Fort Pillow

XVIII

Matt Wardhad watched the Silver Cloud and the Platte Valley steam away late the afternoon before. Chugging north against the current, the gunboat and the steamer she escorted weren't very fast, but they looked as if they would get where they were going.

Here today, Fort Pillow wasn't a fort any more. It was nothing but a bluff next to the Mississippi. Captain Charles Anderson looked around and nodded in satisfaction. “That about does it,” he said to Ward and the rest of the Confederates still at the battle site. “I reckon we've done every single thing we set out to do.”

Bedford Forrest's aide was bound to be right about that. Forrest's men hadn't just taken the place. They'd run off the Federals' horses and captured all the cannon here. They'd taken more than three hundred rifle muskets; the rest probably lay in the river. They had as much of the rest of the movable property as they could carry away. And now they'd wrecked and burned all the buildings and huts in and around the fort. The Federals wouldn't have anything at all to use if they tried to put men in here again.

Another Federal steamer went by. Maybe it would find Union soldiers who'd got away and were hiding along the river. Ward eyed the smoke pouring from its stack, which mixed with the smoke still in the air from the fires of the day before. “We ought to have boats on the Mississippi ourselves,” he said.

Captain Anderson still stood close enough to hear him. “We've got a few,” he said. “We can move things across from Louisiana and Arkansas now and again. But we have to sneak, because we can't make ironclads to fight the damn yankees.”

“Why not, sir?” Ward said. “They can do it.”

“They can build them anywhere along the Ohio or the Mississippi and send them downriver,” Anderson answered. “We haven't got any foundries on the river to do the job.” He made a sour face. “Hell's bells, we haven't got any towns on this side of the river. The damnyankees sail up and down, doing as they please. They've cut us in half, may they rot in hell for it.”

“That's not good,” Ward said.

“No, it isn't,” Captain Anderson agreed. “Kirby Smith is doing everything he can over in the Trans-Mississippi, but what he does and what we do don't have a whole lot to do with each other on account of all those Federal gunboats in between.”

“What can we do about that, sir?” Matt Ward could look across the Mississippi into Arkansas. If he cared to, he could take a rowboat and get across to the other side-to the Trans-Mississippi, Captain Anderson called it. But if you wanted to move an army's worth of soldiers from one side of the Big Muddy to the other, how would you go about it? You couldn't, not unless you wanted those damn gunboats swarming around you like flies around a fried chicken in summertime.

“What can we do about it?” Anderson echoed. “Keep fighting the Yankees as hard as we can. Keep licking them. Keep making them sweat. Keep making them bleed. Abe Lincoln is up for reelection this fall. If we make the North decide the war is more expensive than it's worth, if we make it decide the war is more goddamn trouble than it's worth, they'll throw that Lincoln son of a bitch out on his ear. Whichever Democrat they put in will make peace and send the blue bellies home. And we'll have our own country then. That's what we can do, by God.”

“I understand, sir.” Ward looked respectfully at the officer, who wasn't that much older than he was. “I really do understand. When I joined up, I did it so I could fight the damnyankees.”

“Who doesn't?” Anderson said.

“Yes, sir. But that was all I thought about, you know what I mean?

What you said, I didn't think about that even a little bit. How the war and politics fit together, I mean. And they do. They truly do.”

“You'd best believe they do,” Charles Anderson agreed. “Way things are now, we won't ever drive the United States off our land with guns. Maybe we could have once upon a time, but we lost too many chances. But if we can make those Yankee bastards sick of fighting us, they'll give up and go home. And we win that way, too. So that's what we've got to try and do.”

Ward looked at the remains of what had been Fort Pillow. “Well, sir, seems to me we gave them a pretty good tweak right here.”

“Seems the same way to me.” Captain Anderson eyed him. “When you let Bradford liquor you up so he could get away, I reckoned you were one of those fellows who' re good in a brawl but not so good at thinking, if you'll forgive me. But you aren't that way, are you?”

“I hope not, sir. I like to find out how things tick,” Ward answered. “Bradford… He tricked me, God damn him. I wonder if the son of a bitch got away. Sweet Jesus, I hope not. I'd feel like hell. “

“If he did, he'll run into a minnie some other way, that's all.” To Matt's relief, Anderson didn't seem to hate him. “For now, we've still got our own war to fight. You ready?”

“Yes, sir!” Matt said.

