Rifles for Watie

Hastily, Jeff ties up the mules and rushes to the house. Emory, limping from a permanent injury caused when an anvil fell on his foot two years ago, emerges from the garden and Edith Bussey, who “small, frightened, and pretty” (20) stands on the porch. Jeff’s sister Bess is the one who blew the horn. Two “rough-looking whiskery strangers who carried sawed-off Enfield muskets” (20). Ask if they have reached “the Emory Bussey place” (20). Emory confirms that they have. The two claim to be Union soldiers in search of food, but Emory accuses them of lying. However, although they are not Union, Emory states, “I never turn anybody away that’s hungry” (20) and sends them into the house to eat. As Edith and her daughters go inside to prepare the meal, Emory sends Jeff to finish unharnessing and feeding the mules. Nervous and wishing that he had the family’s rifle, which “was standing unloaded in the corner of the house” (21), Jeff follows his father’s directions.

As Jeff returns to the house, Bess screams. She runs from the house, weeping, exclaiming: “They’re going to shoot Father!” (20). Bess pleads with him not to go and get himself killed too, but Jeff insists, seizing a haying hook as a weapon and entering the house. Although Emory has not been harmed, the two men are aiming their rifles at him as Edith begs them to not to shoot. One man insists that he is arresting Emory, but Emory refuses to leave the house, asserting that the two men will have to kill him in his own home. Jeff orders the men to leave his father alone, and one turns and points his musket at Jeff. Emory informs the men that Bess has left to get help and that “in five minutes’ time, there’ll be a dozen Free State men hot on your trail. I wouldn’t give a nickel for your chances” (23). One of the men pulls the trigger, but his musket doesn’t fire. Jeff throws the haying hook at the man, knocking the gun out of his hands. As Jeff attacks the disarmed man with his fists, the other bushwhacker uses his rifle to hit Jeff in the head, knocking the boy unconscious.

The rest of the family joins in the fight. Edith throws a plate of greens and Emory brandishes a stool. Mary elicits “a sudden howl of pain” (25) from one of the men by tossing a pan of dishwater on him that had been boiling over the fire. The men back off, exiting the house, where Ring sinks his teeth into the seat of the larger man’s pants. The two bushwhackers mount their horses, promising: “We’ll be back! […] There’s thirty men in our band, and they’re close by. We’ll burn your house down and string you all up by the necks, you Free State scum…” (25). Ring cuts his threat off, chasing the men away by attacking the heels of their horses. When Jeff wakes up, he discovers slowly that he is in the smokehouse, surrounded by his family. His mother is pressing a cold cloth on his face. Jeff realizes that their Free State neighbors, roused by Bess, have also crowded around. Jeff tells his father, “The Missourians aren’t going to let us alone. I’m sick and tired of their meanness” (26). Sick of “fighting ‘em with just a hay sickle,” Jeff wants to “go to Fort Leavenworth tomorrow and join the volunteers” (26). Sadly, Emory agrees to give parental consent. Edith weeps, and Jeff promises that the war won’t last long.

Excitedly, Jeff makes his way to Fort Leavenworth on foot. He passes the Chadwick farm, and Big John Chadwick, who is standing at the woodpile, asks Jeff about the bandage on his face. Jeff tells Chadwick about the bushwhackers and his decision to enlist. Chadwick replies, “Believe I’ll go with you, Jeff. I was going to enlist at Sugar Mound anyhow, but I’d rather go with you” (28). Jeff is happy to have Chadwick join him but wonders if the Chadwick family will take issue. Chadwick explains that he has been arguing with his father about enlisting for six weeks and that “Pa says he’ll tan me if I ask him again” (28). Chadwick resolves to leave without asking, exclaiming: “I’m eighteen year old now an’ I want to see the world. I’m agoin’!” (28). The pair heads down the road, arriving at David Gardner’s house. Gardner, whose father died of typhus three years ago, lives with his mother and three younger siblings: “Their lot was hard” (28). Gardner asks about Jeff’s bandage, and Jeff relays the story. Gardner, who is 16, decides that he will join them. Gardner tells the other two that if he asks his mother, she won’t allow him to go.

