Fort Pillow

VI

Noon came and went. The firing from around Fort Pillow and from within the embattled fortress went on and on. Major William Bradford began to have its measure. Indeed, he began to think it mattered less than it did. When Bedford Forrest's men first attacked, Bradford had feared they would storm the earthwork.

They'd tried-they'd tried hard from first light of day till now. They'd tried, and they hadn't had any luck. To Bradford's eye, that meant they couldn't have any luck.

“Keep shooting, men!” he yelled. “Kill 'em all! They'll never break in! Never, you hear me?”

The V.S. soldiers, white and black, cheered raucously. They'd taken fresh courage, too. The colored men, especially, began treating war more as a game than as a serious business. They danced and sang and yelled bits of filth at the Confederates. Men from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry did the same thing.

“Sir, do we really want to tick the Rebs off like this?” Lieutenant

Leaming asked.

“What difference does it make?” Bradford said grandly. He felt like dropping his trousers and waving his backside in Forrest's face, the way that one Negro had. He didn't do it, but he felt like it.

But then a minnie snapped past just in front of his nose, so close that he could feel the wind of its passage-or at least so close that he thought he could. He'd seen a couple of men who got hit in the face. He wished he hadn't. Of itself, his hand came up to caress his handsome features. Yes, they were still intact.

Even so, the near miss made him stop thinking about what his soldiers could do to the Confederates and start worrying about what Forrest's men could do to Fort Pillow. He walked over to talk to Theodorick, who was wigwagging signals to the New Era. If that also took him away from the Rebels' fire, well, he wasn't altogether brokenhearted.

“Hello, Bill,” Theo said. “We're giving 'em hell, aren't we?” As if to prove his point, the gunboat roared out another volley.

Bradford smiled as the shells hissed through the air, and again when they burst among the Rebs. See how you like it, you bastards, he thought. But then he brought his mind back to business. “Send a question down to Captain Marshall, if you'd be so kind,” he said.

“At your service.” His brother looked attentive. “What is it?” “Ask him if the New Era can support us with canister if we have to come down by the riverside.”

If the Confederates broke into Fort Pillow, that meant. It sounded much better when he said it the way he did, though. But no matter how he said it, Theodorick understood the true meaning. “Is that likely?” the older officer asked, sudden alarm in his voice and on his face.

“No, no, no,” William Bradford said quickly, as much to reassure himself as to ease Theo's mind. “I just want to cover every possible contingency.” There was a fine, impressive-sounding word.

“All right, Bill.” Theo sounded relieved. He waved his flags to draw the New Era's notice, then started semaphoring again. His younger brother admired his speed and what looked like his precision, though semaphore signals were a closed book to the major.

“Isn't anyone paying attention down there?” he asked.

But then, down on the gunboat in the Mississippi, someone with flags of his own wigwagged from the foredeck. “They have the message,” Theo reported.

“Well, what do they say about it?” Bradford demanded. “Nothing yet,” his brother answered. “They have to pass it on to Captain Marshall and wait for his reply.”

“All right. I understand.” Bill Bradford also had to wait. He liked it no better than any other busy, important man would have-so he thought of himself. After what seemed a very long time but couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes, the sailor with the semaphore flags on the New Era started using them.

“At your service in every way, Captain Marshall says,” Theodorick told his brother.

“That's good. Thanks a lot, Theo.” Bradford took off his hat and waved it in salute to the gunboat, though the sailors far below probably wouldn't notice.

More than a little reluctantly, he made his way back toward the firing. Nothing had hit him yet. Nothing would hit him. He kept telling himself so, over and over again. Whenever the law had to say something repeatedly, it was a sign nobody was paying attention to it. As an attorney, Bill Bradford understood that principle. Applying it to his own case didn't occur to him, which might have been just as well.

“Captain Young!” he shouted. “Where are you, Captain?”

“I'm here, sir,” John Young answered after Bradford called his name several times. Fort Pillow's provost marshal was a large, solidly built man with a habitual scowl and a black beard so thick it was almost like a pelt. “What do you need?”

Bradford pointed toward the New Era. “I want you to get some men to take a store of cartridges down to the riverbank. If we have to fight down there, 1 don't want it to be just with whatever ammunition we chance to carry with us.”

Captain Young's frown deepened. “If we have to fight by the riverbank, that will mean the Rebs have carried the fort,” he said. Major Bradford waited with a scowl of his own. After a pause that stretched, Young added, “Sir.”

