by Harold Keith
Bullets zipped all about them. Jeff wondered how it felt to be hit by a musket ball; whether it stung or whether it burned. He wondered why their own artillery hadn’t begun shooting.
Looking to both right and left, he found himself part of a long blue line of soldiers moving at a quick walk toward the woods ahead. Men all around him were taking off their coats and dropping them on the prairie. Jeff peeled off his, flung it to the ground and felt a little better. He wouldn’t need it anyhow because he expected to be killed.
“Flam-a-dee! Flam-a-dee! Flam-a-dee-dee!” rattled the drums, sounding their doleful call to death. They entered the woods. A wounded horse screamed in agony. Stifling an impulse to turn and run, he clenched his teeth and kept advancing, dreading what lay ahead because he couldn’t see it, nor imagine what it was like.
Although it was December, sweat ran down the tip of his nose. The winter sun gleamed brightly off his steel bayonet.
Noah, tall, gaunt, looking grim as death, was walking in a low crouch, his bayonet-tipped musket held in front of him. Jeff felt a little better. Just being close to Noah helped. The presence of the other men helped, too.
He stumbled over a fallen log but kept going. His mind was sharp now. He began to recall all the mean things he had ever done and how he might never have time to atone for them. Life was running out on him. He wasn’t ready to die. He didn’t want to be rushed into it. He needed more time to think about it. After all, a person died just once. Anybody who let himself get killed was just plain stupid. The world was a wonderful place to live. No matter how revered he was in life, a dead person was so completely out of things. Even his own relatives soon forgot him and quickly reshaped their lives without him.
“Ba-loom! Ba-loom!”
A sudden rush of air passed overhead, and Jeff’s heart leaped thankfully. Casting a startled look back over his shoulder, he saw streaks of orange-gold flame burst from Blunt’s forward guns as the Union batteries, elevating their cannon, fired over the heads of their infantry, using two-second fuses. For the first time he appreciated how dependent the infantry and artillery were upon each other.
“Charge bayonets!”
With a wild yell the long blue line leaped forward. Sprinting at breakneck speed, Jeff yelled at the top of his lungs, too. Their little red and white striped flag with the blue patch in the corner was going along with them at a jerky motion. There was a steady rattle of musket fire ahead. Gaps were torn in the line by the rebel volleys. They began to run through clouds of sulphurous smoke. It stank and made his eyes smart.
Thud! Down went a man at Jeff’s elbow. Thud! Thud! Men were dropping all around him.
Now they had reached the fringe of the timber and were stumbling through the brush. Thud! Thud! Thud! Jeff saw comrade after comrade pitch to the ground, but Noah was still at his right elbow, panting and grunting as he plowed laboriously through the greenbrier and the shinnery.
With mounting rage Jeff wondered when they would be allowed to fire, retaliating to the volleys that were moving them down like oat stalks before the sickle. He felt a wild impulse to fire anyhow.
Still running, he looked ahead through the trees, and there the rebels were, a long line of men clad in mingled brown and gray, partly obscured by powder smoke. Wearing tan campaign hats, they were standing shoulder to shoulder, shooting muskets held at face level. When the advancing Union line saw them, they pulled up and raised their guns for a volley.
“Fire!”
From one end of the long blue line to the other, red spouts of flame leaped from the bayonet-tipped muskets of the Kansas Volunteers. As his finger tightened on the trigger, and the gun recoiled against his shoulder with the first shot, Jeff felt a vast relief.
With both armies now at full fire power, he was conscious only of the awful thunderclap of battle. There were no clear thoughts in his head. Breathless, he thought neither of victory nor defeat but rather that the end of the world was coming and he was only a small, unimportant part of this tremendous spectacle that was a swift prelude to it.
A rebel bullet sheared off a branch a yard away. Jeff dove to his knees, furious at the stupidity of both armies standing in line and shooting at one another like duelists at ten paces. On his right, he saw Noah firing carefully off one knee. That still wasn’t low enough for Jeff.
