James McBride - The Good Lord Bird

That Old Man watched ’em, irritated. “I knew it,” he said. He ordered me and Bob to guard the horses, sent a few men to a distant hill to take aim at the enemy’s horses, then sent a few more to the far edge of the ravine to block the enemy’s escape. To the rest he said, “Follow me.”

Now, yours truly weren’t following him no place. I was happy to guard the horses, but a few of Pate’s men decided to fire on our horses, which put me and Bob in the hothouse. Shooting suddenly erupted everywhere on the ridge where we was, and the Old Man’s army broke apart. Truth be to tell it, much of the grapeshot whistling past my ears was from our side as come from the enemy, for neither side was coolheaded about what they was doing, loading and firing fast as they could, the devil keeping score. You had as much chance getting killed by your neighbor blowing your face off in them days as you did the enemy hitting you from a hundred yards distant. A bullet’s a bullet, and there was so many of ’em snapping and pinging against the trees and limbs, there weren’t no place to hide. Bob cowered under the horses, which was heavy taking fire and rearing in panic, and staying with them didn’t seem safe to me, so I followed the Old Man down the hill. He seemed the safest bet.

I got halfway down the hill when I realized I had lost my mind, so I throwed myself to the ground and cowered behind a tree. But that wouldn’t do, for there was lead slapping up against the bark ’round my face, so I found myself rolling down the crest into the ravine right behind the Old Man, who had plopped down next to about ten of his men in a line behind a long log they used for cover.

Well, that charged up the Old Man when he seen me land down there behind him, for he said to the others, “Look! ‘And a child shall lead them!’ The Onion’s here. Look, men. A girl among us! Thanks be to God to inspire us to glory, to bring us luck and good fortune.”

The men glanced at me, and while I can’t say whether they was inspired or not, for they was taking fire, I will say this: When I looked down that line of fellers, weren’t a single man from Captain Shore’s company there, except Captain Shore himself. He had somehow got the nerve to come back. His clean uniform and shiny buttons was muddied up now, and his face was drawed-out nervous. His confidence was spent. His men had turned and cut clean out on him. Now it was just the Old Man and his fellers running the show.

The Old Man looked down the line at his men who lay there in the ravine firing and barked, “Halt. Down.” They done as he said. He used his spyglass to inspect the Missourians’ pickets who was firing from their side. He ordered his men to load up, told ’em exactly where to aim their fire, then said, “Don’t fire till I say so.” Then he got up, and paced back and forth along the log, tellin’ ’em where to shoot as balls whizzed past his head, talking to his men who were reloading and firing. He was cool as ice in a glass. “Take your time,” he said. “Line ’em up in your sights. Aim low. Don’t waste ammunition.”

Pate’s Sharpshooters wasn’t organized and they was scared. They blowed a lot of ammunition firing willy-nilly and exhausted themselves after a few minutes. They started falling back in numbers on their ridge. The Old Man shouted, “The Missourians are leaving. We must compel them to surrender.” He ordered Weiner and another feller named Biondi to move down the side of the ravine to flank them and shoot their horses, which they done. This caused cussing and more firing from the Missouri side, but the Old Man’s men was confident, shooting dead-on and putting a hurting on ’em. Pate’s men took a lot of bad hits, and several runned off without their horses to avoid capture.

An hour later, the fight had gone clean out of them. The Old Man’s fellers was organized, whereas Pate’s forces wasn’t. By the time the shooting stopped, there weren’t but thirty or so of Captain Pate’s men left, but it was still a stalemate. Nobody could hit nobody. Each side was tucked behind ridges, and anybody on either side stupid enough to stand up got their balls blowed off, so nobody done it. After about ten minutes of this, the Old Man got impatient. “I will advance some twenty yards by myself,” he said, crouching in the ravine and cocking his revolver, “and when I wave my hat, you all follow.”

He stepped out into the ravine to run forward, but a sudden wild shout in the air stopped him.

Frederick, riding a horse, galloped straight past us, down the ravine, across the bottom of the ravine, and up the hill toward the Missourians, waving a sword and screaming, “Hurrah, Father! We got ’em surrounded! Come on, boys! We cut ’em off!”

Well, he was light as a feather in his mind, and dotty as they come, but the sight of Fred rolling at ’em, huge as he was, hollering to beat the band, wearing enough guns to arm Fort Leavenworth, it was too much for ’em, and they stone quit. A white flag come up from their ravine, and they surrendered. They come out with their hands up.

Only when they was disarmed did they learn to whose hands they had fallen in, for they hadn’t known it was the Old Man they was shooting at. When the Old Man walked up and grumbled, “I’m John Brown of Osawatomie,” several panicked and looked to sprout tears, for the Old Man in plain view was a frightening sight. After months in the cold woods, his clothes was tattered and worn, so you could see the skin underneath. His boots was more toes than anything. His hair and beard were long and scraggly and white and nearly to his chest. He looked mad as a wood hammer. But the Old Man weren’t the monster they thought he was. He lectured several on their cussing and gived them a word or three on the Bible, which plain wore ’em out, and they calmed down. A few even bantered with his men.

Me and Bob tended to the wounded while the Old Man and his boys disarmed Pate’s troops. There was a great many of them rolling on the ground in agony. One feller received a bullet through the mouth that tore away his upper lip and shattered his front teeth. Another, a young boy no more than seventeen or so, lay in the grass, moaning. Bob noticed he was wearing spurs. “You think I can have them spurs, since you won’t be needing them no more?” Bob asked.

The boy nodded, so Bob stooped down to take them off, then said, “There’s only one spur here, sir. Where’s the other?”

“Well, if one side of the horse goes, the other must,” said the boy. “You won’t need but one.”

Bob thanked him for his kindness, took his one spur, and the feller expired.

Up at the top of the ravine, the rest of the men had gathered their prisoners, seventeen in all. Among them was Captain Pate himself and Pardee, who had it out with Bob after he was tried by Kelly and his gang near Dutch’s. He spotted Bob among the Captain’s men and couldn’t stand it. “I should’a beat the butt covers off you before, ya black bastard,” he grumbled.

“Hush now,” the Old Man said. “I’ll have no swearing ’round me.” He turned to Pate. “Where is my boys John and Jason?”

“I ain’t got ’em,” Pate said. “They are at Fort Leavenworth, under federal dragoons.”

“Then we will go there directly and I will exchange you for them.”

We set off for Fort Leavenworth with the prisoners, their horses, and the rest of the horses that Pate’s men left behind. We had enough horses to stock a horse farm, maybe thirty in all, along with mules, and as much of Pate’s booty as we could carry. Myself, I made off with two pairs of pants, a shirt, a can of paint, a set of spurs, and fourteen corncob pipes I was aiming to trade. The Old Man and his boys didn’t take a thing for themselves, though Fred helped hisself to a couple of Colts and a Springfield rifle.