Rifles for Watie (5 page)

Next afternoon Jeff was made to peel potatoes for Captain Clardy's own mess. As usual the kitchen workers were discussing the officers in an uncomplimentary light.

“Are you close to Captain Clardy?” one of them asked, cautiously.

Jeff laughed. “I'll say! I peel the same potatoes he eats. Why?”

The man looked evasive and fell silent. But later one of the cooks, a muscular man with an American flag tattooed gaudily in red and blue on the inside of his right arm, came up to Jeff when the others had gone. His name was Sparrow.

“What are you bein' punished for?” he asked.

Jeff told him about the incident on the drill field.

Sparrow sneered. “Clardy knows he wouldn't dare talk like that to me or—”

“Or what?” Jeff asked curiously.

A cunning look came into Sparrow's swarthy face. “I'm not gonna shoot off my mouth but I could tell you somethin' about Asa Clardy that he wouldn't want you ner nobody else to know. I knew him back in Morris County.”

Jeff was curious to hear more, but Captain Clardy himself walked up, frowning, and Sparrow scuttled back to the kitchen.

Fifteen minutes before the supper call each night, Captain Clardy came on an inspection tour. The surly officer liked the tasty bean soup that was served regularly at the evening meal. Twice that week as Jeff was carrying the heavy soup kettle out of the kitchen, Clardy stopped him and, picking up a big metal spoon, lifted the lid of the kettle, scooped up a full spoonful of the delicious soup, and ate it.

Next evening Jeff was careful to be carrying a soup kettle just as Clardy came into the kitchen. As usual Clardy stepped in front of him, blocking his way.

“Here, you!” Clardy growled. “Give me a taste of that.”

“Yes,
sir!
” said Jeff with enthusiasm. Holding the bail of the heavy kettle in his left hand, he saluted smartly with his right. Selecting a large spoon and dipping deeply into the kettle, Clardy greedily downed the contents of the spoon. Quickly he gagged and spat it out upon the floor.

“Do you call that stuff soup?” Clardy roared, glaring angrily at Jeff.

“No, sir,” said Jeff, with pretended innocence, “that's dishwater.”

Clardy stamped out of the kitchen without a word.

The cooks all looked alarmed. “Lad, you'd best steer clear of that bucko,” one old fellow warned Jeff, kindly. “He's cruel and vindictive. He'll never forget that, long as he lives.”

“No, I suppose not,” Jeff replied. “Thank you for warning me.” But as he performed his duties about the kitchen, Jeff felt repaid for the captain's slur on his name.

He did his work so well that on the sixth day he was dismissed an hour early and wandered down to the stables to see the horses.

There he saw an old teamster leading half a dozen fine-looking cavalry mounts around and around the corral. The old man wore a white undershirt and blue army pants with scarlet stripes down the sides. He was muttering angrily to himself. The horses looked jaded, as if they had been ridden hard.

Suddenly a gust of wind whipped a piece of paper across the corral. Frightened, one of the animals jerked loose from the man and started running for the open gate, his long rein dragging in the dust.

“Ho! You black dog!” shouted the old teamster, but the horse paid no attention. The gate was near Jeff. Quickly he ran in front of it, raising his arms and calling to the horse soothingly. The animal plunged to a stop, eyeing Jeff distrustfully. Still talking to him, Jeff was able to recover the rein and return the horse to the teamster.

“Sir,” said Jeff, saluting, “I was raised on a farm and know something about horses. I'll be glad to help you walk 'em. Why are they in such a lather?”

The old teamster must have been impressed by that “sir” and also the salute. He handed Jeff three of the halter reins.

“These dom stable boys are no account,” the sergeant growled in his rich dialect. “If I send them to the crick to wather the horses, they bile the wather in them on their way back.”

As they walked along, Jeff stole a sidelong look at his companion and saw that the teamster was small, wiry, and had lots of wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. His face was covered with black whiskers, as though he hadn't shaved in a week. Jeff judged him to be nearly sixty years of age.

Later Jeff helped Mike Dempsey, for that was the teamster's name, to rub down the animals, return them to their stalls, and feed them. As they worked, he told Mike all about himself and about his run-in with Captain Clardy.

