Rifles for Watie (40 page)

The things he had brought back for the Jackmans in a wooden barrel were left at the supply depot where Heifer had arranged for a teamster friend to drop them off at the Jackmans' home on his return trip down the Texas Road to Bonham. The town was filling with rebel soldiers and excited civilians dancing jigs of joy in the street. All they talked about was Watie's victories at Pheasant Bluff and Cabin Creek.

Jeff went to his bunk and pulled it into the shade. Lying down upon it, he buried his face in his arms.

He was awakened by somebody kicking the soles of his boots. It was the orderly sergeant.

“Fields say repote to him in half 'n hour, mounted and armed.”

Jeff stretched and sat up. He looked at the sun and at the slant of the dark tree shadows. It was early afternoon. Resignedly he got to his feet and, walking to the commissary wagon, took a long drink from Heifer's gourd dipper. Then he splashed his face with cool water.

He put on his hat, cleaned and loaded his pistol, and saddled Flea Bite. Mounting, he rode to Fields' tent, ducking from side to side to escape the tree branches. Other troopers joined him.

Fields was lacing on a Federal boot taken from the captured Union supply train. He looked up sourly.

“Special duty,” he snarled in his petulant, high-pitched voice. “Le's go!”

When they formed in column, Jeff found himself part of a twenty-man rebel escort. Accompanied by a single, empty, mule-drawn wagon, they started northwest on the little-used Wapanucka Road.

Fields rode ahead with Colonel Thompson, commander of the Second Cherokee regiment, and acting treasurer of the Southern Cherokee Nation. They traveled at a swinging trot, mostly in silence. The gravelly trail meandered in and out of clumps of roadside timber. Both men and horses began to perspire. From every tree cicadas sang shrilly and maddeningly, the piercing chant of one approaching before the stridulations of another had fallen behind. Yellow flowering weeds covered the dusty, heat-locked countryside.

An hour before sundown they halted on the bank of Clear Boggy Creek. There, beneath a towering cottonwood, stood a heavy green Conestoga wagon and a team of big gray mules. Half a dozen men, each well mounted, heavily armed and wearing blue uniforms of the Union cavalry, clustered watchfully around the wagon, obviously guarding its contents. Jeff attached no significance to the color of their uniforms. Half the men in Watie's command had abandoned their own shaggy garments for blue uniforms taken at Cabin Creek.

One of the strangers, apparently the leader, swaggered forward, confronting Colonel Thompson.

“General Watie?”

When Jeff heard the querulous voice he stopped breathing, every instinct sharp and alert. Instantly he knew the tall, stooping figure with the low, graying sideburns, the scar on his cheek, and the wild, suspicious eyes. Clardy!

“I'm Colonel Thompson, treasurer of the Cherokee Nation. General Watie has empowered me to act for him and for the nation. I have come prepared. Are you ready to deal with us?”

The reply didn't satisfy Clardy. Angrily he stepped back and his hand dropped to the butt of the pistol holstered in his belt. He flicked his nervous green eyes distrustfully over Thompson and then over the rebel patrol, as though suspecting treachery.

“I'll deal with nobody but Watie.” He looked at the sun, low in the west, and scowled. “I said noon. Where is he?”

Thompson replied politely, “General Watie is out on scout but we expect him back tonight.”

Jeff's heart was pounding in panic. He ducked so that his hat brim would hide his face.

He knew now that his long wait to learn the identity of the Federal officer selling the contraband repeating rifles was over.

Clardy glared at Thompson. He seemed to be making an effort to conceal his temper. Reluctantly he growled, “I guess we can deal. You got the gold?”

Thompson nodded and started to say something, but Clardy cut him short. “Order your men to stand back farther. They're lookin' down our throats.”

Thompson looked at him queerly but gave the order. This was fortunate for Jeff. He turned Flea Bite around and walked her back with the others. All except Fields. Hands on his hips, Fields stayed where he was, looking coolly into Clardy's Conestoga wagon.

