They walked on.
No, I wouldn’t, said Adair. Just give me my horse.
He’s your pet all right. The man let go her arm. I’m going on to Pike Creek and I’ll get a saddle there from the Upshaws. They’re Union. They’ll give me a saddle. So you just come along, Miss, and if you run I’ll shoot this horse dead. You can stay at the Upshaws until they can take you in.
Take me in where? said Adair.
Under arrest.
I was just running down the road! Adair said. I lost my horses!
The man walked on. Now, you can prove you’re innocent before the provost marshal. His voice became less harsh. She still could not see his features. They went on down the trail, a broad road into the valley before them. There were no house lights in all the dark stretches of the hills but it was late in the night.
Let me put on my jacket, she said. She looked back at Dolly, who hung by her halter, splattered with dark blotches over her pale neck and head, and who was very still except for the slight fluttering of her mane in the night breeze.
Well, go on. I guess you’re cold.
Adair put on the Zouave jacket and held it around her. They walked on into the night where the whippoorwill sang its one repetitive song over and over. Whiskey blew hard and stared around him. He thrashed his head from side to side against the bit.
Stop it, you son of a bitch, said the man.
He don’t mean nothing, said Adair. He’s just scared.
The man laughed. He’s your pet all right.
Adair strode long steps to keep up with the man. They went on down the hill and came to a branch and crossed through it in noisy splashes. It was not deep, but Whiskey sat back on his hindquarters and made a roaring snort like a stag, his nostrils open to red holes. He gathered himself as if he would jump the water or sail into the air.
It’s all right, Whiskey, said Adair. She put her hand on his shoulder. Go on, go on. And the dun horse stepped through the water in high steps as if it contaminated him. He was cautious of everything now. All around them the dry grasses from last summer stood tall, the color of bronze.
Well now, this is companionable, ain’t it? the man said. Do you have any favorite subject of conversation?
I don’t know, said Adair. She tried to sound light. What about you?
Did you ever hypnotize a chicken?
Well, now that you mention it, I did, she said, in a gay voice. It’s just funny one time.
You can hypnotize a man before you shoot him, the man said. You put that gun barrel in his face and bear down on him and stare him in the eye and it’s like he’s kind of fainted away but his eyes are open.
Well isn’t that something, said Adair. That’s really interesting. She hurried along beside the man and Whiskey trying to see where they were going in the dark.
It is something, he said. You hear people talk about it. He cleared his throat and spat. That scare you?
Well, no, said Adair. I guess that’s what it’s like being a soldier. She laughed, in a ragged trailing noise.
Yes it is. I’m tired of being a soldier. A man should relax. Have some fun. Adair didn’t say anything so he said, Don’t you like relaxing and having fun?
Well, sure, said Adair. Her voice was high and thin. They went on along the road with the big bluestem grass nearly touching overhead and through the waving seed heads the low moon flashed and glittered.
What kind of music do you like?
Oh, I like the modern waltzes, said Adair. And some of the old tunes like “Soldier’s Joy.”
I like that jigging music, the man said. But you need a good fiddler. You don’t need such a good fiddler for the waltzes. They can kind of shin through because they’re slow and easy to play.
I never thought of it like that, said Adair.
Are you lagging behind? Come on. Walk up.
Wait, she said, I can’t hardly go on.
Yes you can, he said. I enjoy your company. You just keep walking and talking.
Let me walk on the other side and hold on to his mane. She trudged along in the bedroom slippers holding to Whiskey’s mane. The Steep was leading them through the open valley of Pike Creek and the big bluestem stood very tall in the moonlight on both sides with the pale rutted track going on.
Where does this come out? said the man. I thought it was taking us to Upshaws’.
Well, they call it the Arkansas road, said Adair. It comes out in north Arkansas, I guess, and it goes on to Little Rock and then to Mexico or somewhere.
I ain’t going to Mexico, girl, I am going to get me a saddle.
Well, Upshaws’ track is down here a ways.
