Fort Pillow

XVII

Corporal Jack Jenkins rode east through the Hatchie bottom country in a perfectly foul temper. The other troopers wouldn't stop ragging on him for letting Bill Bradford slip through his fingers. “Jesus God,” one would-be wit said, “if you didn't want him yourself, you should've given him to the rest of us.” He might have been talking about somebody who'd thrown away a drumstick instead of putting it back on the platter with the rest of the chicken.

“I wanted him, dammit,” Jenkins said. “He fooled me, that's all.” That's all? he thought bitterly. That was plenty. He'd never live it down. If he got to be an old man with a long white beard, his neighbors would still think of him as the damn fool who let Bill Bradford get away.

“He makes it down to Memphis, he'll stir up all kinds of trouble,” another horseman said. “He's a serpent, Bradford is.”

“Maybe somebody else'll catch the stinking, rotten son of a bitch,” Jenkins said. “It ain't like he paid me to let him get away.”

“Ain't enough money in Tennessee for Bradford to pay to get away,” the other trooper said. Several men nearby nodded. Jack Jenkins was one of them. He would have paid plenty for the privilege of blowing Bradford's brains out. But he'd had the chance-had it and fumbled it.

He yawned. He could hardly stay on his horse, he was so tired. He'd ridden all day and all night, then fought a battle, then got stuck with that damned sentry duty. So he hadn't had enough sleep to spit at the past couple of days. He wasn't the only man swaying in the saddle, either-far from it.

At least the Confederates weren't going hell for leather now. They'd done what they set out to do. There were no Federals anywhere dose by to give them a hard time. They could move at their own pace.

“Wonder where old Bedford'll want us to kick the damnyankees' asses next,” somebody said.

“Wherever it is, we'll do it,” Jenkins said. He had confidence in Nathan Bedford Forrest, and he had confidence in the men with whom he rode.

Whether they still had confidence in him… “Got to make sure they don't trip you when you've got your foot back to kick,” one of them said.

“No damn Federal's ever gonna trip me again,” Jenkins said furiously. “Ever, you hear?”

The rest of the troopers looked at one another, but none of them said anything. The two stripes on Jenkins's sleeve didn't hold them back; they weren't men who feared sassing underofficers. The growl in his voice, the glint in his eye, the angry flush that reddened his badly shaved cheeks, the hunch of his broad shoulders… Any soldier who sassed him now would have to back it up, with fists or maybe with a gun, and some things were more trouble than they were worth.

A great blue heron sprang into the air from the edge of the swamp, a fish in its beak. The bird's wingspan was almost as wide as a man was tall. Jenkins followed it with his eyes. “Wish I could fly like that,” he said.

“Who don't?” somebody else said-that seemed safe enough to answer. “I've had dreams where I could flap my arms and go up into the air.”

“Me, I've had dreams where I could flap my feet,” another trooper put in.

“I believe that, Lou-they're big enough,” still another man said.

“You find a Federal with shoes that'd cover those gunboats?”

“Sure did-took a pair off a dead nigger,” Lou said. “Cryin' shame when a damn nigger's got better shoes than a white man-that's all I've got to tell you.”

“It is,” his friend agreed. “Well, they're yours now, by Jesus. That lousy black son of a bitch don't need 'em no more.”

“What I'd like to do is, I'd like to go up in a balloon one of these days,” another Confederate said. “Showmen'll take 'em up at country fairs sometimes. Don't know what they charge for a ride — a quarter-eagle, maybe even a half-eagle. Hell with me if I wouldn't pay five dollars just so as I could say I really flew.”

Jack Jenkins thought about doing that. It wouldn't be bad-if he had a five-dollar goldpiece, he figured he would plunk it down so he could see what going up in the air was like, too. But it wasn't what he'd had in mind when he spoke; it wasn't what he craved. A showman's balloon was tethered to the ground. Even if the line should break, the balloon was at the mercy of every vagrant breeze.

When he talked about flying, when he thought about flying, he meant flying the way you flew in dreams, flying the way the heron flew. He meant going from here to there because you were here and you wanted to get there. Where here and there were wouldn't matter; you could just hop in the air and go.

