Tallapoosa

  “How beautiful!” declared Adelin. “Will it stay?”

  “Looks like it. Maybe several inches by morning. I better get Saul and go check on the livestock. Probably take us an hour or so. All right?”

  Adelin lay awake in bed when Cal returned. He undressed, blew out the last lamp, and climbed in. He pulled the blanket close, shivering slightly.

  “Everything all right?” asked Adelin.

  “Yeah, sure. We plugged a few more holes in the shed and put blankets and furs across their backs. Okra says to tell you hello and good night.”

  Adelin laughed and shuffled toward Cal. They turned, facing each other, naked body to naked body. He reached an arm around her and pulled her to him. Adelin snuggled her head under his chin. They lay quietly, drifting into haziness.

  “Cal?”

  “Mmmm?”

  “Cal, I’m really happy. I am so glad you brought me here.”

  Cal squeezed her tighter. “Even with everything that’s happening?”

  “Yes, even with that.”

  “This is a hard land, Adelin. And dangerous.”

  “I know, and that’s fine. It’s also a beautiful land. And I do belong here. With you.”

  “I really love you, Adelin. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I love you, too, more than I ever thought I could.” She shifted slightly and snuggled closer.

  “This place is paradise, and you are the best thing in it.”

  Cal tilted Adelin’s face to his and kissed her. The kiss lingered and she responded eagerly. They exchanged more kisses as they explored each other’s bodies. Cal rolled Adelin to her back and she pulled him after her. He kissed her again. She moaned, and hugged his body tightly to hers.

  18

  The Murph settlement, January 1, 1814

  If the Murphs had the date right, with their crude estimates of the progress of the calendar, Soosquana’s labor began on New Year’s Day. She and Adelin had finished preparing a special dinner to celebrate the occasion when she felt the first pain.

  “Oh! I have to sit down, Adelin.”

  “You all right, Soos? Are you sick?” Then she realized. “Oh, oh! Soos! It’s the baby, isn’t it? Wow! I’ll get Saul.”

  “No, wait. Not yet ready. Maybe it starting but baby not come yet.”

  “I’ll get Saul anyway.”

  Saul and Cal were at Soosquana’s side in less than a minute.

  “We have to get you to bed,” proclaimed Saul. “And then we have to, uh, we have to . . . . Soos, what do we do next? Adelin? Hell, I don’t know.”

  Adelin laughed. Soosquana tried to laugh, too, but the next pain doubled her over.

  “I see that you fellows are going to be a lot of help,” reasoned Adelin. “She’ll be all right; the baby will be a while yet.” She reached for Soosquana. “Come on, help me put her to bed and I’ll get your dinner for you. It’s about ready.”

  Saul and Cal spent the afternoon walking in circles in the yard, with Saul having to look into the cabin at less than five minute intervals. It being a nice day for January, Adelin sat in a rocking chair on the porch and did finger work on a deerskin blouse. The men’s worried antics entertained her. Soosquana mostly napped as the labor symptoms had subsided.

  By supper, Soosquana had decided that the baby was yet days away, that the day’s episode was just an early stirring. She finally convinced the others and prepared for bed.

  Cal had said little all day, and had done even less to be helpful. As they walked to their cabin, Adelin hooked her arm in his and smiled. “You did good today, big boy,” she teased.

  “Huh? Whaddya mean?”

  “Why, you didn’t get in the way a single time. That’s about as good as a man can do in these situations.”

  The quiet and the deep slumber of that same pleasant winter night was splintered by a panicked shout. “Adelin! Cal! Come over! We need you!”

  Cal and Adelin jerked upright in bed in unison.

  “It’s Saul,” said Cal.

  “Soos’s pains must be back. Let’s get over there.”

  Contractions had returned stronger than ever, and this time it was unmistakably the real thing. However, the baby was in no hurry. After making all preparations for the birth and watching the men check everything over and over until it became annoying to both women, Adelin again banished them to the yard.

