Jeff saluted. “Sir, the orderly said you wanted to see me.”
Gesturing slowly with one hairy hand, Blunt indicated a campstool. Jeff sat down. This was it. He was on the general’s black list. As fast as he worked off his punishment for one officer, he was back in hot water with another. This time he had outdone all his previous efforts. He had incurred the wrath of a general, the commander-in-chief of the entire Kansas department. He swallowed resignedly. Anything but the stump-digging detail or the horse-burying crew.
Something nudged his leg. A large tan and white bulldog, tied by a leather leash to a tentpole, was sniffing at his trousers. Forgetting the orderly’s well-meant warning, Jeff reached down automatically, as he did with all dogs, and began to rub the bulldog’s ears.
The general grunted, suddenly, “How would you like to be a scout?”
Jeff was so jarred by the unexpected question that he sat speechless. His first thought was of Lee Washbourne and the execution on the drill grounds. Sometimes scouts didn’t get back alive.
“General, I don’t know anything about it. I’m afraid I wouldn’t be any good at it.”
The general looked annoyed. He threw back his massive shoulders. “That’s what your captain thinks, too. In fact, he went further and said some harsh things about you and about your attitude. Your record with him is very bad. But I saw you in action at Prairie Grove. I think you’d do all right. That’s why I called you in to talk to you.”
“Thank you, sir. But I’m afraid I hadn’t better. I haven’t had any training for that kind of work. I’d probably mess things up.” Jeff could still hear the fife squeaking the “Death March” and see the lonely, bitter look on Lee Washbourne’s face as he stood by the cheap pine coffin just before they shot him.
Blunt scowled and took a long drink from a small tin cup on his table. His deep bass voice seemed to rumble from way down in his black boots.
“Colonel Phillips tells me that he has trouble getting information about the enemy over the river. He says he sends out spies, but they don’t come back. I think all his scouts have sold out to the enemy. So I’ve decided to organize my own. I’ve got to have information about the enemy and I’ve got to have it quick.”
Jeff stopped scratching the bulldog and squirmed on the stool. The general didn’t seem to be paying any attention to his lack of enthusiasm. He guessed that a soldier should always do what his commander asked, regardless of the risk. Anyhow, this might be far better than the punishment he was expecting. Maybe he ought to look into it a little further.
“Sir, if I became a scout, how would I go about it? How would I get across the river? What would I be expected to do after I got across?”
“Can you swim? Can you ride a horse?”
“Yes, sir.”
Blunt put his cup down and belched delicately. “We will escort your patrol across the river and post a guard there until you return. You will ride behind the enemy lines and try to capture some of his soldiers and bring them back with you. It is imperative that you do bring back enemy prisoners. Try to take at least two or three so we can question them separately and cross-check their stories. Also, keep your ears open for any other information regarding the enemy you might hear.”
“Like what, sir?” Jeff couldn’t help noticing that the general was now speaking in the present tense, as though he had already agreed to accept the dangerous mission.
“Like trying to find out if Cooper has any reinforcements coming up from Texas. I want an estimate of all Cooper’s forces south of the river, how much artillery he has, the extent of his earthworks, anything you can find out about their supplies, morale, position, names of their most prominent officers. But the main thing is to bring me back some prisoners.”
Jeff nodded uneasily. He’d be lucky if he got back across the river himself. Still, he had joined up to get the war over with quickly as possible. Maybe this would help speed things up.
“The river’s up. Cooper has dug rifle pits and posted heavy picket stations at every ford. But we’ll get you across some way.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jeff. His skin began to goose-pimple, half in excitement, half in fear. Then a disquieting thought struck him.
“General,” he blurted. “Could I have a new horse? The plug I’ve got now is a good cavalry horse. But he’s so poor his ribs look like bed slats. The rebels have got good horses. They outrun ours every day.”
Blunt nodded, soberly. “That’s because the grass has already risen in Texas. Their horses are further along than ours. But you’ll get the very best stock we’ve got. Report at once to Lieutenant Orff. He’s in charge.”
The general stood. Jeff stood too, saluting. He turned and left the tent. He was now in the Union scouts.
