by Eric Flint
Taylor had been rather impressed by his courage. Granted, there was no danger from any of Crittenden’s outfit. Taylor’s cavalrymen had scouted the area to make sure there were none such present. But the real risk in such a situation would come from the sentries themselves. As keyed up and tense as they were certain to be, they’d be quite likely to fire as soon as they spotted anyone moving in the area beyond the walls.
The corporal’s black face had helped, of course. There’d be no one in Crittenden’s army with skin anywhere near as dark. But the night was dark, too, with only a quarter moon in the sky, so sentries couldn’t be certain of anyone’s race at a distance. And while the green uniform of an Arkansas soldier was easily discernible in daylight, at night it simply looked like any dark garment.
Fortunately, the youngster was shrewd. As soon as he emerged from the woods he began singing “Blue Tail Fly,” with its well-known refrain:
Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care
Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care
Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care
My master’s gone away
Taylor found himself chuckling as he watched. Nobody in Crittenden’s army was likely to be singing a song about a slave’s glee at his master’s death from an accident!
The boy had a very nice tenor voice, too.
“Oh, he sure sings pretty,” he heard Imogene say.
He discovered that Arkansas Post was under the command of a Major Joseph Totten. A bit to his surprise, a white officer. Taylor had known, of course—Captain McParland being living proof he’d already encountered—that a number of the officers and even enlisted men in the Arkansas forces were white. But it was still a bit startling. Not so much the skin color itself as the apparent lack of concern that anyone seemed to have about it, one way or the other. Totten’s second-in-command was a Captain Davies, whose dark face seemed to have a subtly Indian cast to it. Quite possibly, the son or grandson of one of the early slaves taken by the Cherokees or Creeks in the past century. Manumission was far more common in the Indian tribes than it was among white Americans, and it often took the form of a former slave or at least their children marrying into one of the clans.
That, too, was a break with American custom. Andrew Jackson had created something of a scandal by giving Driscol’s sergeant Charles Ball a field promotion to lieutenant during the New Orleans campaign. That had been in clear violation of U.S. Army regulations, which did not permit black freedmen to rise to any commissioned rank.
Jackson being Jackson—with the great victory at the Mississippi to add luster to his reputation for fury—no one had dared to object officially at the time. But after Ball had resigned from the army, the authorities had quietly seen to it that there would be no repetition of the problem and that the promotion would not establish any sort of precedent.
Arkansas, clearly, had different rules. Taylor wasn’t sure if he approved. On the other hand, he was no more sure that he didn’t. He did not consider himself an intellectual officer, in the way that Winfield Scott was, but he thought a man had to be a plain damn fool not to understand that there was ultimately something dark and dangerous about having slavery at the foundation of a republic. Even though his own family’s considerable wealth—even his own position, to a degree—rested on that same institution.
That said, he had no more use for abolitionists than he did for men like John Calhoun. Fine and dandy to denounce slavery in the abstract—but how was one to get rid of it? Two great obstacles stood in the way, the second more immovable than the first.
The first, of course, was simple economics. Slavery was profitable, and the solid basis for most of the wealth of Southern gentlemen. Easy enough for a New England merchant—whose own family’s wealth might very well have derived a century earlier from the slave trade—to demand that a Virginia farmer bankrupt himself by freeing his slaves. Not so easy for the farmer.
But, even if that were done, what would happen next? How was a society to absorb two million freed negroes? That was the second rock below the surface, and the one that all schemes for abolition foundered upon.
Until now, perhaps. If the United States could not do it, what if its new neighbor could?
Zachary Taylor didn’t know the answer to that question. What he did decide, that night, studying Major Totten and his staff of officers, was that he was glad the question was finally being asked by somebody, and in dead earnest.
Many miles away, on a steamboat at the confluence of the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers, an English lady was pondering the same issue. In her case, a rumination brought on by the experience of the past two evenings, watching John Brown leading his large family through a reading of the Bible.
