Fort Pillow

I

Jackson, Tennessee, was a town laid out with big things in mind. The first streets were ninety feet wide. The first courthouse was built of logs, back at the start of the 1820s. Now, more than forty years later, buildings of red and gray brick prevailed. Oaks and elms helped shade those broad streets.

The Madison County seat had not flourished quite so much as its founders hoped. Still, with the Forked Deer River running through the town and two railroads meeting there, Jackson was modestly prosperous, or a bit more than modestly. It was a considerable market for lumber and furs and produce from the farms in the Forked Deer valley.

When civil war tore the United States in two, Jackson went back and forth between Union and Confederacy several times. Confederate General Beauregard made his headquarters there in early 1862. From that summer to the following spring, Jackson lived under the Stars and Stripes as one of U.S. Grant's supply depots. Then Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry ran the Yankees out again.

In June 1863, U.S. General Hatch defeated the Confederate garrison and reoccupied the town. Now, in April 1864, Forrest was back, and the Stainless Banner replaced the U.S. flag.

Forrest had his headquarters in the Duke home on Main Street. Two years earlier, Grant had stayed in the same two — story Georgian Colonial house. The Dukes were happier to accommodate the Confederate cavalry commander than they had been to host his opponent in blue.

Although Forrest went to church on Sunday morning, he did not treat the Sabbath as a day of rest. For one thing, he couldn't afford to. For another, his driving energy made him hate idleness at any time. He paced back and forth across the Dukes' parlor like a caged catamount, boots clumping on the rugs and thumping on the oak planks of the floor.

He was a big man, two inches above six feet, towering over the other Confederate officers in the room. He could have beaten any of them in a fight, with any weapons or none. He knew it and they knew it; it gave him part of his power over them. Though his chin beard was graying, his wavy hair had stayed dark. His blue eyes could go from blizzard cold to incandescent in less than a heartbeat.

“I wrote to Bishop Polk last week that I was going to take Fort Pillow,” he said. He had a back — country accent, but a voice that could expand at need to fill any room or any battlefield. “I reckon we can go about doing it now. All the pieces are in place. “

His aide — de — camp, Captain Charles Anderson, nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said. “General Buford's raising Cain up in Kentucky, and we've got enough men looking busy down by Memphis to keep the damnyankees there from moving north along the Mississippi.”

“About time we gave that garrison what it deserves,” Forrest said. “Past time, by God. Niggers and homemade Yankees…” He scowled at the idea.

“Wonder which is worse,” Anderson said.

“Beats me.” Nathan Bedford Forrest's scowl deepened. That black men should take up arms against whites turned every assumption on which the Confederate States of America were founded upside down and inside out. “You sooner get bit by a cottonmouth or a rattlesnake?”

Dr. J. B. Cowan, the chief surgeon on Forrest's staff, looked up from his cup of sassafras tea. “No,” he said. “I'd sooner not.”

The concise medical opinion made Forrest and the rest of his staff officers laugh. But mirth did not stay on the commanding general's face for long. Most of the white Union troops in Fort Pillow were Tennesseans themselves, enemy soldiers from a state that belonged in the Confederacy. When they came out of their works, they plundered the people who should have been their countrymen. If half of what Forrest heard was true, they did worse than that to the womenfolk. And so…

“We'll move then,” Forrest said. “Captain Anderson!” “Yes, sir?”

“Colonel McCulloch's brigade is at Sharon's Ferry along the Forked Deer, right?” Forrest said. Anderson nodded. Forrest went on, “And General Bell's got his brigade up at Eaton, in Gibson County?” He waited.

Charles Anderson nodded again. “Yes, sir, that's where he was last we heard from him.”

Forrest waved dismissively. “Yankees haven't got enough men up there to shift him, so that's where he's at, all right. How many soldiers you reckon McCulloch and Bell put together have?”

Anderson's eyes took on a faraway look. Under his mustache, his lips moved silently. He wore a neat beard much like Bedford Forrest's. “I'd say about fifteen hundred, sir.”

“ 'Bout what I ciphered out for myself. Wanted to make sure you were with me.” Forrest's gaze sharpened. “Now, Captain, how many Yankees d'you suppose Fort Pillow holds?”