Nobody in all the world could do that. Jeff Davis couldn't. Neither could Abe Lincoln. Neither could Queen Victoria, and she had more money than both of them put together. So what did that say about a ragged Confederate cavalry corporal's chances? That they weren't what you'd call good, worse luck.

For that matter, almost anybody in the world could go from here to there on the ground, and where here and there were didn't matter. Not me, dammit, Jenkins thought. He was going where he was going because that was where Nathan Bedford Forrest wanted him to go. The privates riding with him were much more likely to pick a fight with him than he was to pick a fight with Bedford Forrest.

Riding to Forrest's will, his backside almost as sore from the saddle as if he were stricken with boils, he came into Brownsville from the west. Had he ridden into it from the east only two days before? That seemed impossible, but it was true. Would he be able to sleep in a bed tonight, or at least under a roof? After all he'd been through, that seemed impossible, too, but at least he could hope.

Pain dulled by laudanum, Mack Leaming lay on the Platte Valley's deck. The world would do whatever it did. For the moment, he couldn't do anything about it. With the brandy and opium coursing through his veins, he couldn't even care about it very much.

Captain Anderson walked along the steamer's deck with the Platte Valley's skipper. The civilian wore a uniform considerably gaudier than a Navy man's would have been. “You will give me receipts for all the men you take aboard, sir?” Forrest's aide said.

“Oh, yes, of course,” the skipper answered. “Got to keep the paperwork straight. We'll both wind up in hot water if things don't come out even. “

Anderson laughed. “Heaven forbid!” he said. “You Yanks have it worse than we do there, I believe, on account of you're richer than we are-and you have more men to spare for dotting every i and crossing every t. We've got to make do without so much in the way of spit and polish. “

“I'm sure you miss it,” said the captain of the Platte Valley. He winked at Charles Anderson-Leaming saw in most distinctly.

“Well, now and again I do, to tell you the truth,” Anderson replied. “I was a merchant up in Cincinnati before the war, and after that I worked for the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad. I like having things just so when I can. But when there's no time, and not enough men even if there were time… Well, sir, all you can do is your best.”

“I suppose that's so.” The steamboat skipper pointed up toward the bluff atop which Fort Pillow lay-or had lain. “From what my men say, you Rebs did your best there.”

“We shouldn't have had to storm the place, sir,” Captain Anderson said. “I gather Major Booth fell early in the fight, and Major Bradford, I'm afraid, didn't have the sense God gave a goose. He thought he could hold us out with Tennessee Tories and niggers, and forced us to prove him wrong.”

“Well, you did that, by thunder!” The captain of the Platte Valley sounded as respectful-no, as admiring-as if he and the Confederate cavalry officer were on the same side.

Despite the laudanum, dull anger slowly filled Mack Leaming. This plump, easygoing fellow had no business getting so friendly with the enemy. They were doing everything but drinking brandy together. Captain Anderson took out a cigar case and offered the steamboat captain a stogie. That worthy bit off the end, stuck the cigar in his mouth, and scraped a lucifer on the sole of his shoe. Once he had his cheroot going, he gave Anderson a match. They smoked for a while in companionable silence.

What was happening over on the Silver Cloud? Was Acting Master Ferguson-a real U.S. Navy officer-as friendly toward the Rebs as this fellow? Was he complimenting them in a professional way for the skill and thoroughness they'd shown in slaughtering the Federals inside Fort Pillow? Leaming didn't-couldn't-know, but he wouldn't have been surprised.

Some Federal and Confederate officers were friends because they'd gone to West Point together or served side by side in the Old Army. Leaming could understand that even if he didn't like it. But it wouldn't be true of someone still wet behind the ears like William Ferguson. All the same, though, to Leaming 's way of thinking Union officers too often bent over backwards to extend all the courtesies to their Confederate counterparts.

That dull anger inside him grew sharper and hotter. He was damned if he would ever give any Confederate more than the minimum due him under the laws of war-if he lived to fight again. Had the Rebels given the men inside Fort Pillow even so much? He didn't think so.

Not far away, a colored artilleryman lay groaning. A bloody bandage only partly covered a huge saber cut on his head, and another wrapped his hand. He was in a bad way; Leaming didn't think he would get better. What would Negroes make of the fight at Fort Pillow? Wouldn't they want to swear bloody vengeance against Forrest's men in particular and Confederate troops in general? Leaming had seldom tried to think like a Negro, but so it seemed to him.

