Rifles for Watie

by Harold Keith

  With a long, sharp, bone-handled knife, she planed off three slices of the bread. Jeff could smell the fragrant yeast. With an effort he restrained himself.

  “Mam,” he said, “may I give my dog some of this? I’ll bet she’s almost as hungry as me.”

  The woman said, “You jist go ahead, now, and eat yore vittles. I’ll feed yore dog.”

  “Yes, mam,” Jeff said. “Thank you, mam.”

  Overjoyed at his good fortune, he ate ravenously while the two children, fingers in mouth, stared shyly at him.

  “My name’s McComas,” the woman said, returning and sitting at the other side of the table. “We’re lucky to hev any food at all these days. One army or t’other’s on us all the time.”

  “We get rations,” Jeff explained between bites, “but they aren’t much. Just a little bacon and corn meal and coffee.”

  “Ye talk different than us,” the woman said. “Where’bouts was ye raised?”

  “In Linn County, Kansas, mam, close to the Missouri border,” Jeff said. “My mother was a schoolteacher back in Kentucky before she got married. She taught all of us our speech.” He told them all about his home, his family, and the bushwhackers.

  The woman’s eyes grew hard at the mention of the bushwhackers. “There’s bushwhackers in both no’th an’ south,” she said, smoothing her faded gray apron over her knee. “I got a sister livin’ near Neosho, close to the Kansas border. They was raided twict by Montgomery’s Jayhawkers from Kansas an’ got cleaned out both times. Bushwhackers, no matter which side they’s on, is the lowest critters on God’s green earth.”

  “Yes, mam,” agreed Jeff. With the back of his hand he wiped the bread crumbs off his mouth. Feeling full for the first time in weeks, he arose to go.

  “Mam, are you sure you haven’t got some chores or something I could help you with around here? I’ve a little time before I have to go back.”

  Appreciative, she showed him an ax and several long blackjack logs piled together in the yard. Taking off his coat, Jeff picked up the ax and began to swing it in the crisp fall air. He enjoyed the exercise. He hadn’t used an ax since he had left home. Soon he had cut enough wood to keep the fireplace going several days. He carried part of it inside for her, stacking it neatly on the hearth.

  She thanked him, wiping her rough hands on her apron. “Thet’ll last us a week. My man’s in the army. It’s hard to keep going without him.”

  “Mam,” said Jeff, just before he left, “could I take a blouseful of those apples back to my messmates in camp? I’d take the ones on the ground. And I wouldn’t tell them where I got them. They’re hungry, too.”

  She gave him an old tow sack. Jeff filled it with windfalls.

  As he and Dixie walked away, he looked back and saw them all three standing in the doorway watching him. He waved. The boy and the girl waved back.

  Back at camp, Jeff’s bunk mates bit hungrily into the apples.

  “You’re the best rustler in the whole outfit,” Bill Earle praised, bearded cheek full, and chewing noisily. “After this, we’ll send you out to do all our foragin’. You’re so small and boyish, the farm wives all take pity on you.”

  Next afternoon, Captain Clardy assembled the company and asked for ten volunteers for what he called “important duty.” Still one battle behind everybody else and eager for any kind of action, Jeff stepped promptly forward two steps. As he did so, he heard Noah Babbitt whisper urgently “No, youngster, no.” But it was too late.

  Others volunteered until soon a detail was formed. As it marched down the pike, Spruce Baird, the sergeant in command, told them they were on their way to visit the homes of rebel soldiers who had violated their paroles by returning to the Confederate army. Captured at Wilson’s Creek, they had promised under oath that they would stay out of the fighting until the war ended.

  “It’s a tough duty,” the little sergeant bellowed in his heavy, coarse voice that utterly belied his small frame. “We’re ordered to punish their families.”

  Jeff blinked. “Sir,” he asked, uneasily, “how do we punish them?”

  Baird cleared his throat noisily. “We confiscate their livestock an’ their property an’ take the stuff back to camp with us.”

  Jeff was appalled. He brushed a horsefly from his ear. Surely the government, President Lincoln’s government, didn’t rob the innocent and the helpless. “But, sir, if the men are gone away to war, won’t the women and children need all the worse what we’re going to take away from them?”

