Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II (5 page)

Jackson nodded gravely. He looked so vain and upright and godly that Hooch couldn’t resist it, he hottened up the chair under Jackson just a little, just enough that Jackson had to wiggle his butt. That took off a few layers of dignity. But Jackson still kept his airs. “I believe what I say because I tell the truth.”

“You say what you believe. But still it is not true. What is your name?”

“Andrew Jackson.”

Ta-Kumsaw nodded. “Hickory.”

Jackson looked downright surprised and pleased that Ta-Kumsaw had heard of him. “Some folks call me that.” Hooch hottened up his chair a little more.

“Blue Jacket says, Hickory is a good man.”

Jackson still had no idea why his chair was so uncomfortable, but it was too much for him. He popped right up, stepped away from the chair, kind of shaking his legs with each step to cool himself off. But still he kept talking with all the dignity in the world. “I’m glad Blue Jacket feels that way. He’s chief of the Shaw-Nee down in Tennizy country, isn’t he?”

“Sometimes,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“What do you mean sometimes?” said Harrison, “Either he’s a chief or he isn’t.”

“When he talks straight, he is chief,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“Well, I’m glad to know he trusts me,” said Jackson. But his smile was a little wan, because Hooch was busy hotting up the floor under his feet, and unless old Hickory could fly, he wasn’t going to be able to get away from
that
. Hooch didn’t plan to torment him long. Just until he
saw Jackson take a couple of little hops, and then try to explain why he was dancing right there in front of a young Shaw-Nee warrior and Governor William Henry Harrison.

Hooch’s little game got spoiled, though, cause at that very moment, Lolla-Wossiky toppled forward and rolled out from under the table. He had an idiotic grin on his face, and his eyes were closed. “Blue Jacket!” he cried. Hooch took note that drink had finally slurred his speech. “Hickory!” shouted the one-eyed Red.

“You are my enemy,” said Ta-Kumsaw, ignoring his brother.

“You’re wrong,” said Harrison. “I’m your friend. Your enemy is up north of here, in the town of Vigor Church. Your enemy is that renegade Armor-of-God Weaver.”

“Armor-of-God Weaver sells no whisky to Reds.”

“Neither do I,” said Harrison. “But he’s the one making maps of all the country west of the Wobbish. So he can parcel it up and sell it after he’s killed all the Reds.”

Ta-Kumsaw paid no attention to Harrison’s attempt to turn him against his rival to the north. “I come to warn you,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“Warn me?” said Harrison. “You, a Shaw-Nee who doesn’t speak for anybody, you
warn
me, right here in my stockade, with a hundred soldiers ready to shoot you down if I say the word?”

“Keep the treaty,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“We
do
keep the treaty! It’s you who always break the treaties!”

“Keep the treaty,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“Or what?” asked Jackson.

“Or every Red west of the mountains will come together and cut you to pieces.”

Harrison leaned back his head and laughed and laughed. Ta-Kumsaw showed no expression.

“
Every
Red, Ta-Kumsaw?” asked Harrison. “You mean, even Lolly here? Even my pet Shaw-Nee, my tame Red, even
him
?”

For the first time Ta-Kumsaw looked at his brother, who lay snoring on the floor. “The sun comes up every
day, White man. But is it tame? Rain falls down every time. But is it tame?”

“Excuse me, Ta-Kumsaw, but this one-eyed drunk here is as tame as my horse.”

“Oh yes,” said Ta-Kumsaw, “Put on the saddle. Put on the bridle. Get on and ride. See where this tame Red goes. Not where you want.”

“Exactly where I want,” said Harrison. “Keep that in mind. Your brother is always within my reach. And if you ever get out of line, boy, I’ll arrest him as your conspirator and hang him high.”

Ta-Kumsaw smiled thinly. “You think so. Lolla-Wossiky thinks so. But he will learn to see with his other eye before you ever lay a hand on him.”

Then Ta-Kumsaw turned around and left the room. Quietly, smoothly, not stalking, not angry, not even closing the door behind him. He moved with grace, like an animal, like a very dangerous animal. Hooch saw a cougar once, years ago, when he was alone in the mountains. That’s what Ta-Kumsaw was. A killer cat.

Harrison’s aide closed the door.

Harrison turned to Jackson and smiled. “You see?” he said.

“What am I supposed to see, Mr. Harrison?”

“Do I have to spell it out for you, Mr. Jackson?”