In and around Fort Pillow, the Confederates methodically went on wrecking and burning anything Union forces might possibly use. Forrest's men weren't going to try to hold the place against a U.S. attack. That made more sense than Mack Leaming wished it did. The Federals hadn't been able to keep the Rebs from storming the fortress; the Confederates were unlikely to have any better luck unless they brought in enough troops to man Gideon Pillow's outer perimeter. And what was the point of that?

Smoke from the burning swirled across the Platte Valley and the Silver Cloud. It made Leaming 's eyes sting and burn. It also made him cough, which hurt in spite of the laudanum. He tried to breathe in little shallow sips.

Maybe that helped some. It also made him take longer than he might have otherwise to realize he wasn't just smelling wood smoke. The other odor was scorched meat. His stomach did a slow lurch when he recognized it.

He wasn't the only one. “What are you Rebs doing there?” the Platte Valley's ornately dressed skipper asked Captain Anderson.

“Burning things, sir,” Forrest's aide answered matter-of-factly.

“Burning things.”

“Things-that's fine.” The steamboat captain made a horrible face. “Smells like you're burning people, too.”

“Not live ones,” Anderson said. “I don't know if we got all the bodies out of some of those huts before we fired them. To tell you the truth, I don't much care, either. I am not one of those men who believe the body must be perfect to render Resurrection effectual. My view is that God can provide in such circumstances, and that He will.”

Leaming held the same view. That he agreed with the Confederate officer tempted him to change his mind. The skipper of the Platte Valley did incline to the literalist view of Resurrection. He and Captain Anderson fired Scriptural texts at each other like Mini? balls.

Several real gunshots interrupted them. “What the devil's that?” the steamboat captain exclaimed. “Your men aren't supposed to be carrying arms inside the perimeter. “

“I don't know what it is.” Anderson sounded strained. If the truce was falling apart, he might not be able to get off the Platte Valley.

“They are shooting the darky soldiers!” someone yelled from the shore.

“There is a truce, Captain,” the steamboat skipper said. “Your men shouldn't ought to be doing that now.”

“I know,” Anderson answered, his voice still tight. “If you will let me off this vessel, sir, I will do my best to quell them.” He knew his onions. Even if he meant what he said, once he got ashore, he couldn't be made a prisoner.

Don't let him go! Leaming sucked in smoky air to shout it. Before he could, a Confederate officer thundered up on horseback. “Stop that firing!” he roared. “Arrest that man! “

A couple of more shots were fired, but only a couple. “There went some more niggers, God have mercy on their sorry souls,” said a wounded U.S. officer standing not far from Leaming. Since he was able to stay on his feet, he could see farther than Leaming could himself.

“This is a bad business,” the skipper told Captain Anderson.

“It is indeed,” Anderson replied. “I do not know what provoked our soldier to commence firing-”

“Why do you think anything did, except that he was shooting at black men?” the steamboat skipper broke in. “If he was provoked, would your officer have wanted him arrested?”

Bedford Forrest's assistant adjutant general didn't answer, from which Mack Leaming concluded that he had no good answer. Instead, he said, “It's nothing that breaks the truce, anyhow.” He seemed relieved, as Leaming would have been in his place.

“No, I suppose not,” the captain of the Platte Valley replied. “We'll be able to get back to slaughtering each other soon enough, though-have no fear.”

“Er-yes,” said Charles Anderson. A little later, perhaps feeling he'd worn out what was to Mack Leaming much too warm a welcome, he went back ashore in the rowboat that had brought wounded Federals out to the steamer.

“Ask you something?” Leaming said as the skipper walked past him.

The man stopped in surprise. “Go ahead, friend. Ask me anything you please. I figured you were too far gone to talk.”

“I hope not,” Leaming said. “Now that you have us aboard, I was wondering where you'll take us.”

“I'm bound for Mound City as soon as the truce is up,” the skipper answered. “So is the Silver Cloud. “

“Mound City?” Leaming tried to make his pain-frayed, drugdulled wits work. He had little luck. “I've heard the name, but for the life of me I can't recall if it's in Tennessee or Kentucky.”