Clardy gestured toward the sergeant. “Him, too.”

Fields grinned savagely and shook his head. Clardy's henchmen moved ominously forward. Jeff saw that each of them carried a Spencer rifle.

Fields fingered his pistol and stood his ground.

“That's Sergeant Fields, our gunsmith. I want him to examine the rifles before I pay you for them,” Thompson said, civilly. Apparently satisfied, Clardy turned, barking an order to his followers.

Four of them climbed off their horses and, reaching into the back of the Conestoga wagon beneath a canvas tarp, hauled out several long boxes. The other two held the reins and kept a sharp watch on the rebel patrol. They all looked like thugs. Jeff didn't recognize any of them.

Using the butts of their carbines, Clardy's men broke open the boxes and Jeff saw row upon row of shiny, new repeating rifles, packed flat in sawdust.

While Fields came forward and personally examined each weapon, working the finger levers and inspecting the apertures built into the butts of the walnut stocks, Thompson spread a blanket on the grass. He walked over to his claybank and returned with two heavy saddlebags. They were the same ones Boudinot had carried into Watie's tent.

Pop-eyed, Jeff saw the gold coins gleam brightly in the sunshine and heard their metallic chink as Clardy and Thompson counted them on the blanket. Then Clardy scooped the gold into his saddlebag and stood. Fields barked an order and several rebels came forward to help place the Spencers back in the boxes and load them into the empty wagon they had brought from Boggy Depot.

Thompson turned inquiringly to Fields. “How many, Sam?”

Fields' face shone triumphantly. “Two hunnert even, Cunnel. Cartridges come out even, too. It's all heah. Purtiest sight ah evah seed.”

“When can you let us have the eight hundred additional rifles General Watie sent word to you we would buy?” Thompson asked Clardy.

Clardy swore violently. “In two months, if he'll lay off our wagon trains so we can get 'em through. But the price is gonna be higher next time.”

There was a moment of deadly silence in the clearing. For the first time Thompson's voice was edged with hostility. “How much higher?”

As he hefted the heavy saddlebags of gold into the back of the Conestoga wagon, Clardy looked shrewdly at Thompson.

“That's between me and Watie. That's why I want to talk to him privately. I want you to bring Watie here to me.”

Thompson stared at him, saying nothing. Bold, insolent, and unafraid, Clardy stared back, a sneer on his thin lips. He knew that he and his twelve thousand dollars in gold were safe as a church. The rebels needed those other eight hundred rifles too badly. And he alone could get them for them.

“Why don't you come into Boggy with us and wait for General Watie yourself?” Thompson bargained. “You could wait at my tent. It's next to the general's. It will be dark, and you'll be safe. Nobody there will know you. Half our men are wearing Union uniforms. You could start back north later tonight.”

It seemed to make sense to Clardy. He gave a surly nod.

Ignoring his followers, he reached beneath the canvas tarp and pulled out the bulging saddlebags. Staggering a little under their weight, he walked over to his bay horse and buckled the saddlebags on it. He swung into the saddle and, picking up the reins, joined Thompson at the front of the rebel column.

Fields mounted his horse and sat grinning sardonically down at Clardy's followers, doomed to a long wait.

He snorted with grim amusement. “I see he's takin' the loot with him. Don't trust yuh, does he? Wal, I don't blame him. So long, you bloody-minded shikepokes. See you again some day.” And turning his horse deliberately, he joined the patrol.

The darker it grew, the safer Jeff felt from discovery. He was alternately elated and depressed. Now the trap was ready to spring. All he had to do was slip through the rebel pickets and ride back to Fort Gibson and tell the Union commander what he had seen and heard. They would catch Clardy red-handed. It was odd how his Union friends back at Fort Gibson seemed almost like strangers.

All the way back to Boggy Depot, he rode tight-jawed and silent, fighting it out in his mind for the hundredth time. He was thinking hard and sweating hard. His hands were shaking as they held the reins. Half a mile from Boggy Depot he relaxed suddenly and let his breath out slowly in one long, weary exhalation. He had finally made up his mind. It was time to leave Stand Watie. He didn't want to, and he knew it.

