Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith

his company wasn’t selected for duty with the skirmishers, Jeff felt a cool moisture on his face and looked up.
    A fine drizzle of rain that was little more than mist had started. Word came back from the skirmishers that apparently no rebel pickets were out.
    Jeff was elated. He wanted to get on with the fighting. If they could win this battle, the war might be over in Missouri, and they could go somewhere else and fight. He was in the second line of advance. He knew that the advance line, which had drawn the honor of hitting the Southerners first, was somewhere ahead. He wished fervently that he was with it.
    They left the road and climbed silently up a rocky slope. He could feel the wet brush pulling at his trouser legs and thighs. When they finally crested the ridge, they halted, panting silently. Despite the inky darkness, Jeff knew through some sixth sense that they were on an elevation.
    Breathlessly he squinted over John Chadwick’s thick shoulder and felt a cold chill run along his spine. In the valley below lay the sleeping rebel camp. He could see the sheen of their dying campfires and hear their mules braying faintly in choruses.
    A half hour passed. The night wore on toward a gray dawn. Jeff was on the north hill with Lyon. Sigel was on the south hill. Between the two hills flowed the spring-fed waters of Wilson’s Creek. The Confederates were camped along both its brushy banks. The slow rain stopped, and the stars began to shine brightly between broken patches of clouds.
    â€œFix bayonets,” came a whispered command. As Jeff groped at his belt, he heard faint clicks all around him and knew that the Kansas Volunteers were clamping the long steel knives onto the tips of their musket barrels.
    It was almost daybreak. The country was open, and here and there Jeff could begin to see dark objects. Excited, he felt no fatigue whatever from the twelve-mile march, although he knew he should have been dog-tired. He looked around at his comrades.
    â€œI don’t mind going,” somebody whispered. “The thing I dread most is parting with Mother.”
    Jeff frowned impatiently in the dark. Why be so gloomy?
    â€œThe hardest thing for me to part with will be my g-g-g-graybacks,” Bill Earle whispered, trying to take away some of the sting of death.
    The stars paled. Birds began to twitter. Now Jeff could see the live-oak trees taking shape all around him and smell the cool, musty odors of the woods. His bare hand brushed accidently the leaf of a dwarf oak and came away wet. Everything was dripping.
    Suddenly away off to the south they heard a dull, heavy “Pum!” It seemed to come from the direction of Sigel’s ridge. Crouching in the sodden brush, Jeff glanced at Millholland, who was down on his knees next to him, peering intently through the leaves of a buckeye bush.
    â€œWhat was that, Sergeant?”
    Calmly Millholland checked the cartridge box fastened to his belt and listened.
    â€œCannon,” he whispered hoarsely. “Probably Sigel.”
    The Kansas Volunteers caught their breath, braced themselves, and looked inquiringly at one another.
    The distant booming began to come faster and faster. Soon it was answered by the much louder “Brrom! Brrom!” of an awakening rebel battery from the creek below. Long ropes of orange flame streaked from the dark woods of the rebel-held creek.
    â€œBlam!”
    The deafening roar came from a Union battery located two hundred yards behind them. Jeff ducked and heard the grapeshot rushing noisily through the quiet air over his head, as though projected by a giant slingshot. His eardrums throbbed, and the ground beneath his feet trembled.
    Now the guns were all speaking boisterously together. “Pum! Brrom! Blam!” Both ridges and the valley between were alive with long, slow lines of fire. The Battle of Wilson’s Creek, Missouri, had begun.
    A wild burst of cheering rang out one hundred yards below as