Rifles for Watie (34 page)

The salt grass abounded in mosquitoes. When the horses' feet stirred the grass, the insects swarmed on the cavalry, humming ominously. Soft as lace, they alighted on the exposed parts of his body. The men whipped up their horses, ducking their heads and brushing the insects off their faces and necks with their shirt sleeves.

All afternoon long they retreated down the Texas Road.

The rebel farms they passed were untouched by raiders. The cotton had been hoed neatly and looked abundant. And while it would be two weeks yet before the corn would be fair for bread, it was tasseling clean. Grimly Jeff thought of the violence and terrible destruction the Watie men had wrought on the Union farms farther north. He felt very little compassion for the men with whom he was riding. But he stayed with them because he had a job to do.

At midafternoon, just below the junction to North Fork Town, they met Cabell's advance. While a halt was called so the generals could parlay, Jeff was careful to count Cabell's forces—more than two thousand Arkansas cavalry and four pieces of artillery. Jeff was surprised to see that so many of the Arkansawyers were gray-headed men and young boys. Mingling with them, he soon learned that desertion from Cabell's brigade, many of them conscripts of Union sympathy, had been so widespread that the officers had very little control over the situation. Quickly Cabell joined Cooper in the headlong flight southward.

Just before dark a slow, chilling rain set in. Owning very few slickers, the Watie men had to take it like the cattle in the nearby fields. The road had now become so slippery that they slowed their pace to a walk. Wet to the skin, Jeff was so exhausted that he dozed in the saddle. He discovered that by balancing himself squarely over the horse and kneeling slightly forward, he could sleep while the dun was walking.

Once when they were crossing a creek, Hooley Pogue, a wiry, rollicking little Cherokee mixed-blood who was sound asleep in the saddle, tumbled off his horse into the water with a loud splash.

“What happened?” Fields asked irritably.

Gasping and thoroughly awake now, Pogue scrambled to his feet in the knee-deep water.

“Excuse me, Sam,” he sputtered. “I thought you said dismount.”

A roar of amused laughter arose above the noise of the downpour. It was the first laugh Jeff had heard since the battle. Again, he marveled at privates and sergeants conversing as equals, addressing each other by their first names.

The gray rain sluiced down in long, wind-slanted lines. Jeff could feel it pelting his shoulders and spattering noisily off his hat brim.

“Whew!” somebody called. “It's sho comin' down. Sounds like pourin' peas on a rawhide.”

They had ridden two hours in the rainy darkness when they were hailed to a stop between North Fork Town and Perryville by a man standing in the road waving a torch. He wore an old carpet strip for a raincoat. It had a hole in the top for his head.

“Camp's over here,” he told them, pointing his torch to the right. The torch flickered feebly, threatening to go out.

As Jeff obediently followed the others, he felt a sudden chill and wished for a warm coat. Then he saw the round bulge of a commissary wagon wheel and heard the peculiar sobbing voice of Heifer Hobbs directing the weary men to their tents. They were back at their original camp.

The cook had made a rude lamp from a bowl full of sand, thrusting a nail through a rag and then deep into the sand, with the rag emerging at the top. Using oil he had rendered from a fat possum he had killed that afternoon, he poured the possum oil in the sand and onto the rag, then lit the rag and set the lamp on the shelf at the rear of the commissary wagon, out of the rain and the wind. The homemade device smelled a little but Jeff was surprised at its good light.

Feeling his way in the blackness, he staked out the dun and gave him a ration of corn from the commissary wagon. He felt ravenously hungry but figured he would either have to eat cold food or go without. Nobody could cook in this downpour. But again he reckoned without the resourcefulness of Heifer.

For weeks the cook had saved all his bacon rinds and axle-grease boxes for fires. He also had a few dry tree branches hidden away in his commissary wagon. While Jeff held a blanket over the fire, keeping it alive, Heifer went to work.

Quickly he mixed a great dishpan of corn-bread dough, plastering some of it on small boards, which he leaned near the fire. He wrapped the remainder in corn shucks and buried them in the hot ashes. Soon he was able to offer the wet, exhausted men hot corn bread and steaming plates of a Southern dish Jeff had never tasted before, Irish potatoes and green apples boiled together, mashed and seasoned with salt, pepper and onions. And there was plenty of hot “coffee” to wash it down.

