SURVIVING SKIRMISHERS RAN BACK TOWARD the earthen parapet warding Fort Pillow. Hale soldiers helped their wounded friends. Every so often, a man who'd loaded his Springfield before retreating would fire it at the oncoming Rebs to make them keep their heads down.
Lieutenant Mack Leaming watched a couple of Federals go down, but only a couple. Most of the men who'd set out for the earthwork reached it in safety-or as much safety as U.S. soldiers could find anywhere on this field.
A Mini? ball snapped past in front of Leaming's nose, too close for comfort. He flinched. Half a minute later, another near miss made him flinch again. Fifty yards away, troopers from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry shouted that another officer was down. The Confederates seemed to be taking dead aim-though Leaming wished he didn't think of it quite that way-at anyone inside the perimeter who wore shoulder straps and more than his share of brass buttons.
Though clouds still covered the sun most of the time, Leaming didn't think it could be much past eight o'clock. Looking at his pocket watch never even crossed his mind. The Confederates hadn't been attacking for much more than two hours, and they'd already driven the Federals back inside the fortress proper.
That wasn't good, and Leaming knew it. How could the garrison hold out till reinforcements got here from Memphis? Leaming spotted Major Lionel Booth, who was still going from gun to gun encouraging the colored cannoneers. “Major!” he called. “Excuse me, Major…”
“Yes, Lieutenant?” Booth sounded as calm as if on parade. Leaming didn't think he really was that calm, but even being able to seem so was a valuable asset to an officer. “What do you need?”
“Sir, how many Rebs do you reckon are out there?” Leaming blurted.
Booth considered. He ducked when a bullet cracked past above his head, but he didn't seem especially flustered. “I'd say fifteen hundred, maybe two thousand,” he replied at last. “From the weight of fire, that's about what it feels like to me.”
“Is that all, sir?” Leaming said in amazement.
“Isn't that enough? Two and a half, maybe three times what we've got in here,” Booth said with a wry chuckle. “More than I figured Bedford Forrest could throw at us, I'll tell you that. But does someone else think there are more?”
“When I asked Major Bradford, sir, he said he thought Forrest had six or seven thousand men,” Leaming said.
“Did he now?” Booth started to say something, then visibly changed his mind. What did come out of his mouth after that brief pause was, “Well, Lieutenant, you have to remember this is Major Bradford's first real combat. Your first few times, you're liable to see things that aren't there.” He sounded indulgent, like a father talking about a boy who didn't want to go to sleep without a candle by his bed.
Leaming hoped the fortress commandant felt indulgent about him, too. This was also his first real combat, and he was scared. He was scared spitless-the Sahara couldn't have been drier than the inside of his mouth. The first few near misses, he'd almost pissed himself. That would have been a fine thing for an officer to do in front of his men!
“You're getting along just, fine, Lieutenant, Booth said, so maybe he could seem paternal toward more people than Major Bradford. “I think there are only a few people who aren't afraid on a battlefield and they're men who don't care if they live or die. Nothing wrong with being afraid. The trick of it is to go on doing your job whether you're afraid or not. You're not shirking, and that's all anybody can ask of you.”
“Thank you, sir.” Leaming was no Catholic, but that felt like absolution from a priest.
Major Booth's grin showed crooked teeth. “It's all right. The more Rebs who try to rush this place, the more Rebs we'll shoot, that's all. Let 'em come, by God! How are they going to make it over the parapet? We'll hang on till help from Memphis steams up the river, and then we'll see who runs, and how far.”
Shells from the New Era climbed high over the bluff, slow enough to be easily visible to the naked eye, then rained down someplace not too far from where Confederate troopers were moving. Seeing those bursts and the clouds of smoke rising from them heartened Leaming. Even so, he said, “I wish we had better signal arrangements with the gunboat. The way things are, she's almost firing blind.”
“I won't say you're altogether wrong, but I think we're doing as much as we can,” Booth replied. “Signal flags are about as good as we can manage, I'm afraid, even if they aren't perfect-her crew can't see their targets. The ground up here is too high, that's all, and the Rebs are moving faster than we can let the New Era know where they're moving to. But some of what the gunboat fires off is bound to come down on their heads.”
“Here's hoping, sir,” Mack Leaming said. When Booth put things the way he did, the New Era didn't seem so very formidable after all. Leaming was glad nobody else inside Fort Pillow had heard the commandant. That left him the only one to have his spirits lowered.
Major Booth seemed unworried about what the gunboat could or couldn't do. He hardly seemed worried about anything. Touching the brim of his black slouch hat, he went back to encouraging the gunners.
Despite their steady fire, and despite the work of the white and colored riflemen behind the earthwork, Forrest's men steadily worked their way forward. They came close enough to let Leaming hear their officers shouting orders, close enough to let him hear their wounded men groan when they were hit.
They came close enough to let him draw his revolver from the holster and fire two or three shots at them: the first shots he'd ever fired with intent to kill. He couldn't see if he hit anybody. That was probably just as well.
And then, instead of sliding forward, the Confederates slid back. They still kept up a steady and galling fire, but they didn't seem to think they could simply storm the parapet any more.
We taught them respect, by God, Leaming thought. Those loping, caterwauling shapes had been everywhere in front of the fort, or so it seemed to him. He found Major Bradford's estimate of their numbers far easier to believe than Major Booth's. Six or seven thousand Rebs? Looking at them out there, he could have believed there were six or seven million of them.
Not far away, two colored soldiers passed a dipper of sutlers' whiskey back and forth. Both of them grinned. One of them raised the dipper in salute to Lieutenant Leaming. “Want a snort, suh?” he called.
“No, thanks,” Leaming answered. Dutch courage, nigger courage, what difference did it make? And some of the whites from his own regiment were drinking, too. Put a soldier, white or colored, anywhere near whiskey and he'd find a way to get outside it.
One of the Negroes aimed an obscene gesture at the Confederates out there in the distance. His friend thought that was the funniest thing he'd ever seen, and sent the Rebs something even nastier. Several bullets snarled past them. They went right on laughing.
They weren't afraid, anyhow. And they were fighting the enemy. The colored men at the half-dozen field guns kept firing steadily, while the colored soldiers serving as riflemen loaded and shot shoulder to shoulder with the troopers from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry. Leaming wouldn't have believed it if he weren't seeing it with his own eyes. He had trouble believing it even though he was seeing it with his own eyes.
A Negro let out a shrill screech. He staggered away from the parapet, clutching at his left elbow. “Do Jesus! The surgeon gonna cut off my arm!” he wailed. From what Leaming knew of wounds, he was likely to be right. If a bullet shattered bones, you almost had to amputate. Otherwise, the injured man would die of fever. Shy a limb, he might live.
“Po' George,” one Negro said. “Hard luck,” another agreed.
They both fired their Springfields less than a minute after George got hurt. The other colored soldiers shot at any Confederates they saw, too. Niggers really can fight, Lieutenant Leaming thought in swelling wonder. Maybe it's not a question of keeping them slaves from here on out. Maybe we were lucky to hold them in slavery as long as we did.
