Rifles for Watie (20 page)

“Well, youngster. You joined up to fight in battle. Now that you've been in one, how'ja like it?”

Jeff raised an ashen face and shook his head positively. “Noah, anybody that ever joins anything is crazy. I'll lay in the woods until the moss grows on my back a foot long before I'll ever join anything again.” He felt that being alive was the biggest miracle in the world.

Thirsty, they began walking, looking for water.

It seemed that everybody else was thirsty, too. Soon they came to a little creek thronged on both sides by ragged, exhausted men in blue. Men and horses were drinking thirstily, side by side. There were so many men that soon they stopped the creek from running as they tried to scoop the muddy water into their mouths. Jeff and Noah decided to wait until morning.

Dark was falling. It was growing colder, too. Now they were sorry they had thrown away their coats. Union soldiers were breaking up fence rails to feed their fires. The firelight flared brightly in the soft Arkansas dusk. At the rate the rails were disappearing, Jeff knew the entire fence would be gone before midnight.

“I'm hungry,” Noah said, “but the commissary wagons probably won't be here until morning. Guess we better fergit about food and find us a place to sleep.”

Jeff nodded dully. He was dead tired all over. He was hungry and thirsty, too, but his fatigue overbalanced everything else. He looked up. There were still a few streaks of lilac in the western sky.

Finally they found a strawstack. Burrowing into it, they went quickly to sleep, lying close together, spoon fashion, for warmth.

  
13

Expedition to Van Buren

Jeff lay on his back in the long grass, one army blanket under him and another over him. It was pleasant basking in the Arkansas sunshine. Bone-tired, he felt as if he never wanted to get up. The ridge broke the breeze, and he could feel the sun's rays warming him through the blanket. It felt as though somebody were stroking the outside of the blanket with a hot iron.

After sleeping all night in the haystack, Jeff and Noah had walked fourteen miles without any breakfast before they reached Rhea's Mills. There they found Blunt's baggage trains and mess wagons awaiting them. Gratefully they devoured the hot coffee, fried salt horse, and cold hardtack, and had their lost equipment resupplied by the quartermaster. Then they flopped down in the warm December sun. Jeff would have liked a bath but he was too tired to strip off his sour clothing.

He lay in a comfortable stupor, reviewing with awe the battle he had survived. Among the dead were two men he knew from Wyandotte and also Spruce Baird, the crusty little sergeant who had commanded the confiscation detail that had raided the McComas home.

Baird had been hit in the side by an exploding rebel bombshell. They had buried him on the battlefield. Using the bottom of a stew kettle for a desk, Noah was writing the sad tidings to Baird's family. He sat hunched over in the sun, a blanket draped about his broad shoulders.

Jeff felt a twinge of pain in his left hand. Beneath his fingernails, blue with dirt, the bruised knuckles were swollen frightfully. He had heated water in a stew kettle and soaked them, but the pain was still there. Jeff was thankful to be alive; his puffed hand seemed of small importance. He thought Rhea's Mills the most peaceful spot he had ever seen.

A blue mountain stream, tumbling over a ledge of greenish moss-grown rocks, rushed through a log flume onto a large wooden water wheel. Revolving slowly with a musical swish and creak, the wheel furnished the power for the nearby mill. The mill itself was a weather-beaten edifice of hand-hewn boards. Its roof sagged crazily. The miller's cottage and a country store stood nearby on a gently sloping hillside. Jeff could hear the redbirds whistling sharply from the tall black walnut trees. It sounded as if they were saying, “Ker-soop! Ker-soop! Ker-soop!” Sighing with pleasure, he lay back down, wishing they could spend the entire winter there.

Instead they stayed only nine days. Blunt was still acting as though he had never heard of winter quarters. His scouts informed him that General Hindman and his defeated rebel force were camped at Van Buren, forty miles southward. He and General Herron decided to take eight thousand picked infantry, cavalry and artillery, cross the mountains in two columns and attack the Southern forces before they could have time to prepare defensive fieldworks.