Nobody joshed or teased the cook tonight. Gratefully the tired men in Fields' mess scooped up the food with their fingers or their bowie knives as they discussed in hushed tones the battle they had just lost and the comrades who had been killed or wounded.

Afterward Jeff threw the blanket around his shoulders and wondered where Bostwick was. A doctor had ridden up from the rebel hospital at Boggy Depot to treat the wounded. Tents were going up all around, hog-fat lamps were lit, and soon the place began to look and sound more like a military camp.

Jeff had pitched in and was helping Heifer clean up when he heard feet sloshing toward them in the dark. The slim figure of the sergeant appeared, his wounded arm in a sling and an oilcloth thrown carelessly over his shoulders, in the fashion of a cape. The rain had slackened somewhat but now the wind had arisen and the cold seemed to blow right through Jeff's sodden clothing.

Fields stood looking accusingly down at Jeff.

“Yore pal, Bostwick—he ain't comin' back. Shell got him,” he reported, his voice low with passion.

Shocked by the bad news, Jeff eyed Fields bleakly in the flickering light that came from Heifer's “possum” lamp. Bostwick dead! Jeff breathed a silent prayer for the Missourian's soul and waited. There was something sinister in the sergeant's manner.

Fields went on, “He fell close to me. All day long I watched him drink from that canteen of his. I figured it was whisky. After I got hit, I needed a shot of whisky. So I took the canteen off his dead body and upped it. You know what I found? Coffee! Yankee coffee! He was a blue belly. And so are you!”

Jeff felt a premonition of disaster. He stood facing Fields, grateful for the partial darkness that blotted out the guilty expression he was certain must be on his face. He thought fast. He was on the wrong side of the river. His life might depend upon what he said next.

Heifer said it for him. The cook straightened over his pots and pans, the firelight playing fitfully over his terribly deformed face. Suddenly, he blew his nose into the fire, using his finger and clearing one nostril, then the other, with nasal blasts that rang like a horse snorting.

“Sam, yore addled,” he blurted. “What else does the boy have to do today to prove himself to ya—tote cha on his back all the way from Honey Springs to Red Rivah?”

Fields snarled something unintelligible.

Heifer kept talking. “You otta git down on yore knees and beg his pardon. Where'd yuh be today if it wasn't for him? I'll tell yuh where. Walkin' to a prison camp someplace in Kansas. If this boy's what yuh say he is, he coulda left you on the battlefield an' gone on ovah to Blunt. Or he coulda taken yuh with him to Blunt. You was helpless.”

“Sam!” somebody called from the darkness, “Sam Fields! Major Adair wants to see you.”

Turning on his heel, Fields stamped off through the mud. He didn't seem convinced. Relief flooded over Jeff like warm sunshine. Gratefully he thanked the cook.

Heifer snorted. “Don't pay no attention to him,” he advised, turning toward the fire. “When he gits this away, he don't know skunks from house cats. He's a good officer but he's been all tore up inside evah since the Feds shot his best friend, boy name of Lee Washbu'n, befo' a firing squad. That made Fields crazy suspicious of evahbody. Now he can't wait to catch some Fed scout behind ouah lines. An' if he evah does, God help 'em. He'd cut 'em to pieces with his bowie.”

Jeff remembered the jagged edges of Fields' knife. So Fields knew Lee Washbourne. No wonder Fields was suspicious of anybody who drank Yankee coffee.

Wet, cold and miserable, Jeff looked around for a place to sleep. He didn't even have a quilt. Soaked to the skin, he felt weak and flushed and feverish. He looked longingly at the tents close by, revealed by the lightning flashes. Nobody had asked him to share one. And he hadn't slept much the last two nights. He was so tired he didn't think he could take another step.

“Yuh can bunk with me under the wagon, if you wanta,” Heifer offered suddenly. “It ain't fancy. But it's dry. I got my bed laid on some bee-gum logs an' I gotta canvas fly to keep the rain out.” Thankfully Jeff accepted.

Even if Heifer did have a face that would stop a clock, Jeff was too tired to care. The cook splashed off into the darkness and returned holding something in his hands under his uniform coat, away from the cold drizzle. He thrust dry clothing toward Jeff.

“Heah, kid,” he said kindly. “Pull off those wet duds and put these on. Theah full o' holes but theah dry. Gimme yore shoes an' wet clothes an' I'll dry 'em out fo' yuh by the fire soon as it quits rainin'.” Gently he helped Jeff pull off his boots and his sodden trousers.

