Jack Iron (13 page)

Kit reached inside his shirt and cupped the makeshift medal in his hand. George Washington’s initials gleamed as if with a life of their own. Kit’s father, Dan McQueen, had worn the coin throughout the long dark days of the Revolution when the fate of the thirteen colonies hung in the balance and a valiant colonial army had triumphed over the might of the English military.

“Here we are again, Father,” Kit said beneath his breath. He tucked the keepsake inside his shirt and began to walk the length of the breastworks under his command. Jackson had suffered a shortage of senior officers and entrusted the lieutenant with holding the left flank. McQueen cast no shadow on this cold gray January morning. And his footsteps made no sound as he trod the moist earth. Kentuckians and men of the Louisiana Battalion glanced at him as he walked past. Kit had become a familiar figure. He came by his authority honestly; it rested in his bearing. These volunteers were not the type of men to give allegiance to a uniform. But they would follow a man they respected to hell and back.

“Reckon today’s the day, Lieutenant,” a man called out.

Another of the defenders, a Cajun, raised a jug of corn “likker” and took a swallow, then offered the jug to Kit as he approached. “Here you be, Loo-tenant. This’ll put some fire in your belly I gar-antee.” Jean Baptiste Benard was a grizzled-looking sort with thick features and a bulbous red nose and a track of liver spots that ran the length of his hands and arms. This lean hard man who looked as if he could have used a month of meals kept a rifle at his side that showed loving care. Its walnut stock had been recently polished, the frizzen and hammer oiled and the old flint replaced. He carried a cutlass at his waist and wore the blousy shirt, patched cotton pants, and stocking hat of a veteran seaman. The only man Benard owed allegiance to was Jean Laffite.

“I’ll drink with you and be proud of it.” Kit grinned, and took the jug. “Just so long as I’ll be able to see the redcoats after I’ve tasted your brew.”

“Never fear,” Benard replied in his melodious voice. “You’ll be seeing them plenty good.” A wail of bagpipes drifted out of the mist. He glanced up as the faint strains of a bagpipe carried to them from the mist. The Louisianans around ceased their good-natured banter and became deadly serious. Underscoring the bagpipes, men could hear the footfall of an army on the move. “And seeing them plenty soon, I think,” the Cajun added, returning his attention to the trampled grassland and muddy ground stretching between the British and American redoubts.

Kit took a swallow and gasped as the Cajun’s home brew went coursing through his body. It spread warmth to his limbs and left him sucking in great draughts of wintry air to cool the blaze in his gullet.

“What do you think?” said Benard.

“If the redcoats breach the wall, you just heave that jug at them and duck,” Kit managed to reply in a hoarse voice. The men around Benard began to laugh at his expense. Benard chuckled good-naturedly. But his eyes never left the battlefield.

The bagpipes were a good choice, sounding unearthly behind the rolling mist. Kit started back to his position. He noticed the men at the six-pounder were preparing to reload.

“We’ll let them cut their teeth on grapeshot now, Lieutenant,” said one of the cannoneers. The gunners had been handpicked by Laffite, and Kit had every faith they would stand their ground till doomsday. He waved to the cannoneers and paused to observe the skill with which they prepared to receive the enemy. It slowly dawned on Kit that he had not seen Cesar Obregon or any of his crew the entire morning. McQueen had misgivings about the buccaneer’s absence. Lord only knew what mischief and treacheries that Castilian rogue was capable of. Surely the Hawk of the Antilles had alighted somewhere along the defenses. Kit tried and failed to convince himself he was misjudging Obregon.

“By heaven, I see them,” Kemp Howard shouted. Kit hurried back to his place behind the breastworks. O’Keefe and his Choctaws were to the left of the lieutenant; the Kentuckians and part of the Louisiana Battalion waited to the right.

“Nice of Packenham to invite so many to the dance,” O’Keefe called out, resting the barrel of his rifle in his hook while his right hand slowly thumbed the hammer back.

The only sound from the American lines came from rifles being primed and cocked and the rasp of knives being honed on whetstones one last time. Kit did not know how many of the British were advancing on the defenses where General Jackson sat astride his charger and called out encouragement to his men. But Kit was certain there would be enough of the British for every man to have his fill of fighting. It wasn’t hard for the volunteers to accept that the hour of battle was at hand. Indeed, many of the soldiers at the breastworks greeted the unfolding events with a measure of relief.

