Rifles for Watie

by Harold Keith

  Bill put down the razor and saluted smartly. “Yes, sir. What song would you like to hear, sir?”

  Clardy waved his hand as though leaving the choice to Bill. The troopers sat up with keen anticipation. Bill could sing, and the fact the captain had asked him to lent additional importance to the occasion. Jeff sat with his back braced against a cottonwood log. Dixie was at his feet. Everybody knew her now. She was the pet of the regiment.

  The captain’s sudden interest in singing didn’t dovetail with an incident Jeff remembered from the long, hot march to Wilson’s Creek. On that occasion, they had angered Clardy by singing a parody on the rebel tune, “Dixie,” making up their own words as they marched.

  “I wish I’s back in Douglas County

  Two years up and I had my bounty

  Look away, look away, look away to Kansas land.”

  “Singin’ soldiers won’t fight,” Clardy had snarled at them. Now Jeff eyed Clardy warily and wondered what lay back of the new-found enthusiasm for music.

  Earle’s tenor, clear and sweet, began the ever-popular “John Brown’s Body” and on each chorus the troopers kept time by clapping their hands to the singing. At first Bill sang mostly what the soldiers asked for, such favorites as “Shoo Fly Shoo,” “Gay and Happy Still,” and “Wait for the Wagon.” But when he began the hauntingly sweet notes of “Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming,” everything became quiet, and the whole camp seemed to hang upon the song and drink in the emotional impact of the melancholy words. When the last sad strains were over, no one spoke.

  A stick snapped in the shadow. It was Clardy.

  “Soldier, can you sing ‘Tramp, Tramp, Tramp’?” he asked Earle.

  Bill sang the song, and at its conclusion, Clardy stared across the river, his body bent forward, listening.

  “Listen!”

  From the rebel side of the Arkansas, another voice was heard, a low, powerful baritone that carried strongly across the murmuring water. The rebel singer warmed up on “Johnny Fill up the Bowl” and then swung into “Pop Goes the Weasel” and “Lily Dale.” He was accompanied by what sounded like a banjo.

  In the bright moonlight Clardy’s thin, nervous hands opened and closed spasmodically, and a sneering, triumphant expression crossed his face.

  Suddenly the rebel singer lifted his smooth, vibrant voice in the old favorite, “Annie Laurie.” And then a wonderful thing happened. On the chorus, Bill Earle joined in, singing the harmony. Two hundred yards apart, the rebel baritone and the Union tenor finished the old Scottish song together, their voices blending in the soft June night.

  Then Bill began everybody’s favorite, “Home, Sweet Home.” Quickly the rebel singer joined him, and as the homesick men of both armies sang the chorus, Jeff, misty-eyed like the others, thought of his own home and family in far-off Linn County.

  Later, after they returned to the fort, David stopped him at the water barrel. Looking carefully around, he whispered, “Hey, Jeff. I know who that rebel singer is. His name’s Chasteen. He’s a Texian lawyer from Goliad. The rebel pickets told us about him one night when we was swimmin’ with ’em. He used to lead a church choir at Santone.”

  That night Jeff lay awake, wondering why Clardy, who ordinarily disliked music, had seemed so enthralled with the singing. Why had he asked Bill to sing in the first place? It seemed that Clardy had known what was going to happen.

  An hour before dawn Jeff was awakened by a rough hand shaking his shoulder. It was the orderly sergeant growling, “Be dressed in fifteen minutes. Special duty.”

  Yawning, Jeff sat up and discovered that the weather had completely reversed itself. The morning was heavily overcast and wild with wind. As he pulled on his boots, he felt singularly depressed. He guessed it was because of the gloomy weather.

  Special duty, the orderly sergeant had said. Jeff wondered what it was? The wind gushed so hard that he had to drop to his knees before he could stuff his blouse into his pants. Blown sand stung his cheek. The horses stood with their backs to the wind, their manes, tails, and forelocks tousled. As his company was ordered into infantry alignment and began to march, again he had the feeling of dread and foreboding, as though something unpleasant were about to happen.

  Everything was sodden with moisture. It formed in tiny gray beads on the walnut stock of Jeff’s musket. Ahead, the men’s feet left darkened trails in the wet grass as they marched to the drill field.