Three hours later the Union patrol of forty men started. The sky was cloudy. At first they traveled in the timber so the rebels couldn’t see them from the opposite shore. Despite his lack of horsemanship, Noah was in the patrol, too, his tall body bouncing up and down as he sat his mount awkwardly, one hand tightly gripping the saddle gullet.
After they had ridden for two hours, they turned southward through the trees, searching for the river. Jeff guessed they would avoid the fords, heavily guarded by the rebels, and try to cross at a deep spot. Soon he could hear the Arkansas gurgling noisily ahead and smell the earthy odor of its brown flood waters. They rode up to its north bank and stopped near a gigantic black walnut tree. The sun broke momentarily through the clouds, lighting up the tip of each dirty brown wave. Heavily swollen by the rains, the stream looked a quarter of a mile wide and was running bank-full. Jeff doubted if they’d ever get across.
Orff, a blond Missourian with a big Roman nose, left a dozen men in the tall grass on the Union side of the water, Noah among them. He sat down, pulled off his boats, and tied them on his saddle. Jeff did the same. Orff also took off his trousers and tied them by the legs around his neck. Then his sharp hazel eyes fell on something fastened to his saddle.
It was a rifle scabbard of soft tan leather, and Jeff could tell from the shape of it that there was a gun inside. For a moment the lieutenant hesitated, as though debating whether to risk wetting it in the river water. With a grunt, he disengaged the sheathed weapon from the saddle and handed it to the corporal of the detail staying behind on the shore.
“Don’t lose it,” Orff charged seriously. “Let me have your carbine.”
Quickly the trooper made the exchange, unslinging his weapon from his shoulder. Orff looped it around his own neck. Shifting his pistol and ammunition as high as possible, he thrust his bare foot into the stirrup and swung into the saddle.
“Le’s go,” he said and urged his black horse into the flooded stream, the others following. They crossed the river without trouble.
Jeff liked the dun that had been issued to him. He was splendidly formed from the loins forward and his legs were flat and clean. He had endurance and he could move. He didn’t like to walk, preferring to be ridden at a canter or a lope. Jeff found he could guide him with the outer knee. Twice he felt the cold water rising to his crotch but since he rode naked from the waist down, he kept his clothing and his weapons dry.
On the rebel side of the stream, Orff planted another dozen men in the willows. Then taking Jeff and fourteen others, he spurred southward through the timber.
“They won’t be lookin’ fer us,” Orff reasoned, his mouth full of fresh chewing tobacco. “They probably figger th’ river’s too high.” With a striking motion of his chin, he spat an amber stream at an alder bush and wiped off his mouth with the palm of his hand.
Jeff hoped the lieutenant was right. But this was rebel territory and they might meet a rebel patrol at any time. Their guide was an Indian lad from Drew’s Union Indian brigade, who had once lived in this area. Orff called him Frank. They rode at a swinging trot, and as the sandy trail, bordered by willow and tamaracks and Indian grass, opened ahead of them, Orff sent out flankers on both sides.
Another hour and they cam
e upon the Fort Smith road, a wide, sandy, wagon-rutted thoroughfare over which Cooper, the rebel Indian commander, kept in constant communication with rebel forces in nearby Arkansas. It was bounded on both sides by pine, hickory, and oak.
Orff raised his right fist and the column halted. There was nothing in sight. All Jeff could hear were the mockingbirds singing their heads off in the oaks. Orff looked shrewdly around him at the thick underbrush, mostly dogwood, strawberry bush and papaw.
“Le’s hide here an’ see what comes along.”
The lieutenant planted a guard half a mile up the road in either direction and concealed his main force in the roadside brush. Jeff, the guard on the west approach, guided the dun behind a clump of alder where he had a clear view of the road. As he adjusted the one-shot pistol in his waist, his nose caught the resinous whiff of pine needles as the hot sun shone on them. Big yellow-bodied grasshoppers arose from the grass clumps and cruised in the warm sunshine, snapping noisily while in flight. For two hours nothing happened.