“Neither one. Mound City's in Illinois, just up the Ohio from Cairo,” the steamship captain said.

“Illinois!” Leaming started to laugh, even though it hurt. He'd been up in Paducah, Kentucky, before the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry came to Fort Pillow, but he'd never once crossed the Ohio River to go into illinois. Kentucky felt like home. illinois… He laughed some more. “Yankeeland at last.”

The click of a key in the lock on his cell door woke Bill Bradford from a sound sleep. He was amazed he'd slept at all. Gray predawn light was stealing into the cell through the little barred window in the wall.

With a screech of rusty hinges, the door opened. Three Confederates stood in the hallway. Two of them aimed revolvers at Bradford. “Come on, you,” said the third one, who still held the big brass key.

“Let me put my shoes on,” Bradford said around a yawn.

“Make it snappy,” growled one of the men with a pistol.

“He's a cold-hearted bastard, isn't he?” the other one said.

“Damned if I could lay there snoring my fool head off knowing Bedford Forrest was powerful ticked at me.”

Bradford looked up from tying his left shoe. “I don't snore,” he said with dignity.

The Rebs gave back raucous laughter. “Hell you don't,” one of them said. “Either that or somebody went and snuck a sawmill in here when Colonel Duckworth's back was turned.” All three of them thought that was the funniest thing they'd ever heard.

“I'm ready now.” Bradford got to his feet. “May I have something to eat before you take me to Brownsville?”

“Ought to feed you lead, is what I ought to do,” one of the Confederates said, and fear rose in Bradford like a choking cloud.

But another one said, “Duckworth said to give him breakfast.”

He got a hardtack and a tin cup of coffee that had to be mostly chicory. It was no worse than what they ate themselves, so he couldn't complain. After that, they herded him along to their encampment outside of Covington. “Got some more prisoners to take up to Brownsville,” one of them explained. “Don't reckon they'll try and run off, though, so we didn't have to jug 'em.”

“I wasn't going anywhere,” Bradford protested.

“Not in a cell, you wasn't,” the Reb said. “But you pulled somethin' funny to get away from Fort Pillow-you must've-so the colonel didn't trust you not to do it again.”

I would have, in a heartbeat, Bradford thought. Aloud, he said,

“That's not fair.”

“Too damn bad,” the trooper said. “You made your bed. Now you can lay in it.”

Lie in it, you ignorant oaf Bill Bradford knew the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs. The Confederate soldier standing in front of him knew something else: he had a pistol, and Bradford damn well didn't. And when the country was torn in two, when Tennessee was torn in two, who had a gun and who didn't mattered a hell of a lot more than the difference between lie and lay.

The other Federal soldiers — there were four or five of them — looked at Bradford in surprise. He feared he knew what kind of surprise it was. You're still alive? they had to be thinking.

Yes, dammit, I'm still alive! He wanted to scream it. But that wouldn't do him any good. He made himself seem meek and mild. The less the Rebs worried about him, the better his chances would be. He had got out of Fort Pillow. If he watched for his moment, he would get out of this, too.

But, because he'd got out of Fort Pillow, his captors here weren't inclined to take him on trust. They let the other prisoners mount and ride without restrictions. After he climbed up on his horse, though, they tied his feet together under the animal and they tied his hands to the reins. They tied them tight, and they used plenty of rope.

“This is cruel,” he said. “What if I do fall off? The horse will trample me or drag me to death.”

“Then don't fall off, you son of a bitch,” one of the Confederates said. “Me, I'd pay five dollars in paper or even a dollar in silver to watch that, I would.”

“Come on-let's get going,” another trooper said. “All this jawin' just wastes our time. “

“How come you're so all-fired eager, Dud?” the first Reb asked.

“Anybody'd reckon you got yourself a lady friend up in Brownsville.” He leered.

“Well, what if I do?” Dud said. “It ain't against the law or nothin'. An' if! get the chance to see her, that'd be right nice.”

“See her?” the other soldier said. “Wouldn't you sooner tup her?” He might have been talking about a ram and a ewe. Most soldiers came off farms. He was probably more used to talking about animals than about men and women.

“Never you mind what I'd sooner,” Dud said. “Let's ride, that's all.”

