by Eric Flint
“And you’d better detail some burial parties right away,” Harrison added. “Big ones. This is the Delta in July. That many corpses will stink like you wouldn’t believe, give them any time aboveground.”
The sergeant in charge of the guard over the wounded prisoners being held in a room of the Post was simply amused.
“Do ye now?” he asked, in a pronounced Irish accent. He glanced at his four men. “D’ye hear that, lads? These gentlemen from Alabama wish to wreak havoc upon yon niggers. Having failed the task miserably, mind, when the niggers were on their feet and had guns in their hands.”
“It ain’t funny, you fucking Irish—”
Click.
The Alabaman who was more or less the leader of the little group froze. The musket barrel held by one of the sergeant’s men was now pushing under his chin. It was cocked, too.
“Hey, fella…”
“Oh, there’s no point pleading with Private Aupperle,” the sergeant said, still grinning. “Dieter doesn’t speak but three words of English. The first two are ‘fuck you.’ The third is ‘asshole.’ He got off the boat not six months ago and joined the army straight off, that being the only trade he knows. How’s your German?”
The six Alabamans stared at him.
“My German’s quite good. Even if the dumb Krauts complain about the accent.”
“Can barely understand him,” the corporal growled. His accent was German, whereas the sergeant’s was Irish, and even thicker.
His expression was a lot thicker than the sergeant’s, too. “Fucking militia scheisskopf. You go home, two months. Maybe three. Half of you already running there now. We will be here long time. Get out.”
He brought up his own musket and cocked it. “Get out now.”
“Best do as he says, lads,” said the sergeant, as cheerily as ever. “Dieter’s even-tempered, being from the Palatinate. Corporal Affenzeller, it grieves me to relate, is not. Juergen’s a Swabian, alas. A surly breed; they’re known for it.”
After they were gone, a few seconds later, the sergeant chuckled. “Even in Alabama, now.”
Private Dieter Aupperle uncocked his musket. He uttered several phrases in German that were most uncomplimentary on the subject of militias in general. So did Corporal Affenzeller, after he uncocked his own weapon. But, having considerably more knowledge of their adopted country as well as its language, he added details and specifics.
“—fuck pigs, being Creoles, no better than filthy Frenchmen. But at least the French have a few brains. Georgians can’t figure out which end of a pig to fuck in the first place. Alabamans—”
Late in the afternoon, a delegation from the Arkansas Army showed up under a flag of truce. Harrison ordered them escorted into the Post.
Sam Houston, in the flesh. Harrison had never met him, but the man was one of those few in the world whose reputation genuinely preceded him. In the United States, at any rate.
To Harrison’s much greater surprise—he’d known Houston was serving in the enemy colors—Winfield Scott came with him. Along with a poet whose name Harrison couldn’t remember, even though he could remember reading two of his poems. One had been a gloomy thing, full of histrionics on death. Overwrought, the way poets will be about the subject and professional soldiers won’t. But the other had been a poem about a man’s thoughts watching a waterfowl flying in the distance. Harrison had been quite taken by it.
While he listened to Houston, Harrison’s mind was at least half on Scott and the poet. They represented a real danger to him, which Houston didn’t at the moment. He knew why they were there, of course.
“—the eighteen prisoners who are uninjured or walking wounded, we propose to exchange immediately against a similar number of our own. It’s your choice, but we recommend that you permit us to continue providing medical attention to the other thirteen prisoners.”
Houston glanced around the room in the Post that Harrison had chosen for his headquarters. He’d chosen it for the purpose partly for its size, but mostly because it had little in the way of the carnage that was being cleaned up elsewhere. Still, there were several pockmarks in the wall from bullets, and one bloodstain that hadn’t quite been removed.
“I think we can do better for them at the moment than you could do here, General,” he concluded.
Harrison didn’t doubt it. His medical staff was exhausted already.
“All regulars?”
“Yes, sir. We have no militia prisoners.”
Houston didn’t bother adding: We didn’t take any. The complete lack of expression on his face would have made that obvious, even if it hadn’t been already. Just as it made clear there would be no apologies forthcoming for the fact, either.
Harrison had no intention of asking for them, anyway. His concerns for the moment, outside of his own professional prospects, were entirely for his regulars.
The terms of exchange seemed fair enough. But—
“Let’s make it an equal exchange—within the usual parameters—but I’d prefer not to distinguish between walking and immobile wounded.” He gave Houston a nod that was respectful, perhaps a bit on the embarrassed side. “We—ah—don’t have but three walking wounded of your own. You didn’t leave more than that.”
“Fine. Select fifteen of our men that you think could manage the transfer without further injury, and we’ll begin with that. We can do the rest later, as they heal.”
“Terms of parole?”
“We propose an agreement not to fight on the same front—for a year, let’s say?—but no overall prohibition against bearing arms in the current conflict.”
Harrison thought about it. A complete prohibition—especially with no time limit—would better serve the interests of the United States Army. With their much smaller pool of manpower to draw from, the Arkansans could ill afford to have capable soldiers removed from service altogether.
