Rifles for Watie

by Harold Keith

  At the fire, the repulsive-looking old man, who apparently was the cook, was broiling pieces of beef on a hickory spit and baking sweet potatoes in the coals. The bubbling noise came from a large fire-blackened can of coffee.

  While they helped themselves, with their fingers, to chunks of the delicious hot beef, Jeff had his first look at the Watie men. They were the roughest, raggedest troops he had ever seen. Most of them were dressed in tattered homespun gray or dingy, yellowish-brown butternut. But they had tough, shrewd faces and looked as though they could obey an order or fight intelligently without one, if they had to. Despite their Cherokee blood, most of them looked more white than Indian. Jeff stared with nervous fascination at their weapons.

  There wasn’t a saber in the whole outfit. Instead, each man wore a broad, straight, double-edged Bowie knife in his belt. Their rude bayonets seemed to have been made by local blacksmiths from saws, butcher knives, and files. Surly Voice, whom the others called familiarly “Sam” or “Fields,” had serrated the edges of his knife so it could tear Yankee flesh. They sat around on their heels, drinking tin cups of hot coffee and smoking shuck cigarettes. Jeff could tell from their conversation that they were getting ready to go into battle.

  As the men wolfed down the beef and the sweet potatoes, they called the cook “Heifer” and openly insulted him about everything from his food to his deformed face. The old man took the rough banter good-naturedly. Jeff saw that the nickname “Heifer” was appropriate: the shape of the cook’s head was not greatly unlike that of a full-grown female calf.

  But his food was clean and tasty, and Jeff bit hungrily into his third chunk of hot beef.

  “How d’yuh expect me to fight after eatin’ this tripe?”

  “Heifer, yore gonna have to cut down on the sody in these biscuits. I’m gettin’ plumb yaller,” a gaunt, blond fellow growled amiably. The remark drew a general laugh. Obviously there were no biscuits.

  “Yuh always was yaller. Don’t blame the biscuits,” Heifer retorted in his sobbing, hysterical speech, and everybody roared and slapped the blond fellow sympathetically on the back.

  “Got yet that time, Ben,” somebody said, and they all laughed again. Jeff thought they were the gayest, most light-hearted troops he had ever seen.

  They didn’t act like men going into battle. They seemed more like cattle herders getting ready to do a long day’s work on the range. Still dreading his ordeal before Watie, Jeff wondered where the rebel cavalry leader was and what he looked like. Where he had seen only fifty men last night, there were hundreds this morning, all of them eating their breakfasts over small campfires and saddling their mounts.

  The cook saw Jeff had no cup. Grinning, he handed him half a canteen that looked as if it had been blown in two with powder. Jeff saw with surprise that it was a Union canteen. The Watie men had few canteens. Instead, they carried clay jugs, straw-colored bottles or just plain tin cups.

  He dipped the crude vessel full of coffee from the big can on the fire.

  Jeff nearly gagged on his first swallow of the foul-tasting concoction. It was all he could do to keep from spitting it out upon the grass in front of everybody. This was his first introduction to rebel “coffee,” made by pouring corn meal in a skillet, stirring it until it parched brownly and evenly, then spooning it in a pot and pouring boiling water over it.

  Jeff looked at Bostwick across the fire from him and froze with alarm. Chatting in friendly fashion with the rebels around him, the Missourian was boldly drinking the cold Fort Gibson coffee he had brought along in his canteen. Nobody in the south had coffee like that. If the rebels caught a whiff of that authentic northern beverage, they would know certainly that both Jeff and Bostwick were spies.

  Well, they’d know it soon enough anyhow. Any minute now, they would have to face Watie. And they still didn’t have a story made up.

  Fields, the hostile sergeant, bulged in Jeff’s path, glaring sourly down at him. “Let’s go and see the cunnel.”

  Silently Jeff and Bostwick followed him. He led them to a wagon in the middle of the camp and up to a handsome man who wore his long, sweeping black hair down the back of his neck. It stuck out underneath his slouch hat. Clad in open shirt and butternut pants, he was busily stuffing some papers into a haversack. Behind him, draped over a wagon wheel, was a gray uniform coat with a major’s insignia upon the collar.

  “Mawnin’, Will. Wheah’s the cunnel?” Fields greeted without saluting. With pounding pulse, Jeff realized this wasn’t Watie.