It's all in your mind, Major William Bradford told himself over. You're making it up to give yourself something to worry about. He laughed sourly. As if he didn't have enough already! Here he was, locked up in the Brownsville jail the way he had been the night before in Covington. Some time tomorrow, he'd head for Jackson and a new confrontation with Nathan Bedford Forrest. That wasn't anything to look forward to with joy and eager anticipation.

But right now it seemed the least of his troubles. He couldn't shake the feeling that the corporal who'd volunteered to join the guards on the way to Jackson was the fellow he'd cozened into letting him out past the original, extended works around Fort Pillow.

Had that fellow out there on sentry had two stripes on his sleeve? For the life of him-yes, for the life of him-Bradford wasn't sure. His voice seemed much too familiar, though. And the man had a devil of a nasty leer, the kind of leer that said he might not have known who Bill Bradford was before but by Christ now he did, and somebody was going to pay because he knew.

“Somebody,” Bradford muttered. “Me!” What had the Rebs done to that corporal when they found out he'd let the enemy commander get away? How much did he have to pay back? And how much did he hate Bradford for tricking him, for taking away his pride? A lot of Southern men were touchy as so many greasers about their pride. If you wounded it, they would pay you back no matter what it cost.

Maybe he's not the one. Bradford tried to make himself believe it. He stretched out on the lumpy, musty-smelling cot in the little cell and tried to rest. It'll be fine tomorrow, his mind insisted. You're getting yourself all worn to a frazzle over nothing. But even though he closed his eyes, sleep wouldn't come.

Except it did. When his eyes came open again, the gray light of dawn seeped into the cell through the little barred window. Outside, a mockingbird trilled and whistled. Why not? The bird was free.

The jailer gave him bread and butter for breakfast. The butter was just starting to go off. He could eat it, but it left a sour aftertaste on his palate that the bad coffee he drank with it couldn't erase. The jailer watched him eat through the window set into the door. As soon as he finished, the man unlocked the door to get the cup back. He had a pistol. Two more men with guns also covered Bradford. “I wasn't going anywhere,” Bradford said.

“Not while we can shoot you if you try,” one of the guards said. At noon, Bradford got more bread and butter and coffee. The butter was further gone by then. He ate it anyhow. Time dragged on. The cell got warm and close. Sweat rolled off him. At last, late in the afternoon, the jailer unlocked the door again. “Come on out.” That pistol added persuasion to the words.

Out Bradford came. The jailer gestured with the gun. Numbly, Bradford walked outside. The mockingbird he'd heard before-or maybe another one-flew out of a nearby oak, white wing patches flashing every time it flapped. The other Federal prisoners waited out there; they hadn't had to spend the time in jail. The guards who'd brought them up from Covington waited there, too. So did the corporal who'd volunteered to join them.

Was he…? Bradford eyed him with fearful fascination. He couldn't tell. It had been dark, the moon still young and going in and out of the clouds.

“Get up on your horse, Bradford,” said one of the Confederate soldiers. “Get up, and I'll lash you aboard.” By the way he talked, the Federal officer might have been a sack of dried peas.

“You don't need to tie me-I swear it,” Bradford said.

“You swore you wouldn't run off from Fort Pillow, too, you lying

son of a bitch.” That wasn't the guard who was busy binding Bradford's legs beneath him. It was the newly met corporal. He sounded like a man who knew what he was talking about. Bradford bit his lip. He couldn't even tell the Reb he was wrong. The other trooper tied his hands and tied them to the reins.

“That ought to do it,” he said. “Let's ride.”

Off they went, not at any particularly fast clip. By now the prisoners, even Major Bradford, were afterthoughts. No need to hurry with them. The battle was won. Sooner or later, they would get to Jackson. When they did, Bedford Forrest would deal with them as he got around to it.

Had Bradford not been a prisoner of war, had he not been tied to the horse he rode, he would have savored the glorious spring day. It was perfect: not too cool, not too hot, with the sun shining cheerily in a sky powder-puffed with scattered white clouds. The grass and growing bushes were green, greener, greenest. So were the leaves on some of the trees. Others, not yet in leaf, remained bare-branched and skeletal.

More mockingbirds sang. Catbirds yowled. A robin hopping around after worms chirped. Somewhere deeper in the woods, a wild turkey gobbled. Once the riders got away from the town stinks of Brownsville, which didn't take long, the very air smelled fresh and clean and pure.

