Rifles for Watie (13 page)

Jeff glared at him, an idea forming in his mind, a bold, crazy idea that didn't make sense at all. Maybe he couldn't do anything about it. But he could try. The McComases had fed him and given him apples for his comrades, despite the fact he was an enemy. And this was how they were repaid. Impatiently he crawled to his feet. It was still an hour before bedtime.

He looked at Noah, sudden decision in his face. “Who's the sentry down at the corral tonight?”

Noah peered up at Jeff. “Oscar Earnshaw. Why?”

Jeff looked at Noah meaningfully, without replying. He knew he could trust Noah. And Bill and John, too, for that matter. He put on his coat. He felt lots better about it, now that he had made up his mind.

“Careful, youngster,” Noah warned in a low voice as Jeff went out. “It's after retreat, you know.”

Jeff found Oscar Earnshaw standing behind a tree in the corral, blowing on his hands. Oscar was a fleshy fellow with long brown sideburns that came clear down to the lobes of his ears. He had leaned his musket against the corral fence.

Oscar peered uncertainly at Jeff in the dark, reaching for his gun.

Jeff hastened to identify himself. “It's me. Jeff Bussey. I want to talk to you a minute.” Suspicious, Oscar kept his musket in the hollow of his arm and thrust his hands into the sleeves of his greatcoat for warmth. “Whad'ye want to talk about? I was hopin' you was comin' to relieve me. It's cold out here as a well-digger's bloomers.”

“Oscar,” whispered Jeff, “how'd you like those apples I brought you yesterday afternoon?”

Oscar looked sharply at Jeff. “You didn't come way out here in the frost jest to ask me that. You know how well I liked 'em. Best winesaps I ever et. Only thing, they wasn't enough of 'em. Why?”

Jeff went straight to the point. “Look, Oscar, if I bring you a big slice of home-baked light bread with apple butter smeared all over it, would you do something for me?”

Oscar took his hands out of his sleeves and thrust them under his armpits to warm them. He looked inscrutably at Jeff.

“Depends,” he said. “You know I'd do murder fer a feast like that. But where you gonna git any light bread and apple butter round here, let alone this time o' night? This is an army camp. All we got to eat here is buckwheat an' beans.”

Jeff told him about the McComases. “Oscar,” he concluded boldly, “I want you to look the other way while I take that black-and-white heifer out of the corral and drive her back to the McComas farm.”

Oscar's eyes twinkled shrewdly. He stared thoughtfully at Jeff. “What d'yuh mean, look the other way? I'll help you cut her out myself. The corral's full o' cows. They'll never miss one.”

As Jeff moved off, driving the cow ahead of him, Oscar warned in low tones, “Be sure to come back through my sentry position. An' bring the bread and jelly.”

Jeff nodded, herding the cow off the road into the dark woods. The beast went willingly enough, as though she knew the path. As he walked, Jeff could feel the damp cold shutting down on him.

An hour later he drove the animal quietly into the McComas corral and locked the gate. A big smoky moon, yellow as brass, was rising through the branches of the apple trees. The house and the barn stood silent in its glow.

Jeff took the milk bucket off the oaken peg, rinsed it at the well, and finished milking the heifer. Walking up to the back door with the half-filled bucket in his hand, he knocked and called out guardedly, “Mrs. McComas.” After he had called several times, he heard a noise inside and somebody stirring.

Mrs. McComas opened the back door cautiously. She was holding a hog-fat lamp in one hand. It splashed faint pools of light here and there in the yard. She looked frightened and sleepy.

Jeff said, “It's me, mam. I brought your cow back. Sentry helped me smuggle her out of the corral. I just now finished milking her for you. Here's the milk.” He thrust the bucket toward her.

Puzzled, she set the lamp down on the table. Brushing the hair out of her eyes, she accepted the bucket with a look of astonishment. Quickly Jeff told her about the confiscation detail and how they had all volunteered for it without knowing what it was.