They rode. The rest of the U.S. prisoners had it easy. They bantered back and forth with Bedford Forrest's troopers, giving as good as they got. Nobody seemed to hold anything against them. They were out of the war now, and they were glad of it. The Rebs seemed willing to let bygones be bygones.

Not with Bill Bradford. The C.S. troopers snarled at him whenever he said something. They didn't want to let him down off his horse to ease himself. “Go ahead and piss your pants,” Dud said. “Serve you right. “

“Aw, let him down,” another soldier said. “Al?' d be right ticked if his saddle got piss stains on it. Can't say I'd blame him, neither.”

And so, for the saddle's sake if not for his own, Bradford was untied and allowed to go between a tree. He wasn't allowed to go alone, though. Dud covered him with a revolver as he unbuttoned his fly. “You try and run and I'll blow it right off you.” The Reb sounded as if he looked forward to it.

After that, relaxing enough to do what he'd come for wasn't easy, but Bradford managed. He gave Dud no excuse to pull the trigger, no matter which part of him the Reb aimed at. When he walked back to the horse, the Rebs tied him on as securely as before.

They rode on through the Hatchie bottom country toward Brownsville. How had Forrest got his men through this ghastly terrain ahead of the news of their coming? By driving them like cattle before him, Bradford supposed. If Forrest wasn't a demon in human shape, a man possessed of superhuman energy and determination, Bradford had never seen anyone who was.

“Boy, this is fun,” Dud said as his horse squelched through mud. The other Rebs laughed. So did a couple of the Federal prisoners. Bill Bradford didn't. He just did more marveling. If the roads were bad now, they would have been worse when Forrest and his men came through, because it was raining then. These miserable, narrow tracks had had a day and a half to dry out since the Confederates swarmed west along them.

And how had the Rebs ever found their way through this maze of tracks? Without a guide, chances were they would still be wandering in the swamp. That man Shaw, Bradford thought: the Rebel sympathizer who'd escaped from Fort Pillow a day or two before Forrest descended it. Bradford couldn't prove that; he didn't remember seeing Shaw in the fight. But it seemed all too likely.

He wondered if he would meet a gloating Shaw in Brownsville. He wondered if he would meet Bedford Forrest there, too. Forrest wouldn't be gloating. Forrest would be… what? An educated man, Bradford didn't need long to come up with the right word. Forrest would be vindictive, that was what he would be.

Nathan Bedford Forrest's body felt like one big bruise. He hated staying in the saddle, but he was too stubborn to climb down from his horse. Maybe Captain Anderson could have persuaded him to dismount and rest, but Anderson was still settling affairs back at Fort Pillow. And so Forrest rode on.

He came into Brownsville at the van of his army-and he rode out the other side a few minutes later. “You always were a man in a hurry,” J. B. Cowan remarked.

“You ought to know,” Forrest told the regimental surgeon. Cowan was his wife's first cousin. The general commanding went on, “Getting there ahead of the other fellow counts for more than almost anything.” “Even if you wear yourself down to a nub doing it?” Cowan asked.

“Even then. Especially then,” Forrest replied. “If you do more than the enemy figures you've got a prayer of doing, you hold him in the palm of your hand.”

“It's a hard road,” the surgeon observed.

“It's the only road I know,” Forrest said. “I started with nothing you know that, dammit-and I made myself a man to be reckoned with. I joined the Army as a private soldier, and I'm a major general now. I'm not so young as I used to be; I haven't got much time to waste. I will take the hardest road I have to, as long as it's the quickest one.“

He wondered whether Cowan would go on arguing with him, but the regimental surgeon held his tongue. He knows better than to try and talk me around} Forrest thought with an inward smile.

“What will you do when you get to Jackson?” Cowan asked after a while.

“Rest. Let the rest of the men come in-I know they won't all stick up with me.” Forrest knew that for a while he would have men scattered all across the seventy miles between Fort Pillow and Jackson, and he couldn't do much about it. Sooner or later, they'd come in. He went on, “Once they're all gathered, I'll cipher out what to do with 'em next-or maybe I'll get orders. Who knows?”

“Will we be able to stay up here in Tennessee any which way?” Cowan inquired. “After what you did at Fort Pillow, the damnyankees will be fit to be tied.”