  “What’s up?” Bill whispered as they did a right oblique. “Where they takin’ us?”

  “Dunno,” muttered Stuart, “but we’ll soon find out.”

  Colonel Phillips was off on a scout and Clardy, next in rank, was in temporary command at the fort. What was it all about?

  Finally, after they were formed into a rectangle at one end of the drill field, Noah had it figured.

  “Must be an execution,” he guessed, “or they wouldn’t be puttin’ us in hollow square. Probably some deserter Clardy figures on shootin’ before Phillips gets back.”

  The wind howled like a demented giant. It flattened the prairie grass and turned the small oaks so topsy-turvy that they looked like capsized umbrellas. The air smelled of rain. Jeff shuddered. What a desolate morning to have to die.

  Above the roar of the weather came the thin squeak of a fife, strangely flawed by the wind. It was accompanied by a drum. It was the saddest, dreariest music he had ever heard.

  “That’s the ‘Dead March,’ ” growled a grizzled corporal nearby.

  “There they come,” quavered somebody else.

  Jeff felt the back of his neck prickling. Marching slowly side by side came the fifer and the drummer, followed by a guard of twelve armed men. Then came four troopers carrying a new coffin of cheap, yellow pine. And behind them, the condemned man.

  Bareheaded, he marched stoically, a heavily armed guard on each side of him, a chaplain at his elbow. And last of all trudged the ten-man firing squad whose faces revealed plainly their distaste for the job ahead, despite the fact that the musket of one was loaded with a blank charge, and none knew who carried the harmless gun.

  The grim procession halted. The coffin was placed on the ground beside an open grave. The prisoner, dressed in shirt and trousers of butternut, looked first at the coffin and then at the grave. And when, for the first time, he paled a little beneath his tan and stared desperately about him as though hunting for the face of a friend, Jeff saw with astonishment that he was only a boy.

  The sergeant of the guard directed the prisoner to be seated on the coffin. Shaking his black head, the doomed youth refused and stood facing the firing squad defiantly, his hands tied behind him.

  Jeff marveled at the rebel’s courage. His high cheekbones, brown skin and straight black hair showed he had Indian blood.

  “He’s a rebel spy,” hissed somebody. “They caught the sneakin’ bugger behind our lines with a tissue drawin’ of the fort’s new breastworks hid in the sole of his boot. When they tried to get him to talk, he jest laughed at ’em.”

  “He ain’t laughin’ now,” somebody else added.

  Shivering, Jeff breathed a silent prayer for the prisoner, praying that he would not lose his courage during the ordeal ahead.

  When the provost marshal stepped up to blindfold him, the rebel brushed him away for a moment and turned his clenched, youthful face southward for one final, farewell look across the river to the land of his people and his home. Then the blindfold was tied around his eyes and he stood impassively, his black hair disheveled by the wind, while the official order of execution, signed by Clardy, was read by the provost marshal.

  Suddenly Clardy swore fiercely and sprang forward.

  One of the men in the firing squad had fainted, dropping his musket and tumbling on his face in the wet grass. Clardy stood over him, drawing back his boot as though to deal him a kick.

  But he restrained himself, and while the surgeon came forward and worked to restore the man to consciousness, Clardy wheeled and began stamping down the long line
of troopers, his nervous eyes darting from side to side as he searched for a replacement. Every man in the company stood rooted in his tracks, afraid he would be the unlucky one.

  The captain halted in front of Jeff. His wild, suspicious eyes burned with triumph.

  “Bussey!”

  Jeff felt the marrow freezing in his bones. “Yes, sir.”

  Clardy gestured toward the man who had fainted. “Take his place in the firing squad!”

  A slow anger burned in Jeff. Sweat formed on the insides of his palms. He wanted no part of shooting down anybody who stood helpless with his hands tied behind him. Defiantly he squared his shoulders.

  “Sir, I will not.”

  A murmur of surprise broke from the ranks. Clardy’s face reddened with rage. Half drawing his saber, he fixed upon Jeff a look of hatred. At that moment the surgeon came hurrying up and saluted.

  “Sir, the man who fainted has recovered. He’s back in his place now with the firing squad.” Clardy scoured him with a look that had murder in it. Suddenly his voice went woman-shrill.