Flat on his belly, he began firing as fast as he could. Loading a single-shot musket was an intricate operation. Rolling over on his back, he bit off the end of the paper cartridge, thrust it in the gun, poured powder into the muzzle, withdrew his iron ramrod from the groove beneath the barrel, and rammed the charge and the bullet down the barrel. Then he pulled the hammer back with his thumb and stuck a percussion cap on the nipple. After that, all he had to do was draw a bead on the enemy and press the trigger. With the firing of the shot, smoke and fire from the black gunpowder belched into his face, and then he had the whole thing to do over.
Each time he fired, Jeff scrambled to his feet, ran forward a few steps, then dropped again to reload. He bit the cartridges off so fast that he swallowed some of the spilled powder. It tasted bitter. He wanted to rinse his mouth. But he couldn’t. His canteen had been full of good, cold Arkansas spring water but he had foolishly thrown it away with his coat. Hot with battle now, he felt only that he wanted to encounter the worst and get it over as quickly as possible.
Then with shrill yells and screams and do-or-die expressions, they met the rebels hand-to-hand in the dark gloom of the trees, using clubbed muskets, fists, knives, stones, anything they could get hold of. Jeff hurled himself upon a big fellow in brown, shrieking at the top of his lungs and thrusting upward with his bayonet.
He felt a sharp stab of pain across the knuckles of his left hand as his opponent parried the thrust with such force that both muskets were knocked to the ground.
Scowling, the rebel crouched to recover his musket. Jeff rushed him fiercely, tackling him by the legs. As the man fell, he snatched a long, wicked hunting knife from his belt and tried to slash his way free. He began kicking violently. Jeff dodged the knife and tried with all his might to hang on to the rebel’s legs.
Suddenly his view was blocked by a blue pant leg as somebody stepped close to his face. He looked up in time to see his benefactor swing his rifle downward, like an ax.
Clonk! The sound reminded him of the squashing noise a melon makes when it is dropped onto a stone walk. The thrashing legs in his grasp trembled violently and grew still.
“On your feet, youngster!”
Noah, his brown face looking unnaturally ferocious in the gray gloom, reached down and, with one mighty jerk, lifted Jeff to a standing position. His mouth was smeared with black powder, as though he had been eating it. As Jeff bent over to pick up his musket, he saw the brown line of rebels retreating through the woods, loading as they backed away.
“Wait!” Noah yelled hoarsely, glancing through the smoke at his right. A slow panic blossomed in his powder-begrimed countenance. “Lookie thar! Millions of ’em!”
Jeff looked, and his jaw fell open with alarm. An entire rebel regiment, the men swarming like ants, had completely turned the right anchor of the Union line and, boiling out upon the prairie, was threatening to outflank them. They were after a Federal artillery unit that had just arrived and was running up its long black guns.
The rebels were tearing the top logs off a rail fence so they could clamber over, charge the Union guns, and capture them.
“Let’s go help ’em!” Noah proposed. Jeff didn’t think much of the idea but he did not hesitate. By that time he would have followed Noah anywhere.
Noah ran with long awkward strides, Jeff at his heels. A tall battery lieutenant with red stripes on his tattered blue pants and tiny crossed cannons on his cap lumbered awkwardly to meet them. He cast frantic looks over his shoulder at the rebels forming behind the rail fence, only three hundred yards away.
“Will you fellows help us?” he pleaded. “My cannoneer deserted. One of our crews is short-hand
ed.”
Quickly he showed Jeff how to carry the heavy tin cans of canister, each charged with eighty-five round lead balls weighing an ounce, from the ammunition wagon to the guns, which were muzzle-loading Parrots on two wheels. It never occurred to Jeff that if a rebel shell made a direct hit upon the ammo wagon, they would all be blown to Kingdom Come. A long ram with a sheepskin swab on the end was thrust hurriedly into Noah’s hands.
Hoofbeats thudded behind them. A stubby, scowling, thickset man, with a heavy black mustache and small beardlet, rode up on a bay horse, accompanied by several Federal cavalrymen. He took one look at the menacing rebel movements, then began barking orders in a raspy growl. Noah stole one sharp glance at him.
“That’s Blunt,” he told Jeff. “That must be his personal staff an’ bodyguard with him.”