  “Left an hour ago fo’ a staff meetin’ with Cooper. Whatcha got there, Sam? Couple deserters?” The major’s resonant, far-carrying voice sounded more jolly than threatening.

  “Naw. Couple fighters. At least, that’s what they claim. Came in about three this mawnin’. Said they wanted to join Watie.” He looked scornfully at Jeff and Bostwick and scowled at the major, as though reminding him that he expected him to do his duty.

  The long-haired major turned his intelligent brown eyes fully upon them, and Jeff could tell from the color of his skin that he was part Cherokee, too. He was obviously in a hurry.

  “How come y’all want to join us?” he asked seriously, looking keenly from one to the other.

  Remembering Orff’s instructions, Jeff decided to let Bostwick do the talking. But the major wasn’t looking at Bostwick. He was looking directly at Jeff. Jeff’s mind worked fast. For the first time in months, his stomach felt satisfyingly full.

  He grinned. “Sir, we like the grub better here.”

  “Better here than where?”

  Frightened stiff, Jeff turned his grin on wider. “Better here than anywhere, sir.”

  The rebel major scrutinized Jeff from the top of his tousled brown hair to the soles of his dusty boots. He saw nothing but a boy, a pleasant-faced, clean-cut boy who looked a little scared.

  His face softening, he took his coat off the wagon wheel and put it on, and suddenly Jeff had the feeling that everything was going to be all right. The early morning sun peeked suddenly over the oak-covered eastern ridge, stabbing the scene with long streamers of golden light. Now the parked baggage wagons didn’t look quite so spectral. Jeff saw the initials CSA stenciled in white on their sides.

  “What’s your name?” the major asked.

  “Jefferson Davis Bussey, sir,” answered Jeff. Then he caught his breath. He had given his right name. It had never occurred to him that he might need another in enemy country.

  A surprised expression came into the major’s eyes. Despite his rank, he wasn’t accustomed to being addressed as “sir.” He liked the boy’s politeness. He began hurriedly to button his uniform coat and turned apologetically to Fields.

  “Oh, bosh, Sam. With a name like that he must be all right. You swear ’em in. I was supposed to meet the colonel at brigade headquarters five minutes ago.” Snatching a high-pommeled saddle off the ground, he carried it, stirrups dragging and cinch rings and spurs tinkling musically, to his black horse staked nearby.

  The hostile sergeant had no choice but to swear them into Company H of the Cherokee Mounted Rifles. Slowly and laboriously he wrote their names on the company roll. With his quill he pointed at Bostwick, who had also given his correct name.

  “What’s your full monicker? Robert E. Lee Bostwick?” he growled insolently.

  Later Jeff learned that the major was William P. Adair, a lawyer who lived on Grand River and was one of Watie’s most highly trusted officers and personal friends.

  Quickly the irritable sergeant lined everybody up and called the roll. Jeff was amused at some of the Indian names in his unit—Beamer, Dreadfulwater, Duck, Doghead, Hogtoter. The sergeant rattled them off glibly, ending up with the three oddest names of all, Kickup, Turnover and Roundabout. Jeff also noticed that every man on the roll was present and accounted for. It was the stamp of a good outfit. Apparently the Watie forces had lost nobody because of desertion.

  Later a lieutenant began dispatching guard patrols in all directions. As Jeff r
ode out with his, he asked the man next to him about the cook.

  “Who, Heifer? He’s a loner. Sleeps outdoors on the ground, even in winter. Says sleepin’ inside smothers him. Everybody likes him but nobody wants to be close pals with him. It’s the way he talks and the way he looks, I guess. Heifer’s so ugly that the flies won’t light on him. They say he had a son of his own, once, a handsome-looking boy. Heifer worked hard to get money to send the boy back East to school. But the boy was ashamed of his pa’s ugliness and never came back home or had anything to do with Heifer afterward. Heifer hails from Texas. Used to cook for some big cattle spreads there.”

  The patrol dropped Jeff off near a weather-beaten church. Alongside it was a small graveyard, whose wooden monuments, gray with age, leaned crazily this way and that. All around, like somber guards, stood several old oaks. It was quiet and peaceful.