“It can't have half that many.” This time, Anderson didn't hesitate, though he did add, “They've got a gunboat out in the river to support the place.”

“That's bluff country,” Forrest said. “Gunboat won't be able to see up high enough to do 'em much good. Send orders to McCulloch and Bell, Captain. Get 'em moving tomorrow. I want them to hit Fort Pillow first thing Tuesday morning. We will take it away from the United States, and we will free this part of Tennessee from Yankee oppression. “

“Yes, sir,” Anderson said once more. “General Bell in overall command?”

“No, General Chalmers.” Forrest made a sour face. He'd tried to have James Chalmers posted somewhere other than under his command, but he'd been overruled both here in the West and by the War Department in Richmond. Chalmers was a good — better than a good — cavalry officer, but not respectful enough of those set above him. In that way, and in some others, he was more than a little like Forrest himself, though he had the education his superior lacked.

“I'll draft the orders, sir, and I'll send them out as soon as you approve them,” Captain Anderson said.

“Good. That's good. Tell General Bell especially not to sit around there lollygagging. He's got a long way to travel if he's going to get there by morning after next. He'd better set out just as fast as he can.”

Anderson's pen scratched across a sheet of paper. “I'll make it very plain,” Forrest's aide — de — camp promised. Forrest nodded. Anderson was a good writer, a confident writer. He made things sound the way they were supposed to. As for Forrest himself, he would sooner pick up a snake than a pen.

Fort Pillow was not a prime post. When it rained, as it was raining this Monday morning, Lieutenant Mack Leaming's barracks leaked. Pots and bowls on the floor caught the drips. The plink and splat of water falling into them was often better at getting men of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) out of bed than reveille would have been.

One of the troopers in the regiment swore as he sat up. “Listen to that for a while and you reckon you've got to piss, even if you just went and did,” he grumbled.

“Piss on the Rebs,” said the fellow in the next cot.

“Pipe down, both of you,” Leaming hissed. He was about twenty — five, with a round face, surprisingly innocent blue eyes, and a scraggly, corn — yellow mustache that curled down around the corners of his mouth. “Some of the boys are still sleeping.” Snores proved him right. Quite a few of the “boys” were older than he was.

The bugler's horn sounded a few minutes later. Some of the men slept in their uniforms. The ones who'd stripped to their long johns climbed into Federal blue once more. Some of them had worn gray earlier in the war. Most of those troopers were all the more eager to punish backers of the Confederacy. A few, perhaps, might put on gray again if they saw the chance.

Leaming chuckled softly as he pulled on his trousers. That wouldn't be so easy. The United States wanted men who'd fought for the other side to return to the fold. The Confederates were less forgiving. In places like western Tennessee, the war wasn't country against country. It was neighbor against neighbor, friend against former friend.

Some of the troopers wore government — issue kepis. More used broad — brimmed slouch hats that did a better job of keeping the rain out of their faces.

“Come on, boys,” Leaming said. “Let's get out there for roll call. Don't want to keep Major Bradford waiting.”

Bill Bradford was a man with pull. The Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry was his creation. Recruitment and promotion were informal in these parts. Since Bradford came into U.S. service with a lot of men riding behind him, that won him the gold oak leaves on his shoulder straps. And he'd made an able enough commander so far.

Pulling his own slouch hat down low over his eyes, Mack Leaming went outside. Along with the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, four companies of heavy artillery and a section of light artillery were lining up for roll call and inspection. Leaming lips skinned back from his teeth in a mirthless grin. The artillerymen came from colored outfits. The officers and senior sergeants were white men, but the men they led had been slaves till they decided to take up arms against the whites who'd held them in bondage — and who wanted to keep on doing it.

Nigger soldiers, Leaming thought. He didn't like fighting on the same side as black men in arms — he was no nigger lover, even if he fought for the U.S.A. A Negro with a Springfield in his hands went dead against everything the South stood for. Leaming also wondered if the blacks would fight, if they could fight.

They looked impressive enough. They were, on average, both older and taller than the men in his own regiment. They drilled smartly, going through their evolutions with smooth precision. But could they fight? He'd believe it when he saw it.

