by Michael Aye
Jackson was a brave man but also a cautious man. He wanted to make sure everything was as it was supposed to be. He didn’t want to march into a surprise. He also didn’t want a draw, he wanted a victory…a resounding victory. He wanted to defeat the Red Sticks once and for all.
Jonah walked up. “How’s the arm?” Moses asked. While Jonah never complained, Moses knew the arm had been very painful. Had they not gotten to the surgeon when they did, he might have lost it.
“Doing better,” Jonah said, extending his wounded arm rotating it.
“Did you talk with Lieupo?” Henry asked.
“No…Doctor Bridges had given him some laudanum, so he was out of it.”
“Is he ever going to walk again?”
“Hopefully. Dr. Bridges had to do a lot when he operated. The arrow had broken off a part of what the surgeon called the ball of femur. That and a piece of the arrowhead had to be taken out and the wound cleaned up. There were also parts of Steve’s pants driven into the wound.”
“Reckon they’ll amputate?” Henry asked.
“I asked that same question,” Jonah replied. “Doctor Bridges says there’s nothing to amputate. Steve will get well or die.”
“I will be praying for him,” Moses said solemnly.
“I guess we’d all best be doing it,” Henry said.
-
The fort had almost turned into a city. Settlers in wagons and makeshift cabins and tents now camped on the opposite side of the fort from the Cherokees. Farmers, trappers, boatmen, and army personnel all mingled about.
“Place keeps growing like this, we’ll be seeing lawyers next,” Henry joked.
“Well, they won’t find any business,” Sam Houston said. He’d walked up on the conversation. “Around here, ‘Andy by God Jackson’ is the law and the only law.” This caused the men to chuckle. “Let’s go over to Widow Hayes and see if she’s fixed dinner yet.”
The Widow Hayes was one of the few survivors from Fort Mims. She’d gone to stay with kin, and then as luck would have it, they’d been wiped out. She’d set up a kitchen of sorts outside the fort. Men tired of army cooking and having the money to spare frequently found a hearty meal at her place. Crockett and a few others would provide fresh game in order to get a free home-cooked meal. She’d sew on a button, mend your clothes or provide a little corn squeezing for the right price.
Sitting down at a slab table, Moses wrinkled his nose. “I wish she had hot baths.” The men sitting at the next table smelled to high heaven: a combination of sweat, tobacco, and liquor.
One of the men heard Moses. “You talking about us?”
Never one to start trouble, Moses never ran from it either. “I was making a general comment,” he said, “but I don’t think a bath would be amiss.”
“Listen to that,” the man snarled, his rotten breath contributing to his overall stench.
“Sit down, Lige,” said another man at the table.
“Sit down, I ain’t sitting down. Where’d you learn to talk like that?” Lige asked Moses. “Amiss, I ain’t never heard no nigger speak so, not even no red nigger.”
Jonah and Henry were both on their feet. “Enough,” Jonah hissed.
“You his keeper?” Lige asked. ”You shouldn’t even bring him in here.”
“Maybe you’d like to step outside,” Jonah threw back.
Whipping out his long hunting knife, Lige said, “Shore, I’ll step outside, but I wanna see if he bleeds red first.”
An unmistakable click was heard as a pistol was cocked. Sam Houston held the pistol with the barrel touching Lige’s head. “I believe you have been asked to step outside, sir. A gentleman would be accommodating. Now, unless you’ve no desire to see the sunset, I’d drop the knife and then either apologize or agree to walk outside.”
“I ain’t got no quarrel with him,” Lige whined. “Besides, his arm is bandaged.”
“I wasn’t talking about Mr. Lee,” Houston said. “I was talking about Moses. He’s the one you slighted. Now apologize or walk outside.”
“Apologize, Lige,” the man’s companion said. “Apologize and let’s be on our way. Besides, we do stink.”
“I ah…I apologize.”
“I apologize, sir,” Houston said, emphasizing his words with a nudge of his pistol.
“I apologize, sir.”
“We both do,” Lige’s friend said. “You’ll get no more trouble from Lige, I promise. We head back up river tomorrow at first light.”