Kit watched the British line of attack materialize out of the mist. The British soldiers were immaculately garbed in dark red coats and black kilts and black tufted caps upon their heads. They marched several hundred abreast with the dull metal of their bayonets forming a wall of steel in the damp air and the muffled
tramp tramp tramp
of their footsteps beating an ominous rhythm beneath the blaring bagpipes. The British regiments lowered their rifles at a shouted command from one of their officers on horseback. Onward they came, at a quick clipped pace, marching as if on parade to the tune of the bagpipes. This was the cream of Packenham’s army: the 21st Fusileers, the 95th Rifles, and the 4th King’s Own Regiment. These were men who had never tasted defeat and weren’t about to start today.

But Kit McQueen and the defenders of New Orleans had other ideas. Kit sighted on one of the soldiers in the distance. A cool detachment settled round his heart. There was bloody work to be done this morning. Kit hadn’t asked for the job. But like his blacksmith father, he was prepared to stand and fight because his country needed him. The British had come to reclaim their lost empire. That attempt was going to end here and now.

Kit did not exhort his men or attempt to stir their spirits. They knew what needed to be done. The enemy was visible now, row upon row of them, marching implacably forward, an oncoming, seemingly irresistible force determined to drive these ragtag volunteers to the grave or back into their precious wilderness.

A dance, O’Keefe had said. Well, thought Kit, it’s time someone started the music. He squeezed the trigger. A flash in the pan as the priming charge ignited; a second later the rifle spat flame and recoiled against his shoulder, and a hundred yards away, the first Englishman to die that day clutched his chest, flung his musket from his outstretched hands, and dropped face-forward onto the sacred soil.

A swell of gunfire swept the breastworks and a bugle blared above the crash of guns. Iron Hand O’Keefe was offering his own brand of defiance in the face of those unnerving bagpipes. Like Roland in days of old, O’Keefe rose up and blew the bugle and the Choctaw responded by unleashing a volley from their recently acquired muskets. To McQueen’s right, the six-pounder roared and grapeshot reaped a harvest of death among the British ranks. The redcoats opened fire; as one line reloaded, another marched forward a few paces and fired. Then a third line stepped to the fore and loosed a volley, followed by the first rank again. One rank after another, alternating, they worked their way closer and closer to the breastworks. Soon they’d be ordered to charge. Kit knew the British mustn’t be allowed to storm the fortifications and get within bayonet’s length of the defenders. No matter how adept at close-in fighting these backwoods volunteers, once the battle became hand-to-hand, the superior numbers of the British would carry the day.

Musket balls slapped into the cotton-barricaded redoubts and thudded into the mounded dirt and timbers protecting the riflemen. The British had no cover. They were crossing open ground in the face of a murderous gunfire delivered by the volunteers, most of whom had cut their teeth on rifle barrels. On the frontier, men became adept with their firearms or went hungry or fell prey to their enemies. Kit had to admire the courage of these British regulars. An unending chorus of gunfire from the American lines took a murderous toll among the redcoats.

Did they think the “rabbit hunters” and “dirty shirts” would run at the first glitter of a bayonet or the first glimpse of veteran British regiments attacking in force? If so, then Packenham had made a terrible miscalculation. He wouldn’t be the first English officer to underestimate his foe.

Kit swabbed the barrel of his rifle. He tore open a paper cartridge with his teeth and emptied the measured charge of black powder down the barrel. Then with the ramrod he loaded the cartridge wadding and lead shot after the gunpowder and tamped it firm. He trickled a trace of black powder onto the pan, to prime the weapon. The entire process had taken less than a minute.

Kit rose up with Kemp Howard and a dozen others as an opposing line of British fusileers opened fire. Kit ducked below a cotton bale and heard the bullets thud into the breastworks. Kemp Howard, with a foolish belief in his own invulnerability, remained standing and tried to squeeze off a shot. A British musket ball slapped him in the chest. Howard groaned and slowly spun until he had his back to the breastworks, then slid slowly to a sitting position with his legs splayed out. He reached for and caught McQueen by the leg. Kit knelt by the Kentuckian and noticed the dark stain already spreading across the front of the trapper’s buckskin shirt.

