Rifles for Watie (9 page)

With a clatter of hoofs, the Sixth Kansas Cavalry galloped past on its way to the head of the column. A big, swarthy cavalryman clad in a black suit rode with them. He was bareheaded and his curly chestnut hair was fluttering in the breeze.

“That's Rufe Forney of Atchison,” Jeff overheard somebody say in the next squad. “He's a corporal in the cavalry. He jest got spliced at Leavenworth before we left. Got himself a purty gal, too—the blacksmith's daughter. He's still wearin' his wedding suit.”

Suddenly a muffled gunshot, followed by a scream of agony, rang out ahead. The column was thrown temporarily into confusion and slowed to a halt. Captain Clardy came running past from the rear, his sword swinging and bouncing noisily at his side, his stern face dark with displeasure. A medical orderly sprinted close behind him.

“Keep marching, you fools! Nobody ordered you to stop,” Clardy roared. Then he disappeared up ahead, plunging through the brush as he skirted the column.

“Route step! Keep marchin'!” Millholland barked. “Hup! Hup! Hup!”

Swallowing hard, Jeff tried to march on tiptoe so he could see better. For the first time he felt a slight panic. He looked at Noah, then at Millholland, but they were staring stonily ahead as they marched. Soon he heard voices and somebody weeping loudly with pain.

Captain Clardy and the medical orderly appeared. Between them limped Walter Van Orstrand, a Douglas County boy from their own company. His weak face twisted with suffering, he was blubbering and sniffing. His left hand was wrapped in a bloody white bandage which he held tightly clutched in his right hand.

“Captain, I tell you it was an accident,” the boy kept pleading and sobbing.

“You're a liar,” Clardy stormed, his face black with rage. “You deliberately shot it off so you'd get a discharge. Well, it won't work. I'll have you court-martialed for cowardice. You're yellow as a dandelion.” His rough voice rang with scorn.

“No, Captain, no,” the boy whimpered piteously. “Honest I'm not. My gun jest went off while I was marching.” He gave another howl of pain. “Oh, it hurts, awful!”

“Shut up your sniveling!” roared Clardy. “You were carrying the gun over your shoulder. It's a long gun. You couldn't have shot off your finger unless you stuck it over the muzzle. You're jest a yellow-bellied coward, that's all!” Their arguing became fainter and fainter as they passed toward the ambulances in the rear.

The men began to mutter to one another in low voices as they marched.

“What happened? What happened?” everybody asked, although everybody had a pretty good idea now.

Jake Lonegan grunted, shifting the pack on his back with a single swagger of his powerful shoulders. “Cappen's prob'bly right. The man prob'bly got so scared that he shot off his own finger jest to git a discharge. They do it in every war.”

Leave the army, when they were just heading into their first battle? Jeff could hardly believe his ears.

Jeff looked at Lonegan and sighed. He envied the brawny sergeant who had bulging muscles and weighed two hundred thirty pounds. In their training bivouac, Lonegan had shown a perfect mastery of the manual of arms and could throw down any man in the company. In the election of officers he had been the almost unanimous choice of his squad.

The night deepened. The pace slowed. The road wound up and down several small, rocky hills covered with timber. Once Jeff saw the dark outline of a log house, although all the windows were dark and no dog barked. He felt thirsty and, without slackening his marching pace, took a drink out of his canteen. The water tasted cool and sweet. It was surprising how well you could see after you got used to the darkness.

At one o'clock in the morning by Millholland's big silver watch, they stopped in the roadside grass and rested a couple of hours. Jeff checked the priming and the hammer on his musket, then lay down on the rough ground and slept. At three o'clock he felt a hand shaking his shoulder and heard the sergeant's voice whispering in his ear.

“Fall in and keep silent. We're mighty close to the enemy.”

It was cool on the ground. As Jeff got quickly to his feet, he could hear the June bugs droning sleepily from the grass roots. Their song sounded plaintive, almost hushed. Reaching into his pocket, he drew out a small package containing the last of his rations, a strip of cold bacon, some stale corn pone, and two apples from the sack the lady storekeeper had given him at Springfield. He had given all the other apples away. He was too excited to eat much.