  “Don’t think you’re going to escape seeing the execution, Bussey. And soon as it’s over, I’m arresting you for disobedience.” Wheeling, the captain stamped back to his place by the firing squad. Glaring at the sergeant, he nodded curtly, his face hard and merciless.

  The sergeant barked an order. The firing squad raised its muskets. The click of the hammers sounded above the wind. At the command “Fire!” Jeff felt a weakness in the pit of his stomach and his toes contracted in his wet shoes. Then the simultaneous discharge of the ten guns, muffled by the wind, brought a merciful end to the scene.

  The body was placed in the open coffin, and the company was made to march past and view it.

  While the line in front of him was filing slowly past the casket, Jeff saw Lafe Appleman, one of the guards, pile something in a small heap on top of the foot of the coffin.

  “Them’s the dead man’s personal belongin’s,” somebody whispered in awe.

  Suddenly the morning sun broke through the fast-scudding clouds, glinting brightly off something golden lying on top of the pile. Jeff saw it was a gold watch, the handsomest he had ever seen, lying on its glass face.

  A name was engraved across the back. When he saw the name, his hands shook, and his face turned to ice. Trembling, he hoped he had read wrong.

  He hadn’t. The name was still there, plainer than ever. In small, neat script, it said “Lee Washbourne.”

  Jeff’s hunt for Lucy’s brother was over. . . .

  A hot and bitter rage at Clardy flared in Jeff. He knew he had to think fast or Lee Washbourne would lie forever in a nameless grave. Quickly he turned to Noah. Pressing two shin-plaster bank notes, all he had, in Noah’s hands, he explained, talking fast.

  “Noah, the boy Clardy just had shot is the son of that rebel family our officers boarded with a year ago at Tahlequah. We’ve got to get his body back to them. I’d go, but Clardy is going to arrest me. Go to Sergeant Pike and claim the body. Ask him for permission to go find old Belle, the old woman who lives in that run-down store at the crossing of the Illinois River. She knows the Washbournes in Tahlequah. Tell her what happened. Give her this money, and tell her to hire somebody to help her take the boy’s body back to his folks in Tahlequah. It’s only twenty miles from here.”

  Noah nodded gravely. “I’ll do it, youngster.”

  “And be sure to have her explain to his folks that you, nor I, nor none of our enlisted men here had anything to do with this awful thing. Or even knew who the boy was, until just now when we saw his name on the watch.”

  The sergeant walked up and said briskly, “You’re under arrest. Cappen’s orders.” Jeff hardly heard him. He knew Lucy would blame him for her brother’s death. She always blamed him for everything connected with the war.

  That night he sat glumly on a cot in the fort’s small guardhouse, surrounded by four whitewashed walls. He kept fretting about the terrible surprise in store for the Washbourne women when old Belle arrived with the body of the only son. He tried to estimate the old woman’s arrival by the fort’s various bugle calls.

  At the dinner call, he told himself, “She’s on her way now.” At tattoo, he figured she was nearing the river crossing, close to Tahlequah. At taps, he knew she must be almost there. Still agitated, he went finally to sleep.

  Next morning he awoke more depressed than ever. He ate very little breakfast. He knew that, barring an accident, old Belle had probably completed her sad errand of mercy, and that at last the Washbournes were alone with their dead.

  As commander of the fort until Phillips returned, Clardy had supreme authority in fixing Jeff’s punishment and he made the most of it. Jeff was required to forfeit a month’s pay and carry two heavy saddles around and around the fort’s palisades in the heat of the day. Whenever a horse died, it was his task to bury it. Clardy was clever at varying the punishment.

  Once he had Jeff tied by the thumbs from a tree limb, permitting only his toes to touch the ground. However, the guard, who hated the captain, loosened the cords so that Jeff could drop down flat on his feet and rest, tightening them only when another guard warned him the captain was coming. Jeff bore all the punishment manfully. Finally, on July thirteenth, he was released and returned to duty.

  On the same afternoon, General Blunt arrived at the fort with reinforcements from Kansas. There were two companies of the Sixth Kansas Cavalry with him.

  Mingling with them, Jeff learned that a Union force sent out by Blunt had successfully defended a big Union wagon train from an attack by Stand Watie’s rebels and that the train was now only a mile from the fort. There was bigger news than that, too.