By now, the white captain and sergeant nominally in charge of Ben Robinson's twelve-pounder had seen that the colored gun crew knew what it was doing. They gave fewer and fewer orders. They gave fewer and fewer suggestions. The black men were doing plenty all by themselves to give the Confederates out beyond the earthwork a hard time.
When Bedford Forrest's troopers pressed close to the parapet, Sergeant Robinson ordered a couple of rounds of canister on his own. He looked back to Captain Carron after he did it, but the officer didn't say a word. He just beamed and nodded, and Ben Robinson went on fighting the gun.
Each round of canister had sheet-metal sides and a thin wooden plug at the top. It held two or three hundred round bullets. In effect, it turned the twelve-pounder into God's shotgun. At short range, it was supremely deadly.
A man caught by the full fury of a blast of canister might be blown to red rags. He might simply cease to be, torn apart so completely that nothing recognizable as a human being was left. Or he might be killed or maimed in any number of more ordinary ways.
The Rebs didn't want to come close to any gun that was firing canister. No matter how much Ben Robinson hated those Secesh sons of bitches, he couldn't blame them for that. He wouldn't have wanted to make the acquaintance of a canister burst himself. Who would?
“Look at 'em run!” Charlie Key yelled. “You ever reckon you see Secesh run?”
Some of the Confederates couldn't run. Some of them would never run again. The rest… didn't want that to happen to them.
“Give 'em anudder round, jus' like de last one!” Charlie yelled.
Robinson shook his head. “They outa range now,” he said mournfully. “Don't want to waste the canister. We ain't got but a few rounds.”
“Too bad,” Charlie said. “How come dey don't give us mo'? Powerful good 'munition. Ain't nothin' else make the Rebs scamper like dat.” He mimed scampering himself. He was a dangerous mimic.
“Canister shift damn near anything-anything up close,” Robinson said. “Out past a couple hundred yards, though, it ain't much. So we got us dese shrapnel rounds an' shot fo' de long-range work.”
A twelve-pound iron ball would tear a fearful hole in a tight-packed group of men. Since the Rebs weren't fighting that way, shrapnel bursts did more damage here. Ben Robinson knew he could hurt the white men who'd done so much to make his life a misery. Sell me away from home, will you? he thought furiously as he lowered the altitude screw on the gun carriage. Sell me at all, will you? Treat me like a piece of meat, will you? Treat my sister like a piece of meat, will you? That was a separate outrage, one that burned all by itself.
Sergeant Clark pulled the lanyard. The shrapnel round roared away. The gun rolled back. As Sergeant Robinson put his shoulder to the carriage to wrestle it forward again, he hoped some of the iron fragments from that round blew a white man's balls off. Let's see you come round the slave cabins with a bulge in your pants then, God damn your scrawny soul to hell.
The reloading ritual began once more. It felt almost like a dance. Only the music was missing, and the gun crew didn't really need it. They could go through the steps with no accompaniment but the boom of the Springfields to either side and the whine and crack of enemy minnies darting past.
Like any soldier of any color, Robinson had hated all the hot, sweaty hours he spent on the drill field learning how to handle a cannon. He knew the rest of the colored men in the crew felt the same way. He'd hated white sergeants screaming at him. Dumb-ass coon! Clumsy fool! And those were some of the nicer things they said. But they turned raw black recruits into a real gun crew, something that was more than the sum of its parts, and he owed them a reluctant debt of gratitude for that.
He'd also heard that drill sergeants were just as merciless toward whites. That made him feel a little better. Fair was fair.
“Give 'em hell, boys!” Major Booth came up behind the crew. The gunners worked harder than ever under the commandant's eye. That, no doubt, was exactly what he had in mind. When the gun was ready, he tipped his hat to Sergeant Clark and asked, “May I do the honors?”
“Uh, yes, sir.” Clark handed him the lanyard. Booth gave it a hearty tug. The gun thundered. Looking pleased with himself, Booth returned the match to the sergeant.
A couple of bullets thumped into the earthwork close by. More cracked past. Enemy fire always picked up when Major Booth was around. “Suh, you wants to be careful,” Ben Robinson told him. “They got sharpshooters out there tryin' to pick you off.”
Booth laughed lightheartedly. Ben always remembered that-how cheerful the commandant sounded, as if he'd just heard a good joke. “They can try, Sergeant,” he said-he was always careful to use colored underofficers' ranks when he spoke to them. “The bastards have been trying for a while, but they haven't got me yet.”
“Yes, suh.” Ben didn't see how he could say anything else. He couldn't very well tell Major Booth to go somewhere else because when the Rebs were shooting at Booth they were also shooting at him. He wanted to, but he couldn't.
And then he heard the unmistakable wet slap of a bullet striking flesh. “My God! I'm hit!” Major Booth exclaimed-a cry more of disbelief than of pain. Booth's hands clutched at his chest. Bright blood welled out between his fingers. “My God!” he said again, more weakly this time. Blood bubbled from his mouth and nose, too. That meant it was a bad wound, about as bad as a wound could be. The thought had hardly crossed Ben's mind before Major Booth's legs gave out and he crumpled to the ground.
“Lawd!” Ben Robinson whispered. Major Booth wasn't just the commandant here. He was the man who'd turned the Negroes he led from field hands into soldiers. If Booth couldn't go on leading, command would fall to Major Bradford. And Booth couldn't-that wound looked sure to kill him, and to kill him fast. As for Major Bradford.. A lot of the men in the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry had no more use for colored soldiers than the Confederates had. They didn't fight for the U.S.A. because they wanted emancipation; they fought for the U.S.A. because they couldn't get along with their neighbors who fought for the C.S.A.
Captain Carron came out of the horrified trance that seemed to grip everyone around the fallen Major Booth. “Take him to a surgeon!” he said. “Maybe the sawbones will be able to do… well, something, anyway.” His voice trailed off. A surgeon couldn't do much for a chest wound, any more than he could for one in the belly. A man either got better or he died.
Major Lionel Booth was going to die. The way he plucked at Robinson's sleeve when the Negro started to lift him told him as much. Booth tried to say something, but more blood came out instead of words. He fought to breathe-he was drowning in his own blood.
When Robinson and two other soldiers from the gun crew laid him in front of the green-sashed surgeon, the white man said, “Good God, it's the major!”
“Yes, suh,” Robinson said. “Help him if you can, suh.”
“Help,” Major Booth echoed feebly. “Please help. Please…” His eyes rolled up in his head.
“He gone?” Charlie Key asked.
The surgeon felt for a pulse at Booth's wrist. “Not yet,” he answered. “He's-” He broke off, then said something vile, aimed not at the Negroes but at fate. “Now he's gone.”
“Lawd!” Robinson said again. “What is we gonna do?”
Major William Bradford felt the weight of the world crashing down on his shoulders. He'd resented Major Booth when the younger officer brought his colored artillerymen up from Memphis. He'd resented him, yes, but he'd come to lean on him, too. Booth knew more about soldiering than he did, and that was all there was to it. Booth didn't get stuffy about passing on what he knew, and Bill Bradford knew he'd learned a lot in the couple of weeks since Booth arrived.
