Rifles for Watie

by Harold Keith

  Clardy never returned. After Jeff told Colonel Wattles about the repeating rifles, the colonel rushed a full report by courier to Fort Scott. It was telegraphed to Leavenworth, St. Louis, and Washington, and the illegal traffic through Kansas stopped. No one knew what had become of Clardy. He was nowhere to be found.

  When Jeff didn’t return from his scout with Bostwick, General Blunt personally wrote his parents, sending them Jeff’s personal belongings, including the Medal of Honor he had won at Prairie Grove. Later, when Jeff turned up at the fort, Colonel Wattles wrote again to Jeff’s father, detailing the important service he had rendered the nation.

  When Jeff and David and John crossed the Kansas state line just southeast of Baxter Springs, their excitement grew. They arrived first at the timbered boundary of the Gardner farm, and David stared unbelievingly from beneath his heavy white eyebrows at the corn growing in the thin, rocky soil. The rows were straight, and the crop looked good. A sleek, fat cow grazed in a pasture with a new calf gamboling at her side. Farther on they saw a small patch of wheat and a garden heavy with tomatoes. Apparently there had been plenty of rain.

  As they rode up to the house a small black dog charged them, barking shrilly at the bloodhound. Jeff had never seen it before. He felt a vague alarm, wondering if David’s mother had moved.

  But when David called, the redheaded Gardner brood poured out of the house into the yard, and Jeff was surprised to see how much they had grown. Both girls were taller than their mother, but they had her plain, homely face and freckles. David got down off his horse.

  “It’s David!” Mrs. Gardner cried and ran forward to throw both arms around his neck. She was so glad to see him that she began pounding him with both fists. Recognizing Jeff and John, she greeted them, too.

  Bashful and smiling, the two girls stepped forward to be kissed. David pecked them both dutifully on the cheek. A muscular, red-haired lad of ten ran up from the new barn built of poles and straw. There was mud on his bare feet and awe and excitement in his face.

  David grinned. “Hello, Bobby. Well, I didn’t git killed after all. An’ my bones ain’t bleachin’ on no prairie.”

  Bobby stood there with his mouth open, staring first at his brother and then at the gaunt, sad-faced bloodhound.

  A stranger followed Bobby from the barn, carrying a pitchfork. He was small in stature. To Jeff, he looked like an old gray rooster whose tail feathers had been draggled by the rain. His black hair was sprinkled with gray. Timidly he stood in the background, as though reluctant to intrude upon David’s homecoming.

  Beaming, Mrs. Gardner turned to David. “David, this is yore new pappy.”

  Then Jeff knew why the corn rows were so straight.

  He and John rode on. As they angled off to the Chadwick farm, John straightened in the saddle, watching for familiar landmarks. Grown and heavily bearded, he stood six foot two and weighed 210 pounds, easily the biggest man in his company.

  “Think my old man’ll still try to whop me fer joinin’ up?” he laughed.

  At the same woodpile where he had thrown down the armful of blackjack logs when he left for Leavenworth with Jeff, he stopped his horse. Crawling off, he tied him to the saw rack. Grinning mischievously, he stooped and picked up an armload of logs and carried them toward the house. His father and mother came to the door, staring at him as though he was a stranger.

  “Howdy, Pa,” he said. “Well, I finally got back with the wood.”

  Then they recognized him. Elated, they rushed forward to greet him, chattering joyfully.

  Now Jeff rode alone. The dun nodded his head patiently up and down as he walked down the center of the narrow road, sweat running off his flanks. The bloodhound trotted along in the brush, his long, intelligent nose whuffing and snorting loudly as he read the roadside trail like a newspaper. If the hound had been able to talk, Jeff was sure it could have told him the identity of every creature that had passed that way for a week.

  It was late afternoon. With sweet nostalgia he drank in the green Kansas countryside, the fragrance of the alfalfa and sweet clover, the pastures blued over with wildflowers, the creeks and ponds shining like glass in the setting sun, the quail whistling cheerfully from the corn. He felt good clear through about it all. No more violence and crime in Kansas. No more trouble with the Missourians. The land was calm and peaceful at last. Jeff was proud he had helped bring it about.

  Impatient, he wanted to shake up the reins and gallop the dun on in, but he knew the horse was tired. In his saddlebags were a pair of prunella shoes for his mother to wear to church, a bolt of blue cotton cloth, and a skein of silk. For his sisters there were shawls and shell side combs. For his father, several twists of tobacco, a satin vest, and a new pair of calfskin boots. He had purchased it all from the sutler’s store at Fort Gibson.

  He passed the spot where he had thrown rocks at Ring the morning the dog had tried to follow him to Fort Leavenworth. He knew the house was just around the corner. He smelled smoke and saw a thin gray wisp curling above the trees; he knew it came from his mother’s fireplace, and a fresh wave of homesickness washed over him.

  As the road leaned familiarly to the left, he caught his first view of his father’s house. It looked different. He saw that an extra room had been built off the west side. A new rail fence ran around the yard. The trees looked twice as tall as when he had left four years before. But the corral fence of peeled cottonwood logs was still there.

