Rifles for Watie

by Harold Keith

  Jeff’s detail was patrolling an area north of Tahlequah late one hot June afternoon when they saw a cloud of gray and brown smoke rising above the distant oaks.

  “Ho!” called Jim Pike, the sergeant, pulling his horse to a stop. Scowling, Pike peered hard ahead at the smoke, trying to assess its origin.

  “Look’s like a haystack burnin’,” guessed Sam Sukemeyer, a private.

  Pike touched spurs to his mount. “Maybe we better go see. Might be somepun else.”

  Riding toward the smoke, they found a small cornfield, and Jeff was dismayed to see a crude wooden drag had been pulled across the crop and the plants jerked out of the ground by the roots. Fresh horse tracks lay plain in the sandy soil.

  Alarmed, they quickened their pace. Jeff had heard so many firsthand accounts of the rebel depredations that he dreaded what they might find.

  They found it in the barn lot of a small farm. The troopers pulled up their horses and stared with horror.

  A fine chestnut mare lay dead, her head in a pool of blood. Her two small colts stood tugging at their lifeless mother’s teats. Jeff heard Stuart Mitchell begin to curse, slowly at first, then more loudly and with increasing bitterness. And then he heard something else, something that froze the marrow in his bones.

  A woman was screaming hysterically somewhere in the smoke ahead. Rapidly they followed the noise. A two-room log dwelling blazed brightly in broad daylight, the red flames crackling fiercely as they consumed the thatched roof.

  Beneath some cedar trees in the yard, two women and a small boy were huddled like frightened sheep around the body of a man. The older woman, obviously the grandmother, was trying vainly to comfort the mother, while the child crouched nearby, his boyish countenance stiff with shock.

  The older woman heard them ride into the yard. Raising a white face etched with terror, she drew back as if expecting a blow, one wrinkled hand held over her open mouth. Then she saw their blue coats and realized they were Union.

  Pike got down from his horse and questioned her. They learned the dead man was Frank Brandt, a mixed-blood soldier from the Union Indian brigade at Fort Gibson, who had been given a short furlough to help his family work the corn on their farm. The Watie party had ridden up suddenly, surrounded him, and shot him while his family stood begging for his life. Gently Noah led the wife to the smokehouse and persuaded her to sit on a log and stop her screaming.

  “They came an hour ago,” the grandmother told them, her voice broken with emotion, her eyes twin pools of horror. “First they kilt Frank. Then they tuck all we had to eat, a small midgen of sugar, half a ham, all our flour. They went through the house and tuck all our blankets, quilts, pillowcases, even the children’s shoes. They ripped open our feather beds with their bayonets. They said they was searching for guns, but we knew they was after rings and jewelry to carry back to their families. They went to the barn with their cavalry ropes an’ stole our cow. They couldn’t take the mare on account of her two small colts born three, four day ago. So they shot her. They tuck every chicken and goose. Then they fired the house. I used to love to see the spring come, but now I hate it. I knew the bushwhacking would begin in dead earnest once the leaves came out agin.” She stood indecisively, wringing her hands in her apron.

  His heart in a turmoil, Jeff turned away. Suddenly there was a slight movement ahead, and he discovered a small boy cowering behind a cedar hedge. He held both hands over the stomach of his blouse and looked fearfully at the ground.

  “What’s the matter?” Jeff asked kindly.

  Shrinking back into the hedge, the boy gripped his stomach so tightly that his hands grew white, but still he wouldn’t speak.

  “He’s scared,” piped a childish voice behind Jeff. “The rebel soldiers told him that when the bluecoats come, they’d rip his belly open with their swords.” Aghats, Jeff looked around. The older boy had followed him from the yard.

  “Pa’s dead,” the older boy bluntly told the younger. “The rebels bushwhacked him.” The child stared woodenly, as though he hadn’t heard.

  A wave of pity surged over Jeff. He turned to the older boy. “What’s your name?”

  “Johnny. Can I see yore gun?”

  “And what’s his name?”

  “Jackie. Is yore gun a Springfield? Pa had a Springfield, but when the rebels bushwhacked him, they tuck it with ’em.”