As the men left, Widow Hayes came over, “Pay him no mind, Moses. He tried to start something with Crockett yesterday, called him a lying, loud mouth braggart.” This made everyone at the table smile.
“What did Crockett say?” Jonah asked.
“I don’t recall his exact words, but it had something to do with Lige’s heritage and how old Betsy would be glad to rectify it so that it wouldn’t be passed on to poor helpless children.” Everyone knew Crockett called his long rifle Betsy.
After they’d eaten, Henry broke out his pipe again. He then passed his sack of tobacco around to the others to fill their pipes.
“Care to walk over to the village?” Houston asked Moses. “Leave these old coons to the comfort of their tobacco while we comfort a maiden or two.”
“I believe a stroll in that direction might be good for digestion,” Moses replied.
Watching as the two men walked away, Henry asked Jonah, “Does Moses have to put up with that kind of thing very often?”
Jonah thought a minute. He reached for his wooden cup filled with cider and took a sip. “That’s the first time in a year or two, as I recall. Usually, Moses handles it himself, but because we’re here, attached to Jackson’s command as we are, I thought it best if I intervened.”
“What could Andy do?” Henry commented. “You’re the president’s man.”
“Well, it’s a long way to Washington.”
“Yep, there is that,” Henry admitted. “You two are really close,” he added.
“Closer than brothers,” Jonah said.
“You’ve both been educated,” Henry continued. “Fact is, Moses is more educated than most white men I know.”
“Well, that’s because Mama Lee wouldn’t have it any other way.” Then, for the next hour, Henry found out how Moses came to be with the Lees and all about a proper upbringing according to the gospel of Mama Lee. She was a strong woman of deep abiding faith, who rarely put her foot down, but when she did even the colonel would stop and bend to her wishes.
Slaves were plentiful in coastal Georgia. At one time, the Lee family had slaves just like all the other planters and families of substance. However, after Moses came along, Mama Lee had a talk with the Lord and decided the institution of slavery was against God’s holy word. A lot of back and forth went on when the colonel wouldn’t just up and free his slaves all at once. The economics would have ruined the family, he argued, not to mention the Lees suddenly becoming outcast to the whole community by such an act. But as a compromise, each slave had become an indentured servant, and after seven years of loyal service and attaining the adult age, the slaves would be freed.
“I bet a lot of them took off,” Henry said.
“A few,” Jonah admitted. “But for the most part they all stayed and worked for wages, room and board.”
“Did your mama name Moses?” Henry asked.
“Yep, she sure did. When we were little she’d read to us about Moses in the bible and how he led his people out of bondage. Little Moses would play and imagine himself like the biblical Moses. To this day, he can tell you more about the scriptures than most preachers. Then, one day it happened. One of the men off a boat called Moses a little no-account, half-breed nigger and shoved him in the dirt. Moses had noted the man’s foot on the edge of the scales when he was weighing up grain. Not only was Moses smart about the bible, but Mama Lee educated us well. Eyeing the bag, Moses knew right off there was not near enough grain in the bag to equal the weight that was claimed. Moses picked
himself up, dusted himself off and told the man he was a cheat. The fool clubbed Moses with a whip handle, cutting him over the eye.”
“You didn’t help?” Henry asked incredulously.
“Oh, I tried. But I was younger, and all I got was a slap upside the head for my efforts. We went home to tell papa – that’s the colonel, but he wasn’t there. Mama Lee was, however. Seeing us dirty and Moses bleeding from his eyebrow, she made us tell her the entire story. She got mad as a wet sitting hen. She had the wagon hitched up and off we went. Those mules had never pulled the wagon so fast. When we got there, I pointed the man out. Mama walked right up to him and said, ‘Are you the heathen that struck my child?’ The man opened his mouth but never had a chance to speak. Mama had a buggy whip in her hand. Faster than a striking rattler, she lashed out and she kept lashing out, chasing the lout around the weighing scales, around the wagon and all about. The man was begging her to stop. ‘Please stop, Madame,’ he cried, all the while the whip kept lashing out. Mama Lee was yelling and telling him with each lash, he’d think twice before he struck a Lee child again. A crowd had gathered around laughing their heads off but not lifting a hand to help the poor sod. Finally, papa rode up and got the whip from mama. I remember his words to this day, ‘That’s enough, mama, I ’spect he’s seen the error of his ways and repented.’ I hoped he had, because mama sure beat the devil out of him. Moses whispered to me on the way home, ‘We better not tell Mama Lee anything bad again, she’s liable to kill someone.’ Well, the need to never come up again. We were grown boys before anyone ever made a similar comment again. Being a strong man, Moses just turned the other cheek, so to speak. I didn’t always, but he did. He’d say, ‘They the ones gotta answer to the Lord, not me.’”