Yes, it would have been a pleasant ride, a more than pleasant ride, if not for the ropes around Bradford's wrists and ankles-and if the corporal who'd added himself to the guard party hadn't kept talking to the other Confederate troopers in a low voice. Every so often, he would point Bill Bradford's way, which did nothing to improve the Federal officer's peace of mind.

“Are you sure?” one of the other soldiers asked, loud enough for Bradford to hear him clearly.

“Sure as my name's Jack Jenkins,” the corporal answered. “Sure as that son of a bitch…” His voice dropped so Bradford couldn't make out what he said next. Whatever it was, the Federal didn't think he wanted it applied to him.

They'd come perhaps three miles, perhaps five, when one of the troopers said, “We'll stop here for a little bit. Anybody want to ease himself? “

“I do,” a Federal said. He swung down from his horse and went off to stand behind a tree. One of the Confederates lit a pipe. The soldier in blue came back buttoning the last button on his fly. He pointed to the pipe. “Can I have a couple of puffs of that?” The Reb passed it to him. He smoked for a little while, then gave it back. “Thank you kindly.”

“How about you, Bradford?” the corporal named Jack Jenkins said.

Bradford considered. He didn't particularly need anything, but if he said no the Rebs might use it as an excuse to torment him later by refusing to pause. He nodded. “All right. You'll have to let me loose.”

The trooper with the pipe untied him. After Bradford dismounted, he stood by the horse for a moment, opening and closing his hands to work more feeling into them. Then he started for the woods. Jack Jenkins and four other Rebs, one a lieutenant, came with him. “Don't want you wandering off, now, the way you did at Fort Pillow,” Jenkins said.

“I wasn't going anywhere,” Bradford said, as he had early that morning. His lips were suddenly stiff with fear. That was the sentry he'd tricked, and the man knew him for who he was. “Please,” he whispered. “I wasn't.”

“Well, you damn well won't.” The Reb gestured with his rifle musket. “Go on.”

Terror making his legs light, his knees almost unstrung, Bradford went. The Rebs urged him deeper into the woods, so that trees hid the path down which they'd been riding. “Let me… do what I need to do,” he said at last, when they'd gone about fifty yards.

A little to his surprise, they did, spreading out to all sides around the oak he chose so he couldn't get away no matter how much he wanted to-and he did, with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might. At last, after what seemed a very long time, he finished. He did up his trousers and stepped away from the tree.

“Look!” Jenkins said loudly. “Son of a bitch is getting away!” He swung up his rifle musket. So did the other Confederate soldiers.

“No!” Bradford cried. He fell to his knees. “Treat me as a prisoner of war, please! I fought you as a man, and-”

The guns spoke in a stuttering roar. Hot lead slammed into him from three directions at once. He slumped over. The ground came up and hit him one more blow in the face. He tried to get up, but only his left arm seemed to want to do anything his brain told it to, and it wasn't enough, not by itself.

Corporal Jenkins strolled up and stood over him and slowly and deliberately reloaded. “You shit-eating bastard, you got by me once, but I'm damned if you'll do it twice,” he said, and aimed the rifle musket again.

“No,” Bradford moaned through blood in his mouth, through nerves telegraphing torment, though darkness swelling before his eyes.

And the rifle musket boomed once more, and the darkness rose up and swallowed everything. Through the rising flood, he heard a laugh and the words, “Shot trying to escape,” and then it overflowed, and he never heard or saw anything again.

Illinois. The land of liberty. Abe Lincoln's very own state. A free state. A state where owning a nigger was against the law. Ben Robinson knew there were places like that, but he'd never imagined he would come to one. It was an awful lot like getting to heaven, and nearly made getting shot worthwhile.

Nearly.

He lay on an iron-framed military cot in Ward N of the Mound City general hospital. A big sign said it was Ward N. People talked about it a dozen times a day. Now he knew what an N looked like. Benjamin Robinson. He had four of them in his name. It wasn't much of a start for learning his letters, but a start it was.

Colored soldiers from Fort Pillow, a couple of dozen of them, crowded the ward. Charlie Key was here, and Sandy Cole, and Aaron Fentis, too. They'd all survived their wounds, same as Ben had. Dr. Stewart Gordon, the white surgeon who ran the ward, said they were all likely to get better. He seemed to know what he was talking about, and to know what he was doing, too. Only one man had died since the Silver Cloud and the Platte Valley brought them up here, and poor Bob Hall had been in a bad way: a Reb had hacked up his head and his hand with a saber while he lay sick down at Fort Pillow. Another soldier, Tom Adison, had lost an eye and a chunk of his nose to a Mini? ball. He wasn't in good shape; Dr. Gordon looked worried every time he examined him. The rest were going to make it.

