1812: The Rivers of War (5 page)

Observing nothing on the other side except a line of beached Creek canoes, The Ridge examined the river itself for a moment. The muddy waters of the Tallapoosa were moving fairly quickly, but he didn’t think it would be impossible to swim across. Not even difficult, really, since the distance wasn’t that great.

He went back to studying the opposite bank, with the patience of a hunter.

Nothing. There might well be some warriors in the vicinity, but it was becoming obvious the Red Sticks hadn’t thought to place a guard on the river.

He wasn’t surprised. He could hear the sounds of fighting off in the distance, and had been hearing them for quite some time. By now, the Red Stick warriors would be concentrated at or near the fortifications that stretched across the neck of the peninsula, hundreds of yards away from the river’s curve. The terrain directly opposite The Ridge’s location was flat, once the riverbank itself was surmounted, and it wasn’t as heavily forested as most of the region.

Somewhere in the distance he thought he could see the high ground that was reported to form the center of the peninsula, and he was pretty sure the Creek village itself would be located
at the foot of it. That area would be guarded, but the river itself wasn’t being watched. Not closely, at least.

Moving slowly again, The Ridge let the branch slide back into position, no more abruptly than if it had been moved by the wind. Then, he turned his head and considered the Cherokees who were clustered nearby.

He dismissed John Ross without even a thought. The youngster seemed stalwart enough, but had no real experience in this sort of fighting. The Americans had made him an adjutant, and had given him the rank of a second lieutenant. But, again, that had been mostly due to his familiarity with English. For something like this, The Ridge wanted a more experienced man. Besides, it would take a good swimmer, and The Ridge had no idea how well Ross could handle himself in the water.

His eyes fell on The Whale. The man’s name wasn’t simply due to his size. The Ridge made a subtle summoning gesture with his head, and The Whale eased his way forward.

“Right across the river,” The Ridge murmured. He slid aside a little so The Whale could take his own peek.

After carefully parting the branches and examining the canoes on the other side, The Whale grunted softly. “I’ll take two men with me. Won’t take long, so have everyone ready.”

He turned away and softly called out two names. As the men rose from their crouch, The Whale led them a short distance upstream. They’d start their crossing far enough above the beached canoes that the current wouldn’t sweep them right on past.

Then The Ridge glanced at John Ross again. If the youngster harbored any resentment because he hadn’t been chosen for the task, there was no sign of it on his expression or in his posture. The Ridge was pleased, but not surprised. He’d already come to the conclusion that Ross was exceptionally levelheaded, and as such not subject to public bravado that infected most men his age.

There remained, of course, the question of Ross’s courage. The American ensign wasn’t the only young man in the group for whom this would be the first real test in battle. But there, too, The Ridge expected the young Cherokee to acquit himself well enough.

Well enough
was all The Ridge asked for this day. The Cherokees already had enough warriors who had proven their fighting
abilities. The Ridge himself was one of them. What they lacked were leaders who could negotiate their way through the tangled thicket of politics that confronted their nation in a world being swept over by a tide of white settlers.

He had high hopes for John Ross. Because of his background, Ross had a far greater familiarity with the subtleties of American customs than did most Cherokees. Certainly far more than The Ridge himself. The Ridge had never visited the home of the Ross family, near Lookout Mountain, but he had heard tales about it. The two-story log house was said to be full of books and maps and newspapers—even newspapers from England. John had been brought up in Cherokee country, in a Cherokee family, but as a boy he’d been tutored by a white man; and, as a youth, he had attended a white man’s academy in Tennessee.

The value of such an education was unquestionable, in these difficult days. The proof of it was an even greater marvel than a two-story house full of books. John Ross had formed a business partnership with Timothy Meigs, the son of the well-known Indian agent Colonel Meigs. They had taken good advantage of the lucrative government contracts produced by the Americans’ wars against the British and the Creeks. In the short few months before Ross had joined the Cherokee force that now fought alongside Jackson, he’d become a prosperous man, even as white men measured such things.

