Fort Pillow

X

When Bill Bradford watched the New Era steam up the Mississippi, he felt like… He didn't know what he felt like. Like a man whose intended bride jilted him at the altar? Something like that, maybe. But a jilted bridegroom didn't die at the altar. He just wished he could.

The men defending Fort Pillow, on the other hand… Captain James Marshall, the commanding officer aboard the New Era, must have decided his gunboat couldn't stand the fire from the riverbank and the cannonballs from the artillery captured up on the bluff. He saw to the safety of his own men. He saw to their safety, yes-but he left the garrison to its fate.

A panicked trooper from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry clutched at Bradford's sleeve and shouted, “What the hell do we do now, sir?” An equally panicked colored artilleryman all but screamed the same question at him.

“Boys, save your lives,” Bradford said numbly. “I don't know what else to tell you.” He didn't know how to tell them to save their lives. He didn't know how to save his own life, either. The terror that filled the soldiers took root in his own heart, too. What to do? What to do?

From the south came the exultant whoops and jeers of the Confederate cavalrymen who'd forced the New Era to flee. “Yellowbellies!” they yelled, and “Cowards!” and “You stinking, gutless sons of bitches!” Hearing the enemy shout exactly what he was thinking was as humiliating an experience as Major Bradford had ever known.

Save your lives. It was easy to say. With Bedford Forrest's troopers already shooting down at the Federals from the top of the bluff, with those Secesh soldiers whooping and jeering by the river, it wouldn't be easy to do. He wondered if the Rebs would accept surrenders now. Part of him wished he'd taken Forrest's offer while he had the chance. Forrest was known for ploys and tricks, but he wasn't fooling this time. Bradford wished he had been.

Yellowbellied coward, Bradford thought furiously. Stinking son of a bitch. He stared across the muddy waters of the Mississippi at the receding New Era. If he ever met Captain Marshall again, he didn't think God Himself could keep him from punching the gunboat's skipper in the nose. And if Marshall felt inclined to resent that, Bradford was ready to go as much further as the Navy man cared to.

Bradford laughed a bitter laugh. He knew he wasn't a particularly brave man. He did his best to hide that, from others and perhaps most of all from himself, but he knew it. All the same, the prospect of a fight, or even a duel, with James Marshall worried him not a bit. He knew why, too. It was what he would have called a hypothetical question in the courtroom. A lot of things would have to happen for him to face Marshall again. Chief among them was his living through the combat here. And the chances of that didn't look good.

Some of the men still had fight in them. They grabbed cartridges from the crates Bradford had ordered brought here and fired at the closest Confederates. Major Bradford would have expected his white cavalry troopers to show more spirit than the colored artillerymen. The colored soldiers were only niggers in uniform, after all. He would have expected that, but he would have been wrong. Some blacks were terrified and despairing, yes, but so were some whites. The proportions seemed about the same in men of both races.

What that meant… was as hypothetical as punching James Marshall in the nose. If Bradford got out of this, he could worry about it later. If he didn't get out of this, he wouldn't worry about anything later.

“Ain't gonna give up to no Secesh sojers,” said a colored sergeant ramming a Mini? ball down the muzzle of his Springfield. “Even if them fuckers don't shoot me fo' the fun of it, reckon they sell me later. Ain't gonna be no slave again.”

Not many of the troopers from Bradford's own regiment showed anything close to that kind of spirit. The white major stared at the black underofficer. Bradford's own opinion of Negroes wasn't that far from Nathan Bedford Forrest's or any other Confederate's. He thought they made good slaves, bad freemen, and worse soldiers. He favored the U.S.A. because he didn't want to see the country broken in two-and because several prominent men in west Tennessee with whom he didn't get along well went all-out for secession. He'd paid them back ten times over. But he was worse than indifferent toward Negro rights; he was downright hostile, and didn't care who knew it.

