Rifles for Watie (16 page)

“We still have the carcass,” he remembered, joyfully. “We can still cut us off some more meat.”

“No we can't,” contradicted John. “They stole that too.” He pointed to where Noah had laid it in the slicker. Gone.

The sun was hot. Glumly Jeff found his hat and put it on. Then he drew on his shoes and stockings. He ignored the boiling kettle of pokeberry roots. The stolen steaks were all he could think about.

“They waited until our meat was just about done before they rushed us,” John said. “Probably been watching us the last hour with a field glass from the woods.”

“Where's Earle and Millholland?” Noah asked suddenly.

Jeff looked at Noah with a premonition of disaster. The rebels had fired a lot of shots. It would be a miracle if all the patrol had escaped.

John called loudly several times, but nobody answered. With dread, they scattered and began to search the premises. In the tall grass to his right, Jeff saw an odd depression. The long grass lay flat, as though a weight had fallen on it.

Staring, his body went rigid. Forcing himself, he walked closer. A blue-clad form sprawled face downward, the legs spread awkwardly. One black shoe was half twisted off the left foot. How crumpled and flattened out and still the body looked. Jeff's breath began to come in gulps. He knew it was a dead body. Whose?

A few more faltering steps and he saw the sergeant's chevrons on the sleeve of the dark blue blouse. Millholland! From a small black hole between the sergeant's shoulder blades, fresh blood seeped slowly and darkly, staining the long green grass.

Numb with shock, Jeff grasped the body by the belt and turned it over gently. The sergeant still wore his tiny cap with the sloping crown protruding ludicrously over one ear. His eyes, wide open, stared unblinking into the sun.

Jeff groped for Millholland's wrist, feeling for his pulse. There was none. His throat tightened and he felt a deep and abiding grief for his friend and a wild, uncompromising hate for those who had slain him. Dropping to his knees on the ground, he began to sob.

Shoes grated on gravel. The others were coming up. Dully, Jeff stood so they would see him. He couldn't find his voice. He saw that Bill Earle was with them now.

When they saw the sergeant, shock showed in all their faces. They had great respect for this big Kansas farmer who was fast becoming a leader despite his lack of military bearing.

“You murderin' Indian thieves!” Across the stillness of the hot afternoon Stuart Mitchell's screeching voice lashed like a whip. He began to curse the Watie riders slowly, roundly, and fluently as he buttoned his faded blue shirt over the mat of flaming red hair on his chest.

Depressed, Jeff began preparing supper. He had no enthusiasm for cooking. As he rattled the pots and pans, he could hear Bill Earle's and John Chadwick's shovels biting softly into the rocky earth as they dug Millholland's grave a few feet from where he had fallen. Bill and John had hurried back to the main column to borrow the shovels and report the incident, hitch-hiking rides with a patrol of Union cavalry they encountered.

Noah sat glumly on a log, trying to compose a letter to Millholland's wife, back in Kansas.

Later, a patrol from the Sixth Kansas Cavalry, the yellow stripes down their pant legs gleaming in the sunshine, cantered past, raising the dust in sultry clouds as they began the hopeless task of tracking down the rebel raiders. Jeff knew it would be like chasing a heat mirage on the prairie.

Ignoring the pain of his bruised feet, he tossed dry wood on the fire. Rice from their rations was all they had to eat. Mechanically he reached for it. He had never cooked rice before, but he knew you had to boil it. As he poured water into a gallon stew kettle, he still felt stunned. You marched with a guy for a whole year, ate with him, bunked with him, learned to like him, learned to obey his orders. And then suddenly he was shot in the back, and you buried him and marched away, leaving him lying forever alone in the soil of a hostile land.

The water began to bubble. Listlessly he poured in the rice. They had pooled their rations, but he was afraid there wouldn't be enough.

Soon the rice began to boil over and spill down the sides of the kettle. With a big spoon, Jeff tried to salvage the bubbling white overflow. But it was rising and swelling faster than he could ladle it out. Hurriedly he spread an old saddle blanket near the fire and, with his tin plate, scooped the cooked rice onto it. It made a big snowy pile.