Where does it go before it gets to Arkansas? He stopped and in the dim tall grass struck a match and lit a pipe. The match shone on the grass stems and his ordinary-looking face and then he threw it down and stepped on it.
Well, it goes on to Wilderness.
He laughed. This here is all a wilderness.
No, I mean the town of Wilderness. That place where Hyssop’s Rest is at. The tavern. Adair coughed and leaned and spit into the road.
What’s the matter with you?
I don’t know. I got a cottonseed down my throat.
Well, quit making so much noise.
Adair took up her skirts in both hands and kept walking.
The tavern. I know that place. But I got to get to Upshaws’ first.
It’s just a little ways.
You show me. Show me when we get there. His revolver occasionally took up a flash of moonlight that ran liquid down the barrel. He said, Hyssop’s Rest has got to be a good fifteen miles from here. He smoked and paced on into the seething grasses and said, When I get me a saddle from old man Upshaw then I’ll ride and you can ride behind. When we get to Hyssop’s we can have a drink.
All right, said Adair.
Do you take a drink when it’s offered?
Once in a while.
Well, this is one of those onces. He laughed. Jessie Hyssop. She cooks for the Rebs one night and us fellows the next.
They went on through the broad valley of grass where no trees grew because of the floods that came down out of the mountains from time to time and swept everything before them except for the pliable grass that bent before everything and then came up again to respond amiably to any wind that came and outlasted everything except the willows, which also bent. Even now to the southwest came the rumble of thunder or it could have been artillery.
Off to the right in the creek bottom several hen turkeys burst out in a squalling nighttime argument and were then quiet again.
What was that? He stopped and snatched back on Whiskey’s reins to keep the horse from walking over him. Some of your friends signaling one another? He knocked out his pipe and stepped on the coal.
Adair knew he meant Colonel Reeves’s men, or Freeman’s men. Sounds like hen turkeys to me, she said. The high grass sang around them in a whisper of coming rain, the seed heads tipped uneasily to the northeast over their heads. The thunder sounded again afar off, behind it a glimmer of lightning.
If I don’t look out here I’m going to get myself shot, he said. How do I know this is the Arkansas road? We might have turned off.
I’m following you, said Adair. And you have my horse.
If you run I’ll shoot him.
Before long they came to a place where a deer trail turned off into the grass, and Adair peered at it and thought it might be the place marked on Greasy John’s telegraph forms where the deer snares were.
What’s that? the man said. He paused and wavered at the entrance to the deer trail. The narrow trail was a black slit full of darkness in the wall of grass. I got to get out of this goddamned grass.
No, just go on, she said. She made herself sound urgent. Anxious. Go on! On down this road is where we want to go.
Well, I bet that is the path to Upshaws’, he said.
No it ain’t! Go on ahead. She backed away.
He turned and came back to her and stoo
d over her. I can shoot this horse in a second, he said. He put one hand around her throat and closed it.
He’s no good to you dead, Adair said, and she coughed, and her throat convulsed under his hand. This road crosses Pike Creek just down here, and the Upshaws’ track is on the other side. He dropped his hand. He was so afraid she could smell him sweating. She could see his Militia insignia and knew it was coming light now.
You’re lying like a shithouse rat, he said. He took Whiskey and turned off into the dark passageway in the grass. I got to get out of this grass, you can’t see nothing. He pushed on into the big bluestem, ungrazed these four years of war. He said, You don’t want the Upshaws to see your face, do you?
This here is a deer trail, said Adair.
Shut up. You said not to come this way so this is the way we’re going.
They came to a place where the tall bluestem gave way to the shorter oat grass, and Adair could hear the creek running. The deer trail was now plain, and it ran straight to the sandy bank of Pike Creek under sycamores. She thought she saw the taut cord of a snare but the moon had gone down and now all the world was gray. Whiskey danced to the side.
Go to the left, she said. Don’t take the trail over the bank. Go to the left.
What are you holding back for? he said. He put the revolver barrel against Whiskey’s neck.