“I will bet you one thang,” Henry said draining his tankard, “word got out what to expect from your mama and most ain’t foolish enough to tempt a woman with a temper.”
Jonah laughed until he cried. “You are a smart man, Henry Parrish…a smart man.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was almost dawn. Of the four men sleeping in the cots on the frigid second floor of the Wilderness Tavern, not a single one had done more than stick his head out from under the covers. Outside the window situated next to Jonah’s cot, a tree limb cracked like a musket shot as it broke from the freezing cold and fell to the frozen ground. Jonah shuddered. He had to go…go badly. Normally the call of nature was met with acceptance; he’d get up and relieve himself. However, today was anything but normal. The landscape was solid white. A late winter snow storm had brought everything to a halt. It was cold, a hard, bone chilling, and joint aching cold. ‘A great cold,’ Moses had called it. For three days now the temperature had not risen above zero. A hailstorm had caught Jonah, Moses, Crockett, and Houston twenty miles or so north of Fort Strother on the trail to Fort Deposit. The hail was followed by howling winds and snow. It snowed until huge drifts blocked the wagon road. The thought was to turn south and return to Fort Strother, but Houston remembered the Raccoon Mountain Trading Post.
“Think it’s still there?” a doubtful Jonah had asked.
“Yeah,” Houston replied. “The man that runs it is kin to Peter McQueen. It’ll be there. We might not be the most welcome guests, but they won’t turn us out, not with gold in our pockets anyway.”
“What about McQueen, Weatherford or some of their bunch?”
“I don’t know,” Houston had admitted. “But I would rather chance it, seeing how the weather is getting worse, and it’s a sight closer than either Fort Strother or Fort Deposit.”
That had been four days ago. Footsteps could be heard on the first floor. Good, somebody was stirring about. A door slammed and angry curses were heard. It was more-than-likely Madison’s slaves. They should soon have a fire going in the big fireplace. The heat would rise and help thaw out the room.
“Damn,” Crockett swore. “I gotta go bad, but I’m afraid it’ll freeze and break off if I get out of these covers.”
“No big loss,” Moses muttered.
“Maybe not for you,” Crockett returned. “But there’s a heap of women that would be devastated should such a tragedy occur.”
The floor groaned as Jonah jumped out of bed. He bent over, looking under the beds. “Anybody seen the slop bucket?” he asked.
“By the chest,” Moses answered.
By the time Jonah was finished, it felt like his nose and ears were frozen. You’d think they would have a slave minding the fire at night, he thought.
They heard a knock at the door and then it creaked open. The glow of a candle lit up the room. Jonah quickly jumped back in his cot. It was one of Madison’s house servants. She’d shown an interest in Moses that first night when they had ridden in. Each morning she’d come in and light the lamps in the room so the men would have light to get dressed by. Today, though, nobody seemed anxious to leave the warmth of his bed. “Biscuits in the oven,” she said as she left the room. Anxious or not, it was time to get up.
“Oh hell,” came from under Crockett’s blanket. He’d stood it as long as he could but finally had to get up and empty his bladder.
-
Madison was part Scots. He’d built the trading post nearly twenty years ago. When the trading post was hit by a party of Chickasaw warriors, he’d cleared the land around the building and built a stockade. The stockade was square and looked to be fifty to sixty yards wide and just as long. Jonah was not sure how much protection the stockade really afforded. The night that they had ridden in, there was no sentry or guard at the open gate. The hinges looked so rusty that it was questionable if they worked. They were already at the tavern’s door before anyone noticed them at all. Madison had done well with his trade with the Indians. He’d treated them fairly and had been left to live and prosper.
