1824: The Arkansas War by Eric Flint Page A

shaking. Or thrash him outright, for that matter.
    Some of his aggravation must have shown, for Julia hastily spoke up.
    “Please come in, Sam. Something to drink? I’ve fresh-brewed some tea.”
    Sam was about to agree when Johnson broke in. “Tea for Sam Houston? Don’t be silly, Julia. Sam’ll have some whiskey. I’ll join him myself.”
    The senator passed through the door into the house. Sam felt his resolve crumbling. A slug of whiskey
did
sound good—and it would relax him for what was coming.
    As Sam made to follow Johnson, Julia placed a hand on his arm.
    “How much trouble is he in, Sam?” she asked quietly.
    Houston shrugged uncomfortably. “Well…Nobody’s talking about arresting him or anything like that, Julia. But…”
    “But nobody’s going to advance him any more money, neither.”
    “No. Not a chance.” That wasn’t quite true, but close enough for the moment.
    She nodded and released his arm. “Thank you. I’ll join you in a while.”
    The restraint their mother’s admonition had placed on the girls finally broke.
    “Can we come in, too?” Adaline demanded.
    “We want to talk with Sam!” her twin added.
    “Hush, girls! Sam and your father need some private time.” Julia shooed them away. “You can talk to him all you want over dinner.”

CHAPTER 4

    It took three slugs before Sam was finally ready. Johnson seemed to sense it, because he didn’t prod Sam at all until the third slug had settled in his belly. Then, sighing, he set his own half-full tumbler on the small table next to the divan and planted his hands on his knees.
    “So tell me, Sam. It’s bad news, I’m sure.”
    “The president refuses to authorize any more funds to cover the losses from the Yellowstone expedition, on the recommendation of the secretary of the treasury.”
    “William H. Crawford,” Johnson stated, making the simple name sound like a curse.
    “I don’t like him, either,” Sam said. “But it doesn’t matter. Even if the secretary and the president proposed it, there’d be an uproar in Congress. Financially speaking, the Yellowstone expedition was a disaster.” Sam raised his hand to forestall Johnson’s protest. “Dick, I know most of your constituents still think the expedition was a good idea, to keep the peace on the frontier. But most of the country considers the whole thing a boondoggle.”
    And probably a crooked one, to boot. Half-crooked, for sure.
But he left that unsaid.
    Johnson didn’t pursue the matter any further, not to Sam’s surprise. The Yellowstone expedition and the debts it had saddled the senator with dated back several years now. Not quite ancient history, but ground that had now been trodden over several times. He hadn’t really had any hopes of getting any relief there.
    Instead, he moved to the subject that was much more pressing. “And the Choctaw Academy I want to set up?”
    Julia Chinn came into the room at that moment, giving Sam a little breathing space. After she’d taken a seat on the divan next to the senator, Sam tried to present it as positively as possible. “Do you know Gerrit Smith?”
    “That young New York fellow? Rich as Croesus, they say. Something of a philanthropist, I also heard.”
    “That’s the one.”
    Johnson’s eyes widened. “He’s offered to back me?”
    “Ah…”
    There was no way around it. “Not exactly, Dick. He’s willing to pay the debts you’ve accumulated for it and take the Academy off your hands.”
    “What?”
    May as well give it all to him, at one swallow.
    “And he won’t set it up here, and he won’t call it the Choctaw Academy. He wants to establish it in New Antrim. And he wants to turn it into a school—maybe later a college, attached to it—that’s open to children from all races. Whites, any tribe of Indians—and negroes. He thinks that’s an experiment that’ll work. If it’s done in the Arkansas part of the Confederacy.”
    Johnson was just gaping at him. Sam took a deep breath and