Well, I am tired of arguing with you, said Adair. You keep asking me the way to Upshaws’ and I am telling you. She raised her voice. Just shoot him! Go on!
Which way? He put the revolver barrel toward her.
Go off to the left! There’s a big broad clear space to cross in! She was shouting, she couldn’t help herself, her nerves were gone, everything was out of sequence, there was no safety anywhere, not even in the hot dark.
Be damned if I will, he said, and turned, and walked down the deer trail under the sycamore saplings and straight into the snare.
With a slithering whine the snare came off its circle of stakes and the soldier seemed to vault feet first up into the night like a circus performer, his one leg clasped by the ankle. Whiskey’s reins were ripped from his hand and the dun horse ran backward, snorting. The man leaped and flew, his arms beating the air. You bitch! You bitch! In the dim light of coming dawn he grabbed wildly, upside down, and the limber sycamore that held the snare line beat about among its more sober fellows like a live thing.
I’ll kill you! he screamed. He poured out two wild shots and the muzzle flashes came first from one place and then from another.
Whiskey ran backward. He ran over Adair and knocked her down. She scrambled out away from his hooves and then caught his reins. The man seemed to be a flying demon hurling around in the middle air, up by one leg like the Hanged Man in Madame Rose’s Tarot cards. Things were falling out of his pockets in shining trajectories—coins and a watch and his penknife.
Adair threw herself up and across Whiskey’s back and turned him down the deer trail before she even righted herself. As they went through the narrow slit in the high grass the revolver went off again.
A ball tore through the grass stems and struck the dun horse. He suddenly jumped into the air with his back arched, went sideways as if the ball had thrown him off his footing, but he came down with his rear end under him and went smashing on through the jungle of grass with an erratic crabwise gait. Adair in her oversize dress ballooned along with him. She buried her hands in his mane and felt him falter under her again and again but he remained upright and moving. Far behind she heard the man screaming but he did not fire again and at last the road crossed Pike Creek on a bed of timbers. She slid off Whiskey’s side and led him to water.
A long stream of blood spread out in a fan from a bullet hole just above his stifle, where his hind leg joined his gut, and she put her hand against the pumping hole. It looked as though he were gutshot but it might have lodged in the muscle. Then he would have a chance.
He stood nodding his head up and down, and then made a low throaty noise and turned and pressed his forehead flat against her.
Don’t you want some water? said Adair. She patted him and stroked him. Come to water. Come to water.
Whiskey walked limping through the sand down to the creek and dipped his muzzle into the water. He drank, and lifted his head again, and the drops made expanding circles in red fire as the sun rose and shone through the sycamores.
When he drank as much as he wanted, Adair drank too, and then she took up his reins and led him on down the Steep, watching like something gone wild at every movement of the leaves, every sound.
29
UNION CORRESPONDENCE
Headquarters, Department of the Missouri
Saint Louis, June 20, 1865
[To:] Major General G. M. Dodge, Commanding Department of the Missouri
General: I have the honor to report that the expedition which left here on the 20th of May for north Arkansas to parole [accept the surrender of] the command of Brig. General M. Jeff Thompson returned this day. . . . General Thompson met us in the most friendly manner and acted very honorably. The only person that presented himself that we declined to parole was Colonel Tim. Reeves, Fifteenth Missouri Cavalry. He is the officer that ordered the shooting of Major Wilson and six of his men in the fall of 1864, after they had surrendered.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant, C. W. Davis, Lieutenant Colonel and Assistant Provost-Marshal
—OR, CH. LX, P. 237
Colonel Reeves then led the regiment, those that wished to go, to Jacksonport and surrendered. Union officers were taken aback that 829 officers and 8,782 enlisted men surrendered. . . . Colonel Reeves was the only one that was denied parole. He was held for the murder of Major James Wilson, was taken to St. Louis, but was eventually released and returned to his pre-war occupation as a Baptist preacher.