Rather more to the point at the moment, Lionel Booth had kept his head when the Confederates attacked-and when Bradford was on the edge of losing his. Now he was down. Now Fort Pillow was in Bradford's hands again, no matter how much he wished it weren't.
We can hold on. We will hold on, Bradford thought. And maybe
Booth isn't hit as badly as people say.
No sooner had that hopeful thought crossed his mind than a soldier came pelting toward him from where the surgeon was working. “He's dead!” the man shouted. “He's dead, sir!”
Well, so much for that, Major Bradford thought unhappily. It's all mine now. It was his before Booth and his coons got here. He didn't want it back, not like this, but what he wanted didn't seem to matter. He gathered himself, or tried to. “Keep firing!” he shouted to the embattled garrison, and immediately felt a fool. What were they going to do? Stop? Not likely, not with Bedford Forrest's wolves prowling out there. Bradford tried again: “We'll whip' em yet!”
“You tell 'em, Major!” That was one of his own troopers. They would follow where he led. But what about the niggers? They'd have to, wouldn't they? He was the senior officer left alive, no matter how little he wanted the distinction to land on him at this time in this way.
“Major! Major! Major Bradford, suh!” This time, one of Major Booth's colored soldiers-one of his colored soldiers now, for better or worse-dashed toward him from the parapet as if all the furies of hell were at his heels.
“What is it?” Bradford asked. What is it now? he almost said, but he swallowed the last word in the nick of time. It would have sounded too much like panic. He felt panic hammering hard inside him, but didn't want to show it. That would only make it spread.
“Suh, the Secesh done shot Lieutenant Hill through the head out by the old barracks,” the Negro answered. “He fall down, he twitch a few times, an' he dead now jus' like Major Booth.”
“Oh, good God!” Bradford exclaimed. “One thing on top of another!” Hill was-had been-Booth's adjutant, which meant he'd become post adjutant when Booth took command. Now… he hadn't outlived his superior by more than a couple of minutes.
“Yes, suh-one thing after another. But I reckon we's hurting the Rebs, too,” the Negro said. He still showed fight. That was good.
“We'll just have to carry on the best way we can,” Bradford said, and then, “Thank you for letting me know.”
“Yes, suh,” the colored sergeant answered. He gave Bradford a salute that would have won the heart of any drill sergeant on a practice field. Bradford tried to return it as smartly; he'd already seen the Negroes set more stock in such gestures than did the troopers he led. His salute was spoiled when a minnie cracked past overhead. Both he and the colored man ducked. He would have been humiliated if he did and the artilleryman didn't. As things were, they smiled at each other, both admitting that bullets could scare a man no matter what color he was.
After a bob of the head, the Negro trotted back to his station. “Lieutenant Leaming!” Bradford shouted, and then, when that didn't accomplish anything, “Mack! Where in damnation are you?”
“Right here, sir,” Leaming said. “What do you need?”
“A nigger just told me the Rebs have killed Lieutenant Hill outside the works. That makes you post adjutant again,” Major Bradford answered.
“Good Lord!” Leaming said. “I think their sharpshooters really are trying to pick off our officers. We're losing them too fast for anything else to make sense… Are you all right, sir?”
“Yes,” Bradford lied. He'd always been proud of his major's tunic with its two rows of seven brass buttons each. Now, like Joseph's coat of many colors, his tunic with the many shiny buttons-he made sure they stayed shiny-was liable to land him in danger. He imagined some skinny, mangy Rebel drawing a bead right between the rows, squeezing the trigger, and… He flinched, though no bullet came close.
“What are your orders, sir?” Lieutenant Leaming asked.
“What else can we do but keep on with what we've been doing?” Bradford replied. “Major Booth was sure help would come from Memphis. We just have to hang on till it gets here, that's all.”
“Yes, sir.” Leaming stepped closer to Bradford so he could lower his voice: “Damned if the coons aren't fighting, sir.”
“I wouldn't have believed it, either,” Bradford said. “A good thing, though. Without 'em, we couldn't have held this place ten minutes against that swarm of Rebs out there. Thousands of those bastards! Thousands! “
“Sir, Major Booth didn't think there were all that many of them,” Leaming said. “He guessed fifteen hundred, maybe two thousand at the outside.”
“Nonsense!” Major Bradford said. “Look at them. Just look at them. They've got more soldiers running around than a dog has fleas. And if Major Booth were as smart as he thought he was, he wouldn't have walked into a minnie, now would he?”
“I… guess not, sir,” his adjutant answered.
“However many Rebs there are doesn't matter anyhow,” Bradford said. “Can you imagine what they'd do to us if we surrendered? They hate colored soldiers, and they hate Tennessee Union men. They could have the Army of Northern Virginia out there, and we'd still have to fight. Isn't that right, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir, I guess it is, when you put it like that,” Leaming answered.
“All right, then. We'll fight on, just the way we would have if Major Booth were still here.” Bradford hesitated, then blurted, “I wish he still were.” But Fort Pillow was his again, no matter what he wished.
Nathan Bedford Forrest rode toward the sound of the gunfire ahead. It was somewhere near ten in the morning. He'd been in the saddle since setting out from Jackson. He was so tired, he could hardly see straight. His horse had to be every bit as weary. The ideal cavalry trooper was a little bandy-legged fellow who didn't weight more than 140 pounds. Well over six feet tall and somewhere close to 200 pounds, Forrest didn't fit the bill. But he was what he was, and the horse had to put up with it.
He knew exhaustion would fall away from him like a discarded cloak once he got to the battlefield. Most of the time, he was a quiet, soft-spoken man. In a fight, everything changed. His voice rose to a roar that could span the field, no matter how wide. He became a furious and ingeniously profane swearer. Some men turned pale when they fought-they were afraid of what might happen to them. Forrest went hot and ruddy, like iron in a smith's forge. Instead of being hammered, though, he smashed the damnyankees himself.
His nostrils twitched. Yes, that was the brimstone reek of gunpowder in the air. It smelled like Old Scratch coming up from the infernal dominions for a look around. Forrest's lips skinned back from his teeth in a fierce, mirthless grin. He intended to make Fort Pillow into hell on earth, all right.
The ground around the fort was only indifferently cleared. A good many trees still stood, and stumps; fallen trunks lay scattered every which way. Even inside the outermost perimeter, plenty of cover still remained. He watched his men use it to good advantage, scooting forward from one stump to another as if they were in an Indian fight from the days before he was born.
Seeing a trooper not far away, Forrest called, “Where's General Chalmers?”
“Who wants to know?” the man answered, not looking up from the revolver he was reloading.
“Bedford Forrest, that's who.” Forrest's voice crackled with danger, the way the air will crackle just before lightning strikes. When the battle fit hit him, he was almost as hard on his own men as he was on the Federals. “Now where is he, you son of a bitch?”
The trooper hadn't been pale. Why should he be, when he was safely out of enemy rifle range? But he went white when he raised his head and saw General Forrest. He almost dropped a percussion cap, and had to fight to say, “He-He-He's over yonder, sir.” He pointed west and a little south.
