1812: The Rivers of War (22 page)

Tiana Rogers stared down at the arrow stuck into the side of the canoe, less than a hand’s span from her hip. The tip of the blade had punched right through the thin wall of the craft and almost penetrated her skin. The shaft of the arrow was still thrumming.

For just an instant, she was paralyzed.

If I get killed on this trip, all because of Sam Houston, I’ll kill him! I swear I will!

The circular absurdity of the thought caused her to burst into laughter. Her older brothers James and John were already rolling the canoe, and Tiana threw her weight into the motion also. So, to her regret a moment later, she fell into the river with an open mouth and came up under the shelter of the canoe shell coughing up water.

At least she’d had the satisfaction of knowing she’d die laughing. With the pride of a sixteen-year-old girl, that was not a small matter.

It was nearly dark under the canoe. The vessel’s walls were thick enough to block out sunlight, so the only light in the small open-air space under the shell was coming up through the muddy water. Still, she had no trouble seeing the grin on the face of her brother James.

“What’s so funny?” demanded John, always the more serious of the two.

James had an uncanny knack for reading her mind. “She’s probably thinking how silly it’d be to get killed chasing after The Raven. Might as well chase a real bird.”

Tiana saw no reason to dignify that with a response. Besides, John was still talking.

“Creeks, d’you think? We’d better start moving to the other shore. If they keep firing, they’ll eventually rip it to pieces.”

As if to illustrate his point, they heard two
thunk
ing noises in close succession. Somewhere toward the bow of the canoe. Tiana saw that more arrow blades had punched through.

Then came two muffled
booms
.

“That’ll be John Ross and Sequoyah, shooting back from the other canoe,” James stated. “John won’t hit anything, but Sequoyah’s a good shot. They might drive them off. Let me take a look.”

James moved easily in the water, even though he was encumbered in travel clothing. He vanished from under the canoe shell.

He was back in less than half a minute.

“They drove them off, all right. For the time being, anyway. Let’s roll the canoe. It’d still be a smart idea to push it to the other shore, using it for shelter—but it’ll be a lot easier with the thing sitting right side up.”

“Make sure all our gear is still tied in, first,” John cautioned. “Washington is still a long ways off.”

“What’s the point?” James demanded. “If something came loose and went into the river, we’ll never find it anyway.”

But he was already moving under the shell, checking their goods, which were bound up in oilskins and lashed securely to the canoe frame. The American capital
was
a long ways off, and their journey had only just begun.

Some time later, on the southern shore of the river, they did their best to dry their clothes without taking them off. None of them thought the attack was over, and they didn’t want to be caught naked. The first thing they’d done, of course, was patch the holes in the canoe.

“Wasn’t Creeks,” Sequoyah said in his usual terse manner. “I saw the war paint on one of them. Got a good look, before I shot him. Chickasaws.”

John Ross frowned. It was an oddly mixed expression, Tiana thought, somehow managing to combine ruefulness and doubt at the same time.

“I missed my own shot. But why would the Chickasaws be attacking us? They’re our allies in this war.”

Seeing the annoyed look on Sequoyah’s face, he hastened to add: “I’m not arguing about the paint. I didn’t see it well enough myself to know. I just don’t understand the reason for it.”

James Rogers chuckled harshly. “You spend too much time reading American books and newspapers. What’s the ‘war’ and ‘allies’ got to do with anything? This’ll be a clan fight.”

The last and oldest member of their six-person party spoke up. Nancy Ward, that was.

“I’m sure James is right. There was a killing nearly two months ago, farther down the river at a trading post below the Suck. One of James Vann’s relatives—second cousin, I think—was said to have killed a Chickasaw.”

James and John Rogers nodded, as if that explained the matter completely.

Ross, on the other hand, rolled his eyes, and Sequoyah shook his head. Like Tiana, both of them thought the situation was absurd.

She glanced at Nancy Ward, and saw that the old woman had a tight, disapproving look on her face. Clearly enough, Nancy was of the same mind.

It was odd, Tiana thought, how differently her brothers seemed to look at the world. James and John were just as mixed as she was—which meant, in terms of blood, that they were actually more white than Cherokee. But both of them held to a very traditional Cherokee viewpoint. One that she couldn’t entirely embrace.