—FROM A History of the 15th Missouri Cavalry, CSA
THE BLOOD DRIED on his hindquarters, and often Adair stopped to let him eat if he would. Sometimes he stood without grazing, his head bowed as if to some invisible deity and then Adair wrapped her arms around his head and he was content to stand that way for a while. His wound sealed itself with dried blood and pus. There was a swelling as big as her two hands. Once he lay down with a groan, dropping slowly behind and then the forequarters, and she had a hard time getting him to his feet again.
Come on darlin’, come on. Get up, come on. And he heaved his head forward and struggled to his feet and they went on.
After two days she heard from a distance the sound of a church bell tolling. From the north, toward Van Buren. It was shortly after noon. The bell clanged its wordless news out into the morning air. It tolled for a long time in a double clang. Perhaps thirty times or more.
THAT DAY ADAIR came to the little town called Wilderness, which lay at Slayton Ford of White’s Creek. It lay ahead of her in a small clearing in the pines. So Adair rode into a town for the first time in two weeks.
There were but five log cabins there and a gristmill on White’s Creek, and a long, low tavern made of logs and sealed over with boards of yellow pine. The signboard over the tavern said beds, food and whiskey. hyssop’s rest. A pole thrust out of the eaves with a lantern hung on it, and at the end of the pole a torn glove pointed toward the west in a ragged, imperative gesture. The little settlement stood low and smoky in the aisles of pine. Thunder was prowling once again at the edge of the western horizon.
Look at you! said Jessie Hyssop. She was standing in the doorway of the tavern. As she came out several reddish orange hens came trundling up and began to peck at her feet. Adair Colley. I thought I might never see you again.
She was as tall and strong as she ever was, with her thick head of medium-brown hair uncovered. She was big in the hips and thighs and had bare feet and had been barefoot all her life from the way they were shaped. Look like you come far, Adair.
I have, said Adair.
And you look sick, Jessie said. Your path has been stormy.
Jessie came out and st
ood to look at Whiskey. He stood with his left hind leg cocked up, and a stream of pus and clear matter glistened fanwise down his stifle and on down his tiger-striped leg to his hoof. The flies of Hyssop’s Rest came and chattered over the wound and were delighted with it. Adair waved them away.
Somebody shot him, she said. Adair stood under Whiskey’s neck and stroked him and felt his warm breath down her back. He might be gutshot, she said. But he is eating and drinking.
Who shot him?
A Union Militia fellow. He was trying to take him away from me. He shot my other horse and killed her. Then he ran into a deer snare down on Pike Creek.
I never heard you say that. She prodded at the swelling. Where have you been, Adair?
In St. Louis. After I saw you. They sent me up there on the train with all those women they arrested.
They let you go? Jessie turned to look as two of her feist dogs came up to worry the hens.
I never told them nothing, said Adair. I escaped. I put myself into the telegraph line letter by letter and come out at Iron Mountain and was reassembled.
Jesse smiled but didn’t say anything. The rain was coming now.
I never told nothing on anybody.
I never said you did. You said that twice now. How long have you been on the road?
Well, I don’t know. Maybe three weeks.
President Lincoln has been shot.
Adair stood and stared at her. No! That is hard to believe.
It’s true.
Who shot him?
Some crazy man from Virginia. They are going to come down hard on us now. Jessie stepped out of the doorway. Go on in and see if you can find you something to eat. You look poor. I will see if Medical Dick can tend to this horse. Where’s your traps?
I lost them. When that militiaman tried to get Whiskey.
You aren’t saying much, are you?
There’s hardly anything left to say, said Adair. I just ran out of things to say.
ADAIR PICKED UP her skirts and walked inside the tavern and stood until she could see in the dim interior. There were shelves on the far wall: wooden boxes of biscuit powder, several writing slates, two bottles of pickled vegetables corked and sealed with paraffin, and a stone jar of something. Jerky was strung from the rafters. Bunches of turkey quills stood up like bouquets. They also had three doorknobs for sale and a can of pepper.
Enemy Women Page 28