  The time had to be a couple of hours past midnight. Cal decided he should check the animals and headed for the shed.

  “You’ll just wake ’em up,” Saul called after him. “What the hell can you do in the middle of the night?”

  Saul sat on the porch steps, got up and walked to the edge of the bluff, came back and sat down, got up and went to the door, opened it and spoke to Adelin who again reassured him. Saul closed the door and sat on the steps again. Perhaps three minutes had elapsed. A minute on the steps and he repeated the entire cycle. It would be retraced again with variations dozens of times before the moon set and a hazy gray softened the southeastern sky. Cal had returned to the porch sometime during the predawn and flopped down in the rocker. He hardly moved the rest of the night.

  Through the night inside the cabin, Adelin’s sympathetic conversation and excited giggles had mixed with Soosquana’s occasional grunts, squeals, and tortured comments frequently cut short by sudden yips. As the sky lightened, the tone sharply changed. Soosquana’s pain had become steady and acute. Saul ran to the door. Adelin let him in but soon had to again ask him to leave.

  Cal laughed. “Big brother, you’re just no good at this birthing business, are you?”

  “I reckon you’re doing a helluva lot of good yourself?”

  Cal laughed at him again.

  Saul offered his help a couple more times and was ejected from the cabin anew on each occasion. He walked across the porch, from one end to the other and back again, continuously. Cal grinned at him each time he paced by the rocking chair.

  Suddenly, just as a big fiery sun poked through the treetops across the river, sounds of activity within the cabin stopped. Dead silence. Saul froze in the middle of the porch, facing the door, unable to move. Cal stopped rocking.

  No sound. Nothing. Not even, it seemed, the murmur of the river washing over the shoals. Every movement had been suspended. Long minutes. Long, long minutes.

  The door cracked. Then it swung full open. Adelin slowly walked out. She tenderly held in both arms a big bundled blanket.

  “Daddy Saul,” she smiled, fighting to control herself, “say hello to your beautiful, beautiful baby daughter.”

  Saul carefully peeked into the blanket as Adelin began crying, unable to hold her emotions longer. Sleeping in her arms was the most gorgeous baby Saul had ever seen. Everything about her, as far as he could tell, was perfect, right up to a full head of coal black hair.

  “Is Soos all right?” he asked.

  “She’s just great,” Adelin sniffed between tears. “She’s dozing.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Of course. Go on in.”

  Saul looked past the doorway into the darkened room and nervously stepped inside. Soosquana appeared to be asleep. He quietly walked to her and leaned down and kissed her. She roused and opened her eyes and smiled.

  “Did you see her?”

  “I sure did,” he said.

  “Is she not beautiful?”

  “She is beautiful. The most beautiful baby ever. She looks just like her mother.”

  Adelin still held the baby. “Do you want to hold her, Saul?”

  “What? Hold her? Me? Yes. No! No, I might drop her. No. What, are you crazy? I can’t hold her. I’ve never done that. I don’t know how.”

  “Come on, don’t be silly. You had little brothers and sisters back in Virginia, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t touch
them as babies.”

  “Sit down, you old softy, and I’ll put her in your lap. Don’t worry. I’ll show you. You’ll do fine.”

  Soosquana watched the drama from her bed, amused at her astonished husband. As Adelin arranged the baby in his lap, and he stared down at this amazing new creature, Soosquana’s amusement turned to wonder and worship. Her Muskogi people believed in Spirits and depended on miracles, but what she saw in her husband and child was more spiritual and more miraculous than anything she had experienced in life to this moment.

  Later, Saul, Cal, and Adelin stood on the porch and noticed for the first time that a marvelous, bright day had dawned. Inside, Soosquana had fallen asleep with the baby at peace in the crook of her arm.

  “I’ll go to the cabin and cook some breakfast for everybody,” volunteered Adelin. “You stay here and watch them, Saul. After we’ve all eaten, I’ll stay with them. You boys need to get some sleep.”

