Rifles for Watie

by Harold Keith

  Jeff, mounted on Flea Bite, lay hidden with the Watie horsemen in the cane along the river’s south shore. Although the heavy brush and trees masked them, they could see the river plainly.

  Soon Jeff heard a sound he had never heard before, the steady slap-slap-slap of a large paddle wheel. Suddenly a boat nosed around the river bend, a large boat with two tall chimneys bellowing black smoke and a Union flag whipping gallantly from the jackstaff. Disturbed, Jeff thought that if he ever decided to stay permanently with the rebels, he’d have to get used to riding against that flag.

  The Federal steamboat came on. Heavily laden with the cargo Watie wanted, it rode low in the muddy water, the white foam from its paddle wheel flashing in the morning sunshine. It was a long boat with a fancy pilothouse and a white cabin. In evenly spaced letters of bright blue, Jeff could see the name J. R. Williams printed across the front of the small cupola atop the craft.

  And then he saw something else, something that sent a chill coursing down his spine. Blue-clad Union soldiers with muskets in their hands swarmed behind barricades of cotton bales on the deck. Apparently this boat expected trouble and didn’t intend to take it lying down.

  22

  Pheasant Bluff

  Jeff tightened his grip on Flea Bite’s reins. The cannon would start firing at any moment and when they did, every horse in the rebel outfit would try to climb the bluff or jump into the flooded river. It would be no picnic trying to board an armed boat from a swimming horse. He knew the Union escort, protected by the cotton bales, could pick them off neatly or thrust them through with their sharp bayonets.

  What an odd way to die, killed by your own countrymen as Bostwick had been at Honey Springs.

  A drop of sweat ran down the bridge of his nose. Nervously he wiped it off with his sleeve and looked at the man on his right. His mouth fell open.

  The man on his right was Heifer Hobbs. Astraddle his roan, the rebel cook had deserted his pots and ovens and was standing in his stirrups, squinting through the willow leaves at the approaching boat. In crude leather holsters in his belt he carried both his fighting knife, a bowie, and his eating knife, an old case blade of lead. His muzzle-loading double-barreled shotgun, souvenir of the Comanche wars, was clenched tightly in his hands. He looked at Jeff, and his ugly face broke into a hideous grin of affection.

  Touched, Jeff knew now why Heifer had left his commissary wagon to fight at his side in what was to be Jeff’s first battle with the Watie men in a role other than a horse-holder. Heifer’s feeling for him was like that of a doting father. Heifer had poured out upon him all the fond attention he would have lavished upon his own son, had not the lad he sent East to school disavowed him because of his deformities. Moved by the rebel cook’s devotion, Jeff squirmed in torment.

  Here was a friend who would die for him, one he would wound deeply if he ever ran off to Fort Gibson. And yet, Jeff knew the time was coming when he would have to run, or stay.

  “Blam!”

  The middle gun on the bluff roared so closely that it deafened him. Flea Bite reared, neighing in terror, and the tree branches scraped off Jeff’s hat. He muscled her down.

  A small geyser of water rose brightly ten feet off the boat’s bow and hung suspended in the morning air. An instant later, there came the kerplunk of the ball plowing into the muddy river and a loud, prolonged splash.

  “Blam! Blam!” thundered the other two guns, higher on the densely wooded slope. One of the steamer’s tall stacks had been shot away and black smoke was pouring into the windows of the pilothouse. The fourth shot scored a direct hit, puncturing the boiler and causing the boat to list out of control, toward the opposite bank.

  The thin, clear notes of a bugle floated down from high along the bluff, sounding a charge.

  With a mighty shout the long line of rebel cavalry burst from hiding and rode pell-mell into the muddy shallows of the Arkansas, spattering water six feet high. Finding that it relieved his nervousness, Jeff yelled as shrilly as the rest. Flea Bite was in the vanguard and as she encountered a deep spot, he felt the cool water rise to his armpits.

  She began to swim, striking out strongly. The heads of hundreds of horses and men bobbed on the surface, their bodies entirely beneath the water. Heifer stuck close by. Brandishing his shotgun, he gobbled encouragement to his mount. Every rebel in the river was steering his swimming horse toward the boat.