John Ross didn’t think that way, either, which might be explained by the fact that seven of his eight great-grandparents were Scots.

But Nancy Ward was a full-blood, even if her second husband had been a white man. And her way of thinking was a lot closer to Ross and Sequoyah and Tiana herself than to her brothers.

“James Vann.” Ross pronounced the words as if they left a bad taste in his mouth. Which, they probably did.

Vann had been a prominent Cherokee. He was dead now, murdered over five years ago by an unknown assailant. It could have been just about anyone, as many enemies as the man had made in his brutal life. No one, not even his own clan, had tried to find out who’d done it. But he’d left a legacy that continued to this day. Unfortunately, Vann had been a town chief, as well as a prosperous mixed-blood trader. He’d had more than one
wife, a slew of offspring and relatives, and a small host of hangers-on. No doubt it was one of those who had killed the Chickasaw at the Trading Post.

The person who’d done it, like James Vann himself, wouldn’t have given a moment’s thought to the political repercussions of his violence. Neither, probably, had his victim. The Chickasaw was just as likely to be a mixed-blood as the Vann cousin, and just as loosely connected to his clan.

But that didn’t matter. When a killing like that happened, the ancient customs came into play. The dead Chickasaw’s clan would be out looking for revenge—and any Cherokee would do. The fact that there was a war going on, in which both the Chickasaws and the Cherokees were allied with the Americans, just didn’t matter.

Angrily, Ross scuffed the soil of the riverbank with his boot. “It’s no wonder the Americans always play us for fools! The British and the French and the Spanish, too. Half our people—every tribe’s—are too busy with their idiotic feuds to even think about what’s happening to us all.”

James Rogers shrugged. “I’m not going to argue the point, since I probably agree with you. But so what? Before we start for Washington, we’ve got to get to Oothcaloga and meet up with The Raven. That’s a fair distance itself—and those Chickasaws won’t have given up. We probably just ran into a few of them, and now they’ll gather their whole war party.

“This thing isn’t over yet.”

“No, Colonneh. If I go, it will seem like an official delegation. And no such thing has been approved by the council.”

Major Ridge smiled wryly. “You lived among us. You know how quick one chief is to suspect another of conniving with the Americans. If I go with you to Washington—and
especially
if I agree to anything while I’m there—I’ll be accused of being bribed when I come back.”

Sam tried to come up with some way to argue the point, and couldn’t. It was true enough. On both counts, for that matter, since it wasn’t simply a matter of suspicion. Bribing chiefs
was
a standard method by which the United States sowed division among the Indian tribes, and bent them to its will.

They were standing on the porch of Major Ridge’s big house. Suppressing a sigh, Sam let his gaze wander for a moment across the landscape.

It was a prosperous-looking countryside, with its well-tended orchards and grazing cattle. Sam could see a few signs left of the depredations committed by the marauding Georgia militiamen, but not many. That wasn’t surprising, given that Major Ridge had been home for weeks before Sam arrived, and had something like twenty slaves to do the work of repairing the damage.

Sam had wound up being delayed in Fort Jackson for some time before he set off on his expedition. In the meantime, James Rogers had returned to his uncle John Jolly’s island on the Tennessee, with Sequoyah and John Ross in tow. James had wanted his brother John to join them on the expedition to Washington, and Ross wanted to visit his family in nearby Chatanuga before they left. Especially his wife, Quatie, whom he’d only married a few months ago.

They’d probably all be on their way back here, by now. They’d agreed to meet up at Major Ridge’s plantation before starting off for the capital.

Alas, it looked as if the main reason Sam had set Oothcaloga as the meeting place had become a moot point. Major Ridge’s refusal to accompany them had been stated in a friendly manner, but very firmly nonetheless.

Ridge was not considered
asgá siti
for nothing. If the man said “no,” the word meant “no.”

“However,” Major Ridge continued, “if John Ross and Sequoyah go with you, as you say they plan to, I will promise to pay careful attention to what they tell me when they return.”