The others plodded up wearily, found their camp plates, and gathered silently around the fire, looking loathingly at the rice. Jeff knew they were thinking about the stolen steaks.

“For them that don't like rice, supper's over,” Jeff said.

Ignoring their plates, they ate it off the blanket with their spoons.

  
11

Lucy Washbourne

Jeff stood on a rocky bluff and gazed through the shimmering distance at Tahlequah, capital of the Cherokee Indian Nation that had joined the Southern Confederacy in the war.

Surprise ruled his face. He thought the Cherokees were blanket Indians, like the Potawatomi and Miami near his Kansas home, and that Tahlequah would be a city of teepees scattered over the grassy prairie. Instead, he saw a good-sized town, much bigger than Sugar Mound and almost as big as Leavenworth. It was located among low, green-timbered hills at a picturesque spot near the Illinois River. Many of its town buildings were of brown stone and red brick. And instead of teepees, there were log houses chinked with red clay and chimneys of rock and mud. Spirals of gray smoke twisted lazily into the hot blue sky.

“Now lissen, you foot-sloggers!” bellowed Jim Pike, the new sergeant. “We're comin' into town. Cap'n Greeno says we're to impress 'em with our sodjery bearin'. So smarten up! March good. No profanity. No talkin' to civilians. No swipin' fruit ner vegetables. Close ranks! March!”

Loyal to Millholland and slow to give his allegiance to any new officer, Jeff didn't like Pike, a tall, flint-eyed, thin-shouldered fellow of nearly forty who spent much of his free time boasting about his experiences in the Mexican War. But Jeff marched “good,” as the new sergeant ordered.

It was one week after the death and burial of Millholland. As they plodded along, it seemed to Jeff that the town was slumbering and nobody in Tahlequah knew there was a war.

On the road winding southwest to Fort Gibson, a freighter's wagon, hooped over with gray canvas, crawled through the sand like a June bug. Adjusting his eyes to the distance, Jeff saw what looked like a mail hack crossing the Illinois River at Beane's Ford, the sun reflecting the tiny splashes of water kicked up by the wheels. A solitary Indian boy, humped forward in the saddle, jogged ponyback on a lonesome-looking trail that led toward the hills. Jeff wondered who he was and where he was going.

Jeff lengthened his stride to match the man ahead of him. Noah had told him their march had something to do with making a good impression on the Tahlequah people so that the hundreds of Cherokees who had been compelled to join the rebel army might want to come back to the Union side.

As the trim blue column tramped slowly into the outskirts and on to the town square, Jeff saw Indian people, mostly women and children but also some men, standing in their well-trimmed yards, curiosity and fear in their brown faces. Most of them were dressed like white people.

They looked like white people, too, and Jeff remembered what Joe Grayson had told him about the Cherokee mixed-bloods who governed the nation. They had two legislative houses elected by the people and a school system that surpassed that of many of the states. Colonel Weer had given strict orders that anybody caught stealing or looting private property would forfeit a month's pay and have to work thirty days on fortifications.

Jeff stood beneath a big elm tree on the town square, fanning himself with his cap. He enjoyed being in a big town again. The horses around the shady capitol square fought off swarms of dog gnats with their tails and pawed the plank fence to which they were tethered. People milled about, talking and visiting in musical, low-pitched Cherokee voices. There was the clank of boots on the board sidewalks, the creak and jingle of harness, the measured ringing of a blacksmith's anvil, the snarling of strange dogs meeting in the street, the mingled odor of fresh horse droppings and baking bread, and the whoop and laughter of children playing.

Jeff was assigned to a small escort that accompanied Captain Clardy and some of the Union officers. They wanted to find a house where meals might be procured. As they walked along the street, frightened faces watched them from around the edges of window curtains. Dogs walked up stiff-legged to accost Dixie, but she stayed close to Jeff's heels and paid no attention to any of them.