A Cherokee—not more than twenty-three years old—becoming wealthy from trading with white men! That was what the American missionaries called a “miracle.”

As he ruminated, The Ridge listened for The Whale and his two companions. That was a waste of effort, really, since he knew full well that the men would perform their task soundlessly.

Sure enough, the first sign The Ridge got of their progress was the sight of the three warriors, coming down the river. The Whale and his companions, all of them expert swimmers, were crossing the stream without trying to fight the current, moving quickly, surely, and quietly.

“
Get ready!”
he hissed. The words were pitched in such a way that, while they wouldn’t be heard by anyone across the river, they would alert all of the nearest Cherokee warriors. He could rely on them to pass the word along to the remaining hundreds crouched farther back in the forest.

That left only …

The Ridge hesitated. On the one hand, he wanted to observe the young man next to him under fire. On the other hand, it was also critical that the American cavalrymen didn’t work at cross-purposes with what the Cherokee warriors were going to be doing. Once everyone started piling across the river, there was a serious risk that the allies would start killing one another in the midst of the chaos. White soldiers, even regulars, were notorious for not making fine distinctions between friendly and hostile Indians, especially once their blood was up.

Granted, most Indians didn’t make fine distinctions between friendly and hostile whites, as well. But in situations like this one, the white soldiers had the advantage of wearing uniforms, which the Indians didn’t.

For this campaign, it had been mutually agreed that all the Cherokees would wear two distinctive feathers and a deer tail in their headbands. The Ridge was hoping that would be enough to keep the American soldiers from firing on Cherokees by accident. Still, it would be smart to make sure that Coffee knew exactly what they were doing—and Ross was the obvious person to send as his liaison. The young Cherokee’s English was fluent. More than fluent, really, since English was his native language.

So The Ridge arrived at his decision. “Find General Coffee and tell him we’re crossing the river,” he ordered Ross. “Do what you can to make sure the Americans don’t start shooting at us, once they follow us across.”

Ross’s mouth quirked. “They’re cavalrymen, don’t forget. By the time they finally bring themselves to abandon their precious horses—since there’s no way to get them across the river easily—it’ll probably all be over, anyway.”

The Ridge chuckled softly. There was quite a bit of truth to what Ross said, but…

“Do it anyway.”

Ross hesitated. Just long enough, The Ridge understood, to make clear that he wasn’t afraid to join the fight. It was very smoothly done, for such a young man. Then, moving not quite as quietly as an experienced warrior would have, Ross faded into the forest and was gone.

The Ridge turned his attention back across the river. The Whale and his companions had reached the canoes and were already sliding three of them into the water. They were big canoes,
and they’d have only one man guiding each one. The current being what it was, they’d come across the river quite a ways farther down from his position. He did a quick estimate of where they’d land, rose from his crouch, and started heading that way.

His own movements, unlike those of Ross, were almost completely silent. That was simply long habit, so ingrained that The Ridge wasn’t even conscious of it. The noise of the battle being waged somewhere on the other side of the small peninsula was such that even if he had set off an explosion on his side of the river, it probably wouldn’t have been noticed.

Major Montgomery pulled out his watch.

“Fifteen minutes,” he announced.

“We’re ready, sir,” stated Houston. The two officers were standing twenty yards in front of the arrayed lines of the Thirty-ninth Infantry, facing the enemy fortifications.

Montgomery took the time to move back and inspect the ranks himself. That wasn’t because he doubted the ensign’s assessment; it was simply because Montgomery had learned—largely from watching General Jackson—that soldiers were steadied by the immediate and visible presence of the officers who would lead them in an attack.

“God, I love regulars,” the major murmured. Montgomery himself was only a “regular” in a purely formal sense. Still, even in his short military career, he’d come to share Jackson’s distrust of militia volunteers.

Taken as individuals, militiamen were no different from regular soldiers. Better men, actually, in most ways. Certainly, as a rule, more successful men. The regular army was notorious for attracting vagabonds and drunkards to join its ranks, just for the sake of the steady pay and regular provisions; whereas militiamen were frequently respected members of their communities.