“Yes, I know it will,” Bradford said. “Would you rather not nail new shingles on the roof in case of rain?”

Young grunted. “Well, when you put it that way-”

“That is precisely how I put it, Captain.” Bradford drew himself up again.

He didn't have to wait so long this time. With a crisp salute, Young said, “Yes, sir. I'll take care of it.” He started shouting for soldiers. Before long, he had men lurching and staggering down the side of the bluff, two of them carrying each heavy crate. “All right, sir,” he reported when the job was done. “We've got half a dozen cases of minnies down there. If those aren't enough to keep up the fight, God help us all.”

“Yes,” Major Bradford said. “God help us all.”

Bedford Forrest watched the fighting at Fort Pillow from a swell of ground about a quarter of a mile from the Federal earthworks. Sharpshooters from Colonel McCulloch's brigade not far away sniped at the Union men. Unlike the troops farther forward, who simply fired as fast as they could, the sharpshooters took their time and made sure they had good targets before they pulled the trigger.

“There you go!” Forrest shouted encouragement. “Keep banging away at them. They'll fall down.”

One of the sharpshooters whooped, so maybe the soldier he'd aimed at did fall over. Forrest hoped so. The men in blue inside the fort were putting up a stronger fight than he'd expected. He still thought he could overrun their works-with his men on so many high spots around Fort Pillow, they could fire into the fort with devastating effect, and could keep the enemy from doing as much as he would want to when the final assault came. Still, that final assault was liable to prove more costly than he looked for when he set out from Jackson. And so… A slow smile spread over his face. Even if the colored troops and homemade Yankees inside the fort hadn't fought unusually well, he supposed he would have trotted out one of his favorite ploys. He used it for one simple reason: it worked often enough to make it worthwhile.

“Captain Anderson!” he yelled. “Where in the tarnation is Captain Anderson?” Then he laughed at himself. “To hell with me if I didn't send him down to the riverbank my very own self.” He called to one of the soldiers on the little rise with him: “Hey, Zach! Go down to the river and bring Captain Anderson here, will you?”

“Sure will, General.” Zach hurried away. Bedford Forrest smiled. Sometimes an order phrased as a request worked better than any other kind. Touchy about their personal pride, a lot of Confederates resented being flat-out told what to do.

Rough, steeply sloping ground and fallen trees made Zach's trip down to the riverbank slower than it might have been. Captain Anderson couldn't come back up much faster, even if he was on horseback. Sketching a salute to Forrest, he said, “What's up, sir?”

Forrest pointed toward the fort. “I'm going to give those people in there a chance to surrender. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.”

“Sure worked in Union City three weeks ago.” A smile stole over Anderson's face. “Poor Colonel Hawkins has surrendered to you twice now, even though you were only there once.”

“Well, so he has.” Forrest. grinned, too. His detachment under Colonel Duckworth that intimidated-buffaloed, really-the luckless Isaac Hawkins into yielding Union City was a good deal weaker than the force that surrendered to it. A lot of the Federal officers who went into captivity were furious at their commander-which did them no good at all.

“All right, sir. Let's see if they'll throw in the sponge.” Captain Anderson always had paper and pencil handy. “Go ahead.”

“Headquarters Forrest's Cavalry. Before Fort Pillow, April twelfth, eighteen sixty-four.” Forrest had sent in a lot of surrender demands; he could begin one without even needing to think about it. His aide-de-camp scribbled furiously. Then the general commanding paused. “What's the name of the Yankee son of a bitch in charge there?”

Charles Anderson always had such minutiae at his fingertips; he made a good aide-de-camp. “Booth, Sir — Lionel Booth. He's a major.”

“Yes, I remembered that. Well, then.” He paused again. Captain Anderson poised the pencil. Forrest resumed: “Major Booth, commanding United States forces, Fort Pillow. Major…” He weighed phrases in his mind. “The officers and men of Fort Pillow have fought well…” As usual, fought came out as fit. This time, he shook his head. “No, that won't do. It hasn't got the right pitch to it.”

“Start again, sir?” Anderson asked; he'd seen Forrest edit despatches on the fly before.

“Reckon I'd better. How's this…?” Forrest said. “The conduct of the officers and men garrisoning Fort Pillow has been…” the delay this time was to let Anderson's pencil catch up “… such as to entitle them to being treated as prisoners of war.” Listening, he nodded. “Yes, that'll do.”

''I'm up with you, sir,” Captain Anderson said. “What next?”