  “Adelin,” pronounced Saul, “you are not to be believed. What would we have done without you? You must be an angel.” He looked at Cal. “And little brother, you were as useless as I was.”

  Cal and Adelin started toward their cabin. Adelin turned back.

  “Saul,” she asked, “what’s the baby’s name?”

  Saul looked startled. “Name? Why, I don’t know. I haven’t even thought about it. We haven’t talked about it.” He stroked his chin. “Yeah, I suppose she needs a name. I’ll have to ask Soos.” He turned to reenter the cabin. “Yeah, I’ll have to ask Soos.”

  19

  Fort Strother on the Coosa River, January, 1814

  “How many men we got left, Billy?” General Andrew Jackson demanded the information more than requested it. He sourly chewed on a gnarled homemade cigar.

  Colonel Billy Carroll didn’t dare challenge the general’s mood. He knew his commander was primed to explode, had been for the past month. “Less than fifty, sir, most of them cavalry of Coffee’s troop. That’s not counting your officers from the Nashville brigade.”

  “Friendlies?”

  “About a hundred Cherokees and turncoat Creeks. The rest of the Cherokees left with General Cocke this morning.”

  “That son of a bitch!” Jackson repeated for at least the tenth time today. “What the hell did Cocke come down here for? He’s here for less than two months and does nothing but jump on the Hillabis after we had ’em practically surrendered. Makes ’em madder’n ever and then goes home. Hell, if he’d stayed home to start with we’d have control of this whole country by now and we’d all be home.”

  “Yes, sir.” Carroll knew to give General Jackson his head when he ranted so.

  “Do you think the Creeks are stupid people, Billy?”

  “Sir?” Carroll was surprised at the change to a new subject.

  “Think about it, Billy. We oughta been dead by nightfall. Here we are with our butts hanging out for the whole Creek Nation and they ain’t nowhere abouts. Least I guess they ain’t or they would have jumped us by now. Any half ass military strategist would bring his whole force against a weakened bunch like ours with no provisions and little ordnance.”

  “Maybe they are unaware of our plight, sir.”

  “Not likely, but if so, even more unforgivable. They oughta have scouts all over our ass.” Jackson winced and rubbed his elbow. The arm that had suffered the pistol wound in Nashville still bothered him. “Hell, if I was commanding the Red Sticks, half those Creeks out there with our boys would be spies.”

  “Maybe they know we got reinforcements coming.”

  “If they were smart we’d all be chopped up before any reinforcements got to us. Then, they oughta be ambushing anybody coming in. Besides, we don’t know for sure that help is coming, do we?”

  “Runners from Fort Deposit have been telling us for the past week that fresh troops are on the way.”

  “Hell, if they do come, they better bring stores with ’em. We’re down to hard biscuit and roasted acorns. Everything else is cleaned out, even most of the fish in the Coosa, it seems.”

  “We’re very low on powder and shot and repair parts, too, sir.”

  “God damn, Billy, I know that. We’re dead for sure if the new units come empty-handed.” Jackson’s cigar had been chewed into a thin, ugly twist. “Or if they don’t come at all. Billy, I want every man inside the stockade for the night. Any Indians, too, that want to come in. And double the guard all around.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “At daybreak send out scout patrols for a thousand yards up and down the river and along all trails and roads. We need to know if those mangy scoundrels have been skulking about.”

  Troops had been leaving for home over most of the past month. General Jackson had been able to stand them down for a while, even after enlistments began to expire. He had called them cowards and mutineers and had even threatened to shoot those that deserted him. But when his officers reminded him that the men were within their rights, he had no choice but to let them go.

  “Riders on the road!” the sentry on the north road at the edge of the clearing shouted at midmorning the next day. “Large column!”

  “Riders on the road!” relayed the stockade guard post. “Alert General Jackson.”

  A militia colonel rode into the clearing at the head of a company of cavalry. General Jackson, General Coffee, and Colonel Carroll greeted him before the front gate. “Colonel,” grouched Jackson, “you certainly took your time. We expected you days ago. Our asses have been exposed here for three days since the last of General Cocke’s East Tennessee outfit pulled out.”