Every time Dr. Gordon changed his dressing, Ben stared at his own wound. Every time, he liked what he saw. Oh, yes, he would have liked not getting shot in the first place ever so much better. But the edges of the gouge in his thigh were healing together. The wound wasn't festering. It didn't have pus dripping from it. It didn't stink. It was-he was-getting better.

One morning-Ben thought it was ten days after the fight at Fort Pillow, but he might have been off one either way-the surgeon came into Ward N earlier than usual. “I want you to listen to me, boys,” he said. “Something's up.”

He was younger than a lot of the colored soldiers he was talking to. But he'd treated every last one of them, and was plainly doing the best he could with them. Ben traded glances with Sandy Cole and Charlie Key, but he was inclined to give the surgeon the benefit of the doubt.

“Something's up,” Gordon repeated. “We're going to have men from the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War visit you today: Senator Wade and Congressman Gooch.”

Even a colored artilleryman who'd been a soldier for only a little while knew about the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. When something went wrong with the Union war effort, the members of the committee swooped down like eagles-some said like vultures to pin the blame on whoever deserved it (or whoever they thought deserved it). They could blight an officer's career. They could, and they had, and by all accounts they liked doing it.

“Do Jesus! Us niggers gonna be in trouble for losing the fight?” Robinson asked in more than a little alarm.

But the surgeon shook his head. “No, no, no. So help me, no. As far as they're concerned, you're heroes for fighting as well as you did. No, what they're after is making Bedford Forrest out to be a monster on account of the massacre. They aim to use it to fire up people in the North to fight the Rebs harder.”

“I got you,” Ben said, but he couldn't help adding, “If you was ever a slave, you already got all the reason you need to fight them Confederate bastards hard as you can.”

“There are no slaves up here,” Dr. Gordon reminded him. “A lot of people up here have never set eyes on a colored man, let alone owned one. The men from the committee want to remind them what the war is all about. There's an election coming up, you know. If Honest Abe doesn't go back to the White House, the Democrats will give the damn Rebs whatever they want.”

“Do Jesus!” Ben said again. He'd imagined the Federals beaten. He knew the Confederates fought hard. But he'd never dreamt the United States might just give up the fight.

He felt better when he saw the members of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. Congressman Daniel Gooch was about forty, with a round face, reddish hair and beard, and worried eyes behind small, oval spectacle lenses. Senator Benjamin Wade was at least twenty years older, and quite a bit tougher. He combed his graying, thinning hair straight back. His eyes were narrow and shrewd, his mouth a disapproving slash across his clean-shaven face. He effortlessly dominated the proceedings.

“We are going to get to the bottom of the bad faith and treachery that seem to have become the settled policy of Forrest and his command,” Wade declared in a rasping voice that brooked no argument. “We must convince the authorities of our government of this fact. Even the most skeptical must believe that it is the intention of the Rebel authorities not to recognize the officers and men of our colored regiments as entitled to the treatment accorded by all civilized nations to prisoners of war. And at Fort Pillow the brutality and cruelty of the Rebels were most fearfully exhibited.”

A secretary took down his words as he spoke them. This man means it, Robinson realized. He'd always known the Rebs were in grim earnest. He'd sometimes doubted his own side was. Here, though, here stood a man with as much iron in his spine as even Nathan Bedford Forrest had.

Congressman Gooch started questioning the colored man closest to him, Elias Falls of Company A. Falls spoke of what he'd seen and heard during the fight. He said Bedford Forrest had ordered the firing stopped, and that a Secesh officer had threatened to arrest a soldier for shooting a Negro. The secretary wrote down his words just like Senator Wade's.

When Falls finished testifying-he didn't take long-Ben Wade spoke again: “That will be about enough of that. We are here to show the people of the United States what monsters the Rebels are. We are going to do that. If you men want to testify to anything else, do it before the Confederate Congress. Do you understand me?” After that, no one talked much about officers trying to stop the shooting.