  “Johnny, tell your brother the rebels were lying. We won’t hurt him. Tell him to take his hands down.”

  Obediently Johnny walked over to where his little brother was standing, frozen with fear. “Take yore hands down, Jackie. They won’t hurtcha.”

  Jackie shook his head. Eying Jeff’s saber fearfully, he kept his fingers crossed tightly across his stomach.

  Johnny frowned impatiently. Stooping over until his face was only inches from Jackie’s, he said, “Aw, Jackie, they won’t rip yore belly open. See here. They didn’t hurt mine.” Pulling up his blouse, he bared his own midriff.

  That seemed to satisfy Jackie. The fear went out of his face. His hands came down.

  Jeff knelt, holding out his arms. “Come here, Jackie, and I’ll show you my horse.” Jackie came, haltingly. Jeff picked him up.

  Johnny followed, still chattering brightly about the tragedy that had befallen his family. “Mama screamed and Pa swore. But they bushwhacked him anyways.”

  At dusk the fatherless family was loaded into a wagon and they started back to the fort. Building a rough coffin out of some planks they tore off the barn, the cavalry had buried Frank Brandt beneath a lilac bush in the front yard. Jeff and Noah erected a rude headstone of rocks near the grave.

  The wagon jolted along over the rough ground, its hubs squeaking.

  “What about the two colts?” Noah asked, after they had ridden a quarter of a mile. Pike looked uncomfortable. He pulled back on his reins, stopping his horse. With his big hand, he wiped a gnat off his neck. The wagon lumbered on, accompanied by part of the platoon.

  “They’s too young to travel or to graze. If we leave ’em, they’d only starve or the wolves ud get ’em,” Pike said. He looked around hesitantly. They all saw he hated to give the order.

  “Aw cripes, I’ll do it,” growled Seth Wilson, a farmer from Woodson County. “Gimme a couple extra cartridges, somebody.”

  Silently Mitchell dug in his cartridge box and handed him three. Jerking his carbine out of its leather sheath, Wilson turned his horse around and rode at a slow trot back toward the lonely barnyard, grumbling to himself.

  Later the sound of the two shots caused the wolves back in the hills to set up an unhappy wailing that seemed the consummation of grief and loneliness.

  When they drove through the fort’s big gate six hours later, the western moon was sinking over a row of whitewashed blockhouses. Johnny and Jackie Brandt were sound asleep beside their mother. Wide awake, she sat like a post, staring wretchedly into the semidarkness, trying to plan a new life without a husband or a home.

  Just before he dozed off in his tent, Jeff thought of Lucy and of her brother Lee. He wondered if Lee Washbourne had been with the Watie raiding party that had burned the Brandt home. He doubted it. Judging Lee by the Washbourne womenfolk and by their home, Jeff was sure he hadn’t. He wondered whether Lee were high-spirited and proud, like Lucy, or whether he could control his emotions, like the other Washbourne women?

  Pulling a light blanket over his shoulders, he thought of what Mrs. Adair had told him of Lucy’s devotion to her brother. He wished he could help Lucy find him but he didn’t quite know how to go about it. He resolved to talk to Noah about it in the morning.

  16

  The Name on the Watch

  Jeff heard the sentries calling off all around the sleeping fort, their singsong voices bawling dutifully through the darkness, “Number one. ’Leven a’clock. Aw’swell.”

  It was three nights after Pike’s patrol had brought in the Brandt family. Jeff, accompanied by Dixie, was walking sentry along the north shore of the Neosh
o River below the fort.

  He stopped for a moment, listening to the “Aw’s well’s”—gruff voices, nasal voices, sleepy voices, bored voices—traveling slowly westward up the side of the bluff, passing out of hearing behind the distant palisades, then emerging faintly on the far side, and returning, station by station, to the original point of call. Girding the darkened fort with a ring of security.

  It was stiflingly hot. Wearily Jeff slapped at a mosquito. His uniform, stiff with dirt and dust, chafed, and his body smelled of stale sweat. His musket was heavy. Switching it to the opposite shoulder, he wished he could have drawn the duty on top of the bluff, where there was a breeze. Although it was an hour before midnight, and everything was black as pitch, it seemed to him the night was very much alive.

