Rifles for Watie (37 page)

In late September he got his appetite back suddenly. One afternoon Miss Pat brought him a piece of hot dried-fruit pie, made from the apples the women had sun-dried. As she held it out, tempting him, Jeff could smell the spicy odor of the nutmeg and the hot, brown juice. To his surprise, the smell did not sicken him. He gulped the pie down so hungrily that the girl ran excitedly to the house to tell the others.

That night Aunt Hettie Sloan came to sit up with Jeff, much to his disgust. Tall and stern, she was famous as a local humanitarian. She lived on Yarberry Creek, a mile and a half west of the Jackmans. She wore her gray hair roached upward in a strange-looking topknot into which she had thrust a tiny, jeweled comb.

Tiptoeing in, she seated herself decorously by his bed. Adjusting a faded green shawl about her thin shoulders, she leaned forward, staring long and soulfully at him. Then she wrinkled her long, high-bridged nose at Mrs. Jackman and shook her head.

“He looks bad, Maggie,” Aunt Hettie whined. “I don't like his color a'tall. It's chalky. He looks jest like my Uncle Jeremiah did before he jined the great majority two years ago.”

Startled by her ghastly diagnosis, Jeff blinked. “Mam, honestly, I feel better today than I've felt in weeks.”

Aunt Hettie paid no attention. Shaking her gray head sorrowfully, she sighed, “Uncle Jeremiah rallied like that, too. It's what we used to call the False Recovery. Ever'body thought he was bucking up. Three hours later he commenced pickin' at the covers. We buried him up on Cowskin Prairie.”

When they had gone Jeff broke out in a cold sweat of fear. Having no desire to emulate Aunt Hettie's Uncle Jeremiah and “jine the great majority,” he sat up on the side of the bed.

His head felt almost normal. The hot fruit pie he had eaten seemed to have given him strength. With growing excitement, he stood and, leaning against the wall in the darkness, took half a dozen slow, halting steps to the door. He felt no dizziness, no headaches. Elated, he wanted to shout with joy.

Three weeks later he was able to help Mrs. Jackman and Jill sow wheat in the field. He knew he would be expected to rejoin the rebel outfit. Then Adair, who was now a colonel, sent word he need not report back until spring, since Watie had furloughed most of his men and sent them home to assist their families with the crops. So Jeff stayed that winter with the Jackmans, helping with the farm work and slowly recovering his strength.

He was eager to find out more about the new rifles and hoped that Mr. Jackman, on one of his visits home, might reveal more information. In this he was doomed to disappointment; Watie's adjutant never mentioned the subject again. Even so, Jeff was glad to be at the Jackmans' instead of at Watie's winter quarters at “Camp Starvation.” There the heavy fall rains had left the roads so impassible that the men were subsisting upon small rations of parched corn and poorly dried beef and feeding their horses mulberry brush and tree bark.

Early in March Jeff walked to the door of his shed room and looked out into the darkness on the Texas Road. The cool air was invigorating. A small, bobbing light glimmered far to the south and Jeff could hear the faint clatter of a string of empty freight wagons, hitched together and drawn by mules.

He took a long pull of the night air and his nostrils caught the wild, sweet whiff of plum-tree blossoms. He knew that spring was coming fast to the Choctaw country, much faster than back home in his native Kansas. Already the burr oaks were wearing light green tassels and the redbuds' purplish blooms brightened the hillsides and valleys. The robins had stayed around all winter.

Jeff felt a surge of renewed hope. It would soon be time to plow.

  
21

Boggy Depot

Jeff sat in the afternoon sunshine, his back against the wheel of the commissary wagon, watching Heifer make sourdough biscuits.

It was the second day after he had rejoined the Watie brigade. He had tried to help Heifer unload and rustle the firewood, but the cook wouldn't let him lift a finger until he got stronger.