The Greeley doctor seemed to know his business. Quickly he moved the battery by right flank, reforming it until it faced the oncoming Confederates. Then he dismounted his bodyguard and staff, forming them in protective support to the battery.
“In battery action left—load with canister! Fire at will!” roared Blunt.
The lieutenant set off the brass gun by dealing the pin in the touch hole a clout with the butt of his pistol. It seemed to jump two feet into the air.
“Balooie!” thundered the gun. “Balooie! Balooie! Balooie!” thundered companion pieces nearby. Jeff felt a painful pressure on his eardrums and was nearly knocked off his feet by the concussion. Doggedly he tried to ignore the awful noise and concentrate on his new job.
“Ram her!” the tall lieutenant shouted, frowning fiercely. Noah leaped forward, thrust his ram in the gun’s muzzle, and with one scythelike sweep of his long arm, quickly completed the operation.
“Swab her!” the lieutenant roared. Noah stuck the sheepskin end of his ram into a box of water and again thrust it down the gun’s maw, cooling it. Now the lieutenant fixed his compelling eyes upon Jeff.
“Load her!” he yelled. Jeff ran to the gun, pushed home his cartridge can, and jumped back. Again the tall lieutenant stepped forward and swung his pistol butt.
“Balooie!” Now the guns were firing so rapidly, and the ground was shaking so badly, that Jeff had to stand on tiptoe. He couldn’t take the terrible concussion flat-footed. His ears were throbbing from the continual roar. The black smoke from the cannon drifted everywhere, exuding a sour stench.
Jeff heard a shriek of horror and saw that one Southern shell had wiped out a complete Federal battery unit. One man had both legs sheared off below the knee. He was yelling at the top of his lungs with agony. Jeff knew the rebel sharpshooters had moved up. Deadly marksmen, they were picking off the Union gunners one by one.
Rebel Minie balls began to pepper around them, but Jeff kept feeding canister into the big gun. He saw an enemy ball brush off the lieutenant’s cap. Other balls skipped noisily off the barrels and wheels of the cannon. The battery horses whinnied in terror. General Blunt and his staff officers moved in closer, firing at the rebel sharpshooters. The noise of the cannonading was so great that each time Noah completed his swabbing duty, he would scamper away several yards and crouch in the brush, a finger stuck into each ear. But he always returned to the gun.
Jeff shot a worried look at the advancing rebels and saw that they were wavering. Shoulder to shoulder, six and seven men deep, they were a target the Union battery couldn’t miss. The rebel dead and wounded were lying in long, still swaths. The woods behind them were ablaze with fire.
“Alf!” somebody shouted to the tall lieutenant.
Something was wrong with the off-side wheel-driver of the near-side gun, an Indian with a smooth face and long black hair sticking out from under his campaign hat. There was a puzzled, vacant stare in his black eyes. Without saying a word, he sat down weakly. Reaching behind him, he placed his hand on the ground and lay down as quietly as though he were going to sleep. The swing driver next to him went coolly to his side and examined him. Straightening up, he turned both thumbs down expressively. Jeff knew the man was dead.
Suddenly the Southern fire slackened. Jeff was relieved to see the rebels falling back into the woods. The tall lieutenant, his brown hair bared to the breeze, swung his guns around on the Confederate artillery and quickly got the range. After ordering half a dozen more rounds fired, he waved both long arms, a jubilant smile on his face.
“Cease firing!” he shouted and cocked his head, listening. The rebel batteries did not answer. All he heard was the rattle of the Confederate gun carriages retreating over the rocky ridges. Everywhere the fighting had stopped.
Jeff was surprised to see the sun sinking in a welter of purple clouds. It was dusk. What had seemed to him like an hour and a half had in reality been the whole of the afternoon.
His dirty face beaming, the lieutenant asked for Jeff’s and Noah’s names, scribbled them on a dirty piece of cartridge paper, and thanked them profusely. He said proudly, “We fought ’em flank an’ rear an’ licked ’em ever’ clatter.”
Dazed, Jeff sank down onto the grass. Miraculously he was still alive. His ears still rang from the battle din. His eyes were red and smarting from the dust and the cannon smoke. His knuckles ached from his bout with the big rebel infantryman in the woods. He felt indescribably tired and dirty.
