AFTER CORPORAL JACK JENKINS LET the sutler pass, he figured his excitement was over for the night. For a couple of hours, he was right. The moon sank toward the Mississippi. Jenkins yawned several times. He didn't lie down. He didn't even squat. He didn't doze-not quite, anyhow. But he'd ridden through the previous night and fought a battle the day before. He wasn't at his brightest and most alert. He didn't think he needed to be.
He yawned again, wider than ever, when the moon set. Darkness came down, a veil of black so thick he could hardly see his hand in front of his face. But he had no trouble picking out the party of horsemen who rode out from Fort Pillow, torches in hand. One of those riders was conspicuously bigger than the rest. If that wasn't Bedford Forrest, Jenkins would have been surprised.
And if that was Forrest… then what? Then something's gone wrong somewhere, Jenkins thought, never imagining that whatever had gone wrong had anything to do with him.
The riders went along the bank of Coal Creek till they came to the northernmost sentry along Fort Pillow's old outer perimeter. Then they started working their way south, toward Jenkins. As they drew closer, he could hear them talking with the sentries, but couldn't make out what they were saying.
They headed his way. Whatever they were looking for, they hadn't found it yet. He showed he was awake and alert by calling, “Halt! Who goes there?” – as if he wondered.
A dry chuckle came from Forrest. “I'm your commanding general, by God!”
“Advance and be recognized sir,” Jenkins said.
“Here I am.” Forrest and his aides slowly rode forward. He held up his torch so that it shone on his face. “Well, soldier? D'you recognize me?”
“Uh, yes, sir,” Jenkins answered hastily.
“Who are you? Can't quite make you out in the darkness,” Forrest said.
“Jack Jenkins, sir, corporal in the Second Tennessee Cavalry, Colonel Barteau's regiment.”
Forrest laughed again. “I know who that regiment belongs to. You'd best believe I do. You were over by Coal Creek before. I've got a question for you, Corporal. Did you let anybody – anybody at all – past you since you came on duty?”
“Yes, sir. One sutler,” Jenkins said.
The officers with Bedford Forrest all exclaimed. He held up a hand for quiet. As usual, he got what he wanted. “When was this? What did the fellow look like?”
“Hour and a half ago-maybe two hours,” Jenkins said. Forrest's aides exclaimed again, in dismay. A couple of them swore. Jenkins went on, “Couldn't hardly see him-he had his hat pulled down kind of low. He sure smelled bad, though; I'll tell you that.”
“I bet he did,” Forrest said. “I don't think he was a sutler at all. I reckon you let a polecat get through. Major Bradford broke his parole, and he's nowhere around.”
“Bradford!” Jenkins said. “That was Bradford? God damn it to hell! If I knew it was him, I'd've got some more blood on my piece.” He held up the rifle musket, which he still hadn't cleaned.
“Don't know for sure yet, but that's the way it looks.” Forrest eyed not the ghastly weapon but Jack Jenkins himself. “Why'd you pass him through?”
“He said an officer inside Fort Pillow told him he could go,” Jenkins answered uneasily. If his own officers wanted to, they could blame him for letting the Federal get away. And what they'd do to him if they did… Trying not to think about that, he went on. “He just seemed like a no-account fellow. And I never reckoned a major could stink like that, neither.”
He got a laugh out of Bedford Forrest, but only a sour one. “Oh, you'd be amazed,” the general said. He turned to the men who'd ridden out with him. “Any point to beating the bushes for the son of a bitch?”
“Not till morning, sir,” one of them answered. “A million places he could hide in the dark. If we didn't trip over him, we'd never know he was there.”
“ About what I figured myself.” Forrest muttered under his breath. “I was hoping you'd tell me I was wrong, dammit.”
Jenkins listened to the mounted men with only half an ear. “Bill Bradford?” he muttered. “I had Bill Bradford in front of me, and he slipped through my fingers? Shit!” Bradford wasn't the worst thorn in the side of West Tennessee Confederates; that dishonor went to Colonel Fielding Hurst, who'd been in business longer. But it wasn't for lack of effort on the major's part.
I could've been a hero, Jenkins thought, angry at himself and even angrier at Bradford for fooling him. Killing ordinary Tennessee Tories and smashing in niggers' heads was all very well, but he would have traded the lot of them for Bill Bradford. How many men would have pounded him on the back? How many would have plied him with cigars and whiskey? When word got out, how many pretty women would have smiled at him to show their gratitude, or maybe more than smiled?