The day before the army left Rhea's Mills, Jeff was surprised to hear his name called while the company was lined up at a morning inspection. Noah's name was called too. Obediently each took two steps forward and saluted. With a measured stamping of feet on the drill ground, half a dozen officers approached. Out of the corner of one eye, Jeff spied Clardy among them. Recoiling, he felt his insides tighten. What had he done now?

The tramping stopped. A big man with black whiskers and two curved rows of brass buttons on the front of his blue dress coat, ambled up to Jeff and Noah. He was short and heavyset, with a thick neck and sloping shoulders. He walked with a roll, swaying his hips and planting his feet carefully, like a sea captain. In one hairy hand he carried a piece of paper. Everybody saluted. Then Jeff recognized General Blunt. Dumfounded, he wondered what it was all about.

In a bass voice sonorous as a bell, Blunt began reading from the document in his hand: “. . . for gallantry beyond the call of duty . . . distinguished themselves conspicuously at the risk of life . . . voluntarily assisted a battery that was hard pressed, although it was their first experience with artillery and they had already participated intrepidly in the infantry charge . . . the Medal of Honor, presented in the name of Congress.” As the general continued reading, Jeff watched with fascination the small beardlet beneath his lower lip bob up and down.

Then the general stepped so close that Jeff could smell the pomade on his thick black hair. Leaning forward, he passed a ribbon around Jeff's neck and underneath his collar. Suspended from the ribbon was a tiny piece of red, white, and blue fabric. And dangling from the fabric was a shiny bronze star and eagle that flashed more brilliantly in the sunshine than even the general's gold shoulder bars.

Noah got one, too. Just as Jeff began to realize that he and Noah were being decorated, the general was shaking hands stiffly with each of them.

Jeff couldn't hide the embarrassment and unbelief in his face. Somebody had made a mistake. He hadn't done anything in the battle but follow Noah. If this was the way the army handed out decorations, then something was wrong with the system.

“Shoot, General,” Jeff blurted in protest, “all we did was load her and swab her.”

He looked at Noah for confirmation. But Noah, usually the most articulate man in the company, was strangely tongue-tied. He just stood there, ramrod stiff, staring straight ahead, his long neck pink as a peony.

Several of the officers looked displeased at Jeff's boldness. Blunt smiled faintly behind his heavy black mustache.

“Your name is Bussey?”

“Jefferson Davis Bussey, sir,” corrected Jeff in a loud, clear voice, and waited for his usual reprimand. But Blunt only looked at him curiously and turned away.

Later Jeff wondered how the general knew who they were. As usual, Noah had the answer. “Remember the tall artillery lieutenant that axed us our names soon as the battle ended?” Jeff nodded.

On the next day, which was Christmas, Jeff's company began marching southward. Meanwhile the warmish weather changed. It grew much colder. The wind blew from the north and the sky was heavily overcast.

At noon they reached Cane Hill, where a month earlier a battle had been fought. They were told there would be a short rest and that they might visit the rebel hospital, if they wished.

Jeff looked about him with dazed wonder. War had made a shambles of the quiet little college town. Homes were looted and laid waste, outbuildings burned, stables pulled down, fences destroyed, shrubbery and fruit trees ruined. Dead domestic animals lay in the streets, stinking up the scene. Jeff wondered how the inhabitants bore the awful stench. The whole town was one vast hospital. Most of the wounded were concentrated in the Methodist church.

As Jeff entered the church, rain began pelting the roof overhead. The wooden pews had been carried outside to make room for the rebel wounded, and his nostrils caught the sickening odor of morphine. The cots of the wounded had been placed in a long line the length of the building. Their whiskery faces were contorted with pain. Jeff heard their smothered groans and wanted to talk to them, but something restrained him, something hard and inflexible as iron. These men were his enemies.