“I’m a lawyer. I like things spelled out. If you can spell.”

“I can’t even
read
,” said Hooch cheerfully.

“You also can’t keep your mouth shut,” said Harrison. “I’ll spell it out for you, Jackson. You and your Tennizy boys, you talk about moving the Reds west of the Mizzipy. Now let’s say we do that. What are you going to do, keep soldiers all the way up and down the river, watching all day and all night? They’ll be back across this river whenever they want, raiding, robbing, torturing, killing.”

“I’m not a fool,” said Jackson. “It will take a great bloody war, but when we get them across the river, they’ll be broken. And men like that Ta-Kumsaw—they’ll be dead or discredited.”

“You think so? Well, during that great bloody war
you talk about, a lot of White boys will die, and White women and children, too. But I have a better idea. These Reds suck down likker like a calf sucks down milk from his mama’s tit. Two years ago there was a thousand Pee-Ankashaw living east of the My-Ammy River. Then they started getting likkered up. They stopped working, they stopped eating, they got so weak that the first little sickness came through here, it wiped them out. Just wiped them out. If there’s a Pee-Ankashaw left alive here, I don’t know about it. Same thing happened up north, to the Chippy-Wa, only it was French traders done it to them. And the best thing about likker is, it kills off the Reds and not a White man dies.”

Jackson rose slowly to his feet. “I reckon I’ll have to take three baths when I get home,” he said, “and even then I still won’t feel clean.”

Hooch was delighted to see that Harrison was really mad. He rose to his feet and shouted at Jackson so loud that Hooch could feel his chair shake. “Don’t get high and mighty with me, you hypocrite! You want them all dead, just like I do! There’s no difference between us.”

Jackson stopped at the door and eyed the governor with disgust. “The assassin, Mr. Harrison, the
poisoner
, he can’t see the difference between himself and a soldier. But the soldier can.”

Unlike Ta-Kumsaw, Jackson was not above slamming the door.

Harrison sank back down onto his chair. “Hooch, I’ve got to say, I don’t much like that fellow.”

“Never mind,” said Hooch. “He’s with you.”

Harrison smiled slowly. “I know. When it comes to war, we’ll all be together. Except for maybe that Red-kisser up in Vigor Church.”

“Even him,” said Hooch. “Once a war starts, the Reds won’t be able to tell one White man from another. Then his people will start dying just like ours. Then Armor-of-God Weaver will fight.”

“Yeah, well, if Jackson and Weaver would likker up their Reds the way we’re doing ours, there wouldn’t have to
be
a war.”

Hooch aimed a mouthful at the spittoon and didn’t miss by much. “That Red, that Ta-Kumsaw.”

“What about him?” asked Harrison.

“He worries me.”

“Not me,” said Harrison. “I’ve got his brother here passed out on my floor. Ta-Kumsaw won’t do nothing.”

“When he pointed at me, I felt his finger touch me from across the room. I think he’s maybe got a come-hither. Or a far-touch. I think he’s dangerous.”

“You don’t believe in all that hexery, do you, Hooch? You’re such an educated man, I thought you were above that kind of superstition.”

“I’m not and neither are you, Bill Harrison. You had a doodlebug tell you where firm ground was so you could build this stockade, and when your first wife had her babies, you had a torch in to see how the baby was laying in the womb.”

“I warn you,” said Harrison, “to make no more comment about my wife.”

“Which one, now, Bill? The hot or the cold?”

Harrison swore a good long string of oaths at that. Oh, Hooch was delighted, Hooch was pleased. He had such knack for hotting things up, yes sir, and it was more fun hotting up a man’s temper, because there wasn’t no
flame
then, just a lot of steam, a lot of hot air.

Well, Hooch let old Bill Harrison jaw on for a while. Then he smiled and raised his hands like he was surrendering. “Now, you know I didn’t mean no harm, Bill. I just didn’t know as how you got so prissy these days. I figured we both know where babies grow, how they got in there, and how they come out, and your women don’t do it any different than mine. And when she’s lying there screaming, you know you’ve got a midwife there who knows how to cast a sleep on her, or do a pain-away, and when the baby’s slow to come you’ve got a torch telling where it lays. And so you listen to me, Bill Harrison. That Ta-Kumsaw, he’s got some kind of knack in him, some kind of power. He’s more than he seems.”

“Is he now, Hooch? Well maybe he is and maybe he ain’t. But he said Lolla-Wossiky would see with his other
eye before I laid a hand on him, and it won’t be long before I prove that he’s no prophet.”