“Heah,” he said, holding back the tarp that dangled down the side of the commissary wagon, “hop in theah an' crawl 'tween the covahs. You'll be snorin' in five minutes.”

Jeff beat even that. He was sound asleep in three. . . .

Next morning he and the cook were up with the birds. The sun came out warm and hot. Feeling better, Jeff helped Heifer with the breakfast. He rustled the firewood, carried water, and did a score of other odd jobs besides. He was clearly the cook's favorite now.

The Watie men stayed in camp all day, drying out their wet clothing and their powder caps, doctoring one another's minor wounds, and cleaning and overhauling their weapons. Still listening keenly for news of Steele and his Texas reinforcements, Jeff strolled into the shade of a nearby baggage wagon and came upon Hooley Pogue.

Hooley was clumsily sewing a white “flag of truce” into the seat of his worn trousers. Except for his big hat and his boots, he was naked. His wet cotton shirt was draped over a nearby wagon wheel, drying in the sunshine. He had taken off his pants to repair them and was sitting bare-shanked on his saddle.

Hooley waved his needle in greeting and smiled, his white teeth flashing in his brown face.

“Howdy. In this army, one patch on the seat of yore britches means a captain; two patches, a lieutenant; three, a bucktailed private. That's me.” Gaily he held up the tattered butternut so Jeff could inspect the repairs he had made. Sure enough, there were three big patches.

Jeff was greeted with respect by the bearded rebel horsemen. They had heard how he had rescued Fields. They seemed so friendly that he almost hated to leave. But all that was keeping him now was news of Steele. He had all the information he needed on Cabell. He knew Blunt had nothing to fear from the Arkansawyers.

He decided to stay close to Heifer's commissary wagon. It was the social center of Company H, Cherokee Mounted Rifles, and a good place to get information. Everybody knew the cook and came by to banter him. All day Jeff listened carefully. Finally, about midafternoon, he got what he was after.

At the water barrel, he overheard one rebel lieutenant tell another that Steele and his fifteen hundred Texans had just arrived, and with Steele in command, all the rebels would soon move northward to Prairie Springs, fifteen miles east of Fort Gibson, to await the arrival from Red River of a brigade of Texas cavalry under General Smith R. Bankhead. Then they would all move together against the fort.

Eager now to take the news to Blunt, Jeff made his plans. He saddled the dun. During supper he hid two large chunks of cooked beef in his haversack and several large sweet potatoes.

He felt mean about deceiving Heifer. Heifer had been good to him. When the rebels discovered him gone, it might go hard with Heifer. But this was war and Jeff had a job to do. The dun was fresh. When darkness came, he would just ride off, heading northward up the Texas Road.

The violent stomach pains struck him as he was filling his canteen from the water barrel. Nauseated, he reeled blindly against a wagon wheel. He didn't know what ailed him. He had never felt like this in his life before. Surely it was just a sudden cramp that would pass.

But the stomach pains kept coming, hard and relentlessly. He felt suddenly cold, then hot. Heifer found him crouched against the wagon, so dizzy he could hardly walk.

The big cook picked Jeff up and carried him bodily to his bunk. Quivering with cold, Jeff pulled a blanket over himself and lay still, his mind in turmoil. He had to get through to Blunt right away. Any delay would be ruinous, jeopardizing Fort Gibson and the lives of thousands.

Unable to find any quinine, Heifer came back and dosed Jeff with a foul-tasting tea he brewed from dogwood bark. Jeff began to sweat and threw off his blanket. He was burning up. Panting, he felt as though he could drink gallons of cold water.

Like a distraught father, Heifer hovered constantly over him. Finally he left again to hunt for the ingredients for what he called his “iron medicine,” made by dropping several rusty nails into a bottle of water. “If you drink it, you'll have plenty o' iron in your blood,” he told Jeff.

Jeff watched him go and, feeling his chills subsiding slightly, crawled to his feet and staggered over to the dun. It took nearly all his remaining strength to gain the saddle. A sentry stopped him, saw he was sick and let him pass.

The dun's galloping jarred him so much that he slowed the horse to a walk. He felt so weak that twice he almost fell off. He would never make it to Fort Gibson. He would be lucky if he made it back to camp. How was he going to warn Blunt?