  He knew the rebels were very much alive on the south bank of the nearby Arkansas River that divided the two armies. When he had been on outpost duty there the day before he had heard the voices of their pickets as they met across the river, and seen the faint illumination of their pipes through the shadowy cottonwoods and willows that lined the opposite shore, and smelled the fresh beef broiling over their campfires. The rebels always had twice as much to eat as they did.

  He thought of Lucy and her dark beauty, and an intolerable longing assailed him. If she could ever forget the war long enough, maybe he could make her like him.

  A low growl came from Dixie. Crouching, she advanced on the bushes, ears flat, fur bristling. Startled, Jeff wheeled and raised his musket to the ready, remembering how Sparrow had been knifed in the back while on sentry.

  “Jeff.” The voice came in a half whisper.

  “Who’s there?”

  A shadowy figure loomed out of the darkness. “It’s me—David Gardner. I’ve got the duty two stations down. Say, Jeff, let’s walk over to the other river and talk to the rebel pickets. Want to?”

  “Corn, no!” said Jeff, recoiling. It was the craziest idea he’d ever heard. “I’m scared of ’em. Besides, we’re not supposed to leave our posts. If the officers caught us, they’d court-martial us.”

  “Naw they wouldn’t, Jeff,” David argued. “Besides, the officers in both armies is all asleep. McCoy says he’ll walk my beat and his, both. John says he’ll watch yours. Our outpost pickets over at the other river always lets us go through if we give ’em some of the tobaccy we git from the rebs.”

  Jeff thought of Pete Millholland and the Brandt family. “You can’t trust the rebels, Davey. I wouldn’t trust one of Watie’s men any farther than I can throw an ox by the tail. They’d slit your throat. They’re treacherous.”

  “Naw, they’re not, Jeff. Not when we meet ’em thisaway,” David insisted with quiet stubbornness.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we been meetin’ ’em ever’ night in the middle of the river an’ swappin’ knives an’ talkin’ to ’em.”

  Jeff stared at him incredulously, unable to believe his ears.

  David went on, “Some of their pickets is mean, but I don’t think they’re Watie men. There won’t be any Watie men there. When the mean ones is on sentry, our guys will holler over jist to devil ’em an’ say, ‘How much is Confederate money worth today?’ an’ the rebels will sass us right back by askin’ us if the niggers we are fightin’ for have improved the Yankee breed any yet, an’ things like that. But mainly they’re purty good fellers—fer rebels. Tonight the good ones is on duty. They promised to bring us some plew tobaccy. We’re gonna swap ’em some of our coffee fer it.”

  Jeff thought it over. It still sounded hairbrained to him. “What do you talk to ’em about?”

  “Oh—jist everthing—girls, rations, officers, the weather. How the common soljers on each side is the victims in the war. How we’d both stop the war tomorrey and hang all the politicians thet got us into it if we was runnin’ th’ show.”

  Jeff laughed in the dark. “Which we aren’t.”

  “But mainly, we just talk about our mothers an’ our fathers an’ our sweethearts. Better come with us, Jeff. It’s fun.”

  In the dark Jeff rubbed his thumb along the smooth stock of his musket. Maybe some of the rebels knew Lee Washbourne and would volunteer some news that Jeff could pass on to Lucy. He drew a long breath and decided to take the plunge.

  “All right, Davey, I’ll go. But I still think it’s crazy.”

  Half an hour later, with three other Union pickets, they stole down to the north bank of the Arkansas, stacked their arms carefully on the bank and peeled out of their clothing. They left one sentry to guard the clothing and stay with Dixie, whom Jeff tied to a willow back away from the shore so she wouldn’t bark. Then they walked a hundred yards through the warm sand to the water’s edge.

  David cupped his hands around his mouth and called cautiously toward the opposite shore.

  “Hey, Pork and Molasses. You there?”

  There was silence. A small sandbank caved with a slight splash into the murmuring current. A bullfrog bellowed sleepily from a swale. Jeff listened and his breathing quickened as a voice came softly, furtively, from the rebel side.

  “We’s heah.”

  One of the Union pickets with David and Jeff called jocularly, “When is Cooper gonna march into Gibson?”