A flash of lightning illuminated the scene, and Jeff saw that Zed Tinney, a quiet, religious boy who lived near Wabaunsee, was clutching in one hand a small Bible bound in black leather. Fear and despair ruled his face. Resigned to being killed in battle, he was praying quietly to himself. Lonegan saw him and stepped across the intervening space.

“Hello, Parson,” he taunted. “What time does the revival start?”

Millholland walked up to Lonegan, scowling fiercely. In a low voice he said, “You shut up an' git back over thar with your own outfit. Iffen anybody in my squad wants to pray, he shore can, an' nobody's gonna laugh at him, neither. You hear me?”

For a moment the two big sergeants glared at each other. Then, to Jeff's surprise, Lonegan walked obediently back to his own squad. And Millholland went up several notches in Jeff's estimation.

Tinney paid no attention to the incident. His mind seemed far away. “I'm glad I've always lived a good life,” Jeff heard him whisper. “I'm glad that I've never knowingly harmed a soul.”

Again the army was put in motion. It now marched southeast in column by companies, the batteries by section, and a line of skirmishers in front. Disappointed because his company wasn't selected for duty with the skirmishers, Jeff felt a cool moisture on his face and looked up.

A fine drizzle of rain that was little more than mist had started. Word came back from the skirmishers that apparently no rebel pickets were out.

Jeff was elated. He wanted to get on with the fighting. If they could win this battle, the war might be over in Missouri, and they could go somewhere else and fight. He was in the second line of advance. He knew that the advance line, which had drawn the honor of hitting the Southerners first, was somewhere ahead. He wished fervently that he was with it.

They left the road and climbed silently up a rocky slope. He could feel the wet brush pulling at his trouser legs and thighs. When they finally crested the ridge, they halted, panting silently. Despite the inky darkness, Jeff knew through some sixth sense that they were on an elevation.

Breathlessly he squinted over John Chadwick's thick shoulder and felt a cold chill run along his spine. In the valley below lay the sleeping rebel camp. He could see the sheen of their dying campfires and hear their mules braying faintly in choruses.

A half hour passed. The night wore on toward a gray dawn. Jeff was on the north hill with Lyon. Sigel was on the south hill. Between the two hills flowed the spring-fed waters of Wilson's Creek. The Confederates were camped along both its brushy banks. The slow rain stopped, and the stars began to shine brightly between broken patches of clouds.

“Fix bayonets,” came a whispered command. As Jeff groped at his belt, he heard faint clicks all around him and knew that the Kansas Volunteers were clamping the long steel knives onto the tips of their musket barrels.

It was almost daybreak. The country was open, and here and there Jeff could begin to see dark objects. Excited, he felt no fatigue whatever from the twelve-mile march, although he knew he should have been dog-tired. He looked around at his comrades.

“I don't mind going,” somebody whispered. “The thing I dread most is parting with Mother.”

Jeff frowned impatiently in the dark. Why be so gloomy?

“The hardest thing for me to part with will be my g-g-g-graybacks,” Bill Earle whispered, trying to take away some of the sting of death.

The stars paled. Birds began to twitter. Now Jeff could see the live-oak trees taking shape all around him and smell the cool, musty odors of the woods. His bare hand brushed accidently the leaf of a dwarf oak and came away wet. Everything was dripping.

Suddenly away off to the south they heard a dull, heavy “Pum!” It seemed to come from the direction of Sigel's ridge. Crouching in the sodden brush, Jeff glanced at Millholland, who was down on his knees next to him, peering intently through the leaves of a buckeye bush.

“What was that, Sergeant?”

Calmly Millholland checked the cartridge box fastened to his belt and listened.

“Cannon,” he whispered hoarsely. “Probably Sigel.”

The Kansas Volunteers caught their breath, braced themselves, and looked inquiringly at one another.

The distant booming began to come faster and faster. Soon it was answered by the much louder “Brrom! Brrom!” of an awakening rebel battery from the creek below. Long ropes of orange flame streaked from the dark woods of the rebel-held creek.

“Blam!”

The deafening roar came from a Union battery located two hundred yards behind them. Jeff ducked and heard the grapeshot rushing noisily through the quiet air over his head, as though projected by a giant slingshot. His eardrums throbbed, and the ground beneath his feet trembled.