A large family which had just gotten larger, and darker, since Brown had calmly assumed that the three rescued negroes—having no other family any longer—would find a home with his.
“He simply doesn’t care, does he?” she murmured to her husband.
Sitting next to her in the sheltered rear of the Comet’s main deck, Robert watched Brown and his people for a moment before answering.
“No. He doesn’t.”
“I find him a somewhat frightening man.”
Her husband smiled wryly. “I find him considerably more than ‘somewhat’ frightening, my dear. Still…”
He trailed off. Eliza suspected he had no more of a ready answer than she did.
Still…
The day before, in conversation with the two young corporals before they’d left with Captain McParland, the black one had told her what Brown had said the first time he met him. To a band of slave-catchers.
I believe in the Golden Rule, sir, and the Declaration of Independence. I think that both mean the same thing. And, that being so, it is better that a whole generation should pass off the face of the earth—men, women, and children—by a violent death than that one jot of either should fail in this country. I mean exactly so, sir.
Said it calmly and matter-of-factly, just as he’d calmly and matter-off-actly slain the one slave-catcher who’d doubted him.
A frightening man, yes. A fanatic, some would say.
But Eliza had also heard the tale of the young black woman—bits of it, rather, since the poor girl was still half out of her wits. Faced with such incredible barbarity, the term “fanatic” seemed almost meaningless. She understood now, really for the first time, why her husband had found himself drawn into Clarkson’s movement. Understood, finally, why he insisted on keeping that horrid illustration of the Brookes on the wall of their home in Ireland.
Quietly, she rose from the bench and went over to stand by the guardrail. The quarter moon glinted off the waters of the Mississippi, a shining crescent half obscured by mud and slime.
If one allowed oneself—even for a moment—to consider that those spoons shaped like people nestled in a drawer were actually people…
She could hear Brown’s voice murmuring in the background. The words were indistinguishable, but she knew he was reading from Judges. A Calvinist through and through, Brown was partial to the Old Testament. His God was a wrathful deity.
Eliza being an Anglican, her God was a considerably gentler Creator. But she could no longer avoid the simple and obvious truth that if those spoons were actually people…each and every one of them a real human being…full and complete in every particular….
Not even the sweetest cherub in Heaven would show any mercy at all. Less—much less—than any man who ever lived, be he never so fanatic.
A shudder ran through her whole body. At that moment, the Mississippi seemed like a dark torrent rushing toward a pit of eternal damnation, carrying her with it. Scream as loudly as she might, no angel would hear. Nor care, if they did.
Robert was at her side an instant later, running his hand up her arm.
“Are you ill, dearest?” His voice was full of concern. “These waters are not healthy.”
A half laugh, half sob burst from her lips. “Not healthy!”
But, blessedly, the horrible vision was gone. She took a deep breath and sighed it out.
“No, I’m quite well, Robert. Just…a bad moment.”
She leaned her head into his shoulder. “You intend to see this through to the end, don’t you?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. “And our blessed rambunctious son, too!”
She laughed again, very softly, but there was no half sob to go with it. “Very well, husband. I’ll help. As best I can.”
Near midnight, Captain McParland and the two corporals left the fort again. On horseback, having been assured by Major Totten that the few enemy units who had crossed to the north bank during the day had retreated to their own camp before nightfall. They’d have no difficulty moving upriver to find Driscol and his army—who were surely coming, the major had no doubt at all—beyond the obstacles posed by the terrain itself.
The rest of McParland’s soldiers remained behind to strengthen the garrison at Arkansas Post.
After carefully asking permission, Taylor took the opportunity to inspect the fort. He was a bit surprised that Totten gave that permission. It was quite possible that a time would come, and not so far in the future, when Taylor might be investing Arkansas Post. If not he himself, some other officer in the army of the United States.
