1824: The Arkansas War

O CTOBER 3, 1824

"Oh, dear," said Eliza Ross. Her husband thought the comment was outstandingly low-keyed under the circumstances. Very much "stiff upper lip," to use the expression that had started coming into vogue during the Napoleonic Wars.

He would have been amused, except there was nothing amusing about the sight of the two riverboats heading for their steamer. Longboats, the British navy would have called them, although Robert had no idea what the correct term was for them here.

True, the boats were oar driven, but with multiple oars and the advantage of the current, they would arrive long before the steamboat could turn itself around and head back to the south. They'd emerged suddenly from the mouth of the Arkansas, just as the steamboat came up. Much as if they'd been lying in ambush.

Which was probably true. Not because the freebooters were targeting their steamboat in particular, but simply because they'd been left behind to seize any steamboat that came along. The freebooters' supply train-if such a term could be used at all-was not likely to have been well planned and organized. By now, especially as scattered as his forces must have gotten from their frenzy of plundering and mayhem as they went upriver, Crittenden must be getting worried about his logistics. Having an extra steamboat would be invaluable, especially one as big as the Comet.

"Oh, dear," his wife repeated, as she watched the approaching craft. "What shall we-"

Her question was interrupted as well as answered by Charles Ball's emergence onto the deck.

General Ball, now. The slave disguise was gone, with a vengeance. Ball was wearing his full uniform. The hussar-style uniform had the green pants of an officer, unlike the white ones of enlisted men, with a much fancier green coatee trimmed with black, and the distinctive fur cap. It was something of an odd-looking uniform to Ross, accustomed as he was to the continental styles. But he knew Driscol had had it patterned after the uniforms worn by Canadian voltigeurs, and it was probably more practical in this terrain.

Anthony McParland had emerged alongside him, wearing a uniform that was very similar except for the officer's insignia. Right after them came the two corporals, both in enlisted men's uniforms and both carrying muskets. Young as they might be, Callender and Sheffield seemed to be very familiar with the firearms. Knowing Driscol, Ross was quite sure they'd been thoroughly drilled by now.

Still, while the four of them made a resplendent showing on the upper deck of the Comet, there were only four of them-and there were at least a dozen men in each of the approaching boats.

David came out on deck, holding a weapon in each hand. "I've brought our pistols, Father."

Six men, then-but two of them armed merely with pistols.

But Robert discovered that he'd underestimated Ball. Most of the Kentucky flatboat men had left the Comet the day before, not wishing any further involvement. The men who had remained behind had been the eight black ones and the three poorest-looking of the whites. The most indigent of the lot, Robert had assumed, unable to forgo the free passage no matter what the risk.

"All right, boys!" Ball shouted. "Time to show the bastards what's what, don't you think?"

The eleven "flatboat men" on the lower forward deck grinned up at him. In an instant, any trace of lackadaisical, undisciplined civilians vanished. Before Robert quite understood what they were doing, six of the men were hauling two guns from somewhere below. Four-pounders, in naval carriages.

Rummaging in his memory, Robert recalled seeing a pair of large hatches down there on one of his tours of the boat. Storage, he'd assumed.

Indeed, "storage" it had been. The other five men were bringing forth powder and balls.

Starting to, rather. Seeing what they were carrying, Ball hollered at them.

"Canister, damn you! Think we're fighting a siege? Canister-and be damn quick about it!"

Hastily, the two guilty parties scurried back out of sight. They emerged just a few seconds later carrying a tin of canister each.

"Good, boys! Good!" Ball's tone had gone from fury to praise in a heartbeat. "I want to see the bastards bleed!"

By the time the ammunition carriers got the canister tins to the front, the rest of the men already had the guns laid and were training them on the approaching boats. They'd also done something to the steamboat front rail-the guard, as it was called-that had lowered a section of it on hinges. That allowed a clear line of fire while leaving the thick stanchions necessary to attach the recoil slings. And there were eyebolts already in place for that purpose. Robert had noticed them earlier but had not thought much about their function. Tying up the boat, he'd assumed, even though that was not normally done at the bow.

Robert understood at once that the Comet had been prepared for such a battle-and that Ball must have brought with him the cream of the Iron Battalion's gun crews.

