The Outlaw Josey Wales (6 page)

“Bluebellies will give ye a better funeral, son,” he said grimly, “anyways, we said we was goin’ to the Nations… by God, one of us will git there.”

Across the rump of the mare he laid a big Colt, so that when fired the powder burn would send her off. He took a deep breath, pulled his hat low, and fired the pistol.

The mare leaped from the burning pain and stampeded straight toward the nearest campfire. The reaction was almost instantaneous. Men ran toward the fires, rolling out of blankets, and hoarse, questioning shouts filled the air. Almost into the fire the mare ran, the grotesque figure on her back dipping and rolling with her motion… then she veered, still at a dead run, heading south along the creek bank. Men began to shoot, some kneeling with rifles, then rising to run on foot after the mare. Others mounted horses and dashed away down the creek.

Josey watched it all from the shadows. From far down the creek he heard more gunfire, followed by triumphant shouts. Only then did he walk the roan out of the trees, past the deserted campfires, and into the shadows that would carry him out of bloody Missouri.

And men would tell of this deed tonight around the campfires of the trail. They would save it for the last as they recounted the tales told of the outlaw Josey Wales… using this deed to clinch the ruthlessness of the man. City men, who have no knowledge of such things, seeking only comfort and profit, would sneer in disgust to hide their fear. The cowboy, knowing the closeness of death, would gaze grimly into the campfire. The guerrilla would smile and nod his approval of audacity and stubbornness that carried a man through. And the Indian would understand.

PART II

Chapter 8

The cold air had brought heavy fog to the bottoms of the Neosho, Dawn was a pale light that through weird shapes of tree and brush, made unearthly in the gray thickness. There was no sun.

Lone Watie could hear the low rush of the river as it passed close by the rear of his cabin. The morning river sounds were routine and therefore good… the kingfisher and the bluejays that quarreled incessantly… the early caw of a crow-scout… once… that all was well. Lone Watie felt rather than thought of these things as he fried his breakfast of fish over a tiny flame in the big fireplace.

Like many of the Cherokees, he was tall, standing well over six feet in his boot moccasins that held, half tucked, the legs of buckskin breeches. At first glance

he appeared emaciated, so spare was his frame … the doeskin shirt jacket flapping loosely about his body, the face bony and lacking in flesh, so that hollows of the cheeks added prominence to the bones and the hawk nose that separated intense black eyes capable of a cruel light. He squatted easily on haunches before the fire, turning the mealed fish in the pan with fluid movement, occasionally tossing back one of the black plaits of hair that hung to his shoulders.

The clear call of a nighthawk brought instant movement by the Indian. Nighthawks do not call in the light of day. He moved with silent litheness; taking his rifle, he glided to the rear door of the one-room cabin … dropped to belly and slid quickly into the brush. Again the call came, loud and clear.

As all mountain men know, the whippoorwill will not sing when the nighthawk is heard… and so now, from the brush, Lone answered with that whipping call.

Now there was silence. From his position in the brush Lone listened for the approach. Though only a few feet from the cabin he could scarcely see it. Sumac and dead honeysuckle vine had grown up the chimney and run over the roof. Brush and undergrowth had encroached almost to the walls. What once had been a trail had long since been covered over. One must know of this inaccessible hideout to whistle an approach.

The horse burst through the brush without warning. Lone was startled by the appearance of the big roan. He looked half wild with flaring nostrils and he stamped his feet as the rider reined him before the cabin door. He watched as the rider dismounted and casually turned his back to the cabin as he uncinched saddle and pulled it from the horse.

Lone’s eyes ran over the man; the big, holstered pistols, the boot knife, nor did he miss the slight bulge beneath the left shoulder. As the man turned he saw the white scar standing out of the black stubble and he noted the gray cavalry hat pulled low. Lone grunted with satisfaction; a fighting man who carried himself as a warrior should, with boldness and without fear.

