Rifles for Watie (6 page)

“I don't understand why he didn't wait,” he told John Chadwick. “We were both going home in two more days. I just don't understand.”

  
5

Furlough

“Jeff!”

His younger sister was the first to see him as he strode wearily into the yard just before sundown. Barefoot, she was sweeping the rock porch. She threw down her straw broom and with a glad shout ran to the house to tell the rest of the family. Then she returned, slamming the door behind her, to throw both arms around Jeff's waist and hide her brown head under his arm.

Bess and his mother ran out to join the happy homecoming and found Ring leaping and bounding all over Jeff. The big gray dog was so glad to see his young master that he grasped a cottonwood stick in his mouth and, whining and moaning with pleasure, ran around and around the woodpile with it, scattering the chips and kicking up small clouds of dust.

Mary shouted with laughter. Emory Bussey hurried up from the barn. Grinning, he held out his hand.

They sat up that night until nine o'clock while Jeff told them all about his new life in the army. To Jeff's surprise, his father remembered Clardy from the Mexican War.

“He had the makings of a good officer, but he was a strange, vindictive fellow whom nobody trusted,” Emory recalled. “He turned very bitter when his own regiment, the Mississippi Volunteer Rifles, elected Jeff Davis colonel. Clardy wanted the job. He had set his heart on it. When they elected Davis, Clardy left the regiment and moved away from the South forever.” Jeff leaned forward, listening carefully. So that was why Clardy hated the mention of anything Southern.

The family had more news for him. David Gardner wasn't home. Jeff's heart missed a tick when he heard that. Had David drowned, trying to swim back across the wide Missouri? Had he been captured by the soldiers or murdered by the bushwhackers?

For supper that night, Jeff's mother fried wheat biscuits in a pan and roasted sweet potatoes in the fireplace ashes. Best of all, she baked a delicious green-grape cobbler in her fireplace oven. For breakfast next morning they had “sweet toast,” home-baked wheat bread toasted in a pan over the fireplace coals. There was hot milk to cover it, and butter, salt, and sugar to add for taste.

“Mama, the army hasn't got any cooks near as good as you,” Jeff told her loyally between gulps.

She looked anxiously at him. “I don't see how you can tell. You're eating too fast to taste the food.”

Jeff said, “I'm tasting it when it goes down.”

His brief leave of one day and two nights at home passed all too quickly. He spent the morning helping his father thresh the wheat by hand, using two hickory clubs tied together with buckskin and letting the wind blow out the chaff. Early in the afternoon he helped Bess pack the eggs in bran, so they would be ready to take to the trading post. He went to the springhouse with Mary and helped her skim the cream off the cool milk and churn the butter. He helped his mother plait lampwicks and fry refuse pork, out of which to make the fuel oil for the lamps.

Although all four of them were putting up a great show of being brave, Jeff couldn't help noticing how they kept stealing pensive sidelong glances at him, as though they didn't want to forget what he looked like. He wished he had thought to have a daguerreotype made at the gallery in Leavenworth so he could give it to them. Neither he, nor Bess, nor Mary had ever had their pictures made.

Just before bedtime, Jeff took a short walk outdoors with Ring. He looked thoughtfully at each well-known object as it lay sleeping in the bright Kansas moonlight: the little creek where he had trapped skunk and muskrat, his duck blind on the riverbank, the big oak tree where he had twisted the rabbit out with a forked stick. Now they seemed unimportant and far-away, like a child's toys.

A coyote's melancholy wail floated in from across the river. Jeff saw the hair rise on Ring's back. The big dog growled deep in his tawny throat, then whined and looked inquiringly at Jeff. But Jeff just reached down and patted him, then turned back toward the house. There wasn't time for a hunt now.

Next morning at sunup he was back on the military road, headed for Fort Leavenworth. As he passed John Chadwick's place, he saw gray smoke curling from the chimney.

Old Man Chadwick and one of his boys were yoking the oxen to the tar-hubbed wagon. Probably getting ready to go to the trading post, Jeff thought. He stopped a minute to tell them how John was getting along.

John's mother was anxious for news and gave Jeff a big drink of cold clabber milk. But the rest of the family seemed to regard him coldly, as though he had persuaded John to join up. He was glad to be back on the road again.

Then the road became rockier, and the soil lighter and thinner. He was approaching the Gardner place. The brown corn had made a fair stand and was nodding in the warm wind. But the rows were so crooked you could tell that a woman had done the planting. Jeff glanced at the mean one-room log house and thought he heard voices. Then he stopped in surprise.

David and his mother were standing in the yard. Mrs. Gardner looked tired. Apparently her faded blue sunbonnet failed to protect her plain, florid face from the sun. Like David and all the rest of her homely brood, she was red-haired, with splashes of orange freckles running over her face, neck, and arms.

Glad that David was home safely, Jeff ran beneath the trees toward the house. As he came closer, he saw that David's face was dirty and tear-begrimed, and his clothing torn, as though he had been living in the brush. Apparently he had just arrived.

Mrs. Gardner was looking fiercely determined. Her red face was flushed, her mouth a tight line. Two of her children stood behind her, listening with curious concentration. Bobby was playing in the mud by the horse trough. Nobody paid any attention to Jeff.

