Sword of Vengeance (26 page)

Kit looked at the young officer. “I hardly knew Big Turtle. As for Stalking Fox, he hated my guts. But he had courage, and I respected him for that even while I disliked him. Just like I respect you, Captain Kelly.” Kit’s meaning was obvious. Kelly turned livid. His lips tightened into a thin line. “Respect, Mr. McQueen? Perhaps one day I might have the opportunity to teach you the meaning of the word.”

“Perhaps,” Kit replied. “If the Red Sticks let you live that long.” He turned and winked at Marcus Bellamy, who had to stifle his own laughter so as not to further aggravate the situation.

“I asked you all here for a reason,” Andrew Jackson began. “And it wasn’t so that you might stuff your bellies on the last of my good cheese and make bold threats over tankards of rum like common roisters!”

He paused and sucked in his breath as the bickering around him ceased. Then he leaned over the map and placed the tip of his knife blade on the Tallapoosa River at Horseshoe Bend.

“There they are. Wolf Jacket, Red Eagle, and the whole Red Stick confederacy. That’s the stronghold we must take, or the territory will never know peace.” Jackson traced a line with the dagger from the location of Fort Strother to the fortified Creek village. “Our next line of march must bring us straight to the Tallapoosa. Once we break winter camp there will be no turning back. The longer we take to achieve victory, the longer we leave New Orleans and the underbelly of our country open to British invasion.”

Jackson set aside his dagger and rolled up the map of the territory, revealing Iron Hand O’Keefe’s own rendering of the fortifications at Horseshoe Bend. The Creeks had chosen their encampment well. They had placed their village in the center of a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the Tallapoosa River. Across the landward base of the peninsula the Creeks had erected a palisade from which they could direct a murderous fire. The Tallapoosa itself was an equally challenging barricade, wide enough to slow an advancing force and leave them sitting targets for Red Stick marksmen on the riverbank.

Carroll and Bellamy studied the map of the stronghold. Kelly quickly joined the men at the table. He was curious as to this new dilemma and eager to offer his suggestions.

“Give me a couple of hundred fighting men, and we’ll storm their palisade and drive the Creeks back to the village,” he bragged.

Jackson did not reply. Instead, he shifted his gaze to Kit and waited for the lieutenant to comment on the map.

“Without a doubt the palisade must be stormed,” the general agreed when Kit made no remark.

“Such an assault, over open ground,” Captain Bellamy observed, his tone thoughtful, “would no doubt result in a frightful loss of life.”

“Determination will prevail,” Kelly retorted.

“A frontal assault is a fool’s gambit,” Bellamy said.

“I take offense, Mr. Bellamy.”

“Blast your pride! We are talking about human lives!”

“Both of you are right,” Jackson flatly interrupted, putting an end to the heated exchange. “We must take the palisade. But such an attack cannot hope to succeed without a diversion.” He looked once more at Kit, waiting. …

Kit sighed and traced a line along the river until he stopped at the tip of the peninsula. “O’Keefe and I could lead a force of Choctaws and Cherokees across the river under cover of night. By morning we could be in position to strike the Red Sticks from the rear while you rush their fortifications.”

Captain Bellamy paled. “Think what you’re saying, man. If they’ve posted sentries and an alarm is given, you’ll be caught in the river and cut to pieces.”

“No alarm will sound.”

“You place great trust in your luck, Lieutenant McQueen,” Colonel Carroll remarked.

“Indeed,” Kelly added.

Kit drew his broad-bladed knife from its sheath. It was duel-edged and razor sharp, capable of slitting a man’s throat from ear to ear. He stabbed the knife into the tabletop, skewering the Creek stronghold. “I trust in this!”

No one had anything else to add. General Jackson nodded in appreciation. He couldn’t have said it better himself.

Kit could have shared quarters with Bellamy and Kelly, but he had no apology for his preferences, and with the snow settling on his shoulders and coat he made his way out of the fort and to the lodge some of the Choctaw people had built for him. As he had fought at their side, so the long-haired people accepted him.

He picked his way unerringly through the cluster of pole-and-woven-reed huts until he came to his own, a small, adequate shelter erected close to O’Keefe’s. Kit paused at his entrance and looked longingly at O’Keefe’s. His innermost thoughts reached out to Raven across the transformed setting, for the snow had begun to work its magic, drifting and swirling in a tempest underscored by the ceremonial drums.