Congressman Gooch asked most of the questions. Senator Wade chimed in now and again. They worked their way through the ward, coming closer and closer to the cot where Ben Robinson lay. At last, the secretary told him, “Raise your right hand.” When he did, the white man said, “Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

“Yes, suh,” Robinson answered, impressed by the gravity of the phrases.

“I have sworn in the witness, sir,” the secretary said formally to Daniel Gooch. “You may proceed.”

“Thank you.” Gooch's voice was a light tenor. His New England accent gave Ben a little trouble, but he managed. “Were you at Fort Pillow in the fight there?” Gooch asked.

“Yes, suh,” Ben said. The secretary scribbled, taking down his words for all time.

The Congressman took him through what had happened and how he got shot. Gooch asked if he had seen the Confederates burn any soldiers. He said no, because he hadn't. Gooch's mouth tightened a little, but he went on to ask about burials, and whether Ben had seen anyone buried alive. Robinson mentioned the one Negro who was still working his hand when he went into the ground.

“Were any Rebel officers around when the Rebels were killing our men?” Gooch asked.

“Yes, suh-lots of them,” Robinson answered.

“Did they try to keep their men from killing our men?”

“I never heard them say so.” Ben explained how Bedford Forrest had ridden his horse over him three or four times.

Daniel Gooch let him finish, then asked, “Where were you from?” “I come from South Carolina,” Robinson replied.

“Have you been a slave?”

“Yes, suh.”

“Thank you, uh, Sergeant.” Gooch went on to the colored man in the next bed, a private from Company B named Dan Tyler. He asked him the same sorts of questions he'd asked Ben. He and Senator Wade continued through the ward till they'd heard the stories of most of the Negroes there. Even badly wounded Tom Adison got to speak his piece.

“Thank you, men,” Ben Wade said when they finished. “Thank you for your bravery down South, and thank you for what you told us here today. We aim to make it so that everyone in the whole country will remember Fort Pillow for as long as this nation lives. It deserves remembering, and that's a fact. Men will go into battle crying, 'Remember Fort Pillow!' And we will pay the Rebels back in their own coin. Never doubt it, men, for we will!”

He lumbered out of the room, Congressman Gooch and the secretary hurrying along in his wake. “We was part of history,” Ben Robinson said in wonder as the door closed behind them. “We reckoned we was just soldierin', but we was part of history. I be damned. Me-a part 0' history.” Up till now, history, like freedom, had been something for whites only. In an odd way, a completely unexpected way, he felt more of a man than he ever had before.

Mack Leaming wasn't happy, and the pain from his wound wasn't the only thing to make him unhappy. Like everyone else who'd lived to come north from Fort Pillow, he knew the officials from the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War were on their way west to find out what went wrong.

He knew when they reached Mound City, and he knew when they questioned the Negroes who'd survived Bedford Forrest's murderous attack. Senator Wade and Congressman Gooch got to the coons before they asked the white survivors a single question. And if that wasn't wrong, Lieutenant Leaming had never run into anything that was.

Not until the following day did Wade and Gooch and their obsequious secretary come to Ward B, where Leaming lay recuperating. The surgeon, a tall, thin, doleful-looking man named Charles Vail, came early in the morning to change his dressings. Vail also stopped by the bed of Captain John Potter, who lay not far away. He looked at Potter-who'd led Company B of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry-and shook his head.

“No change?” Leaming asked.

“I'm afraid not,” Dr. Vail answered. “With a head wound like that, he's in God's hands, not mine. And God hasn't doled out many miracles lately. Potter's almost hopeless. I wish I could tell you different, but…” He spread his hands.

While Leaming was digesting that, the secretary who'd accompanied Messrs. Wade and Gooch to Mound City came into the ward. He spoke with Vail; the surgeon led him over to Leaming's bed. “Good morning, Lieutenant,” the secretary murmured. His voice and clothes were prissily precise. A cornholer? Leaming wondered. Wouldn't be surprised.

But that was neither here nor there. “Good morning,” Leaming said.

“I hope you continue to improve,” the secretary told him.

“He's making good progress,” Dr. Vail put in. “His prognosis is favorable, unlike poor Captain Potter's.”

“I am glad to hear it.” The secretary gave his attention back to Leaming. “The gentlemen from the Joint Committee are most desirous-most desirous, sir-of presenting the massacre at Fort Pillow to the people of the United States in terms as emphatic, and as condemnatory of Bedford Forrest and his brigands, as possible. Any assistance you can offer towards that end will be greatly appreciated. Do I make myself plain?”