  As he trotted up, a big gray dog with a white ring around his neck leaped up from the shade of the parked carryall and, with a low growl, trotted out springy-legged to smell noses with the bloodhound. Jeff’s heart jumped exultantly. It was Ring.

  “Ring,” he called, “don’t you know me?”

  When Ring heard Jeff’s voice, he cocked his ears and forgot all about the hound. In two bounds he was at Jeff’s stirrup, wild with excitement.

  Whining eagerly and springing up on his hind legs, the dog took sky hops almost as high as the saddle, trying to reach Jeff. The dun snorted and shied to one side. Jeff quieted him and dismounted. Before he could tie the horse, Ring sprang upon him. Laughing happily, Jeff pulled the big dog’s ears and scratched his back. Finally he tied the horse by the woodpile and walked across the chip-strewn yard to the house.

  A girl came out the back door, her mouth parted in surprise. She wore a simple cotton gown of purple. She was slim and shapely, with a couple of cinnamon-colored freckles high on the bridge of her nose. Jeff grinned at her. She had sure grown up but she didn’t fool him any. After seeing David’s sisters, he was prepared.

  “Jeff!” she shouted and ran to meet him. Throwing both arms around his middle, she hid her brown head under his arm. Her cry aroused the whole house.

  Jeff gave her a big squeeze and kissed her on top of her warm, clean-smelling head. “How are you, Bess?”

  She gasped and, looking up at him, giggled. “Why, Jeff, don’t you know me? I’m Mary. Bess is married. She lives over by the trading post with her husband. They’re coming to visit us tomorrow.” Now it was Jeff’s turn to look surprised.

  Jeff embraced his mother and father. They looked fine. His mother was crying. She said it wasn’t Jeff at all, he had grown so much.

  His father gazed at him with quiet pride and satisfaction. Mary claimed it was a miracle he hadn’t been shot, considering all he had been through.

  Jeff laughed. “A running target is hard to hit, Sis. I was too small for their rough sights.”

  And so, Jeff came home. . . .

  Later, after he had helped his father do the feeding and milking, they had supper in the firelit kitchen. He told them the whole story. When he had finished it was very late. His mother arose and quietly left the room. Returning, she handed Jeff a letter.

  “It’s for you. It came by army courier to Sugar Mound and was sent by a Colonel Matthews. He was in Doaksville in the Choctaw Indian Nation receiving the surrender of the Confederate Indian forces. He said a Captain Washbourne handed
him the letter personally to give to you.”

  Jeff’s heart gave a glad leap when he saw Lucy’s name written in small, neat letters in the upper left-hand corner. Moving nearer the fireplace, he tossed a handful of dry chips on the coals and carefully slit the envelope open. He pulled out the two folded pages of ruled paper torn from a record book and began to read:

  Boggy Depot, C.S.A.,

  May 27, 1865.

  My dear Jeff:

  You cannot imagine how thankful I was to learn you got back safely to Fort Gibson. When I heard you were on foot and our soldiers were close on your trail, I had no breath to speak. I thought of you all alone out there in the hills and how you could never be rid of the awful fear of being captured and executed. I don’t know how you did it with the whole country after you.

  You must have done a great deal of praying as well as running. I couldn’t run for you but I prayed hard for you every day. Once I heard that the hounds had run you down and mangled you terribly. Another time I heard you were dead. We do not know what to believe here any more, there is so much rumor.

  Our refugee home is a log house eleven miles west of Boggy Depot, near Blue River. When I heard after the dance that something went wrong and they were after you, I told my father everything. He knew about the rifles. He told me about having one of our men sing a certain song across the river to signal when we had the gold ready to buy the contraband rifles. Father had just returned from Texas. He went to Boggy Depot and talked to General Watie. The general promised to let us know when you were taken. When they got me up in the middle of the night to tell me they had lost the hound and you had escaped, my pulses throbbed and then almost ceased to throb at all. I knew before I answered the door that you were dead. Thank God I was wrong.

  The war is over here, and I am glad. General Watie gave nearly all our boys a furlough in March so they could help their families put in a crop.

  Boggy Depot is desolate. The streets are quiet. We had already lost our homes and property. Now we have lost the war. It is so dreary in town that one feels it is almost sacreligious to laugh. Everybody here is worrying about what kind of terms we will get in the peace treaty.

  I am wearing my last calico frock, and it is mended in many places. Most of my nice dresses were left behind in the trunk at Tahlequah. We have learned to make fine-flavored coffee from roasted okra seeds, and now everybody is planting long rows of okra along the edges of their cornfields. Before our cow died we churned every day but we didn’t drink the precious buttermilk. We made biscuits of it instead. Tonight we have nothing to eat, so I am going to bed early and fill up on sleep.

  I saw Hooley Pogue taking a walk around the hospital block the other day. He was the raggedest, shabbiest, most patched-up little fellow I ever saw. When I told him I was going to write to you, he said tell you to keep the hound. He said, “If that hound ever shows up here again, Fields will have him court-martialed.” Hooley’s wound is almost healed. He told Father and me about you holding him on his horse all the way back from Pheasant Bluff. I told him and Father how you were forced into our army by Bostwick’s remark. Mother had already told Father how good you were to us at Tahlequah. I think he would have tried to help you even if they had caught you.