Or he hadn't cared who knew it. He didn't think he would be smart to go on about niggers and coons where that grimly determined sergeant could hear him. The way the blacks in Fort Pillow fought had surprised him. The way the colored sergeant was ready to go on fighting no matter how bad things looked astonished him.

If we were wrong all along about what Negroes can do, then it doesn't matter if the Confederates win this fight, he thought. It doesn't even matter if they win this war. Sooner or later, their cause is doomed, and it will fall to pieces. It has to, because it rests on lies.

On a cosmic level, that might well be so. Back here in the mud by the edge of the Mississippi, who won and who lost mattered very much, because it told who lived and who died. Some of the Federals started south along the riverbank, perhaps hoping to get past the Confederate troopers who'd helped drive off the New Era.

A couple of them looked back at him, as if wondering if he would try to stop them. He didn't. For one thing, he wasn't sure they would obey him. Why should they, when his orders had led them to their present sorry state? For another, he wasn't sure they were wrong. What were they supposed to do, wait here for Bedford Forrest's troopers to shoot them to pieces? Certain disaster lay down that road. Maybe, if they pushed hard…

And maybe not, too. Every choice Bill Bradford made that day, even keeping his mouth shut, proved wrong. The men in blue fired a few shots-hardly enough to dignify with the name of volley-at the Confederates. The roar of musketry that answered sent them reeling back in dismay. Some bled. Some limped. Some didn't even reel, but lay dead or badly wounded by the river.

“They're coming!” a white Federal screamed. “They're on our tails! “

“Dey gwine kill all 0' we!” shrieked a Negro beside him. The black's terror and his thick accent made the words almost incomprehensible. But no one could misunderstand the fear that made him push through the crowd of soldiers, that made him throwaway his Springfield to run the faster.

And the panic from the men who'd taken that blast of musket fire-and the whoops and Rebel yells from the Confederates who were indeed on their tails-stampeded the rest of the Union troops into motion. What point waiting here for the massacre they all saw ahead? The New Era wouldn't rescue them now-they all saw that, too. And so, more a mob, a herd, than anything resembling soldiery, they pelted north, toward where Coal Creek ran into the Mississippi.

One more spooked steer, Bill Bradford ran along with the rest.

A few of the men in Colonel Barteau's regiment along Coal Creek fired at the Federal gunboat as it steamed away from the fight. “No, goddammit! Don't waste your ammunition!” Corporal Jack Jenkins roared, along with other underofficers and officers. “Jesus Christ!” he went on. “You can't hit the son of a bitch at this range, and even if you could, so what? She's iron-plated, for cryin' out loud.”

“Have a heart, Corporal,” a trooper said. “Damn boat's been shootin' at us all day long. Least we can do is pay her back a little.”

“Blow 'em a kiss. Wave bye-bye.” Jenkins suited action to word. “Bastard's gone. That's all we've got to worry about. Now reload your damn piece, and don't go shooting at anything till you got somethin' to shoot at. “

The private scowled. He muttered. But not only did Jenkins have two stripes on his sleeve, he was also taller and wider through the shoulders and, without a doubt, meaner. If the soldier tried to give trouble, he'd end up getting it instead. He might be a grumbler, but he wasn't a fool. He could see that for himself. And he did need to reload, regardless of whether he needed somebody to tell him to do it. He went right on muttering, but he followed Jenkins's order.

And Jenkins was happy enough to leave it right there. Getting troopers to do what you told them was a never-ending pain in the neck. They always thought they had a better idea, and they were bound and determined to go ahead with it no matter what.

He wondered if he was such a pest before he got promoted. A reminiscent smile stole over his face. He was. Not a chance anyone ever set over him would say anything different. He wondered how sergeants and officers ever put up with him. But the answer to that wasn't hard to find. No matter how big a nuisance he'd been, without even trying he could think of a dozen men who were worse.

“What do we do now?” somebody asked.