A hand closed over his. He jumped, startled. Raven drew him into his lodge. She wore a woolen blanket and a teasing smile and nothing more, and she led him to his bedding of rushes covered with soft pelts.

“What are you doing?”

“I have wept for the dead,” she said, pulling him down beside her. “Now I will sing, my body to yours, my heart to yours.” She looked up into his eyes and grew troubled by what she saw there. He sat beside her, but his gaze was filled with worry, not passion. A small fire burned in the center of the lodge. But all the warmth seemed to emanate from Raven O’Keefe.

“What has happened?” she said, moving closer to him. She abandoned, for the moment, her attempted seduction.

“I may have killed your father myself, and many of your people tonight,” Kit told her, and quickly recounted his plan for a diversionary attack upon the Creek stronghold. He looked at her. “You ought to run to your father and tell him to take his people and go from here.”

“This is our land. Have you learned nothing?” Iron Hand’s daughter said. “The Choctaws will be the first to draw blood. My people will think you honor them.” She sat on her haunches and faced Kit. “The Red Sticks slaughtered our old ones, carried off the young. It is our right to strike them first.”

“You think and talk like all the others,” Kit grumbled. Fording the Tallapoosa could get a lot of them killed.”

“I am one of the others,” she said. “Do you think being a mixed-blood makes me any the less a Choctaw? Is that what you hope?” she added coldly.

Raven opened the blanket, revealing her lithe form, her coppery skin, and the soft, sweet curves of her breasts and thighs.

“What do you see?”

Kit reached around the young woman and pulled the blanket up about her shoulders. “Life,” he told her. And taking her hands he kissed each palm, lifting first the left, then the right to his lips.

An ember cracked and popped like a pistol shot. Firelight leaped and fell; shadows crouched and danced like gypsy angels.

“When will you leave?” she asked.

“Two weeks, three, maybe longer, maybe when the weather clears or worsens and the Red Sticks do not expect us.”

“Then we have time,” Raven said, and pulled him down beside her.

“Listen,” Kit said.

The drums had ceased their mourning toll. The reed flutes finished their trilling whispers. And all that remained beneath the silent, settling snow was what had always been there and always would be—death and life.

I
T WAS IN THE
time of the First Budding Moon, on the twenty-sixth day of March, and the Creek stronghold at Horseshoe Bend waited out the death throes of a savage thunderstorm. Rain pummeled the new-growth branches of white oaks and sweetgums. Winds as cruel as a cat-o’-nine-tails lashed the log barricade and sent the Creek defenders Wolf Jacket had posted scurrying to the safety and comfort of their lodges.

One solitary figure seemed immune to the bruising downpour. Wrapped in a heavy blanket that he clutched about his head and shoulders, Bill Tibbs continued his rounds of the hundred-acre encampment. His keen eyes probed the storm-lashed line of trees across the river.

When will they come? From which direction? Tibbs noticed the lack of Creek guards by the dugouts. If Jackson was foolish enough to try a crossing, the sentries would need to sound the alert. Tibbs, his back to the Tallapoosa, peered one last time through the curtain of rain at the stockade walls. The Red Stick defenders could hold that barricade against twice the number Jackson had under his command.

Old Hickory was on the move, bringing his Tennesseans and his Choctaw allies with him.

And bringing McQueen, Tibbs thought. My friend, my enemy.

He tightened his grip on his blanket and, skirting a puddle, made his way through the village, his long-legged gait carrying him across the newly tilled fields where Creek women had planted corn and beans. His boots sank in the soft earth, and for a few minutes, Tibbs had to fight for each step. By the time he reached the lodges at the east end of the peninsula, a trickle of water had begun to work its way beneath his makeshift cowl and send a rivulet down his back.

Eventually he reached firmer footing, but his woolen trousers were mud-soaked up above his ankles. Tibbs made better time as he headed straight for Wolf Jacket’s lodge. The gunrunner was about ten feet from the entrance when Wolf Jacket, half naked, bolted through the doorway. His features were mottled with anger.

Behind him, a naked young girl of fifteen winters flailed away at the war chief of the Red Sticks. His right hand, entangled in her hair, held her at arm’s length. He dragged her out into the rain and with a mighty backhand sent her sprawling facedown in the mud. Wolf Jacket wiped a forearm across his bloody lip.