The open buckskin jacket revealed something more that made Lone step confidently from the brush and approach him. It was the shirt; linsey-woolsey with a long open V that ended halfway down the waist with a rosette. It was the “guerrilla shirt,” noted in U.S. Army dispatches as the only sure way to identify a Missouri guerrilla. Made by the wives, sweethearts, and womenfolk of the farms, it had become the uniform of the guerrilla. He always wore it… sometimes concealed… but always worn. Many of them bore fancy needlework and bright colors… this one was the plain color of butternut, trimmed in gray.

The man continued to rub down the roan, even as Lone walked toward him… and only turned when the Indian stopped silently, a yard away.

“Howdy,” he said softly and extended his hand, “I’m Josey Wales.”

“I have heard,” Lone said simply, grasping the hand, “I am Lone Watie.”

Josey looked sharply at the Indian. “I re’clect. I rode with ye once… and yer kinsman, General Stand Watie, ‘crost the Osage and up into Kansas.”

“I remember,” Lone said, “it was a good fight”… and then… “I will stable your horse with mine down by the river. There is grain.”

As he led the roan away Josey pulled his saddle and gear into the cabin. The floor was hard-packed dirt. The only furnishings were willows laid along the walls draped with blankets. Besides the cooking utensils there was nothing else, save the belt hanging by a peg that carried a Colt and long knife. The inevitable gray hat of the cavalry lay on a willow bed.

He remembered the cabin. After wintering at Mineral Creek, Texas, near Sherman, in ’63, he had come back up the trail and had camped here. They had been told it was the farm of Lone Watie, but no one had been there… though there was evidence left of what had been a farm.

He knew something of the history of the Waties. They had lived in the mountains of north Georgia and Alabama. Stand Watie was a prominent Chief. Lone was a cousin. Dispossessed of their land by the U.S. government in the 1830’s, they had walked with the Cherokee tribe on the “Trail of Tears” to the new land assigned them in the Nations. Nearly a third of the Cherokee had died on that long walk, and thousands of graves still marked the trail.

He had known the Cherokee as a small boy in the mountains of Tennessee. His father had befriended many of them who had hidden out, refusing to make the walk.

The mountain man did not have the ‘land hunger” of the flatlander who had instigated the government’s action. He preferred the mountains to remain wild … free, unfettered by law and the irritating hypocrisy of organized society. His kinship, therefore, was closer to the Cherokee than to his racial brothers of the flat-lands who strained mightily at placing the yoke of society upon their necks.

From the Cherokee he had learned how to hand-fish, easing his hands into the bank holes of the mountain streams and tickling the sides of trout and bass, that the gray fox runs in a figure eight and the red fox runs in a circle. How to track the bee to the honey hive, where the quail trap caught the most birds, and how curious was the buck deer

He had eaten with them in their mountain lodge-pole cabins, and they had brought meat to his own family. Their code was the loyalty of the mountain man with all his clannishness, and therefore Lone Watie merited his trust. He was of his kind.

When the War between the States had burst over the nation, the Cherokee naturally sided with the Confederacy against the hated government that had deprived him of his mountain home. Some: had joined General Sam Cooper, a few were in the elite brigade of Jo Shelby, but most had followed their leader General Stand Watie, the only Indian General of the Confederacy.

Lone returned to the cabin and squatted before the fire.

“Breakfast,” he grunted as he extended the pan of fish to Josey. They ate with their hands while the Indian looked moodily into the fire. “There’s been a lot of talk in the settlements. Ye been raising hell in Missouri, they say.”

“I reckin,” Josey said.

Lone dusted meal on the hearth of the fireplace and from a burlap extracted two cleaned catfish, which he rolled in the meal and placed over the fire.

“Where ye headin’?” he asked.

“Nowheres… in pa’ticular,” Josey said around a mouthful of fish… and then, as if in explanation, “My partner is dead.”

For a few harrowing days he had had somewhere to go. It had become an obsession with him, to bring Jamie out of Missouri, to bring him here. With the death of the boy the emptiness came back. As he had ridden through the night he had caught himself checking back… to see to Jamie. The brief purpose was gone.