  “When you all git yore last mule an’ dog et up.”

  “Got any tobaccy?”

  “Yep. Got any coffee?”

  “Yep. We’ll meet ya halfway.”

  “Won’t shoot?”

  “Nope.”

  Still suspecting treachery, Jeff stepped gingerly into the warm water. His skin felt goose-pimply. This was madness. What had he been thinking about, agreeing to do a thing as stupid as this? This was the enemy, the people they’d been fighting against two long years.

  They waded out a few yards, then stopped to listen. From the darkness ahead came a faint splashing of men wading. Half a dozen naked figures appeared from the opposite bank like ghosts out of the gloom. They met at a shadowy sandbar in the middle of the river and halted, the water dripping noisily off their sleek bodies.

  “Hello, Johnny. How are ya?” David said to the nearest one.

  “Fine, Yank. How y’all?”

  Jeff relaxed a little. It was lighter here in the open, away from the dark trees.

  Some of the rebels were carrying twists of tobacco, scarce in the North. Some of the Union pickets bore small sacks of coffee beans, dear in the South. After the swap was made, they stacked the bartered goods on the sandbar and, to Jeff’s astonishment, went swimming together in midstream.

  Jeff found himself with a small, wiry rebel who swam like a bullfrog. Cautiously they began to talk, watching each other like hawks.

  “We’s Armstrong’s men. From Texas. What’s yo’ outfit?” the rebel asked.

  “Clardy’s Seventh Kansas Cavalry,” Jeff replied. The rebels had captured six of his company, two weeks earlier, and sent them to a prison at Tyler, Texas, so he knew the information was no secret.

  The rebel seemed interested. “Clardy? Seems like ah’ve heard o’ him. Ah heared he’s a rough ’un.”

  “You heard right.” Jeff frowned in the darkness. “Say, you know a fellow named Lee Washbourne? He’s with Watie.” The rebel shook his bushy head in the half light.

  “Ah don’t know him. But wait a minute. Joe, ovah heah, is a Watie man. Maybe he knows him.”

  Jeff’s heart began pounding furiously. David had told him there wouldn’t be any Watie men.

  Quietly the rebel summoned one of his comrades swimming a short distance away. “Joe, yo’ know somebody named Lee Washbu’n? With Watie?”

  As Joe bobbed his wet, black head up and down, Jeff thought he looked like an otter.

  “Sure, I know him. But he never come back from a scout three weeks ago. Our officers is afraid the Yanks captured him. His father is captain of my company. Colonel Watie’s bin tryin’ to git Lee back on a prisoner exchange, but he can’t get in touch with the Union commander.” Jeff was disappointed. But at least he
had some news for Lucy.

  Soon it was time to go. The two parties bade each other good-by and parted, each wading back to its own shore. Jeff had swapped an old St. Louis newspaper for a twist of tobacco for Noah, Bill, and Stuart Mitchell. The swim had cooled him off. To his surprise he found he had enjoyed the unusual adventure. But as they dressed, he was curious about one thing.

  “Davey, won’t all this visiting and fraternizing make each side want to go easy on the other when they meet in battle?”

  David snorted, “Naw. If we met in battle tomorrey, we’d still be tryin’ to cut each other’s hearts out. This was jest a recess.”

  There was a recess of a different kind on a quiet, moonlight night a week later. They were camped on the north bank of the Arkansas and the cavalrymen were bored. Lieutenant Foss had entertained them just before sundown with an exhibition of trick riding, hooking one toe around his saddlehorn and leaning low to snatch up a handkerchief from the ground while riding full tilt. But they were tired of the usual long jumping contests, the card games, and the tugs of war. Noah was slumped on his stomach by the campfire, reading a new novel by Dickens. Bill Earle had just finished shaving and was wiping the soap off the straight-edge he had borrowed from John Chadwick.

  “Soldier, why don’t you sing something?”

  Clardy, the scar on his left cheek gleaming in the moonlight, had walked out of the shadows and confronted Bill. There was a smirk on the captain’s face, as there always was when he tried to look pleasant and failed. He should have addressed Earle as “Trooper” but like all of them had difficulty adjusting his conversation to cavalry terms.