“That was the idea.” When Forrest said it, it sounded more like idear. “If it gets too hot round those parts, we'll slide on down to Mississippi, that's all. But if they think they can keep me out of Tennessee for good, or even out of Memphis for good, they'd better think again, is all I've got to tell you.”

“Out of Memphis? How would you get in there? It's fortified to a fare-thee-well. “

“I'll get in.” Forrest spoke with supreme confidence. He didn't say how he would get into Memphis, because he had no idea. When the time came, he would come up with something. The West Point men against whom he fought made their plans well in advance. They figured out every little thing before they went and did it… and then they thought they would take you by surprise.

Bedford Forrest laughed softly. Once you'd fought one of those fellows, you'd fought all of them. They'd all learned the same way of fighting, and they all had the same bag of tricks. They never figured out that you might know ahead of time what they'd try. The way they were trained, they were supposed to think alike.

The Confederacy had a lot of generals and colonels who'd learned at West Point, too. Couldn't they see that the Yankees could read them like a book? Evidently not-and a lot of time both sides seemed ignorant of how predictable they were.

Because Forrest had never learned all the fancy West Point rules and regulations, he was as far beyond the regular officers' ken as a hawk was beyond a snapping turtle's. Things seemed very simple to him. You moved faster than the man you were fighting. You hit him where he wouldn't expect it, where he was weak. You used fear as much as you used bullets. A frightened enemy was an enemy who gave up too soon or who made mistakes that let you lick him. And once you got him scared and jittery, you never let up.

That thought made Forrest mutter into his chin beard. Instead of going all-out after the beaten Yankees at Chickamauga, Braxton Bragg let them retreat into Chattanooga-which meant the only victory that sour-souled son of a bitch ever won turned out not to be worth spit. He had his chance, his single, solitary, glorious chance to bring the war in the West back to life, to make the Confederate presence in Tennessee and Kentucky more than a matter of cavalry raiders. He had it, and he dropped it, and he broke it, and the Confederacy wasn't likely to be able to pick up the pieces ever again.

“I should have killed him,” Forrest said. “By Jesus, I should have.” “Who are you talking about, sir?” J. B. Cowan asked. “Major Bradford?”

“What's that?” Bedford Forrest blinked, brought back from what might have been to what was. “No, I wasn't thinking about Bradford-not that he doesn't rate killing now. I had somebody else in mind.”

“Must be Colonel Hurst, then.” The regimental surgeon sounded very sure of himself.

“That's right-Fielding Hurst.” Forrest let his wife's cousin down easy. Why not? Every Confederate in Tennessee knew Fielding Hurst needed killing. Stories were going round that Forrest had come within inches of challenging Braxton Bragg to a duel, but most people thought they were only stories. Forrest didn't say anything different. What point to it? If the Confederate generals fought among themselves, who gained but the Federals? Still and all, he knew the stories were true-were, if anything, less than the whole truth.

Dr. Cowan grinned, pleased with his own cleverness. Bedford Forrest grinned, amused the other man was so easy to fool. If you let people believe what they wanted to believe anyhow, you could get them to do almost anything.

But then Cowan asked, “What will you do with Bradford if our boys catch him?”

The question was unpleasantly sharp. “Don't rightly know,” Forrest said, an admission he seldom made. “I hated the son of a bitch before he broke his parole, and he gave me plenty of reasons for it, too. I almost hope we don't catch him. That way, I won't have to make up my mind.”

“Almost?” the surgeon said. Forrest nodded. “Almost.”

Word got around. It always did. Jack Jenkins hated that truth, but knew it was one. As he rode east toward Brownsville, he heard the same question over and over again: “How the hell did you let that Bradford son of a bitch get away?”

“It was dark,” he said at first. “He said he was a sutler. He was wearing a sutler's clothes, and he stunk like a goddamn polecat. How in God's name was I supposed to know who he was?”

That sounded reasonable-to him, anyway. It didn't satisfy any of the men who flung the question in his face. They didn't really want an answer. They wanted somebody to blame… and there he was.

His temper, always short, soon started to fray. Before long, he stopped giving a reasonable answer when people asked him how he let Bradford escape. Instead, he said things like, “It just happened, goddammit. Bad shit happens all the time. This time it happened to me. “

He got no sympathy. He didn't expect any. He wouldn't give anybody else much sympathy for letting Bradford slip through his fingers. The same miserable question came at him even more often.