They belonged to the side that had tried to take his father's life. They had begun the war, killed Pete Millholland and wounded Ford Ivey so badly that his leg had to be amputated. Tight-lipped and silent, he moved slowly and cautiously about the straw-strewn floor, looking with horror at what he saw and marveling again and again at the divine Providence that had enabled him to survive the battle and escape such a terrible fate.

A French harp moaned from somewhere within the dark gloom, playing the same dreary tune over and over, until a long, heart-wrenching cry echoed through the church. Then it fell silent. Overhead the rain swelled from a patter to a deluge.

A doctor carrying a small surgical valise of reddish-brown leather bent wearily over the last bed in the ward. Jeff paused, peering through the dim light. A Sister of Mercy, her gray gown brown-stained and disheveled, stood near the doctor, ready to assist him.

Seeing Jeff's blue uniform, she looked from him to the patient on the cot.

“He's just a lad but he's going to die,” she said in a low voice to Jeff. “He's one of your own bluecoat boys. Got run over by a caisson at Prairie Grove. It broke both his legs and hurt him internally. He's barely conscious.”

Jeff looked pityingly at the patient. Then he caught his breath with surprise. The boy on the cot was Jimmy Lear!

With rough, well-meant kindness, the tired doctor was saying, “Jimmy, you are very badly hurt and will have to die. It's impossible for us to do anything more for you.”

Jimmy's big blue eyes blinked with shock as he read in the doctor's face the certainty of his going. Jeff never forgot that look. Of all the poignant expressions he would see on men's faces during the war, none matched the desperate, cheated look of this young Missouri lad who had just been told his life on earth was ebbing.

Jimmy mumbled, “Doctor, I don't want to die. I'm not ready to die.” There was a look of wild frustration on his youthful, pallid face, flushed with fever.

Jeff stepped forward, grasping both of Jimmy's hands in his own. “Jimmy, it's me. Jeff. Don't you recognize me?”

The boy peered at Jeff, his breath coming in short, uneven gasps. Then a faint, glad flicker of recognition lit up his eyes.

“Jeffy,” he murmured, “don't leave me. I don't want to die.”

Jeff felt tears stinging his own eyes.

“Jimmy, I'd help you if I could. I don't know what to do for you.” Beseechingly he looked up at the Sister of Mercy, his eyes pleading for some slight sign of encouragement. But she shook her head slowly. Then she and the doctor moved on to care for the other men.

“Pray for me, Jeffy,” Jimmy said.

Jeff swallowed, overcome with grief. “Jimmy, do you know who Jesus is?”

Jimmy shook his curly black head faintly. “No. Who is he?”

“Jimmy, only Jesus is able to save you.”

“Well, where is he?” Jimmy whispered, looking very tired. Jeff told him as best he could. Jimmy listened silently, then stared reflectively at the dull gray wall.

“I wouldn't mind leavin' if I could jest come back sometime,” he said.

“Jimmy, what's your mother's name and where does she live? I'll write to her.”

“She's dead. So's my father. I ain't got no kinfolks.”

Jeff felt an overwhelming compassion and sympathy. He reached down and smoothed Jimmy's hair. His skin felt hot and sweaty to the touch.

The doctor came back and gave Jimmy a strong opiate. His eyes fluttered sleepily.

“Jeffy,” Jimmy whispered, “lean over.” Jeff did, his ear close to Jimmy's mouth.

“Jeffy, my new drum's under the bed. You can have it when I die. Treat it good, Jeffy. Always keep it in a dry place so the vellum head will stay tight.”

Jeff nodded. Blinking, he tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He remembered that Jimmy's drum was his dearest possession. He looked out a nearby window and saw snowflakes sifting down thickly. The Arkansas weather couldn't seem to make up its mind.

Jimmy stirred restlessly, a frown of pain on his boyish face. “I wouldn't mind leaving, Jeff, if I could jest come back sometime,” he said again. “But my father and mother ain't never come back. None of my relatives or friends that's died has ever come back, either—or writ any letters back—or sent any word.”