Rifles for Watie

by Harold Keith

  Jeff got them both a fresh drink from the ambulance barrel.

  “Corn, Ford, I’m sure glad you’re alive. When they told me you’d been killed, I gave up on you.”

  Ford shut his eyes and swallowed painfully, then turned his head slightly toward Jeff.

  “Naw,” he said, with a touch of bravado. “I got it in the leg as we retreated.”

  Ford’s eyes kept leaping wildly from Jeff to the amputation tent. “Some Missouri boys was carryin’ me to the rear, but the rebels was firin’ so fast they had to drop me an’ run. The rebel advance skirmishers found me. They stole my money an’ my watch but a major made ’em give it all back. I laid all afternoon in the sun on the battlefield until one of our ambulances picked me up last night. Jeff, it was awful out there alone, listenin’ to the wounded an’ the dyin’ ashriekin’ an’ cussin’ an’ prayin’ an’ nobody there to help ’em.”

  A tired-looking surgeon in a bloodstained coat stuck his head out of the tent. He was trying to thread a needle with silk thread, so he could tie blood vessels. Unable to thread the needle, he moistened the end of the silk strand with his tongue and rolled it between dirty fingers. He pointed with the needle to the sandy-haired man at Ford’s side.

  “Bring him in next,” he mumbled wearily to Jeff and the litter detail. Gently they picked up the litter. The sandy-haired man took one long, deep draw on his cigarette and exhaled the smoke noisily.

  “So long, Slim,” he told Ford, almost gaily. “Next time you see me, my dancin’ days will be over forever.”

  Jeff and the litter bearers carried him inside the tent and lifted him carefully onto a table. Jeff looked around him with awe. The surgeons and medical orderlies hardly had room to work. A disgusting stench assailed his nostrils. The place reeked with the sweet odor of chloroform. Two army lanterns dangled from a wooden ceiling crosspiece, furnishing some light. Jeff saw one of the medical orderlies washing a catling in a pail of dirty, dark-colored liquid. The other was cleaning human bone fragments from a small saw. When one of the surgeons motioned him outside, Jeff was glad to leave.

  “So long, kid,” the sandy-haired man called after him. Then noticing Jeff’s stricken face, he added apologetically, “I don’t care, kid. I never could dance worth a darn anyhow.” An orderly plucked the cigarette rudely out of the man’s mouth.

  All too soon the surgeon appeared at the tent flap and gestured toward the unhappy Ford.

  “Your turn next,” he said roughly. Ford’s face turned chalk white. A single convulsive shudder shook his long frame. His horror-stricken eyes sought Jeff’s.

  “Don’t let ’em cut off my leg, Jeff,” he pleaded.

  “It won’t hurt you, Ford,” Jeff tried to comfort him as they lifted his litter. Ford was so lanky that his bare feet slopped over the end. Jeff went on, “You won’t even feel it. They have to do it to save your life.”

  “Soon you’ll be all through with war, son,” somebody else said as they carried Ford inside and laid him on the table.

  “I don’t want to live if I hafta be a hopeless cripple for life,” Ford screamed, thrashing about wildly. “Please, Jeff, for God’s sake don’t let ’em do it!” Ford grabbed Jeff’s hand and held on. Wearily the surgeon gestured Jeff outside.

  Ford saw the gesture. “No!” he pleaded, half rising on his litter. “Don’t go, Jeff. Please don’t leave me.”

  Jeff halted indecisively, his heart in turmoil. His stomach felt weak and his throat dry. Impatiently the surgeon motioned him outside again.

  Tears stinging his eyes, he took one last look at his friend, then gently detached his hand from Ford’s despairing grip. The boy stared at Jeff in wonder, turned his face helplessly to the tent wall, and began to sob bitterly. Jeff ducked beneath the tent flap and went outside. He had no time to find out how the operation went, for immediately his detail was assigned to burying dead Union soldiers. Using pick and shovel, they dug shallow trenches in the hot sunshine.

  The dead had fallen in long windrows, as though shot down by volleys. They lay in queer convulsive positions with all sorts of expressions on their faces. They seemed almost equally made up of Kansas Volunteers and Lyon’s Missourians.