At headquarters Fields dismissed them. Jeff walked to the commissary wagon. Heifer was gone. He unsaddled Flea Bite, led her to the creek for water, then tied her loosely to a wheel of the commissary wagon, where she would have plenty of room to graze. Heifer would find her there.

Reluctantly he fondled the little mare's soft ears, his throat suddenly tight. He knew he would never see her again. He hated to leave her but he couldn't run off to Fort Gibson on the horse Heifer had given him.

He couldn't take the saddle, either. Sighing, he lifted it into the back of the commissary wagon, passing his hand fondly over its smooth leather seat. He would take a horse and saddle from the inexhaustible rebel remuda at the camp's south border and leave two hours after sundown. He would be a long way up the Texas Road before daybreak. He felt like a thief. But he couldn't explain it to Heifer. Heifer was a rebel.

With time on his hands, Jeff took one last walk uptown. In spite of the dull misery in his heart, he felt calm and relieved at last. He was glad to have the struggle over with.

Boots clopping on the flagstone sidewalk, he neared the hotel. He heard the squeak of a fiddle and the tinkle of gay feminine laughter. Sounded like one of the “starvation” dances the rebels sometimes held. He walked onto the hotel's plank front porch and looked curiously into the open front door, a rectangle of yellow light. The place was crowded. The dance seemed some sort of celebration of the rebel victory at Cabin Creek.

In the lobby were rebel officers in worn, frazzled uniforms waltzing with girls in patched-up, made-over hoop skirts. The officers wore spurs, and when they danced, the spurs jingled rhythmically with the fiddle music. Everybody seemed to be having a gay time.

“Excuse us, sir.”

Jeff spun around. Behind him, a girl stood smiling. She was a pretty girl. A band of black velvet encircled her brown throat, a brooch swung at her neck. Clad in a hoop skirt with pink crosswise ruffles, she was necessarily taking up lots of room on the porch.

A tall, blond rebel lieutenant stood stiffly at her side. Obviously they wished to enter.

Moving back, Jeff's eyes followed her in the half-light. At the same time she looked full at him and her small round mouth parted with astonishment. She gave a low cry of pleasure.

“Jeff!”

Jeff was so wonder-stricken he nearly fell off the porch.

The girl standing before him was Lucy Washbourne.

  
23

The Redbud Tree

“Lucy!”

Jeff breathed her name with a whistling gasp of surprise. She took both his hands tightly in hers.

Then her eyes dropped to Jeff's clothing. He was wearing what was unmistakably a pair of rebel gray cavalry pants. Moreover, he was roaming free and unmolested in the heart of the Southern Indian military headquarters. To Lucy, that could mean but one thing. She gave a low cry of ecstasy.

Insensible to all else, Jeff could only stand there on the hotel porch and stare at her, his nerves thrumming like a guitar string. Lucy was the first to recover from the shock of their meeting.

Skirts swishing, she spun around lightly, facing her escort. “Lieutenant Chavis, Mr. Bussey.”

For once, Jeff forgot to salute. He only nodded mechanically, caring not a whit for the rebel lieutenant, his rank, nor his presence.

“Lieutenant, could you possibly excuse me for a moment?” Lucy said sweetly. “I will join you later on the floor.”

The rebel lieutenant frowned. Plainly he didn't like it. But he bowed, mumbled something, and stepped back.

Still holding Jeff's hand, she led him off the porch and around the side of the building. There the heart-shaped leaves of a small redbud tree screened them from sight.

To his astonishment, she came lightly, eagerly, into his arms and, standing on tiptoe, put up her lovely mouth.

As their lips met and his arms went around her waist, he felt a blissful melting within him, an overpowering rapture that he had never known nor dreamed existed. For a moment there was no sound save that of their quick breathing and the leaves of the redbud tree soughing gently as the warm south wind stirred them. He could feel Lucy's warm, pliant body trembling.