“There's damnyankees round the bend of the bluff, down by the

Mississippi. You can hear the bastards,” somebody else said. “Let's go kill 'em. Them bastards what went up into the fort, they've had all the fun.”

Jenkins felt the same way. But a nearby lieutenant shook his head. “We'll just sit tight for a little while, is what we'll do. Aren't a whole hell of a lot of us. We might bite off a bigger chaw than we can get in our cheek.”

“Aw, hell sir.” Jenkins was still a pain in the neck, whether he realized it or not. “They ain't real Yankee soldiers, not hardly. Nothin' but Tennessee Tories and niggers in blue shirts. One of us has to be worth… well, a bunch of 'em, anyways.”

“I said no.” The officer got stuffy, the way officers have since the beginning of time. “If they get through us, it's liable to give them an escape route. Do you want to see that happen?”

“No, sir,” Jenkins allowed. He knew how things worked. As long as he kept saying si1; he could get away with saying anything else he pleased, near enough. “But they ain't gonna get through us, sir. No way on God's green earth they can do that. You reckon niggers can fight better'n us… sir?” If the lieutenant said yes to that, he'd have a fight on his hands even if he did wear two bars on each side of his collar.

But the lieutenant shook his head. “No, no, no-of course not, “ he said impatiently. “Up till this combat, I wouldn't've reckoned niggers could fight at all: fight like soldiers, I mean.” He sounded faintly, or maybe more than faintly, troubled at having to admit even that much, and more troubled as he went on, “They've done better than anybody imagined they could, I'm afraid.”

“Well, I'm not afraid, sir. To hell with 'em. To hell with 'em all, and with the homemade Yankees, too,” Jenkins said. “Way they were scornin' us and cursin' us during the truce, they must've thought they were somethin' special. They ain't special enough, by Jesus, and they don't fight good enough, neither.”

“That's the spirit, Corporal,” the lieutenant said. “Don't let anything bother you, do you?”

“Not if I can help it, sir,” Jenkins said. “Anything in a blue uniform does bother me, reckon I've got an answer, too.” He held up his rifle musket.

The officer smiled. “Good. If it weren't for you and soldiers like you, we'd never get ourselves a free Confederacy.”

“Well, hell. We'll manage.” Jenkins had as much faith in that as he did in the Resurrection and the Second Coming. “Ain't we whipping the damnyankees out of their shoes here?” He hoped he found a dead Federal with feet his size. His own shoes were falling to pieces.

Around the bend, on the Mississippi River side of the bluff, the gunfire suddenly picked up. So did the shouts and yells. Jenkins had listened with much amusement to the Federals' cries of dismay when their precious gunboat left them in the lurch. After it steamed away, the coons and the homemade Yankees quieted down for a while. Now the fighting picked up again. And by the way the Federals moaned and wailed, things weren't going any too well for them. The Rebel yells that also rang out said those other Confederates on the far side of the enemy were having fun.

And the Federals were heading this way: the shouts were getting louder. For the first time, they also sounded frightened. Gauging things by ear-which was all he could do-Jenkins thought the Federals had put up a pretty fair fight until now. But the men heading this way didn't sound like soldiers under control. They seemed like men who'd had everything they could take, and a litde more besides.

Any Union soldier who saw Jack Jenkins's smile would no doubt have called it nasty. No matter how much the bluebellies had taken, they were about to get some more.

“You see, boys?” that know-it-all lieutenant sang out. “We didn't need to go to the fight. It's coming right to us. Y'all ready to give those Federals a little taste of Southern hospitality?”

“We'll give 'em just what they deserve, by God!” Jenkins said, and the lieutenant didn't grumble or fuss one bit. He only nodded. And his smile was every bit as predatory as the corporal's.

“Here they come!” Half a dozen troopers sang out at the same time as the Federals rushed up to Coal Creek and started away from the Mississippi along its southern bank.