“Shit!” he said again.
“We have men down in the south,” said one of the officers with Forrest.
“Oh, yes, I know,” the general commanding said. “Still and all, I don't much care to have to count on somebody else, not when he shouldn't have got loose in the first place.”
“I'm sorry, sir,” Jenkins said. “I'm sorrier'n I know how to tell you.” He was nothing if not sincere. Had he had the faintest notion who Bradford was, the homemade Yankee's body would lie at his feet. In that case, Bedford Forrest would be congratulating him. The way things were…
The way things were, Jenkins didn't want to meet Forrest's eye. Forrest muttered under his breath, then sighed. “Well, Corporal, you're not the only man who messed things up,” he said. “Bradford poured spirits into the soldier who was guarding him till the fellow passed out. And he likely did fool an officer or two, else he wouldn't have got out of the fort. He was dressed like a sutler, you say?”
“Yes, sir,” Jenkins said. “In ordinary clothes, anyway, not in uniform.”
“I bet he wasn't in uniform,” Bedford Forrest said. “He took a dip in the Mississippi trying to get away from our boys, and came out soaked to the skin.”
“Bastard looked like a drowned rat,” one of the other horsemen said.
“He's a rat, all right,” Jenkins said.
“He's a rat out of the trap, dammit,” Forrest said. “We just have to go on, that's all.” He swung his horse back toward Fort Pillow. His companions followed. Watching them go, Jack Jenkins sighed in relief. Forrest hadn't pounded his head against a rock. But if Bill Bradford got away, Jenkins would be pounding his own head for the rest of his life.
Confederate troopers loaded Springfield after Springfield into a couple of wagons. Nathan Bedford Forrest smiled as he watched the work. “This is more like it,” he said. “Let's get these taken care of, and then let's get the hell out of here. How many did we capture?”
“About 350, sir,” answered Captain Anderson, who as usual had the numbers at his fingertips. He paused significantly. “We brought up 269 of them-that figure is exact, sir-from alongside the Mississippi. “ “Well, I can't tell you I'm very surprised,” Forrest said. “Half the
garrison went down there, did it?”
“More or less, yes, sir.” Anderson gave him a quizzical look.
Forrest looked back, bland as butter. He knew what his aide-de-camp was thinking: how could he cipher out a problem like that when he'd had so little book learning? Forrest let Charles Anderson go right on chewing on it. Being such a precise fellow, Anderson would no doubt picture him doing a formal long-division problem inside his head. Forrest could no more do formal long division than he could fly. But that didn't mean he was foolish about numbers. About 600 Federals had held Fort Pillow. Half of six was three; you didn't need to be any kind of scholar to see that. And 269 was close to 300. Nothing complicated about it-unless you tried to make it that way.
He found a different question: “Where are the rest of the Federals' guns?”
“They threw some of them in the river, sir,” Captain Anderson answered. “A few will have stopped bullets or had their stocks smashed or otherwise become unserviceable. And I suspect a good many of our men have, ah, informally appropriated weapons that took their fancy. “
“Well, I suspect you're right about that,” Forrest allowed. “Our boys are first-rate foragers-and they need to be, dammit.”
“When we have our own country and we chase the damn yankees out of it, we'll be able to make everything we need for ourselves,” Anderson said. “We have the wealth, and we have the tools-or we can get what we need from abroad, anyhow. And we have men who can use them as they need to be used.”
Bedford Forrest frowned. He was so much a part of the war, and the war so much a part of him, that he hardly thought about what might come afterwards. When he did, he feared the Confederacy could not hope to win. There'd been a last bright spot in the west at the end of the past summer, when Braxton Bragg beat Rosecrans at Chickamauga. If the Confederates could have destroyed Rosecrans's army, if they could have retaken Chattanooga…
But they hadn't, and they never would now. The Yankees got their revenge at Missionary Ridge, shattering Bragg's army and-too late – forcing him from his command. When the spring campaigning season started, which it soon would, the Confederates wouldn't be pushing north. The Federals would be driving south instead.
