1812: The Rivers of War Read Online Free PDF Page A

cowardly bone in his body. Even his fingernails have guts.”
    Coffee stopped then and turned to face Sam straight on. The general was as big as Houston, so their eyes were on a level. There was still enough light shed by the sundown to enable Sam to make out his features. Coffee’s round face was surmounted by a mass of black hair and centered on a prominent nose. He had very dark eyes. Despite the natural solemnity of the face, Sam thought he detected a trace of a smile playing across the general’s lips.
    “And I’ll tell you what else is true, young man. The British probably
will
beat Napoleon. And if they do, they’ll send their crack units here—Wellington’s veterans—to crush the only republic left on the face of the earth.”
    Sam thought that was a bit of an exaggeration. The Swiss were a republic, and they were likely to survive the fall of Napoleon. However …
    He wasn’t inclined to argue the point, since he understood what Coffee was saying. The Swiss had been around for centuries, and they weren’t any sort of threat to the aristocracies that ruled Europe. The United States, on the other hand, really stuck in their craw.
    “If they can get away with it,” Coffee continued, “don’t think for a moment that the British wouldn’t love to throw our little revolution here into the waste heap. If they can land and seize control of the gulf, along with the mouth of the Mississippi, they’ll have us by the throat.”
    He stopped talking for a moment, and cocked his head questioningly.
    Sam nodded in agreement, and firmly. He’d already come to the same conclusions.
    “Okay, then.” Coffee turned and resumed walking. “So here’s what else is true. Just be damn glad that conniving, way-smarter-than-he-looks, bullying son-of-a-bitch Andy Jackson is in command. We’ll need him, before this is over.”

CHAPTER 3
MARCH 27, 1814
The Battle of the Horseshoe Bend
    The next time Sam Houston encountered Andrew Jackson, the general was hollering again, but this time Sam couldn’t make out the words.
    First, because Jackson wasn’t the only one hollering. So were a thousand Red Stick warriors hemmed in behind their barricade on a horseshoe bend in the Tallapoosa, with about two and a half thousand white soldiers and militiamen facing them.
    Secondly, because the hostile Creeks trapped behind their own fortifications were beating war drums.
Lots
of war drums, from the sound they were making.
    And, thirdly, because up close, even two cannons make an incredible racket.
    It was late morning when Sam and his superior officer, Major Lemuel Montgomery, came up the rise where the general had set up his field headquarters. Topping the rise, Sam saw the two cannons Jackson had hauled with him across the wilderness positioned atop a small hill overlooking the fortifications the Red Sticks had erected. Sam had been in the army long enough now to recognize the cannons as a six-pounder and a three-pounder.
    Field guns. No more, and the three-pounder was something of a lightweight, at that. Nevertheless, Sam had been hearing the racket they made ever since the Thirty-ninth Infantry had arrived at the battlefield and had taken up their position. The Thirty-ninth was at one end of a field that sloped down toward the other end, which was closed off by the Creek fortifications. Now that he was close enough, he could see that the guns hadn’t done any damage worth talking about to the enemy’s fieldworks.
    He wasn’t really surprised, though, getting his first good look at those fortifications. The Red Sticks had had months to prepare for this attack, and obviously they hadn’t wasted the time. The barricade they’d put up across the neck of the peninsula was impressive. Very, very impressive.
    Moments later Montgomery and Houston were just a few feet away from Jackson. Seeing them, the general waved his hand in the direction of the fortifications. The nearest part of the wall stood less than a hundred yards from the