Major Booth, who commanded them, seemed to have no doubts. Leaming might have trouble taking colored troops seriously. Nobody in his right mind, though, could lightly dismiss Lionel Booth. He was a veteran of the Regular Army, his face weathered though he was only in his mid — twenties, one cheek scarred by a bullet crease. Though he and his men came up from Memphis only a couple of weeks before, he was senior in grade to Major Bradford and in overall command at Fort Pillow.

Back when the war was new, Confederate General Gideon Pillow ordered the First Chickasaw Bluff of the Mississippi fortified. With customary modesty, he named the position after himself. As the crow flew, Fort Pillow lay not quite forty miles north of Memphis. Following the river's twists and turns, the crow would have flown twice as far, near enough.

General Pillow didn't think small when he built his works. His line ran for a couple of miles from Coal Creek on the north to the Mississippi on the west. The next Confederate officer who had to try to hold the place built a shorter line inside the one Pillow laid out.

That didn't do any good, either. When the Confederates in the West fell back in 1862, Federal troops occupied Fort Pillow. The U.S. Army kept nothing but the tip of the triangle between the Mississippi and Coal Creek. The present earthworks protected only the bluffs at the apex of the triangle and ran for perhaps four hundred feet. The Federals did keep pickets in rifle pits dug along the second, shorter, Confederate line.

These days, six pieces of field artillery aided the defenders: two six — pounders, two twelve — pounders, and two ten — pounder Parrott long guns. They were newly arrived with the colored troops from the Sixth U.S. Heavy Artillery and Second U.S. Light Artillery. Having come under artillery fire, Leaming liked it no better than anyone else in his right mind. He assumed the Confederates felt the same way.

Major Bradford strode up in front of the drawn — up ranks of cavalrymen. Leaming saluted him. “All men present and accounted for, sir,” he said. Military formality sounded good. Outside the perimeter defined by the soldiers in the rifle pits, where would the troopers of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry go? If they didn't ride out in force, they were asking to get bushwhacked, to get knocked over the head and tipped into the Mississippi or buried in shallow graves with their throats cut.

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Bradford returned Leaming's salute with a grand flourish. He enjoyed being a major. He didn't much enjoy losing command of the fort to Major Booth. He couldn't do anything about it, though, not unless he wanted to arrange an accident for the younger man. Nodding to Leaming, he said, “Have the men fall out for sick call.”

“Fall out for sick call,” Leaming echoed.

Four or five men did. One of them shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Sir, permission to visit the latrines?” he said. When Leaming nodded, he scurried away.

Most of the sick men probably had some kind of flux of the bowels. Camp in one place for a while and that would happen, no matter how careful you were. Bad air or something, Leaming thought. Doctors couldn't do much about it. An opium plug might slow down the shits for a while.

If you were already plugged up, the surgeon would give you a bluemass suppository instead. Leaming didn't know what the hell blue mass was. By the way it shifted whatever you had inside you, he suspected it was related to gunpowder.

After roll call, he went up to Bradford and asked, “Any word of trouble from the Rebs?”

“Not here.” The other officer shook his head. “I reckon General Hurlbut started seeing shadows under his bed, that's all. Why else would he send us all those darnn niggers?” He had even less use for them than Leaming did.

“Worried about Forrest, I expect,” Leaming said. “Way he chased Fielding Hurst into Memphis…”

Colonel Hurst's Sixth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) had had the misfortune of running into a detachment from Forrest's force not long before. Hurst's men were rough and tough and nasty. They needed to be. Like the Thirteenth, they were homemade Yankees, and the hand of every Secesh man in the state was raised against them. However rough, tough, and nasty they were, they couldn't stand up to Forrest's troopers.

Major Bradford chuckled unkindly. “I hear tell Hurst ran away so hard, he galloped right out from under his hat.”

What could be more fun than hashing over another outfit's shortcomings? “I hear tell he left his white mistress behind,” Leaming said, “and his colored one, too.”

Now Bradford laughed a dirty laugh. “He had to have variety — unless he put 'em both in the same bed at the same time.” With a sigh, he pulled his mind back to matters military. “But anyway, Forrest isn't anywhere near here. He's off at Jackson, and that's got to be seventy miles away.”