Suddenly Jeff heard shots down the road, then men shouting and horses running. Apparently Orff’s patrol had jumped a small party of rebels. Jeff grasped the dun’s bridle reins and listened nervously. Sounded as if the chase was going away from him. He had just decided to follow when he heard hoofbeats coming up the road.
A single horseman, clad in Confederate gray, hove in sight, galloping easily, as though bound for a far-off destination. He was an older fellow, good-looking, with low black sideburns showing beneath his gray campaign hat. Instantly Jeff drew his pistol and, putting spurs to the dun, burst from the woods and rode straight across the rebel’s path.
“Halt!” he cried. “You’re my prisoner.”
The rebel seemed to have a different opinion. His face white, he ducked behind his horse’s neck, snatched a pistol from his belt, and threw a quick shot at Jeff. The bullet missed and the rebel horse reared, neighing shrilly. Cursing, the rebel dropped his pistol, got both hands on the reins, and turned his mount off the road into the trees.
Jeff followed closely, holding his unfired pistol shoulder high. Their orders were to take prisoners without shooting them, if possible. Both horses were galloping almost at full speed, but the dun, hunching himself low as he skimmed over the ground, quickly overhauled the rebel horse.
Abruptly, the rebel horse stumbled, spilling the rebel from his saddle. Riding past him, Jeff heard the heavy thump of his body as he fell in the sand.
Elated, Jeff sawed at the dun’s reins. Finally he got the dun turned and retraced his steps. For five minutes he carefully combed the dark pine scrub and sumac, but there was no sign of the rebel. All he found was the rebel horse grazing quietly in the woods. She was a small black mare. On her back was a shallow Mexican saddle, a haversack lashed to its large, flat horn. Jeff switched the haversack to his own saddle and, leading the rebel mount, rode slowly back over his tracks, taking one final look. But the man had vanished.
“Corn!” Jeff growled, thoroughly chagrined.
He put the dun at a gallop, heading back to the river as Orff had ordered him to do if they became separated. He figured some of the rebels had probably escaped and would quickly bring back cavalry to intercept Orff’s patrol. Better get home before it was too late.
When he struck the river, it was midafternoon. There was no sign of Orff, nor his patrol. The water had gone down and the stream looked easier to ford. Finally he saw the gigantic black walnut tree on the opposite bank. Gratefully he pulled rein.
“Bussey,” somebody called in a low voice. The patrol was waiting for him in the brush. Orff rode out of a clump of cottonwoods. From collar to cuff, the lieutenant’s blue uniform was soiled with mud. He frowned anxiously as he saw the extra horse, its saddle empty.
“What happened?”
Vexed at having to report his failure, Jeff told him. “Did you do any good, lieutenant?”
Orff gestured behind him at the riverbank, disgust and passion in his tired face. “We got one, but I don’t think he’s gonna live to tell the general nothin’. Joe had to shoot him off his horse to stop him. These brush rebels don’t know what halt means. They’d rather get shot than captured. Even when you throw down on ’em, they break an’ run like turkeys.” He glanced nervously up and down the stream. “Le’s get outa here. The ones that got away went after help. The woods is full of rebels right now lookin’ fer us. We’re a long ways from Gibson.”
They plunged into the dirty water. Orff’s prisoner, bleeding from the back, lay on his stomach across the saddle of his own horse, limp as a sack of oats. He looked like an Indian. His black eyes were open and he was moaning with every step his horse took, his arms dangling, his black hair fluttering in the breeze.
Orff rode alongside him in the water, one hand on the back of the rebel’s saddle. When the horses swam, he steered his mount with his knees, using his hands to hold the rebel’s face out of the water, so he wouldn’t drown.
As they waded out on the north shore, Jeff saw the Union troopers rise cautiously out of the green river cane, only their black hats and white faces showing. They gawked curiously at the wounded prisoner.
“They got one.”
“Looks like a Creek or a Choctaw.”
“He shore looks bucked out.”
“Dead as Santa Anna. Jest as well git a shovel an’ cover him up.”
Orff still didn’t like the situation. He unslung the carbine he had borrowed and returned it to its owner, reclaiming his own beloved gun. He tied it securely to his saddle and barked an order. “Mount!”