He didn't know whether he should be gratified or furious. It was clear enough, now, that Ball had been expecting such an encounter even before they left New Orleans. Half expecting it, at the very least.

Patrick, too, for that matter.

After a moment's hesitation, he decided on gratification. Why not? It wasn't as if, deep down, he hadn't always known his wife was right.

"See?" she demanded, as if to prove the point. But there didn't seem to be any condemnation in her tone, either. Eliza had been a soldier's wife for decades, a fair bit of which time she'd spent with her husband in the field in Iberia. She was probably remembering Spanish and Portuguese officers she'd cursed in the past. For not being able to do a tenth as much in ten hours as Ball and his men had just shown themselves capable of doing in a few minutes.

And while she didn't have Robert's experience with battles-never having actually been at any of them, thankfully, if not so many miles distant-the sight of those two cannons would have cheered even the most naive of civilians.

Robert himself was cheered immensely. True, they were both four-pounders. It would have been foolish to bring any larger ordnance. As big as it was, by steamboat standards, the Comet lacked the sheer bulk and bracing that warships had to have to withstand the recoil of heavier guns.

But, in the here and now, four-pounders should do very nicely, he thought. Those two approaching longboats were even further removed from ships of the line. Cockleshells, practically, and jammed full of men.

Worried men, now. The freebooters were close enough to have spotted the cannons-which they quite obviously hadn't been expecting.

"Hey!" one of them shouted, half rising to his feet in the lead boat. "You there in the-"

"Fire!" Ball bellowed.

Belatedly remembering some of the realities of cannon fire-the wind was blowing the wrong way, too-Robert hissed: "Eliza! David! Close your eyes!"

He did the same himself. The sharp double clap of the four-pounders was followed, very quickly, by the familiar feel of unburned powder and smoke on his face. Along with, of course, that very familiar smell.

As it always did, the odor roused something deep and primitive in Robert Ross. As soon as he felt the gust passing, he opened his eyes. Only with great effort was he able to restrain himself from shouting the sort of praise and encouragement he would have shouted, in years past, to his own soldiers.

The man who'd been half standing in the bow of the lead ship was nowhere to be seen. Not surprising, that. The bow itself had been badly splintered by canister balls. Not shattered, since Ball's guns hadn't been using round shot, or even the heavy shot that naval men called grapeshot. But it hardly mattered. Canister rounds weighed three ounces each: twice the weight of a musket ball. At that range, a three-ounce ball wouldn't destroy a wooden boat, but it would do a very nice job of shredding it some. And even a four-pounder fired a lot of them at once. Like a huge shotgun, for all intents and purposes.

The men in the bow of that lead boat had all been killed or mutilated. Or both, mostly. The ones toward the rear who'd survived had done so simply because their comrades had absorbed most of the fire-and not all of them had come off it uninjured.

Three of them were just sitting in the boat, screaming, covered with blood. How much of it was theirs was impossible to determine. The rest were already throwing themselves overboard and starting to swim toward the west bank of the river, over a hundred yards distant.

The second boat was desperately trying to turn around. Clearly enough, that crew had no intention of risking all in a fierce boarding attempt.

Wisely, Robert thought. Even if they could have reached the steamboat before another volley was fired from the cannons, they no longer outnumbered Ball's men by any significant margin. And he didn't doubt for a moment that every one of those so obviously experienced gunners was just about as skilled with pistols and hand weapons.

"I want that boat down!" Ball hollered. "Don't you give me one and not the other, you blasted curries!"

One of the white gunners flashed a grin. However much he might have taken offense as being labeled a curry under other circumstances, under this one he apparently simply found it amusing.

Ball didn't see the grin. He was already turning his glare onto Callender McParland and young Parker.

"All right, boys. Jones been braggin' you the best shots in his regiment. That's why you here, wet behind the ears and all." He pointed at the boat some forty yards away, which was now halfway through its turn. A man was crouched in the stern, yelling orders.

"Take him down," Ball hissed. "I want that bastard down. "

Both young corporals already had their muskets leveled. Rifled muskets, Robert now understood, from the way they were actually aiming the weapons, not simply pointing them in the general direction of the enemy.