But even those members of the militias who weren’t lawyers soon enough adopted a lawyerly view of their rights and obligations. That usually meant a keen sense of the right to leave the service the moment their short term of enlistment was up.

As he walked slowly down the well-formed ranks of the Thirty-ninth Infantry, here and there giving a soldier a careful inspection, Major Montgomery’s lips twisted into a half-sarcastic little smile.

Regulars, God bless ’em
.

Most of the men were armed with the older-style Model 1795 .69-caliber musket that Jackson had wanted for this campaign. The weapon wasn’t as handy as the Model 1803 .54-caliber Harpers Ferry musket that was the standard issue for regulars, but it had the advantage of a fixed bayonet mount—and all the bayonets were fixed. Jackson believed in the value of cold steel.

They looked splendid, too, in their real uniforms with their high-collared blue coats and white trousers. Best of all, Jackson’s quartermaster had somehow managed to finagle iron cap plates for the Thirty-ninth’s tall headgear. The men would go into battle with their heads shining the regiment’s name in the sunlight, instead of having to make do with painted imitations.

Vagabonds or not, when the time came these regular soldiers could be counted upon to do their duty, and do it well. Whatever coat of mail they might pass on to their offspring, assuming they knew who their bastards were in the first place, it might well include a half-empty bottle of whiskey as part of the insignia. Should, by all rights, for at least half of them. Still, there’d be no petticoats there. Not a one.

Montgomery came back forward to stand alongside Ensign Houston. He pulled out his watch again.

“Five minutes to go. And, yes, we’re ready.”

There were some Creek warriors not far from the riverbank, as it turned out. Even if they hadn’t been posted as guards, they were too alert not to notice when The Whale and his two companions started sliding canoes into the river.

With a great shout, several of them rushed down to the water’s edge, waving the crimson-painted war clubs that had given the Red Sticks their name. Most of the clubs were the type
known as
atassa
, which were very similar in shape and design to a sword, concentrating the force of the blow on a narrow wooden edge. Many, however, were ball-headed clubs, or tomahawks with flint or iron blades.

The Whale’s two companions got their canoes into the river and started paddling them across. But The Whale himself had some trouble untying the tether on his chosen canoe. By the time he got the canoe freed, it was too late. The Red Sticks were right on him.

The Whale hadn’t encumbered himself with weapons when he swam the river, so all he had for defense was the canoe’s paddle. The Ridge saw him rise up and smash the first Red Stick in the ribs with the edge of it. The Creek warrior went down instantly. His rib cage must have been shattered, and he might even be dead. The Whale was very strong.

But there were four more Red Sticks surrounding the intruder. He was only able to block one club strike and break another warrior’s arm before he was struck down himself, his head bleeding profusely. Half-dazed, The Whale dropped his paddle and scrambled into some brush by the riverbank.

No doubt the Creeks would have followed him and finished him off, but by then one of them had caught sight of the hundreds of Cherokees massed in the woods on the other side of the river. He gestured to his fellow warriors, and the expression on their faces almost caused The Ridge to laugh.

Meanwhile, the two canoes were already more than half the distance across, and it was obvious to the Creeks that they would soon be facing an invasion of their fortress on its unprotected river side.

So, they left The Whale unmolested and began running back to alert the rest of the Red Sticks. By the time they were all out of sight, the captured canoes had reached the southern bank. The Ridge was the first to pile in. The Whale and his companions had taken care, right off, to seize the paddles for all the canoes and stack them in the ones they’d seized. So all the Cherokees who crammed into the canoes could help drive them back across the river. As experienced as they were with such things, it took less than a minute before they were starting to clamber onto the opposite bank.

The Ridge didn’t bother giving any orders, now. Cherokees
might not have the mindless discipline of white soldiers, but they didn’t need to be told the obvious. Several Cherokee warriors, each holding a paddle, were already untying the rest of the canoes. They’d paddle them back across to load up more warriors. Within a few minutes, the vanguard that had crossed in the first two canoes would be reinforced by hundreds more.