“I was talking with one of the officers who came up with the coons,” Leaming said. “You know what Forrest had the nerve to do?”

“Son of a bitch has the nerve to do damn near anything. That's what makes him such a nuisance,” Major Bradford said. “What is it this time?”

“He sent Memphis a bill for the five thousand and however many dollars Colonel Hurst squeezed out of Jackson while he held it,” Leaming said.

Bradford laughed again, this time on a different note. “He better not hold his breath till he gets it, that's all I've got to say. He'll be a mighty blue man in a gray uniform if he does. Besides, that's not all Hurst has squeezed out of the Rebs — not even close.”

“Don't I know it!” Mack Leaming spoke more in admiration than anything else. Colonel Fielding Hurst had turned the war into a profitable business for himself. People said he'd taken more than $100,000 from Confederate sympathizers in western Tennessee. Leaming couldn't have said if that was true, but he wouldn't have been surprised. The Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry had done its share of squeezing, too, but the Sixth was way ahead of it.

“So anyhow,” Major Bradford went on, “I don't reckon we've got to do a whole lot of worrying about Bedford Forrest right this minute.”

“Sounds good to me, sir,” Leaming said.

Corporal Jack Jenkins had always hated Federals. Riding along these miserable roads in the rain did nothing to make him like them any better. Jenkins yawned in the saddle. The order from Jackson had reached Tyree Bell's brigade in Eaton in the middle of the night. Bell got his men in motion by midnight.

“Black as the inside of a hog,” somebody near Jenkins grumbled. “Black as a nigger's heart,” somebody else added. The horses' hooves plopped in the mud.

“Plenty of niggers in Fort Pillow,” Jenkins said. “Plenty of niggers, and plenty of Tennessee Tories.” He had no more love for the men from his state who clove to the D.S.A. than did any other Tennessean who followed the C.S.A.

“Keep 'em moving! Come on, keep 'em moving!” That was Clark Barteau, colonel of the Second Tennessee Cavalry (C.S.). “You want those damn Missourians to get there ahead of us?”

Protected by the darkness, somebody said, “Have a heart, Colonel. They ain't got as far to ride as we do.”

Had Barteau been able to see who was complaining, he would have made the trooper sorry for it. As things were, he said, “And you bet your life they didn't set out as fast as we did, either. Sons of bitches are likely asleep in nice, warm beds even now. We've got to work harder, but we'll make all this hard work payoff. Ain't that right?”

Nobody said no, not out loud. Men recognized a loaded question when they heard one. Too much growling and people would get in trouble even if the officers couldn't see who was doing it. They recognized voices — and they knew who was in the habit of saying what he thought.

“When McCulloch's brigade does get moving, I reckon he'll say, 'Hustle it up! You want them bastards from Tennessee and Mississippi to get there first?' “ Jenkins said.

He didn't pitch his voice to carry. Several soldiers close by laughed. One of them repeated it for a pal who hadn't heard. The pal passed it on. It made its way down the line of horsemen. Jenkins hadn't particularly meant it for a joke. He knew how officers got men to do what they wanted. You had to coax and cajole. Everybody in a cavalry regiment knew everybody else — people had grown up as friends and neighbors. You couldn't just give an order. Not even the damnyankees could get away with that very often. You had to give a reason, keep people sweet.

Jack Jenkins was not feeling sweet. The horse in front of his kept kicking up mud. He'd got splattered a couple of times, once right in the face. But he had to stay close behind; in this dripping darkness, he could easily lose the road. And if he did, how many men would follow him to nowhere?

Up in a tree, an owl hooted unhappily. It couldn't like the weather any better than he did. With raindrops pattering down, it couldn't hear scurrying mice. And it couldn't see them, either. Nobody could see anything here.

“Come on!” Colonel Barteau called. “Keep moving! Got to keep moving! Y'all want to learn the homemade Yankees a lesson, right?”

“You bet, Colonel!” Was that a trooper who really did feel like punishing the Federal soldiers in Fort Pillow, or was it some lieutenant pretending to be a cheery soldier? Jenkins couldn't tell, which made him suspect the worst.