For a brief moment, they seemed to hesitate. Robert recognized the moment. Just so had he seen other young soldiers, in times past, hesitate before firing their first shot intended for real murder. Just so could he remember himself hesitating, that first time so long ago.

Ball knew the moment also. " Down, I said." But he growled the words; he didn't shout them. This was not the time for shouting.

Sheffield Parker fired first, just a split second before Callender. Robert saw his shot take the steersman in the shoulder, lifting and turning him just in time to take Callender's shot in the chest. A second later, his corpse-for corpse it surely was-splashed into the river.

"Good," Ball said. "Reload."

He paid no more attention to the teenage corporals, leaning instead over the guard of the upper deck and going back to hollering at his gun crews.

Hollering, now. No need for tenderness-of sorts-dealing with such veterans.

"Kill 'em, God damn you! Kill 'em all!"

Two seconds later, both cannons fired almost simultaneously. And Robert looked up at the target.

And it was done. For the most part, at least. There were survivors, of course. There almost always were, even with a murderous volley at such close range. Time after time, Robert had been astonished at the way the whimsy of battle would rip one man to pieces and completely spare the man next to him. That same whimsy had saved his life more than once.

Still, over half were dead or wounded. Only four of them went over the side into the river, to start swimming after their companions toward the shore.

Robert wondered if Ball would show any mercy. He didn't expect he would.

No, no chance of it.

"Reload, blast you! That boat's bloody but it's still not down! I want it down! "

The gun crews went through their practiced cycle. Ball turned back to the youngsters. "Don't waste shots on them while they're still in the water. But the minute they start climbing up on shore, I want to see at least two of them dead before the rest get away. You hear me? Two, at a rock-hard damn bottom!"

Callender was a bit pale-faced, perhaps. Impossible to tell about Sheffield, as dark-skinned as he was. But from the tightness of the young negro's very full lips, he seemed determined to keep whatever emotions he was feeling under control.

Splendid young soldiers. Whoever this "Jones" was, Robert had no difficulty understanding why he'd recommended them to Ball. Their marksmanship had only been part of it, as always-and not the most important part. This was probably their first real clash at arms, and they were conducting themselves with as much composure as most veterans.

The cannons went off again. That volley slew whoever might still have been alive on the second boat, and punched enough holes in the hull that it began to settle. Robert swiveled his head and saw that the first boat was still afloat. But it was drifting with the current, obviously out of control, leaking streams of blood into the water. The three men slumped in the boat might still be alive-some of them might even survive the whole experience-but they were no longer a threat to anyone.

By now, even with the difficulty of reloading rifled muskets, Callender and Sheffield had them ready. Not quite to shoulder, but close. Waiting for their targets to come out of the water. To his surprise, Robert saw that the shore was now much closer. Apparently-he'd never noticed-the steamboat pilot had been driving the craft after the men swimming toward safety.

That seemed rather dangerous, Robert thought. He was no expert on the subject, but he could remember people talking about the perils of navigating the Mississippi, much of which was still uncharted. The river was so muddy that it was impossible to see more than an inch or two beneath the surface. If they grounded on a hidden sandbar or hit a submerged snag:

The first of the freebooters reached the riverbank and started to clamber ashore, with two of his companions right behind. From the corner of his eye, Robert could see the two corporals aiming.

But they never fired. Instead, a volley was fired from somewhere in the thick growth next to the river. All three of the freebooters were blown right back into the river. The two remaining, who'd been with that first five, were paralyzed by the shock, crouched half in and half out of the water.

A man stalked out of the foliage, a pistol in his hand. From a distance of five feet, he leveled the pistol and shot one freebooter in the head. Then, he leaped on the other and began clubbing him senseless with the pistol butt. His opponent tried to resist, but to no avail. His attacker seemed on the slender side, but there was something utterly relentless about the way he kept slamming down the pistol butt. As if, half immersed in water like his companion, he was engaging in some sort of horrible, upside-down baptism.

Within half a minute, the freebooter slipped into the water. His body, rather. That skull had been shattered into a pulp.

The four remaining freebooters were now treading water in the middle of the river, trapped between the oncoming steamboat and whoever had fired the volley from the riverbank. Their faces looked pale. One of them was gaping like a fish.