But he was sure the Arkansans would never agree to that, for the same reason, so there was no point raising it. He could live with their proposal, and it was similar enough to various prisoner exchanges that had taken place in the war with Britain that no politician could yap about it.
Not that some of them wouldn’t try, of course.
“Done.” He extended his hand. “Please convey to your officers and men my salutations. You fought a most gallant battle.”
Houston returned the handshake, an expression coming back into his face. Quite a friendly one, even an animated one. “And please accept our own compliments. Generals Driscol and Ball asked me to forward their admiration to your First Regiment and its commander, in particular. That was a bloody business by the wall.”
Harrison nodded. “I’ll certainly pass that on to the regiment. The commanding officer—that was Colonel John McNeil—fell in the battle, I’m afraid.”
And then it was a round of handshakes between all the officers present. The fact that two of the three Arkansans were black caused not even a moment’s hesitation, so far as Harrison could detect.
Not even on his part. He tried to remember if he’d ever shaken a negro’s hand. He couldn’t recall doing so, unless one were to count pressing a coin into a doorman’s hand at a fancy hotel in Philadelphia and Washington.
Which would be an absurd comparison.
Scott and Bryant stayed behind, after Houston and the other Arkansan officers left to begin the prisoner exchange.
The first words out of Winfield Scott’s mouth were the critical ones.
“The victory was yours, General Harrison, and Cullen and I shall so report it in our account.”
Harrison nodded, stiffly, trying to let no sign of his relief show.
For a moment, he and Winfield stared at each other. They were not friends and never had been. Harrison resented the man, actually. Despite his victories at Tippecanoe and the Thames, Harrison’s resignation from the army in 1814 as a result of his clash with Secretary of War Armstrong had inevitably removed some of the luster from his reputation. Scott, on the other
hand, had suffered a dramatic wound at Lundy’s Lane that had enabled him—in effect if not in name—to withdraw from the rest of the war with his great victory at the Chippewa untarnished.
Still, there were rules. And since Scott had made clear he would follow them, Harrison had no legitimate grounds for complaint.
He knew full well, of course, what sort of account Scott would be filing with the newspapers. Any discerning reader with any military experience who got past the headline—U.S. VICTORIOUS AT SECOND ARKANSAS POST—would understand that beneath the formality lay something completely different. An Arkansas Army less than half the size of its American opponent had completely outmaneuvered the U.S. commander; allowed a good portion of its Chickasaw allies to escape a trap; fought a superior force of U.S. regulars to a standstill in a battle whose butcher’s bill, proportionate to the size of the forces involved, was worse than Lundy’s Lane; and practically destroyed the Georgia militia to boot.
A complete disaster, beneath the headline. A tactical “defeat” that was actually a strategic victory. A battle—never mind the formalities—that guaranteed that Henry Clay’s short war was going to be a long and protracted one. With God-only-knew-what consequences would come out of it, at the end.
Still, Harrison had the headline. He clutched it for all it was worth.
Quite a bit, actually. Luckily for him—on this occasion—almost all the politicians in America with real military experience were on the other side anyway. Clay and Calhoun would clutch that headline even more tightly than he would. They’d have no choice.
“Please be seated, gentlemen.” He indicated some nearby chairs. “This will be a long interview, I imagine. Some refreshments, perhaps? I believe—”
He cocked an eye at Captain Matlock, who gave him a quick little nod in return.
“We have some whiskey.”
He’d start with Matlock to assemble a new staff. His regimental commander would protest, of course, but too bad for him. For the war that was coming, Harrison needed a staff. A real one, this time.
CHAPTER 38
New Antrim, Arkansas
JULY 26, 1825
Sheff would retain flashes of memory of what happened to him after he’d received his wound. But flashes were all they were. The last one, thankfully, was a hazy recollection of himself screaming while two men held him down and a surgeon dug a bullet out of his shoulder.
The one thing from that episode he did remember clearly was the surgeon grunting, “Well, he’s a lucky one.”
If he’d had any strength at all, he’d have hit him. As it was, he lapsed into unconsciousness again.
So, when his eyes opened and he saw the hand, he spent some time just looking at it, getting reacquainted with having a clear head. It was a delicious sensation, as enjoyable as one of the glasses of iced milk his mother made on occasion when she could afford ice.
Sheff had never drunk much whiskey, anyway. But he made a promise to himself then and there that he’d avoid liquor altogether henceforth, except when doing so would be socially ungraceful. He’d never appreciated before what a blessing it was to have an unfettered consciousness. Why would any sane man go out of his way to imitate an experience that a battle wound provided?
It was a small hand, quite nicely shaped. Female, clearly. The hand wasn’t moving, just lying loosely on an open book. He couldn’t see the thumb, just the fingers. They were spread out on the pages, curled up a bit. The book was the Bible, he realized after a while. From what he could tell, open to some passage midway through the Old Testament.
Eventually, it occurred to him that the hand belonged to an arm, and the arm belonged to a person. So his eyes began moving up along the forearm, then past the elbow. He couldn’t see the arm itself, though, above the wrist. It was covered in the sleeve of a calico blouse, which seemed better made than usual. That didn’t necessarily mean it was store bought, since there were women who could cut and sew that well. Sheff ’s mother was one of them. But he had the sense that this blouse was tailor made. The common everyday calico seemed more finely dyed than usual.