  After staking out the dun, he lay on his back in the graveyard grass, worrying about the battle to be fought the next day. Would he be ordered to fire upon his own troops while riding with the forces of the South? He resolved not to fire directly at his comrades.

  Above him in one of the big oaks, a mockingbird was splitting his throat. As he sang, he threw himself angrily into the blue sky, wings fluttering, then stood suddenly on his head in the air and flew back down to the same branch, scolding and fussing. Jeff wondered idly what the bird was upset about.

  It was hot. For want of anything better to do, he read the inscription carved on the wooden face of the monument nearest him.

  It said “Sarah McDivitt. Born June 2, 1788. Died Nov. 6, 1854.” There was a verse under it too, a wistful little verse that seemed to express all humanity’s sad yearning not to be forgotten completely after death. Jeff got up on his knees so he could read it better. It said,

  “As you are, so once was I.

  As I am you soon will be.

  When these words you see,

  Remember me.”

  Jeff wondered who Sarah McDivitt was and how old she had been when she chose the pensive lines for her gravestone.

  The church reminded him of the deserted chapel he and Lucy had visited two days before. With a stab of longing, he thought of her, and then of her abrupt, “I like you, Jeff Bussey. But I warn you: I’m still a rebel—to the backbone.” He wished the war would be over tomorrow.

  Several hours passed. He was so sleepy that he almost dozed off. Finally he heard something coming down the road.

  It was a husky young Negro driving a small herd of red cows ahead of him. They moved very slowly, the cows grazing as they walked.

  “Howdy,” Jeff said as they passed in front of him.

  Startled, the Negro boy jumped. Then he saw Jeff and looked with wonder at his horse, and at the pistol in his belt.

  “You a soljuh?”

  Jeff nodded. “Why do they always build their graveyards next to the churches in this country?” he asked.

  The Negro boy looked solemn. He was wearing a gray homespun shirt, striped trousers, and had a sweat rag tied around his bare head. He was barefoot. Jeff wondered how he could stand walking on the sharp rocks.

  “So the dead folks can heah the organ music an’ the singin’ on Sundays, I reckon,” he said simply.

  Jeff stood and pointed to the church. “What’s the name of it?”

  “Hancock Mission,” replied the Negro, slowly and proudly. “They built it fifteen years befo’ I was borned. They sho’ did do somethin’ when they built it. It stands theah in the woods apointin’ its spire up towards heaven. Evah time I passes it, I feels kinda reverent-like. I always sings somethin’ religious when I drives the cows by.”

  “Have you ever been in it?”

  “Naw suh. It’s jes’ for white folks an’ Indians.”

  They fell silent. A warm wind gently stirred the long graveyard grass. A flock of green parakeets circled a nearby field with shrill cries, searching for cockleburrs. The old church dozed peacefully in the warm sunlight.

  “You’re a big, strong-looking fellow. Why aren’t you in the Southern army?” Jeff asked.

  The Negro boy looked at him strangely. “The South don’ want slaves in theah armies,” he said. He added, proudly, “We’s too valuable. We’s property.”

  Jeff’s mouth fell open. He hadn’t realized that.

  “Are you a slave?”

  The Negro nodded soberly. He looked at Jeff with narrowing eyes. “How come you nevah knowed slaves can’t get in the army? Wheah you from?”

  “Kansas,” said Jeff boldly. He decided that if the rebels ever did question him at length, he would be safer giving his own name and home than trying to fabricate false ones.

  “Isn’t that wheah Mistah Aberham Linkum lives?”

  “No. He was born in Illinois. But now that he’s President, he lives in Washington. Why? What do you know about Lincoln?”

  The Negro boy smiled, and a rapturous look came into his dark eyes. “I know mo’ bout him than anybody. All the slaves talks about him all the time. We loves ouah mastahs but we all want to be free some day.”

  He spoke so guilelessly that Jeff was impressed. It was an odd speech for anybody to make in rebel-held country. He supposed the community was so isolated that no military force had ever passed through it before.

  Jeff picked up a small rock and tossed it at a nearby gravestone. “If you were at Fort Gibson, you’d be free right now. In the Northern army there’s a battalion of Negro soldiers from Kansas. They’re all free. They wear blue uniforms, just like the white soldiers. And they’re good fighters, too.”