  The Union pilot swung on the whistle cord, hoping to attract help from any Union cavalry patrol north of the river. The whistle started on a single note, then slid into a deep, hoarse, three-toned blast that made Jeff’s ear drums throb and echoed off the nearby bluff. But it didn’t stop the Watie men.

  The pilot ran the crippled boat aground on a sand bar. Leaping over the side, the Union soldiers hurried to the north bank of the stream and scattered into the woods.

  The Watie men waded their ponies alongside the stranded steamer. Clambering over the side, they bored into the stricken boat like hungry squirrels into a hickory nut. With shouts of barbaric enjoyment, they began to plunder the cargo. Ignoring the barrels of flour and sides of bacon, they pounced upon the Union issue clothing and boots they needed so desperately.

  A loud hissing came from the escaping steam. On the deck, two Union soldiers lay dead as mackerels, one with most of his head blown off.

  In the captain’s cabin they found whisky, rock candy and cigars. Jeff pocketed a handful of the cigars for Heifer.

  Fields was scooping handfuls of Federal greenbacks out of a small iron safe. Apparently the boat had been carrying the Fort Gibson payroll, as well as cargo. Every rebel in the cabin had both hands full of money.

  Yancey Pearl, a tall, raw-boned Arkansawyer, shoved some into Jeff’s hands. Gaping, Jeff saw that they were twenty-dollar bills.

  “Heah y’ar, kid!” Pearl guffawed, a lighted cigar from the captain’s locker between his stained, jagged teeth. “Washington wallpaper! Hits yore’s to play with. Hit ain’t gonna buy nothin’ now. We’s gonna win the war. Jest as well throw it away.”

  Pearl twisted the wad of Federal bank notes in his horny hands, tearing them down the middle. He pitched them out the broken cabin window into the river.

  One by one, the other rebels tore their greenbacks in fragments, or ignited them with their cigars and tossed them over the boat’s side.

  Pearl towered impatiently over Jeff. “Come on, kid! What cha waitin’ on? Rip ’em in two and heave ’em into the drink! They’re no good.”

  Jeff swallowed indecisively. They had a lot of nerve running down good Union money when their own cheap specie wouldn’t buy a couple of bites of hot gingerbread. Three or four hundred dollars’ worth of perfectly good Federal greenbacks in his hands was enough to buy a farm or pay his way through college.

  Jeff saw Fields staring at him, his hard blue eyes ablaze with new suspicion. With reluctance, he hurled all his bank notes overboard. They floated for a moment upon the tan eddy, then slowly sank from sight.

  The rebels moved the steamboat to the south shore and began to unload her cargo on the sand. A doctor was examining the handful of rebel wounded lying on the grassy bank beneath a cottonwood tree.

  Among them was Hooley. He had caught a Federal Minie ball low in the stomach and the surgeon attending him looked grim.

  Distressed, Jeff dropped the armload of booty he had acquired for the Jackmans—blankets, shawls, sugar, and Union coffee—and hurried to Hooley’s side.

  Hooley’s brown, inscrutable Indian face was clenched in pain. He was half sitting, his arms braced behind him and his short legs stuck out helplessly, revealing the ragged soles of his broken boots. The muddy water dripped off him onto the sand. He had lost his hat; his long black hair was waving in the morning breeze.

  He glanced up at Jeff. Perspiration was beading on his forehead. He was breathing fast.

  “Jefferson,” he mumbled, “gimme a drink outa yore canteen. I wanta see if I got any leaks.”

  Jeff carefully held his cant
een to Hooley’s lips. It never occurred to him that Hooley was a rebel and therefore his enemy. For three months they had knocked around together. Watie’s surgeon stopped most of the bleeding but he had to do better than that. Everybody knew there would soon be hundreds of Federals after them.

  Scowling, the surgeon stood, wiping his bloody hands on his shirt. He looked pityingly at Hooley. “It’s a hundert miles to the hospital back at Boggy. You’d have to ride horseback. Think you can make it?”

  Hooley was suffering now, panting faster and grunting every time the pain hit him. Angrily he glared up at the doctor.

  “Hell, no!”

  They moved him out into the sun, where the light was better. The surgeon gave him a drink of whisky, then handed him a lead bullet to bite. With men holding him forcibly on both sides, the surgeon quickly produced a scalpel, sterilized it with whisky and extracted the bullet which was lodged against his abdominal wall.

