Rifles for Watie (15 page)

Noah had found several ears of corn in a rebel crib, and Mitchell, who had been a baker at Council Grove, knew what to do. Using the butt of his musket, he pounded the corn into a pulpy meal, adding a little flour, water, and an egg. He spread his black oilcloth cloak on the ground, rolled up his sleeves and, adding salt to the batter, made a dough so delicious-looking that Jeff's eyes stuck out like marbles as he watched the wet cakes drop from Mitchell's freckled fingers onto the hot pan over the fire. He was sure he had never eaten anything half so good as that hot corn bread and the fresh honey they spread over it.

The bountiful Cherokee farms gave up many a hog and a chicken to the small but hungry Union army of Colonel Weer. The first thing the soldiers did after pitching camp in the evening was to visit the nearby barnyards. Gunshots were heard, then the soldiers returned to camp, carrying game over their shoulders or safely gigged on their bayonets. Although Colonel Weer threatened to punish anybody caught foraging, the pickets usually yawned and looked the other way as the army, tired of the wormy hardtack and the tasteless salt horse, rustled its own provisions.

One day the army camped early. Mike Dempsey, the old Irish teamster who had befriended Jeff at Fort Leavenworth, went foraging with Jeff and Bill Earle.

Jeff filled his pockets with beets and onions. Bill Earle was straining under the weight of half a sack of last year's sweet potatoes, and Mike had speared a large gray goose with his bayonet. On their way to camp, they passed a deserted log house in the midst of a thicket of black cedars. The waters of a small creek sang sweetly nearby.

Jeff halted, looking curiously at the old cabin. Rose and lavender from the dying Cherokee sunset reflected faintly off its broken windowpanes. “Let's see what's inside,” he proposed.

“Aw, let it go, Jeff,” Bill urged. “We already got all we can carry. Nothin' there, anyhow.”

“Might be,” said Jeff. Entering the open door, he explored the dark interior but found nothing. Just as he was leaving, he heard a plaintive meow and a large yellow tomcat followed him out into the warm dusk, pausing to arch its back and stretch its toes on the hot ground.

Jeff stooped to rub its back and the fur felt warm to his touch. “All they left was the house cat,” he reported. He picked up the cat and started back to camp.

“Hey!” protested Bill, frowning. “Whad'ya wanta take a cat back with us for?”

Jeff said, innocently, “I don't know. To keep the enemy from getting him, I guess.”

Disgust showed plainly in Bill's face. “Jeez!” he snorted.

Although they waited until dark to enter camp, they had the bad luck almost to collide with a detail of soldiers. A firm voice command, “Halt! Fetch a light, somebody.”

Jeff could feel the sweat crawling down his neck. He knew the penalty for pillaging—two days' hard labor digging up stumps. He knew that in his own case Clardy would cheerfully double it and, on the grounds that Jeff was an old offender, probably make him stand all night on his tiptoes with his thumbs tied together over an overhanging tree branch.

A torch flashed in their faces. They were half-blinded by its sudden glare.

“You men know the regulations against stealing from civilians,” a lieutenant scolded sternly.

Jeff blinked and swallowed nervously. “Sir,” he protested helplessly. “We didn't steal it. We just took it.”

Hearing the lieutenant's voice, Mike Dempsey glanced keenly at the officer's face.

“It's Lootenant Sor-rely, isn't it, sor?” he said, dropping the goose so he could salute. Its heavy carcass thumped noisily into the weeds at his feet.

Surprise creased the lieutenant's whiskered face, vaguely visible in the torchlight. “Is that you, Dempsey?” His voice sounded a little more conciliatory.

Mike began to chuckle in his hoarse growl. “It is, sor. Bedad, sor, I can explain everyt'ing. I've got a dead goose on the ground here that I had to kill. Me frinds here and I was goin' along paceably whin this goose dar-rted out of the brush and hissed at the Amer-rican flag. An so bejabez, I speared him on the spot. What else could I do, sor?”

“Meow,” purred the cat in Jeff's arms.

The lieutenant's head jerked about. Ignoring the vegetables in Jeff's possession, he looked with amusement at the cat riding on his shoulder. Jeff began to feel better.

With rough amiability the officer barked, “What you got there, mister? A pussycat? I know nothing in regulations forbidding the confiscation of a rebel pussycat. Detail dismissed!” Tossing his torch into a nearby fire, he walked off into the gloom.