He was hardened to the saddle, but a ride like this took its toll. When he finally dismounted, he knew he would walk like a spavined chimpanzee for a while. One more reason to take it out on the coons and the galvanized Yankees in Fort Pillow, he thought, and rode on.

Maybe Ulysses S. Grant was prouder of the three stars on his shoulder straps than Benjamin Robinson was of the three stripes on his left sleeve, but maybe he wasn't, too. No doubt Grant had risen from humble beginnings. He was a tanner's son. He'd failed at everything he tried till the war began. Only the fighting gave him a chance to rise.

And the same was also true of Sergeant Ben Robinson. Next to him, though, U. S. Grant had started out a nobleman. Ben Robinson was born a slave on an indigo plantation not far outside of Charleston, South Carolina. He'd heard the big guns boom when the Confederates shelled Fort Sumter.

Not long after that, his master ran short of cash and sold him and several other hands to a dealer who resold them at a tidy profit to a cotton planter with a farm outside of Jackson, Mississippi. Not without pride, Ben knew he'd brought the dealer more money than any of the other hands. He was somewhere around thirty, six feet one, and close to two hundred pounds. And he worked hard — or as hard as any slave was likely to work, seeing that he wasn't working for himself.

Once, drunk, his new owner told him, “If all niggers was like you,

Ben, we'd have a hell of a time keeping slaves.”

The white man didn't remember it the next morning. Ben Robinson never forgot it. He probably would have run off anyway when Federal troops got down to Corinth, Mississippi. He'd long been sure he could run his own life better than any white man could run it for him. But finding out that his master more or less agreed with him sure didn't hurt.

He'd been a stevedore, a roustabout, a strong back for the Yankees, too — till they started signing up colored soldiers. He was one of the first men to volunteer. Even the very limited, very partial freedom he had as a laborer struck him as worth fighting for.

His size and strength got him accepted at once. And, along with the good head on his shoulders, they got him promoted not once but twice. Officers in the Sixth U.S. Heavy Artillery were all white. Most of the sergeants were white, too. For a colored man to get his third stripe was no mean feat.

Ben Robinson had heard that there actually were a handful of Negro officers in the U.S. Army. There was even a major, a man named Martin Delany. But he'd been born in the U.S.A. and educated like a white man. For somebody who'd started out a field hand and who still couldn't write his name, sergeant was a long, long climb.

A soldier in Robinson's company tossed a well — gnawed hambone on the ground. “Is you a pig, Nate?” the sergeant called. “Way you leaves your rubbish all over, I reckon mebbe you is. Take it back to the kitchen an' throw it out there.”

Nathan Hunter scowled at him. “Is you happy you gits to play the white man over me?”

A lot of Negro soldiers preferred to take orders from whites, not from their own kind. It was as if they'd been taking orders from white men for so many generations, that seemed natural to them. But if another black man told them what to do, they saw him as a cheap imitation of the real thing.

“Don't want to be no white man.” Robinson meant that from the bottom of his soul. All the same, he tapped his chevrons with his right hand. “Don't got to be no white man, neither. All I gots to be is a sergeant, an' I am. This here place bad enough if we do try an' keep it halfway clean. If'n we don't, we might as well be pigs fo' true.”

Still scowling, Hunter picked up the bone and carried it away. Ben Robinson nodded to himself. Military punishments weren't so harsh as the lashes a master or an overseer could deal out — quite a few of the men in the Sixth U.S. Heavy Artillery joined the Army with stripes on their backs. But marching back and forth with a heavy plank on your shoulder or sitting out in the open gagged and with your hands tied behind you and your knees drawn up to your chest, while they weren't painful, were humiliating. For men whose sense of self often was still fragile, stripes could be easier to bear than embarrassment.

Although Robinson had the authority to mete out such punishments himself, he wouldn't have done it. Had he tried, a soldier would have gone over his head to an officer — probably straight to Major Booth. Better to let the men with shoulder straps — and with white skins — take care of anything really serious.

He walked over to the twelve — pounder for which his company was responsible. The smoothbore gun threw an iron ball as big as his fist a mile, or hurled a round of shrapnel just as far. At close range, canister turned the piece into an enormous shotgun that could mow down everything in front of it.