Could Joe Johnston stop them this side of Atlanta? If he couldn't, the war here was lost. He was a good defensive fighter, no man better, but was he good enough? Forrest had his doubts.
And if Johnston lost, if Robert E. Lee lost in Virginia, what was left for the C.S.A.? Forrest saw only one thing: retreating to the mountains and the woods and the swamps and bushwhacking the damnyankees till they got sick of trying to hold down a countryside that hated them and went home. That might take five years. It might take ten. It might take fifty. Forrest faced the idea without enormous enthusiasm, but also without fear. If that was what wanted doing, the South could do it.
The only trouble was, it left little room for Captain Anderson's peaceful Confederacy acquiring the tools it needed to get free of imported goods. Forrest shrugged. That might come one of these days. He didn't think it would come any time soon, no matter what his clever aide-de-camp believed.
He intended to fight as long as the rest of the Confederate States
did-and longer, if he had to. If he had no great faith in a Confederate triumph… in the end, what difference did that make? He couldn't fight the whole war, only his own little piece of it. Today, he'd done that well.
“Have we taken everything we can from this place?” he asked Anderson.
“I believe we have, sir,” the other officer replied.
“Then let's clear out,” Forrest said. “Sure as the Devil, we'll have more Yankee gunboats calling on us come morning, and maybe troopships with 'em. We haven't got enough men to hold the outer line of this fort, and the inner line's not worth holding. I can see that, by God, even if Major Bradford couldn't.”
“We're ready,” Anderson said. “I expect you'll want to leave some pickets behind?”
“I surely will.” Forrest nodded. “They'll warn us when the Federals do come around, and they'll help keep the stinking scavengers away. “
He and Anderson exchanged glances filled with distaste. Not all men who carried guns in this debatable land fought for the Confederate States or the United States. Quite a few fought for themselves and nobody else. Once the armies moved on, the jackals and hyenas moved in, stealing whatever got left behind and slitting throats when they came upon men they didn't care for.
They were impossible to put down completely. Most of the time, they looked and acted like anybody else: like farmers or tradesmen going about their lawful business. But when the sun went down they picked up shotguns or rifle muskets and rode out to raid. Some inclined to one side, some to the other, some to neither. The Federals in Memphis and Nashville hated them all. Forrest liked them very little better himself.
“Well,” he said, “let's go.”
Matt Ward poured down one cup of black coffee after another. It made him feel like a wide-awake drunk. He was paying for letting Bill Bradford slip away. He was paying in all kinds of ways. His head pounded; he knew the hangover would get worse later, but it was bad enough now. And he had the joy of realizing Bradford had played him for a fool.
If I could shoot him now… But, however tempting that thought was, he shoved it aside. If he fired his Enfield now, he feared his brains would blowout through his ears.
“You awake, Ward?” A second lieutenant from the Second Missouri Cavalry (C.S.) named Tom Bottom sounded as if he would do something dreadful if he didn't get the answer he wanted.
“Yes, sir.” Ward sighed. He knew he'd let himself in for this. That made him put up with it, but didn't make him enjoy it.
“You'd better be,” Bottom growled. “I'll come round again pretty damn quick to make sure you stay that way.”
“Yes, sir,” Matt Ward repeated. Bottom was one of the handful of officers left behind with the pickets now that most of the Confederate force had pulled out of Fort Pillow. He was acting as if that made him something altogether grander than a miserable second lieutenant. Were things otherwise, Ward would have called him on it. With his headache and with his even more painful knowledge of his own failure, he kept quiet.
Not everybody who'd stayed behind by the fort was so constrained. “Yeah, I'm awake, you whistleass peckerhead,” another trooper rasped. “Are you?”
“What's your name?” Bottom said furiously. “I'll put you on report!”
“My name is Stonewall Jackson, and you can do whatever you damn well please. But you better not turn your back on your own men if you try it.”
Had Bottom had more nerve, he might have arrested the mocking soldier. He didn't. He just walked on. Maybe the man's threat unnerved him. Everybody heard stories about unpopular officers shot by the soldiers they commanded. Ward had no idea how many of them were true-probably not many. If Tom Bottom didn't want to take a chance on this one, though, who could blame him? Bottom wasn't a coward – he'd fought well enough in the fall of Fort Pillow – but he wasn't a fool, either.