Mrs. Gardner said to David, “You walked sixty miles away from me to enlist and now you come crawlin' back to tell me thet you're tired of it and thet you wanta come back home. Well, it's too late now to come back home. You're in the army. That's what you always wanted, so go on back to the army.”

David's blond brows wrinkled with anger.

“I won't go back,” he almost screamed. “I'll go up into the hills an' live before I'll go back to the fort again.”

His mother put her hands on her hips and stared at him with disgust. “You'll go up into the hills!” she mimicked him scornfully. “You couldn't live a week by yoreself up there. You'd starve or you'd get homesick. Or somebody'd turn you in as a deserter jest to make the thirty dollars the government would pay to anybody turning you in. Or the bushwhackers'd find you an' kill you like a dog.”

David sniffed and wiped his red eyes with the knuckles of both his dirty hands. His manner changed from defiance to pleading.

“Please let me stay here, Ma,” he begged. “I don't wanta go to war. I git too homesick.”

She shook her head and pointed to the road. “If yore brave enough to leave us and run off an' join the army, then yore brave enough to go on back to the army. There's the road. Take it.”

The wretched boy looked at her incredulously, then broke into a fresh torrent of tears.

“You're agin me, Ma,” he bawled bitterly. “I never thought my own ma'd go agin me like that.”

Jeff felt sorry for David, felt sorry for them all. But he was glad to see that David had somehow reached home safely. He walked slowly up to them, feeling embarrassed to interrupt.

“Howdy, Dave,” he said. “Howdy, Miz Gardner.”

Both of them looked at him, but neither spoke. Jeff walked a step closer.

“You can go back with me, David,” he offered. “I'm on my way to Leavenworth now. If you came back with me, they might let you off light. I'll sure talk to them about it. Pretty soon the lonesomeness will all wear off, and then you'll like it in the army, David. I know.”

David looked once at Jeff, then at his mother.

“I guess I'll have to go with you, Jeff,” he said brokenly, his voice still rough with anger. “Nothin' else I can do.”

Again he looked accusingly at his mother. Calmly but firmly she met his look and conquered it.

“Better go down to the crick, Davey, and wash yoreself,” she said, her voice softer but still stern. “Then you can come to th' house, ef you want. It's a long walk to the fort. You'll need a fresh change of clothes. I'll cook you some breakfast an' pack you a lunch fer the trip.”

Obediently David turned and trudged off dejectedly toward the creek.

For a moment a look of tender compassion crossed her face. He was her own flesh and blood, the only man she had left in the world. Jeff swallowed as he watched her. He knew how hard it must be for her to send David back to the war. But Kate Gardner never hesitated. Chin up, she walked with a firm stride back into the house and began rattling the pots and pans.

While David washed and ate in silence, Jeff dropped his bundle and pitched into the Gardner chores. He finished milking the cow and toted the filled pails to the springhouse. He turned the cow out and cleaned her stall with a pitchfork, scattering fresh straw on the hard, dirt floor.

Half an hour later he and David were again on the road. This time there was little talk between them.

  
6

March

A week later they broke camp and began the long battle march from Fort Leavenworth to Springfield, Missouri.

The bugles blew at three o'clock in the morning. Jeff didn't hear them but when the orderly sergeant shook him, he got right up, washed his eyes in cold water, and began to pack.

Tents were pulled down and rolled up and, with mess boxes and camp kettles, packed into the baggage wagons. Mules were fed and harnessed, horses saddled, cannon and ammunition trucks backed into line. Soldiers hurried to the creek, filling their canteens with fresh water.

“Fall in!” barked Millholland, the sergeant, pointing with his arm to indicate the right of the line. Shortest man in his squad, Jeff went automatically to the left end of the line. He had learned long ago that the tall men always took their places on the right and the short ones on the left, so it was easier for each to find his place.

“Count off! Remember your numbers! Don't swap places!”

The night was black and still. A cloud bank was rising in the west and when fiery threads of lightning veined suddenly across it, Jeff saw them reflect dimly off the cannon, some of the guns showing black, others brassy bright. Behind him, the artillery gun drivers had their teams hitched and were standing patiently at attention, ready to mount at the word. Jeff felt a flush of excitement. Unlike the bivouac in the Missouri river bottoms, this was the real thing.

At Grand River the Kansas Volunteers were to join General Nathaniel Lyon. Their combined force of a little more than five thousand men was the only Federal command between Rolla and the new state of Kansas, representing the forlorn hopes of all the Union people in that vast area.

Jeff knew very well what was at stake. Lyon was hurrying to Springfield to meet the rebel armies of Price and McCulloch. If the Southern force of ten thousand men won a decisive victory, Missouri would fall to them, with its rich middle portion from which valuable supplies could be had and thousands of men recruited for the rebel cause.

Jeff felt a grim satisfaction. It seemed good to be moving aggressively into Missouri for a change, instead of always waiting for the bushwhackers to come across the border and hit them first. But for half an hour the infantry stood in line, waiting.

Impatient, Jeff twisted and squirmed in his tracks. Corn! What were they waiting for? He would explode if there was further delay.

Daylight came finally, and the eastern sky was laced with pearl and orange. The cloud bank in the west was receding. The wind blew up softly from the south, carrying upon it the musty odors of the creek bottoms; Jeff could feel its cool flush on his face and see it gently bend the buck brush and the prairie grass close by. But still the column didn't move.