But there was nothing they could do about it, so he levered himself onto his feet, using the musket as a brace. “Come on, we may as well catch up with Crittenden.”
“Our own veritable Napoleon,” Powers sneered. But he was getting to his feet also. There wasn’t really any alternative, no matter what qualms and reservations they were both starting to have. Even leaving aside the risk of encountering Choctaws, the land behind them had been so thoroughly ravaged that they wouldn’t find enough food to get them back to Louisiana.
The confluence of the Arkansas and the Mississippi
OCTOBER 4, 1824
By midafternoon, Ball had made his decision.
“All right, General Ross. Much as it rubs me the wrong way, I admit you’re probably right. We oughta keep this boat here, not be running up the Arkansas with it.”
Since it had taken Robert most of a day to persuade the black general of something so obvious, he was careful to do nothing more than nod agreeably. Ball was far from stupid, and a very experienced combat veteran to boot. But the problem was that, as was uniformly true of the officer corps of the army of Arkansas from Patrick Driscol on down, his experience was deep but narrow. It was an army led by sergeants, essentially. Granted, some of the finest noncommissioned officers Robert Ross had ever encountered, but without enough experience at higher command levels to really grasp that war was much broader than battles.
The idea of taking such a critical piece of military equipment as a large steamboat armed with cannons—which could completely cut off any chance of Crittenden being resupplied—in order to use it for what amounted to nothing more than a big water-going cavalry horse…
From Robert’s viewpoint, the idea had been sheer insanity. But it had taken a whole night and most of a day to finally convince Ball on the matter. Again, not because the man was stupid, but simply because he wasn’t accustomed to thinking in strategic terms.
Worse than that, really. Ball had been trained not to think in such terms. In the modern era of line warfare, massed muskets, and cannons against equal masses—and naval warfare was no different at all—the last thing an officer wanted was sergeants who tried to think for themselves. There was no room in such utterly brutal and up-close combat for independent initiative. What was wanted, from the men and the noncommissioned officers who led them, was simply obedience, discipline, and courage. Don’t think. Just face the enemy, fire, accept the casualties, reload, step forward, fire again. And do it and do it and do it—the very same thing, invariant and inflexible—until the enemy broke.
Patrick Driscol might be an exception, to a degree. To begin with, he’d had the experience of serving as what amounted to Winfield Scott’s sergeant major in the Niagara campaign. And with his years of service in the French army during the Napoleonic Wars, he had a much wider range of experience than someone like Charles Ball. Still, even Patrick was likely to be rigid and angular in his thinking. He’d be oriented toward war as a series of battles, rather than seeing war as a complete campaign.
So be it. Robert was not frustrated, really, even if there’d been moments over the past twenty-four hours when he’d felt like hitting Ball on the head with a pistol butt. The truth was, he was in his element.
It had been a long time. But he was finding that, near the age of sixty, his body might be creaking a bit—leaving aside the lingering effects of his wounds in the American war—but there was nothing wrong with his brain. He’d been, all false modesty aside, one of the half dozen best generals in the British army—and that, during a time when the quality of generalship had reached a peak because of the demands of the great war.
His wife had commented on it, the night before. In a manner of speaking, the memory of which left Robert feeling half embarrassed and half smug.
“And what brought that on?” she’d asked, smiling from under a sweat-soaked brow. Her hair, splayed across the little pillow in their cabin, had been almost as wet. It was a hot and humid climate, and neither of them were what you’d call spry any longer. He’d been covered with just as much sweat.
How to explain?
“Never mind,” she said, adding a little laugh. “Thank God I’m too old to get pregnant, or I’d be bearing quintuplets in nine months.”
She reached over and stroked his cheek. “Robert,” she said softly, “I know you’re feeling…useful again. But please be careful. This is not actually our war, and you are not actually a general in it.”
“Yes, dearest,” he’d agreed. Knowing, finally, that he was lying. Or would be, at any rate, before much longer. He would make it his war. Share in it, for a certainty.
All through the next day, as he argued with Ball, one part of Robert’s mind had been attentive to his son. David, he understood, was making the same decision himself—and doing it with the verve and recklessness of a nineteen-year-old. By midmorning, his mother’s protestations notwithstanding, he’d had a spare uniform refitted by the captain’s wife and was training with one of the gun crews.
He looked to be quite good at it, too.
It couldn’t be said that Ball actually sulked after agreeing to Robert’s proposal. But he was noticeably gruff toward his men for a time thereafter. If Ball had been harsh and even caustic during the moments of combat the previous day, Robert had found him to be very good humored any other time.
Fortunately, the time was brief. Before the sun had reached the western horizon, Robert was vindicated.
Twice, in fact—even if, ironically, neither of the instances had anything to do with cutting lines of supply. But Ball was beginning to learn what any capable general knew in his bones: that a good strategic move always brought serendipitous results in its wake.
“Hey, we’re noncombatants!” the captain of the captured steamboat protested.
“Not any more,” Ball countered cheerfully.