“All right,” Forrest said. “I don't see you in the fight once you finish loading that hogleg, though, you'll answer to me, man to man. You hear?”
“Y-Y-Y-Yes; sir,” the man answered-not the first time Nathan Bedford Forrest had reduced a man from his own force to frightened stammering. But what he did to the Federals…
He found Brigadier General Chalmers about where the trooper said he would. Chalmers was urging his men forward-always a good thing for a general to do, especially when he wasn't far from the firing line himself. Nothing encouraged soldiers like officers who shared their risks.
“How's it look, Jim?” Forrest asked.
James Chalmers whirled. Even in the informal world of the Confederate army, even in the extra-informal world of Forrest's command, an officer who led a brigade didn't expect to be addressed by his Christian name… unless a superior did it. “Hello, sir,” Chalmers said, saluting. “So you finally made it up here, did you?”
“No, but I reckon I'll get here pretty soon,” Forrest answered dryly.
His brigade commander blinked, then decided he was joking and laughed. “Well, I'm glad to hear that, sir. We can use you.”
“It looks pretty good, from what I've seen of it,” Forrest said.
“I think so.” Brigadier General Chalmers nodded. “They sent out skirmishers after we started driving in their pickets, but we shifted them, too. Just about all the Federals are back inside the main position there. They should have hung on to some of the knobs around it. They should have, but they damn well didn't. Now we've got men on, em, and we can shoot down into their works. This isn't the best place for a fort with a small garrison, no matter what General Pillow thought when he set one here. “
“Already knew that myself,” Forrest said. “If the Yankees can't figure it out, too damn bad for them. The riffraff they've got in there, they're asking for everything we give 'em.”
A bullet cracked past. Chalmers flinched. So did Forrest; he was no more immune to that reflex than most of his soldiers were. It annoyed and angered him, but he couldn't do anything about it. However little he cared to admit it, even to himself, he was made of flesh and blood like any other man.
Straightening, Chalmers said, “You might do well to get down from that horse, sir. It makes you a target for the bastards holed up in there. You wouldn't want some damn nigger to be able to say he shot the great General Forrest, would you?”
“No, but I'm not going to worry about it, either,” Forrest answered. “And I want to see this place for my own self from one end to the other, and the horse'll tote me around faster'n I could go on shank's mare.” He always carried out his own reconnaissance when he could. More than once, he'd seen things nobody else did. He went on, “You keep crowding our boys forward, you hear, Jim?”
“I'm doing it,” Chalmers said shortly.
“I know you are. Keep doing it. Do more of it. Get' em close to the enemy. Use that high ground. I don't want the Federals moving around a lot in there. They should ought to be scared to death to step away from that parapet.”
“I'm doing it,” Chalmers repeated. This time, he smiled a little. “I've got sharpshooters picking off the Union officers whenever they see the chance, too.”
“There you go,” Forrest said. “That's what we need. If those coons and galvanized Yankees haven't got anybody to tell 'em what to do, they won't tend to something that needs tending, and we'll get the bulge on 'em that way. “
He started to ride on toward the Mississippi, but a minnie caught his horse in the neck. Blood gushed forth, hideously red and stinking like a smithy. Forrest tried jamming a finger in the wound, a trick that had kept another mount of his alive for some little while. This horse writhed and thrashed and reared, then crashed to the ground, pinning Forrest's leg beneath it.
Pain shot through him. He roared out curses, kicked at the animal with his free leg, and beat it with his fists. It rolled off him and thrashed away its life, kicking slower and more weakly as blood rivered out of it.
General Chalmers ran up to Forrest. “Are you all right, sir?” he asked, alarm making his voice almost as shrill as a woman's. “Can you get up?”
“Don't rightly know.” Forrest made himself try it. His breath hissed out between his teeth. Moving hurt like fire. But he could move, anyhow. “Don't reckon anything's broken,” he said.
His right trouser leg was torn. His flesh was bruised and scraped and battered. The whole leg would be purple and black and swollen tomorrow, if it wasn't already. But it bore his weight even if it screamed. He took a couple of limping steps. Yes, he could manage.
“You were lucky,” Chalmers said as he tried to walk off the worst of it.
“Lucky, my ass,” Forrest ground out. “If I was lucky, that damned Yankee minnie would've missed my horse. If it did hit the stupid critter, he wouldn't have fallen on me. That there's luck, General. This you can keep this.”
“The fall could have broken your leg-or your neck,” Chalmers said. “The minnie could have hit you instead of the horse.”
“All that would have been worse,” Forrest agreed. “Don't mean what happened was good.» He glowered at the beast that had brought him from Jackson. Its writhing was almost over now. Its blood pooled on the muddy ground and started soaking in. A man had an amazing lot of blood in him-you found out how much when he spilled it all at once. A horse had even more. Forrest had had plenty of horses shot out from under him, but he didn't think he'd ever had one hurt him so much when it went down. “Got to get me another animal. Will you tend to that for me?”
“Yes, sir,” Chalmers said, and then, stubbornly, “You'd still be safer on foot.”
“I'd be slower on foot,” Forrest said. “Nothing else matters now. And you don't think dismounted men are getting hit?” A wounded trooper howled and cursed as his friends led him back toward the surgeons. Forrest pointed to him the way a schoolmaster would have pointed to an example on the blackboard. He chuckled when that occurred to him, because his own acquaintance with teachers and blackboards was so brief and sketchy. He could read. He could write, too-after a fashion-however little he cared to do it.
Even if he had no education, he owned other talents in abundance. He had nerve and a fierce and driving energy. He also had an unfailing knack for seeing what needed doing at any given moment. And he could make people listen to him and take him seriously and do what he told them to do. Set against all that, knowing how to spell didn't seem so important. He had men under him who could spell. He was the one who set them in motion.
“A horse!” James Chalmers shouted now. “Get General Forrest a horse! “
One of the troopers brought up a large, sturdy-looking beast. A horse needed to be of better-than-average size to bear a man of his weight. “Thank you kindly, Edgar,” Forrest said.
“You're welcome, General!” Edgar's face glowed with pride: Bedford Forrest knew him well enough to call him by name! Edgar didn't know Forrest could call most of his men by name. He learned names quickly, and they were the easiest handle you could grab to get somebody to follow you.
Mounting hurt. It would have hurt worse if the blamed horse had fallen on his other leg. Jim Chalmers would have said he was lucky it didn't. Forrest didn't give a damn what Chalmers would have said. Almost getting his leg broken wasn't lucky, not so far as he could see. When he booted the horse into motion, riding hurt, too.
But walking would have hurt worse. And it would have been slower, and speed counted now. Speed always counted to Bedford Forrest. Plenty of people knew how he talked about getting there first with the most. If you got there first, sometimes having the most didn't even matter.
Over the next hour, he painstakingly reconnoitered from the Mississippi to Coal Creek. Like General Chalmers, Captain Anderson begged him to do the job on foot so he would offer the Yankees less of a target.
