Rifles for Watie (17 page)

Jeff followed the uproar through a dining room and into the kitchen, where Dixie had cornered the cat atop a food cupboard. He snatched her up the quickest way he could, backward, her head behind him and her tail in front. Two other women, both young and well dressed, were chattering hysterically as they cringed along the wall. The girl was with them.

Jeff swept off his infantry cap. “Mam, I'm awfully sorry,” he apologized, backing out of the room with Dixie under one arm. As the dog squirmed to free herself so she could renew the battle, her tail kept swinging around and swabbing Jeff in the mouth.

Like a statue of cold fury, the girl stood. Her eyes were blazing.

“You—you—Yankee!” she began, unable to find the words she wanted. “Get out!”

“Yes, mam,” said Jeff. As he bore Dixie back through the elegant parlor, he saw lying on a table a large Bible bound in blue leather with the name “Levi Washbourne” engraved on it in silver. He blinked. He had never seen anything like this in Kansas. It seemed strange that he had to come clear to the Indian country to see a home as plush as this one. As he carried Dixie out the front door, her excited barking rang noisily through the halls.

Finally a young woman came to the door. She had the same proud lift of chin as the girl but looked older and seemed to have better control of her emotions. She told them that she was Mrs. Adair, an older sister. She looked pale and frightened.

Major Thompson swept off his hat and bowed. “I'm sorry to discommode you, mam, but my officers and I haven't dined today. Is there anybody here who could fix us some dinner?”

“There isn't any firewood,” she answered. “We have plenty of food but no fuel.”

The major told her that he would see that she got plenty of firewood. “And I'll post a guard around your premises to see that you aren't harmed,” he promised, noting the uneasy look she gave the soldiers. He turned to Clardy.

“Captain, may I borrow your escort as wood procurers and also for temporary guard duty?”

Clardy had no reason for refusal. He nodded and turned toward Jeff. Jeff knew Clardy was going to order him to cut the wood. He hoped he would. He wasn't afraid of Clardy. He wasn't afraid of work, either. Besides, the work might give him a chance to see that pretty rebel girl again.

“Bussey, here, will cut your wood,” Clardy said to the woman at the door. “And if you've any other odd jobs to do, like peelin' potatoes or emptyin' swill or diggin' stumps or diggin' graves, Bussey will be glad to do them, too. He's had lots of experience. Haven't you, Bussey?”

Jeff straightened, popped his heels together, and saluted briskly.

“Yes, sir.” He didn't mind Clardy's abuse any more. While he was cutting the wood outside the town limits, he learned from a Negro passing by that Levi Washbourne was a captain in Stand Watie's Confederate Cherokee cavalry and that the girl was his sixteen-year-old daughter, Lucy.

Just before supper Jeff drove a wagon, heavily loaded with the chopped wood, up to the house. He knocked on the back door. The young woman who had identified herself as Mrs. Adair opened it a few inches. She carried a saucepan in one hand.

Jeff swept off his cap. “Mam, I've fetched the stovewood. Where would you like me to stack it?”

The woman seemed surprised at Jeff's kindness. She showed him where to put the wood in the yard.

“Mam,” offered Jeff, “do you have a woodbox in the kitchen? If you want me to, I'll be glad to fill it for you.” She hesitated, then nodded. When Jeff returned with his first armful, she showed him where to stack it. Two women with aprons tied about their waists were busily cooking supper for the officers. In an adjoining room he saw a big, heavy-legged dining table of oak spread with plates and silver. His jaw dropped. They ate in a different room than they cooked in.

Jeff could hear ham frying. He smelled what he thought were hot, mealy Irish potatoes roasting in a pan set in the fireplace ashes. He hadn't tasted a roasted Irish potato in months.

“Thank you, mam,” he said, trying to hide his hunger as he backed out of the house after filling the box. He hadn't seen the girl, although he knew she must be there.

Major Thompson, Clardy, and three other Union officers knocked on the front door. They were admitted. Jeff, on duty outside, could hear them talking and laughing. He heard the rattle of the crockery and the jingle of the silver. Later, when his nose caught the whiff of cigar smoke, he knew they had finished eating.

