SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON smashed the flat of his hand down on the planking that served for a table in his canvas field tent. The blow dislodged ink-horn and pen stand, sent them flying to land and roll on the dirt floor. A hanging lamp, its suspending chains fastened to a tent-pole rod, swayed violently back and forth. 

"By Lucifer, captain! Don't dispute me!" 

Captain Stephen Vane, rigid with rage in his tight dragoon jacket and white trousers above the knee-high guard boots, tightened his mouth to a thin line. 

"I repeat, sir," Vane said stiffly, "I am neither an informer nor a spy. I will not be considered as one!" 

Jackson leaned across the planks and leered. "Oh, won't ye, now? By the red horns of Beelzebub, I say you will. Damn it, man! I need you! Your country needs you!" Jackson rose and walked around the crude desk to grasp the hanging tent flap and jerk it back. Vane could see the red dots of a thousand campfires on the Alabama landscape in this late summer of 1814. 

"Steve, you're the only man I got for the job! Look out there. The Army of the United States is celebrating a victory over the Creek Indians. A victory that don't mean a thing less'n we can keep the British from rip ping into our underbelly, anywhere from the Florida Keys to Barataria Bay. 

"The only way I can learn where they'll strike—they're readying a fleet of sixty big ships and an army of nine thousand men down in Jamaica—is by sending a man into New Orleans. I've tried to do just that, but it's a hotbed of unrest, that place! I've already lost three good men down there." 

Jackson was a tall, lanky man wearing a buckskin hunting shirt and tattered breeches that gave him the look of a querulous crane. Now he came striding back through the tent, scowling, biting his lips, eyes feverishly bright. 

"I hear tell you can handle a sword with the best man in my army," he growled. "Seems I've heard something about a duel or two—off the record, of course—in which you blooded half-a-dozen of my officers." 

Vane showed his teeth in a faint grin. "A matter of honor, general. They'd heard my mother was French and made remarks to which I took exception. The bulk of their belief was that if it came to a choice between Bonaparte and my country—" 

Jackson waved a hand. "I'm not interested in reasons. All I want to know is, can you use a sword? Good? Really good? I don't want some perfumed Orleannaise running you through because you've been taught to shoot a gun and not to move a pig-stabber around.” 

"I went to Edouard Signac's salle d'armes in Biloxi."

Outside the tent, a twig snapped crisply. 

The general grunted. "Doesn't mean a thing to me, though I suppose it should. All right. I'll take it for granted you can fence well enough to hold your own. And you speak French." 

Vane chuckled. "Like a native. My mother saw to that. But I've said I don't want to play the spy. I'm a captain of dragoons and—" 

By Lucifer, sir!" Jackson roared. "Am I your commanding officer or am I not? If I ordered you to charge a battery of twelve-pounders, you'd do it, wouldn't you?” 

"Certainly, sir! I—” 

"Then I'm ordering you to New Orleans. D'ye understand? To New Orleans, captain-as a deserter from the army, by Beelzebub !" 

Vane fumed. Anger surged into his face past the tight collar of his dragoon jacket. He was no plantation slave to be ordered to come and go at a mere whim. 

He moved from the plank desk to the tent flap and back. Impulse moved his hand to his Chicopee saber. He would have liked to rip it loose and throw it on the ground before Jackson and tell him what he could do with it, but his training as an officer prevented that. He breathed deeply. 

As air distended his lungs, he heard a twig snap outside the tent. Only short moments before, he'd heard another twig snap some distance away. 

Vane let the air out of his lungs slowly. He listened, but there was no sound. 

"General, I'm asking you to reconsider," he said, moving silently to the tent flap. "I ask you to send—" 

He leaped for the tent opening, an arm thrusting up the flap, revealing the dark figure of a man standing poised, crouched forward a little, intently listening. In one movement, Vane was outside the tent, both big hands fastened in the other's uniform coat. 

"You want to hear what the general tells me, come inside!" 

A hand struck at him as a voice cursed softly. 

Vane swayed aside and, loosing his grip, drove a left fist hard under the other's rib-case. The man grunted and sat down suddenly on the ground, both hands clasped to his middle. 

Andrew Jackson stood in the tent opening, grinning widely. 

“Serves you right, Baxter," he said. "Always pussy-footing around, you give a man unhealthy ideas. Now get on your feet and come inside. What d'ye want?" 