“Looks like I’ve gone and got myself killed,” Howard said with a voice filled with disgust for his own carelessness. He took Kit’s hand and placed it on the long rifle the Kentuckian had carried with him since boyhood. “Old Sting’s loaded. I’d appreciate you not waste the shot. Fire her one last time for me.”

Kit nodded, and setting his own rifle aside, he raised up and snapped off a shot at the British ranks, about seventy yards from the breastworks. Kit immediately crouched down and set the rifle across the trapper’s legs.

“Obliged,” said the trapper.

“She shoots true,” Kit said, and patted the man on the shoulder. “I can carry you back to the physician’s tent.”

Kemp Howard shook his head no. He coughed and a trickle of crimson phlegm formed at the corner of his mouth. “You do your job,” he said, “and I’ll do mine.”

Kit took up his own rifle and peered over the cotton bales. The six-pounder roared again, to be echoed by the heavier field pieces along the fortifications. The bagpipes continued to play, but not as loudly as before. The marksmanship of the volunteers had taken a deadly toll. The ground was littered with the dead and dying. For every five yards the British regiments advanced, they left a carpet of corpses in their wake.

“Our Father… who art in heaven…” Howard’s voice drifted up from below. Kit shouldered his rifle and brought the gun to bear on a soldier in the process of advancing forward to fire. Here was a brawny, black-haired fusileer who refused to break ranks and flee. Although his comrades were dropping all around him, this fusileer seemed impervious to harm. He reached his position and knelt to fire. His bullet ricocheted off a chunk of timber a yard from Kit. The fusileer fell face-forward as the six-pounder roared and sent a load of grapeshot plowing into the soldiers forming behind him. Then the clever fusileer sat up and started to feverishly reload.

Kit shifted his aim as an officer on a white charger trotted past his field of vision. The officer was exhorting the battered ranks who had just received the grapeshot to press on. Press on. The officer waved his saber and stabbed the curved blade toward the American lines. The British officer was a hatless, handsome-looking individual who sat erect in the saddle, disdainful of the bullets that fanned the air around him.

Kit exhaled and squeezed the trigger. The rifle’s report was lost in the din, but Kit felt the characteristic shove against his shoulder. An acrid cloud of black smoke spewed from the muzzle. The officer clapped a hand to his throat and toppled from horseback into the arms of one of the bagpipers. A trio of soldiers instantly bore the officer from the battlefield.

“Thy will be done on earth…” poor Howard prayed with his back to the fray.

Kit reloaded and fired again. Reloaded and fired. A shot went wild. Another had no effect. A third sent a soldier crumbling to his knees and left him crying out to his companions for help. And still the regiments pressed their attack. One by one the bagpipes ceased their keening cry and the men of valor became fewer, and the bravado in the eyes of the living gave way first to fear and then to numbness as the slaughter continued.

“… on earth as it is… in… heaven.”

Kit himself was dazed. His senses reeled from the stench and the din of battle and the terrible carnage as Packenham’s army disintegrated on that butcher’s field, that meadow of madness, the last battle of a pointless war. Kit tossed his rifle aside and tugged the Quakers from his belt and vaulted the mounded earth and cotton bales to meet the British bayonets with guns blazing. But the attack had broken and he faced but a single man, the same fusileer Kit had spared by shifting his aim to the British officer. Fate had presented him with a second chance at the fusileer.

The two enemies faced one another. The black-haired soldier held his bayonet at the ready. One good thrust and Kit would be spitted like a chunk of meat. But the lust for blood rapidly cooled in the fusileer as he looked up into the matched set of fifty-caliber pistols Kit held. The soldier realized he was a dead man depending on the whim of the redheaded lieutenant.

The gunfire trailed off as the “dirty shirts” and “rabbit hunters” allowed the straggling survivors to retreat across the fields of Chalmette, across the mangled bodies of their friends and comrades. The mist reclaimed the living. The dead remained.

“Give us this… this… day.” Kemp Howard lowered his head and died, never knowing how prophetic were his final words.

To the astonishment of the fusileer, Kit lowered his pistols, his expression hardened. “Go home,” he said with grave finality. Kit turned his back on the British soldier and didn’t bother to watch him start back toward the river.