In the middle of town they approached a handsome log house shaded by several majestic sycamores. Obviously its owner was a man of considerable wealth. They turned into its ornate front gate with wrought-iron hinges and walked up a path of gray chat bordered by bushes of yellow roses. Jeff saw that the rafters of the house were of peeled pine poles held together with wooden pegs. Behind the property were slave houses and a barn.

Ignoring the property's magnificence, Clardy clumped boldly onto the wide front porch and, flanked by Jeff's patrol, rapped sharply with his knuckles on the heavy oaken door.

The door opened from the inside and revealed a girl, a very pretty girl. Her black sun-streaked hair was caught in a dark green bow. She was carrying a big white Persian cat which at the sight of Dixie began to swell up angrily like a peacock.

Jeff's mouth flopped open and he got a weak feeling in the pit of his stomach as though thousands of butterflies were beating their wings madly inside him. Although the girl's skin had a brownish cast, her complexion was lovelier than wild strawberries. Breathless, he wondered what any girl that pretty was doing in this far-off Indian town.

When she saw the blue-clad Union soldiers, the girl shrank back quickly. Her small round mouth parted with surprise and displeasure.

“My officers and I are hungry,” Clardy growled. His sly, nervous eyes darted past her into the house. “Order your servants to fix us some supper.” As usual, his tone was surly and domineering.

The girl raised her oval chin a trifle and looked fearlessly back at him.

“Since you freed all the Negroes, we're not even cooking dinner for ourselves,” she said. “We're all rebels—to the backbone.” Proudly she gestured behind her. “My mother and two sisters live here. They all have husbands in the rebel army.” Her voice was melodious and low-pitched.

Jeff saw that despite her hostility, she was a girl who went well with July, even a hot, drouth-stricken July. She was wearing a long cotton dress of light green and looked as fresh and clean as a green shrub after a rain.

Clardy's face purpled. “I'll brook none of your rebel impertinence,” he roared in bullying tones. “Which will it be? Supper for us or must I burn your house down and set an example to the rest of this yappy Indian town?”

The girl didn't back up an inch.

“I've no doubt, sir, that if any white man would stoop to that sort of barbarism, you'd be completely capable of it,” she said. Clardy stood on the porch sputtering helplessly.

A Union officer who wore the gold shoulder bars of a major on his blue dress coat stepped forward, smiling courteously.

“Firing the house won't be necessary, Captain, I'm sure.” He faced the girl, sweeping off his black hat and bowing gracefully from the waist. “May I speak to your mother, please?” He was Major Thompson of the Ninth Wisconsin.

The girl's stormy brown eyes settled on the major. She said, coolly, “Wait here, please.”

But as she started to withdraw, the big white cat in her arms flattened his ears and began to moan threateningly way back in his throat. Jeff's dog Dixie, who had wandered up to the door, started calmly to follow the girl inside the rebel home, as though she had lived there all her life.

With an angry yowl, the cat jumped out of the girl's arms and landed on Dixie's back. Quickly he discovered he had overmatched himself. In an instant dog and cat swept past the girl and, vanishing into the dark interior, began a running battle through the house. With a little gasp of dismay, the girl ran after them.

Appalled, Jeff could hear the crash of china, the soprano screams and protestations of the women, the incessant barking and growling of Dixie, and the wrathful snarling of the cat. The soldiers on the porch were laughing uproariously.

Jeff stepped forward and looked imploringly at Major Thompson. He saluted. “Sir, that's my dog. May I go get her—before she tears the place up?”

The major nodded. Jeff darted inside and felt his dusty brogans sink into the deep pile of a rug. Looking quickly about, he discovered the room was elegantly furnished with armchairs and divans upholstered in blue. The combatants weren't there, but Jeff could tell they had been. A small candle stand with slender, tapered legs had been overturned. A tall spinning wheel, wound with orange yarn, lay on its side on the floor, still whirling round and round.