1824: The Arkansas War (38 page)

Adams couldn’t resist returning the grin. It was quite infectious, really.

“Certainly. The man committed a forgery to try to smear my reputation during the negotiations with Britain—and I know perfectly well Clay was the one put him up to it. If only I could prove it.”

He took another drink. No sip, this time. “I genuinely detest Henry Clay.”

“Well, so do I, partner. So, like I said, let’s gut the bastard. Forget this election. We’ll have four years to do it—and we’ll know exactly where to find him.” He waved the glass in the direction of the White House. “Just down the street a ways.”

Monroe came upon Houston just as his son-in-law was gently closing the door to his grandson’s room.

“Is he asleep, finally?” he asked.

Houston glanced over his shoulder. “Yes. He’ll have nightmares again, though. So, with your permission—”

“Of course. I’ve already told the servant to vacate the room next door so you can occupy it for the night.”

Houston looked genuinely haggard. He’d gotten no sleep himself since the murder. “Thank you. I wouldn’t want to sleep in our—that—bedroom anyway. I don’t think I could bear it.”

“Yes, I understand. If you’d like, I can manage other arrangements. More permanent ones, I mean.”

Houston shook his head. “No, thank you, sir. Any arrangements you made would be invalid come March, anyway. But, as it happens, I’ve already decided to seek residence elsewhere.”

“You’re going to Arkansas.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes, sir, I am. As soon as I think the boy is up to the trip.”

“Sam…”

“No, sir.” The dark fury Monroe had sensed was rising to the surface now, filling Houston’s face. “No, sir. You forget—most people forget—that I belong to two nations, not one. My name is also Colonneh. ‘The Raven,’ in English.”

“Sam—”

“No, sir. I didn’t get much of a look at the man who murdered my wife. But I saw enough to know one thing, for sure. That man was not a Cherokee. That man was one of those stinking, filthy Georgians who drove the Cherokee off their land. To call ‘relocation’—yes, I know I engineered the treaty, and I used it, too—by its right name.”

A little shudder passed through his big body. Then, softly: “So I’m going home, and taking my boy with me. Meaning no offense to you, sir, but I want him to meet his Cherokee grandfather. While John Jolly’s still alive.”

Monroe sighed. “Please don’t forget that you shared five years of Maria Hester’s life, Sam. And I shared all of them.”

Houston’s eyes teared. “I know that, James,” he said softly. “I don’t mean to belittle your grief, or her mother’s, or her sister’s. But you do what you feel necessary, and I will do the same. I’m not bringing up my boy in a country that murdered his mother, because it was a country full of spite and meanness. No way in Hell. We’re for Arkansas.”

Monroe recognized the impossibility of altering his son-in-law’s course. Still…

Forty years of political life produced unshakable habits. “Don’t burn any bridges you don’t need to, Sam. Lafayette’s visiting the country, as you know.”

Sam frowned, thrown off by the remark. “Well, sure. His tour’s taking the whole country by storm. In fact, I met him—well, shook his hand and exchanged pleasantries—at a festival in his honor just two weeks ago. But what’s that got to do…”

His voice trailed off, and the color of his eyes seemed to lighten a bit. “Oh.”

Monroe was careful not to show any visible relief. If Sam Houston didn’t have much of the Scots-Irish capacity for rage, except in his worst moments, he had all of that breed’s aptitude for political maneuver. Considerably more than his rightful share, in fact.

“Oh,” he repeated. Then, shook his head slightly. “I doubt he’d receive me, James. He’s deluged with well-wishers, and he doesn’t know me at all.”

“Don’t be foolish. He knows who you are. Just because the Marquis is now sixty-six years old, don’t think for a moment he’s become less acute when it comes to political affairs. The hero of the Capitol, and then New Orleans?”

Monroe cleared his throat. “Not that it matters. He certainly knows who I am, since I’m not only the president of the nation but the one who extended the invitation for him to visit. He’ll see
me,
Sam. In fact…”

Monroe had to swallow for a moment. “He’s coming here tomorrow, as it happens. He asked if he could accompany us in person to the funeral.”

Sam nodded. “In that case, I’ll be able to see him. At least briefly.”

“Briefly, yes. Tomorrow. But…”

Monroe paused, for a moment, thinking. “Can you postpone your departure for a week or two?”

“Well…Yes, I suppose. Andy won’t be up for traveling immediately, anyway.”

“Good. In that case, I think I can manage something quite a bit better than ‘briefly.’ ”

Houston was looking at him very intently now, his fury almost completely gone. “What are you thinking, James?”