His answer changed again. He looked around and growled, “Oh, shut up, goddammit!” That did some good. Most of Forrest's troopers were leery of pushing him too far.

“You look like a treed coon,” one of them said.

“I feel like a treed coon, too,” Jenkins replied-that was one of the few things he'd heard that made sense to him. “Got all these bastards around the tree bayin' their damnfool heads off.”

On they rode, into the morning. Every time somebody with a fast horse came up to Jenkins, he heard the hateful question again. And he heard it every time he caught up to somebody with a slow horse. And when they weren't just coming out and asking it of him, they were talking about him and pointing at him. “There's the fellow who…”

“Aw, shit,” Jenkins mumbled. Yes, he was likely to stay the fellow who for the rest of his life. Some mistakes were too damn big to let anybody ever get out from under them. Had he made one of those? He didn't think so, but what he thought didn't matter here. What everybody else thought did. And those nudges and murmurs and pointing fingers went on and on.

“Hey, Corporal, aren't you the one who let Bradford get away?” “Puck you up the cornhole!” Jenkins roared. Only after the words

were out of his mouth did he realized he'd cussed out a captain. The officer started to say something. Then he got a good look at Jenkins's face. His mouth hung foolishly open for a moment, as if he were a frog catching a fly. He booted his horse up to a trot and rode away.

I bet I had murder in my eye, Jenkins thought, not without pride. I know goddamn well I had murder in my heart.

For some little while, nobody bothered him. Oh, people went on pointing and went on talking behind his back, but he knew he couldn't do anything about that. When a newcomer tried to ask him something-and he knew what it would be-somebody softly explained to the man that that wasn't a good idea. Not if you want to go on breathing, it isn't, Jenkins thought.

And then every trooper around was cussing a blue streak, and none of it had anything to do with him. He was swearing, too. Whoever was leading them east had led them astray. The path petered out in the middle of a swamp. They were going to have to double back and try again. “God, I didn't need this,” somebody groaned, and that summed things up just fine.

“How the hell did we bollix this?” Jenkins demanded. “Lord almighty, it ain't like we're the first bunch to go back to Brownsville. Shouldn't whoever was at the front of this bunch have known where he was going, the rotten skunk?”

Whoever had been at the front of that group of soldiers didn't want to admit it. In his shoes, Jack Jenkins wouldn't have wanted to admit it, either. Something nasty would have happened to him if he did.

Because it had to double back, the group of cavalrymen from Barteau's regiment with whom he was riding didn't get to Brownsville till the late afternoon. By then, the people in the small town had had bands of troopers of varying sizes riding in for hours. Some houses still had the Stainless Banner and the Confederate battle flag and the outdated Stars and Bars flying or hanging on their porches, but no ladies were standing in the street offering the soldiers food, the way they had when the regiment rode west to attack Fort Pillow.

“Rein in, boys!” a first lieutenant called. “We may as well spend the night here. We don't need to ride in the dark today, and we'll make it to Jackson tomorrow any which way.”

That was the first piece of good news Jenkins had heard in a long time. Even if he couldn't get a bed for the night-which didn't look likely-he could sleep on a floor or in a shed or somewhere else under a roof. Roughing it was fine when you did it on purpose every once in a while-when you were going hunting, say. When you had to do it day after day after day, it wore thin.

He'd just dismounted when some soldiers came up from the south.

“Y'all got lost worse'n we did,” he jeered.

“We're not lost,” one of them replied. “We're up from Covington with prisoners. We'll take' em on to Jackson in the morning.”

“Prisoners?” Jack Jenkins looked them over. That some wore blue hadn't meant much to him-he'd just thought they hadn't had a chance to dye Yankee plunder. One fellow had on ratty-looking civilian clothes. Jenkins stiffened. He'd seen those shabby clothes before, by moonlight. As casually as he could, he asked, “Need somebody else to help bring 'em in?”

The shabbily dressed prisoner jerked on the horse to which he was tied. He recognized Jenkins's voice. The Confederate captain in charge of the captives nodded. “Sure, Corporal. You can come along.” Jenkins smiled like Christmas.