1812: The Rivers of War

I-"

He choked, clutching his throat, torn by a musket ball. Blood spewed out instead of words. Another musket ball struck him in the ribs, spinning him sidewise; then another passed through his jaw, smashing out most of his teeth along the way.

Gubbins collapsed. On a dirt road by the Mississippi River, he bled to death.

"You're in command, sir!" cried the pale-faced young lieutenant of the Eighty-fifth. "Colonel Thornton and Colonel Gubbins have both fallen."

Captain James Money of the Royal Navy stared at the head of the column, some fifty yards or so in front of his own marines. The column was bunched up, now. No longer a column as much as a ragged lot of men trying to form an impromptu line, with no officers and a narrow front to boot. The charge had stumbled to a halt. Bayonets wouldn't do it here, clearly enough.

Money looked back at the rest of the column.

"Right. No help for it, then. We've got to form a line and fight it out. Lieutenant, I want-"

A musket ball struck his left shoulder and drove him to his knees. Turning his head, his mouth open, Money saw a wave of wild savages pouring out of the cypress swamp. The Indians had begun their charge with a volley, apparently, as soon as they emerged from the trees.

A volley of sorts, at least. Money's mind was too dazed to remember exactly what he'd heard. All he could do was watch as the savages slammed into his unprepared men. They fired again, once-no volley there; just each savage as he would, those who had muskets-and then began killing with war clubs and spears.

Captain Money detested this idiot war in the gulf. The terrain and climate were the worst he'd ever encountered. Nothing that happened in the next half a minute caused him to reconsider his opinion. Certainly not the war club that shattered his skull.

"Back! Back to the woods!" Major Ridge's voice, like Driscol's, was eminently capable of carrying across a raging battlefield. "Get back now!"

For a wonder, the warriors obeyed him. That alone, John Ross knew, as he plunged back into the cypress along with the others, was enough to make clear Ridge's status. Cherokee warriors weren't terribly prone to discipline. Ferocity, yes. Obedience in the face of commands He actually chuckled, once he reached the dark safety of the trees.

Not hardly.

Apparently Ridge heard the chuckle. John had stayed close to him throughout the charge out of the swamp, and the quick retreat back into it.

He gave the younger man a crease of a smile. "Amazing, isn't it? But it only worked because they aren't stupid."

John nodded. The attack had caught the British completely by surprise, and had inflicted a lot of casualties on them. But John's own experience in the swamps on the night of the twenty-third had taught him how dangerous British soldiers could be, once they were planted and ready to fight. There were still at least twice as many enemy soldiers on that road as there were Cherokees. If Ridge had tried to stand and slug it out, they'd have started getting butchered.

"What now?" he asked.

Ridge was peering through the trees at the British column on the road. John, doing the same, could see British officers racing up and down, bringing order to their troops. Faster than he would have imagined possible, the enemy was forming a line to defend their flank.

"We'll just wait a bit," Ridge answered. "Let Houston do whatever he's going to do first, and then we'll see what things look like. If they come at us, here in the swamp, we'll rip them. The same would happen to us, if we were stupid enough to charge back out there against that line."

It made sense to Ross. So, he took the time to reload his pistol. He'd even hit an enemy soldier with the round he'd fired during the charge, he thought.

That wasn't much of an accomplishment, of course. Not at point-blank range, against a mass of men caught with their backs to the river. John added the experience to the long list he was compiling, which was proving to him that there was something ultimately absurd about war.

Or, at least, the way men talked about it.

Why did men boast so, about a field of endeavor whose greatest achievement was to do the crudest thing imaginable, in as simple a way as possible? No Cherokee woman, after all, would have bragged that she'd made the ugliest garment in the world, using the fewest possible stitches.

"Shall we charge them, Colonel Houston?" Lieutenant Pendleton asked eagerly. "We bloodied 'em good!"

Sam took a moment from his study of the enemy to glance at the young dragoon officer who was standing next to him.

He was tempted to say, Do I look like an idiot? The British, their charge having been broken, were forming a line about one hundred and fifty yards away. He was amazed at the speed and precision with which they'd done so. Sam knew perfectly well his own regiment would have made a dragged-out mess of the business, if they could have even managed it at all after suffering such casualties.

And he could practically feel the savage eagerness of the British soldiers to see him marching toward them. Oh, they'd get some of their own back, then! Surely they would.

"No, Lieutenant. Face facts-that's the first thing an officer has to learn. Those are regulars over there, and we aren't. So we'll not be so foolish as to try matching them line against line. Tell the men to start digging in and form a breastworks, and tell the three-pounders to hold their fire unless the enemy advances. They'll be getting low of ammunition, anyhow. We'll just stand here. That's really all we need to do. If we keep the enemy away from the commodore's guns, we've done our job."

It was almost comical, the way Pendleton's face fell.

" Now, Lieutenant."

"Yes, sir." Pendleton raced off.

Well. Slouched off hurriedly. But Sam wasn't inclined to chide him over his posture. Now that the immediate danger was past, he was worrying about Driscol and his men.

Were they still alive? If so, they were trapped back there-and Sam didn't dare charge to their rescue as long as the British had that line across the road. If the enemy broke his charge, which they most likely would, there'd be nothing between them and Patterson's guns.

"Why is everything so quiet now, Robert?"

Somehow, she'd still managed to keep her face expressionless. But Ross thought the lines of the face itself were tighter than any drum he'd ever seen.

"The assault's been beaten off," he said, trying not to sigh. "For the moment, at least."

He suspected that his own face was as tightly drawn as Tiana's. Under the circumstances, for the moment was a meaningless phrase. Ross knew the battle plan Thornton had been following. The thing either had to be done quickly, or there was no point in doing it at all.

The tree was starting to shed bark, under that softly but steadily pounding fist. Gibbs was genuinely amazed. He'd never seen Pakenham able to restrain himself to such a degree in a battle.

Wellington, he knew, would have been pleased to witness Pakenham's unwonted control. The duke had won the Peninsular War because he'd always been able to contain himself, when the need be. Something few of his immediate subordinates could have managed.

Including Gibbs. If he'd been in command here, despite his own great doubts about the prospects, the men would have started across Chalmette field at least an hour earlier.

They might have even carried the day. Who was to know? Leading a charge was so much easier than being the commander who had to order it-or refrain from doing so.

Another piece of bark fluttered to the ground.

"Come at me, blast you," Jackson hissed. He was back on the line now. He didn't need a glass to see the British formations, hundreds of yards away. Not when all he had to do was look across the bareness of Chalmette field.

He'd cover that beautiful empty field with red-coated corpses, if they came across. He knew it as surely as he knew the sun would rise on the morrow.

TheRiversofWar