But there might lie the answer, as well. A potential foe, forewarned, might never become a foe at all. These things were always difficult to predict. For a professional soldier even more than most people, life was seen in the words of the apostle: through a glass, darkly.
The fort itself was quite impressive: well designed and sturdily constructed, especially by the standards of the frontier. Taylor didn’t envy Crittenden at all, trying to take it.
In fact, he very much doubted that he could. Even though, by now, Crittenden’s army must have swelled to something like fifteen hundred men. He’d lost some through the inevitable desertion that always plagued such jury-rigged military forces as little bands of men peeled away after finding some loot. But he’d gained more than he’d lost, since his initial force of roughly a thousand men coming up from Alexandria had been augmented by adventurers coming down the Mississippi from Missouri and the other border states.
True enough, Crittenden’s army greatly outnumbered the garrison at Arkansas Post, which didn’t have more than a hundred and fifty men. All other things being equal, a ten-to-one numerical superiority would normally be quite sufficient to overrun even a well-designed fort.
But all other things were very far from equal. Crittenden’s force was more in the way of a mob or a gang of outright criminals than what any sane man—certainly a professional officer—would call an army. And while Taylor was sure that most of the fort’s garrison were green troops, a sufficient number of them were veterans of the Iron Battalion to serve as a spine and a stiffener.
Not that much stiffening would be needed, anyway. All but perhaps a dozen of the soldiers in Arkansas Post were black. Surrender, for them, meant a life of slavery. And, if anything, the fate of the white soldiers would most likely be worse. Under these circumstances, the term “nigger-lover,” for such men as filled the inchoate ranks of Crittenden’s army, amounted to a death sentence. Especially after the blood they’d spill, getting into the fort.
They had women to defend, too, at least fifty of them. And children. The women would suffer worse than their menfolk if Crittenden’s men made it over the wall. The youngest of the children, also, since Crittenden’s men wouldn’t want the burden of carrying toddlers all the way back to New Orleans. Just bash in their little skulls with a musket butt while waiting a turn to rape their mothers and sisters.
But he didn’t think it would come to that. In fact, the more he wandered through the Post and studied the soldiers in their green uniforms, the more certain he became that it wouldn’t. Those might be green troops, mostly, but they’d clearly had considerable training. They were tense, yes, but it was more the tension of a racehorse before the gun went off than the tension of men expecting calamity.
In fact, he was pretty sure that most of them were downright eager to see the sun come up.
He laughed, then, standing in the middle of an alien army.
So was he, when you got right down to it. Lieutenant Colonel Zachary Taylor wasn’t certain of many things in life. But he surely and purely loathed the sort of men who were gathered across the river. Come morning, let the bastards bleed. And bleed and bleed and bleed, until the river ran red and the dirt was crimson mud and the stink of their emptied bowels drew every crow and beetle in Creation.
The Arkansas River, five miles west of Arkansas Post
OCTOBER 6, 1824
Captain McParland and the two corporals found the Laird’s army at half past two o’clock in the morning.
It wasn’t hard. The whole river seemed covered with boats. From what Anthony could tell, by the light of the quarter moon, Driscol had commandeered every single rivercraft in or around New Antrim, from the steamboat Hercules—the newest of Shreve’s boats, and the pride of his company’s fleet—all the way down to rowboats and fishing skiffs.
By the time they arrived, it looked as if a good half of the Arkansas Army had already debarked onto the southern shore of the river. Which was, unfortunately, the opposite bank from the one they were on.
That proved to be a minor problem, however. Driscol had sent several keelboats to patrol the north bank of the Arkansas, and McParland had Corporal Parker go down to summon them.
The device having worked once, Sheff saw no reason not to do it again. He had just finished the fourth verse—
Well the pony jumped, he start, he pitch
He threw my master in the ditch
He died and the jury wondered why
The verdict was the blue-tail fly
—when the picket in the nearest boat called out: “Who’s there? Name yourself!”