They didn't find the safety they hoped for. They were in no kind of order, and didn't seem to be under any officers' control. Jenkins shot the lieutenant a glance of mingled annoyance and respect. Maybe the men who told ordinary soldiers what to do had some uses after all. Maybe.

“Let 'em get close,” the lieutenant said now. “Let 'em get close, and then give 'em a good volley at my command. May I face eternal damnation if we don't break those sons of bitches. Hold your fire till I give the order, y'all hear?”

Nobody said no. Even more to the point, nobody started shooting. On came the men in blue. Their “Hurrah!” made a poor excuse for a battle cry, but they used it when they were in good spirits. They weren't cheering now-oh, no. Some of them skidded to a stop when they saw a line of Confederates in front of them. Others kept coming-not so much because they were eager to attack, Jenkins judged, as because they didn't know what else to do.

Only a handful of Federals raised Springfields to their shoulders and fired, trying to clear the way of Bedford Forrest's men. One luckless Confederate howled and crumpled, clutching at a shattered knee. “At my order…,” the lieutenant said, and then, “Fire!”

Jenkins's rifle musket bucked against his shoulder. Smoke and flames belched from the muzzle. He took off his hat and fanned the air in front of him, trying to clear it enough to see not just through his own piece's smoke but that from the rest of the rifle muskets as well. The Union charge, such as it was, shattered like crockery on a big rock. Only eight or ten men in blue were down, but even the ones who didn't take a minnie felt the Angel of Death brush them with his dark wings.

“Charge!” the lieutenant shouted. A revolver in one hand and his ceremonial saber in the other, he set his own example.

Against determined foes, it would have been madness. It would have been suicide. But the Federals had no fight left in them. Some turned and pelted back in the direction from which they'd come. Others threw down their guns and tried to surrender.

Sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn't. Jack Jenkins saw some of his comrades send Federals back toward the rear-often with a kick in the rear as they went. Others shot men in blue uniforms at point-blank range or bayoneted them even as they got down on their knees and begged for mercy.

“Don't shoot! Sweet Jesus, please don't shoot!” a Federal sergeant called to Jenkins. He held out empty hands. “See? I ain't got no gun.”

He also didn't have an accent like Jenkins's. He was no Tennessean, no homemade Yankee. He really did come from up North; he seemed to pronounce every letter in every word. And that likely meant… “You one of those fellows who tell nigger soldiers what to do?” Jenkins barked.

“Yes, that's right,” the sergeant answered. “But-”

He got no further. Jenkins pulled the trigger. The minnie caught the Yankee right in the middle of the chest. The man stared in astonished reproach for a moment, as if to say, What did you have to go and do that for? He opened his mouth, as if to ask the question. His knees buckled instead. He flopped and thrashed on the ground like a sunfish just pulled from a stream.

“Hold still, God damn you,” Jenkins said, and used his bayonet. He stabbed several times, till the U.S. sergeant finally stopped moving. “You turn niggers into soldiers, you deserve worse'n I just gave you.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a bullet cracked past his head. For all he knew, a colored soldier fired it. He reloaded his own piece in feverish haste. He felt naked if he couldn't shoot back at the enemy. Some Yankee cavalrymen and even foot soldiers were getting repeating rifles that gave a company almost a regiment's worth of firepower. He thanked heaven nobody in Fort Pillow seemed to have guns like that. The lead they put in the air would have made storming the place gruesomely, maybe impossibly, expensive.

As he stowed his ramrod in its tube under the rifle musket's barrel, he wondered why the Confederacy couldn't make repeating rifles for its troopers. U.S. soldiers weren't any braver than their C.S. counterparts; with his own fierce pride, Jenkins refused to believe they were as brave. But the Federals would never lose the war because they ran short on things. Guns, ammunition, uniforms, railroads to take men where they needed to go, gunboats… The men in blue seemed to pull such things out of their back pockets, along with more food than they knew what to do with.