  With a start Jeff recognized the first victim they buried as the big Kansas cavalryman he had seen riding merrily into battle in his black wedding suit. Hit in the side by artillery fire, the man apparently had died during the night, his face twisted grotesquely under his shoulder.

  When it came time to put him into the rocky Missouri hillside that was to be his final resting place, Jeff wondered whether the bride had been notified. Casualty reports traveled horseback or by stage and usually required weeks to deliver. After he helped ease the body into the shallow trench, he stood back, a weight in his throat, and thought how awful it was to be buried without any identification or without even a song or a prayer. The sergeant roughly flipped the corner of the blanket over the dead man’s face.

  Later Jeff’s detail was ordered back to the Wilson’s Creek battlefield with an ambulance to claim the body of General Lyon. There they saw several rebel Negro burial parties busily interring the dead, a duty that usually fell to the side winning the battle.

  They also found a mourner. In a small thicket of blackjack where the savage cannon fire had gutted the tops of the trees, a handsome shepherd dog sat in the broiling sun near the corpse of a fallen rebel lieutenant. The lieutenant lay with his arms flung out. His hat was still on his head and his eyes were open.

  The dog kept licking the face of her dead master and whining piteously. When the Negro detail came to bury him, the dog growled and refused to let them touch him. They had to drive her away with their shovels. Jeff saw that she was a brown shepherd, two or three years old, and that she looked very thin.

  “Here, girl,” he called kindly. Whistling to her, he bent down and held out his hand.

  The dog walked over to him and paused, regarding him gravely. Jeff began talking to her, using the same gentle, coaxing language he used on Ring at home. He had never seen a strange dog he couldn’t make up to.

  She came closer, permitting him to fondle her ears. Later, when his detail picked up the body of the general and headed back toward Rolla, Jeff whistled to her and she followed the ambulance. At the evening mess Jeff persuaded the cook to give him a piece of beef.

  He held it out to her. Despite her hunger, she came gracefully to her feet, accepted it gently from his hand, and then ate it slowly. Her beautifully plumed tail waved in gratitude.

  She was obviously a lady. That night they were such good friends that Jeff lifted her into the moving ambulance, and she slept at his feet all the way back to Rolla. He decided to call her Dixie.

  Upon rejoining his outfit, Jeff lost no time telling his comrades that Ford Ivey was still alive and had had his leg amputated. Pete Millholland’s blue eyes swept the group authoritatively.

  “Ford’s got a long siege ahead of him at the hospital in Springfield,” he said. “If anybody ever gits thar agin, be sure to stop an’ see him.”

  After reveille and roll call next morning, new uniforms were issued to everybody by the quartermaster. Jeff’s eyes shone when he saw the trim blue coats and the bright brass buttons. However, the first uniform he tried on was much too big for him.

  Bending over in front, he peered with dismay back between his legs at the sagging seat of his new trousers.

  “How do you like ’em?” beamed the quartermaster.

  “Sir, I think I’d like ’em smaller,” Jeff said forlornly. “If you took about two inches off the waist and a gallon and a half out of the seat, I think they might fit.”

  A pair of trousers was finally found that did fit reasonably well, and fifteen minutes later Jeff walked out for guard mounting, wearing his new uniform proudly.

  At the regimental parade grounds he found Noah sweeping one of the company’s earthen streets. He told him about Ford Ivey and he also told him about his encounter with Clardy behind the battle lines.


  Noah stopped sweeping. Leaning on the broom, he looked at Jeff intently, his keen eyes clear and unblinking. For the first time Jeff thought he saw fear in Noah’s usually placid face.

  Noah said anxiously, “Youngster, you talk too rough and too plain to the officers. Now don’t misunderstand me. I think in every army they otta fire about ninety per cent of the officers just to diminish the general confusion. But this fellow’s different. You’d best watch him like you would a snake. It’s probably his strategy to keep turning you in for this and that, so if you ever do inform on him, he can discredit your charges by pointing to your long record as a troublemaker in the army and say that you were just trying to get even with him for enforcing discipline. Don’t ever turn your back on him in battle. He probably wouldn’t hesitate to take your life.”

  Jeff felt a tiny shiver running up his spine. Then he laughed bitterly.

  “Don’t ever turn my back on him in battle? Corn! It doesn’t look like I’m ever going to get in a battle.”