Voice testy-maybe the pain was talking through him-Forrest answered, “I'm just as apt to be hit one way as another.” And he had that sturdy horse shot out from under him (though it was only wounded), but got yet another remount and finished the reconnaissance. When he did, his smile was purely predatory. “We've got 'em,” he said.
V
BELOW THE BLUFF ON WHICH the innermost line of Fort Pillow's works sat, a crescent-shaped ravine ran north into Coal Creek. Corporal Jack Jenkins crouched in that ravine, only a few feet away from General Forrest, when Forrest declared that he and his men had the Federals inside the fort.
Jenkins was glad General Forrest thought so. Forrest commonly knew what he was talking about. Jenkins hoped the general did this time. He hoped so, yes, but he was a hell of a long way from convinced.
If Coal Creek Ravine wasn't hell on earth, you could see it from there. Jenkins had ridden through the Hatchie bottoms to get to Fort Pillow. Coal Creek seemed a distillation of everything that was worst about the bottom country. The ground was muddy enough to suck the shoes right off a man's feet. Every sort of clinging vine and thorn bush seemed to grow there, all of them clutching at trouser legs and tunic sleeves when Jack and the other troopers in Colonel Barteau's regiment tried to push on toward the fort.
Poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac… Jenkins tried not to think about any of those. If he broke out in welts later on, then he did, that was all. Now he just wanted to close with the enemy.
One thing worked in his favor, and in favor of the rest of the men in the Second Tennessee Cavalry (C.S.). Because Fort Pillow stood so high above Coal Creek Ravine, and because its earthen rampart was so thick, the soldiers inside the fort had to crawl out on top of the earthwork to shoot down into the ravine. When they did, Confederate sharpshooters farther back and higher up had clean shots at them. After a couple of Federals were wounded, or perhaps killed, the rest seemed less eager to expose themselves.
The cannon inside Fort Pillow would not bear on the ravine at all. Every so often, shrapnel rounds or solid shot would snarl by overhead, but they always came down far to the rear.
That didn't mean the troopers in Coal Creek Ravine went altogether free of bombardment. The Yankee gunboat out in the Mississippi lobbed an occasional shell into the ravine. Jenkins hated the gunboat. It could strike with impunity, for the Confederates weren't able to shoot back at it. But it was firing blind. Just as the bluff and the fort atop it shielded the gunboat from C.S. fire, so they also shielded the Confederates from the sailors who aimed the boat's cannon.
Some of the black men and Tennessee Tories inside Fort Pillow had nerve enough to keep exposing themselves to Confederate fire. One Negro soldier crawled out on top of the earthwork and had his pals within the fort pass him one loaded rifle musket after another, so he sent an almost continual stream of bullets down into the ravine.
Corporal Jenkins took a shot at him. So did a couple of other Confederate troopers not far away. The smoke that burst from their rifles announced where they were. In moments, the Negro sent minnies whistling through the undergrowth close to each of the three men.
As Jenkins reloaded, he said, “To hell with me if that nigger's not too dumb to realize how much trouble he's in.”
“I wouldn't be crazy enough to stick myself out there, that's for damn sure,” one of the nearby Confederates agreed.
More bullets whipped past the colored man. Had he been white-even if he were only a homemade Yankee-Jenkins would have respected his courage. But the corporal didn't want to admit, even to himself, that a Negro had courage. If a black man could be brave, wasn't he much the same sort of man as a white? And if he was much the same as a white, how could he also naturally be a slave?
Those two things didn't fit together. Jenkins could see that as plainly as Abe Lincoln could. Where it forced the President of the United States to conclude that all men should be free, it forced the Southerner and most of his comrades to deny the possibility that Negroes could show the same sort of courage as white men.
If Jenkins saw a black man exposing himself to enemy fire, then, the blue-uniformed Negro couldn't be brave. He had to be stupid instead.
Another Minie ball clipped leaves and twigs a few feet away from Jenkins. “This here's warmer work than I reckoned it would be,” he said.
“We'll get 'em,” another trooper said. “Long as they don't get reinforced from down the river, we'll get' em. And even if they do, we've still got most of the high ground. We'll make' em sorry they holed up in there.”
Squelching through the mire at the bottom of Coal Creek Ravine, Jenkins thought of high ground as little more than a rumor. Something slithered over his boot and vanished in the bushes. Maybe it was just a water snake, not a copperhead or a cottonmouth. He hoped so, because he didn't know how far away it had slithered.
After what seemed like forever and was probably fifteen minutes or so, the Negro soldier let out a holler and scrambled back into the fort. “Somebody nailed the son of a bitch!” Jenkins exclaimed. “About time!”
“You see where he got it?” one of his friends asked gleefully.
“Not me.” Jenkins shook his head. “I was ramming a cartridge home.” That was true, but he wasn't sorry to have been screened off by the undergrowth. The damn coon had come too close to hitting him a couple of times. “So where?”
“They shot him right in the ass,” the other C.S. trooper said. “Probably give him a brain concussion,” Jenkins said. “Remember that Yankee general who said he was going to make his headquarters in the saddle?”
“That was General Pope. He had his headquarters in his hindquarters, just like that nigger,” the other man said. “Once he ran up against Bobby Lee, it didn't matter where his headquarters were at anyways.”
“You're sure right there,” Jenkins said. Every Federal general who'd operated against Robert E. Lee had come to grief. The Confederates' luck wasn't so good out here in the West. But they were still in the fight, and the Union troops holed up in Fort Pillow would pay for forgetting it.
A bullet cracked past Bill Bradford, close enough to make him duck. He imagined he felt the minnie tug at the brim of his slouch hat, but the hat seemed untouched when he took it off and looked at it. He set it back on his head, pulling it down low as if to make himself a smaller target.
Another Confederate fired at him. Again, the bullet made him flex his knees. This time, though, he felt no phantom tugs. He scowled at the cloud of black-powder smoke rising from one of the barracks in front of the fort. The Confederates seemed to infest both rows of wooden buildings.
“Captain Carron!” he called.
“Yes, sir?” the artilleryman answered, standing by his twelve-pounder.
“Will that piece of yours reach those barracks halls? The Rebs have got men in them, and they're close enough to make the fire annoying.” That was a polite way to put it. When the Rebs almost parted his hair with a Minie ball, Major Bradford wasn't just annoyed. He was scared green.
Captain Carron shook his head. “Sorry, Major, but I can't do it.
The gun won't depress far enough to hit those huts. “
“Damnation,” Bradford said. “How am I supposed to shift the devils sheltering in them, then?”
“You could burn them out,” Carron suggested.
Bradford hadn't thought of that. Now that the artillery officer planted the idea in his mind, though, he found that he liked it. “Lieutenant Leaming!” he said. “Where the-? Oh, there you are.”
“Yes, sir. Here I am,” his adjutant agreed. “What do you need from me, sir?”
“I want you to gather a-a storming party, I guess you'd call it,” Bradford answered. “The Rebs are shooting at us from those barracks.” He pointed. “I want the men to take torches along with their Springfields. They are to burn down the buildings and then return to the fort. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Leaming said. “Do you think fifty men will be enough? Shall I send some niggers along with our Tennessee troopers?”