As they leave, Gardner tells his little brother to pass the message on to his mother that he is enlisting. Gardner’s brother retorts, “You’re not old enough to go to war. You’ll git killed an’ we’ll find your bones bleachin’ on the prairie” (30). Embarrassed but unmoved, Gardner joins Jeff and Chadwick on the road. Jeff is surprised to see Gardner’s apathy, remembering his own family’s tears. Ring had tried to follow him, undeterred by Jeff’s efforts to make him stay until Bess agreed to keep the dog in the barn long enough for Jeff to get away. Happy to have company, Jeff shares the food his mother packed as they walk 15 miles down the road. After getting two rides and spending a night with a farmer who agreed to take them in, the boys arrive at Leavenworth, “riding the last twenty miles in an army teamster’s wagon” (32). A sentinel in a Union uniform admits them, sending them to the enrollment officer.

The three boys are sworn in and then directed to the hospital for physical exams. Jeff watches in anticipation as “they passed hundreds of soldiers in blue blouses marching on the spacious green drill fields,” noting: “Apparently everybody was getting ready for a fight” (33). Nearly trampled by a squadron of cavalry on horseback, Jeff wishes he could join the cavalry rather than the infantry. But he couldn’t, since the bushwhackers who accosted his sisters had taken his family’s horses. At the hospital, the doctor who gives their physicals asks Jeff, “Lots of fellers nowdays can’t wait to put on some blue clothes and go out and shoot at perfect strangers. […] Are you one of ‘em?” (34). Jeff quickly asserts that he is: “I want to shoot at them before they shoot at me” (34). The doctor examines Jeff’s chest, declaring it “a pretty good chest. […] Jest right for the rebels to shoot Minie balls through” (34).

Jeff is unnerved by the doctor’s comment, and the three boys are surprised again when the enlistment officer asks them where they would like the army to send their pay if the boys are captured. Jeff, who secretly feared that the war would end before he could join, is relieved at insinuation that he will see battle. They receive their uniform: “one light blue blouse, one pair of cotton socks, and one pair of drawers each”—not quite the “handsome blue outfit he had seen on the sentry at the fort’s gate” (35). Jeff and his friends gather with the new recruits, who share their reasons for joining the army. One boy says he enlisted because bushwhackers in his area were ambushing boys his age, robbing them, and choking them. Although his mother didn’t want him to enlist, he ran away. Another boy claims, “I jined up for a frolic” (35). One boy whines, “I joined up because they told me the rebels was cuttin’ out Union folks’ tongues and killin’ their babies. After I got here, I found out all it was over wantin’ to free the niggers” (35). Jeff listens quietly to his fellow fresh-faced volunteers, content that he has finally joined the army.

The boys awake early the next morning to the sound of a bugle summons. On the drill field after breakfast, they each receive their official issue Enfield rifle and bayonet. Due to a mistake, the three Kansas teens and their fellow new enlistees are “assigned to fill out a company that, unknown to them, had already received several days’ instruction” (36). One man warns Jeff, “The captain’s a terror. […] Name’s Asa Clardy. He fought in the Mexican War and hates being outranked here by volunteer officers who were farmers a few weeks ago. He takes is out on us volunteer soldiers” (36). Jeff wonders if his father, who also fought in the Mexican War, might know Clardy. Clardy arrives and issues the company to “Fix bayonets!” (36), which confuses Jeff and the other new recruits. Clardy asks Jeff why he didn’t obey, and Jeff replies, “[B]ut mine isn’t broken, sir” (36). Clardy asks for Jeff’s name. When Jeff responds, “Jefferson Davis Bussy” (37), Clardy becomes angry, screaming: “Then change your name! […] Jefferson Davis is the president of the traitorous Southern Confederacy we are now at war with” (37).