"Did I say anything about quarter?" Robert heard Ball snarl at the two corporals.

"No, sir," replied Sheffield. "But you did say-"

"Don't sass me, boy! I said don't waste shots while they were in the water. At this range-now-that don't count. Or if it does, you not the men Jones said you were."

Parker's jaws tightened, just for an instant. Then:

"Yes, sir. " He stepped up to the rail, aimed, fired. Quick as that. The freebooter with the gaping mouth went under, leaving a little patch of blood and brains on the surface.

Callender was a bit slower. Not much. Another shot, and another freebooter went down. Rolled, rather, the way a slain fish might, before slowly starting to sink.

The two survivors-the second boat's sole survivors, now-began frantically swimming downstream.

"Follow 'em!" Ball yelled to someone Robert couldn't see. The pilot, he assumed.

A voice came back. "Be damned if I will! Be damned, I say! This ain't your boat, Ball-and I ain't in the fucking army!"

A sudden moment of mercy, Robert might have assumed, except for the next exercise in profanity and blasphemy.

"God damn you, Ball, this boat is valuable! Henry Shreve'll have my fucking hide, I run it aground and we gotta scuttle it! Which we will, God damn your black soul, 'cause there ain't no way were gonna-"

"Oh, never mind. And shut up!" Ball hollered back. "It's all gonna be over soon, anyway, so take your blasted boat wherever you want to-as long as it's upstream and into the Arkansas!"

Soon, indeed. Robert could now see over a dozen men emerging from the foliage by the river. All of them were armed with muskets, and all of them were half running down the riverbank, keeping even with the swimmers. Like a pack of wolves trailing wounded prey.

It was over quickly. The two surviving freebooters were exhausted by now, as much from sheer fright as from physical exertion. The moment one of them slowed, a dozen muskets went off. At least one of the rounds hit. Another patch of red stain was all that was left on the surface of the river.

It took almost a minute for the repetition. Mainly because the men, whoever they were, were clearly not experienced infantrymen. They took much too long to reload. Still, another volley went off soon enough, and the last head faded from sight.

By now, a different river might have been streaked with blood. The carnage had been as horrendous as any Robert had ever seen in a small unit action. But the muddy Mississippi swept it all away within seconds.

Half an hour later, the pilot finally agreed he had a safe place to bring the steamboat alongshore. There was a pier there. Not much of one, since it had clearly been designed for a much smaller boat than the Comet. Still, it was enough to tie up to.

Seventeen men came out of the woods, five of them boys. Along with them came six girls and four young women, two of whom were carrying infants. All were white except for two of the adult males, one of the boys, and one of the infant-toting women. They were black.

The man who led the way across into the steamboat was the same one who'd clubbed the man in the river. Robert hadn't been able to discern his features, at the distance, but there was something distinct about his way of moving.

He was quite a young man, Robert realized, once he came aboard. He hadn't seemed so, at first, from the severity of his features.

"Name's Brown," he said to Ball. "John Brown." He turned and helped one of the young women with an infant into the boat. "My wife, Dianthe. My whole family-those as are living in Arkansas-and the people working for me."

The pistol was stuck back in his belt. Shifting his musket to his left hand, he stuck out his right to Ball. "Pleased to meet you."

"Charles Ball. General in the Arkansas Army. You the one got that new tannery set up near the river?"

" Had a new tannery," Brown corrected. Tight-jawed but not seeming especially angry. More like a man depicting an unfortunate turn in the weather-but such is God's will.

"They burned me out," he explained. "Not without a fight, mind you. But there was too many to make a stand, so we ran off after shooting a few."

Ball nodded. "We're heading up the Arkansas, if you want to join us. To be honest, I could use your help. Don't know what's waiting for me up there. But:it's likely to be another fight, and you got children and womenfolk."

"Would they be any safer anywhere else?" Brown asked, mildly. "With the land overrun by heathens? I think not. Yes, we'll join you. We'll fight, too. But-!"

He held up a stiff, admonishing finger. "I want it clearly understood that I am not enlisting in any army! I'll fight, but I won't be a soldier. Meaning no personal offense, General Ball, but you're a blaspheming lot."

1824: TheArkansasWar