Poison Spring
Page 21
It was then that Jared Greene reached under his pillow and pulled out a package wrapped in brown paper. “And this is for you, Travis. With thanks from Jeremiah Wilson and all of the First Kansas Colored Infantry.”
My trembling hands took it.
“Write well,” he said. “Write honest. Oui?” Like Miss Mary Frederick was speaking through him.
“Oui.”
* * * * *
It would be a long way to Kansas. I didn’t know what it would bring. Wasn’t even sure we would make it. There were plenty of Confederates in northern Arkansas, and southern Missouri. Plenty of trouble. Mama, however, said we had nothing to worry about. And Mama, we had learned, was never wrong.
So we rode. Out of Little Rock, with a pass from a Yankee major saying that Connor Ford and his family were free to travel to Kansas with the thanks of the First Kansas Colored Infantry. Which wouldn’t do us any good if we happened upon Confederates.
As the wagon rolled north, I opened the package. I knew what it was. I hadn’t planned on opening it until I was alone, but Baby Hugh and Edith insisted. Mama and Papa just stared ahead.
“That for drawing?” Baby Hugh asked when I showed them all the writing tablet.
“For writing,” I told him.
“Stories?” My brother made a face. “Another one of them learning things? Like what Miss Mary give you?”
“Yes, it is.” I lifted the cigar box off Webster’s. Opened it. Withdrew the tablet Miss Mary had bought me in what seemed like a lifetime ago. The tablet opened, and I glanced at one of my stories about France, cringing as I read my weak attempt at writing, but grinning at my misspelling of oui.
“Read a story you wrote,” Edith said.
“Some other time,” I said.
They frowned.
“Well, maybe tonight.”
I turned the page. New thoughts flashed through my head, thoughts about all I had seen in … what … a month? I leaned back, and put both tablets—one from Sergeant Greene and Wilson, one from Mary Frederick—inside the cigar box. I closed the lid. Sliding closer to my brother and sister, I put my arms around them both. Behind me, Mama reached over and gripped Papa’s leg.
“Ain’t you gonna write something?” Baby Hugh asked. “Or draw something?”
“Later,” I said.
“You ain’t gonna write nothing,” he said. “I bet you can’t write a thing.”
“Hugh,” Mama admonished.
The wagon rolled. A spring breeze blew.
Oh, I would write. I knew exactly what I would write, not the words, mind you, but the story. Stories, I mean. Not just one.
One story was finished, but another held promise I’d never felt until that moment.
Poison Spring lay behind us.
The Spring of Hope waited ahead.
the end
Author’s Note
Historian Gregory J. W. Urwin has called the Poison Spring massacre “the worst war crime ever committed on Arkansas soil.”
The battle—six days after a similar, and more infamous, massacre of black Union soldiers by Confederates at Fort Pillow, Tennessee—resulted in more than three hundred killed, wounded, and missing for the Union Army. Of that number, the First Kansas Colored Infantry lost one hundred seventeen killed and sixty-five wounded. Confederate losses totaled fewer than one hundred forty-five.
Less than two weeks later, the Second Kansas Colored Infantry got a measure of revenge. On the day after the Battle of Poison Spring (sometimes called Poison Springs), Colonel Samuel J. Crawford, the Second’s commanding officer, told his men that they “would take no prisoners so long as the Rebels continued to murder our men.”
At Jenkins’ Ferry on April 30, as the Union Army retreated for Little Rock, the Second Kansas met an Arkansas regiment. Crawford ordered his men to “aim low, and give them hell.” Shouting “Poison Springs,” the black soldiers stormed into the Confederates. In a matter of seconds, the Second overran the enemy position, bayoneting as many soldiers as they could, including some who tried to surrender.
A quiet state park rests about ten miles west of Camden off Arkansas Highway 76. I’ve hiked around it a couple of times, but have never felt that it does justice to the tragedy, the injustice, that happened there. Which might be why I tackled this novel.
Marks’ Mill (on Highway 8 near Fordyce) and Jenkins’ Ferry (on County Road 317 / Forest Road 9010 near Leola), by the way, are also nearby state parks.
Poison Spring is a work of fiction, but the battle, part of the Union’s failed Red River campaign, is fact. A fact that has too often been overlooked.
My primary source was “All Cut to Pieces and Gone to Hell”: The Civil War, Race Relations, and the Battle of Poison Spring (August House, 2003), edited by Mark K. Christ. Other sources include Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Southern Arkansas (Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1890); “A Rough Introduction to This Sunny Land”: The Civil War Diary of Private Henry A. Strong, Co. K, Twelfth Kansas Infantry (Butler Center Books, 2006), edited by Tom Wing; Things Grew Beautifully Worse: The Wartime Experiences of Captain John O’Brien, 30th Arkansas Infantry, C.S.A. (Butler Center Books, 2001), edited by Brian K. Robertson; Civil War Arkansas: Beyond Battles and Leaders (University of Arkansas Press, 2000), edited by Anne J. Bailey and Daniel E. Sutherland; and Rugged and Sublime: The Civil War in Arkansas (University of Arkansas Press, 1994), edited by Mark K. Christ. I should also thank the Ouachita County Historical Society, based in Camden.
Johnny D. Boggs
Santa Fe, New Mexico
About the Author
Johnny D. Boggs has worked cattle, shot rapids in a canoe, hiked across mountains and deserts, traipsed around ghost towns, and spent hours poring over microfilm in library archives—all in the name of finding a good story. He’s also one of the few Western writers to have won six Spur Awards from Western Writers of America (for his novels, Camp Ford in 2006, Doubtful Cañon in 2008, and Hard Winter in 2010; Legacy of a Lawman, West Texas Kill, both in 2012; and his short story, “A Piano at Dead Man’s Crossing,” in 2002) as well as the Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum (for his novel Spark on the Prairie: The Trial of the Kiowa Chiefs in 2004). A native of South Carolina, Boggs spent almost fifteen years in Texas as a journalist at the Dallas Times Herald and Fort Worth Star-Telegram before moving to New Mexico in 1998 to concentrate full time on his novels. Author of dozens of published short stories, he has also written for more than fifty newspapers and magazines, and is a frequent contributor to Boys’ Life and True West. His Western novels cover a wide range. The Lonesome Chisholm Trail (Five Star Westerns, 2000) is an authentic cattle-drive story, while Lonely Trumpet (Five Star Westerns, 2002) is a historical novel about the first black graduate of West Point. The Despoilers (Five Star Westerns, 2002) and Ghost Legion (Five Star Westerns, 2005) are set in the Carolina backcountry during the Revolutionary War. The Big Fifty (Five Star Westerns, 2003) chronicles the slaughter of buffalo on the southern plains in the 1870s, while East of the Border (Five Star Westerns, 2004) is a comedy about the theatrical offerings of Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, and Texas Jack Omohundro, and Camp Ford (Five Star Westerns, 2005) tells about a Civil War baseball game between Union prisoners of war and Confederate guards. “Boggs’ narrative voice captures the old-fashioned style of the past,” Publishers Weekly said, and Booklist called him “among the best Western writers at work today.” Boggs lives with his wife Lisa and son Jack in Santa Fe. His website is www.JohnnyDBoggs.com. His next Five Star Western will be The Killing Trail: A Killstraight Story.
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