  “Yes, sir.” The young officer dismounted and saluted sharply. “I’m Colonel Patrick Highsmith. I bring you compliments from Governor Blount and a detachment of fresh militia.”

  “How many?”

  “There’s another company of cavalry on the road no more than a mile back, with a regiment of infantry. Over eight hundred personnel in all.”

  “Eight hundred!” exploded Jackson. “God damn, Colonel, we need at least three thousand. Haven’t Governor Blount and President Madison and the Secretary of War been reading my dispatches?”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir. The governor says to tell you he’s doing his best to recruit adequate forces. We’re the first of your replacements.”

  “Did you bring ample stores? Provisions, tools, ordnance, shot and powder?”

  “Yes, sir. We have enough for at least a week.”

  “A week? Damn, isn’t anybody up there thinking with half a brain? Colonel, we need a month of reserve supplies. We’re on the verge of starvation here.”

  A new shout came from the sentry at the head of the road. “Men on the north road! A large column!”

  “That would be the remainder of your brigade, Colonel,” sourly spoke Jackson, chomping down on the same mangled cigar of last night. “Get them settled in. Colonel Carroll will direct you. Meeting of staff officers in two hours. You and your second and third in command will be there, of course?”

  “Of course, General.”

  By the time he gathered his officers, Jackson raged hotter than ever. While the eight hundred men rendered him less vulnerable, they didn’t come close to the number he thought he needed to defeat the Creeks. His personal military strategy had always been to assure himself the advantage of overwhelming force before challenging an enemy. But Blount was falling short of recruiting the militia he needed and the Secretary of War continued to ignore his pleas for a Regular Army brigade.

  General Jackson decided he had no choice. He had made up his mind.

  “Gentlemen,” he began the staff meeting, “we’ve been holed up here for two months, helpless, while the Red Sticks have been gathering forces. While we don’t have the troops we had hoped for, I believe we must act now with what we do have.” He studied each officer’s face and saw that he had their attention. “Our friendly Creeks h
ave learned that the Red Sticks are massing on the upper Tallapoosa, building a new town there, a big one. They supposedly are putting up some kind of fortress. We cannot allow them to centralize their forces; we have to keep them split up.”

  “You aim to go after them, General?” asked Coffee.

  “Damn right. We ain’t got the proper numbers, but if more help ain’t here in a week, we can’t wait any longer. We’re close to starvation already and it’s only gonna get worse. And the Creeks are only gonna get stronger. So, Colonel Highsmith, you have maybe five days to drill your men and learn about the Creeks’ fighting ways from our boys. Then, weather permitting, we march. We have to go after the murdering bastards. Now let me show you what I have in mind.”

  General Jackson unfolded a large roll of rough paper on which he had drawn a crude map. “This is the territory east of the Coosa. We actually know very little of the lay of the land between the Coosa and the Chattahoochee. What you see here is what we’ve learned so far. Here we are, here is the Tallapoosa. We know about Hillabi Creek; it is along here. General Cocke’s route from Knoxville to get here took him across Hillabi. That’s where the damn fool decided he had to rip those savages that was about to give up to us. The rotten incompetent son of a bitch! Anyway, we will march along his road to about here,” Jackson stabbed a finger at the map, “and then cut east until we are about ten miles due north of where the Red Sticks are. There’s a little creek we should be able to follow down to the Tallapoosa that’ll bring us right on top of ’em. If they don’t do a better job of scouting than they’ve done till now, we may even jump ’em by surprise.”

  Each officer scrutinized the map, asked questions, offered suggestions. After another hour, they were unanimous in approving General Jackson’s scheme.

  “Gentlemen, we have a few days to refine the plan and to prepare the men.” Jackson scowled. “And if more reinforcements haven’t arrived, then by god, we’ll whip the Red Sticks’ rotten asses by ourselves.”