1824: The Arkansas War (28 page)

No one had really noticed what he’d done anyway. Well, except Thompson—but the smile on Ray’s face made it clear he approved heartily.

Things got better a moment later. Another one of those hideous Arkansas volleys went off. The flatboat was still close enough to the bank that some of the stray shots hit two of the men in the bow. One went over the side on his own; the other was helped on his way by the man next to him. Clearly a fellow thinker.

“Let’s get out of here!” Ray shouted.

The one drawback to being on the side now meant that Powers had to man one of the poles. He didn’t mind the work itself. He’d have willingly labored like Hercules to get them out of there. But there was no way to pole a flatboat except by standing up and making a better target.

“Damn,” he hissed. Still, it was better than staying there. Anything was better than staying there. Powers was pretty damn sure—would have bet every penny he’d made during his years in the slave trade—that the Arkansans weren’t going to be taking any prisoners.

So, he heaved himself up and began poling. Ray, the bastard, had managed to squirm still lower into the boat.

“There they come,” Totten said. “ ’Bout time.”

Looking up, Taylor followed the direction of the major’s gaze. Then, brought up the eyeglass.

So Driscol did have cavalry, after all. Cherokee irregulars. Maybe Creeks. They’d not have been of much use in the battle. Not in tight ground like this.

But they’d be of use, now. No use Taylor would have put them to, though.

Well…he liked to think so, anyway. But he was fair-minded enough to realize that his way of looking at the world probably wasn’t much the same as the way a freedman did. Especially one who’d been driven out of his home by exclusion mobs and maybe seen some of his family die. If not at the hands of the mob, from the rigors of the forced journey overland to Arkansas.

He brought the glass back to his eye and swept the terrain. Sure enough. Around three hundred Cherokees or Creeks. Maybe four hundred. It was hard to be certain, between the distance and the fact they were scattering out.

Inevitably, some of Crittenden’s men were escaping the ever-closing trap on the little peninsula on the south bank of the Arkansas. Some, leaving by boat; others, by swimming downstream; still others, simply by scrambling and running. Driscol was still keeping the regiments in formation and probably would until almost the very end. So, like a piston driving into a very loose and sloppy cylinder, a lot of steam was escaping from the sides.

Most of them wouldn’t get far. Not across that terrain, with hundreds of Indian light cavalry hunting them down.

Another
volley came. By now, that was like hammering porridge. But if nothing else was clear to Zachary Taylor about the man they called the Laird of Arkansas, one thing was. All of war, for that man, would be a hammer or an anvil. Beat or be beaten against, he’d not yield at all. Taylor had always wondered a bit how such a peculiar unit as the Iron Battalion had managed to break British regiments on the Mississippi. He didn’t wonder any longer.

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.