“Whew!” panted Bill Earle. “That was close.” He turned to Jeff. “That cat saved our necks. And it was my big mouth that tried to talk you outa bringin' him.” Picking up their booty, they began walking again, hugging the shadows.

Jeff whispered to Mike, “Who was he?”

Mike was still chuckling. “Lootenant Sorely. His father and I were boys togither in County Roscommon, back in west Ireland. Tim Sorely and I used to play Gaelic football togither with an old leather ball fulla straw. When the lootenant was a laddie, I held him on me knee many a time.”

Bill Earle said, “The good Lord was sure holdin' all three of us by the hand t'night.”

“Amen,” Jeff said heartily.

“Meow,” said the cat, and that seemed to make it unanimous.

Three days later the command moved on down the military road toward Flat Rock, twelve miles north of Fort Gibson. Again the northern troops sweltered in the almost tropical heat. No rain had fallen since the expedition had entered the Indian country. The cavalry had constant brushes with small bands of Stand Watie's rebel horsemen, who raided busily on both flanks. Jeff's outfit had missed the defeat of Clarkson and Watie and the capture of some of their supplies by the Union Creek Home Guards at Locust Grove.

“Just my luck,” Jeff muttered to Noah Babbitt. “I'll never get in a real fight.”

Noah was chewing a blade of grass. “That's what I'd call good luck, youngster.” But Jeff didn't see it that way.

“All I ever get to fight are these dad-gummed body lice,” he complained. He began to look along the roadside for red pokeberries. Joe Grayson had told him that if you'd boil up a kettle of pokeberry roots and bathe yourself and wash your clothes in the juice, it would kill all the body lice in creation.

They kept walking. The day became hotter and the ground rockier. The straps on the heavy pack chafed Jeff's back. The warm sweat ran down his neck and chest. His rifle barrel felt hot to the touch.

Stuart Mitchell drawled laconically, “This country is two rocks to one dirt.”

Dixie trotted alongside Jeff, her pink tongue vibrating as she panted. Despite the universal dryness, Jeff had never seen finer cattle country, nor more cattle. He could always look up while marching and see a bunch of beef grazing somewhere. The yellowing bluestem grew stirrup high to a big horse. Occasionally coyotes galloped through it, only the tips of their tails visible.

Bill Earle sighed and changed hands on his musket. “Cripes!” he panted in his high voice. “If this keeps up, it otta take the frost outa the ground.”

They were patrolling the right flank of the main column so they could forage as they marched. They hadn't had anything to eat all day save a prod of ham John Chadwick had found in the ashes of a cold campfire that morning. Noah said the fire had probably been made the day before by Watie's men. Jeff had found a quarter of a pail of sorghum in a smokehouse and filled his canteen with it.

Late in the afternoon they flushed a young beef out of the brush. Herding it to the edge of the woods, they shot it. As it lay kicking, its eyes glazed in death, John thrust his knife into its throat and a column of blood gushed over the hot grass. After the animal had bled, Millholland flipped the carcass over on its back, carefully turning the head under the shoulder to balance it. He drew his knife and began skinning. Jeff watched with admiration.

The sergeant certainly knew what he was doing. Quickly Millholland straddled the carcass and, working down the belly, slit the hide from chin to tail. Then he slit each leg from the heel to the belly. Grasping the hide with his strong hands, he peeled it off, laying it back so the meat could be cut up on the inside of the hide instead of on the dusty ground. After he had carved off several steaks, Millholland dropped them in Noah's camp skillet.

He wiped the knife clean on his pants legs. The ragged men stared with hungry fascination at the fresh meat.

John Chadwick blurted, “Le's stop right here and broil 'em. We can join the main column later.” Everybody looked at Millholland. The sergeant squinted at the sun and nodded, and Jeff's heart leaped with joy. Bill Earle and Mitchell began breaking off dead tree limbs for a fire. It was Jeff's day to cook.

The red meat looked fresh and tender. Jeff's mouth drooled hungrily.

He tenderized the steaks by pounding them with the butt of his musket. Noah produced a skin bag filled with white salt, and Jeff salted the meat carefully. Borrowing John's knife, he cut some green switches from a dogwood growing nearby. After the fire burned down, he threaded the steaks on spits over the live coals. Noah wrapped the remainder of the carcass into a slicker.

