Read Online Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith - Free Book Online

Missouri now, and Jeff stared with curiosity at everything he saw. Everything here seemed so different from Kansas. The houses were much older, and the country more heavily populated.
    All afternoon long, Jeff had felt something itching under his arms and in the edge of his hair. He thought it was gnats or heat rash until after supper, when he walked to the persimmon grove where the Missouri troops were camped and hunted up Jimmy Lear.
    Instantly Jimmy clapped his eyes on Jeff’s arm. Reaching over, he began to pick several small gray-looking objects off Jeff’s skin.
    â€œLook!” Jimmy blurted. “You got graybacks.”
    Jeff’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement.
    With a quick motion of his right hand, Jimmy captured another of the tiny insects. “Boy, you got ’em, all right!”
    â€œSo have you,” said Jeff. With thumb and forefinger, he trapped one on Jimmy’s forehead. For a moment the two boys stood toe to toe, pulling the insects from each other’s skin. Finally Jeff asked, “What are graybacks?”
    â€œLice,” said Jimmy. “Only we calls ’em Arkansas lizards. Lookie here. I’ll show you how to make ’em kill each other.” He put two of the small insects together on a piece of white cartridge paper, and they began fighting fiercely.
    â€œCorn!” marveled Jeff. “Watch ’em go after each other. Just like hogs fighting.”
    Later that evening both boys stripped and Jimmy showed Jeff how to shake his clothing over the campfire. When the lice dropped into the flames, they popped like salt. But the soldiers never seemed to be entirely rid of them.
    Day after day they marched, usually covering twenty to twenty-five miles from morning to dusk. The more they marched, the more they got used to it. Now the heat didn’t bother them so much. The flat land began to give way to hillier country, and they encountered more streams and saw more trees, mostly hickory and oak and persimmon. Each night they tried to camp beside a small river, and when everybody but the mess cooks stripped off and went swimming, the stream would be so full of naked men that Jeff couldn’t see the water. As they dressed he could smell the smoke from the campfires and hear the hiss of the bacon frying.
    One night Jeff wrote to his parents, “We eat breakfast early and supper late to lose the flies. But at noon the flies get as much of it as we do.” He hoped to mail the letter when they reached Springfield. The government stage would take it back to Fort Leavenworth and it would go south from there by mule train to Sugar Mound, near Jeff’s home, where his folks would get it when they came to buy supplies.
    After the meal the men usually sat around smoking and resting. Some washed their socks, shirts, and drawers in the river. Others submitted to the shears and razors of the several regimental barbers who traveled with Lyon’s army from St. Louis. General Lyon had even brought along a twenty-piece regimental band that played each night. Ever since the Missourians had joined them at Grand River, Jeff had watched the perspiring German musicians striding along stoically in the heat, carrying their brass horns on their thick red necks or under their fat muscular arms.
    One night after supper, Jeff walked over to the Missouri troops’ camp to visit Jimmy. He found him shaving under a small persimmon tree. Jimmy had placed a small broken piece of mirror in the crotch of the tree and, straight-edge in hand, was peering into it. He had lathered one side of his face and was scraping it with the razor when a husky sergeant, hairy and pug-nosed, walked up. Standing behind Jimmy, he watched him suspiciously.
    Jimmy must have seen the sergeant in his mirror because his hand was trembling.
    â€œHow old are ye?” the sergeant asked, stepping around in front of Jimmy and looking at him accusingly.
    Jimmy’s face blanched. He looked sheepish.