Rifles for Watie (22 page)

“Yeah—or mine!” growled an artilleryman, stepping on his feet.

“Here's my eye. Let's see you stomp it!”

“Here's mine.”

Jostled by his own furious soldiers, Clardy might have been mauled badly had not the cannon fire begun again. Sullenly the men formed a line. This time the firing came from across the river, but a Union battery quickly got the range of the rebel gun and silenced it.

“Let's give the cowardly so-and-so the treatment,” somebody proposed after the firing stopped.

Quickly they lined up behind one another, fifty of them. Jeff fell in line with the others and learned for the first time how soldiers punished an unpopular officer.

As they passed Clardy, one at a time, each man saluted briskly. Mechanically, Clardy saluted back. The line grew longer as some of the soldiers ran from the head to the foot so they could pass him two or three times. Clardy's right arm grew heavy from the exercise. Soon he could hardly lift it.

Soon Clardy guessed their purpose. Although he returned the salutes, a sneer was on his lips, and his eyes flashed vengefully.

Jeff looked again at the prisoner. He lay motionless in the dusty street. Jeff's fists clenched in helpless anger. Upset by the incident, he rejected an invitation to accompany Stuart and Bill and Noah on a tour of the town, and turned off alone to walk along the river levee.

He had gone a short way when he was accosted by a Negro slave. Hat in hand, the Negro asked whether he would be kind enough to come to a cabin close by to see an old man who was dying. He said the old man, a former slave, loved freedom and had prayed to live long enough to see a “Linkum soldier.”

“It he last chance, young massa,” the slave entreated. “He goin' fast.”

Touched, Jeff followed him through the dusk to a small shack built on stilts. The slave opened the door, and Jeff stepped inside, taking off his cap. The poorly furnished room was illuminated dimly by candlelight. A fire of cottonwood logs crackled faintly from the mud fireplace, casting weird, dancing shadows on the rude plank walls.

Beneath a patched and faded quilt on the only bed in the room lay an old Negro. Eyes shut, he looked as limp as a piece of rope. In the eerie light, the black skin on his wrinkled face looked the same texture as document paper. Several other Negroes stood around the foot of the bed, regarding Jeff wonderingly.

As they raised him gently to a sitting position and pointed toward Jeff, the old man opened his eyes and whimpered, “Whar? I don' see nuffin.”

He was turned facing Jeff. When his old eyes fell on Jeff's blue uniform, he raised his hands. In a deep voice he murmured, reverently and brokenly, “I bress God,” and fell back dead.

Deeply moved, Jeff walked quietly outside. This was part of what they were fighting for. Freedom meant a great deal to many Southern people, too. Behind him he heard the Negroes praying in the room where the old fellow lay.

When the slave came out the door to thank Jeff for coming, he said that the old man was one hundred years old, “an' maybe mo'.”

He walked back toward the Union camp on the bluff. It was dark now, save for a faint smear of orange low in the west. Overhead the first stars were twinkling timidly. He could smell the river mud and hear the gentle wash of the current. His mind was busy with the events of the last two days. Never had so much happened in so little time.

He thought gloomily of his own family back in Kansas. Would he ever live to see them again? He thought of Lucy Washbourne, the proud, mettlesome rebel girl back in Tahlequah and wondered what she was doing tonight? Probably holding hands with some rebel sweetheart. A girl that beautiful was sure to have her front porch full of suitors.

Back in camp he had the bad luck to run into the orderly sergeant and was detailed to stand picket guard on the road leading from Van Buren to the Union camp at the top of the bluff. His instructions were to commandeer all the liquor the men might try to bring. The Second Kansas Cavalry had captured three rebel steamboats. Hundreds of Blunt's cavalrymen had swarmed into the galleys and helped themselves to the cold corn pone, spareribs, pies, candied yams, and to unlimited quantities of bottled liquor.

Soon the men came straggling back. Many of them were intoxicated. Ignoring their arguments and protestations, Jeff made them pile the liquor on the ground until soon he was standing guard over samples of whisky, gin, brandy, wine, rum, cordials, and such local products as moonshine and home-brewed beer. Despite his careful surveillance, some of the liquor got through.