Glumly Jeff sat on the rock fence that ran around the property. He wondered if Lucy had helped serve them? For the first time in his life he envied the officers. They had the privilege of at least meeting her.

Corn, but he was hungry! Dad-gummed officers. It never occurred to them that their guard might be hungry, too.

Just before dusk the back door squeaked, and Lucy came out of the kitchen with a pail on her arm. Jeff's heart leaped happily. He guessed she had come to do the evening milking.

The rest of the soldiers who comprised the Union guard were lounging against the fence. When the girl walked by, they strained their necks and eyeballed her from head to toe.

One of them whistled seductively and catcalled, “Yuh know, I hain't hugged a gal fer so long I'm outa practice.”

The girl looked uneasy. At first Jeff thought it was because of the men. Then he found out that wasn't the only reason.

With an assurance she apparently was far from feeling, she went to the barn, emerged with an armful of prairie hay, and dropped it awkwardly in a corner of the lot. Then she drove a brindle cow into the lot.

Jeff watched her with foreboding. Even before she sat down on the stool, he doubted she had ever milked a cow in her life. And when she sat down on the wrong side of the cow, he was sure of it.

A titter of amusement went up from the guard. The girl blushed scarlet. Jeff felt sorry for her, even if she was a rebel.

He got down off the fence and walked up to her. She saw the dog and recognized him.

As he drew near, Jeff felt dizzy. Again he had the peculiar butterfly feeling in the pit of his stomach. Dad gum! She was pretty as a basketful of red monkeys, twice as pretty as any girl he had ever seen before.

He took off his cap. For a fleeting moment he looked into large brown eyes that were fringed with the longest, blackest eyelashes he had ever seen.

“Mam, you're supposed to milk from the cow's right side, not her left. I've lived on a farm all my life. Why don't you let me milk her for you?”

Angrily she arose, grasping the bail of the empty bucket in her hand and drawing it back threateningly as though she were going to belt Jeff over the head.

“Get out or I'll call the major!” she breathed furiously. “Take your old Yankee dog and get out.”

Jeff stopped dead in his tracks. “All right, mam. Only she's not a Yankee dog. She's a Confederate dog.”

Back on the fence, his chin in his hands, he watched her gloomily. Corn! She was the sauciest girl he had ever seen. Why couldn't she forget the war long enough to let him help her milk the cow?

The rebel girl was dead game, even before an enemy audience. This time she began to milk from the correct side. The blue-clad guard applauded with handclaps and more catcalls.

No matter how hard she worked, very little milk came from the cow's udder. Finally, after she had labored twenty minutes and had drawn about twenty teaspoons of milk, she went into the house, pursued by the jibes of the soldiers.

Vaulting the fence, Jeff walked into the stone smokehouse and found a small wooden pail with an upright stave as a handle. Although it looked clean, he drew fresh water from the well and washed it. Then he milked the cow and, carrying the milk to the back door of the house, he knocked. The door was opened by a third Washbourne daughter.

“Mam, here's the rest of your milk,” Jeff said.

The young woman was taken aback. She stared at the piggin and the fresh, warm, bubbly milk in it.

“It's clean, mam,” Jeff assured her. “I scrubbed the bucket carefully in your smokehouse.”

“We're very beholden to you,” she told him and accepted it. “We've always had slaves to do our milking and, now that they're gone, my mother has been doing it. But she didn't feel up to it tonight, so Lucy said she'd try.”

She smiled a little and looked back over her shoulder at Lucy, who was washing the dishes in a large gray porcelain pan on the cupboard. Lucy blushed but didn't say anything.

“You look most too young to be in a war,” the young woman continued, more kindly. “You ought to be home with your mother.”

Now it was Jeff's turn to blush. His face flamed crimson. His hands tightened on his blue cap. If all the women in the country, both Union and rebel, kept telling him he looked like a schoolboy, it must be true.

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen, mam,” Jeff replied. What would Lucy Washbourne think of him now!