As for the Confederates… How many of Bedford Forrest's men were wearing captured clothing? Quite a few had blue trousers. A standing order required shirts to be dyed butternut right away, to keep the troopers from shooting at one another by mistake. A lot of Confederates carried captured weapons, too. The South simply couldn't make or bring in enough to meet its need.

Before the war, Southerners sneered at Yankees as nothing more than merchants and factory hands. The charge was true enough. But the South hadn't realized it brought strengths as well as weaknesses. Men fought wars, but they fought them with things. No matter how brave you were, you'd lose if you didn't have food in your belly, if you didn't have bullets in your rifle musket, if you didn't have gunboats to control the rivers. The Federals didn't have to worry about anything like that. The Confederates did, more and more as the fight dragged on.

But not right here, not right now. Forrest's motto was Get there first with the most men. He had the most men here, right where he needed them, and the Federals were melting away like snow in the hot sun.

A Negro running in front of Jenkins gave a despairing screech, threw his hands in the air, and wailed, “Do Jesus, don't kill me! I ain't done nothin' to nobody!”

“You one of those niggers yellin' you wouldn't give us quarter?” Jenkins growled.

“Oh, no, suh, not me! I ain't one o' them bad niggers!” The black man shook his head so hard, his cap flew off and fell to the ground beside him. He didn't seem to notice; all his fearful attention was on Jenkins. “I don’t want to fight no mo.

“I bet you don't, boy,” Jenkins said. “You a runaway?”

The Negro hesitated. If he said no, the way he talked would betray him-he sounded like someone from the deep South, from South Carolina or Georgia or Alabama or Mississippi. But if he said yes, he was liable to seal his own fate. Jenkins could watch the gears meshing and turning behind his eyes. In the end, all he said was, “Don't kill me, suh. I surrender.”

“You had your chance. All of you bastards had your chance. You should've took it when you could.” Jenkins squeezed the trigger.

Even he winced at what the Mini? ball did. It tore off the bottom half of the black man's face, leaving him gobbling and bleating because he could no longer make sounds resembling human speech. Blood poured down his front. But he would not fall. He would not die. He slumped to his knees and imploringly stretched out his hands to Jenkins. His eyes were enormous in his shattered face.

“Christ!” That was the Confederate lieutenant. He shot the colored soldier in the side of his head with his revolver. The Negro didn't try to stop him-the poor bastard's last gobble before he toppled over might have been meant Thank you. The lieutenant shook his head. “I wouldn't let a dog live with a wound like that, Corporal.”

“I'm sorry, sir,” Jenkins answered; it was horrific enough to sober him, which said a great deal. “I was gonna finish the son of a bitch. I had to reload, that's all.” He was doing it as he spoke. He forgot-or maybe he chose not to remember-that he'd bayoneted the white Tennessean after his bullet didn't finish the man right away.

“Well…let it go,” the lieutenant said. “Stinking bluebellies didn't give up when they had the chance. Now they're going to pay for it.”

“Oh, hell, yes.” There Jack Jenkins agreed with the officer one hundred percent. He stowed his ramrod and went back to the fight.

The smoke from the New Era's stacks was only a receding stain against the northern skyline. Nathan Bedford Forrest smiled a slow smile, the smile of a big cat that has fed well. The Federals inside Fort Pillow had surely counted on the gunboat's firepower to save their bacon for them. There had to be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth among them now, for they'd leaned on a reed that broke and pierced their hand.

Gunboats were wonderful-where the Mississippi was wide, and where they could shell soldiers who couldn't answer back with rifle muskets. If a gunboat came close enough to fire canister, though, good shots could put enough minnies through the gunports to remind them that the fight had two sides. Sailors didn't like being forced to remember that.

Now the New Era was gone, and Fort Pillow was gone, and nothing remained but the aftermath Forrest foresaw as soon as the U.S. commander refused to lower his flag. War means fighting, and fighting means killing, he thought with somber satisfaction. Quite a few generals on both sides shied away from that simple, brutal truth. He didn't. He never had. You did what you needed to do.

