Free 1824: The Arkansas War by Eric Flint Page B

country folks hereabouts, but at least”—he nodded toward Julia—“she doesn’t have to worry none, just going down to the store to buy provisions.”
    “Folks are right nice to me,” she agreed.
    “What’s your point, Sam?” asked Johnson.
    “I’d think it was obvious. The one thing you can at least be sure of, if one or both of your daughters winds up marrying somebody
you
think is unsuitable, over there in Arkansas, is that nobody
else
will.”
    He gave Johnson a cocked-head look. “Never been there, have you? You ought to go visit sometime. Soon.”
    “Yes,” said Julia. “Soon. But…”
    “It can be dangerous these days,” said Johnson. His hand reached out and squeezed Julia’s forearm. “Traveling, I mean, for anyone with her color. Even the color of Imogene and Adaline. Those so-called slave-catchers have been running pretty wild.”
    Sam grinned savagely. “Less wild than they used to be, I bet. When I passed through Cincinnati, I heard about the killing.”
    Johnson grimaced. “Don’t make light of it, Sam. Most people down here were pretty upset about that.”
    “Sure. So what? ‘Most people’ aren’t running around trying to catch so-called runaway slaves. Who, most times, are just freedmen trying to make it safely to Arkansas. Which they have to, thanks to that bastard Calhoun and his Cossacks stirring up lynch mobs all over the country. So what difference does it make if they’re ‘upset’ because some unknown abolitionist fiend gunned down a slave-catcher across the river? What matters is that the slave-catchers are a lot more than just ‘upset.’ ” His grin grew still more savage. “Why, I do believe they’re downright nervous. Seeing as how they don’t know who the fiend and his fifty brothers were. Or where they might pop up next.”
    Sam waved a hand. “But it doesn’t matter, anyway. As long as you make the trip while Monroe’s in office, I can provide you with a military escort as far as the Confederacy. A small one, but that’ll be enough. After that, the Cherokees will escort you the rest of the way.”
    Julia pursed her lips. “That gives us almost a year. How soon will this Mr. Smith have the school up and running?”
    Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. Not that soon, I wouldn’t think. But you can put the girls up at the Wolfe Tone in the meantime. Tiana will look after them.”
    Johnson looked a bit dubious. As well he might. The young Cherokee princess who’d married the notorious Patrick Driscol enjoyed her own reputation in the United States. Granted, a more favorable one than her husband’s, since in her case most of it was in the form of overwrought and long-winded verses written by New England poets.
    Ridiculous verses, too, for anyone who knew the realities of Indian and frontier life. Sam had shown one of the more famous poems to Tiana once—Edward Coote Pinkney’s “The Cherokee Bride”—and her comment, after reading less than a third of it, had been a terse “Well, he’s never gutted a deer.”
    But however uncertain the senator might be at the prospect, Julia was firm. “We’ll do it, then. Look for us coming toward the end of the summer.”
    Sam nodded. “Good. I probably won’t be there myself, then, but I’ll let Patrick and Tiana know that you’re coming.”

    When they found out at lunch, the girls were ecstatic.
    “We get to play Indians!” squealed Imogene.
    “
With
Indians,” her sister corrected her.
    Imogene bestowed the inimitable sneer of a twelve-year-old upon a hopelessly ignorant sibling. “In Arkansas, silly, there’s no difference. Everybody knows that!”
    Johnson looked to be growing more dubious by the minute. But since Julia wasn’t wavering, it didn’t really matter.
    Johnson left shortly thereafter to attend to some business around the plantation. After he was gone, Julia asked Sam quietly: “How much of that is really true? What Imogene said, I mean.”
    By then—noon being a thing of the