“What I am thinking, my dear son-in-law—which you are and will remain, whatever else—is that the last sight of you I want the United States to have, before you depart for Arkansas, is receiving the blessing of the Marquis de Lafayette. Who fought with George Washington and shed his blood on American soil at Brandywine, that republicanism might triumph in the world.”

Washington, D.C.

N
OVEMBER 19, 1824

Eleven days later, at the state dinner hosted by President Monroe at Williamson’s Hotel and attended by practically every member of Congress, the Marquis sat beside Sam Houston.

That caused pained looks among some of the congressmen present, but not many. Word was already spreading that John Quincy Adams would throw his support to Jackson in the event the election was thrown into the House. Which, with the first election results beginning to come in, now seemed certain to happen. State dinners of this sort were such enormous affairs that there was plenty of time and space for quiet dickering. Most of the congressmen were too busy with their whispered consultations to pay much attention to the formalities of the affair.

Peter Porter was one of the exceptions. He’d gotten an invitation through the offices of the Speaker, so he was there also. But since he was not a congressman, he paid little attention to the small maneuvers taking place at the multitudes of tables in the huge dining room. Instead, he spent the time carefully studying the men at the central table.

James Monroe. Sam Houston. The Marquis de Lafayette.

Porter had had enough military experience to understand—he was pretty sure, anyway—what he was seeing. Strategists at work, not tacticians. He tried, at one point in the evening, to get Clay’s attention. But the Speaker was preoccupied with his negotiations with several of the congressmen from North Carolina.

“Tomorrow, Peter. I couldn’t possibly find the time to speak to you tonight.”

Toward the end of the evening, the Marquis rose and offered three toasts.

The first, in solemn remembrance of the president’s daughter.

The second, in honor of his heroic son-in-law, who had so valiantly defended the Capitol of the United States from enemy attack—and then repeated the deed, a few months later, at New Orleans.

The third—

Smiling broadly, the Marquis prefaced his toast by announcing that Sam Houston was moving to Arkansas and taking his young son with him. They would depart two days hence.

So, another toast: “To the New World, so clearly blessed by the Almighty! To the New World! Which has produced yet another great republic on its soil!”

Andrew Jackson was the first to rise to the toast. Had he not been a bit too portly, John Quincy Adams might have beaten him to it.

Outside the hotel, later, Clay brushed Porter off again. “Not now, Peter, sorry. Yes, I know it’s a bit awkward. A minor setback. But I think we’re on the verge of taking all of North Carolina from Jackson. South Carolina, Calhoun can promise us for sure.”

Off he went. Porter was left alone in the night, watching the crowd spilling out of Williamson’s Hotel.

Setback.

“Jesus Christ,” Porter muttered to no one at all. “Who cares about that? This thing is careening out of control.”

CHAPTER 25

Natchez, Mississippi

D
ECEMBER 15, 1824

The bullet missed, but it did manage to shatter a bottle of whiskey sitting on the bar top that was close enough to shower Ray Thompson with its contents. Crouching behind the bar next to Powers, he cursed bitterly. It was rotgut, naturally. He’d be stinking for hours. Assuming he survived the next few minutes.

“Can’t you
ever
just keep your mouth shut?” he hissed.

Powers finished reloading his pistol. “Damnation, this tavern was my old watering hole.” He peered up at the bar top above them. “How many were there?”

“Four, till you shot one and I shot another.”

“The tavern keeper?”

“He ran off. I don’t think he was one of them. But they’ll have friends coming, you watch. And meantime they’ve got us pinned here, and”—Ray rapped a knuckle against one of the planks that formed the base of the bar—“sooner or later it’s going to occur to those stupid yahoos to try to shoot through these planks to see how thick they are. I’m not looking forward to the results.”

Powers winced. “Neither am I.” He gave Thompson a calculating look. “We got no choice, I’m thinking. Right at ’em is the only way.”

Ray shook his head. “Yeah, we got no choice. But I’m only joining you if you
swear
you’ll stop using your own name.”

“Yeah. Fine. I swear. Mother’s grave, whatever you want.”

Thompson didn’t bother to answer. He was too busy gauging the distance to the only unshattered bottle still on the bar top.

“I’ll go first, right over the top. You come around the side.”

Powers nodded. Since there was no point in dallying, Ray rose up enough to tap the bottle over with the barrel of the pistol.

Almost instantly, a shot was fired, smashing into the wood behind the bar.

“Thank God for yahoos.” But he was erect before he finished the statement, where he could see the room, his pistol tracking the man who’d fired.

Dumber’n sheep.
The idiot was standing up, reloading. Ray shot him in the chest. Then, lunged to his left, just in time to evade the shot fired by the man’s partner. He kept lunging leftward, half running and half scrambling, but never dropping out of sight. That would keep the man’s eyes on him while Scott—

Powers’s shot came from the other side of the bar. Ray stopped and looked over. Good enough. He didn’t think Scott had killed him outright, but it was good enough.