And now his men were… doing what they needed to do. He was abstractly sorry they were, but knew better than to try to stop them. Nothing so corroded an officer's authority as giving orders no one heeded. If he tried to stop the soldiers from paying back the Federals, they wouldn't listen to him. And so he hung back from the fighting, where usually he led the charge.

Some of the Federals were able to surrender. Grinning troopers herded white soldiers along-and some blacks as well. When the prisoners didn't move fast enough to suit them, a prod with the bayonet worked as well as spurs on a horse.

One of the soldiers in blue, a Negro, waved to Forrest. “I knows you, General,” he called. “I knows you, sure as anything.”

“Wouldn't be surprised,” Forrest answered-the black man looked familiar to him, though he couldn't put a name on the fellow. “You come through my nigger lots down in Memphis?”

“Yes, sub, I done that,” the black answered. “I done that a couple times, matter of fact.”

Bedford Forrest believed it. A slave who was sold more than once was liable, even likely, to be an uppity nigger, and one who was likely to run off and make trouble. Putting on the U.S. uniform, this one had made as much trouble as he could. Eyes narrowing in concentration, Forrest said, “I still don't recollect your name, but the last time I sold you I got… let me see… twenty-one hundred dollars for your worthless nigger carcass.” He spoke without malice; he might have described a good horse as crowbait the same way.

“That's my price, all right. “ The Negro's voice held a certain pride, too-it was a good price, a damn good price. Then the man did a double take and stared at Bedford Forrest. “How you remember? How many niggers you done sold since I go through there six, seven years ago?”

“Selling niggers is my business,” Forrest said. “I better remember — I'm in trouble if I don't. I wouldn't have got such a good price for you if you didn't have good teeth-I remember that, too. They still sound?”

“Sure enough are, suh.” The colored soldier's eyes got wider yet. “Do Jesus! You mus' be some kind o' hoodoo man, you call to mind a thing like that.”

“Not me.” Bedford Forrest's smile was half reminiscent and, again, half predatory. “Like I say, I've got to remember those things. When I came to Memphis, I didn't have fifty cents in my pockets. When the war started, though, I don't know if I was the richest man there, but hell with me if I can name four who were richer. And I got that way buying and selling niggers. What do you do when you're not trying to murder your masters?”

“I's a carpenter, sub,” the black man said. By the way he said it, he was a good carpenter, too, someone who took pains with his work.

That suited Forrest fine. “All right, then,” he said. “You'll know when to use oak and when to use pine, when to use nails and when to cut mortises and tenons, what kind of shellac to use, how to match grains-all those kinds of things. That's your business, so sure you know. Well, niggers are my business.”

In spite of himself, a certain sour edge touched his voice. No matter how rich he'd grown in Memphis, some people looked down their noses at him because he was a slave trader. That didn't keep them from buying and selling with him. Oh, no. He was useful. But he wasn't welcome in some homes no matter how much money he made. Hell with' em, he thought. He'd grown up on a hardscrabble farm, and lost his father while he was still young. He'd had to be the man in his large family himself then, and he'd damn well done it. If the men who owned slaves didn't care for the men who sold them, what did that prove? Only that they were fools. It was like despising the butcher while you ate his beefsteaks.

“Your sojers damn near kill me,” the Negro said.

“That's what you get for tryin' to fight white men,” Forrest retorted. “No, suh. I knows about fightin',” the colored artilleryman said.

“They killin' lots 0' Federals tryin' to give up. Onliest reason I didn't get shot is, trooper who catched me didn't have no bullet in his gun. I was tryin' to surrender, honest to God I was.”

“Too bad.” Bedford Forrest's voice went cold and hard. “I told Major Booth I could take that stupid fort. I told him he'd pay the price if he didn't give up. He wouldn't listen. Now he is paying the price, and so are you.”

