  Taylor still didn’t know if Mrs. Houston’s killer was in that camp. But that it was a bandit camp, he didn’t doubt at all. There was no reason in the world for white men who weren’t bandits to be camped out here like this. Not to mention still be sleeping this late in the morning if they were doing honest work. The sun had come up over an hour earlier.

  “The two of you are experienced bounty hunters, I take it?”

  Thompson looked more shifty-eyed than ever. Powers just grinned. “Not exactly, Colonel. Be more accurate to say ‘experienced bounty.’ But we know what we’re talking about.”

  He pointed a thumb toward the hidden camp. “Anyway, that’s why we need Clark alive.”

  Taylor’s patience had run out. “Fine. But you’ll have to figure out how to do it, because I’m not about to risk any of my men for the purpose. I’ll give you ten minutes to get into whatever position you think might do the trick for you. After that, I’m calling on them to surrender—and if any of them so much as wave too hard, I’ll have ’em all shot down.”

  “Ain’t this a mess?” Ray grumbled, nine minutes and maybe fifty seconds later. They’d found a place to wait in ambush in some switchgrass on the opposite side of the bandit camp. It was a good hiding
place, sure, but switchgrass was no fun at all. It was almost like hiding in a thicket of razor blades.

  “Shut up,” Scott hissed. “It’s worth ten thousand dollars.”

  “I think there’s a snake somewhere in here.”

  “So bite him if he gives you any trouble.”

  “I hate snakes, you know that. What if—”

  He was interrupted by the sound of distant shouting. He and Scott were too far away to make out the exact words.

  It didn’t matter, though. He’d heard words spoken in that official tone of voice often enough to know the gist of it. We’re the law and you ain’t, so give up or we’ll shoot you dead and not even have to skip lunch on account of it.

  Not five seconds later, the camp burst into activity, men spilling out of their bedrolls and running every which-a-way. Most of them were pulling out guns, and two or three of them were shooting at nothing.

  The idiots. Ray and Scott could only hope that their quarry was at least a little smarter.

  The company Taylor had had hidden behind that rise came over it, just as crisp as you could ask for. Up came the muskets, and a volley went off. That took down at least three bandits. The rest started veering north, but another company was in front of them, and another volley went off.

  This was about as uneven a contest as you could ask for. If their quarry was in that pack of dumb yahoos, he was a dead man, and they’d just have to hope Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay were more honest than most reward-posters. Given that one of them was a U.S. senator and the other was president of the whole country, Ray thought that was about as likely as getting a royal flush in an honest game of poker.

  “Somebody’s coming,” Powers murmured. “Over there.”

  Ray followed the direction of Scott’s little nod. Sure enough. Somebody was moving through the bluestem grass that covered most of the area. The stuff was tall enough for a crawling man to stay out of direct sight, but not so tall that his progress couldn’t be followed by watching the grass move, if you were looking for it.