Paw chuckled. “I’m sure most of the slave owners in the counties south of the river are already enlisting men. The east, too. I’ll bet my young friend Tom Hindman is already planning a regiment.”
Murphy looked at Butler. “What about you, young man? Are you ready to charge off and fill your life with dash and glory? Or, as a Union man, will you go the other way?”
“Or be smart and avoid the whole blooming mess,” Maw called from the kitchen. “There’s no sense in my boys running off to get shot wholesale for someone else’s lunacy.”
Butler pushed back in the uncomfortable chair and rolled his whiskey glass as he quoted, “‘The battle where men were perishing shuddered. Now with the long man-tearing spears held in their hard hands, the men’s eyes were blinded in the dazzle of bronze light, which shone from helmets, burnished armor, and polished shields. Men came on in confusion.’”
“What’s that?” Isaac Murphy asked, forcing himself to keep from staring at Sarah, who pulled a fresh-baked loaf from the brick oven.
“Homer,” Butler replied. “A section that stuck with me from the Iliad.”
“They’ll make you an officer,” Murphy groused. “Nay, strike that. In Arkansas, they’ll make you a general.”
Butler waved it away. “Mr. Murphy, I’d be a book general, quoting Caesar, Xenophon, Thucydides, and von Clausewitz. Doesn’t mean I’d be worth spit commanding troops.”
Paw shifted. “Butler, no law says you’ve got to take sides. You could go west. Cowards don’t head to the Shining Mountains.”
Murphy snorted his dismay. “Butler can stay here. Fighting is going to be in the East. What’s it to Washington or Richmond … or wherever the Confederate capital is today? A couple of battles will be fought to determine who’s who. Then each side will have stood for their honor, and it’ll all be over.”
“If there’s to be a war, I will bear arms for my state,” Butler replied graciously. “What greater calling to manhood is there? Read your Homer, Scott, and Shakespeare. Or as is quoted in Thucydides, ‘You do not see that peace is best secured by those who use their strength justly yet show their determination not to submit to wrong.’ And in this case, should the Union attempt to force us back into the United States through force of arms the moral argument grants superiority to Arkansas.”
Paw nodded. “I could give a damn about slavery, but a state’s got as much right to leave a nation as a person has to emigrate.” Then he fixed Butler with his hard gaze. “But war’s not what you read in books, son. I was in Mexico.”
Isaac Murphy opened his mouth, raised a finger … and stopped short.
Thinking better of what he was about to say, no doubt.
Butler pursed his lips. As much as Paw liked to remind folks that he’d been in Mexico during the war, people still whispered behind his back that he’d been more interested in looting Mexican gold and silver. Indeed, Paw’d never enlisted, nor had he served in any known unit.
“A freebooter,” it was suggested by men in the taverns—usually far into the night when they were deep in their cups. James Hancock had killed men who impugned his honor. Like so much about Paw, even his killings were veiled in controversy. Butler had been but a boy the first time he overheard a man claim that James Hancock had never killed a man in a fair fight.
That was the problem with Paw. No one knew him, least of all his own sons. Half the White River Valley considered James Hancock to be a scoundrel, and the other half thought of him as a solid man of the land, an entrepreneur, and a pillar of manifest destiny.
Was he the blackguard, backstabbing bastard that tough men dared not insinuate to his face, or the man who read King Lear by the fire at night, his long-stemmed pipe at hand?
Or is he both?
Why would such a self-serving cutpurse have encouraged his son Butler to pursue an education in letters? Paw claimed that the English adventurer Sir William Drummond Stewart had forever altered his appreciation for letters and a more cultured approach toward life.
James Hancock might be cold and calculating, but the man wouldn’t brook disobedience or poor behavior. He insisted on the standards and comportment of a gentleman, and at the same time consorted in the company of illiterate backwoods farmers, Indians, Mexicans, and free blacks. Many of the more upstanding citizens of Fayetteville—let alone the lordly planters in the Mississippi counties with whom Paw associated at the legislature—were appalled at the notion that he’d let a ragamuffin Cherokee like John Gritts share his table. Unfortunately, and to their immense discomfort, Paw’s reputation as a duelist—and that he always seemed to have enough gold in pocket—made his company “acceptable.” Not to mention his political influence with the illiterate voters in both Benton and Washington Counties.
Paw noticed Isaac’s hesitation—read it with the same ease Butler had. “Isaac,” he said, “I’ve been many things. One thing I am not is a traitor to my home. Arkansas has seceded. I’ll place my fortune and honor with her.” He raised a pale eyebrow. “And, my feelings about slavery be damned, that includes taking a commission in whatever military we cobble together.”
In the kitchen, Maw’s wooden spoon clattered as she and Sarah turned to stare their disbelief.
Butler straightened. “Then that decision steers my course, as well.”
“Do I have to go, too?” Billy cried, having long ago exhausted his fidgeting. He shot a sidelong glance at John Gritts. The big Cherokee seemed to be enjoying some private amusement.
Paw pointed his pipe stem. “You will not! You are only fourteen. Philip’s gone, God knows where. And by tarnal damnation, he’ll probably fight for the North just to enrage me. That means someone’s got to become the man of the house. Well, now’s your chance. You’ve got three or four, why perhaps as much as six, months before