Ben set a proud, affectionate hand on the smooth curve of the barrel, almost as if it were the smoothly curved flank of a woman he loved. He hadn't seen combat yet, but he'd practiced with the gun. He knew what it could do. He frowned. He knew what it could do if it got the chance.

Sergeant Joe Hennissey belonged to Company A. He had no more rank than Robinson, but he had white — very white — skin, red hair, and a beard the exact color of a new penny. He had a better chance of getting something done than Robinson did. The Negro waved to him. “Reckon we got us some trouble here, Sergeant,” he said.

“And why might that be?” The Old Sod still filled Hennissey's voice. To most whites, an Irishman was only a small step up from a Negro. To Ben Robinson, looking up at the whole staircase, the distinction between the Irish and other whites was invisible.

“When they made this here fort, they made the goddamn parapet too thick.” Robinson kicked at it: eight or ten feet of earthwork.

“Got to be thick enough to be after keeping out the Secesh cannonballs, now,” Hennissey said.

“Oh, yes, suh.” Ben knew he wasn't supposed to call the other sergeant sir, but he did it half the time without even thinking. Calling a white man sir was always safe. The redheaded sergeant certainly didn't seem to mind. “But look here, suh. Suppose them Rebels is comin' at us, an' suppose they gets down in the low ground under the bluff. We can't git the guns down low enough — “

“Depress 'em, you mean.”

“Depress 'em. Thank you kindly.” Robinson was always glad to

pick up a technical term. “We can't depress 'em enough to shoot at the Rebs when they is gettin' close to we. Almost like not havin' no guns at all, you know what I's sayin', suh?”

Hennissey scratched his beard. Once he started scratching, he seemed to have trouble stopping — he wasn't scratching for thought any more, but because he itched. Seeing him scratch made Ben want to scratch, too. He was lousy. Most of the men at the fort were.

“We can't be doin' much about where the guns are at,” the Irishman said at last. “But I wouldn't worry my head about it too much, Ben me boy. For one thing, we can hit the Secesh bastards while they're still a ways away, so they'll have the Devil's own time coming close at all, at all. Am I right or am I wrong?”

“Reckon you's right, suh,” Robinson said.

“Reckon I am, too,” Hennissey said smugly. “And even if them sons of bitches do come close, have we got the New Era down there

on the river, or have we not? Be after tellin' me, if you'd be so kind.”

“The gunboat, she there, suh,” Ben Robinson agreed. Hennissey clapped him on the back. “All right, then. You'll fret yourself no more about it, will you now?”

“Reckon I won't,” Robinson said.

“Good. That's good, then.” Hennissey walked away.

Was it good, then? Still not convinced, Robinson walked over to the edge of the bluff and looked down at the Mississippi. Sure enough, the gunboat floated there. Seen from more than four hundred feet above the river, the New Era seemed as small — and as flimsy — as a toy boat floating in a barrel of water. Could its presence make up for the problems with the field guns? Well, he could hope so, anyhow.

Major William Bradford was a lawyer before the war turned western Tennessee upside down and inside out. Since then, he'd stayed busy doing the same thing as a lot of other Tennesseans on both sides: paying back anybody with whom he had a score to settle.

He'd done a good job — better than most. Because of that, he and the troopers of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) he led were marked men whenever they rode out of Fort Pillow. He didn't mind. If anything, it made him proud. They were marked men because they'd left their mark on their enemies. And when those enemies also happened to be enemies of the United States, well, so much the better.

He made himself nod to Lionel Booth when their paths crossed. “Good morning, Major,” he said, his voice as smooth as if he were in a courtroom.

“Morning, Major,” Booth replied. He spoke with a Missouri twang. He'd been a sergeant major in a Missouri regiment before winning officer's rank. He was shorter and squatter than Bradford — homelier, too, thought the Tennessean, who was vain of his looks. But Booth was also senior to him even if younger, and so commanded inside Fort Pillow. Bradford didn't like that, but couldn't do anything overt about it. “Can your niggers really fight?” he asked Booth.

“I expect they can,” the other man said. “And I expect they won't have to. All's quiet around these parts. It'll likely stay that way.”