His eyes got as far as the shoulder, which was puffed out in one of the new-style gigot sleeves. What his mother called leg-of-mutton sleeves. Then, his eyes couldn’t roll any further in their sockets. He had to decide whether he had the strength and interest to shift his position.
He was in a bed, he suddenly realized, covered by a thin blanket. He wondered how that had happened. There were no beds in the tents of army surgeons. You were lucky if you got a cot.
It dawned on him that he wasn’t in a tent to begin with. This was a room. In a house of some kind.
For that matter—
His eyes rolled back, coming to bear again on the hand.
Yes, that was a woman’s hand, sure enough. No chance of error. A young woman’s, too, he was certain. But there wouldn’t be any women in an army medical tent, either, certainly not young ones. Nursing wounded soldiers was a filthy business.
He was interested enough, and he thought he had the strength and energy. So, painfully—champing down a shout when he placed weight on the left shoulder and felt a spike of agony—he managed to shift position enough to be able to look up at the woman’s head.
Which turned out to be pointless. The woman was asleep, her head slumped forward with her chin resting on her chest.
At least, Sheff assumed the chin was on the chest. He couldn’t actually see any part of the woman’s face. Her head was covered by a large bonnet with a flaring brim. Sheff thought the technical term for it was “cabriolet,” but his mother just called them coal-scuttle bonnets. She had one herself, since they were handy out in the sunshine.
A thought finally occurred to him, then, and he experienced what might just possibly have been the single most frustrating moment in his life. Was this…
Tarnation, he couldn’t move. No more than he had, anyway, and he’d almost fainted doing that much. And what good would it do, anyway? He couldn’t very well shake the woman awake, even if he could have reached her.
Fortunately, his quandary was resolved.
“Stop fidgeting, young man! You’ll reopen the wound, and I’ll have to get the surgeon around again.”
Well, he knew that voice. Courage, he told himself. He’d faced U.S. regulars, hadn’t he? Hadn’t even flinched, so far as he could remember.
Turning his head a little, he saw the dragon in the doorway. She was glaring at him as usual.
Well…not quite. The look on her face seemed more one of exasperation than outright hostility. So did the look she bestowed upon the mysterious woman sitting by his bed.
“The two of you!” he heard her mutter. The dragon came into the room and laid a hand on the leg-of-mutton shoulder. Then, gave it a little shake.
“Wake up, Imogene. Your precious captain’s come around.”
The head popped up. Yes, that was Imogene under the brim.
“Oh,” she said.
Julia Chinn was now looking at the open Bible on Imogene’s lap.
“I told you!” Firmly, she moved Imogene’s hand aside and, more firmly still, closed the Bible. “You too young to be reading that.”
Puzzled, Sheff tried to remember what part of the Old Testament—
Oh.
Fortunately, he didn’t say it out loud. He even managed not to smile. He could remember the time his own mother had caught him engrossed in the Song of Solomon the way no proper thirteen-year-old boy ought to be.
To cover the moment’s awkwardness, he cleared his throat. “I’m not a captain, Miz Julia. Just a second lieutenant.”
Julia gave him that same exasperated look. “I wish! Boy, I will say you are prob’bly the most tenacious critter I ever met.”
But the tone in her voice didn’t seem as chilly by the time she got to the end of the sentence as it had when she started it. She reached down and tugged his blanket back into position and said quietly to Imogene: “Five minutes, girl. Then I want you out of here.”
For the first time, Sheff felt a surge of passion. No poetic abstraction, neither.
Fortunately, he was still too weak to embarrass himself. The hand that would have impulsively reached for her lay limp on the blanket. So did…well. Everything else.
“They promoted you, Sheff! All the way to captain.”
“That’s…” He tried to decide how he felt. Pleased, of course. But—
“I’m not even eighteen years old. Won’t be, till next month.”
The smile wasn’t fading at all. “Don’t matter! The whole town’s talking about it. Oh, Sheff, I’m so proud of you!”
“ ‘Doesn’t’ matter,” he corrected.
“You and Mama!” She waved a dismissive hand. Which, on the way back, somehow found its way into Sheff ’s. “Both nagging me.”
He had enough strength to squeeze the hand. “You listen to your mama. Listen to me, too. She wants you talking proper. Properly. I’m trying myself.”
The smile was replaced by a serious look. “Do—does it really matter, Sheff?”
“Yes, Imogene. It does.”
In the corridor of the boardinghouse just outside the open door, where she’d been eavesdropping, Julia Chinn pressed the back of her head against the wall. It was either that or bang it against the wall.
The next three minutes weren’t any better. She could have handled a rascal, easy as pie. This one…
“Imogene, that’s been five minutes, for sure!” she shouted.
“Mama!”
“You listen to me, young lady!”
Sheff ’s firm voice could be heard clearly, even through the wall. “Best do as your mama says, Imogene.”
Julia had heard the talk herself. It couldn’t be avoided, anywhere you went in New Antrim. Parker by the wall. For just that moment, she had a deep sympathy for the U.S. regulars who’d faced him. If only they’d…