  Before leaving Fort Scott, Blunt’s command had been notified of the defeat of the rebel General Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg and of the surrender of the rebel port of Vicksburg to General Ulysses S. Grant. In nearby Arkansas, the Union General Prentiss had inflicted an overwhelming defeat upon Confederate troops led by Generals Holmes and Price. Everything looked much brighter for the Union cause.

  That night Jeff went on sentry duty again. This time, his beat was in the timber southeast of the fort, where the newly arrived cavalry had camped. He had supposed that General Blunt would prefer to sleep in a bed in one of the commodious rooms in the officers’ barracks, but to his surprise, he discovered the general’s large brown Sibley tent, its edges raised from the ground for ventilation, pitched in the timber with his command.

  After taps were blown, the general’s tent was the only one in camp with a light. As Jeff, followed by his dog, walked back and forth past it, he could hear the scratching of the general’s pen as Blunt worked busily into the night on his dispatches.

  Shortly after the sentries had called one o’clock in the morning, Blunt emerged from the tent. Walking to the fire, he stooped, lifting a small kettle off it. He poured a steaming dark-colored liquid into a small metal cup. Adding sugar which he took from an envelope in his shirt pocket, he raised the cup to his bearded lips as though to drink from it.

  Changing his mind, he set the cup on a rock, probably to let it cool. Sniffing, Jeff could not detect the odor of coffee. He figured the drink was hot tea.

  The dog was watching the general too, her plumed tail waving slowly in the reflected firelight. Suddenly she trotted over to the rock, thrust her slender nose into the cup, and began to lap up the tea.

  With a bellow of irritation, the general rushed to drive her away. At the same time a wild, savage barking came from inside the tent. Apparently Blunt owned a dog, too. But he kept it tied. Dixie, her ears flattened and her tail down, bolted from the scene.

  Gaping, Jeff shrank back into the darkness. He hoped the general hadn’t seen him. When he finally got to bed at two, he heard raindrops pattering timidly on his tent and then swelling into a steady deluge.

  Next morning Blunt’s orderly came to Jeff’s company headquarters shortly after reveille. He conferred a moment with Clardy, who barked something at
a sergeant. The sergeant sloshed down the muddy company street, bellowing, “Private Bussey!”

  Jeff was busily digging trenches to divert the rainwater that flowed everywhere. He looked up, leaning on his shovel. “Here, sir.”

  “Report immediately to General Blunt.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jeff’s face paled beneath its tan. He knew what that summons was for. The general had made inquiries about the dog that had drunk his tea. Everybody in the regiment knew Dixie and to whom she belonged.

  Jeff followed the orderly, buttoning his jacket with fumbling fingers. As they marched up to Blunt’s tent, Jeff wondered what his punishment would be this time. He didn’t want any more of the ditch crew, or the road crew, or the horse-burying crew.

  “Wait here,” said the orderly. Pausing a moment to look about him, he whispered behind his hand to Jeff, “An’ when you go in, watch out for his bulldog that he keeps tied up. He’s mean. If you get in range of him, he’ll bite a chunk out of you so big it’ll look like a bear chawed you.”

  Jeff thanked him and snorted to himself. He’d take his chances with the bulldog. The general was what he feared most. He took off his cap and tried to part his rumpled hair with his fingers.

  The orderly came out and held the tent flap open for him.

  “General Blunt will see you now.”

  Jeff took a long breath and licked his lips nervously. “Yes, sir,” he said and ducked inside.

  17

  The Ride of Noah Babbitt

  It was dark inside the tent, save for a candle that flickered brightly from the far end, throwing moving shadows on the brown canvas walls. The air was clean and damp, with a slight, pleasant smell of tobacco and pomade. Despite the night’s rain, the bottom canvas had been raised six inches. A bayonet stuck into the earthen floor held the candle on its round, upthrust end.

  In the weird half light cast by the candle there was a small table covered with maps and papers. And behind the table sat General Blunt. The general was wearing his blue dress coat, but this time the brass buttons at the top were undone, and his white shirt front showed at his open throat. His strong, mustached face was thrown partially in shadow, accentuating its swarthiness. He raised his dark, quizzical eyes.