“He done paid it, sub. Major Booth, he dead-he got kilt this mornin', 'fo' noon.”

“Oh, really?” Forrest heard the surprise that got into his voice in spite of himself. The Negro nodded solemnly. “Then who led the garrison there?” the Confederate commander asked.

“Major Bradford, he been in charge o' things ever since Major Booth die.”

“Bradford? That miserable little son of a bitch?” Forrest growled; the head of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry (US.) was not one of his favorite people, to put it mildly. The colored soldier nodded again. Forrest aimed a scarred forefinger at him like a pistol barrel. “You say Booth's been dead since before twelve o'clock?”

“Two-three hours 'fo' that, suh. Cross my heart an' hope to die.”

The Negro matched action to word.

“When we had the truce this afternoon before my men stormed the fort, every single note-every one-the Federals sent out to me had Booth's name on it,” Forrest said.

With a shrug, the black man answered, “I don't know nothin' 'bout that, suh. I's jus' powerful glad to be alive.”

“And you'll stay alive,” Forrest promised. “You told me something I didn't know-something I needed to know, by God. I wish I would've known it sooner, that's all.” He stabbed out his index finger again. “What's your name?”

“I's Hiram Lumpkin, suh.”

Bedford Forrest laughed. “To hell with me if I know how I ever forgot that.” He raised his voice to a shout: “Guards! This here nigger, this Hiram Lumpkin”-he spoke the name with enormous relish-”he just did me a favor. Y' all make sure you treat him good. I hear anything happened to him, it'll happen to you, too, only worse. You got that?”

“Yes, sir!” the Confederates chorused. Union troops didn't faze them. Their own fierce leader? That was a different story.

The Negro in blue saluted as if Forrest were one of his own officers. “Thank you kindly, suh. This here nigger, he right grateful.”

“Go on, then,” Forrest said, and Hiram Lumpkin hurried off into captivity with joyful strides. For his part, Forrest shook his head. “So Booth was dead all along, and Bradford never let on? How about that?” He could see why Bradford kept the senior officer's death a secret. Lionel Booth was a real soldier, and had a pretty good notion of what he was doing. Bradford, on the other hand, was nothing but a lawyer with a loud mouth. Had Forrest known he was in charge at Fort Pillow, he would have pushed the attack harder. Without a doubt, the place would have fallen sooner.

And so Bradford let him think the experienced officer still held command. And it deceived him, too. Bedford Forrest slowly nodded to himself. It cost the Federals in the end. When Forrest demanded a surrender, he was sure Major Booth would have given him one. Booth was no fool. He could see what was what, and he could see the writing on the wall. Bradford pinned his hopes on the New Era-and got them pinned back when she sailed away.

Would Bradford try surrendering now? Or would he have the nerve to fight to the death? Forrest had never heard anything suggesting that he was particularly brave. A slow smile spread over his face. He could hardly wait to find out.

Lieutenant Mack Leaming crouched behind a bush halfway down the bluff from Fort Pillow to the Mississippi. He'd watched men in blue run back and forth along the riverbank, pursued first by one band of Confederate soldiers and then by another. They were getting chewed to pieces down there, and more Confederates at the edge of the bluff only made things worse for them.

Part of Leaming wanted to go down by the river with the rest of the Union troops and share their fate. But he could see too clearly what that fate would be. They were getting picked off from three sides at once. The only direction from which nobody was shooting at them was from the Mississippi itself. Some of them threw away their weapons and waded out into the river to try to save themselves from the unending fusillade of lead. It didn't work. Bullets splashed into the water, kicking up little fountains. Although some men waded out up to their necks, that didn't keep them from getting hit.

Trails of blood started appearing in the muddy river. Gators might have followed those trails to see what made them. This far north, though, gators were scarce. It was too early in the year, too cool, for them to be very lively anyhow. The wounded Federals were spared one torment, then. They weren't spared much else.