Parker stepped out into plain view from behind a gum tree at the edge of the river. “It’s Corporal Parker. With the Third Regiment.”
“That you, Sheff? You just in time!”
Easy as that.
After Captain McParland finished his report, standing on the main deck of the Hercules, Patrick Driscol spent perhaps half a minute examining the steamboat. Then, cocked his head at the two men standing nearby in civilian clothing.
One was white, one was black—but their garments were both expensive, and equally so.
“It’s mostly your money, gentlemen,” Driscol said. “So I suppose I should ask permission. Mind you, I make no guarantees I’ll accept the answer.”
The white man started to glare at him but wound up just rolling his eyes. “The day I agreed to be your partner…” Henry Shreve sighed. “Fine, Patrick, fine. Let’s go ahead and wreck another of my boats. Why not?”
The black man with him, who looked to be about twice his size, shrugged massive shoulders. “The captain didn’t say they was wrecked, Henry. Just maybe banged up a little bit.”
“Crittenden’s got guns,” Shreve pointed out sourly. “The three-pounders, I’m not much worried about. But a six-pounder’s a different story altogether.” His eyes gave the boat the same inspection Driscol’s had done, except in far less time. “This boat was never designed to handle any such thing. A six-pounder’ll hammer it into splinters.”
“That’s assumin’ they fire it in time, and fire it straight,” said Crowell. Again, he shrugged those shoulders. The gesture bore a fair resemblance to a small landslide encased in fine linen. “From what the captain’s told us, I doubt me either one of those is gonna be true.”
His white partner gave him a none-too-friendly look. “And you’re willing to bet money on it. Just as much of it’s yours as mine, Henry.”
Crowell smiled. “I’ll do more than bet money. I’ll bet my life.” He pointed toward the bow. “We got four cannons of our own, and I still remember how to serve on a gun crew. I did it before, on the Mississippi. I plan on doin’ it again.”
; He turned the smile onto Driscol. “Assuming, of course, our fine general will allow me to resume the colors.” He stuck out a huge finger and wagged it under Driscol’s nose. “Just for a day, y’understand? We ain’t got no conscription in Arkansas, Patrick, even though I know your black Napoleonic soul’s lusting for it, so don’t be gettin’ any crazy ideas!”
Driscol gave him a thin smile in return. “Leave it to a banker—black one worse than a white one—to parse the difference between conscripting a man with an honest press gang and doing it by squeezing his empty wallet. But I’ll not argue the point again, tonight. Sure, Henry. Consider yourself reenlisted—very temporarily—in the Iron Battalion.”
Shreve threw up his hands. “Oh, fine, then! I’ll pilot the blasted thing. What I get for going into business with a curree and an Irishman. Especially the crazy Irishman.”
When he brought his hands down, though, Anthony thought he might be detecting a little gleam in the shipbuilder’s eyes. There had to be something of a professional interest there, he figured. Shreve really prided himself on his boats. If one of them could…
“But we’re not doing it in daylight!” Shreve continued. “No blasted way!” He emulated his black partner’s finger-wagging in the face of the general. “We do this, we’re going past Crittenden before dawn—or we don’t do it at all.”
“Weren’t you the one pissing and moaning all the way down here about the frightful risks of navigating an uncharted river by the light of a pitiful quarter moon?” Driscol asked mildly. “Let’s compromise, Henry. I want the gun crews to be able to see what they’re doing, even if the pilot’s working by guess and memory. We’ll steam past Crittenden just at sunup.”
Shreve rolled his eyes again. “Don’t remind me. I like to have lost five years of my life this night. I say we’re still lucky the whole blasted flotilla didn’t wind up stranded and snagged, instead of just two of the boats.”
“Which we got off the sandbars right easily,” Crowell pointed out, his tone as mild as Driscol’s. “In less than five minutes each. Come on, Henry. By now you know this river about as well as you do the back of your hand.”