Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith

of the medical orderlies washing a catling in a pail of dirty, dark-colored liquid. The other was cleaning human bone fragments from a small saw. When one of the surgeons motioned him outside, Jeff was glad to leave.
    â€œSo long, kid,” the sandy-haired man called after him. Then noticing Jeff’s stricken face, he added apologetically, “I don’t care, kid. I never could dance worth a darn anyhow.” An orderly plucked the cigarette rudely out of the man’s mouth.
    All too soon the surgeon appeared at the tent flap and gestured toward the unhappy Ford.
    â€œYour turn next,” he said roughly. Ford’s face turned chalk white. A single convulsive shudder shook his long frame. His horror-stricken eyes sought Jeff’s.
    â€œDon’t let ’em cut off my leg, Jeff,” he pleaded.
    â€œIt won’t hurt you, Ford,” Jeff tried to comfort him as they lifted his litter. Ford was so lanky that his bare feet slopped over the end. Jeff went on, “You won’t even feel it. They have to do it to save your life.”
    â€œSoon you’ll be all through with war, son,” somebody else said as they carried Ford inside and laid him on the table.
    â€œI don’t want to live if I hafta be a hopeless cripple for life,” Ford screamed, thrashing about wildly. “Please, Jeff, for God’s sake don’t let ’em do it!” Ford grabbed Jeff’s hand and held on. Wearily the surgeon gestured Jeff outside.
    Ford saw the gesture. “No!” he pleaded, half rising on his litter. “Don’t go, Jeff. Please don’t leave me.”
    Jeff halted indecisively, his heart in turmoil. His stomach felt weak and his throat dry. Impatiently the surgeon motioned him outside again.
    Tears stinging his eyes, he took one last look at his friend, then gently detached his hand from Ford’s despairing grip. The boy stared at Jeff in wonder, turned his face helplessly to the tent wall, and began to sob bitterly. Jeff ducked beneath the tent flap and went outside. He had no time to find out how the operation went, for immediately his detail was assigned to burying dead Union soldiers. Using pick and shovel, they dug shallow trenches in the hot sunshine.
    The dead had fallen in long windrows, as though shot down by volleys. They lay in queer convulsive positions with all sorts of expressions on their faces. They seemed almost equally made up of Kansas Volunteers and Lyon’s Missourians.
    With a start Jeff recognized the first victim they buried as the big Kansas cavalryman he had seen riding merrily into battle in his black wedding suit. Hit in the side by artillery fire, the man apparently had died during the night, his face twisted grotesquely under his shoulder.
    When it came time to put him into the rocky Missouri hillside that was to be his final resting place, Jeff wondered whether the bride had been notified. Casualty reports traveled horseback or by stage and usually required weeks to deliver. After he helped ease the body into the shallow trench, he stood back, a weight in his throat, and thought how awful it was to be buried without any identification or without even a song or a prayer. The sergeant roughly flipped the corner of the blanket over the dead man’s face.
    Later Jeff’s detail was ordered back to the Wilson’s Creek battlefield with an ambulance to claim the body of General Lyon. There they saw several rebel Negro burial parties busily interring the dead, a duty that usually fell to the side winning the battle.
    They also found a mourner. In a small thicket of blackjack where the savage cannon fire had gutted the tops of the trees, a handsome shepherd dog sat in the broiling sun near the corpse of a fallen rebel lieutenant. The lieutenant lay with his arms flung out. His hat was still on his head and his eyes were open.
    The dog kept licking the face of her dead master and whining piteously. When the Negro detail came to