“Fucking yahoos,” Powers snarled on their way out of the tavern. “Why the hell do
they
care if we hurt Clay’s chances? The bastards never bother to vote, anyway. Too stupid to read the ballot.”

Ten minutes later they were ready to head for the Natchez Trace.

“Now we’re horse thieves, too,” Ray complained as he led his mount out of the barn they’d broken into.

Powers was in a cheerier mood. “Lookit this. Found it tacked on the wall in there.”

He handed over a printed notice.

Thompson didn’t look at it, though, until they were out of the town’s limits. Killing three or four men might be forgiven in Natchez, depending on who their friends and relatives were, but stealing a horse was a hanging offense.

When he did look at it, reading slowly because of the horse’s gait, he whistled.

“Ten thousand dollars.
Whoo-eee.
”

Then he shrugged and handed it back to Powers. “Lot of good it does us.”

But Powers was still smiling. “O ye of little faith. I
know
him, Ray. Andrew Clark’s the first cousin of an old friend of mine.”

Thompson looked over at him skeptically. “And what of it? He did the killing in Washington, Scott. If your geography’s gotten hazy since our seafaring days, that’s about a thousand miles from here as the crow flies—and we ain’t crows. By now he could be anywhere.”

“ ‘Could be,’ sure. But he won’t be. Where’s he going to go? That’s a snooty family he comes from, real Georgia gentlemen. If he’d killed
Houston,
he’d have been all right. They’d hide him as long as it took. But killing Houston’s wife, won’t nobody in those circles touch him. In fact, they’d turn him in faster’n anybody. Even the yahoos in Louisiana would. Well, half of ’em, anyway.”

Ray thought about it. That was true enough, actually. Killing a woman, unless she was a whore or a cheating wife, was one of the few ways a man could cross the line with Southern and Western roughnecks. Almost as bad as horse stealing.

The last thought reminded him of their own predicament. “What’re we going to do with these horses, Scott?”

“Let ’em go; what else? As soon as we reach Port Gibson. That’s stretching it a little, but I figure we can probably get away with it. Being as there was four of them, and us not knowing how many friends they might have.”

Again, Ray thought about it. That was…

Also true enough. There was a certain protocol involved. Actually
stealing
a man’s horse was a hanging offense, sure enough. But if a man let the horse go while it was still close enough to find its way home—or be returned by someone else who knew the brand—most people were inclined to let it go as more-or-less borrowing the horse just to get out of a bad spot. Which theirs had certainly been. Often enough, it became a laughing matter.

It wasn’t surefire, of course. But at least it gave you an arguing point if you got caught.

“Okay, then what?”

“Port Gibson’s where we want, anyway.” Powers flashed Thompson a grin. “Being as how you and me is for a Mississippi steamboat and St. Louis. I figure we can get hired on, easy enough. This soon after the massacre, a lot of the regular men’ll still be nervous about steaming past the Arkansas.”

Thompson grimaced. “Scott,
I’m
nervous about steaming past it. Unless they’re even dumber than yahoos, they’ll still have that flotilla there. One or two boats anyway—and they’re likely to be none too fussy about diplomatic protocol. What if they stop our boat and search it? They find us, we’re for the rope.”

“Yeah, sure. But it’s been two and a half months since Arkansas Post. I figure by now the U.S. State Department has made plenty of protests to the Confederacy on the subject of interfering with American commerce on the Mississippi. Say whatever else you will about the bastard, Quincy Adams ain’t no slouch. As long as we stay out of sight when our boat gets to the Arkansas, we should be safe enough.” His cheery expression was disfigured for a moment by a scowl. “Which won’t be hard, since we’ll probably be working in the boiler room.”

Ray matched the grimace. Boiler room work was just as hard as it was dangerous.

Not, however, as dangerous as staying in yahoo country, with their names black as mud because of that damned Bryant. And even if they always used aliases, there were just too many men in the area who knew them personally.

Nor could they return to more civilized parts of the United States. Leaving aside what difficulties they might encounter because of Bryant’s articles—which could be serious, given that Clay might well be the next president—they had several other awkward issues to deal with. Scott had arrest warrants out for him, and Ray had creditors. Not the sort of creditors who demanded imprisonment for debt, either, as a last resort. The sort who started with broken knees.

“All right, then.”

“Oh, stop being gloomy,” Scott said. “We need to get to St. Louis anyway, on account of this.” He patted the pocket into which he’d stuffed the reward notice.

“Why?”

“Don’t you pay any attention? I
told
you. Well, maybe not all of it. Andrew Clark’s cousin is the black sheep of the family. He’s the one person Clark could find shelter with, and he’s in Missouri.”