For want of anything better to do, he began to pull the corks from the various bottles and jugs and to sniff them. He thought most of it pretty horrible until he came to a small basket flask that smelled exactly like the delicious apple cider his father concocted. Carefully he emptied the water out of his canteen and poured in the cider.

At one o'clock he was relieved and crawled between his blankets high on the bluff overlooking the town. Most of the soldiers were sleeping. Behind him Jeff could hear their snores and their measured, heavy breathing. He was just dozing off when somebody shook his shoulder roughly.

“Pardon me,” a thick voice said. It was Baldwin, a big, quiet, sour-faced infantryman who rarely spoke and never laughed or smiled, until he became intoxicated, whereupon his black eyes would dilate with good humor, his mouth expand hospitably, and he was a whole circus by himself. But this time he wasn't by himself. With him was a small private whom Jeff didn't know. The small man wore a black beard.

“Pardon me,” Baldwin burped, politely, “I want you to meet General Blunt.”

With an expansive sweep of his hand, he indicated his small companion, who came forward unsteadily and, in a very dignified manner, bowed so low that he almost fell into the nearby campfire.

Amused, Jeff got to his feet and, with a salute and a handshake, acknowledged the introduction. Then Baldwin and “Blunt” left him and began waking up other soldiers and going through the same routine.

Unable to go back to sleep, Jeff yawned and, turning on his side, looked down upon Van Buren. The ruby glow of a big fire blazed from the distant river levee. He heard returning soldiers say that it was a large brick warehouse filled with rebel supplies. He sat up in his blankets so he could see it better and felt the hard bulge of his canteen under him.

Uncapping it, he sniffed the cider. It still smelled good. He decided to taste it. Tilting the canteen, he drank a couple of swallows, smacking his lips. Although it stung his tongue a little, he liked the smooth apple flavor. It tasted even better than the cider back home. Soon he began to feel very cheerful.

He got to his feet, only to discover that the sky, brightly spangled with stars, was swimming around and around. He reached for a small black gum tree nearby to steady himself but, owing to some strange confusion, there were now three trees instead of one. Missing all three, he fell back down upon his bed.

There was a mumble of familiar voices. Noah, Mitchell, and Bill Earle were returning from town. They greeted him noisily and began to spread their blankets. Jeff pushed his canteen, still uncapped, over toward Noah.

“That's—stronghest—cider I ever drank,” he mumbled, his tongue feeling thick and furry. “I donwananymore.” He pulled a blanket over his head.

Noah looked at him queerly, then stooped and picked up the canteen, sniffing at it suspiciously. He grunted, “That's not cider, youngster. That's high-proof applejack.”

Jeff felt Noah stuffing the blankets around his hips.

“Lor' Noah,” Jeff said, miserably, “you'll ner—get me—take 'nother drink.”

Noah said amiably, “I don't remember anybody asking you to take this one.”

Noah sat down and began to unlace Jeff's shoes. He pulled them off and, looking at them in the flickering firelight, frowned and shook his shaggy head. The boy was practically barefoot. And they were heading back to Cane Hill in the morning. Forty miles over stony roads and through thirty-seven fordings of Cove Creek.

When the bugles sounded reveille at daybreak, Jeff sat up in his blankets. He smelled smoke. A campfire burned merrily in the gray light close by. He felt tired and worn-out as though he were taking a cold.

Noah towered over him, a bottle of whisky in one hand. “Come on, youngster,” he said and led him to the creek. When Jeff saw the whisky, he shook his head positively, hanging back.

“I don't want any, Noah.”

Noah's white teeth shone in one of his rare grins.

“Take off your shirt,” he said.

Jeff fumbled with the buttons. A lavender flush lay along the eastern horizon. The early morning air was sharp. Pulling off his shirt, he looked down off the bluff. Most of the sandy river plain below was hidden by a long low cloud of fluffy white vapor that hugged the valley floor for miles, clinging to the water and the low places. Only the fuzzy tops of a few tall cottonwoods and willows showed. It was half an hour yet until sunup.

