He tapped the table again, more forcibly. "Second, political affairs are determined more by matters of blood and attitude than they are by cold intellect. I don't think you could find two prominent men in the country more unlike than Andy Jackson and John Quincy Adams. They're as different as the Kentucky whiskey and French wine they each prefer to drink."
That was true enough, of course. Best of all, it was salient.
Sam rose to his feet. "A toast, then, gentlemen! To unlikely alliances!" The men at the table began to rise, all except the two veterans who were missing a leg. But their smiles were enough to indicate their full agreement with the toast.
Sam reached down for his tumbler. Then, his mouth widened as if he'd just noticed the glass was empty.
"Ah. How awkward."
"Grover!" Johnson barked at one of the slaves standing by the sideboard. "What are you daydreaming about? See to it that Sam's whiskey is refilled!"
1824: TheArkansasWar
CHAPTER 5
The next morning, at breakfast, Johnson waited until the girls were finished and had excused themselves from the table before returning to the subject of the new school.
More precisely, to where the new school might lead them.
"Tarnation, Sam-I'll make this as plain as I can-I want them to marry white men. Even if they have to move to Vermont or Massachusetts in order to do it. And how many white men are they going to run into, over there in Black Arkansas?"
"They're only twelve years old, Dick," Sam pointed out mildly. "Hardly something you've got to worry about right now."
The senator wasn't mollified. "They'll grow up fast enough. Faster than you expect. If there's any sure and certain law about kids, that's it. They always grow up faster than you expect."
Sam glanced at Julia. Her expression was unreadable: just a blank face that might simply be contemplating clouds in the sky. He wondered how she felt about the matter.
But since there was no point in asking, he decided bluntness was the only tactic suitable.
"They'll marry whoever they marry, Dick. If you think you can stop them-here any more than in Arkansas-you're dreaming. You heard about the ruckus with Major Ridge's son? Over in Connecticut?"
Johnson chuckled. "Who didn't? I heard the girl even went on a hunger strike."
"Yep, she did. Stuck to it, too, until her parents got so worried they caved in and let her marry John Ridge after all. Cherokee or not. But here's really the point I was making. Did you hear what happened to her family afterward?"
The senator shook his head.
"Well, after the wedding they wound up moving to New Antrim also. I guess, after visiting the town to make sure their daughter wasn't winding up in some Indian lean-to-" He grinned widely. "Which Patrick Driscol's Wolfe Tone Hotel most certainly isn't, not with Tiana running the place. Anyway, it seems they found New Antrim most congenial. Especially since it was maybe the only town in the continent, outside of Fort of 98, where their daughter wouldn't be hounded every day. Neither would they, for that matter. It got pretty rough on them, too, you know. One newspaper article even called for drowning the girl's mother along with whipping the girl herself. John Ridge himself, of course, was for hanging."
"I heard." Johnson's lip curled. "So much for that snooty New England so-called upper crust. You can say what you like about the 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 past-Sam had a tumbler of whiskey in his hand and was leaning back comfortably in one of the porch chairs. "Not much, Julia. Not the way Imogene put it, anyway."
He took a sip from his whiskey, feeling the usual contentment the liquor gave him as it warmed its way down. "You're familiar enough with the Indians down here in the South. The way they figure descent and inheritance, through the mother rather than the father, makes a lot of difference when it comes to the way they figure which race starts here and which one ends there. It's not that they don't see the difference, mind you."