“In St. Louis?”

“Well. No.” Powers seemed to be avoiding his gaze. “Further west. Missouri Territory.”

Ray rolled his eyes. “Wonderful. He’s a bandit, isn’t he?”

“Some might call him that, I suppose.”

“ ‘Some,’ ” Ray mimicked sarcastically. “Let me guess. Ninety-nine out of a hundred citizens of Missouri.”

Scott grinned. “Nah, not that many. Maybe ninety-five out of a hundred.”

He gave Ray a sideways look. “What? You worried about our good names?”

Thompson said nothing. What was there to say?

“What I thought. Face it, Ray. We ain’t exactly upstanding citizens, our own selves. Not even around bandits. Southern ones, for sure.”

New Antrim, Arkansas

D
ECEMBER 16, 1824

“I don’t care if we go bankrupt, Henry.” Patrick Driscol’s rasp seemed more pronounced than ever. “What difference does it make if Arkansas goes under? I’ll be dead on a battlefield, you’ll be a slave picking cotton in the Delta, and even the engineer fellow here”—a thumb indicated Henry Shreve, who was scowling at him from the doorway—“is likely to be standing trial for treason. Never gave up his U.S. citizenship, you know.”

“That’s not funny, Patrick!” Shreve’s scowl grew darker still.

“No, I suppose not. It’s still true.” Driscol smiled thinly. “Of course, you could always have a sudden conversion on the road to Damascus. ‘Reconversion,’ I guess I should say. Hurry on down to Memphis, confess the error of your wicked ways, and offer your services to the Fulton-Livingston Company. Word has it they’ve already got the contract for supplying the U.S. Army, in the event war comes. I’m sure they’d hire you on.”

Now Shreve’s scowl could have terrified an ogre. “Stop playing the fool! ‘Hurry on down to Memphis.’ In
what?
A rowboat?—seeing as how you’ve already seized everything I own, you damn tyrant. Worse than any Federalist who ever lived, you are.”

Henry Crowell’s grunt combined amusement and exasperation. “Don’t forget the years he spent with Napoleon, Henry. Conscription—seizure of personal property—all out for the war effort. Nothing’s too low for the Laird. By next Tuesday, I figure he’ll start debasing the currency.”

“Don’t call me that, damnation. I hate that term.”

“Why? It’s true, Patrick. And before you start prattling about your republican principles—about which Henry’s right; you’ve shredded every one these past two months—you might keep in mind that the term is prob’bly worth another regiment, as far as the army’s morale goes.”

Shreve’s scowl lightened a bit. “He’s right about that. Black heathen savages. Bad as Frenchmen.
Vive l’empereur! Allons enfants de la patrie!
”

His French accent was quite good. Better than Driscol’s, in fact, although Driscol was more fluent in the language. So Crowell had been told, anyway. His own knowledge of French was limited to the Creole he’d picked up in New Orleans.

“They’re hardly heathens,” grumbled Patrick. “Most of ’em are downright Calvinists, by now, since Brown started his preaching.”

Shreve gave him a skeptical look. Driscol shrugged. “Well, fine. Some of Marie Laveau’s voudou in there, too, I suppose.”

“John Brown doesn’t actually preach,” Crowell said mildly. “It’s more just that black folks admire the man so much. And why shouldn’t they? The Catholics are doing pretty well, too, actually. Especially since all that money started coming in from Pierre Toussaint to fund them.”

Shreve rolled his eyes. “You had to bring that up, didn’t you?” Sourly, he crossed his arms and slouched in the doorway. “I can remember a time—O blessed days of innocent youth—when my world was a lot simpler. Sure as hell didn’t include rich black bankers in Arkansas and still richer darkies in New York. And a crazy Scots-Irishman to fan the flames of their insane ambitions.”

Crowell’s grunt this time was simply amused. For all of Shreve’s more-or-less constant carping and complaining, the fact was that the Pennsylvania steamboat wizard had thrown in his lot with Arkansas as unreservedly as the poorest freedman. Henry wasn’t sure why, exactly, since it certainly wasn’t due to any commitment on Shreve’s part to abolition or even any deep faith in human equality. Shreve didn’t really care that much about such things, one way or the other. He had the mind and soul of an engineer, first, last, and always.

In the end, Henry thought, that was the key. As much and as often as Shreve protested Driscol’s ways—which did, indeed, sometimes border on Napoleonic high-handedness if not outright tyranny—the fact remained that the Laird of Arkansas had supported and funded Shreve’s plans and schemes far more extensively than any person or institution in the United States had ever done. Or ever would, so long as the Fulton-Livingston Company could throw its money and influence around.