The captain stared at the Arkansas soldiers who were hacking away the front guard of his steamboat with axes. Then, stared at the soldiers manhandling a cannon from one steamboat to the other. It was a tricky operation, even with the two boats tied together in the middle of the river.
“This is piracy!” he squawked.
Robert cleared his throat, drawing the man’s eyes. “Actually, it’s not, by the laws of war. The Confederacy of the Arkansas has been invaded by an army coming out of the territory of the United States. Until and unless the United States makes clear through diplomatic channels that there was no official involvement—and takes rigorous and public measures to put a stop to such offenses—General Ball has no choice but to conclude that a state of war exists. That being the case, he has every right—indeed, the obligation as an officer—to seize enemy property that might be turned to military advantage.”
He added a smile for good measure. “Provided, of course, he follows proper military procedure and sees to it that his men remain disciplined and no outrages are committed against the persons owning the property. Which, I dare say, he has done meticulously in this case.”
He turned the smile onto the American who’d been scribbling furiously in his notebook since the moment the steamboat had come into sight and been captured. “Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Bryant?”
“Oh, yes,” the scribbler replied, not even looking up from his scribbling. “Been right the proper gentleman.”
“Damn New Englander!”
Bryant finally looked up from his notebook. “New Englander or not, Captain, I remain a citizen of the United States. Registered to vote, I assure you. And I’m just as curious to know as General Ball is, how it came to pass that an army large enough to commit savageries that would have shamed the Huns managed to assemble, train, and launch an attack on a neighboring country from the state of Louisiana—without, so far as I can determine at the moment, any official of that state issuing so much as a peep of protest. Perhaps I shall ask you for an interview. Being as you are, I understand, a citizen of Louisiana.”
The captain’s jaws tightened. Bryant went on, relentlessly: “I’
m curious to discover if the state of Louisiana entertains a different translation of the Constitution than my native state of Massachusetts—or any other state of the Union, so far as I’m aware. I refer you to Article I, Section 8. The right to select officers for the militia is reserved to the states, true enough, but only Congress can declare war.”
“That ain’t no Gol-derned militia! That’s just Crittenden and his boys!”
“Ah. Pirates, in other words. Or bandits, if you prefer. May I quote you to that effect?”
“You sure as Sam Hill can not. Those boys find out I said any such thing, my life ain’t worth a plucked chicken.”
“Oh, splendid. That’ll do even better.” Bryant began scribbling in his notebook. “A knowledgeable local source who insisted on remaining anonymous for his own safety depicted Crittenden and his men as criminal extortionists, who would cold-bloodedly murder any man who exposed their nefarious activities to the light of day.”
“I said no such thing!”
“Actually, you did,” said Robert mildly. “If not in so many words.”
Ball was less diplomatic. “Sure did. And fuck you. This boat now belongs to the Arkansas Army. And if you don’t pilot it for me, you best stop worrying about what Crittenden’s men’ll do to you.”
His black face could have served as the model for a bust entitled Menace.
“You wouldn’t!” the captain protested.
Ball sneered. “No, I wouldn’t. Don’t need to. You don’t do what I tell you, you be useless. Ain’t no room for useless men on this boat, so I’ll have to set you ashore. A ways down, though. In Choctaw territory.”
The captain’s face paled. Ball swiveled his head to the south. “I do believe the Choctaws be pissed, right around now. Pissed like you wouldn’t believe. ’Course, they might listen to you, when you explain you just an innocent bystander. But if I was you, I surely wouldn’t want to bet on it.”
“All right, then,” the captain muttered.
Less than half an hour later, the newly expanded flotilla made its next capture: a keelboat, filled with white men and three negroes. One young black woman and two black boys.
They didn’t put up a fight. Not with two steamboats alongside and cannons trained on them. And close to thirty well-armed men with muskets leveled.
Bryant interviewed the blacks, who turned out to be captives. The boys, at least. The young woman—not much more than a girl, really—was too distraught to be coherent. Clearly enough, she’d been badly abused.
Ball’s interview of the white men was extremely brief. There wasn’t any mystery about their identity, after all, even without the testimony of the two boys.
“Hang ’em,” he ordered, “I want to save our powder.”
“You can’t do that!” shrieked the man who seemed to be the leader of the group.
Ball’s expression had long since gone beyond menace.
“Watch me, you pile of shit,” he said. “You’ll have the best view around.”
After it was done, and the corpses had been pitched into the river, Ball took a few minutes to settle his anger. That was the mark of a good officer, too. Robert’s hopes for the man kept rising.
Still higher, when Ball turned to him for advice.
“What do you recommend now, General? I’d dearly love to have some knowledge of what’s happening upriver.” He nodded to the west. “The Arkansas, I mean.”
The two steamboats were now positioned right at the confluence. Controlling both rivers completely, at least until such time as an opposing force of warships could arrive. Which wasn’t likely to happen any time soon, in Robert’s estimation. Unless he was badly mistaken, both the state of Louisiana and the American federal authorities had been caught by surprise by Crittenden’s expedition. Not the fact of it, so much as the timing. From what they’d been able to glean, Crittenden had come into a sudden and unexpected windfall in terms of arms. The expectation had been that he couldn’t launch any serious attack on Arkansas until the following year, if ever.