“If fifty can't do the job, no larger number can,” Bradford said. “And no, leave the niggers here inside the fort. I don't know how well they'd fight out in the open, and they shouldn't go out where they can be captured, anyway. Forrest's men don't love colored soldiers.”
“All right, sir,” Leaming replied. “I'll tend to it.”
There was some small delay assembling the storming party. There was a larger delay equipping the troopers with torches. But they swarmed out of the fort bravely enough. “Hurrah!” they shouted as they went forward. “Hurrah!” The U.S. war cry wasn't so impressive as the Rebel yell, but they showed good spirit.
The Confederates didn't have many men in those barracks buildings. H they had, they could have slaughtered the onrushing men from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry. They did knock down a couple of soldiers, but only a couple. Then the men in blue reached the first row of barracks.
Major Bradford whooped when smoke began to rise. The rains of the past few days had soaked the wood; he'd feared it wouldn't catch. But two or three of the buildings started burning. His men also fired at the Confederates lurking there. And they'd gone out with fixed bayonets. They could skewer any Reb who got too close.
Most of the time, a bayonet made a good knife and a good candle holder, but not much else. In close combat where a foe might jump out any time, though…
The Federal assault naturally drew the enemy's notice. Confederates ran toward the two rows of barracks buildings, too. The Rebs rushing up had no kind of order, but they outnumbered the men from the U.S. storming party.
“Come on!” Bradford shouted to the Tennessee troopers inside Fort Pillow and to the colored artillerymen now fighting as infantry. “Shoot those Rebel bastards! Don't let them gain a lodgment there!” He wondered if the Negroes knew what a lodgment was. It didn't matter. They could see that letting the Confederates shoot at them from cover at close range wasn't a good idea.
As he ordered the black men to shift position behind the earthwork so more of them could fire at the wooden buildings, he paid them the highest compliment any officer from Tennessee could give: he forgot what color they were. He treated them the same way as he treated the troopers from his own regiment. In time of danger, they were all just.. soldiers.
Maybe some of the Negroes had dipped up a little too much Dutch courage. They capered and gestured to show their scorn for the enemy. Along with obscene taunts, they thumbed their noses and stuck their thumbs in their ears and waggled their fingers. They made ridiculous faces, their expressions all the more absurd because their teeth and tongues and eyeballs showed up so well against their dark hides.
And Major Bradford laughed and slapped his thigh and urged them on. Let the Rebs see his men weren't afraid (even if he was). Let them see Negroes could fight, too. He wouldn't have believed it himself, but he had no more doubts. They could. They really could.
A minnie kicked up dirt between Matt Ward's feet as he ran toward the two rows of wooden huts in front of Fort Pillow. Another snapped past at about breast height. A couple of feet to the right and it would have torn his heart out.
He didn't have time to be afraid-or maybe he was already as afraid as he could be, and one more near miss made no difference. He dashed past somebody who lay on the ground writhing. Poor bastard, he thought, and tried not to remember that that could still happen to him. With luck, it was only a flesh wound, and the other man would get better if it didn't fester. Without luck… Well, that was one more thing you didn't want to think about.
Then he got in back of the second row of wooden shacks. Bullets stopped flying all around him. His relief lasted perhaps half a minute. After that, he realized the fight went on, and at close quarters. This was different from shooting at the enemy from long range. You had to think about when you pulled the trigger here, because you were hideously vulnerable if you fired and missed and had to reload. Ward wished for a six-shooter instead of his single-shot Enfield.
Wishing didn't make a revolver fall out of the sky. He edged up to the space between two buildings. Ever so cautiously, he stuck out a hand, as if to feel if the enemy was there.
When no one shot at him, he looked into the space. No Yankee rushed toward him or, worse, waited with aimed rifle musket for a target more deadly than a hand. Carrying his own weapon at the ready, he moved up toward the first row of buildings.
Smoke made him cough. The homemade Yankees had already fired some of the barracks. He saw a running shape through the smoke. Friend or foe? The other soldier saw him, too, and started to bring his musket up to his shoulder.
That decided Matt. Anyone who aimed a weapon at him was an enemy, no matter which uniform he had on. Ward shot first. The other soldier screamed and staggered and fell. He fired, too, but wildly, into the air.
He wasn't dead. He feebly tried to crawl back toward Fort Pillow. That told Ward he really was a damnyankee. Rushing forward, the Missourian drove his bayonet home again and again. He'd never used it before, but he'd never been in a mad, cramped fight like this before, either.
He was amazed and more than a little appalled at how many times he had to stab before the other man stopped moving. Sometimes people were harder to kill than anyone who hadn't fought in war could imagine.
Just then, with the Enfield unloaded, Ward felt all too easy to kill. He reloaded as fast as he could, trying his best not to drop the cartridge or fumble with the ramrod or do any of the other stupid things that would waste time. He'd heard of men who, in the heat of battle, rammed home cartridge after cartridge without ever putting a cap on the nipple. With the roar of gunfire all around, they got too excited to notice that their piece wasn't roaring or belching smoke or kicking. Sometimes they would cap it with several rounds in the barrel. Then the rifle musket commonly blew up in their face.
Cartridge bitten open and rammed home. Copper cap on the nipple. Enfield half cocked. Ward nodded to himself. He was ready to shoot again. The smoke got thicker. He coughed and rubbed at his streaming eyes. Between the smoke and the black powder he got on his face whenever he reloaded, he hoped his fellow troopers wouldn't shoot him for a nigger.
The row of buildings closest to the fort was on fire. The damned Tennessee Tories had done that much, and Ward didn't see what he and his comrades could do but let those huts burn. The second row remained intact. The barracks there could still give the Confederates good cover… if the Federals didn't fire them.
Another indistinct shape came through the smoke. No, this fellow had a torch in his hand, which left no doubt whose side he was on. “Forrest!” Ward shouted, and fired at him.
To his disgust, he missed. Before, he'd sniped at men inside Fort Pillow from several hundred yards, and was pretty sure he'd scored hits. Here he could damn near spit on this bluebelly, but he missed him. It was embarrassing. It happened all the time, but it was still embarrassing.
“Jesus God!” the enemy trooper screeched when the rifle musket roared not thirty feet away and the minnie cracked past him. He dropped the torch and dashed back toward Fort Pillow in great terrified bounds, his feet hardly seeming to touch the ground. Ward didn't think a catamount could have caught him, let alone a mere man.
Missing him hadn't been so bad, then. He was out of the fight here, anyway. Matt Ward tried to console himself as he reloaded again. You could talk yourself into believing almost anything if you tried hard enough.
More and more men in blue uniforms ran back to the earthwork on the bluff. Unless the wind suddenly swung, it didn't look as if the second row of wooden buildings would catch. And if they stayed intact, Ward and the other Confederates who'd saved them would be able to go on peppering Fort Pillow from the cover they gave. That was the point of the clash.