Mike chuckled when Jeff related what he had said when ordered to “Fix bayonets.” Without a word, the old Irishman carefully knocked the ashes out of his cob pipe and stuffed it into his side pocket.

Walking into his small office in the harness room, he came out with a bayonet and an old, well-oiled rifle. He showed Jeff every command involving bayonets in the manual of arms, then gave him the gun and bayonet and began to drill him. Jeff soon got the hang of it.

“After this, me boy, you fix it whin he says to, whither it's broke or not,” counseled Mike.

In spite of his good intentions, Jeff found out next day that a volunteer soldier serving under volunteer officers has a lot to learn about military etiquette. Henry Slaughter, a neighbor from Linn County, had joined up earlier than Jeff and secured a commission. He approached Jeff on the drill field and handed him a letter from home.

Jeff knew Slaughter well. They had hunted rabbits together many times in the Bussey cornfield.

Grateful, Jeff blurted, “Thanks, Henry.” Slaughter drew himself up haughtily and cursed Jeff roundly for his familiarity. And Jeff learned that two neighbors of yesterday could today be separated by an impassable gulf when two bits' worth of tinsel was pinned on the shoulders of one and not the other.

When the men in Jeff's outfit elected their own noncommissioned officers, they chose for sergeant Pete Millholland, a big, broad-beamed farmer with white hair and blue eyes, who had homesteaded along the Kaw River, near Lawrence. Jeff was surprised at the choice, since Millholland was green as a gourd about military procedure and wore his uniform in a slipshod manner.

As a drillmaster, he must have been the worst in the regiment. His squad marched with their rifles down or held over the wrong shoulder. Their coats were unbuttoned, their pants legs stuck out of their boots. And when they attempted the bayonet drill, they stuck each other repeatedly.

For three weeks the Kansas Volunteers marched and drilled at the fort. Jeff was afraid the war would be over before the First Kansas Regiment of Infantry would reach the battleground. His fear grew each day.

Finally on the first of July, 1861, the command was sufficiently trained to cross the Missouri River on the military ferry and bivouac in the big timber beyond. There Jeff liked the hard, rugged training in the open. It was getting him nearer his first battle.

But David Gardner liked no part of it. He never seemed to understand the commands. The officers scolded him constantly, and the other recruits hazed him. Soon he became the loneliest volunteer in camp. Jeff helped him all he could. But David never seemed to adjust to army life.

One night Jeff found him sobbing in his bunk.

“I'm lonesome,” David blurted, miserably. “I want to go home and see Ma. Goshallmighty, Jeff, I ain't cut out to be no soldier. I was a fool to ever leave the farm.”

“Corn, Dave,” Jeff said, in alarm, “you can't just walk off from the army once you've joined it. That's desertion. You know the penalty for desertion. They'll stand you up against a wall and shoot you.”

David's pinched face looked pale. His eyes were red. He clenched his teeth with desperation. “I'm jist about homesick enough to chance it,” he said, defiantly. Then his mood softened. “It's just about time to harvest the wheat at home. How's Ma gonna manage with me gone? Onless I'm there to help her, they'll likely starve, come winter.”

“No, they won't, Dave,” argued Jeff. “Pa will help her. And so will the other Free State families.” David stopped sniffing, but he didn't seem comforted.

At night the soldiers had lots of time on their hands. The veterans, who had already drawn their pay, gambled it away. There were all kinds of card-playing, foot-racing, long-jumping and side-hold wrestling.

Bill Earle, a corporal in Jeff's company, had a rich tenor voice. He was from Bluemont Central College, a Methodist school at Manhattan. He would sing to the boys whenever they asked him after supper. Once they discovered an open-air revival in progress behind a small sod schoolhouse near the bivouac spot. Most of Jeff's outfit attended, and several of the boys became converted, including all the tough ones.

Because of the hard daytime training in the woods and on the prairie, the soldiers never seemed to get enough to eat. They were served bacon, beans, hardtack, and coffee three times a day but soon began to yearn for more variety.

One hot night in mid-July they discovered a large patch of ripe watermelons in an open field. Unfortunately, a soldier stood guard over them. For nearly a week Jeff's company marched back and forth past the field, their mouths watering.