“General Hurlbut doesn't think so, or he wouldn't have sent you up here,” Bradford said. Was that bitterness? He knew damn well it was. Fort Pillow had been his ever since the Thirteenth Tennessee came down from Paducah in January. Now it wasn't any more. The loss stung. Better not to show it, though. He couldn't get rid of Booth, however much he wished he could.

The senior officer shrugged. “When you build yourself a house, you're smart to dig a storm cellar down underneath. Maybe you won't need it. Chances are you won't, matter of fact. But if you ever do, you'll need it bad. So that's what we are — we're your storm cellar.”

Bradford's eyes flicked to the Negroes who'd come north a couple of weeks before. They were going about their business, much as any other soldiers would have. They paraded smartly enough. They probably marched better than the men from his own command, for whom spit and polish was a distinct afterthought. But marching in step didn't make their skins any less dusky or their hair any less frizzy. Bradford had just asked if they could fight. He didn't want to do it again, not in so many words. He tried a different question that amounted to the same thing: “If Bedford Forrest did show up here some kind of way, could we hold him off?”

To a Union man from west Tennessee, that was always the question. A preacher face — to — face with the Devil would have had the same worry. How could he help wondering, Am I strong enough? Fielding Hurst hadn't been, and Bradford was uneasily aware that the Sixth Tennessee was a bigger, tougher outfit than the one he led.

On the other hand, Forrest's men had caught Fielding Hurst out in the open. The garrison here had Fort Pillow to protect it. And Lionel Booth, maybe because he came from Missouri, didn't hold Forrest in the same fearful regard as local men did. “Major, if he showed up here, we would whip him back to wherever he came from,” Booth said, not the tiniest trace of doubt in his voice. “We can hold this fort against anybody in the world — in the world, mind you — for two days.”

“I like the sound of that,” Bradford said, which would do for an understatement till a bigger one came along.

“No reason you shouldn't. The truth always has a good sound to it.” Major Booth tipped his hat and went on his way. He sounded like a preacher who was ready to wrestle with the Devil, all right.

Despite his reassurances, Bradford hoped the Devil stayed far, far away. He was no coward, but he didn't care to borrow trouble, either. And Nathan Bedford Forrest was trouble with a capital T.

Bradford climbed up onto the earthworks enclosing the Federal garrison and peered east. His nerves sent him up there, not his common sense. He knew that. The drizzle — sometimes it was real rain — coming down drastically shortened his range of vision. He could barely make out the two rows of wooden barracks still left from the fort's earlier, larger incarnation, let alone the rifle pits beyond them. He knew those pits were there, and also knew soldiers in blue manned them. But they might have been a mile beyond the moon for all his eyes told him.

What else was out there that his eyes couldn't see? From everything Major Booth said, he didn't think any Rebel soldiers were within forty miles of Fort Pillow. Bradford hoped the younger man was right, and had no particular reason to think him wrong. He found himself worrying even so.

Nerves, he thought again, and made himself walk along the parapet for a while before coming down again. A few soldiers, both white and colored, sent him curious looks. He ignored them — he seemed to ignore them, anyhow. Lionel Booth, now… He thought Booth really was nerveless. Bradford envied him for that as well as for his seniority. Maybe such calm really did come with combat experience. Bradford hoped so. He'd raised the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry only the autumn before. None of the men in it had much.

None of them had much experience in a U.S. uniform, anyhow. More than a few had fought for the Confederacy before switching sides. They'd ridden whichever horse looked like a winner at the moment. Bill Bradford didn't worry about that. They weren't likely to change sides again. Nobody on the other side would trust them now. Whenever they came out of the fort, in fact, they needed to worry about bushwhackers who resented their changing sides once.

A colored sergeant bawled out a private for going around with filthy boots. But for his dialect, he sounded like every other sergeant Bradford had ever heard. The major wondered how often either Negro had worn shoes before joining the U.S. Army. Not very, not unless he missed his guess. They had them now, though.

And they acted like soldiers now. Would they act like soldiers when bullets flew and cannonballs screamed through the air? Bradford shook his head. He had a hard time believing it.

He shrugged. Before long, Forrest was bound to go back down to Mississippi. Then these coons would go away, too, and whether they could fight or not wouldn't matter a bit.