For a little while, the smoke and flames rising from the nearer row of barracks buildings let Lieutenant Mack Leaming believe both rows were on fire. But the bullets still coming from the wooden structures soon disabused him of that notion. The men he'd sent out to burn both rows of buildings at Major Bradford's orders had torched the first row, but not the second. They wouldn't have the chance to do it now. They were falling back toward Fort Pillow. Some of them were running, scrambling up the forward face of the bluff as far as they could go. Others moved more slowly-those were men who would pause to shoot at the Rebs when they got the chance. Still others helped wounded comrades toward what they hoped would be safety.
A bullet whistled over Leaming's head. He didn't worry about bullets that whistled. They were too far away to be dangerous. Bullets that cracked by-those were the near misses, the scary rounds. People said you never heard the one that got you. Leaming didn't know if that was true, and didn't want to find out, either.
“Lieutenant, why are those men retreating?” Major Bradford demanded.
“Sir, there are probably too many Secesh troopers to hold off,” Leaming answered. “If they don't come back, they'll all get killed.”
“But they didn't do what I sent them out there to do,” Bradford said.
“No, sir,” Leaming said. Sometimes-often-the least answer you could give was the best one.
“But they needed to burn those buildings,” Bradford said. “We are in danger as long as Forrest's men can fire from them.”
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Leaming said. It wasn't as if Bradford were wrong. They were in danger from the Confederates in the barracks buildings. As if to prove as much, a minnie snapped past over the major's head. Bradford automatically ducked. So did Leaming.
“What are we going to do? We can't let them establish themselves there,” the commandant said.
We can't stop them from establishing themselves there, Leaming thought. We tried. It didn't work. Major Bradford had to know that as well as he did. Since Bradford had to know it, Leaming couldn't think of any answer for him. Then he had a happy thought. “Maybe the New Era can shell them out. “
“Maybe.” Major Bradford brightened. He had great faith in the gunboat in the Mississippi-more faith than its performance so far justified, as far as Leaming was concerned. “Go tell my brother to direct the gunboat's fire against those buildings.”
“Yes, sir.” Lieutenant Leaming tried to sound cooperative, not resigned. He'd given the major the idea, after all. He trotted over to Captain Theodorick Bradford at the edge of the steep bluff leading down to the river. “Your brother's compliments, sir, and he says for you to tell the New Era to pound the stuffing out of the barracks halls and drive the Rebs out of ' em.”
“Well, I'll try,” Theo Bradford said dubiously. He held up the pair of large wigwag flags and semaphored with great vigor. Leaming peered down, down, down to the New Era. From this distance, the gunboat seemed hardly bigger than a toy.
An officer-or maybe a sailor-on her deck signaled back.
“What's he say?” Leaming asked.
“Says they'll try-I think.” Captain Bradford sounded harried. “I wish to God I had a spyglass so I could make out his flags better. I can't be sure what he's telling me half the time.”
“Can he read you?” Leaming asked anxiously.
“I sure hope so,” Theodorick Bradford said-not the most encouraging response he could have given.
But the New Era had the request. The gunboat did its best to comply. Its guns swung in the direction of the twin rows of barracks halls. Leaming admired that-the sailors far below couldn't see what they were aiming at. One after another, the cannon went off. Fire and smoke belched from their muzzles. He watched the shells rise into the cloudy air, then descend toward their targets. Booms said they'd hit-somewhere.
“Were those on the mark?” Leaming asked.
Captain Bradford shrugged. “Damned if I know. I can see the gunboat, or else I can see what it's shooting at. I can't do both at once.” He waved the wigwag flags again. “The more shell the boat puts down, the better the chance that some of them will come down where we want them to.”
“I see,” Leaming said. He didn't say what he saw, which was bound to be just as well. Since he couldn't change anything, complaining wouldn't do him any good. But Major William Bradford plainly thought the New Era was a vital part of Fort Pillow's defenses against Forrest's men. And so the gunboat might have been-if only it could hit its targets with something resembling accuracy. As things were… Mack Leaming grimaced. As things were, the New Era was doing the best it could, and he had to hope that would be enough.
Not long after Nathan Bedford Forrest finished his reconnaissance of the ground in front of Fort Pillow, a soldier in a butternut tunic and blue trousers trotted up to him. He'd issued orders that shirts captured from the Yankees had to go into the dye pots right away so his men wouldn't shoot at one another by mistake. Trousers were supposed to be dyed, too, but that was less urgent.
“What's up, Red?” he asked.
About half a dozen men in his command answered to that nickname. This lanky Mississippian had hair the color of a newly minted copper penny and ears that stuck out a good four inches. He said, “Ammunition wagons just came up, General.”
“Did they, by heaven?” Forrest said. “About time!”
“Yes, sir,” Red said. He probably didn't worry about the struggle they'd had moving those wagons along the narrow, rutted, muddy roads that went through the Hatchie bottoms, especially the troubles they'd had moving them along in pitch darkness. He did have sense enough to ask, “Any special orders for 'em?”
“Just make goddamn sure you get those cartridges up to the men who need 'em the most,” Forrest answered.
Red sketched a salute and went back the way he'd come. Bedford Forrest slowly nodded to himself. Up till now, his men had had only the cartridges they carried with them. They were supposed to bring enough to fight with-a rifle musket and cartridges were all a soldier really needed. But some would have more ammunition, some less, and some none at all. Forrest knew only too well that plenty of soldiers were natural-born knuckleheads.
With the wagons here at last, though, he didn't have to worry about that any more. He wished he would have been able to bring field guns forward, too, but that just wasn't in the cards. One of the Federals' cannon roared. The guns in the fort and the ones on the boat in the river were nuisances, but they weren't anything worse than nuisances. If he could have dropped shells into that cramped space inside the U.S. earthwork, though…
He shrugged. Worrying about might-have-beens wasn't his style. Another cannon inside Fort Pillow fired at his men. Those really were niggers manning the guns in there. Easy enough to seem brave when they were shooting from inside an earthwork. They wouldn't act like such big men when they met his troopers face-to-face. His hands folded into fists. He was sure of that. Oh, yes.
For now, though, the coons were having a high old time, skylarking and fooling around and mocking Forrest's men as if the Confederate soldiers would never have the chance to pay them back. They gave the troopers obscene gestures. One Negro even turned around and dropped his pants to show them his bare brown backside.
Forrest hoped that Negro would take a bullet where it did him the most good. No doubt all the Confederates who saw him did their best to give him what he deserved. But he pulled his trousers up again, waggled his bottom at the attackers one last time, and jumped down behind the rampart again.
In spite of himself, Forrest laughed. Say what you would, that Negro had nerve-which only made him need killing more. Ordinary blacks were no great trouble. They did what they were told, the same way ordinary whites did.
An uppity nigger, though… An uppity nigger was trouble. He might as well have smallpox or measles or some other deadly, contagious disease. He could infect others with what he carried. And if he did, he made them dangerous to white men, too.
“We got here just in time, sir,” Captain Anderson said, coming up beside Forrest. Quiet fury filled the aide-de-camp's voice.
“How's that?” Forrest asked.