By now, after two decades of constant freebooting activity into Mexico and—in times past—Florida and Amelia Island, the mere fact that a band of adventurers had gathered somewhere in the Gulf and was making noise didn’t really mean that much. Even as large a group as Crittenden had assembled needed more in the way of arms and ammunition than personal weaponry. Following the Adams-Onis Treaty, the United States had clamped down on the former custom of providing unofficial assistance through government channels.
As he pondered the answer to Ball’s question, Robert’s eyes fell on Bryant. The young New England poet and journalist had left off his interview of the rescued negroes and was back to scribbling. He had the look of an energetic and curious man, as well as an intelligent and well-educated one. It would be interesting to see what his investigations turned up, once he returned to the United States. Somebody had provided those arms to Crittenden—or the money for them, at any rate. And as quickly as it had happened, it had to have been one man or a small handful. No collection taken up from a large group contributing small amounts could possibly have done it so quickly and so secretively.
A cabal, in short. The American public doted on tales of cabals and conspiracies in high places. Robert had hopes for the poet, too.
But it was time to give Ball an answer, and the answer was obvious—even if Robert didn’t much like it. Still…
Parker and the two McParlands weren’t the first young men he’d sent into harm’s way in his life. Not by several decades’ worth. He doubted they would be the last.
“A reconnaissance is in order, I think. Now that”—he nodded toward the captured keelboat—“you’ve acquired the means for it, without jeopardizing your main force. I’d recommend Captain McParland for the commanding officer. Beyond that—”
But Ball was already turning away, and Robert closed his mouth. There was really no need to give Ball advice on the rest.
“Anthony!” Ball hollered. “You and Corporals McParland and Parker. Take enough men to man the oars on the keelboat and head upriver.” He pointed to the west, his finger indicating the Arkansas. “I want information, mind. Don’t be gettin’ in no pointless scrapes.”
Robert hesitated. But before it was necessary to intervene, Ball corrected his own error.
“Ah, never mind that. I don’t need the information so much as Patrick does. You do whatever you gotta to do to find him. Let him know where things stand down here.”
Captain McParland nodded and began giving orders. Robert relaxed and went back to watching Bryant at his work.
It was quite a bright day, he realized. Even now, so close to sundown.
Just after sunset, many miles downriver, another keelboat finally drifted ashore. The sole survivor of the three men in the boat clambered painfully onto the east bank of the Mississippi.
As exhausted as he was—the wound in his leg had kept him from sleeping—he was still shaking from the whole experience. Seeing most of his friends ripped to shreds by that incredible steamboat—since when did steamboats have cannons? he was still wondering—and then watching two of them slowly bleed to death, was never anything he’d expected when he joined up with Crittenden. He was only twenty-two years old.
He’d barely gotten ashore when he half sensed a threat. Turning his head, he got a glimpse of a war club coming at him before he lost consciousness altogether.
When he woke up, his head ached and there was dried blood caked on the side of his face. He tried to wipe it off but discovered his hands were tied.
What—?
Everything was flickering. It took him a while to realize that night had fallen and that he was seeing everything by the light of a fire in a small clearing. A while longer, to realize that he’d been tied spread-eagled between two trees in the clearing. And a bit longer still, to discover that he was naked.
Not long at all, then, to realize the rest. The dozen or so men also in the clearing were all Choctaws, from their outfits. He was pret
ty sure they were, anyway. Indians all looked alike to him, but since he’d moved to Mississippi from South Carolina he’d gotten to know a little of the differences in the way the various southern tribes dressed.
Knives, however—Indian, white, or Creole, it really didn’t matter—all looked very much the same. And he was looking at an awful lot of them.
“Oh, shit,” was all he could think to say.
CHAPTER 15
Arkansas Post
OCTOBER 5, 1824
It took a day longer to reach Arkansas Post than Zachary Taylor had expected. He’d assumed that, this being the autumn, the White River would be fairly low, and fording it would be easy enough.
And so, in fact, it had proved—once they got to the river. What he hadn’t realized was how difficult the terrain between the Mississippi and the White rivers would be in the first place. No settlers had moved into this part of the Delta yet, and the natural landscape was essentially unmodified. Swamps, bayous, oxbow lakes, a profusion of creeks—everything that cavalrymen detested.
Crossing the White itself hadn’t been a big problem, although they’d had to travel upriver a ways to find a ford. But, finally, a day late, they’d arrived at Arkansas Post.
More precisely, would have arrived—except by now, the fort was under siege.
“A day late and a dollar short,” Taylor muttered to himself. “For want of a nail. Hell and damnation.”
He didn’t even have the advantage of high terrain, from which he might have been able to spot the gaps in the siege lines. There wasn’t any high terrain worth talking about, in the area. The only reason he was able to observe the Post at all, from a reasonably close range, was simply because most of the area north of the river hadn’t been cleared yet, and the terrain was still heavily wooded.