“I think you do, sir,” Leaming answered. Wade and Gooch wanted him to slang the Rebs, and they wouldn't mind if he stretched things a little to do it. Neither would he. After everything that had happened at Fort Pillow, he wanted to pay them back any way he could.

The effete secretary withdrew, to return a few minutes later with the Senator and the Congressman. He administered the oath to Leaming, then took out his notebook and pen while Daniel Gooch started the questioning. With the secretary's encouragement, Leaming wasn't above stretching things when he talked about the truce. He complained that the Rebs who'd come down to the riverside to meet the Olive Branch took advantage of the white flag to improve their position. Because the steamer was not a party to the cease-fire, that wasn't exactly so, but it felt as if it ought to be. Congressman Gooch nodded gravely. The secretary's pen slid across the paper.

Leaming told how he'd been shot and robbed and succored only by his fellow Freemason. When he described how he'd been carried aboard the Platte Valley, Senator Wade took over for Gooch. He wanted to know who'd been drinking with the Rebs. Leaming hesitated about putting U.S. officers in hot water, and truthfully said he hadn't seen anyone doing so. Wade did not look happy. Leaming got the idea he seldom looked happy, but he looked even less so now.

“Do you know what became of Major Bradford?” Wade asked. “He escaped unhurt, as far as the battle was concerned,” Leaming answered. “I was told the next morning on the boat that he had been paroled. I did not see him after that night. “

A little later, Congressman Gooch asked, “What do you estimate Forrest's force to have been?”

“From all I could see and learn, I should suppose he had from seven thousand to ten thousand men,” Leaming answered. Major Booth hadn't thought so, but Major Booth was dead… and the larger number better suited the Union cause. A few questions later, Leaming got the chance to trot out one more rumor: “I have been told that Major Bradford was afterwards taken out by the Rebels and shot. That seems to be the general impression, and I presume it was so.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Gooch and Wade said together. “No further questions,” Wade added.

After the secretary closed his notebook and put away his pen, Daniel Gooch nodded to Leaming. “Thank you, Lieutenant,” he said.

“That was very effective testimony.”

“I was doing my best to help, Your Excellency,” Leaming replied.

“Well, your best is damned good, son,” Ben Wade rumbled.

“We'll hold Bedford Forrest's toes to the fire with what you had to say-just see if we don't.” His face darkened with anger. “And we'll put a stop to the despicable practice some of our officers have of treating white men on the other side better than they treat colored soldiers in their own uniform. Despicable, I say, and we will stamp it out.”

“Er — yes, sir.” Till he'd seen the Negro artillerymen at Fort Pillow fight, Mack Leaming would have been that kind of Federal officer himself. Fighting for the Union and fighting for the Negro had seemed two very different things to him. They still did, as a matter of fact-but he had more sense than to admit it to the implacable Senator from Ohio.

“If I may be permitted to say so, Lieutenant, your testimony was exactly along the lines envisioned by the committee when it voted to send Senator Wade and Congressman Gooch west to investigate this tragic incident,” the secretary observed.

You told them what they wanted to hear. Leaming heard the words behind the words. “Good,” he said. The secretary had told him what the distinguished gentlemen wanted, and he was glad to oblige. This was a war of soldiers and cannons and gunboats, yes. But it was also a war of politics. He could see November ahead, just as Wade and Gooch could. If Lincoln failed then, if the Democrats prevailed then, all the Union's sacrifices would be for nothing.

He and his comrades had lost the battle at Fort Pillow. They might yet win the struggle to define what happened there, and winning that struggle would go some little way toward winning the war as a whole. Leaming shifted carefully on the cot. His wound still pained him. Wounded or not, though, he might still pain Nathan Bedford Forrest.

“Shot trying to get away, was he?” Bedford Forrest said, stalking through the parlor of the Duke house in Jackson as he had while ordering the attack on Fort Pillow.

“Yes, sir,” Captain Anderson said stolidly. “So the men who were bringing Major Bradford and the other prisoners here report.”

“Well, Lord knows he's no loss. He's a gain, by God.” But Forrest studied his assistant adjutant general. “So they say, eh? But you don't believe 'em, do you?” Anderson shook his head. “How come you don't?” Forrest asked.

“Well, sir, for one thing, among the men who were supposed to be bringing him in was Corporal Jack Jenkins,” Anderson answered.