  Hooley introduced us to Mr. Hobbs, the cook. He looked so lonely I felt sorry for him. We heard later he went back to his ranch in Texas and that he gave your pony and saddle to the youngest Jackman girl.

  We all want to return to our homes but Father says we cannot until late this year or early in 1866, after the treaty is made. Father is going to work driving freight wagons. Mother plans to run a boardinghouse at Fort Gibson, catering to the Union officers there. After feeding that polite Wisconsin major at our home in 1862, she has decided that many of your officers are nice people.

  I almost forgot to tell you about Clardy. When they didn’t catch you, he was afraid to go north. Meanwhile some of his followers became intoxicated and our people found out what his real name was and that he was the one who had ordered Lee’s execution. A few days later he was found stabbed to death and his twelve thousand dollars gone. Some say he was slain in revenge, others think his own companions murdered him. Hooley Pogue said, “I’ll bet he’s in hell pumping thunder at three cents a clap.”

  We are excited to hear that our Methodist conference will soon start up again. Now that the war is over and a minister is coming, nearly everybody here plans to get married.

  Remember the plans you and I made under the redbud tree at Boggy? Jeff, please don’t make me wait too long. I’ve said “No” three times in the last two weeks. Soon I’ll be the only unmarried girl in the refugee country.

  Your dog Dixie is with us. She is the family watchdog and pet.

  We all love her very much. I hope you don’t want her back too soon. She is all I have to remember you by.

  You should have seen me milk the cow before we lost her. Mother said I did it almost as well as Jed, our slave who ran away. I do most of the cooking when we have anything to cook. I am learning to weave and spin. You already know how well I sew. Except when I grow angry and stick my finger with the needle.

  Jeff, when you are coming to see me? I wish with all my heart that you were here tonight. I don’t think it would be safe for you to come now. Wait until we get back to Fort Gibson, then it will be perfectly safe. Please write to me here at Boggy. Please write the day after you receive this. I think of you every day and every night. Do you ever think of me?

  Ever yours affectionately,

  Lucy Washbourne.

  Jeff laid the letter on the sandstone hearth. He sighed deeply. What did she mean, asking him if he ever thought of her? Corn! He thought about her all the time.

  Lately he had begun worrying about her, too. In a few short months she would go with her family to Fort Gibson and be courted by all those ardent Union officers flocking around her mother’s table.

  A frown puckered his face. He was going to have do something about it right away. He almost wished she lived at Fort Gibson now so he could start back first thing in the morning. If he ever lost that girl, he’d never get over it.

  His mother put him on a shuck mattress in the new room. The floor was made of split logs. There was a rag rug on it. He could smell the fragrance of the newly hewn hickory. The walls were plastered with clay and felt smooth to the touch. Through the open south window, a cool breeze was blowing, gently stirring the red cotton curtains Mary had made. Truly, it was a fine room.

  But Jeff couldn’t rest in it. After reading Lucy’s letter, his heart kept going back to her and to the fine people on the defeated side who would have to wait another year before they could return to their homes and start making a new life for themselves. From somewhere on the warm night wind, he kept hearing a rowdy banjo tune picked by flying rebel fingers back at Boggy, and tasting Heifer’s yeasty “dough gods,” and feeling the water of the muddy Arkansas rise to his armpits as he rode again with Watie at Pheasant Bluff. And his regret came like pain.

  Restless, he climbed through the open window to keep from awakening his family and spread his blankets on the Bermuda outside. Sleeping outdoors on the ground was a habit he would have for many years.

  He settled back comfortably upon the blanket. The Kansas sky was spangled with blazing stars. They shone so brightly that he imagined he could almost hear the crackle of their fires. Down in the corral a cowbell tinkled faintly. He felt a slight movement at his side and saw that Ring had joined him and was lying close by, his head upon his forepaws.

  Reaching over with his hand, Jeff gave the big dog a couple of pats. Then he closed his eyes. Soon he began to breathe deeply and regularly.

  About the Author

  HAROLD KEITH grew up near the Cherokee country he describes in Rifles for Watie. A native Oklahoman, he was educated at Northwestern State Teachers College at Alva and at the University of Oklahoma, where he was a long distance runner.

  While traveling in eastern Oklahoma doing research on his mas
ter’s thesis in history, Mr. Keith found a great deal of fresh, unused material about the Civil War in the Indian country. Deciding that he might someday write a historical novel about it, he interviewed twenty-two Civil War veterans then living in Oklahoma and Arkansas; and much of the background of Rifles for Watie came from the notebooks he filled at that time. The actual writing of this book took five years.

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  Credits

  Cover art © 1987 by Michael Garland

  Cover © 1995 by HarperCollins Publishers

  Newbery Medal reproduced by permission of the American Library Association

  Copyright

  Copyright © 1957 by Harold Keith

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  EPub Edition © April 2015 ISBN 9780062419675

  ISBN 0-690-70181-0

  ISBN 0-06-447030-X (pbk.)

  First Harper edition, 1987.

  14 15 LP/OPM 50 49 48 47

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