He said nothing about James and John Rogers. That didn’t surprise Sam. The two Rogers brothers were excellent warriors, but neither of them had a reputation for anything other than their fighting skills.

“John Ross and Sequoyah have earned enough respect for their words to carry weight, when they return,” said Ridge. “But neither of them is a recognized chief, so we will avoid that problem. That will be better all the way around, Colonneh. We
will get the advantage of a good discussion in the council, without the chiefly rivalries and suspicions. Trust my judgment, if you would.”

Sam nodded. Started to, rather. The nod broke off into a frozen little gesture when he saw that the smile on Major Ridge’s face had become
very
wry.

“However, there
is
a way you can keep me directly connected to the situation, without requiring my own participation.”

Ridge turned and beckoned to someone who had been lurking inside the house, so silently that Sam hadn’t known they were there. Two young boys stepped forward onto the porch, followed by a girl. The boys looked to Sam to be about twelve years old. The girl, perhaps two years older.

Ridge placed his hand on the shoulder of one of the boys. “This is my son, who is known as John Ridge, though his Cherokee name is Skahtlelohkee. And the girl is my daughter, whose American name is Nancy.” His other hand came down upon the shoulder of the second boy. “And this is my nephew Gallegina—or Buck Watie, as he is often called. All three of them have been studying at Spring Place, at the school set up by the Gambolds.”

Sam knew of the school at Spring Place, although he’d never visited it himself. The Reverend John Gambold and his wife were Moravian missionaries who’d emigrated to the United States from Germany. Since then, they’d devoted themselves to bringing learning and the Christian faith to Indians on the southwest frontier.

He had a bad feeling he knew what was coming.

Sure enough, Ridge continued:

“They came home just recently. The Gambolds are fine people, but I would like to place the children in a school which is more substantial, where they can continue their education in the American manner. Since you are going to Washington anyway, I wish you to do me the favor …”

So now I’m a nursemaid
, Sam thought sourly.

He couldn’t refuse, of course, given the nature of his mission. If he was to get any significant number of Cherokees to return to rejoin General Jackson’s forces, Major Ridge would be the key to his success. Most of the other Cherokee chiefs were still too furious at the wreckage the Georgian militia had made of their homes and lands—while they’d been down in Alabama
fighting as Jackson’s allies, no less!—to even consider joining Sam’s proposed expedition to Washington, much less volunteer to fight any further in the war.

Gloomily, he wondered what else could go wrong.

With the Rogers brothers involved …

A lot.

By sundown, Tiana and her companions had made it to a small island where they decided to rest for the night. The isolation gave them the advantage of enjoying a campfire. No revenge-seeking Chickasaws could attack them there without making some noise crossing the water—and Tiana’s brothers had even better hearing than she did.

“Wait’ll Colonneh sees you!” James laughed, as he fed fuel to the fire. He was grinning widely. “He thought you were joking when you told him, three years ago, that you’d have him for a husband.”

“I
was
joking,” Tiana said, with as much dignity as she could manage.

Was I?
she wondered.

It was hard to remember. The difference between a sixteen-year-old and a thirteen-year-old girl was enormous. At the time, Sam Houston had seemed as glamorous and exciting a husband as any Tiana could imagine. Exotic, yet familiar enough with Cherokee life to make such a union seem possible. Not to mention witty, intelligent, good-natured. Even good-looking.

But she wasn’t sure, anymore. She was a lot more practical-minded than she’d been at the age of thirteen. And Sam Houston had been gone from John Jolly’s island for those three years, back to the American society he’d come from. So she’d had time to think about things without the distraction of his presence.

Marriage to a white American certainly wasn’t out of the question. Her own mother had done it, after all. But whether it would be successful or not depended mostly on the man’s ambitions.

The ambitions of Captain Jack Rogers had been those of an adventurer, who liked the frontier and intended to stay there. “Hell-Fire Jack,” they called Tiana’s father, and for good reason. He didn’t care in the least about the good opinion of proper society, as Americans figured it. If they chose to call him a
“squaw man,” he’d return the sneer with plenty of his own. What did he care? It wasn’t as if he was planning to run for office, or get appointed to some prestigious position.