Free 1812: The Rivers of War by Eric Flint Page B

I’m assuming you didn’t interrupt your commanding officer in the midst of a battle simply to introduce your friends.”
    Houston flushed. The ruddy complexion under his mass of chestnut hair turned pink. He looked like one of the brightly painted Christmas ornaments that German immigrants were starting to turn into a popular custom. It was all the general could do not to burst into laughter. Despite the severity of his rebuke, he approved of this young ensign. Approved of him mightily and heartily, in fact.
    “Lieutenant Ross here serves as one of General Coffee’s aides, sir,” Houston explained. “He was the one Coffee sent to warn The Ridge not to cross the river again. Which he did—he and James spoke to The Ridge himself.” Houston squared his shoulder and stood very straight. “That’s because it was The Ridge and the Cherokees who grabbed some canoes and created the diversion that gave us our initial advantage.”
    The last statement was spoken in a slightly combative tone. Not belligerent, precisely. And not precisely aimed at Jackson. But Houston sounded like a man who felt he’d made his point, and had been proven right.
    Yet again Jackson stifled a smile. For all that he routinely referred to Indians as savages, he understood them quite well. He wasn’t all that different himself, in many ways. Like any Cherokee or Creek or Choctaw chief, he magnified his own influence by gathering young leaders around him and making them his protégés. Political authority, among white men on the frontier as much as the Indians, was mostly an informal matter.
    But it wasn’t enough for his protégés to be smart and capable. Not enough, even, to be physically courageous, as well. They also had to have the strength of character to stand up to Jackson himself, if need be. Without that, they were useless to him.
    Andrew Jackson had been a bully as far back as he could remember. As a boy, he’d bullied other boys; as a man, other men. He’d bully anyone he could, and he’d do it in a heartbeat.
    He was phenomenally good at it, too. That wasn’t and never had been because he was an especially large man. Although,even there, Jackson’s whipcord body was one that could do far better in a fight than many people would have suspected just looking at him.
    Yes, Jackson was a bully, and he made no apologies for the fact. Indeed, he worked at it, the way a smart man works to improve his skills. It enabled him to get things accomplished he could not have accomplished otherwise.
    But he also knew—he’d seen it all his life—that a stupid bully collected nothing around him but yes-men, fawners, toadies, and lickspittles. Who, as a rule, were good for absolutely nothing else. And what did that accomplish?
    So. Ensign Houston was looking better all the time. Jackson was starting to develop great hopes for him.
    But that was for later. Today, there was still a battle to be won.
    He looked up at the sky. There were still several hours of daylight left, even this early in the year with the solstice just passed. Enough time, he thought, to drive the matter through before night fell.
    Whatever else, Jackson wanted the Creeks defeated—no, more than that: broken and pulverized—before the sun set.
    It wasn’t so much that he feared fighting them in the dark, though that certainly wasn’t something he looked forward to. But Jackson knew from long experience that the red men were in many ways a more practical breed than whites. They had their superstitions, to be sure, but they had their reason, as well. Indians preferred ambush and surprise attacks to open battle, and they simply weren’t given to pointless last stands. Not, at least, if there was a viable alternative.
    Which there would be, if hundreds of them were still at large come nightfall. There was no way in creation that John Coffee, even if he had thrice the force he had covering the riverbank, could prevent Creeks from escaping the trap under cover of