As for Ward, he stayed on his feet and kept his rifle musket on his right shoulder. The lieutenant couldn't complain as long as he went on doing that. His headache got worse as the night wore along, and then worse still. He wished for a hair of the dog that bit him. That might ease the pain. But he didn't ask if any of the other pickets had a jolt in his canteen. If Lieutenant Bottom caught him doing that, the lieutenant would start roaring at him, and he would deserve it.
And word might get back to Bedford Forrest. Forrest had gone easy on him for letting Major Bradford escape, but if the general commanding got the notion he was a drunk… He didn't know just what would happen then, and he didn't want to find out, either. It wouldn't be pretty. He was only too sure of that.
Here and there, down by the Mississippi, wounded Federals still groaned. Ward couldn't tell whether they were white or colored; all wounded men sounded pretty much the same. Some of them would be dead by the time the sun came up. Others… If the Federals sent gunboats up to Fort Pillow soon enough, they might be able to take away the survivors.
“Gunboats,” Ward muttered. He shivered, though the night was mild enough. With the blood throbbing inside his sodden brain every time his heart beat, he didn't want to think about cannon going off. If a shell burst close by, he feared his head would fall off regardless of whether any fragments struck him.
The moon sank toward the western horizon. Even its light seemed uncommonly bright, which told him how badly hung over he was. When the sun came up, he wondered if he would bleed to death through his eyes.
“Are you still with us?” Lieutenant Bottom tried to sneak up on him.
Matt Ward thought about coming back with a smart answer, the way Stonewall Jackson had-the way he would have himself had he felt better. But his headache wasn't the only thing that held him back. He had yet to earn the right to do that again, and Lieutenant Bottom did have the right-indeed, the duty-to check up on him. Feeling uncommonly small, Ward said, “Yes, sir, I'm still here.”
“Good.” Bottom nodded and walked on toward the next picket. Was it? Ward rubbed his throbbing temples, which didn't help much. If he felt this bad now, how much worse would he be come morning? He tried not to think about that. But a long, miserable night loomed ahead.
A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse! Bill Bradford remembered some ranting fool of a Shakespearean actor bellowing out the line when a traveling company put on Richard III in Memphis. The actor would have done best on a horse that usually pulled brewery wagons, for he was built like a beer barrel himself.
But the cry! The anguished cry! Bradford felt the truth of that, felt it in his very marrow, as he splashed and squelched south through the Hatchie bottoms, heading toward Memphis once again.
He was still wearing his shoes. The mud hadn't pulled them off yet, though it had certainly tried at least half a dozen times. His feet were soaked. In the darkness under the trees, or even out in the open when the moon went behind a cloud, he couldn't see puddles before he stepped in them. Half the time, he couldn't see his hand in front of his face. Pretty soon, the moon would set. He wanted to curl up under the nearest broad-spreading oak and sleep till morning.
He wanted to, but he didn't dare. Bedford Forrest's men would be looking for his trail, sure as hounds went after a raccoon. He'd broken his parole, so he had to make good his escape. The sport they had with him before they finally let him surrender gave a taste of what they'd do if they caught him now.
If he never saw another Confederate soldier, if he never heard the Rebel yell again, that wouldn't break his heart. So he thought for a moment, anyhow. But then he shook his head. Theodorick lay in the cold, wet ground, a shroud the only thing that kept the dirt out of his mouth and nose. The Rebs thought they were getting their revenge for what the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry had done to them, did they? Well, he aimed to show them they were nothing but amateurs when it came to revenge.
Maybe-no, probably-General Hurlbut wouldn't give him any sizable command, not after he'd lost Fort Pillow. But if he could have, oh, a company's worth of men who hated the Confederate States and everything they stood for and most especially hated all the people who followed the Stainless Banner just as much as he did… If he could have a company of men like that, what a vengeance he would wreak!
“I know where they live,” he muttered, and then swore when a hanging vine hit him in the face. And he did. He knew who the leading Confederate sympathizers were, from Paducah, Kentucky, all the way down to Pocahontas, Tennessee. He knew where their brothers lived, and their sons-yes, and their sisters and daughters, too. He hadn't ordered any outrages against their womenfolk. He hadn't, and he wouldn't. But if some happened anyway, he wouldn't shed a tear.