Jeff asserts, “I won’t change it. My father gave me that name. He knew Jefferson Davis before the Mexican War. He fought in Jefferson Davis’ regiment at the Battle of Buena Vista. Both were serving then under the Stars and Stripes” (37). The captain punishes Jeff with kitchen duty, where he meets a cook named Sparrow. Upon hearing about the reason Jeff is being disciplined, Sparrow notes that Clardy would never speak to Sparrow that way because Sparrow and Clardy came from the same county, and Sparrow knew a secret that Clardy would not want anyone to know. However, Sparrow refuses to elaborate. Every evening, Clardy inspects the kitchen before dinner. Clardy is partial to the bean soup that the kitchen serves each night, and twice, as Jeff carries it from the kitchen, Clardy stops him to eat from the pot. One evening, Clardy stops Jeff and tastes the contents of the pot, spitting it on the floor and demanding: “Do you call that stuff soup?” (40). Jeff informs him that what he tasted is, in fact, dishwater. The cooks warn Jeff that Clardy is “cruel and vindictive” and “he’ll never forget that, as long as he lives” (40). Jeff thanks them for the warning but feels vindicated for Clardy’s attack on his name.

On his sixth day of kitchen duty, Jeff is dismissed an hour early, and he visits the stables. An old teamster leads “half a dozen fine-looking cavalry mounts around and around the corral” (40). When one of the horses is spooked and suddenly breaks free, Jeff catches him, calming the horse and returning him to the soldier. Jeff tells the teamster that he has experience with horses and offers to help walk them. The sergeant agrees, grumbling about the useless stable boys. Jeff helps the sergeant, whose name is Mike Dempsey, and tells him about what happened with Captain Clardy. Dempsey laughs at Jeff’s response to “Fix bayonets” (40), and then teaches him all of the commands. The next day, Jeff commits another faux pas when Henry Slaughter, a man Jeff knew well in Linn County who enlisted earlier and became an officer, brings him a letter from home. When Jeff says, “Thanks, Henry” (42), Henry admonishes him for his lack of formality: “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” (42).

Jeff is surprised when the men in his company vote for Pete Millholland as their noncommissioned officer, since Pete is a sloppy soldier and drillmaster. As their training continues, Jeff worries that the war will end “before the First Kansas Regiment of Infantry would reach the battleground” (43). By July 1861, the company is ready for advanced training. David Gardner, however, is not thriving. Frequently in trouble and often hazed by fellow recruits, Gardner “became the loneliest volunteer in the camp” (43) despite Jeff’s attempts to help him. One evening, Gardner sobs to Jeff that he wants to go home. Jeff warns him that the punishment for desertion is to “stand [him] up against a wall and shoot [him]” (43). In despair, Gardner cries, “I’m jist about homesick enough to try” (43). Gardner worries that his family will starve without him in the winter, and Jeff reassures him that the other Free State families will make sure that they have help. Gardner does not seem to be relieved.

At night, the soldiers have free time. Some spend their money gambling. One evening, some of the soldiers attend a revival meeting and many convert to Christianity. The soldiers train all day and are always hungry. One evening, they find a watermelon field and are tempted, but a soldier always stands guard. For a week, the company yearns for those watermelons. One night, Noah Babbitt, a soldier in Jeff’s company, hatches a plan to get the melons. Babbitt tells the men that he will volunteer to guard the watermelon field that night. Another soldier nominates Jeff to hide in the bushes so that Babbitt can pass him watermelons under the fence. Jeff protests, “You can’t do this to me. It’s against the articles of war. It’s against the constitution” (45), but the other men convince him to agree. Babbitt’s plan works, and “the incident convinced Jeff that privates were as capable of strategy as officers” (46). The next day, Jeff’s company learns that they will leave for Missouri in a week and that those who live within 75 miles from the fort—including Gardner and Jeff (and Chadwick, who decides not to go)—will be granted a quick furlough to visit their families. Two days before furlough, Jeff wakes up to discover that Gardner is gone. In his place is a note: “jeff i can’t stand it no longer i have goned home to see ma. david” (47). Shocked, Jeff decides not to report Gardner and to give him a head start.