Now Heifer was pinching off pieces of the white dough. Rolling them into balls between his palms, he placed them in the Dutch oven, turning them in the hot grease so that all sides received a coating and they wouldn't stick together. As he worked he hummed snatches of songs to himself. When Heifer hummed, his sobbing, quavering voice sounded like one of Cooper's squeaky baggage wagons making a sharp turn in the road on an early frosty morning.

And yet Jeff had no difficulty recognizing the tune. Today it was Heifer's favorite, the religious hymn “Amazing Grace.” Watching him, Jeff was ashamed.

Everybody in the rebel country had been nice to him. Heifer watched over him like a fussy old hen over a single chick. The Jackmans had taken wonderful care of him. The rebel riders had been good to him since he got back. Disturbed by all their kindness, Jeff felt mean about being against them in the war.

With a sweet gush of sorrow he remembered leaving the Jackmans yesterday. Heifer had come for him in the commissary wagon, a small gray mare trotting behind. All the Jackmans had gathered in the front yard to kiss Jeff good-by. He thanked them as humbly and gratefully as he knew how for all they had done for him. They seemed genuinely sorry to see him go. Miss Sophie even cried.

Heifer's cowhorn mustache looked a little shaggier and grayer, but otherwise he seemed the same. Mrs. Jackman had heard of him through her husband. She urged him to stay for supper.

“Can't, Madam,” Heifer replied in his broken speech. “Gotta be gittin' back and fixin' my own supper fer the boys. But here's somethin' anyhow fer yore supper.” And groping in the back of the wagon, he pulled out a middling of bacon and half a sack of wheat flour.

“The hoss is fer you, kid. Got her from our fo'age camp, down in Texas. Name's Flea Bite.”

Jeff looked for the first time at the small mare daintily cropping the Bermuda greening along the Jackman driveway. She was more cream-colored than gray, with small brown freckles all over her trim, young body. Enchanted, Jeff felt the thrill of ownership. He liked her looks. She was sleek and lean. There was a saddle on her back, a small, than Frazier with narrow stirrups bound in shiny brass.

Jeff gulped, “Corn, Mr. Hobbs, thank you for finding her for me.” Heifer beamed happily. His distorted face seemed more frightening than ever when it was registering joy or pleasure.

Jeff saw Miss Pat big-eyeing the mare longingly. He felt sorry for her. He knew she hadn't straddled a horse since her beloved Barney had been stolen by the Pins. Since then, the girl's only contact with stock had been driving an ox to the walking plow they sometimes borrowed from a Choctaw neighbor.

Jeff walked to the back of the commissary wagon, untied the bridle reins, and held them out to her.

“Here,” he said, “why don't you take a gallop on her while I go pack my things?”

He liked the way her eyes suddenly grew big and round and starry.

“Oh, thank you!” she breathed. Quickly she tied the reins to the wagon wheel. Squealing with delight, she raced to the house to find her riding habit.

Later, when it was time to go, Jeff couldn't wait himself to ride the mare. Putting his foot in the stirrup, he went up on one side of her and came down on the other in a heap, Heifer catching him with one arm just in time. He still wasn't entirely over his dizziness. He felt silly, folding up like that in front of everybody. He rode off seated in the back of the commissary wagon, where he could lead the mare and look at her. . . .

Now Heifer was lifting the lids of other Dutch ovens and turning the beefsteaks in them. The ovens were deep, iron skillets with three small legs and a heavy lid with an upturned lip so the hot lid could be picked up with a gouch hook. There were red coals of fire on top of each lid as well as underneath the oven.

The rebel cook certainly knew how to revive a balky appetite. Yesterday he had taken his shotgun and, riding out into the brush, killed two fat quail, frying them for Jeff in the Dutch oven. From the sack of dried apples the Jackmans had given them, he had made a pie, rolling out the dough with a whisky bottle and cutting the initials CMR, for Cherokee Mounted Rifles in the top crust with his bowie knife.

The brigade had seemed glad to see Jeff back, too. One shaggy fellow brought him four hen's eggs. Even Fields welcomed him with a stiff handshake. The sergeant wore his campaign coat buttoned neatly in front. His shoulder seemed entirely healed.

