Rifles for Watie (42 page)

In the eastern sky the moonlight revealed a few white, fleecy clouds floating motionless like long films of cobwebs. When finally they began to turn darker and the stars around them to burn more sharply, he knew it was time to hole up. He figured the best way to avoid being seen was to travel at night and sleep in the woods in the daytime.

Half an hour before sunrise, he crawled into a plum thicket. Taking his knife and pistol out of his belt and placing them on the ground beside him, he lay down with his hat over his eyes.

Dozing off, he slept fitfully. He dreamed he was hidden in a tall tree overlooking the commissary wagon in the rebel camp back at Boggy. Heifer was serving huge plates of ham and fried potatoes to Fields, Watie, Thompson and Clary. Perishing from hunger, Jeff was about to crawl down out of the tree and give himself up, begging for one good meal before they called the firing squad, when oddly, somebody began to throw cold water in his face.

Awakened by a growl of thunder, he opened his eyes to find the sky was overcast and big raindrops were hitting him in the face. They plunked softly through the plum leaves above him. A big black cloud was rolling out of the west, darkening everything. The wind was blowing fresh and cool from the north and smelled of rain. Sweeping up his knife, pistol and boots, he dove under a tree for shelter. Then the storm broke.

He thrust his loaded pistol into one of his boots to keep the two loads dry; they were all the ammunition he had.

All afternoon long, he sat drearily in the downpour, listening to the raindrops monotonously peppering his hat brim. The water ran off his hat onto his arms and shoulders, chilling him. The wind came up, plastering the wet grass to the muddy ground.

Hungry, he chewed some of the shelled corn in his pocket. As soon as it grew dark, he began walking again. It rained nearly all night. It was slower going now. He was tired. Clouds hid the moon. The ground was slick, and the mud balled up beneath his shoes. Dawn caught him halfway through a big patch of hazel brush.

He was just falling asleep in it when he heard the sound of a horse's hoofs striking the stony ground. Thinking it might be a loose horse, he reached for the bridle he had brought along. Then squinting through the brush, he felt his blood freeze in his veins. He didn't need any bridle. He wasn't going any place except maybe back to Boggy Depot.

Several mounted men, all heavily armed, rode toward him. They were rebels. Two black dogs that looked like Newfoundlands walked ahead, sniffing the earth.

Jeff wondered how they had traced him so fast. Probably by his tracks in the mud. He gulped in despair. This was it. They had him.

He flattened himself on the ground and began to pray hard. A hundred yards away, the dogs entered the brush and came toward him. The men followed. They came closer and closer.

Suddenly a man laughed. “Ah, thar y'are, Bussey! I see ya. Come on outa thar er I'll shoot yuh full of buckshot.” Jeff heard him cock the trigger.

His heart hammering with fear, Jeff lay too frightened to move. His pistol was in his hand. Carefully weighing his chances, he wondered if he could catch the horse after he shot the nearest man off it.

Before he could decide anything, the rebel rode off. “Dogs don't trail worth a hoot. He's gotta be in h'yar somewhars,” he muttered.

“We'll hev the right kind of a dog in two, t'ree days,” another voice answered. “Fields went to Preston fer Sully, Snoop Sanders' best bloodhound. He's the one thet trailed thet murderer clear 'crost northern Texas last spring. Got 'im, too. No trail gits too cold fer thet Sully ta foller.”

The two men rode to the head of the thicket. Jeff knew they would beat it out foot by foot until they found him. He crawled on his hands and knees.

Rolling into a gulley, he ran, bent low, until he came to a small creek. Hoping to throw them off the scent, he waded into the water with his shoes on. It was then he discovered he had left his bridle and his boots behind. The rebels would soon find them and know he had been there.

All day he alternately walked and ran. He was tired and hungry and discouraged, but he didn't dare stop. The chase was fast approaching a climax. It had become a grim, compelling game. When Fields arrived with that bloodhound, it was going to be even grimmer.

That night Jeff came to a river. He saw the banks were high and steep. Entering the water from a ford downstream, he waded to a sandy place directly below the highest bank, where he crawled out and lay beneath some willow bushes, covering himself up in the warm sand almost at the water's edge. The last thing he remembered was the whippoorwills.

