1812: The Rivers of War (6 page)

“Can The Ridge handle it alone?” General Coffee asked, leaning forward in the saddle.

John Ross nodded firmly. “Yes, sir. And, ah …” His voice trailed off, as he searched for the right words.

Coffee frowned. “Yes, I think I know what you’re getting at. He’s more worried about being shot by my soldiers than he is about the Creeks, isn’t he? Can’t say I blame him.”

Coffee pursed his lips and stared into the distance, examining what he could see of the river.

“All right, then. I’ll keep my cavalry on this side for an hour. But I’ll have them spread out all the way around the horseshoe, with orders to shoot any Indian who tries to swim across. The one thing General Jackson is determined about is that we’re going to crush the Red Sticks, here and now. They’ll either surrender or die. None of them are going to escape.”

He looked down at Ross again, his expression bleak. “You understand? Make sure you tell The Ridge to keep his Cherokees on the other side, once they’ve crossed, no matter how desperate it gets. Those fancy feathers and a deer’s tail won’t look like anything once they’re soaking wet and dragging behind heads of men swimming across the river. They’ll just get shot in the heat of battle …”

He didn’t finish the sentence, because he didn’t need to. Ross understood the harsh realities as well as anyone. To most white men, one Indian looked just like the next. There were some who could tell the difference between the hair styles worn by the different Indian tribes, but not many. All the more so because of the habit men had in the southern tribes of wearing turbans as often as not.

John suppressed a sigh. This was no time to dwell on the unfairness of life. There was still a battle to be fought and won, this day.

“I’ll tell him, sir,” he said, then he raced off.

A horseman came charging up the field toward Montgomery and Houston, where they were standing in front of the Thirty-ninth. Even at a distance, Sam was pretty sure it was the same militia officer he’d seen harangued by Jackson the day he arrived in Fort Strother. Houston had good eyesight.

Montgomery had been on the verge of ordering the attack. But, seeing the oncoming officer, he held off. “Better see what he has to say. Jackson must have sent him.” The major snorted. “The blasted fool. On a field like this, he’ll break that horse’s leg if he isn’t careful.”

Even on an uphill slope, at the pace he was driving his mount, the militia officer would arrive within seconds. Sam was already certain he knew the message he was bringing. The officer had plucked off his hat and was waving it frantically toward the Creek fieldworks, using only one hand to guide the horse.

“Blasted fool,” Montgomery repeated.

“Sir, I think General Coffee—or the Cherokees, more likely—just launched an attack on the enemy from across the river,” Sam said.

Montgomery squinted at the log fortifications. The open field which led to that barricade sloped from a rise to the north of the peninsula. The Thirty-ninth was arrayed on that rise, ready to start its charge. Most of the charge would be on level ground, since the rise ended less than half the distance to the wall. But their current position did give them, at the moment, a decent view over the top of the enemy fieldworks.

“I think you’re right. I can see Red Sticks—quite a few of them—scrambling away from the barricade.”

Sam was pretty sure his eyes were better than the major’s, and he’d already seen the same thing.

But there was no longer any need for them to guess. The militia officer finally came within shouting range.

“
The general says to attack at once! Coffee has launched a diversion in the enemy’s rear!”

“That’s it, then,” Montgomery said. He drew his sword, which, like Sam’s, was scabbarded on a two-inch waist belt. Thereafter, the swords parted company. Officers were expected to purchase their own weapons, and Montgomery was a prosperous man. His weapon was a fine clipped-point saber, silver-mounted with eagle pommel and an ivory grip. Sam’s was a
straight sword he’d purchased from a down-at-heels artillery officer who’d resigned from the service. The sword could best be described as utilitarian.

On the positive side, Sam had also bargained well enough to get the man’s pistol in the deal. He didn’t think much of the sword, but the sidearm was a dandy Model 1805 Harpers Ferry cavalryman’s pistol. It was against regulations, true, but he’d stuffed it into his waistband that morning, and Montgomery hadn’t done more than look at it cross-eyed for a few seconds.

Jackson hadn’t looked at it at all.

Montgomery hawked up some phlegm and spit on the ground. Then, loudly, he said, “Ensign, give the signal!”

Trying not to smile, Sam waved his hand, and the drum began pounding the signal to advance.

Their one and only drum. When Jackson’s army had marched out of Fort Strother on March 13, to begin what everyone hoped would be the final campaign against the Red Sticks, it had been discovered that there was only one drummer boy left in the little army. All the others, it seemed, had reached the end of their enlistment, and had gone home.

Another commander might have been nonplussed by the fact. But Old Hickory, after five minutes worth of yelling about worthless thirteen-year-old lawyers, had simply snarled that men could march as easily to a single drum as they could to a thousand. They’d just have to listen a little harder.

So as the drum began its own battle against the din, the men began to move.

They had several hundred yards to cover, and Montgomery paced the charge accordingly. At the beginning, it was more in the way of a fast march than a “charge,” properly speaking. Sam was eager to close with the enemy—just to get rid of his nervous energy, really, not because he felt any bloodlust. Still, he appreciated the major’s foresight.

Maybe Homer’s ancient Achaean heroes could run hundreds of yards and fight a battle at the end—though Sam had his doubts—but their feebler modern descendants would be winded if they tried to do the same. The pace Major Montgomery established wouldn’t tire out soldiers who were accustomed to frontier wilderness terrain. Sam guessed that the major would only order a real charge once they were within fifty yards or so of the breastworks.

True enough, that meant they’d be exposed to enemy fire that much longer, out in the open. Still, better that than to try to scale those fieldworks exhausted and out of breath.

It was hard, though, at least for Sam, to maintain that disciplined pace. Already, the Creeks were starting to fire arrows at the oncoming Thirty-ninth. They’d save their powder and bullets until the infantry regulars were within a hundred yards.