  That night Jeff hung his new uniform carefully on the tent pole. Although he usually slept in his woolen uniform pants and shirt for warmth, he broke the custom that night. He didn’t want to wrinkle his new blue pants with the handsome light blue stripes down the sides.

  It was good to be back with his own outfit, although he felt awfully left out when they began talking about their experiences in the battle. And that was all they seemed to want to talk about. Moodily he turned over on his side and tried to sleep.

  Next morning he awoke at daybreak to find Noah’s cold hand shaking him.

  “Get up and dress quickly, youngster,” Noah whispered hoarsely. “I want to show you something.” There was a strange urgency in his voice.

  He led Jeff a hundred yards away to the camp’s outskirts. Suddenly Jeff’s body goose-pimpled with horror. A crowd of soldiers had formed silently around a body lying in the brush, a body with a knife sticking up out of its back. It was Sparrow, the cook. Apparently he had been stabbed during the night while on sentry duty.

  Captain Clardy had been summoned and, not taking time to dress fully, had thrown a long blue overcoat and cape over his gray woolen drawers.

  He stooped and examined the body, shaking his head. Then he rose and looked straight at Jeff.

  “You must all be more careful,” he warned, his voice suddenly soft and silky. “The enemy has stray patrols all around us. What happened to Sparrow here might well happen to any of you who are not prudent.”

  Jeff felt his stomach puckering. It was plain to him now that Sparrow had died at the hands, or orders, of the captain. Suddenly a strong remorse punished him.

  “Noah, I feel awful,” Jeff confessed, as they walked soberly back to their tent. “If I hadn’t got mad and deviled the captain about the widow’s murder, poor Sparrow might still be alive today.” Overwhelmed with grief, he sat down on the ground inside the tent and began sobbing.

  He felt Noah’s big hand on his shoulder. “You didn’t mean to hurt him. Clardy would probably have got him anyhow, sooner or later. Sparrow was the type who couldn’t keep a secret. He would have had to tell somebody, some day.”

  After a supper of hardtack and beans Jeff began to feel a little better. The army, recovering from its exhaustion and its casualties, seemed almost normal again. Noah was soaking his big feet carefully in salt water. From somewhere in the woods Bill Earle’s clear tenor was singing “Aura Lee” and Jeff knew Bill was probably surrounded by a group of young soldiers, all of them homesick. Jeff thought of his own family and wished with all his heart that he could see them tonight.

  Jim Veatch and half a dozen comrades played cards by the light of the smoldering campfire. Jim was dealing from the same deck he had thrown away on the battle march to Wilson’s Creek. Jeff grinned in the dark. Apparently Neeley North had sold the cards back to Jim after the army had returned to Rolla.

  Finally Jeff stretched and lay down outside the tent on the single cotton quilt that was his bed.

  He heard a slight rustle and saw the dog, Dixie, stand, turn around once, and then deposit herself in a neat brown bundle at his feet. She was careful not to lie on his bedding, and again he smiled. Her manners were perfect. Somebody, probably her dead master, had trained her well.

  Soon Jeff fell asleep. He began to dream. He dreamed that he saw Clardy, at the head of a gang of cutthroats, creeping stealthily toward his bed. Each man was carrying a dagger. He awoke in a cold sweat of fear. After tossing and tumbling another hour, he finally dropped off to sleep again. But he kept having nightmares.

  He kept seeing Sparrow lying in the brush with the knife in his back, the surprised, questioning look on his pain-glazed face.

  Finally he began to breathe more regularly. But the lonely dog who had changed armies only that afternoon stayed awake a long time, her head lying across her paws, her eyes wide open. Whenever she heard a strange noise in the sleeping camp or the dark woods, her ears would point alertly, the fur would bristle along her back and a quiet growl would issue from her throat as she guarded the fitful slumbers of her new master.

  9

  Light Bread and Apple Butter

  Summer passed, and with the coming of autumn the Kansas troops at Rolla were issued warm woolen gloves and long blue overcoats. Jeff was satisfied with everything but the food. He would always be hungry, he reckoned. They never got enough to eat.

  He was issued three days’ rations during a march and could have eaten it all in one day. And now that cooler weather had arrived, his appetite had burst its fetters. He was hungrier than a woodpecker with a headache.