First, though, he had to get to Memphis. Remember that, Bill, he told himself sternly. One thing at a time. If he made a mistake on the road south, all his hopes for vengeance would go glimmering.
He kept hoping he would run across some homestead out in the middle of nowhere, some place where a farmer scratched out a living with a few crops and whatever he could shoot or trap in the swamps. If the bumpkin had any kind of nag…
But he didn't come across any farmhouses, or even trapper's huts. No one seemed to live in these swamps. He knew people did. But one of the reasons they lived in a place like this was that they didn't want anybody from the outside world bothering them. They didn't come out much, and the outside world didn't come in. Bill Bradford suddenly understood why it didn't. It couldn't find anybody here.
Something slithered over one of his shoes. Copperhead? Cottonmouth? Rattler? Only a garter snake? A figment of his overheated imagination? It could have been anything. Whatever it was, it didn't bite. And he didn't yell his head off, though he couldn't say why he didn't. He shuddered and pressed on.
Sooner or later, I have to come out 0/ the bottoms… don't I? he thought. When he did, he would surely find a farmhouse. And then, depending on whether the farmer backed the U.S.A. or the C.S.A., he would borrow a horse or talk his way into using one or simply steal one, whichever looked like the best idea.
And then, Memphis. Once he got there, Bedford Forrest's friends would find out they weren't the only ones who could strike by surprise at dawn. “Oh, yes,” Major Bradford muttered. “They'll find out, all right.”
When the distant thunder of guns woke Mack Leaming, his first reaction was astonishment that he'd been able to sleep at all. He'd thought the pain from his wound would keep him up all night. His second reaction was a groan as that pain, of which he'd been blissfully unaware since whenever he dozed off, flooded back into his consciousness. Did it hurt any less than it had before he fell asleep? Maybe a little, he decided, but maybe not, too. It was still plenty bad.
All around him, other wounded Union soldiers were coming back to themselves with almost identical groans. No one had done anything for any of them all through the night. The only mercy the Rebels showed was not bursting into this miserable hut and murdering them while they slept.
The guns sounded again, closer this time. “What the hell's going on?” somebody said. “Who's shooting at what?”
“Have men marched up from Memphis to chase the Rebs away?” someone else asked.
“Why couldn't they show up yesterday, God darnn their rotten souls to hell?” another wounded soldier said.
“It's not men marching-it's a gunboat, dog my cats if it ain't,” another man said.
As soon as Leaming heard that, he knew it had to be so. “I love gunboat sailors,” he said bitterly. “They sail away when we need 'em the most, but then they come back again after the fighting's done. They're heroes, all right, every darnn one of 'em.”
That touched off some vigorous and profane swearing from his fellow sufferers. The guns on the river boomed again. Yes, they were definitely closer this time. “You reckon that's the New Era comin' back?” somebody asked. “Even though I got me a hole in my leg, there's a few things I'd like to say to the high and mighty skipper who sailed off and left us in the lurch.”
More obscenities fouled the early morning air. By all the signs, quite a few men had some things they wanted to tell Captain Marshall if they ever made his acquaintance. Lieutenant Leaming had several thoughts of his own he wanted to share with the New Era's commanding officer.
But another man said, “This here boat sounds like it's coming up from Memphis. The New Era steamed north, off toward Cairo”-like anyone from those parts, he pronounced it Kayro-” and places like that.”
A rifle musket near the Mississippi banged, and then another one. A minute later, the gunboat's cannon responded. “Can't be yesterday's gunboat,” a soldier said. “They're shooting at it, and it's got the gumption to shoot back.”
Several wounded men swore again. Mack Leaming was not behindhand-far from it. Some of the shells the gunboat fired burst not far from the hut. “I hope they blow the damn Rebs to hell and gone,” Leaming said.
As if in response, a Confederate outside yelled, “Come on, boys! Don't just stand there! If we have to pull back, to hell with me if I want the damnyankees to be able to get their hands on one single thing they can use. Burn these buildings, by God! We'll fix this place the way the Lord fixed Sodom and Gomorrah! “
That roused the men inside the hut. “Hold on!” they shouted. “Hold on! There's wounded in here! Let us come out before you fire this place! “
“Devil take your wounded!” the Reb answered. “We have to get rid of this here place right now. Lou! Daniel! Come on! Get moving!”