Now the guns were all speaking boisterously together. “Pum! Brrom! Blam!” Both ridges and the valley between were alive with long, slow lines of fire. The Battle of Wilson's Creek, Missouri, had begun.

A wild burst of cheering rang out one hundred yards below as Lyon's first line of attack hurled itself down the ridge and across a small field filled with wheat shocks and onto the brown- and gray-clad Confederates who were trying frantically to form a battle line in front of their tents.

Just before the two lines met and fused, there came a different sound, a menacing mutter and snarl, like thousands of beans being dropped into hundreds of tin pans. Jeff knew what that was—musket fire. Drawing in his breath, with solemn wonder he watched the Union line strike the Confederate one, bending it backward and driving it in confusion toward the creek.

Feeling a wild thrill at the solid charge of the first Union advance, he yelled joyfully at the top of his lungs. It was time for the second line of advance—his line—to join the battle.

Hoofbeats sounded behind him. A mounted staff officer in full uniform galloped up full tilt, jerking on his reins. As the bay horse slid to a stop, it kicked up a shower of small rocks and gravel. On the shoulders of his blue uniform coat, the officer wore the chevrons of a major. There was an urgent expression on his handsome face.

“Got your line formed, boys?” he called stridently. “Be ready. We'll give you the word in a minute.” He kept looking back impatiently over his shoulder. Then his nervous eyes swept up and down the line of men before him and fell on Jeff, the smallest one in the platoon.

“Boy!” he barked, pointing with his gloved hand. “Something has happened to delay the quartermaster. Go to the rear and find him. Tell him to join us on the double. Hurry!”

Jeff recoiled. “Sir,” he protested, saluting weakly, “can't you please send somebody else? I want to stay with the boys here.”

The major stared harshly at Jeff while he tried to control his plunging horse. Then he saw Jeff's stricken face and his own countenance softened perceptibly.

“Do as I tell you,” he ordered firmly. “Another time you shall have your chance to fight in battle. What's your name?”

Jeff swallowed miserably. He was the most disappointed man in Lyon's army.

“Bussey, sir,” he replied tonelessly. “Jefferson Davis Bussey.”

The officer looked at him sharply, then recovered himself. “Very good, Bussey. Better start at once.” Wheeling his horse around, he galloped off along the ridge.

Wild with anger, Jeff stood and watched him ride out of sight. Recklessly he considered ignoring the command. Then Millholland stepped quietly to his side.

“You heared him, kid. Like it or not, it's a order. Better git started.”

Jeff looked defiantly at the sergeant. Millholland looked right back at him.

Throwing one last yearning glance at his comrades, most of whom looked as if they would enjoy changing places with him, Jeff stepped back out of line. Still clutching his bayoneted musket, he trudged to the rear, descending the same slope they had marched up. Behind him the cannon were booming like thunderclaps, and he could hear the salvos of musket fire and the wild, frenzied shouting of the second line of advance,
his
line, as it charged down the ridge without him.

Hot tears of disappointment stung his eyes. Twice he walked blindly into trees. Never again, he told himself, would he obey an order that took him away from his comrades.

“Bussey!”

Jeff stopped abruptly and looked up. Before him in the growing daylight stood Captain Clardy, saber in hand. He broke into a volley of abuse.

“Get back into line, you little yellow-bellied cur,” he stormed.

Jeff's patience, already threadbare, snapped. He matched Clardy, glare for glare.

“I know where the line is,” he shouted back. “I don't need no old grouch like you to help me find it.”

Clardy seemed to gasp and explode, all in one motion. Raising his saber and waving it threateningly, he took a step toward Jeff. Jeff cocked the hammer on his rifle and coolly pointed the bayoneted gun at his captain's commissary department.

With his finger on the trigger, Jeff looked Clardy squarely in the eye.

“What are you doing back here yourself, so far away from the fighting?” Jeff asked. “At least I've got an excuse. A major just ordered me back to find the quartermaster. I didn't want to come, but he ordered me to.”

Hand tightening whitely on his saber, Clardy fixed Jeff with a look of hatred. Now Jeff's own anger was rising and he felt a rash, uncontrollable urge to nettle the bullying officer, shocking him out of his attitude of arrogant authority.