“Heared yuh been layin' sick. Too bad. Glad yore back.”

Again Jeff felt the prickings of his stubborn conscience. He almost wished they weren't so good to him.

A week later the whole outfit moved north fifteen miles toward Boggy Depot. Gorging himself on Heifer's cooking, Jeff was feeling fine.

He rode Flea Bite alongside the commissary wagon. They splashed across a creek with clay-colored water and white haw blossoms blooming along its banks. He heard the redbirds whistling and they reminded him of home. The sun penetrated warmly through his old coat. Spring was on the way.

When they first saw Boggy Depot, it was late afternoon. In the sun's flat rays the rebel war capital looked like a handful of clods on a muddy creek bank. But as they rode closer, Jeff saw with surprise that the town sprawled all over the woodsy flat. It had been built in the edge of the woods. Stumps of trees protruded in the streets and patches of native live oak and hickory remained undisturbed in the very heart of the town.

It was an hour before sundown when they jogged into its outskirts. After helping Heifer set up in the military zone at the town's south edge, Jeff and Hooley Pogue rode down the middle of Main Street.

They drew rein at the public well and at the top of a crude flagpole Jeff saw something that startled him, something he had never seen before.

It was a ragged rectangle of gray and blue bunting. Two red bars crossed each other in the middle with a few white stars sewn crudely between them. He realized it was a homemade rebel flag.

He felt vaguely displeased. Compared to his own beloved Stars and Stripes, it seemed cheap and bold and arrogant. And yet it made him feel a little alarmed. If the rebellion against his country had reached the point where the enemy now had a flag as well as a president, a congress and an army, no wonder the war had lasted three years. These people were fighting for something they believed in. They might be hard to subdue.

Suddenly a cannon boomed loudly from behind them. Flea Bite jumped nervously.

A troop of ragged Indian cavalry raced down the street on their small ponies, war-whooping shrilly and brandishing their stone tomahawks. They galloped round and round the flagpole, singing loudly and fiercely something that sounded like, “Yakeh walih, he kanah he!”

Mystified, Jeff turned to Hooley. “Who are they?”

Hooley's lip curled scornfully. “Choctaws an' Chickasaws singin' the Choctaw war song. They always sing it when the sunset gun goes off. If they could fight as good as they can sing . . .”

Jeff remembered these same Indian troops riding blithely into the Battle of Honey Springs armed only with archaic weapons. He didn't think Hooley was being entirely fair to the Choctaws. They didn't have much to fight with. Maybe if they had been armed decently, and trained intelligently, they could have fought as well as anybody.

When Jeff and Hooley returned to camp, hundreds of Indian soldiers were hobbling their horses and cooking their suppers over campfires. Hooley led Jeff on a tour and he saw from close range how the Watie men lived during their spare time.

Cheers and shouts came from one of the few cleared spots, where the long grass had been trampled down. Men armed with hickory switches were flailing each other about the legs and hips with howls of mingled pain and laughter. Hooley said the game was called “Hot Jackets.”

They wandered here and there, encountering teamsters repairing sets of heavy harness and greasing them with tallow and neat's-foot oil. Troopers were sharpening their long, fierce-looking knives on blue whetstones, or cleaning shotguns and horse pistols, or erecting torn dog tents amid the trees. Many were writing letters, using pokeberries for ink and sharpened corn stalks for pens.

Moving on, they heard the distant sound of banjo music and of feet stamping the grassy ground in rhythm. They hurried closer and saw, seated on a bois d'arc stump, a gangling, long-armed rebel banjo player. Dirty hands flying, he was strumming the merriest, rowdiest music Jeff had ever heard.

Listening to it, his feet itched, and he almost felt compelled to join the other Watie men who were grasping each other round the waist and, with shrill cries and yells, stomping about the leaf-strewn ground, hoedown style. Hooley told Jeff the name of the lively tune was “Billy in the Low Grounds.” Like everything else in the rebel country, the banjo was home-made, with a drumhead nailed tightly over half a whisky keg and its five long strings fastened with small staples.