The shot was perfect, right through the top of Clark's Blucher half-boots. Probably blew off a couple of toes. He wouldn't be making any escape, for sure-and he wouldn't bleed to death, either.
Clark screeched and threw up his hands. The pistol he'd been reloading sailed off somewhere. He stumbled backward and fell on his butt.
Up close, with Clark howling the way he was, Ray could see the scar where Houston had split his lip pretty badly. At least three teeth were missing, too.
No reason not to subtract a few more. Ray kicked him in the face, twice, and then clubbed him with the pistol butt. That ought to do it.
"You stinking bastard!"
Looking over, he saw that Clark's companion was still alive. In fact, he'd levered himself up on the elbow of his uninjured arm.
Which was his left arm-and he was left-handed. In that position, he couldn't fight a kitten. The world was full of dang fools.
By then, Scott had retrieved the man's pistol and was working at it. "Sorry 'bout that, Eddie," he said, "but ten thousand dollars is ten thousand dollars."
"You stinking bastard!"
Scott flipped up the frizzen and shook his head. "You got some dew in the primer. You should've watched for that, this early in the morning, crawling through grass like you were doing." He scraped out the powder and reprimed the pistol.
"I'll kill you, you stinking bastard!"
"Oh, Eddie, that ain't likely at all." Scott cocked the pistol and shot the man in the head. At that range he could hardly miss, and he didn't.
He looked up at Ray and shrugged. "Sorta hated to do that, him being a friend of mine and all. But Eddie always was the unforgiving sort. I don't feel like having to look over my shoulder all the time, the next twenty or thirty years."
That was the main reason Ray and Scott had been partners for so long. They were both reasonable men, neither one of them given to silly fancies that might strain the relationship.
By the time they got back to the fort, three days later, word had arrived about Arkansas Post. The news was on the scanty side but enough for Taylor to know that he wouldn't be marching into the Confederacy any time soon. Victory or not-and Zack was sure that was a formality, in this instance-any army that had been battered that badly would need months to recuperate. Harrison wouldn't be moving out of the Post until winter came, and then he might very well decide to wait for spring. He'd need reinforcements-lots of them-before he could even think of marching upriver on New Antrim.
That meant Zack was effectively stymied also. The Confederates had the advantage of interior lines. If he and Harrison didn't move together, the enemy could simply switch forces back and forth between their southeastern and northwestern fronts.
He took it philosophically enough. Zack had never thought this war would be over quickly, to begin with, and he'd had years of experience on the frontier. Just another six to twelve months ahead, building another fort and keeping his men in fighting condition. Nothing he hadn't done many times before.
Besides, there was at least one small benefit. He'd be able to make sure those two rascals were telling the truth.
"Send a squad down to Arkansas," he told his aide. Then, thinking about it, amended the order. "No, better make it a whole company. The way that luna-the special commissioner-has been throwing arms around to Indians in the area, a squad might get ambushed. Under a flag of truce, of course."
"Yes, sir. And they're:"
"What do you think? Sam Houston was really the only eyewitness. See if he's willing to come here and verify that we've got the right man."
A UGUST 22, 1825
"Yes, that's him. I'm quite sure of it, Colonel Taylor."
Sam had wondered how he'd react if indeed it proved to be the man who'd killed Maria Hester. Six months earlier, he'd probably have had to be physically restrained from attacking him.
Now:
The man glaring at him from a much-battered face just reminded him of a filthy rat. Not even a cornered one, but one caught in a trap, and knowing it.
He turned away, not ever wanting to see the man again in his life. Taylor's rough, honest features were a relief.
"And thank you, Colonel."
"My pleasure." Taylor looked to the guards holding Clark. "Get him out of here, and back into chains."
When he looked back at Sam, his face was a bit stiff. "Ah:"
Sam waved his hand. "Yes, I understand, Colonel. The crime was committed against an American citizen, on American soil. The prisoner will have to be returned there for trial."
Taylor nodded. "Personally, I'd be quite happy to hand him over to you. Or Arkansas, for that matter. But-"
He rubbed his heavy jaw for a moment. "I think it'd be best, all around, if we did everything by the book."
There was a slight stress on everything.
"Yes, I agree. Everything by the book."
Later that day, Sam met privately with the two men Colonel Taylor credited with the capture.
"I can guarantee you that Andy Jackson will pay his half of the reward, once he gets my letter. Clay's half:"
He shrugged. "Who knows? And even if Clay is good for it, I'm not sure where you'd need to go to collect. You can wait for Andy's money in New Antrim."
The two men looked particularly shifty-eyed in response to that.
"Well. Ah." That came from the one called Ray Thompson. It might even be his real name.
His partner, Scott Powers, echoed him. "Well. Ah."
Sam grinned. "Don't tell me you boys are in bad odor in the chiefdom of Arkansas?"
"Well. Ah."
"Well. Ah."
That was worth a chuckle. "What was it? Slave trading? Or were you part of Crittenden's crowd?"
That was worth an outright laugh. "Both, huh? Anybody ever suggest to you that you're not walking in the ways of the Lord?"
"Well. Ah." That was Thompson. Powers managed to return the grin. "Yeah. Started with my mother. I was maybe five."
A thought came to Sam. It was:intriguing, anyway.
"Tell you what," he said. "You come back to New Antrim with me. I'll guarantee your safety."
Those had to be the two most skeptical looks he'd ever gotten in his life.
"Safety out, too?" asked Thompson.
"Oh, relax, will you? Nobody'll lay a hand on you, all the way in and out of Arkansas. Fact is, I think the Laird's more likely to be amused than anything else. Charles Ball, for sure."
At the mention of Charles Ball, Sam thought they almost jumped.
"We'll probably have to keep you out of John Brown's sight, however."
At that, they did jump. Not more than half an inch, though. Tough fellows, obviously. Rogues, rascals, and renegades, too, just as obviously. But Sam was pretty sure he could find a good use for such. Several good uses, in fact.
It took two weeks longer than anyone expected to get Andrew Clark back to Washington, D.C. Not because of his bad foot, which none of his captors cared about in the least. But simply because the army soon realized it had to detail sizeable units to escort the prisoner every step of the way.
As it was, they almost lost him at Uniontown. The crowd that surrounded the company was more in the way of a small army than the lynch mobs they'd encountered in St. Louis and the Ohio river towns.
Fortunately, the governor of the state was there also, and Shulze finally managed to talk the crowd out of the hanging they'd been looking forward to.
He'd been there by pure coincidence, as it happened. News of Clark's capture and return for trial had spread all over the country by then, but Shulze hadn't paid much attention to the details. He'd had no idea the prisoner was coming through Uniontown when he planned to be passing through.
Word had spread all over the country about the Second Battle of Arkansas Post, too. "Word," in the form of extensive and detailed reports printed in every newspaper in the nation.
Not always the same reports in all the newspapers, of course. Most newspapers gave pride of place to the reports filed by Bryant and Scott, those being authoritative in terms of their authors as well as being the only really eyewitness accounts from all sides of the fray. But not all did. A considerable number of papers, especially in the Deep South, refused to run the Bryant-Scott accounts at all. Several of them went so far as to point to those reports as prime examples of the sort of pernicious abolitionist propaganda that the Georgian delegation to Congress had already announced it was going to demand be banned from being carried by the U.S. Postal Service.