Noah made Jeff plunge his head into a bucket of water, then handed him part of an old blanket to dry it on. He jerked the cork out of the bottle with his teeth and began rubbing the whisky vigorously over Jeff's upper body.

Jeff wrinkled his nose. “Whew!” he said. “I smell like a distillery.”

When he dressed and got back to the fire, Noah was frying thick slabs of ham in a skillet. It was the same ham he had taken away from the Negro. Mitchell was mixing flapjacks in a new white enamel washpan he had found in one of the Van Buren stores. The price “5¢” was still crayoned on it in a purple scrawl. A big can of coffee was bubbling on the coals.

Both the coffee and the ham smelled wonderful to Jeff. Invigorated by the cold water and the rubdown, he felt better. As he turned to pack his bedding, he felt so good that he didn't mind at all the forty-mile hike back to Cane Hill.

  
14

The Cow Lot

It was spring in the Cherokee Nation. As Jeff tramped along with the infantry on the road from Three Forks to Tahlequah, he took a long pull of the pine-scented morning air.

On the slopes needle points of greenness were thrusting through the gray earth. Wild onion, verbena, and buffalo burr nodded from the sandy trailside, and Noah said the dogwood blossoms would soon appear, looking like enormous coverlets of white lace spread here and there in the woods. Down in the bottoms the new grass was out. Sweet, damp smells of new life came from the ground, and the April sun warmed the air.

They struck a sandy path that cattle had trodden. Obeying a sudden impulse, Jeff sat down and pulled off his shoes and stockings. Knotting the laces together, he swung the shoes around his neck and began walking barefoot in the cool, moist earth. Bill Earle eyed him with amazement.

“One of us must be crazy, and I feel all right.”

Jeff laughed. He felt as bouncy and frolicsome as a biting shoat. He swung along, feeling the cool gray sand sift between his toes. Soon they would be in Tahlequah. Maybe he would see Lucy Washbourne again.

Dixie was exploring the field nearby. The top of her head was wet where she had been nosing in the dewy brush. Mike Dempsey had kept her for Jeff during the long march to Van Buren.

Soon Jeff smelled willows and water and river sand. He stopped to draw on his shoes and stockings. They came up to the Neosho River and a small, deserted crosswoods store built near the ferry landing.

Jeff dropped out of the column to get a drink, Dixie at his heels. A flash of blue in the brush behind the store arrested his attention. Squinting curiously between the branches, he almost stepped on a little old woman wearing a sunbonnet and a man's coat that was much too large for her. She was seated on a small wooden barrel, fishing from the riverbank. In her wrinkled hands was a short willow pole.

Startled, she jumped. “Look out, thar, soldier boy. You scairt me!” she shrilled in a burst of high, thin laughter. “Well, well! So yer bluecoats. On your way to Tahlequah, I bet. Couple, three days ago a bunch o' Watie's grays rode their hosses acrost thet very ford, right thar. They was goin' to Tahlequah, too. How'd you aliked to met up with 'em, soldier boy?”

Watie men! Jeff's hands tightened whitely on his musket. He had already met the Watie men.

Tucking her linsey skirt around her thin ankles, the old woman jerked her line out of the water and flipped it neatly into a different riffle.

“I lived fifteen year in Tahlequah,” she said, proudly. “Andy Jackson's soldiers made me hoof it thar all the way from Rome, Georgia. Rome's whar Stand Watie was born. But I'm not a rebel, even iffen I am from Stand's home town. I got grandsons in both armies.”

Jeff took off his cap. “Mam, may I have a drink and fill my canteen here? I'm dry as a gourd.”

With a gnarled forefinger she pointed to the spring behind her. “Thank you, mam,” Jeff said and buried his face in the cool water, drinking deeply.

“Jeepers, soldier boy, I tried to enlist in both armies, but neither one 'ud have me. I'd be useful to an army. I can cook, sew, wash, and doctor. And fish! Man, I could ketch enough fish on these h'yar crawdads to feed old Blunt's whole outfit.”