Ten minutes later he was on his way back to camp, carrying a couple of fresh apple-butter sandwiches in his blouse for Oscar Earnshaw and gorging another she had given him for himself.

Three months later he wasn't so fortunate. On a balmy day in January, Captain Clardy ordered all guns cleaned for a noon inspection.

Walking a short distance into the woods, Jeff raised his old-style musket to shoot it off preparatory to cleaning the barrel. An unpleasant memory stayed him. Remembering his arrest and punishment for doing this same thing on the march to Springfield, he lowered the weapon. He decided it would be more discreet to go to Clardy and get his permission.

Ushered by a sentry, he found Clardy inside his quarters in the officers' barracks. A fire burned cozily in his “California” type furnace, a hole dug in the ground and covered with a removable stone. The smoke was tunneled to an outside flue. A long blue overcoat, a cape, and a pair of gray woolen drawers hung from pegs in the wall. Clardy's glistening black head was bent low over his reports. They were alone. The captain didn't look up.

Jeff saluted briskly. “Sir, may I have permission to fire off the load in my musket so I can clean it? It'll take too long to draw the load with a ball screw.”

Clardy's probing eyes rose slowly and deliberately over the feathered end of the quill with which he was writing. He transfixed Jeff with a cold, naked stare, letting him stand for a whole minute with his question unanswered. Finally the captain seemed to tire of his sport. He dropped his gaze back upon his reports.

He nodded curtly. “Permission granted.”

“Thank you, sir.” Feeling relieved, Jeff backed out. He walked two hundred yards into the woods, fired into a sandbank, and had hardly begun to clean the barrel when a patrol swooped down upon him, arresting him by the order of the colonel.

Jeff claimed the permission of Captain Clardy. Deciding to check, the sergeant took him before Clardy and asked if he had given Jeff the permission.

Clardy snarled, “Of course I didn't. This man did the same thing on the march to Wilson's Creek when we were only a few miles from the enemy. I had to punish him.”

Enraged, Jeff turned on Clardy, forgetting all caution. “Sir,” he said hotly, “you gave me the permission yourself right here only five minutes ago, and you know it.”

Shocked by Jeff's effrontery, the sergeant fell back a pace. Confusion in his face, he looked uncertainly from one to the other.

Clardy sprang to his feet, his face livid with anger. “Arrest that man!” he howled. “You hear me? Take him to the guardhouse. I'm tired of his eternal impertinence. This time I'm going to teach him a lesson he'll never forget.”

Jeff spent one day in the guardhouse, a guarded tent. For two weeks he was assigned to the most disagreeable tasks the captain could contrive, marching about the camp carrying a knapsack filled with rocks, digging stumps, burying dead horses, digging latrines. Finally he was switched to a shovel crew that was busily constructing breastworks around the southern approaches of the camp. It was hard work. The ground, rocky and frozen, had to be broken first with a pick. The more Jeff labored, the more his hate for Clardy grew.

One day he passed a husky, brown-faced young workman carrying a big stone. When the workman saw Jeff, he looked so astonished he almost dropped his boulder.

“Jeff!”

It was David Gardner. Overjoyed, David threw down his stone, ran to Jeff's side, and began to pound him on the back. Then he saw the shovel in Jeff's hands and the dark look on Jeff's face.

“Goshallmighty, Jeff,” he stammered. “What are you doin' on the ditch crew? Did you desert, too?”

That night Jeff lay quietly on his cold pallet, trying to think. All around him he could hear the snores of the other prisoners and smell the stench of their unwashed bodies. Slowly his mind began to go back over the last few weeks. They had been difficult weeks for him, thanks to Clardy's tyranny.

Turning on his side, he shut his eyes and clenched his teeth. Although he still hadn't lost his desire to fight in battle, he was torn with loathing for all the cruelty and tyranny that accompanied war. Sleep didn't come to him until nearly midnight.

Next morning, after he had awakened and had breakfast, he felt better and began again to dream his old dream, looking forward to the day when he would get off the trench-digging detail and back onto the battle line, where he could settle his old score with the rebel Missourians. With the coming of spring, Jeff knew there would be more fighting.