Up at the top of the bluff, one Confederate trooper nudged the man next to him on the firing line. “Bet you four bits I can hit that nigger in the water there.” He pointed.

“Which one?” his pal asked. “I can't see which way your blamed finger's goin'.”

“The ugly bald coon, there behind that redhead.”

“All right. I see him. You won't hit the son of a bitch.” They were both shouting, which let Leaming hear them. Gunfire had likely stunned their ears to anything less than shouts.

“Hell I won't.” The first Confederate drew a bead and fired. He whooped. “Did I get him or did I get him? Bastard's headed for hell right now.”

“If he is, I better go to heaven, on account of I don't want to spend forever with a stinkin' nigger.”

“That's half a dollar you owe me.”

“Dumb luck. Dumb fuckin' luck. Bet you can't hit the redheaded Yankee. Double or nothin', all right?”

“Let me reload, by God, and I'll have me a dollar of your money.” Methodically, the first trooper started doing just that. He fired again. “There? You see? That damnyankee sank like a rock. I gave him what he had coming, and you can kindly give me a dollar.”

“Here, dammit.” The other Confederate paid up.

“This here is Secesh paper,” the first one grumbled. “It ain't hardly worth what it's printed on. I wanted a real U.S. greenback.”

Even the Rebs knew U.S. money was better than their own. The second trooper shook his head. “You didn't say what kind of dollar we were bettin', and you wouldn't give me any better if I won a bet off you. Ought to be grateful you're getting any dollar at all. You sure won't see a different one, and that's the Lord's truth. “

“Don't take His name in vain, Cyrus,” the first trooper said. “Bart, you tend to your own little shriveled-up mule turd of a soul, and I'll take care of mine. How does that sound?”

Mack Leaming thought it sounded like good advice. He also thought it was about time to give himself up if he could. Here and there, stubborn U.S. soldiers, white and colored, were still banging away at Bedford Forrest's men. They would undoubtedly wound some, even kill some. They had no chance at all of changing the way the battle was going.

Without even a pistol, he couldn't shoot back no matter how much he wanted to. He'd done what he could with a cavalry saber. He'd done more good for the U.S. cause with only a cavalry saber than he'd imagined he could. Now he had to trust to the mercy of enemies who weren't showing much. He watched a trooper in filthy butternut walk up to a wounded Negro crawling on the ground and blowout the black's brains.

“There you go, Tyler!” another Confederate called as the grubby trooper reloaded.

Up on top of the bluff, where the fighting was about done, things would be calmer. So Leaming reasoned, anyhow. He started crawling up the steep side again. If he could get someone to take his surrender…

All I want to do is go on living, he thought. Is that too much to ask? Please, Jesus, tell me it isn't.

He got to within perhaps fifteen paces of the top of the bluff before he dared to stand up. When he did, he looked at the saber he still held in his right hand. Then he looked up at the ground for which the Federals had fought, and which they'd lost. Three or four Rebs were watching him intently. They might have been wolves wondering when a sick deer they were chasing would stumble and fall.

Wishing that particular comparison hadn't occurred to him, Lieutenant Leaming tossed aside the saber. He didn't want the Confederates thinking he might make a mad dash up the slope and try to murder them all. He spread his hands and forced a smile he didn't feel across his face.

“I surrender,” he called. “You've licked us. We can't fight any more.”

Bedford Forrest's troopers glanced at one another. With slow, thoughtful deliberation, one of them raised his rifle musket to his shoulder and peered over the sights down the slope at Leaming. If he pulled the trigger at that range, he could hardly miss. And, Leaming realized with rising horror, he was going to pull the trigger.

Leaming tried to turn away, tried to run. Too late. Too late. The Confederate fired. The minnie caught Leaming in the back, just below his right shoulder blade. His face hit the ground harder than he ever dreamt it could. Blackness covered him.