When he awoke the sun was shining brightly. Sleepily he raked the sand off himself and found that his feet and legs were still wet. But he felt refreshed.

A stick broke on the bank above him. Jeff caught his breath. There sat a big, dark-skinned rebel on a gray horse. With him were the same two black dogs Jeff had seen yesterday in the hazel clump. Jeff heard voices and knew the searchers had arrived in force.

Cautiously, he eased first one foot, then the other into the river. Then he lowered his whole body into it until only his nose and forehead stuck out. The water was cold but he didn't care. He hoped the willow leaves would hide him. Trembling with cold and fear, he lay perfectly still in the opaque water, watching them hunt for him.

They had plenty of men to do the hunting. Soon the tops of both riverbanks were black with Indians and rebel soldiers, mounted and on foot. The Indians looked like Creeks. In the hot sunshine their greased faces glistened. They were poking into the brush piles with their rifles and shotguns. Jeff was thankful that the bank behind him was so steep that they could not get down. With a feeling of annoyance, he thought of his pistol in his waistband. The water had ruined the loads. Now he had no weapon but his knife.

The rebels didn't give up. All afternoon Jeff lay in the water and watched them look for him. He didn't recognize any of them. It seemed there were more in the afternoon than there had been even in the morning, jabbering and eating with their fingers the cold beef they had brought along in their saddlebags. The smell of the food was almost unendurable. He hadn't eaten in three whole days.

Jeff stayed in the water until after sundown. Gradually everything became quieter. When the wolves started howling savagely close by, he thought he had never heard a sweeter sound. It meant the rebels had gone.

The moon was up. Jeff set his course by the North Star. Each morning early before he went to sleep, he located the north star in the heavens, then marked its direction with several stones or sticks, so if it was cloudy when he started walking each night, he could stay on his course without getting lost. He had got the idea from Heifer, whose last act before crawling into his bunk had always been to turn the tongue of the commissary wagon toward the North Star, so that if it were overcast next morning and they were in unfamiliar country, they would take the right direction.

The hunger cramps and the fatigue hit him at the same time. Wanting only to get away, he hadn't particularly noticed the cramps before. But now they struck like the blade of a hot bowie knife held against his stomach, and he had to walk more slowly. He was chilled to the bone. He wondered how long it would be before Fields and the bloodhound overtook him? He had never seen a bloodhound but he had heard his father speak of what wonderful noses they had and how, back in Kentucky, the sheriffs and marshals used them to track down criminals. Jeff knew his rambling trail would be easy to follow. That Texas hound would sniff it up at a gallop.

He smelled pine trees ahead. When he awoke, a cool north breeze was blowing on him, carrying the clean, strong smell of the pines. Chilled, Jeff blew upon his hands. It was late September. There would soon be frost in these mountains.

He stood, weak and stiff and hungry. There was no sound save the scolding bark of a buck squirrel and the high, thin, buglelike notes of an ivory-billed woodpecker. He began walking again.

Once he surprised a small, short-eared owl dozing on the limb of a sycamore. Flushing it with a stick, he watched it flap away through vertical streaks of sunshine that leaked in through the tops of the pines. He saw a wolf, a catamount, and even a small brown bear waddling up a draw. There were so many wild animals prowling about that he concluded the rebels weren't around and therefore it might be safe to travel in the daytime.

Every step he took, he saw birds and flowers and occasionally an animal he had never seen in his life before. He wished Noah were here to help identify them. He wished Noah were here with a couple of big, strong horses, a knapsack full of food, and about a gallon of hot Union coffee.

Then he thought of Heifer and the commissary wagon back at Boggy. It was breakfast time in the rebel camp. The rebel range was full of fat beeves and the flour had come up from Texas. Heifer would be turning the pink T-bones in his Dutch ovens, searing them to hold the juices in. Then he would take his gouch hook and lift the lids to see if his sourdough biscuits were browning properly. The light, tightly packed “dough gods,” as Hooley called them, stood seven inches high. Jeff's mouth watered.

Ahead of him loomed the mountains, rounded, pine-covered. He was sure he couldn't climb the first one.