While they ran to get their horses, he walked over and looked anxiously at the prisoner, examining his wound. Then he shook his head. The man was obviously dying.
They took him with them, anyhow, traveling at a gallop. One trooper rode double behind him, holding him on. As usual, Noah was having trouble staying in the small army saddle. It was a McClellan, just rawhide fitted over a hardwood tree. It had no horn. His red face screwed in pain, he sat straight up, one hand on the reins and the other clutching the saddle’s gullet, his long legs clinched tightly against the horse’s sides.
When they stopped at a small creek, the prisoner looked more dead than alive. The panting horses thrust their muzzles gratefully into the water, their wet sides heaving. The prisoner was lifted off his horse and laid on the grass of the creek bank.
Orff lifted his head, his empty canteen in one hand. He had the other arm under the prisoner’s neck. He looked around.
“Anybody got any likker?” Nobody answered.
“Lieutenant,” Jeff said, “this water looks cool over here. I’ll get some in my canteen. Maybe we can get some down him.”
Leading the dun, Jeff headed for the shady spot.
It was there the rebel cavalry struck. Jeff was on one knee emptying the stale water out of his canteen when suddenly he heard the rebel yell—a long, low-pitched howl that swelled into a couple of high-pitched yelps and a long, shrill scream, all of it in one breath.
A long line of brown-clad figures, all mounted, bulged suddenly into the clearing, fanning out. They were a hundred yards away but coming like the wind, pistols, carbines, and shotguns in their hands. There must have been seventy-five or eighty of them.
A rebel ball clipped off a sunflower six inches from Jeff’s nose, as though somebody had severed it with a whip. As he ran for his horse, he wondered with amazement where they had come from? Gunfire laced the clearing, echoing hollowly off the distant timber. Horses’ hoofs drumming menacingly, the rebels came on and on.
“Stand an’ fire on ’em!” Orff roared.
Obediently Jeff unslung his carbine and crouched in the brush by the lieutenant’s side. Noah joined them, his carbine in his hands. Orff reached for the leather sheath tied to his saddle and yanked out a small, shiny, newish-looking gun.
Kneeling, the lieutenant pressed the gun’s polished walnut stock caressingly to his cheek. Aiming deliberately, he began to pump bullet after bullet into the rebel ad
vance. His muddy face grim with purpose, he fired with unhurried confidence. Spang! Spang! spoke the rifle, neatly and mortally.
Jeff was amazed. He saw Orff knock two rebels out of the saddle. While Jeff was reloading, the lieutenant emptied a third saddle and hit a fourth man in the arm. Each time he fired, he worked a lever behind the trigger, ejecting empty shells and pumping new ones into the breach.
After reloading laboriously, Jeff raised his carbine for a second shot, leveling down on a rebel who, charging at full gallop, was in the act of lifting his horse in a spectacular jump over the narrow creek. But before Jeff could get the man cleanly in his sights, Orff’s rifle cracked at his elbow and the rebel, arms and legs flung wildly into the air, slid out of the saddle and hit the creek with a loud splash. Orff was firing so fast and with such deadly effect that the nearest rebels pulled up, their horses grunting and rearing, and retreated. Most of Orff’s men were able to mount.
But the rebels wheeled, reformed, and charged again. The lieutenant bellowed, “Mount an’ let’s git out o’ here!” Everybody able to travel hit the saddle, save Jeff and Noah.
They ran toward their horses. Jeff was in the saddle and had the dun turned around before Noah reached his horse. He shoved the bay’s reins into Noah’s hands. Noah dropped them on the ground and stooped to grope for them.
The bay began to lunge and back wildly through the brush. Noah, clutching the front and back of the saddle, got one foot in the stirrup. Hopping on the other foot, he pawed the air desperately as he tried to swing his long legs over the bay’s back.
“Waw, you danged ole . . . Look at the gray devils swarm! What a fool Orff was to stop here. . . . I’m comin’, youngster. . . . Waw, dang it! Dang the cavalry an’ every hoss in it!”
Now the thicket blazed with fire. Jeff drew his pistol, praying that Noah would mount before they both got killed or captured. Noah had saved his life at Prairie Grove, and he wouldn’t leave him now.