“Speaking of old one-eye, here, he’s starting to fart something dreadful.”

Harrison called for his aide. “Send in Corporal Withers and four soldiers, at once.”

Hooch admired the way Harrison kept military discipline. It wasn’t thirty seconds before the soldiers were there, Corporal Withers saluting and saying, “Yes, sir, General Harrison.”

“Have three of your men carry this animal out to the stable for me.”

Corporal Withers obeyed instantly, pausing only to say, “Yes sir, General Harrison.”

General Harrison. Hooch smiled. He knew that Harrison’s only commission was as a colonel under General Wayne during the last French war, and he didn’t amount to much even then. General. Governor. What a pompous—

But Harrison was talking to Withers again, and looking at Hooch as he did so. “And now you and Private Dickey will kindly arrest Mr. Palmer here and lock him up.”

“Arrest me!” shouted Hooch. “What are you talking about!”

“He carries several weapons, so you’ll have to search him thoroughly,” said Harrison. “I suggest stripping him here before you take him to the lock-up, and leave him stripped. Don’t want this slippery old boy to get away.”

“What are you arresting me for!”

“Why, we have a warrant for your arrest for unpaid debts,” said Harrison. “And you’ve also been accused of selling whisky to Reds. We’ll naturally have to seize all your assets—those suspicious-looking kegs my boys’ve been hauling into the stockade all day—and sell them to make good the debt. If we can sell them for enough, and we can clear you of those ugly charges of likkering up the Reds, why, we’ll let you go.”

Then Harrison walked on out of his office. Hooch cussed and spit and made remarks about Harrison’s wife
and mother, but Private Dickey was holding real tight to a musket, and that musket had a bayonet attached to the business end; so Hooch submitted to the stripping and the search. It got worse, though, and he cussed again when Withers marched him right across the stockade, stark naked, and didn’t give him so much as a blanket when he locked him into a storage room. A storage room filled with empty kegs from the
last
shipment of likker.

He sat in that lock-up room for two days before his trial, and for the first while there was murder in his heart. He had a lot of ideas for revenge, you can bet. He thought of setting fire to the lace curtains in Harrison’s house, or burning the shed where the whisky was kept, starting all kinds of fire. Cause what good is it to be a spark if you can’t use it to get even with folks who pretend to be your friends and then lock you into jail?

But he didn’t start no fires, because Hooch was no fool. Partly, he knew that if a fire once got started anywhere in the stockade, there was a good chance it’d spread from one end to the other inside half an hour. And there was a good chance that while everybody’s rushing around to save their wives and children and gunpowder and likker, they might not remember about one whisky trader locked up in a storage room. Hooch didn’t hanker to die in a fire of his own setting—that wasn’t no kind of vengeance. Time enough to start fires when he had a noose around his neck someday, but he wasn’t going to risk burning to death just to get even over something like this.

But the main reason he didn’t start a fire wasn’t fear, it was plain business sense. Harrison was doing this to show Hooch that he didn’t like the way Hooch delayed shipments of likker to jack up the price. Harrison was showing him that he had real power, and all Hooch had was money. Well, let Harrison play at being a powerful man. Hooch knew some things, too. He knew that someday the Wobbish country would petition the U.S. Congress in Philadelphia to become a state. And when it did, a certain William Henry Harrison would have his little heart set on being governor. And Hooch had seen enough elections back in Suskwahenny and Pennsylvania and Appalachee to know that you can’t get votes without silver
dollars to pass around. Hooch would have those silver dollars. And when the time came, he might pass around those silver dollars to Harrison voters; and then again he might not. He just might not. He might help another man sit in the governor’s mansion, someday when Carthage was a real city and Wobbish was a real state, and then Harrison would have to sit there the rest of his life and remember what it was like to be able to lock people up, and he would grind his teeth in anger at how men like Hooch took all that away from him.

That’s how Hooch kept himself entertained, sitting in that lock-up room for two long days and nights.

Then they hauled him out and brought him into court—unshaven, dirty, his hair wild, and his clothes all wrinkled up. General Harrison was the judge, the jury’ was all in uniform, and the defense attorney was—Andrew Jackson! It was plain Governor Bill was trying to make Hooch get mad and start in ranting, but Hooch wasn’t born yesterday. He knew that whatever Harrison had in mind, it wouldn’t do no good to yell about it. Just sit tight and put up with it.