1824: The Arkansas War

J ULY 22, 1825

"It's him, all right." Scott Powers lowered his eyeglass. "Now all we gotta do is figure out how to pry him out of there."

Lying next to him in the tall grass, Ray Thompson squinted at the distant bandit camp. "Why can't we just ride in there? You said his cousin was a friend of yours."

"Well:he is, in a manner of speaking. But by now he'll have heard about the reward offer. And, ah:"

"Right. He might suspect your motives."

Powers grinned mirthlessly. "About as likely as a rooster guarding hens, who spots a coyote coming. 'Well, hello there, my old friend the rooster. I just dropped by to pay a social call.' "

Ray went back to studying the bandit camp some hundred yards away. "Why hasn't he turned him in for the reward, do you think?"

Scott shrugged, insofar as a man could manage that gesture while lying prone. "Who knows? Eddie's another Georgian. You know the type. Walk around calling themselves Southrons and challenging their images in a mirror to a duel because of some slight nobody else noticed. Crazy bastards can find a point of honor in anything. There's no way he's going to let us have Andrew Clark without a fight."

Ray sucked his teeth. "You know, Scott, you could have maybe mentioned this little problem a few weeks back. Before we added horse stealing and card cheating to our track record."

"We let the horses go, and we didn't get caught cheating," Powers pointed out, reasonably enough. "And we would have needed the money no matter what. Besides, I got a plan."

"A plan. That'll somehow make it possible for two men-yeah, sure, we're the most dangerous desperadoes on the frontier-to win a gunfight with eleven bandits. And an assassin, even if we know he can't shoot straight. You got a plan."

The same grin came back to Powers's face. "Well, of course that's not the plan. Do I look like an idiot? But why bother? When-"

He rolled a little sideways to clear his left arm and pointed to the southwest. "When just over yonder we got two regiments of the U.S. Army to do the work for us. Even got artillery."

Ray's eyes widened. "You think-"

"Hey, look. Zack Taylor's in command. He'll remember us from when he commanded Cantonment Robertson at Baton Rouge."

"Sure he will," Ray said sourly. "He'll remember we tried to swindle his commissary."

" 'Swindling's' an awful harsh way to put what I prefer to think of as frugal business practices. It's hard to keep meat from getting wormy in the Delta. Even if you try."

"It's the way he'll put it. Taylor's always been unreasonable."

Scott shook his head. "Fine. But it's beside the point. All we have to do is convince him we know where Mrs. Houston's killer is. For that, our perhaps unsavory reputation will work in our favor. 'Thieves falling out,' as they say."

Thompson thought about it for a moment. "You think?"

Scott did that awkward prone shrug again. "Worth a try, the way I see it. It sure beats eleven-to-two odds in a gunfight. Even ten-to-three, figuring that any dang fool who can't hit a man as big as Houston at point-blank range is likely to shoot one of his own."

"Well, that's true."

1824: TheArkansasWar