  Jeff couldn’t watch it. He walked off to one side, leaning against the trunk of a big walnut tree, listening to Hooley groan and curse while the surgeon worked. Twice Hooley yelled out and struggled helplessly, and each time Jeff felt so sorry for him he wanted to bawl.

  In three or four minutes it was all over, and the crowd began to clear. The wound was swabbed with whisky, and Jeff gave most of his shirttail for a bandage that the doctor first sterilized by holding close to a fire. Then they put Hooley on his horse.

  He rode half a mile in the heat and fainted, whereupon Jeff mounted behind him and held him on with both hands, while Heifer and Pearl, riding ahead, took turns leading Jeff’s horse. They camped that night near Limestone Prairie.

  Most of the Indian troops, their ponies heavily burdened with spoils from the steamboat, broke camp and headed for the homes of their destitute families in the refugee camps along the Red River. Jeff was puzzled. Watie seemed to know or care very little about military discipline, and his men reflected his attitude. What held them together and kept them going, Jeff asked Heifer?

  “Depends on whatcha mean by discipline.” Heifer blew his nose loudly. “We ain’t got no West Point discipline. Watie’s a Indian. He’s educated, Christian, an’ well-to-do. But he’s still a Indian. He uses Indian discipline. Indians b’lieve in takin’ booty. Makes ’em fight bettah. Watie fights bettah when he fights his own way. He took the steamboat, didn’t he?”

  The steamboat wasn’t the only thing Watie took. September came and the scarlet sumac began to stain the sides of the ridges; cicadas led the heat chant from the trees. Steve Hildebrand, Watie’s chief of scouts, learned while ranging in Federal territory north of Fort Gibson that a big Federal wagon train was coming by land from Fort Scott, Kansas.

  He sent one of his men speeding horseback to Watie with the news. Watie notified General Richard M. Gano, an able Texas cavalry officer. With a combined force of two thousand men, Gano and Watie struck the Union train and its 670-man escort at Cabin Creek, capturing the train and its mule-drawn cargo valued at $1,500,000. It was the greatest disaster of the war to Union arms in the Indian country. Most of the captured stores were distributed among the needy refugee families along Red River.

  The rebel morale soared sky high. The Confederate General Sterling Price had started his diversionary raid toward St. Louis and there was serious talk of a Watie raid upon Kansas in the spring. That sobered Jeff as though somebody had hurled a dipper of cold spring water in his face.

  His family lived in Kansas and would be squarely in the path of the proposed raid. He worried about that all the way back from Cabin Creek. He didn’t want a Watie raid hitting his father’s farm. He drove back one of the captured Federal wagons, bringing with him blankets, shawls, sugar, and Union coffee for the Jackmans and a little bit of everything for Hooley, who had survived the long horseback ride from Pheasant Bluff and was recovering in the hospital at Boggy Depot. Arriving at Boggy Depot shortly before noon, he unhitched the big, black Union mules, watered them, unharnessed them, and staked them out to graze. Walking to a nearby creek, he stripped off his dirty clothing, took a bath and felt refreshed.

  The things he had brought back for the Jackmans in a wooden barrel were left at the supply depot where Heifer had arranged for a teamster friend to drop them off at the Jackmans’ home on his return trip down the Texas Road to Bonham. The town was filling with rebel soldiers and excited civilians dancing jigs of joy in the street. All they talked about was Watie’s victories at Pheasant Bluff and Cabin Creek.

  Jeff went to his bunk and pulled it into the shade. Lying down upon it, he buried his face in his arms.

  He was awakened by somebody kicking the soles of his boots. It was the orderly sergeant.

  “Fields say repote to him in half ’n hour, mounted and armed.”

  Jeff stretched and sat up. He looked at the sun and at the slant of the dark tree shadows. It was early afternoon. Resignedly he got to his feet and, walking to the commissary wagon, took a long drink from Heifer’s gourd dipper. Then he splashed his face with cool water.

  He put on his hat, cleaned and loaded his pistol, and saddled Flea Bite. Mounting, he rode to Fields’ tent, ducking from side to side to escape the tree branches. Other troopers joined him.

  Fields was lacing on a Federal boot taken from the captured Union supply train. He looked up sourly.

  “Special duty,” he snarled in his petulant, high-pitched voice. “Le’s go!”