One of the men in Jeff's outfit was Noah Babbitt, a tramp printer from Illinois. He was a tall, droll fellow, whose skin was tanned dark as mahogany from his long travels in the open. He had set type in newspaper offices all the way from Illinois to San Antonio, Texas, traveling by foot across Indian Territory. Even the longest marches failed to tire him. He was always soaking his long, gnarled feet in salt water to toughen the skin for the long jaunts. He read everything he could get his hands on.

“Boys, I've got it,” Noah said, late one hot afternoon after they had been dismissed from maneuvers. “Get ready to eat those watermelons.”

“I've been ready for a week,” said Jeff, dropping his knapsack and canteen into the sand by his feet. Pulling off his shoes, he lay on his back in the shade, wriggling his bare toes in the cool south breeze.

“How we gonna git past thet guard?” asked a private from Lecompton.

Babbitt lowered his voice, looking cautiously around him. “Tonight I'll go on guard myself in the melon field. One of you can hide in the brush along the fence. I'll roll the melons out to you.”

“Yup,” frowned Ford Ivey, “but the field's already got a guard. What you gonna do about him?”

Babbitt ignored the remark. He said, “I've got to have help. Who'll volunteer to snake the melons out from under the fence to the timber after I roll 'em out of the field under the fence? It'll be open moonlight.” Everybody looked at everybody else but nobody answered.

“How about Jeff?” somebody proposed.

“Shore. He's jist the man.”

“Jeff's little. They'll never see him.”

Jeff rolled suddenly to a sitting position. “Now wait, boys,” he protested. “You can't do this to me. It's against the articles of war. It's against the constitution.” But they persuaded him.

After dark they all walked quietly to the melon field. The moon was so bright that Jeff could see the light stripes on the big green melons as they lay amid the vines in the sandy soil.

Babbitt advanced on the uniformed guard, climbing boldly over the wooden fence.

“Halt! Who are you? I'm on guard here,” challenged the sentry, raising his weapon.

Babbitt's deep voice answered in demanding tones, “Whose command do you belong to?”

“To Graham's battery,” the man answered.

“That's funny,” grumbled Babbitt, pretending to be confused. “Wonder why they need two guards? I'm from McGregor's company. I'm assigned here for guard duty, too. Well, you watch that end. I'll watch this.” The first guard grunted an assent and moved to the upper end of the field.

Soon Babbitt was rolling several big melons under the fence to Jeff, who transported them, crawling, to the fringe of the nearby woods, where hungry hands reached for them in the dark.

Later they cut and divided the tasty booty and all went quietly to bed. The incident convinced Jeff that privates were as capable of strategy as officers.

Next morning they were told that after one more week of training, they would depart for Missouri. There General Sterling Price had organized thousands of Missouri state troops into a rebel army. It was reported Price had gone into Arkansas to meet the Confederate General Ben McCulloch and urge him to aid the Missouri Confederate cause. Jeff was elated by the news.

A short furlough had been granted the volunteers living within seventy-five miles of the fort. That meant David and Jeff could make a quick trip home to see their families. John Chadwick decided to stay at the fort.

“If I go home, I'll just have another big brawl with Pa over joinin' up, and he'll whop me,” John grumbled.

Two days before the furlough began, Jeff awoke early. He drew in a long, luxurious breath. He liked the pungent, early-morning smell of the sandbar willows and the tamaracks. He liked to see the white river mist crawling slowly along the surface of the water.

He looked at David's bed and felt a vague alarm. David wasn't there. His clothing was gone. His army knapsack and canteen lay on his folded bedding. His rifle, brightly polished, was neatly stacked.

Something white was pinned to the bed. It was a torn-off fragment of notebook paper. On it rudely printed in pencil was this note: “jeff i cant stand it no longer i have goned home to see ma. david.”

Jeff was stunned. How could David leave the army and its excitement, its promise of glorious adventure? Where was he now? As Jeff hurriedly thrust his legs into his pants, he tried to calculate. David would probably travel alone, swimming the river and skirting the fort until he encountered the military road leading south to Linn County.

Jeff resolved not to report him. That way they wouldn't miss him until after the morning roll call, and he would have at least two hours' head start toward home.