  “Aye,” growled Sergeant Baird, nodding, “that they will. An’ now, youngster, lay off askin’ your searchin’ questions. Orders is orders. I don’t like ’em no better than you. But I don’t make ’em. All I do is enforce ’em.” He kicked savagely at a rock in the road and added, “It’s a tough duty.”

  It was, indeed. Before the hard day ended, Jeff wished a score of times that he was back in camp. Some of the Confederate women accepted the confiscation coolly. Others wept, pleading for their cows and for their children’s pets. Some became angry and cursed like men as Jeff and the soldiers rounded up cows, calves, horses, sheep and hogs and drove them down the road ahead of them toward Rolla.

  “Only one more place,” barked the sergeant gruffly. “Let’s come up on it through the woods so’s they won’t see us comin’.” Leaving the road, they cut into the timber. The sergeant had sent all the livestock back to camp by five of the men. Only Jeff and three others remained with him. It was just turning dusk.

  After they walked half a mile, a small house loomed ahead. They could smell the smoke from its fireplace chimney. Breaking ranks, they hand-vaulted a rail fence and approached the place from a path through the woods. Ahead of them, Jeff heard the familiar sound of milk spurting against the bottom of an empty metal bucket and knew somebody had started the milking.

  As he flipped up the back of his collar, he saw several apple trees and then a small field of pumpkins, their orange faces pale and eerie in the twilight.

  Cold fear gripped him. The McComas place!

  They surprised Mrs. McComas milking a black and white spotted cow in the barn. Startled, she gave a squeal of fright and rose clumsily, spilling part of the milk on the ground and on the threadbare coat she was wearing. Alarmed, the cow plunged to one side.

  Baird hauled out his paper and, clearing his throat huskily, read the confiscation summons. When the unhappy woman saw Jeff among the soldiers, she was furious.

  “This is what a body gits fer goin’ soft an’ feedin’ a Yankee swine.” She spat at him, bitterly. “Ye brought ’em here, jist liken I said ye would.”

  She turned wildly on the sergeant. “Sure, my man’s a rebel! What’s wrong with thet? So is the husbands of thousan’s of other wimmen all over Missouri. Sure, he broke his parole! He couldn’t bear standin’ round doin’ nothin’ when his state was bein’ invaded by a passel of furriners.”

  Panicked by the noise, the cow started to lumber out the door. Jeff ducked quickly and picked up the frazzled fragment of rope that was fastened around the beast’s neck.

  “Ho, bossy!” he commanded gently.

  “Take her on back to camp,” Baird ordered, motioning with his hands toward the road.

  Jeff’s face fell. “Yes, sir,” he said, wishing the sergeant had given the task to somebody else.

  He looked imploringly at Mrs. McComas. “Mam, please believe me. I didn’t have nothin’ to do with bringin’ ’em here.” He pointed to the other soldiers. “Ask ’em, mam. None of us likes this kind of duty.”

  The woman scourged him with an angry look.

  “Liar!” she said, clawing the black hair out of her eyes. “Yankee liar!” Scornfully she turned on Baird. “Ye’r a brave crew, th’ lot o’ yer. Took five of ye to capture one woman’s cow.”

  Sheepishly they marched the cow back to the camp at Rolla and put her in the corral with the other confiscated animals. As he fastened the gate’s catch, the little sergeant took off his cap and shook his shaggy b
lack head with disgust. “It’s a tough duty,” he croaked for the tenth time and dismissed them.

  Bitterness in his heart, Jeff returned to his winter quarters, a shelter tent superimposed on a hickory log base. It was heated by a stick and clay fireplace. Four bunks, two built above and two below, extended from wall to wall in the rear. In the foreground was a table constructed ingeniously from an inverted hardtack case mounted on legs. A sign hung over the door. Printed in Bill Earle’s rude scrawl, it said “The Astor House.”

  Noah Babbitt looked up from his seat on the fireplace where he was writing letters off a shingle on his knee. “How’d it go, youngster?”

  Jeff hung his head. Slumping to a seat on one of the lower bunks, he stared at the earthen floor, covered with yellow straw. “I feel low down as a snake,” he said and told Noah and the others all about it.

  “Don’t volunteer like that for extra duty,” Noah warned, looking up soberly from his shingle. “Far as that’s concerned, don’t ever volunteer for nothin’! I tried to warn you, but you moved too fast for me.”