Sam’s mother routinely accused him of being “high-strung.” True, his mother was a harsh woman, given to exaggeration when she criticized someone—which she did frequently, especially her children. Still, he knew there was at least some truth to it.

So, he did his best to dampen the instincts that were shrieking to send him racing toward the enemy. He still didn’t feel anything resembling the wrath of Achilles—which, in and of itself, suited him just fine. Sam had never much liked Achilles. He’d always found the Trojan Hector a far more appealing character.

No, it wasn’t bloodlust or fury, he finally decided. He had no particular desire to pitch headlong into battle, no matter how much he wanted to make a name for himself. He was simply wound tight and ready to run, like a racehorse, now that the contest was under way.

That realization helped him to focus. Sam Houston had determined that he would pass through his life like a fine thoroughbred, not a plow horse. Better a short and glorious life than a long and dull one.

“Better yet,” he murmured, “a
long
and glorious life.”

“I’m sorry, Ensign, I didn’t catch that,” said Major Montgomery, marching along next to him.

Embarrassed, Sam cleared his throat and tightened his grip on the sword. “Nothing, sir. Just talking to myself.”

Sam eyed an arrow that was speeding in his direction. More and more were falling now, though few were yet finding their targets. He didn’t break stride, but he did edge slightly to his right, almost crowding Montgomery. The arrow passed safely three feet to his left.

“Don’t,” said the major. The word was spoken firmly, even sternly, but the tone wasn’t accusatory. “In a fight, you can’t see every danger. Just ignore it all, young man. That’ll help steady the men—and it’s in God’s hand now anyway.”

“Yes, sir.”

And that, too, young Sam Houston filed away for later study.

He suspected the major was right—but he still thought it was a foolish way to fight a battle. Of course, that might just be his Cherokee upbringing at work. Cherokees, like all Indians Sam knew of, generally thought that the white man’s headlong way of fighting was just plain stupid.

Perhaps it was. But it was also a fact that white men eventually won their wars with Indians, if not always all the battles. Maybe this was part of it.

He chewed on that concept, too, for a time. Indeed, he became so engrossed in thought that Montgomery’s bellow caught him by surprise.

“
Charge
!”

Breaking into a run, the major led the way, waving his saber. The fieldworks weren’t more than fifty yards distant now.

By the time John Ross got back to the river and crossed on the first available canoe, the battle on the other side—between The Ridge’s Cherokees and the Red Sticks—was well under way.

It was a swirling, confused melee; hundreds of Indian warriors fighting singly or in small clusters, clubbing and stabbing one another among twice that many tall trees. John heard some shots ring out, as well. The Cherokees had been provided with guns by Jackson. Not enough to arm every warrior, to be sure; but they had gotten far more guns from the Americans than the Red Sticks had been able to obtain from the British and Spanish enclaves down on the coast.

But there weren’t that many shots, for this size of a battle. Even someone as inexperienced in fighting as John Ross could tell as much. He wasn’t surprised, though, now that he saw the terrain. The fight between Cherokees and Creeks on the southern end of the peninsula was simply too close up, too entangled in forest and brush. By the time a man could see his opponent, his gun usually wouldn’t be any more use than a large and clumsy club. That being so, why not use a real war club from the outset?

John, on the other hand, was no more proficient with traditional Cherokee weapons than he was with the Cherokee language. His loyalties to his nation were clear, but the truth was that he was far more comfortable with the white man’s ways of doing most things.

So, like any young white man would have done in his first battle,
Lieutenant John Ross drew his pistol and charged forward. He would have preferred a rifle, but proper officers didn’t carry such.

Less than fifteen seconds later, John was glad he’d been armed with only a pistol. A Red Stick came around a tree, screaming out a war cry, and tried to brain him with his war club. John barely had time to throw up his arm and block the blow. Fortunately, his forearm intercepted the club well down the shaft, or he would have had a broken arm instead of just a badly bruised one.

The Red Stick drew the club back for another blow. He was a terrifying sight, in that moment. His mouth was open in a rictus of fury, and his painted face made him look like a demon.

John never knew, then or later, whether he pulled the trigger of his pistol out of fear or rage, or just pure reflex. Probably all at the same time, he concluded.

He wasn’t even aware that the gun had gone off—the sound of it was overwhelmed by the chorus of war cries and the confusion of the moment. Then he saw the Red Stick’s left leg flung aside and a spray of blood erupt from his thigh. The warrior’s strike missed him by a good foot, and the warrior himself staggered for two paces before collapsing.

But to John’s dismay he rose again, almost instantly, screaming another war cry. The .62-caliber bullet would have shattered the bone, had it struck the leg squarely. But it had only inflicted a flesh wound. A bad one, to be sure—the man would eventually bleed to death if he didn’t tie up his leg—but not bad enough to stop him.

John stepped back, wondering what to do. Even against a half-crippled opponent, his pistol with its twelve-inch barrel was a poor match against a real war club, especially when the club was being wielded by a religious fanatic. What was worse, he certainly didn’t have time to reload.

The Red Stick lurched toward him, still screaming. The smartest thing for John to do was simply to run away, of course. Fanatic or not, the Creek would have no chance of catching him, not with that bad a leg wound. Or by the time he did, at any rate, John would have been able to reload.

But John couldn’t stomach the thought of being seen as a coward. So, he braced himself, took a firm grip on the pistol butt, and decided he’d try to deflect the coming blow—

Then another Cherokee came around the same tree, as silent as a ghost, and shattered the Red Stick’s skull with a single blow. From the amount of blood and hair and gore that was already covering his ball-headed war club, this wasn’t the first brain he’d spilled that day. The warrior paused to stare at John.