  An eager light came into the young Negro’s eyes. “I been to Fote Gibson. I knows a short way to get theah without goin’ up the Texas Road. Two years ago I helped drive a herd of cows to Fote Gibson fo’ my mastah. While we was theah I saw one of them big cannon guns. How fah will one o’ them things shoot?”

  “Oh, if it’s big enough, about two miles, I guess.”

  The Negro rolled his eyes in awe. “Um! Um! A man could run all day an’ still get killed.”

  Laughing, Jeff brushed the grass off his pants. “What’s your name?”

  “Leemon Jones. I b’longs to Mastah Saul Hibbs, a Chickasaw Injun farmer. I lives half a mile down the road theah.”

  Jeff looked at the sun. It was about time for him to be relieved. He mounted the dun and, lifting his hand in farewell to the Negro, jogged off down the road.

  As he swung along, he thought that if he ever got in trouble, real bad trouble, he might find an ally in Leemon Jones. He bet he could have made Leemon’s eyes stick out like marbles if he had told him he had once heard Abraham Lincoln make a speech.

  At daybreak next morning, Jeff saddled, mounted and, joining hundreds of hard-faced Watie riders, rode twenty miles north to Elk Creek, where Cooper’s rebel battleline was being formed on both sides of the Texas Road. In the timber north of the creek, they dismounted and, building log barricades, awaited the onslaught of Blunt’s Union army.

  Jeff could hear cannon fire north of him and he knew that the Union artillery commanded by Hopkins and Smith had gone to work on the rebel artillery. He couldn’t help feeling excited and uneasy. He had never gone to battle under such strange circumstances. Horrified at the possibility of fighting his friends, he had to stay and try to get the information Blunt wanted. Besides, if he left now it would draw suspicion on Bostwick. Keeping his eyes open, he had a good view of the rebel preparations for the battle.

  Cooper’s army consisted mainly of Texans and Indians. Jeff saw the Texas cavalry riding their little mustangs into position in the rebel center. They were mostly blond men, who controlled their mounts with chain bits and thrust their booted feet into big, wooden ox-yoke stirrups. Cooper posted on his left two Creek regiments commanded by Colonel D. N. McIntosh. His right wing was composed of Watie’s First and Second Cherokee regiments of which Jeff was now a part.

  Jeff was most surprised of all when he saw Cooper’s reserve, a regiment of Choctaws and Chickasaws. Before he s
aw them, he could hear the jingling of the little bells and rattles they wore on their arms and in their horses’ bridles.

  Then they appeared through the trees, mounted on their small ponies. Their faces were painted orange and green. Although they looked active and sinewy in their buckskin hunting shirts and leggings, Jeff was amazed to see that their weapons consisted only of obsolete Indian rifles, knives and tomahawks. They were whooping and yelling shrilly as though to keep up their courage in spite of their incredible lack of fire power.

  A crackle of musket fire broke out ahead, and the Watie men began to unsling their weapons, mostly shotguns and oneshot Southern Enfields with brass mountings.

  In plain hearing of nearly everybody in the detail, Fields, the bossy rebel sergeant, ordered Jeff to the rear. “Yore too young for the front line,” he said, curtly. “We fight dismounted with every fo’th man holdin’ fo’ hosses in the rear. Today you’ll stay in the rear and be a hoss-holder.” He thrust his reins into Jeff’s hand.

  “Yes, sir,” said Jeff, saluting.

  He took the reins, secretly pleased that he wouldn’t have to oppose his own side in battle. Bostwick wasn’t so lucky.

  The Missourian was drafted for duty on the firing line but he seemed to be taking it well. As he trudged off to the front, his boots clumping awkwardly in the underbrush, he winked at Jeff and reaching behind him, patted his canteen, still one-half full of cold Union coffee.

  A shower of rain fell about an hour before the battle began, rendering the rebel powder, obtained from Mexico, useless. In the damp weather it became pastelike and would not ignite. Jeff heard some Creek soldiers complaining because even when they built fires, they could not dry out their wet musket caps.

  When the Northern bombshells, screeching through the trees overhead, began exploding with a roar, setting the grass and brush afire, it took all of Jeff’s strength to hold the four saddled horses he had been entrusted with. Soon, rebel after rebel began to pass him, running from the front.