Somebody with a torch applied it to the corner of the hut. Mack Leaming watched and listened with fearful fascination. He could hear flames crackle, and then he could see them. Terror sent ice along his spine. But ice was not what he would feel. Getting shot was bad enough. Getting roasted in the flames had to be ten, a hundred, a thousand times worse.
Men who could limp or crawl made for the doorway as fast as they could go-which mostly wasn't very fast. The more badly wounded men cried out: “Take me with you!” “Don't leave me here to cook!” Leaming added his voice to the chorus. He shouted as loud as he could, and wished he were louder.
“Here you go, sir. I'll give you a hand,” a wounded Federal said. He had one hand to give, for his wound was in the left arm. He grabbed Leaming by the collar of his tunic and yanked hard. Leaming groaned-any motion tore at the track the bullet had drilled through him. “Sorry,” the other soldier said.
“It's all right,” Leaming got out through clenched teeth. It wasn't all right, or anything close to all right. But it was infinitely better than lying there while those vicious orange flames crept closer and closer. Anything, anything at all, was better than that.
The other wounded man dragged him about ten feet out of the barracks hut, then let go of him. “Here you are, sir,” he panted.
“God bless you,” Leaming said. The right side of his back was in torment, but it would ease. The fire would have given him no relief, no mercy. The man with the injured arm went back into the hut and brought out another wounded soldier who could not move on his own. The hut was burning hard by then, but Leaming didn't think anyone got left behind in it.
Several Confederate soldiers and one officer stood around watching the Federals, but none of them did anything to help. The sun beat down on Leaming's head; it would be a warmer day than the one before. Some of the Confederates had canteens on their belts or slung over their shoulders. He didn't bother asking them for water, though-he knew how poor his chances of getting any were.
A wounded Negro lay not far away. He must have spent the night in the open; as far as Leaming knew, all the men in the hut had been white. One of Forrest's troopers walked over to him and said, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Suh, I wants to get on the gunboat if she stop,” the colored man answered. “Reckon they got a surgeon on bo'd kin cut this minnie out o' me.” He pointed to his crudely bandaged calf.
“You want to fight us again, do you?” the Secesh soldier said. “Damn you, I'll teach you!” He brought up his rifle musket and shot the Negro in the chest from a range of no more than a couple of feet. The black man groaned and died inside of a minute or two.
Another black man-he didn't seem badly hurt-stood not far away. Were Mack Leaming in his shoes (not that he was wearing any), he would have got out of there as fast as he could. The Confederates were still shooting wounded Negroes-and the occasional wounded white, too. Maybe this colored artilleryman didn't think they would do anything like that while the gunboat-it was number twenty-eight, the Silver Cloud-drew near.
If he didn't, he made a dreadful mistake. The Reb who'd shot the Negro on the ground by Leaming reloaded his rifle musket with a veteran's practiced haste. He hardly even needed to watch what he was doing; his hands knew with no help from his eyes.
Only after the man set a percussion cap on the nipple did the colored soldier seem to awaken to his danger. By then, it was too late for the black to run off. Forrest's trooper would have had no trouble hitting him before he got out of range. Instead of running, he begged for his life: “Please don't shoot me, suh! I ain't done nothin' to you. Honest to God I ain't!”
“You were up in the damn fort, weren't you?” the Confederate replied, taking deliberate aim at the black man's head. “You were shooting one of them goddamn cannon, weren't you?”
“No, suh, not me! Do Jesus, not me!” the Negro said, voice high and shrill, his eyes showing white all around the iris. “I never had nothin' to do with no cannon! Never!”
“You lying sack of shit,” the Reb said. “Hell, even if you didn't, you still had a gun in your hands. For all I know, one of my pals is dead on account of you. So you can go to hell along with this other coon here.”
He pulled the trigger. The hammer fell-with a loud click and nothing more. The colored artilleryman, who'd seemed on the point of fainting from terror, let out a joyous cry. “You see? You see? God don't mean fo' you to take my life. God don't want you to take my life!”
“Fuck you, boy,” Forrest's trooper said. He thumbed up the hammer and reseated the cap on the nipple. “Didn't have it quite square there.” He raised the rifle musket again. “Now I reckon we'll find out what God wants and what He don't.”