He was right. In May, 1862, two months after he won his emancipation from the road crew, he was transferred to Fort Scott, Kansas, and became a part of a Federal invasion force of six thousand men under Colonel William Weer. Weer was a soldierly-looking fellow who had commanded a band of Jayhawkers in territorial days and had been a lawyer at Wyandotte, Kansas. Leaving Fort Scott in June, Weer's army moved down the old military road into the Cherokee Indian nation.

Its mission was to restore to their homes the loyal refugee Indian families who had fled into Southern Kansas early in the war. Also, it was to form a protective cover for Kansas and Southwest Missouri, operating against small enemy forces in the vicinity of Tahlequah and Fort Gibson.

Jeff could hardly wait to start. Nearly thirteen months in the army and he still hadn't fired a shot in combat!

  
10

Foraging in the Cherokee Country

The expedition started in early June, crossing the Kansas state line below Baxter Springs and moving down the Grand River into the Cherokee Indian nation. Pickets were posted every night, for now they were in enemy country and small parties of rebel Indians prowled all around them.

It had been a dry spring and they were plagued by lack of water every mile of the march. The only running water was in Grand River itself. However, it did not cross their route often, so they had to rely on the stagnant pools in the bottoms of the dried-up creeks, where small herds of brown Indian cattle stood in the muddy sinkholes, switching their tails and shaking their heads to protect their legs from the large greenheaded flies that attacked them constantly.

When Jeff saw the army cooks drive the cattle out of the creeks and scoop up the greenish ooze with their big government buckets and camp kettles, he lost all his thirst and resolved not to take another drink until autumn. However, the cooks kept boiling the muddy liquid and skimming it through clean white dish towels until finally it was usable. He was surprised what good coffee it made, and coffee was all he drank until they veered alongside the river every three or four days and refilled their canteens.

With them were two regiments of newly organized Union Indian Home Guards, mostly Creeks and Seminoles armed with antiquated long-barreled Indian rifles. Jeff had never seen soldiers like them. Their small blue military caps looked ridiculous on their bushy heads. Every night they made medicine for the coming battles by singing their weird war songs. The backbone of the expedition consisted of two white regiments of Kansas and Wisconsin infantry, three of Kansas and Ohio cavalry, and batteries from Kansas and Indiana. Behind the army in creaking wagons rode thousands of Indian refugees, women, children, and aged men, and it seemed to Jeff that every child in the caravan had a pet puppy. Destitute, they were returning to their homes after being driven out by the rebels in the early days of the war. Jeff walked. Although the rocky miles stretched endlessly and his feet hurt, he was glad to be back with the infantry. Anything was better than the road gang.

As they kept trudging southwestward along the old military road, the weather became unseasonably warm. Although it was spring, no rain had fallen, and the grass was dry enough to burn. The winds blew so hot and searing that the birds stopped singing. Tempers began to grow short, and the men to grumble.

“Nothin' here but rocks and dead grass,” one protested.

“This is Stand Watie's home stompin' grounds,” another sulked. “I didn't jine up jist to fight Injuns. I thought we was gonna fight the rebels.”

Jeff had heard of Stand Watie, a warlike Cherokee of mixed blood, who owned slaves and commanded a small, hard-riding rebel cavalry unit that had begun to raid, boldly and sharply, the comfortable homes, fields, and livestock of the Union Indian sympathizers who had not yet left the country. Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, and Creeks—most of them were now fighting actively with the South. He had also heard that some of the rebel Indian troops at Pea Ridge, armed with nothing better than bow and arrow and tomahawk, had scalped dead Union soldiers on the field.

Pea Ridge. Jeff felt his face and neck redden angrily, even in the stifling heat. Clardy had kept him so long on the road crew at Rolla that he had missed the Battle of Pea Ridge in northwestern Arkansas. His company had fought in it, and it had been the first Federal victory of the war in the far West.