While the steaks were broiling, Jeff found some red pokeberries, dug up the roots with his bayonet and, borrowing some water from Mitchell's canteen, placed the roots on the fire in a stew kettle to boil. He began pulling off his clothes. So did Mitchell. They were going after those body lice.

As Jeff struggled with a knotted shoelace, he could smell the aroma of the broiling veal and hear the steaks sizzle as juice from them dropped into the fire. The smell was maddening. He yanked off his shoes and socks.

Mitchell peeled off his drawers and, standing naked by the fire, dropped them into the open kettle. Huge splotches of pink freckles covered his entire body.

“Look,” he said, glancing up. “There's riders.”

Jeff straightened, shading his eyes with his hand. A dozen men, all mounted, rode into the clearing. They wore boots and slouch hats. All were heavily armed. Jeff shifted his bare feet on the rocky ground, studying them. They were probably from Judson's Sixth Kansas Cavalry.

A long, piercing yell, shrill as a wildcat's scream, rent the air. A rifle cracked, and Jeff ducked instinctively as a bullet cut through the trees over his head and twigs and leaves fell in a cascade around him. He stared incredulously at the cavalry. Darned fools! Couldn't they see the blue pants of the infantrymen?

“Rebels!” Mitchell shrieked the hated word in mingled alarm and rage. Astonished at the reckless boldness of enemy riders striking so close to Weer's main column, Jeff stood rooted to the spot. Then he heard the swift drumming of hostile hoofbeats and the Confederates were on them, yelling fiendishly and firing pistols.

Cut off from his rifle, which lay against a small hickory where they had skinned the beef, Jeff dived barefooted into a nearby thicket. Dixie was at his heels, her tail between her legs and her ears flattened out. Pistol reports rang out loudly behind him, the noise spanging into the woods, arousing echoes. It seemed the whole rebel army was shooting at him.

Letting out his last notch of speed, he ran with all his strength between the trees, scarcely noticing the rocks tearing the soles of his bare feet. It seemed that the concussion of the rebel fire was pushing him along, lending him wings.

He felt something wet flowing down his left leg and saw that his pants were sodden with a red stain. Blood! Wildly he realized he must have been hit, but there wasn't time to stop. The gray-clad riders were yelling fiercely as he doubled and dodged ahead of them. Puffing loudly, he stumbled, fell, and rolled over and over on the rough ground, feeling sharp stabs of pain where the rocks gashed his bare skin. Then he noticed that the shooting and yelling had stopped.

Dizzily he sat up and stared frantically behind him, his breath coming in dry sobs. Apparently the rebels had fled, fearing pursuit because they were so close to the main Federal column. As quickly as it had happened, it was over.

Still panting, Jeff scrambled to his feet and began to search for his wound. He couldn't find it. He wiggled his arms and legs but felt no pain. He grasped his canteen, which had slipped around in front of him, and noticed that it felt wet and slippery. The last of his precious sorghum was oozing out of a jagged bullet hole.

Sheepishly he realized he hadn't been shot.

Instead, his canteen had been hit and the sorghum had flowed out through the bullet hole and down his leg.

His feet were bruised and bloody from the rocks. Brushing off the dirt, he looked cautiously through the trees. The rebels had disappeared into the timber.

One by one, Jeff's patrol began to appear. Noah's tall form showed first. He had lost his cap. Blood was dripping from a cut under his right arm. A rebel saber had slashed him.

“Where'd they come from? Who were they?”

“Watie men!” Mitchell spat out the word venomously, his blue eyes alive with hate.

Naked as a jaybird, he emerged from the woods and limped up to the fire. His nude body was reddened from running through the shrubbery. His bare feet were cut and bleeding. Then he saw Noah trying to stanch his wound with his bare hand.

Mitchell limped to his haversack, hanging on a nearby bush. Reaching into it, he drew out a pint bottle a quarter full of brown whisky. Without a word, he handed the bottle to Noah.

Noah poured whisky into the hollow of one hand, flung the raw liquor onto the wound, winced, rubbed it in, then put the bottle to his lips and drained it.

John Chadwick crawled out of a nearby hazel thicket. Eyes transfixed, he stared at the fire. He began to curse, pronouncing each syllable slowly and vehemently.

“The dirty, low-down so's and so's! Stole our steaks.”

Blinking, Jeff pressed forward to look, his face dull and set. It was true. Every spit was bare. Then he brightened.