  One Sunday afternoon in October, after inspection, he took Dixie for a walk down the leaf-strewn road to the clay pits, hoping to find some ripe persimmons. It was good to be out in the tingling air.

  The north wind held just enough of a sting in it that his short coat felt comfortable. From somewhere back in the quiet timber he heard the splintering thud of an ax. His nose caught the sour, winy odor of a cider press. A sharp pleasure came over him. It was good to get away from the camp, where for three long hours the officers had kept him busy cleaning his quarters and scrubbing his buttons and buckles with a fresh corncob in advance of the brigade commander’s weekly inspection visit.

  The Missouri woods reminded him of his mother’s brilliantly colored rag rug that lay on the split-log floor beside her bed, back in Linn County. The blackjack seedlings seemed aflame in the genial sunshine. The young hickories glowed in livid gold. The oaks couldn’t seem to agree on an appropriate color; some wore a subdued foliage of yellow and pale green, others were gay in bronze and bright red. A cardinal flew leisurely out of a tall, coppery sweet gum, and Jeff thought at first it was a falling leaf. Dixie trotted along contentedly at his side.

  Soon they came to a rude clearing and Jeff saw a small, unpainted clapboard house with crude leather hinges on the door. Behind the house were several apple trees, heavy with fruit. A small patch of big orange pumpkins lay in a garden nearby.

  The red apples looked so tempting that for a moment Jeff hesitated. It would be easy to help himself. Curbing his fierce appetite, he decided to ask first and, walking up a small passageway of pulverized white rock, knocked vigorously on the thin-planked door.

  A woman opened it, frowning suspiciously at his blue uniform. With a gnarled hand she raked the black hair out of her eyes. Jeff snatched off his army cap.

  “Mam,” said Jeff, twisting the cap in his hands bashfully, “I’m real hungry. Could I have some of those apples yonder?” With his cap, he pointed at the fruit trees nearby. He saw a small boy’s white, scrubbed face peering curiously at him from behind the woman’s skirts.

  “Begone with ye,” the woman snapped, in a tired, strained voice. “Iffen I feed one of ye, ye’d come back tomorrey, an’ bring the whole army with you. We ain’t got enough fer ourselves.” She started to shut the door.

  Jeff stepped back, disappointment in his face. “Mam,” he said politely, “I wouldn’t bring the a
rmy down on you. And I’ll be glad to work for the apples. I was raised on a farm in Kansas. You got any man’s work needs to be done around here? Anything you want lifted, any fence to fix?”

  Now it was the woman’s turn to look surprised. Hopefully Jeff watched her. When she glanced at his blue uniform she scowled. But when she looked into his boyish face, her hard features began to soften and her distrust to fade.

  “I reckon it’s all right,” she whined, wearily. “Jest help yo’sef to the apples. Ye don’t need to work fer ’em. Most soldiers woulda jest taken ’em and not even bothered to knock.”

  Relief flooded Jeff, like a warm shaft of sunshine.

  “Yes, mam,” he said, “I come pretty near doing that myself, mam, I was so famished.”

  She seemed pleased with his honesty and opened the door wider. A small girl with curly yellow hair thrust her head bashfully around the jamb. When Jeff smiled at the children, the boy opened his mouth and smiled back and Jeff saw he had two upper front teeth missing.

  “Ye don’t look like a soldier nohow,” the woman said. “Ye look more like a schoolboy. Ye orter be home with yer mother.”

  “Yes, mam,” grinned Jeff.

  That grin must have done something to her, because now she stepped back. “Why don’t ye come in?” she invited. “Sit down. We ain’t got much ourselves but mebbe we can do better fer ye than jest raw apples.”

  She indicated a kitchen table covered with oilcloth. “Sit thar.” She went back into the shed room. Gratefully Jeff stepped inside and sat down.

  “Do ye like light bread and apple butter?” she called from somewhere inside the house.

  Jeff could feel his mouth puckering with hunger. “I sure do, mam. I’d like it even if it had bugs on it.”

  She came back carrying a stone jar of apple butter, part of a round loaf of fresh light bread and a tall blue-glass bottle of cold milk. “It ain’t much. But it ain’t got no bugs on it. Hep yersef.”

  “Yes, mam. Thank you, mam.”