“Long-haired she-welp!” he cursed. When the hapless girl tried to crawl out of harm’s way, Wolf Jacket moved in and delivered a kick to her midsection that tumbled the girl over in the mud, where she lay clutching at her belly and gasping for breath. Another well-aimed kick snapped her head back, and she lay still.

Wolf Jacket noticed Tibbs standing off to one side and motioned for the white man to join him, then ducked back through the entrance, leaving his poor captive motionless in the rain. Pity for the Choctaw was a luxury Tibbs could not afford. He ducked through the entrance and followed Wolf Jacket into his lodge.

The interior of the lodge smelled of smoked venison, boiled beans, and cornmeal cakes. Wolf Jacket squatted by the cook fire, warming himself while carving a portion of venison from a roasted haunch brought to him by one of his wives. Tibbs glanced around at the willow backrests and folded blankets. The lodge, about twenty feet across from wall to wall, seemed empty without them. “Your wives, Calling Shadow and Little Willow?” Tibbs asked.

Wolf Jacket shrugged. “The long-hair poisoned them against me. Their eyes were like knives; I could not be with the long-hair woman while my wives watched from their blankets. I sent them both to the lodges of their mothers.” Wolf Jacket wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, his torso rippling with coppery muscles thick as cordwood. The Red Stick grinned.

“Ah, but the long-hair was too much trouble.” He gingerly touched his swollen lip where she’d cracked him in the mouth with a bowl. “Now I have no woman to keep me warm.” He crawled back to his bedding and began to eat.

Tibbs removed his blanket and dried himself by the cook fire. He removed the pistols from his belt and laid them aside. The scimitar with its baleful eye he placed close at hand upon the ground.

“We don’t need women to keep us warm,” Tibbs said. “You and I have our hate.”

Wolf Jacket studied Tibbs. Here was one white man the war chief could tolerate. Tibbs brought guns, traded for plunder, and then left. He made no claim to the Creek lands. But there was something more to Bill Tibbs than guns and gold. Wolf Jacket had offered the renegade an escort to see him safely to Mobile once General Jackson had found him out. But Tibbs refused, insisting that he remain at Horseshoe Bend.

Now Wolf Jacket had an inkling why. He too was waiting for an enemy.

“I understand you,” the war chief said. “Our hearts are one in our hate.” Wolf Jacket stretched out upon the tanned skins and soft pelts that served for his bed. Leaning against his backrest, he watched the smoke from the fire curl up through the hole in the woven reed roof. The smoke hole was shielded from the elements by a reed flap.

The Red Stick surveyed the familiar surroundings. His weapons were stacked nearby, a fine British rifled musket, a short-barreled pistol, its stock ornately engraved with swirls and floral designs. Wolf Jacket had personally bludgeoned to death the pistol’s former owner at Hope Station. Next to the firearms lay his favorite weapon, an iron-bladed tomahawk whose shaft the war chief had decorated with brass studs. The walls of his lodge were hung with, tanned hides and British blankets to catch any wayward draft that might slip between the logs where the chinking had cracked.

Wolf Jacket searched beneath his blanket and produced a brown clay jug, just another bit of plunder that he’d kept for such a night.

“This is Creek land, from the Tensey,”—he waved the bottle in a northerly direction—“to the great waters.” He gestured toward the south, then sloshed the contents of the jug and passed it to Tibbs, who chanced a sip.

“By heaven, that’s whiskey,” Tibbs gasped, savoring the warmth that spread from his nose to his toes. “You cunning devil, you’ve been hiding this.”

He lifted the jug to his lips and, while he drank, caught the war chief studying the scimitar. He knew Wolf Jacket coveted the weapon. The Eye of Alexander had woven its spell and captured the Red Stick’s imagination. He recognized the weapon’s spirit power.

“My runners tell me the white chief Jackson will soon be here. He is camped two day’s walk from our village. The Choctaws and Cherokees follow him like camp dogs, hoping to feast on our bones.”

“You should not have attacked their village,” Tibbs remarked. “They might have joined you.”

Wolf Jacket’s brows momentarily knotted, and for a moment, like sparks from flint or lightning against the night sky, fire danced in his dark eyes. But when he spoke, his tone was cordial. “Maybe when the storm ends and the sky clears, I will lead my people out and we will surprise the white chief and his red dogs.” Wolf Jacket raised up and reached toward the jeweled hilt gleaming close to the cook fire. “I will carry this into battle.”