He fired again. The Mini? ball hit the Negro just above the left eye. The man couldn't even scream. The only good thing was, he didn't suffer, not with the back of his head blown out. He hardly even twitched after he fell.
The Confederate spat. “Don't look like God cared much about one worthless nigger after all, does it?”
Leaming had seen too many horrors over the past day. He was numb to them, if not to the pain of his own wound. Fear of retaliation wasn't what kept him from saying anything to Forrest's trooper. What were two more killings among so many? And the officer who stood there and watched his man shoot a pair of wounded, defenseless men? He said not a word, either.
Bedford Forrest hadn't ridden far from Fort Pillow after despoiling the place. The fall he'd taken left him stiff and sore. He camped about five miles from the fort, and passed an uncomfortable, restless night. When he woke before sunup the next morning, he pulled up his shirt and got a good look at himself by the light of a guttering lamp.
“By God!” he muttered. “I'm all over black and blue. Lucky I didn't break anything-mighty lucky.”
As long as he was up, he didn't see any reason why his aides shouldn't be up as well. He limped over to Captain Anderson's tent and shook him awake. “What the-?” Anderson said, and then, recognizing Forrest, “Oh. Good morning, sir.”
“I've got a job for you, Captain,” Forrest said.
“At your service.” Yawning, Anderson emerged from the blanket in which he'd wrapped himself like a gray-uniformed butterfly coming out of its cocoon. He started pulling on his boots; like Forrest, he'd slept in the rest of his uniform. “What can I do for you?”
“I want you to ride back to Fort Pillow,” Forrest said. “Chances are there'll be Yankee gunboats nosing around. Show a flag of truce and tell' em they're welcome to take on all the wounded Federals they can hold.” He chuckled. “Long as they're doing it, we don't have to.”
“I understand, sir.” Captain Anderson took a hardtack from his haversack and started gnawing on it. If he went back to the fort, he wouldn't have much chance for any better breakfast. With his mouth full, he asked, “Do you want me to go by my lonesome, or shall I bring a couple of other officers along?”
“Oh, fetch your sideboys, by all means,” Forrest said indulgently. “Don't want the Federals to reckon we can't afford to send but the one man… Will you do one more thing for me?”
“Whatever you need, General.” Charles Anderson knew the only right answer an aide-de-camp could give to that question.
“General Chalmers is camped a couple-three miles in back of us. Would you be kind enough to stop at his tent and tell him I reckon he did a might fine job yesterday?” Nathan Bedford Forrest sighed. If he was going to bury the hatchet with his division commander, he had to show he appreciated Chalmers's work. He wouldn't lie to do it, but, fortunately, he didn't have to here.
“I'd be happy to, sir,” Charles Anderson said. “Isn't Captain Young back at General Chalmers's encampment?”
“Who?” For a moment, the name meant nothing to Forrest, who was thinking of his own officers. Then he remembered the parley of the day before. “Oh, the Federal from Missouri who knew me. Yes, I do believe he is. You want to take him along to Fort Pillow with you?”
“If you don't mind, sir. He seemed to be a pretty sharp fellow, and having somebody like that along may help me dicker with the Yankees in the gunboat.”
“It's all right by me, Captain. If he gives his parole not to fight us till he's exchanged, you can let him go, too. I reckon he'll keep his word-not like that Bradford son of a bitch.” Forrest's mouth twisted. The way the enemy officer had escaped left him steaming.
“I'll see to it, then.” Anderson stuffed the rest of the hardtack into his mouth and left his tent chewing with determination.
Having a little more time on his own hands, Forrest breakfasted on skillygallee: hardtack pounded to crumbs, softened in water, and fried in bacon grease. Washed down with coffee brewed from beans captured at Fort Pillow, it made a tolerable meal. His belly was in no doubt that he'd eaten something, anyhow.
Inside of fifteen minutes, Captain Anderson and three junior officers rode off toward the northwest. Not long after that, Forrest heard the distant thud of a cannon's discharge. He nodded to himself. “Might have known,” he said; as usual, the first word came out mought. Of course the Federals would be shelling Fort Pillow. It was too late to do them any good, but not too late to salve their pride.
He shrugged. They could have all the pride they wanted. He'd taken the fort. The Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) wouldn't harry west Tennessee any more. It would be a while before the Sixth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) stuck its head out of Memphis, too. As usual, he'd done what needed doing.