He smelled the odor of food in the big candle-lit kitchen. In spite of all he could do, his eyes kept wandering to the cooking fireplace of native rock where he saw several large, fluffy, brown-topped biscuits languishing in an open Dutch oven. He could tell from their height that they were sourdoughs, his favorite back home.

Lucy Washbourne spoke from the cupboard. “Liz, maybe he's hungry.”

Astonished, Jeff could scarcely believe his ears. Lucy's voice, if he had heard it correctly, was gentle, sympathetic, kind. He shot a grateful look at her, but she bit her lip and kept her eyes glued on the dishpan.

“How long has it been since you've dined?” Liz asked solicitously.

Jeff felt his insides trembling. He kept big-eyeing the biscuits.

“Mam—do you mean—how long since I've set down at table to a square meal?”

She nodded.

“About a year, mam.”

Liz gave a little gasp of surprise. Stepping back, she looked around uncertainly at the other Washbourne women, as if hesitating to invite an enemy soldier into the kitchen where the family usually ate their meals. Jeff understood her reluctance. This was war. He was a Yankee soldier and might be shooting at her rebel husband tomorrow. She stood silent, her lips compressed. Jeff's heart almost stopped beating, he was so afraid she'd say no. But her natural instinct for hospitality triumphed.

She stepped back from the door. “Won't you come in? We've all had dinner. We ate after we served your officers. We have plenty left.”

“Yes,
mam,
” said Jeff enthusiastically. “Thank you, mam.” He almost leaped inside, closing the door behind him.

It was a nice kitchen. Besides the wide fireplace, there were tall cupboards with glass doors and a large oak table covered with a red linen cloth. The chairs were of oak and had leather backs. The long walls had been sheathed in oak paneling and painted brown. Overhead, the rafters were stained blue with yellow undersides. He wished his mother could see it.

The food was good. As Jeff ate ravenously, the women busied themselves elsewhere, leaving him alone at the big table. But each time his glass of milk was empty, Lucy appeared quietly at his elbow to refill it. She also replenished the empty biscuit plate beside him and put two more roasted potatoes on his plate.

Jeff wanted to talk to her but he didn't know what to say. He was afraid he might say the wrong thing.

He brushed the crumbs from his mouth and looked up at her. “Mam, I'm sorry my dog disgraced herself this morning by fighting with your cat. Was there a lot of damage in the house?”

Lucy's chin lifted indignantly. She didn't speak. Carrying the pitcher back to the cupboard, she went on washing the dishes. Jeff felt his ears reddening.

Miffed, he finished his meal and arose to leave. What was the matter with her?

He thanked the woman named Liz. “Mam, may I give some of those leftover scraps to my dog? She hasn't eaten all day.”

She raked them into a paper sack. “Thank you for doing the milking for Lucy,” she said.

“I didn't do it for her, mam. I did it for the cow. It hurts a cow not to be milked.”

Chin up, he walked proudly out the back door. He didn't want that rebel girl to think she could wipe her feet on him. . . .

Weer's Union army didn't stay long in the Cherokee nation. The weather continued hot, the grass burned to a crisp, and the supply train from Kansas was long overdue. Weer put the army on half rations, without vegetables. Alarmed, most of the officers wanted to return to Kansas. Weer not only opposed them but became intoxicated and abusive.

Finally Colonel Salomon, the next ranking officer, arrested Weer and took command. He marched most of the expedition, including Jeff's company, back to Fort Scott.

Jeff had never seen such a sorry-looking array. The cavalry looked the shabbiest of all. Forage was so scarce that when the horses were picketed, they ate off each other's manes and tails. Most of the strong little ponies of the Indian Home Guard scouts were unshod and totally unfit for use after galloping over the rocky, flinty Cherokee land.

With the coming of winter, Jeff hoped he would be allowed to go home on furlough. But the Department of Kansas had other plans. They had decided upon a bold penetration of Western Arkansas. Jeff's company was to be part of the invading Union army.

Jeff didn't know it, but he was destined to fight in a real shooting battle at last.

  
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