From all around he could hear the pleading moans and cries of the wounded as the ambulances of both armies gathered up the worst hurt. Already burial details, hoisting little white flags on sticks, were digging long trenches in the flinty, clay soil. Jeff was shocked at the rough, indifferent manner in which the dead were rolled into the trenches, and the clay and gravel shoveled on top of them.
Noah towered over him like a tall wraith, his brown eyes grave.
“Well, youngster. You joined up to fight in battle. Now that you’ve been in one, how’ja like it?”
Jeff raised an ashen face and shook his head positively. “Noah, anybody that ever joins anything is crazy. I’ll lay in the woods until the moss grows on my back a foot long before I’ll ever join anything again.” He felt that being alive was the biggest miracle in the world.
Thirsty, they began walking, looking for water.
It seemed that everybody else was thirsty, too. Soon they came to a little creek thronged on both sides by ragged, exhausted men in blue. Men and horses were drinking thirstily, side by side. There were so many men that soon they stopped the creek from running as they tried to scoop the muddy water into their mouths. Jeff and Noah decided to wait until morning.
Dark was falling. It was growing colder, too. Now they were sorry they had thrown away their coats. Union soldiers were breaking up fence rails to feed their fires. The firelight flared brightly in the soft Arkansas dusk. At the rate the rails were disappearing, Jeff knew the entire fence would be gone before midnight.
“I’m hungry,” Noah said, “but the commissary wagons probably won’t be here until morning. Guess we better fergit about food and find us a place to sleep.”
Jeff nodded dully. He was dead tired all over. He was hungry and thirsty, too, but his fatigue overbalanced everything else. He looked up. There were still a few streaks of lilac in the western sky.
Finally they found a strawstack. Burrowing into it, they went quickly to sleep, lying close together, spoon fashion, for warmth.
13
Expedition to Van Buren
Jeff lay on his back in the long grass, one army blanket under him and another over him. It was pleasant basking in the Arkansas sunshine. Bone-tired, he felt as if he never wanted to get up. The ridge broke the breeze, and he could feel the sun’s rays warming him through the blanket. It felt as though somebody were stroking the outside of the blanket with a hot iron.
After sleeping all night in the haystack, Jeff and Noah had walked fourteen miles without any breakfast before they reached Rhea’s Mills. There they found Blunt’s baggage trains and mess wagons awaiting them. Gratefully they devoured the hot coffee, fried salt horse, and cold hardtack, and had their lost e
quipment resupplied by the quartermaster. Then they flopped down in the warm December sun. Jeff would have liked a bath but he was too tired to strip off his sour clothing.
He lay in a comfortable stupor, reviewing with awe the battle he had survived. Among the dead were two men he knew from Wyandotte and also Spruce Baird, the crusty little sergeant who had commanded the confiscation detail that had raided the McComas home.
Baird had been hit in the side by an exploding rebel bombshell. They had buried him on the battlefield. Using the bottom of a stew kettle for a desk, Noah was writing the sad tidings to Baird’s family. He sat hunched over in the sun, a blanket draped about his broad shoulders.
Jeff felt a twinge of pain in his left hand. Beneath his fingernails, blue with dirt, the bruised knuckles were swollen frightfully. He had heated water in a stew kettle and soaked them, but the pain was still there. Jeff was thankful to be alive; his puffed hand seemed of small importance. He thought Rhea’s Mills the most peaceful spot he had ever seen.
A blue mountain stream, tumbling over a ledge of greenish moss-grown rocks, rushed through a log flume onto a large wooden water wheel. Revolving slowly with a musical swish and creak, the wheel furnished the power for the nearby mill. The mill itself was a weather-beaten edifice of hand-hewn boards. Its roof sagged crazily. The miller’s cottage and a country store stood nearby on a gently sloping hillside. Jeff could hear the redbirds whistling sharply from the tall black walnut trees. It sounded as if they were saying, “Ker-soop! Ker-soop! Ker-soop!” Sighing with pleasure, he lay back down, wishing they could spend the entire winter there.
