Enemy Women (36 page)

Adair looked back at him. Her expression was dubious. You are a storyteller, she said.

Have a care, said Greasy John.

Asa picked up a wooly worm. I can see ever hair, he said.

26

In the year 1863 there were 3,000 Federal Soldiers moved from Pilot Knob (Iron Mountain) to Van Buren where they encamped. . . .And in order to keep in touch with all the movements of the war, they put up a telegraph line from Pilot Knob to within five or six miles of Van Buren and in some way the builders were menaced until they quit building. Others tried to finish it, but without success.

Finally Mr. Crow said he would finish and operate the line. So he went to work on the line just above the Shade Chilton home. James Maberry and Martin McLemurray seemed to be the hindering cause of the failure to complete the line to Van Buren. The insulators were nailed to trees along the . . .(military) road over which the soldiers had moved to Van Buren. Mr. Crow started his work and set a long ladder against a tree and went to the top of it and was nailing an insulator to the tree when a shot was fired from nearby and Mr. Crow dropped from the ladder and was taken to the Shade Chilton farm and buried. The grave was as completely hidden as possible.

The soldiers soon moved away from Van Buren. The citizens took the wire down and found many uses for it. My father got enough of it to trellis fifty grapevines and we used it in place of hickory withes and papaw bark around the farm and feed lots, much as we use baling wire now.

—J. J. C
HILTON, FROM THE
Current Local,
S
EPTEMBER
13, 1933,
REPRINTED IN
The Civil War in Carter and Shannon Counties

December 27, 1864; Miss Smith, the lady, or rather child, that cut the telegraph, informed me she was captured with the hatchet in her hand, and after
her trial, they told her she was sentenced to be hung, but they would release her if she would tell who told her to cut the wire. She told them she would rather be hung than tell. While she was in prison in Rolla, they treated her very badly—gave her nothing to lie on for six weeks except the bare rock floor.

—G
RIFFIN
F
ROST,
Camp and Prison Journal

U
NION
C
ORRESPONDENCE

Patterson, Mo., Feb. 1, 1864

Brig. Gen. C. B. Fisk, Commanding District of St. Louis

Sir: The guerillas have made their appearance again in squads from 2 to 15 in number. Yesterday a gang was between here and Iron Mountain. My men are after them. General, I have watched them long and I become more than ever convinced that many of the people between here and Arkansas will have to be either killed or moved out of the state. Our good, loyal friend Mrs. Byrne has been a regular spy since the commencement of the war. . . .General, if Mrs. Byrne was a man and guilty of the crimes that she is, she would not live twenty-four hours.

W. T. Leeper, Captain, Commanding Post

—OR,
CH. XLVI, P.
213

A
DAIR SPENT THE
next morning preparing for her journey; she and Greasy John cut the ham into pieces and fried them, then tied them into four separate bundles. They gave her ten pounds of bolted cornmeal and half that of flour, a tin of saleratus to raise the cornbread, a hard, sticky package of dried apples and a cloth sack of salt. He threw in a roll of hempen rope for picket lines. At evening time, Asa saddled a brown mule and rode off down the Military. Before long he came back with a bridle and a sidesaddle.

It was considerable of a saddle. The leather was glove leather on the fender and the seat was of a velvet flocking, the single stirrup of good heavy steel.

We got things stored in a cave, said Asa.

Adair sat it on Whiskey’s back to see if it needed padding but it fit
him well. Adair had determined never to be caught riding astride. It was something that hillbilly women did. Adair knew now that she must never appear to the Union soldiers as a woman of low degree. They felt that all women of the hills were women of low social class, and a southern woman who seemed poor and ignorant and who could be labeled white trash had no rights that any Union soldier was bound to respect.

Now, I have a pair of saddlebags for you, said Greasy John. He rooted around in their pile of camp gear and came up with a small set of saddlebags that was stamped with
OM,
which he explained meant Overland Mail.

We’ll steal from anybody, said Greasy John. In a war there is always just so much
stuff
laying around.

I want to get my hands on that copper wire from that telegraph line, said Asa. But I ain’t got any way to get it to St. Louis to sell it right now. And I am too old and at the end of my days. I remember when Thomas Jefferson was president.

ADAIR SLEPT AMONG
the gravestones. She lay down between Mrs. Minerva McCloskey and four of her children who had died in infancy, with only natural stones to mark their resting places and the initials carved on each one. Like a hen and chickens made of stones. She folded the down quilt and then lay on it under her blankets and the wrapper in her chemise, her face to the stars. The boar’s head sat on the gravestone that it seemed to have appropriated to itself in lieu of a body, out of its razorback roach watching the night through, it’s mouth open and greedy for darkness.