He braced and began to labor up the rise, concentrating on each step and thinking of Pete Millholland and his words, “You can always go farther than you think you can.” It was funny how a fellow could lie moldering in his grave and still his words could go right on helping people.

He paused to eat a cluster of wild grapes, greedily swallowing some of the seeds. The tart, reddish-purple juice tasted good but there wasn't enough of it. It was cool in the shade beneath the pines. A flock of wild turkeys arose with a thunder of wings.

At noon he came to a wide road with deep ruts made by wagons. He knew it was the road running east from Perryville to Fort Smith. It was an important landmark and he felt a little encouraged, knowing he was roughly halfway to the fort.

His head throbbed. Black spots came before his eyes. He knew now what hunger meant, what that line in the Lord's Prayer meant that he had repeated a thousand times without thinking, “Give us this day our daily bread.” He lay down in the sunshine to rest but each time it was a little harder to get up. He thought,
One of these times I'm not going to get up.

Ahead, the Limestone Mountains looked still higher and more rugged. Sighing with despair, he walked down into the valley between the two ranges. It was growing dark.

A strange sound came to his ears, a strange domestic sound that had no business existing in the vast wilderness of green timber rolling endlessly over one round-domed hill after another. It was the sound of a spinning wheel. The sound died away, and Jeff smiled sadly. In his delirium, his ears were playing him tricks.

Then he heard it again, a steady, mechanical humming, and all at once he came upon a small shanty set in a dogwood thicket a hundred yards away. He lay down in the brush to watch.

Presently a woman in a blue dress came out the door carrying a piggin of shelled corn. She had black hair. Going to a small steel mill fastened to a big oak, she ground the corn in the mill, then took it back inside. Soon gray smoke began to spiral out of the fireplace chimney.

Two men walked up. Each was heavily armed and carried his rifle into the house with him. Jeff didn't see a horse on the place. Sighing, he guessed it didn't make any difference. He doubted if he had strength enough now to mount a horse, let alone catch one. He didn't even have a bridle.

He smelled corn bread baking and beef roasting in the fireplace, and again the hunger cramps grabbed him, twisting cruelly at his vitals. His appetite became so savage that it took all his will power not to rush into the house and snatch the food away from them. Afraid their dogs might scent him and raise an alarm, he backed through a brier patch, cutting his hands on the brambles, and circled the place widely. Doggedly he kept plodding forward. He was so tired now that he took his knife and cut himself a thick willow stick, using it for a cane.

Just before dusk the country grew flatter and gold-washed with autumnal wild flowers. He came to a wide river with cottonwood and black willow growing along its sandy shore. Jeff knew it was the Canadian River. Cautiously he scanned both its banks. The gray current rippled gently as it flowed in lazy loops and whirls among the sand bars. He might have to swim across.

Taking off his clothing, he waded tentatively into the shallows. The water was warm. It rose to his waist, and his feet touched sand and flat stones on the bottom. He got across safely, waded out, and slipped into his ragged pants and shirt. Very weak now, he started walking slowly northward, then pulled up, staring incredulously.

Several buildings loomed ghostlike in the woodsy gloom ahead. The place seemed empty and uninhabited. It was dark and cool beneath the trees.

He felt faint. Staggering inside the nearest building, he lay down on the dusty plank floor. He was sure he had come to the end of his rope. If he had to die, this would be as good a place as any. What a fool he had been not to show himself at that shanty he had passed in the afternoon.

The floor was covered with old paper. The room smelled musty. Apparently it had once been occupied by rebel soldiers. On the floor he found an old voucher dated “North Fork Town, August 7, 1863.” It was signed by General Douglas H. Cooper. Was this North Fork Town? He was too tired to care.

He tried to sleep, but packs of snarling wolves kept entering the deserted town. It sounded as if they were chasing other creatures out. In the morning he was awakened by a wild hog squealing in terror. He hobbled out to investigate and found a pack of wolves had killed it and had part of its intestines out on the ground.

Yelling and waving his stick, Jeff drove them off. The young ones ran away, but the old ones sat only a few yards distant, hungrily watching him. With his knife he peeled the skin off the hog's flanks and hewed off most of both hams. He carried the meat back into the house, leaving the rest for the wolves.