“Corporal…? Oh!” A fortnight after the fight at Fort Pillow, Forrest needed a moment to place the name, but only a moment. “The fellow he gave the slip to getting out of the fort!”

“The very same,” Anderson said.

“You reckon Jenkins got his own back, then?”

“Sir, I can't prove a thing. All the men tell the same story,” Anderson replied. “And it certainly is something Bradford might have done, when you consider that he did break his parole in leaving Fort Pillow. “

“Uh-huh.” Forrest wondered what to do-but, again, not for long.

“Well, Charlie, I don't suppose I need to ask any more questions. Bradford got what was coming to him, and by my lights he earned it. If anybody ever kicks up a stink about it-and who would kick up a stink about a skunk like that? — 'shot trying to escape' ought to quiet things down, eh?”

“Yes, sir. I suppose so.” Captain Anderson didn't sound overjoyed at his decision, but he didn't sound as if he wanted to make a fuss, either. That suited Bedford Forrest fine. Major Bradford hadn't been worth a fuss while he was alive, and sure as hell he wasn't worth one dead.

“Anything else I need to know?” Forrest asked.

“News from Memphis is that a couple of Federal Congressmen are nosing around, trying to figure out where the blame goes for losing Fort Pillow,” Anderson said.

“Are they, by God?” Forrest said. His aide nodded. Forrest threw back his head and laughed. “I'm glad to hear it, the Devil fry me black as a nigger if I'm not. I was starting to believe our side was the only one with fools in Congress.”

“They're shouting and wailing about how we massacred all the poor darkies-and the homemade Yankees, too,” Anderson said.

“They can shout and wail as much as they please. Bradford had the chance to surrender, and he damn well didn't take it. I told him I wouldn't answer for my men if he didn't, so he only got what was coming to him,” Forrest growled. “Besides, we did take prisoners. We gave some of 'em back to the Federals by the river-”

“I did that myself,” Anderson said.

“Of course you did,” Bedford Forrest said. “And we've got more prisoners going on down to Mississippi with the men. And there are niggers in both batches. Am I right or wrong?”

“You don't need to ask me, sir,” Captain Anderson said loyally. “I know damn well you're right.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest dropped it there. He'd won at Fort Pillow, which was all that really mattered. But he also knew-however little he cared to admit it-his men had got out of hand when they took the fort. Going up against Negroes with guns and Tennessee Tories, it wasn't surprising. He'd expected it after Bradford refused his surrender demand; he might even have had trouble enforcing a peaceful surrender had the Federal commander yielded. His soldiers hated the men they were fighting: it was as simple as that.

“They say all the Yankees' nigger troops are taking an oath to avenge Fort Pillow,” Anderson added.

“They can say any stupid thing they want, and the niggers can swear any stupid oath they want,” Forrest said scornfully. “It won't amount to a hill of beans next time they bump up against our boys. With an oath or without one, nigger troops can't stand up against white men.”

“I should hope not, sir!” Anderson said.

“Don't worry about it, Charlie, because they damn well can't. Just remember the bloodstains in the Mississippi.” Forrest remembered them himself, with somber satisfaction. He didn't care to remember how long the garrison in Fort Pillow had fought, how defiant the enemy had been, or how outnumbered they were. Since he'd won, he didn't need to remember any of those things. Get there first with the most men. He'd done that. Whenever and wherever he had to do it again, he expected he could.

He had less faith in the Confederacy's other generals, with the partial exception of Robert E. Lee. Joe Johnston was bound to be an improvement on Braxton Bragg. Forrest couldn't think of anything breathing that wouldn't be, including the mangiest Army mule. But could Johnston stand against the Federals when they finally started south from Chattanooga? Could anyone? Nathan Bedford Forrest didn't know.

In one way, it wasn't his worry. He'd done what he aimed to do, and he saw no reason he couldn't go on doing it for a long time. But if the great Confederate armies fell, what difference did it make? Could he go on bushwhacking even after they fell?

If I have to, I will, he thought grimly. If it means holding the niggers down, I will. He wasn't afraid; what concerned him were ways and means.

He shrugged broad shoulders. Thinking about bushwhacking and defeats to other generals was also borrowing trouble. The day-to-day routine of war was enough to worry about and then some. Soon he and his staff would follow the rest of his men down to Mississippi. “We'll lick 'em yet, Charlie,” he said.

“Of course we will, sir,” Anderson answered. Bedford Forrest hoped he meant it.