Adair listened to the slow approaching footsteps of one of the horses. It was Dolly. She had got her halter rope loose and came to stand over Adair and smell of her, and of the quilt, and the carpet sack, as if to ascertain where she had been and what had happened to her. Adair turned and looked up into her muzzle and eyes and felt very tired. But she got up and wrapped her arms around the big bony horse head, and then retied her and then went to sleep.

Her dreams now took her to some home place that she knew even though she had never been there before. There was a house in a valley with a light in the window and at first she was afraid to approach it but there was singing inside. It was beautiful and holy singing, and she stood outside and tried to make out the melody but it was only a long chord of harmony that went on and on and never changed, never finally devolved into a melody.

IN THE PALE,
smoky morning old Asa Smitters took hold of Adair’s reins.

Listen and I will tell you something about getting horses across water.

Adair said, Whiskey will take any river I put him at.

Sometimes even the most courageous horse will hesitate. Listen to me.

Adair became silent and listened.

I was raised on the Georgia borders with the Choctaw and I learned their language and I minded their ancient tales. I was there when the treaty was signed at Dancing Rabbit Creek with Gordon Lincecum and Pitchlynn, when he was translating, so you don’t have to think I’m a crazy old man.

I don’t, Mr. Smitters, she said. I am minding you.

Greasy John shook his head. The young are so easily deceived.

They say there is a long cat that lives under the water of the rivers. She is called the Underwater Panther, and she loves horsemeat when she can get it. And that this is why most of your common horses never want to cross water. But if one goes in and they see that the Underwater Panther ain’t eat him, the rest will go. You just get one horse in the water and the rest will come, but do it quick, because if you hesitate too long, they think you’ve seen the Old Lady and you’ll lose them all.

I’ll get them across, said Adair

Between here and Van Buren the grass is good. But listen now. Push
them hard through the Irish Wilderness. There ain’t much to eat there, and you will lose them of a night when they go a-wandering in search of grass, so do not tarry but push on to the town of Wilderness, through Pike Creek and Big Barren Creek as fast as you can.

All right.

Greasy John handed her the
Stars and Stripes.
Something to read so you don’t forget your alphabet.

She rode away with the newspaper clutched in her hand.

27

U
NION
C
ORRESPONDENCE

Houston, (Southeast) Missouri, November 17, 1863:

To: Captain Murphy, Commanding Post, Houston Mo.

Sir: In compliance with Special Orders No. 43 . . .I started on scout . . .Missouri State Militia, in the direction of Spring Valley . . .visited the residences of Benjamin Carter and Wilson Farrow . . .Burned Carter’s house. . . .Found fresh trail of horses, followed them to Jack’s Fork to the residence of Miles Stephens and brother Jack Stephens, whom I was satisfied were bushwhackers. Burned the house . . .Proceeded down Jack’s Fork 10 miles having marched 30 miles that day. Camped at Widow McCormick’s. Had positive evidence that the widow had kept a general rendezvous for Freeman’s and Coleman’s guerillas. On the morning of the 6th, burned the buildings. Learned from the widow’s son that on the previous evening James Mahan had got him to give news of our approach. Sent back and took Mahan prisoner. . . .Prisoner Mahan attempted to escape and was shot. On the morning
of the 9th . . .discovered about 20 of the enemy on the bluff above us; fired a few shots at them when they fell back . . .they had all fled into the rocky ravines and hills where it was impossible to pursue. . . .Had gone about one mile and met three men, who started to escape on seeing us. Killed two of them, whom I ascertained from papers found on their persons to be William Chandler . . .and a man named Hackley, who had in his pocket a discharge from Company F, Mitchell’s Regiment, Rebel army. . . .Two miles further on we captured William Story on a United States horse. . . .He attempted to
escape and was killed. . . .(next day) Marched five miles and captured William Hulsey, James Hulsey, William McCuan and Samuel Jones at the house of James Harris. . . .The first three, viz, the Hulseys and McCuan, were killed. Jones, on account of his extreme youth and apparent innocence, I brought
in a prisoner. Five miles farther at the house of John Nicholson, a known Rebel . . .we captured the said John Nicholson, Robert Richards, and Jessie Story, all of whom we killed. . . .All arrived here this evening, all in good health, having been out six days, marched 145 miles, killed 10 men, returned one prisoner, burned 23 houses, recaptured nine horses, and took six contraband horses and mules. All of which is respectfully submitted, John W. Boyd, First Lieutenant, company I, 6th Provisional Regiment, Commanding Scout.