Jeremiah Baxter breathed harshly. His narrowed eyes gleamed venom up at Stephen Vane. "I was bringing you dispatches from President Monroe, general. Troops are being recruited in Tennessee and Georgia to rein force us against the threatened British invasion!" 

Jackson motioned both men inside the tent. Amusement made his thin mouth twitch. He introduced Vane to his aide. "Baxter conceives me to be his personal property, captain. He fusses over me worse than my wife Rachel." 

The men shook hands; Baxter like a ruffled rooster restoring his barnyard dignity, Vane with a rueful grin. "If I hadn't been so mad, I wouldn't have done that," Vane said. 

"No harm done, no harm at all," said the aide, but his eyes glared sullen hatred. 

Baxter put a small dispatch case on the plank table, then left the tent. Vane moved to the flap and stood watching until he disappeared between two distant campfires. 

"I don't trust that man," he said. 

Jackson was emphatic. "Nonsense! Been with me since the fight at Horseshoe Bend. He has only one failing: He gambles away every cent he gets his hands on. But never mind Baxter; he's unimportant. What is important—are you going to obey my command and take yourself off to New Orleans?" 

Vane moved his shoulders irritably. "If I refuse, you'll have me broken of my command. Maybe even shot. I'll go." 

Andrew Jackson grinned. He liked this young dragoon officer. There was good stuff in him, by Beelzebub! He stood up to a man, and let his mind think for itself. If he lost Vane the same way he lost the other men he'd sent into New Orleans-well, by the devil's horns! he'd take his army and burn the place. He would, by God! 

He hunched forward at the table, peering up sharply through the lamplight. "Sit down, captain. We've got a lot to talk about, you and I. New Orleans isn't like the rest of the country. We bought it from Napoleon only twelve years ago, along with the rest of the Louisiana Purchase." 

Vane laughed. "I know more about New Orleans than you suspect, sir. My mother was a De Roffignac. When Toussaint L'Ouverture led his blacks in the insurrection against the French on Haiti some years ago, she was all for throwing open our doors to the émigrés who came flocking to the United States for shelter. Most of them have taken up residence in New Orleans." 

Jackson growled, "They owe us no loyalty, I suppose, though some of them are patriotic as any Boston bean eater. One of them—who prefers to remain nameless to you for a time—will meet you in the Place d'Armes when the cross of the Cathedral throws its shadows on the cobblestones before the fountain. He likes to call himself L'Ombre Noire, the black shadow. 

“The melodrama is for a good reason. Just as our friend helps the American cause, so another French count—I don't know his name—helps the British. I can't tell you to watch out for him because I don't know who he is. I've a feeling he's the reason why I've lost three good men already." 

Vane nodded. "Just what is it I'm to learn?” 

Jackson rose to his feet. He drew out a parchment map from the scrolls thrust carelessly in a map rack. With pins, he attached it to the tent wall. 

His finger traced a line from Cape Hatteras down the Florida coast and up across the gulf to New Orleans. "The British are coming against us somewhere in here. That's our soft spot, the south. We're wide open to an invasion landing. And now would be a good time to hit us. 

"In August the British under General Ross burned Washington. He tried to burn Baltimore too, but they stopped him at Fort McHenry. Some young lawyer wrote a song about it, I hear. Calls it The Star-Spangled Banner, or some such thing. All very well to write songs, but right now the country doesn't know which way to turn. There's a lot of land down here to protect, and I don't have the men to do it. 

"I must learn where and when the British will hit us! Above all else, find that out. When you learn it, get word to me!" 

Jackson stared at the map a moment longer, and shook his head. "One more thing. There's a pirate down there in New Orleans, name of Jean Lafitte. He's friendly to the American cause. In case you need help, the knowledge might come in handy." 

Vane stood up. Jackson gloomed at him, biting his thick lower lip. "By Lucifer, I hope I'm not sending you to your grave the way I sent those other officers. If my need weren't so great, I wouldn't ask you to do this, captain." 

Vane shrugged. He did not mind the clean death of sword thrust or rifle ball so much. It was the thought of hanging that put the icy chill in his middle. If the British found him out, they'd put a noose around his throat fast enough. 

He saluted crisply, but uneasiness ate in him. 

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