  Miserable, Jeff kept shaking his head. “That cow was all the livestock they had,” he said. “Now those children won’t have any milk to drink.” He was thinking of the tall blue-glass bottle of cold milk he had drained back in the McComas kitchen.

  John Chadwick whistled incredulously. “You mean, this is the same family that sent us the apples?”

  Jeff nodded, glumly.

  Bill Earle, squatted on his heels, shook his brown head in bafflement. “War’s hard,” he said, philosophically. “I wished they was something we could do about it. But they ain’t nothin’ we can do. Not a gol darned thing.”

  Jeff glared at him, an idea forming in his mind, a bold, crazy idea that didn’t make sense at all. Maybe he couldn’t do anything about it. But he could try. The McComases had fed him and given him apples for his comrades, despite the fact he was an enemy. And this was how they were repaid. Impatiently he crawled to his feet. It was still an hour before bedtime.

  He looked at Noah, sudden decision in his face. “Who’s the sentry down at the corral tonight?”

  Noah peered up at Jeff. “Oscar Earnshaw. Why?”

  Jeff looked at Noah meaningfully, without replying. He knew he could trust Noah. And Bill and John, too, for that matter. He put on his coat. He felt lots better about it, now that he had made up his mind.

  “Careful, youngster,” Noah warned in a low voice as Jeff went out. “It’s after retreat, you know.”

  Jeff found Oscar Earnshaw standing behind a tree in the corral, blowing on his hands. Oscar was a fleshy fellow with long brown sideburns that came clear down to the lobes of his ears. He had leaned his musket against the corral fence.

  Oscar peered uncertainly at Jeff in the dark, reaching for his gun.

  Jeff hastened to identify himself. “It’s me. Jeff Bussey. I want to talk to you a minute.” Suspicious, Oscar kept his musket in the hollow of his arm and thrust his hands into the sleeves of his greatcoat for warmth. “Whad’ye want to talk about? I was hopin’ you was comin’ to relieve me. It’s cold out here as a well-digger’s bloomers.”

  “Oscar,” whispered Jeff, “how’d you like those apples I brought you yesterday afternoon?”

  Oscar looked sharply at Jeff. “You didn’t come way out here in the frost jest to ask me that. You know how well I liked ’em. Best winesaps I ever et. Only thing, they wasn’t enough of ’em. Why?”

  Jeff went straight to the point. “Look, Oscar, if I bring you a big slice of home-baked light bread with apple butter smeared all over it, would you do something for me?”

  Oscar took his hands out of his sleeves and thrust them under his armpits to warm them. He looked inscrutably at Jeff.

  “Depends,” he said. “You know I’d do murder fer a feast like that. But where you gonna git any light bread and apple butter round here, let alone this time o’ night? This is an army camp. All we got to eat here is buckwheat an’ beans.”

  Jeff told him about the McComases. “Oscar,” he concluded boldly, “I want you to look the other way while I take that black-and-white heifer out of the corral and drive her back to the McComas farm.”

  Oscar’s eyes twinkled shrewdly. He stared thoughtfully at Jeff. “What d’yuh mean, look the other way? I’ll help you cut her out myself. The corral’s full o’ cows. They’ll never miss one.”

  As Jeff moved off, driving the cow ahead of him, Oscar warned in low tones, “Be sure to come back through my sentry position. An’ bring the bread and jelly.”

  Jeff nodded, herding the cow off the road into the dark woods. The beast went willingly enough, as though she knew the path. As he walked, Jeff could feel the damp cold shutting down on him.

  An hour later he drove the animal quietly into the McComas corral and locked the gate. A big smoky moon, yellow as brass, was rising through the branches of the apple trees. The house and the barn stood silent in its glow.

  Jeff took the milk bucket off the oaken peg, rinsed it at the well, and finished milking the heifer. Walking up to the back door with the half-filled bucket in his hand, he knocked and called out guardedly, “Mrs. McComas.” After he had called several times, he heard a noise inside and somebody stirring.

  Mrs. McComas opened the back door cautiously. She was holding a hog-fat lamp in one hand. It splashed faint pools of light here and there in the yard. She looked frightened and sleepy.

  Jeff said, “It’s me, mam. I brought your cow back. Sentry helped me smuggle her out of the corral. I just now finished milking her for you. Here’s the milk.” He thrust the bucket toward her.