Once dressed, Jonah quickly made his way downstairs. There’d be a fire roaring in the fireplace, he was certain. It was warmer in the great room but coolness and dampness still prevailed. The heat from the fireplace was beginning to thaw the ice on the window panes. Watching the ice melt and run down the panes, Jonah could see snowdrifts had piled up and onto the porch. Icicles hung from the eves of the slanted porch.
“Good morning to you,” Madison said, entering the room. He had a steaming mug in his hand. From the strong smell, Jonah knew it was coffee. Suddenly his taste buds became very active and cried out for a cup of the brew. “Mama,” Madison called to his wife. “Bring Mr. Lee a cup to warm up his innards.” Jonah nodded his thanks.
Madison had once been a powerful man, but age and good living was taking its toll, and he was starting to get fat. Will I get to a point of such contentment that I’ll run to fat, Jonah wondered. His father had gotten thicker but was not fat. Since they’d been forced to hole up at the trading post, Madison had smoked his pipe and drank homemade beer and corn liquor. He had been content to let ‘mama’ run the business. A good job she did of it too, Jonah decided.
Jonah had just gotten his cup of coffee when they heard the sound of men bounding down the stairs. “Outside,” Crockett said, holding his long rifle tightly. Alarmed, Jonah ran to the window. Indians, six or eight of them. They seemed to have a few whites with them, too.
Madison had slowly gotten his body in motion and made it to the window. Looking out, he said nonchalantly, “Weatherford. Now what’s he out in the cold for?” Without hesitating, Madison opened the door and called to the Indians. “Come in here and get out of the cold.”
Weatherford seemed anxious but trusted Madison. Leaving the door cracked open, Madison turned to his four guests. “No shenanigans. The weather isn’t fit and my post is open to all who are friendly.”
Houston took his own, Crockett’s, and Moses’ rifles and headed back up the steps. Out of sight but not far out of reach. Anxiously, the four waited until Weatherford and his braves walked in…without any firearms. Jonah gave a sigh but didn’t let down his guard.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jonah moved from
the center of the fireplace allowing the new ‘visitors’ to get close to the hearth and warm themselves. Jonah was not sure what he’d expected Weatherford to look like, but it was not what he saw. The fearsome Red Stick war chief known by both Red Eagle and William Weatherford was dressed in white man’s attire, a wealthy white man’s attire. His clothes were of thick wool. His coat, a red plaid mackintosh, was not the type of apparel you’d normally see an Indian or white man wearing. Of course, his grandfather, old Alex McGillivray, was said to have been a man of great means.
He owned a huge plantation and several flatboats, which carried his cargoes to Mobile for trading. Henry Parrish had said McGillivray traded on a grand scale. On one trip south, his shipment would fill several hundred flatboats, keelboats, and barges. McGillivray was the emperor of the Creeks. He was known by the president of the United States and leaders of other nations. Jonah also remembered something his father had said. McGillivray had been a freemason. As emperor, he felt for the Creeks to survive that they would have to emulate the white man. Most of the Creeks wore shirts, trousers, and boots just like the whites. They owned numerous slaves and had large landholdings, often greater than the white settlers, who continued to encroach upon the Creek lands.
McGillivray’s daughter was an Indian princess. He had given a huge plantation to Charles Weatherford as a wedding present for marrying his daughter. Why, then, did William Weatherford, Red Eagle, turn his back on his father and grandfather’s wealth and way of life? Did he feel such a calling from his mother’s people? Was he tired of seeing jealous white men destroy the Indian way of life? Was he tired of broken treaties and white man laws being made just to steal away what the whites had not already taken? Gazing at the warrior, Jonah recalled something else Henry Parrish had said. Had it not been for the massacre at Fort Mims, he would be siding with Weatherford.
-
Madison had to force the door shut against a heavy wind. Once the door was closed, he spoke in Creek to the new guests. He then returned to speaking English. “Gentlemen, this is Lumhe-Chati, or Red Eagle. He is also known as William Weatherford.” Mama Lee’s training in manners caused Jonah to reach out his hand.