Read Online Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase by David Nevin - Free Book Online Page A

thought I’d see a Madison betray his people. You’ve turned your coat, sir.”
    She saw a look of surprising vulnerability flash over Jimmy’s face and then his expression hardened. “I’ve done no such thing, sir, and I resent your saying so.”
    It was so unexpected that she felt momentarily disoriented; then she saw the officer staring at her with angry intensity and all her instincts went on guard.
    “Oh, do you?” the old man shouted. “Well, the people who matter, who count for something in this country, they understand what you’re doing, the false doctrine you and your precious Mr. Jefferson are spreading. Common man democracy!” He spat the words out as if they had a foul taste. “Look at France, a monument to what it really means. What it’s always meant. You let the rabble get control and they’ll destroy everything— everything ! Dragged everyone who counted off to that great bloody blade of theirs; you think that can’t happen here? It can . You’ll see. You think you’re safe, but they’ll turn on you too; you’ll never be able to control the passions of your own followers—”
    Listening to the old man rant, she saw the danger; he believed every word of it. Like the women at whist, the old woman in the apricot hat, he honestly saw Democrats as in league with the devil! No one denied that ideals expressed in our own revolution had spun out of control in France, the clattering guillotine taking revenge against centuries of wealth and privilege. And then Napoleon Bonaparte seized a broken country and imposed his rule—
    “We’re not the French, Colonel,” Jimmy said. His voice was strong. It was the point he’d made again and again. The French peasant came out of feudalism, but the common man in America has governed himself for two hundred years. He won’t lose his mind.

    For a moment she felt reassured; but then, looking into the old eyes, she saw he hadn’t even heard. “Do you have any idea how frightened people are?” he cried. “They look for mobs, riots, pillaging, burning. They’re building walls, setting out buckets of sand, rigging two-man pumps at their wells. Laying out pistols and shotguns—”
    The son interrupted. It was snakelike, his lips scarcely moving, and this stirred an atavistic fear in her.
    “It won’t come to mobs, because we won’t let it ! The army will be ready, cannon loaded with grape and bayonets fixed. We’ll cut rabble mobs down like scything wheat!”
    He whirled on Jimmy. “Take this as warning. You damned Jacobins aren’t going to steal this country from us!”
    “We’re not Jacobins!” Dolley cried. The radical French clubs that led to revolutionary violence were nothing like American Democrats.
    But the whisper went on, harsh as stones rubbing together. “The army stands for order, decency, stability. We destroyed the whiskey rebels, and I promise you we’ll handle your democratic rabble just the same.”
    Oh, the whiskey rebels! Pennsylvania farmers protesting an unfair tax on what they made from their grain. There’d been a rough few weeks, but they’d dispersed in the end. But Federalists had mounted an army and saw the outcome as a great victory.
    The soldier’s hand came up slowly and he pointed a finger at her that was like a pistol. “So let me tell you, madam—and you, Mr. Jacobin Democrat traitor —you go one little notch beyond the straight and narrow and we’ll crush you!”
    She stared into his saurian eyes; her hands were cold and there was an icy flutter in her breast.
    And Jimmy said, “Major, no one is talking mobs except you. Should mobs form, citizens can be deputized to control them. You are a subordinate officer of the U.S. Army, and what you are talking about is using the military to subvert the democratic process. Such action would be high treason, and such talk, sir, is a disgrace to your uniform!”

    That told him—and yet, stating it so baldly increased her own sense of ground opening at her feet