  Puzzled, she set the lamp down on the table. Brushing the hair out of her eyes, she accepted the bucket with a look of astonishment. Quickly Jeff told her about the confiscation detail and how they had all volunteered for it without knowing what it was.

  Ten minutes later he was on his way back to camp, carrying a couple of fresh apple-butter sandwiches in his blouse for Oscar Earnshaw and gorging another she had given him for himself.

  Three months later he wasn’t so fortunate. On a balmy day in January, Captain Clardy ordered all guns cleaned for a noon inspection.

  Walking a short distance into the woods, Jeff raised his old-style musket to shoot it off preparatory to cleaning the barrel. An unpleasant memory stayed him. Remembering his arrest and punishment for doing this same thing on the march to Springfield, he lowered the weapon. He decided it would be more discreet to go to Clardy and get his permission.

  Ushered by a sentry, he found Clardy inside his quarters in the officers’ barracks. A fire burned cozily in his “California” type furnace, a hole dug in the ground and covered with a removable stone. The smoke was tunneled to an outside flue. A long blue overcoat, a cape, and a pair of gray woolen drawers hung from pegs in the wall. Clardy’s glistening black head was bent low over his reports. They were alone. The captain didn’t look up.

  Jeff saluted briskly. “Sir, may I have permission to fire off the load in my musket so I can clean it? It’ll take too long to draw the load with a ball screw.”

  Clardy’s probing eyes rose slowly and deliberately over the feathered end of the quill with which he was writing. He transfixed Jeff with a cold, naked stare, letting him stand for a whole minute with his question unanswered. Finally the captain seemed to tire of his sport. He dropped his gaze back upon his reports.

  He nodded curtly. “Permission granted.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Feeling relieved, Jeff backed out. He walked two hundred yards into the woods, fired into a sandbank, and had hardly begun to clean the barrel when a patrol swooped down upon him, arresting him by the order of the colonel.

  Jeff claimed the permission of Captain Clardy. Deciding to check, the sergeant took him before Clardy and asked if he had given Jeff the permission.

  Clardy snarled, “Of course I didn’t. This man did the same thing on the march to Wilson’s Creek when we were only a few miles from the enemy. I had to punish him.”


  Enraged, Jeff turned on Clardy, forgetting all caution. “Sir,” he said hotly, “you gave me the permission yourself right here only five minutes ago, and you know it.”

  Shocked by Jeff’s effrontery, the sergeant fell back a pace. Confusion in his face, he looked uncertainly from one to the other.

  Clardy sprang to his feet, his face livid with anger. “Arrest that man!” he howled. “You hear me? Take him to the guardhouse. I’m tired of his eternal impertinence. This time I’m going to teach him a lesson he’ll never forget.”

  Jeff spent one day in the guardhouse, a guarded tent. For two weeks he was assigned to the most disagreeable tasks the captain could contrive, marching about the camp carrying a knapsack filled with rocks, digging stumps, burying dead horses, digging latrines. Finally he was switched to a shovel crew that was busily constructing breastworks around the southern approaches of the camp. It was hard work. The ground, rocky and frozen, had to be broken first with a pick. The more Jeff labored, the more his hate for Clardy grew.

  One day he passed a husky, brown-faced young workman carrying a big stone. When the workman saw Jeff, he looked so astonished he almost dropped his boulder.

  “Jeff!”

  It was David Gardner. Overjoyed, David threw down his stone, ran to Jeff’s side, and began to pound him on the back. Then he saw the shovel in Jeff’s hands and the dark look on Jeff’s face.

  “Goshallmighty, Jeff,” he stammered. “What are you doin’ on the ditch crew? Did you desert, too?”

  That night Jeff lay quietly on his cold pallet, trying to think. All around him he could hear the snores of the other prisoners and smell the stench of their unwashed bodies. Slowly his mind began to go back over the last few weeks. They had been difficult weeks for him, thanks to Clardy’s tyranny.

  Turning on his side, he shut his eyes and clenched his teeth. Although he still hadn’t lost his desire to fight in battle, he was torn with loathing for all the cruelty and tyranny that accompanied war. Sleep didn’t come to him until nearly midnight.

  Next morning, after he had awakened and had breakfast, he felt better and began again to dream his old dream, looking forward to the day when he would get off the trench-digging detail and back onto the battle line, where he could settle his old score with the rebel Missourians. With the coming of spring, Jeff knew there would be more fighting.