  When they formed in column, Jeff found himself part of a twenty-man rebel escort. Accompanied by a single, empty, mule-drawn wagon, they started northwest on the little-used Wapanucka Road.

  Fields rode ahead with Colonel Thompson, commander of the Second Cherokee regiment, and acting treasurer of the Southern Cherokee Nation. They traveled at a swinging trot, mostly in silence. The gravelly trail meandered in and out of clumps of roadside timber. Both men and horses began to perspire. From every tree cicadas sang shrilly and maddeningly, the piercing chant of one approaching before the stridulations of another had fallen behind. Yellow flowering weeds covered the dusty, heat-locked countryside.

  An hour before sundown they halted on the bank of Clear Boggy Creek. There, beneath a towering cottonwood, stood a heavy green Conestoga wagon and a team of big gray mules. Half a dozen men, each well mounted, heavily armed and wearing blue uniforms of the Union cavalry, clustered watchfully around the wagon, obviously guarding its contents. Jeff attached no significance to the color of their uniforms. Half the men in Watie’s command had abandoned their own shaggy garments for blue uniforms taken at Cabin Creek.

  One of the strangers, apparently the leader, swaggered forward, confronting Colonel Thompson.

  “General Watie?”

  When Jeff heard the querulous voice he stopped breathing, every instinct sharp and alert. Instantly he knew the tall, stooping figure with the low, graying sideburns, the scar on his cheek, and the wild, suspicious eyes. Clardy!

  “I’m Colonel Thompson, treasurer of the Cherokee Nation. General Watie has empowered me to act for him and for the nation. I have come prepared. Are you ready to deal with us?”

  The reply didn’t satisfy Clardy. Angrily he stepped back and his hand dropped to the butt of the pistol holstered in his belt. He flicked his nervous green eyes distrustfully over Thompson and then over the rebel patrol, as though suspecting treachery.

  “I’ll deal with nobody but Watie.” He looked at the sun, low in the west, and scowled. “I said noon. Where is he?”

  Thompson replied politely, “General Watie is out on scout but we expect him back tonight.”

  Jeff’s heart was pounding in panic. He ducked so that his hat brim would hide his face.

  He knew now that his long wait to learn the identity of the Federal officer selling the contraband repeating rifles was over.

  Clardy glared at Thompson. He seemed to be making an effort to conceal his temper. Reluctantly he growled, “I guess we can deal. You got the gold?”

  Thompson nodded and started to say something, but Clardy c
ut him short. “Order your men to stand back farther. They’re lookin’ down our throats.”

  Thompson looked at him queerly but gave the order. This was fortunate for Jeff. He turned Flea Bite around and walked her back with the others. All except Fields. Hands on his hips, Fields stayed where he was, looking coolly into Clardy’s Conestoga wagon.

  Clardy gestured toward the sergeant. “Him, too.”

  Fields grinned savagely and shook his head. Clardy’s henchmen moved ominously forward. Jeff saw that each of them carried a Spencer rifle.

  Fields fingered his pistol and stood his ground.

  “That’s Sergeant Fields, our gunsmith. I want him to examine the rifles before I pay you for them,” Thompson said, civilly. Apparently satisfied, Clardy turned, barking an order to his followers.

  Four of them climbed off their horses and, reaching into the back of the Conestoga wagon beneath a canvas tarp, hauled out several long boxes. The other two held the reins and kept a sharp watch on the rebel patrol. They all looked like thugs. Jeff didn’t recognize any of them.

  Using the butts of their carbines, Clardy’s men broke open the boxes and Jeff saw row upon row of shiny, new repeating rifles, packed flat in sawdust.

  While Fields came forward and personally examined each weapon, working the finger levers and inspecting the apertures built into the butts of the walnut stocks, Thompson spread a blanket on the grass. He walked over to his claybank and returned with two heavy saddlebags. They were the same ones Boudinot had carried into Watie’s tent.

  Pop-eyed, Jeff saw the gold coins gleam brightly in the sunshine and heard their metallic chink as Clardy and Thompson counted them on the blanket. Then Clardy scooped the gold into his saddlebag and stood. Fields barked an order and several rebels came forward to help place the Spencers back in the boxes and load them into the empty wagon they had brought from Boggy Depot.