Lone Watie asked no questions about the partner, but he nodded his head in understanding.

“I heard last year thet General Jo Shelby and his men refused to surrender,” Lone said, “… heard they went to Mexico, some kind of fight down there. Ain’t heard nothin’ since, but some, I believe, left to join up with ’em.” The Indian spoke flatly, but he shot a quick glance at Josey to find the effect.

Josey was surprised. “I didn’t know there was other’n thet didn’t surrender. I ain’t never been farther into Texas than Fannin County. Mexico’s a long way off.”

Lone pushed the pan toward Josey. “It is somethin’ to think about,” he said. “Men sich as we are… our trade… ain’t wanted around hereabouts… seems like.”

“Something to think about,” Josey agreed, and without further ceremony he walked to a willow bed and unbuckled his guns for the first time in many days. Placing his hat over his face, he stretched out and was in deep sleep in a moment. Lone received this unspoken confidence with implacable routine.

The days that followed slipped into weeks. There was no more talk of Mexico … but the thought worked at the mind of Josey. He asked no questions of Lone, nor did the Indian volunteer information about himself, but it was apparent that he was in hiding.

As the winter days passed, Josey relaxed his tensions and even enjoyed helping Lone make fish baskets, which he did with a skill equaling the Indian’s. They set the baskets in the river with meal balls for bait. Food was plentiful; besides the fish they ate fat quail from cunningly set traps on the quail runs, rabbit, and turkey, all seasoned with the wild onion, skunk cabbage, garlic, and herbs Lone dug from the bottoms.

January, 1867, brought snow across the Nations. It swept in a great white storm out of the Cimarron flats, gathered fury over the central plateau, and banked its blanket against the Ozarks. It brought misery to the Plains Indian, the Kiowa, the Comanche, Arapaho, and Pottawatomie… short of winter food they were driven toward the settlements. The snow settled in four-foot drifts along the Neosho, but driftwood was plentiful and the cabin was snug. The confinement brought a restlessness to Josey Wales. He had noted the leanness of Lone’s provisions. There was no ammunition for his pistol, and the horses were short of grain.

And so it was, as they sat silently around the fire of a bleak evening, Josey placed a fistful of gold pieces in Lone’s hand.

“Yankee gold,” he said laconically, “we’ll be needin’ grain… ammunition and sich.”

Lone stared at the glittering coins in the firelight, and a wolfish smile touched his lips.

“The gold of the enemy, like his corn, is always bright. It’ll cause some questions in the settlement, but,” he added thoughtfully, “if I tell ’em the blue pony soldiers will take it away from them if they talk…”

Bright, crystal-blue days brought the sun’s rays in an unseasonable warmth and melted away the snow in a few days and fed new life into the rivulets and streams. Lone brought his gray gelding to the cabin and prepared to leave. Josey carried Lone’s saddle to the door, but the Indian shook his head.

“No saddle… also no hat… no shirt. I’ll wear a blanket and carry only the rifle. I’ll be a dumb blanket buck, the soldiers think all Indians with a blanket are too stupid to question.”

He left, riding along the river bank, where the marshy bottom would hide his tracks … a forlorn, hunched figure under his blanket.

Two days passed, and Josey felt the tenseness of listening for Lone’s return. The feeling of the trailed outlaw returned, and the cabin became a trap. On the third day he moved his bedroll and guns to the brush and alternated his watch between river bank and cabin. He could never have been persuaded that Lone would betray him, but many things could have happened.

Lone could have been found out, backtracked by a patrol… many of them had Osage trackers. He had moved the roan from the stable and picketed him in the brush when on the afternoon of the fourth day he heard the clear call of the nighthawk. He answered and watched as Lone slipped silently up from the river bank, leading the gray. The Indian looked even more emaciated. Josey suddenly wondered at his age as he saw wrinkles that sagged the bony face. He was older… in a dispirited sense that had suckled away the sap from his physical body. As they unloaded the grain and supplies from the back of the horse the Indian said nothing… and Josey volunteered no questions.