“Well, sir, the longer we let these niggers think they're soldiers, the longer they have the chance to believe it, the more trouble they'll be in the long run-not just facing us but spreading their nonsense to other coons,” Anderson said. “Better-much better-to nip all that in the bud.”
“I was thinking pretty much the same thing,” Forrest said.
“If we teach those sons of bitches a good lesson, every smoke who puts on a Federal uniform will remember it from here on out,” Anderson said.
“Don't know much about lessons. Don't care much about lessons, neither.” Forrest grimaced, remembering his own brief, irregular schooling. “I just want to get in there, clean this place out, and then go give the damn yankees another boot in the behind somewheres else.”
“A boot in the behind isn't what that one damnfool nigger deserved.” Captain Anderson still seethed. “A minnie up the cornholethat's more like it.”
“He'll get his,” Forrest said. “We can find out who he is and damn well make sure he gets his.”
“Yes, sir.” But Captain Anderson remained discontented. “He's not the only nigger acting that way-he's just the worst.”
“I know, I know.” A shell from the gunboat in the Mississippi crashed down not far from the row of wooden huts the Confederates had captured. The cannon in the fort wouldn't bear on those barracks buildings, but the gunboat kept pestering them. Another shell burst over there. Somebody screamed-a sliver of iron must have struck home. Forrest pointed that way. “Here's something for you to do, Captain. “
“What is it, sir?”
“Find yourself some men who don't look like they're busy doing anything else.” Bedford Forrest's mouth quirked in a wry grin-you could always find plenty of men like that on a battlefield. He pointed west, toward the great river. “Take' em over there. If we have to storm the fort, we'll want to grab the riverbank just as quick as we can. We'll be able to shoot back at that damn gunboat then, and we'll make sure the damnyankees can't land any reinforcements, too.”
“I'll do it,” Anderson said. “Reinforcements are about the only thing that can save that place, aren't they?”
“Nothing's going to save Fort Pillow,” Nathan Bedford Forrest said. “You hear me? Nothing.”
“Here they come again!” Captain Carron shouted. Sure enough, a couple of hours after their first headlong assault on Fort Pillow was beaten back, the Confederates made another push. Sergeant Ben Robinson and his crew served their twelve-pounder like steam-driven mechanical men. They sent one round of shrapnel after another at Bedford Forrest's troopers.
But the Rebs were able to get under the range of the gun, the way Robinson had feared they would. Because of the thick earthwork, the crew couldn't depress the cannon enough to bear on them when they drew near. It was up to the soldiers with Springfields then: the colored artillerymen who didn't have a big gun to serve and the dismounted troopers of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry.
They had the same trouble the gunners did, though to a lesser degree. Because of the thick parapet protecting Fort Pillow, they couldn't easily fire down on the enemy soldiers coming up the steep ground toward them. If they tried, they exposed themselves to Secesh sharpshooters. The Rebs were good marksmen; they wounded several Federals who tried to pick off their friends.
All the same, Forrest's men had to run a gauntlet to get too far forward for V.S. gunfire to bear on them. Enough of them got hit to make the rest lose heart. Most of them fell back out of easy range, with only a few hanging on down below where the men in the fort had trouble shooting at them.
Seeing Forrest's fierce fighters move away from Fort Pillow made Charlie Key and Sandy Cole and the rest of the blacks in the gun crew jump in the air and click their heels together. “Look at 'em run!” Charlie shouted. “Just look at 'em run! They ain't so god damn tough! “
Confederate minnies still cracked past the gunners. “They ain't quit yet, neither,” Robinson pointed out. If you forgot that-or maybe even if you didn't-you'd stop a bullet with your face.
Charlie was too excited to care. So was Sandy Cole. “So what if they ain't, Ben-uh, Sergeant Ben?” he said. “So what? You ever reckon you'd live to see the day when we had guns an' the buckra was runnin' from us? Feel so good watchin' 'em go, I reckon I done gone to heaven.”
“You keep carryin' on like a damn fool, a minnie send you straight to heaven,” Ben said gruffly. He knew what a sergeant was supposed to sound like. He'd had several fine white examples. And his own manner proved him an excellent scholar.
All the same, he knew just what Sandy was driving at. One of the reasons slavery persisted in the South was that whites intimidated blacks. Blacks had always been sure that if they got out of line, if they tried to rise up, whites would fall on them like an avalanche. Whites would be bold, whites would be fierce, whites would be fearless.
Negroes believed it, anyhow. How could they help but believe it when every sign of unrest was ruthlessly put down? Ben Robinson had believed it himself, back before the war started. Whites were so sure of their own superiority, they convinced Negroes of it, too. Didn't most colored men prefer light-skinned women to their duskier cousins? Weren't very black men, men with broad, flat noses and wide lips, reckoned uglier than those formed more in the image of their masters?
But how could you go on thinking somebody was better than you by nature when he ran away for fear that you would blow him a new asshole with your Springfield? Wasn't he a man, just like you? Wasn't he a frightened man, just like you?
It sure looked that way to Ben. Sandy Cole and Charlie Key weren't the only Negroes jeering at the Confederates as they fell back-far from it. The gun crews were fairly restrained; their officers seemed to have them well in hand. But the colored artillerymen serving as foot soldiers alongside the whites of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry were lapping up the sutlers' whiskey as if someone would outlaw it tomorrow. Robinson didn't know if that meant they weren't shooting straight. He didn't need to be Grant or Sherman to see that they weren't thinking straight.
“'Scuse me, Cap'n, suh,” he said.
“Yes, Sergeant Robinson? What is it?” Captain Carron gave his three stripes their due.
“Suh, kin we git the sutlers to put up them whiskey barrels now?” Robinson asked. “Reckon the men done plenty 0' drinkin'. Reckon mebbe some of 'em done too much drinkin'.”
“I don't think it's harming them any, Sergeant,” the white officer answered. “It keeps their spirits up, you might say.” He smiled at his own joke. Ben Robinson didn't. Carron's head swung this way and that as he looked along the line. “The Tennesseans are drinking, too, you know.”
“Yes, suh.” Robinson's agreement was thick with disapproval. If anything, the troopers made rowdier drunks than the colored artillerymen. One of the white men yelled something at the Confederates that would have made Robinson want to kill him were it aimed his way. “They is actin' like fools their ownselves.”
Captain Carron frowned. Ben knew why: he'd called white men fools. Even in the V.S. Army, even when it was an obvious truth, a Negro wasn't supposed to do that. Ben Robinson might not have been a slave any more, but he wasn't exactly a free man, either, not even in the eyes of the power that had put a uniform on his back.
Two colored soldiers, both laughing like idiots, shouted things at the Confederates that made what the Tennessee trooper had said sound like an endearment. That was so funny, they had to hold each other up. Then they shouted something viler yet.
But they might not have said anything at all if the drunken white man didn't give them the idea. Even through the din of cannon fire and musketry, those insults carried. Out there beyond rifle range, some of Bedford Forrest's hard-bitten troopers were shaking their fists at Fort Pillow.
Ben didn't want to make Forrest's men any angrier at him than they already were. Why couldn't anybody else see the plain sense in that?