“I demand the unconditional surrender of this garrison, promising you that you shall be treated as prisoners of war.” Forrest knew he'd repeated himself, but let it go. The Federals were bound to be anxious about the point. He went on, “My men have received a fresh supply of ammunition, and from their present position can easily assault and capture the fort.”

“Every word of that's true,” his aide-de-camp said when he caught up with Forrest's dictation. He grinned again; Forrest and the commanders who served under him had lied like Ananias in several surrender demands, most recently the one that bagged Union City. They didn't always work, either; the fortress up at Paducah, Kentucky, had held out against his forces not long before, even though his men controlled most of the town for half a day. “Now for the warning?” Anderson asked.

“Oh, yes.” Even though the Federals inside Fort Pillow couldn't hear him, Bedford Forrest sounded lion-fierce as he continued.

“Should my demand be refused, I cannot be responsible for the fate of your command. Respectfully, N.B. Forrest, Major-General commanding… Read that back to me, Anderson.”

“Yes, sir,” Anderson said, and then, when it was done, “Does it suit you?”

“Yes, it'll do,” Forrest said.

“Shall I deliver it to the enemy myself?” Anderson asked.

“No, I want you back down by the river, fast as you can get there,”

Forrest replied. “I'll send somebody else.” He looked around for another man and spotted one of General Chalmers's staff officers not far away, ready to do anything Chalmers might require of him. Well I need him more than Jim does now, Forrest thought. “Captain Goodman!” he called.

“Yes, sir?” Walter Goodman was not only brave-no one who wasn't brave served under Forrest for long-but had a pretty good head on his shoulders. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“Take a flag of truce and ride up toward the fort,” Forrest answered. That drew Chalmers's notice, too; Forrest thought it might. He went on, “Captain Anderson here has written out a call for the Federals to surrender. Will you take it to them?” He held out the paper.

“Of course, sir,” Goodman said.

“Good.” Forrest nodded to himself; again, he'd phrased the order as a request, but that didn't make it any less an order. “Round up a couple of more officers as you go forward, if you care to-that'll give you a proper-looking truce party.”

“I'll take care of it.” Captain Goodman read the surrender demand. He looked up with a frown on his face. “Ask you a question, sir?”

“What is it?” Forrest said. “Something not clear?”

“You say the garrison's entitled to be treated as prisoners of war,”

Goodman replied. “Does that include the niggers, too? The Federals are bound to ask, and they've got a hell of a lot of coons in there.”

Forrest grimaced unhappily. What to do about Negroes in blue uniforms had bedeviled the Confederacy since the U.S.A. started arming them. The usual practice, codified by a law out of Richmond, was to return runaway slaves-who formed the bulk of the colored troops-to their owners. Here, though… “Yes, dammit, we'll treat the niggers as prisoners of war — if they give up now. I want that fort, and I want it before the Yankees can bring reinforcements up the river.” He glanced over to General Chalmers. Chalmers didn't look happy about it, either, but he nodded.

Walter Goodman looked sorry he'd asked. “All right, sir,” he said, “but a lot of the men won't like it.” He wasn't wrong. If anything, ordinary Confederate troopers hated the idea of colored soldiers worse than their officers did.

But challenging, or even seeming to challenge, Nathan Bedford Forrest was the wrong thing to do. Bristling, the general commanding snapped, “If I say we'll take nigger prisoners as long as the Federals give up now, then we damn well will. Have you got that, Captain?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” Captain Goodman said hastily.

“All right, then.” Forrest's temper cooled as quickly as it rose. “Go on forward and see what this Major Booth has to say for himself.”

“If he has any sense, he'll quit now, while he's still able to,” Brigadier General Chalmers said. “We can storm the place if he's stubborn. “

“Looks that way to me, too,” Forrest agreed.

Captain Goodman shouted for a white cloth he could make into a flag of truce. When he had one, he started up toward Fort Pillow. Forrest sent Captain Anderson back down to the Mississippi.

“Well,” he said, as firing began to fade with men on both sides spying the white flag, “now we see what happens next.”

“Look, sir!” an excited trooper from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry called to Mack Leaming. “The Rebs are sending up a truce flag.”

“So they are.” Lieutenant Leaming didn't sound as happy as the private did. Forrest used flags of truce all the time. He was known to take advantage of them, too, if he saw the chance to do it.

For the moment, though, the rattle of musketry from both sides faded. Major Bradford called out a command to his brother: “For God's sake, Theo, let the New Era know we've got a cease-fire!”

“Yes, sir!” Theodorick Bradford waved the wigwag flags as if suddenly stricken with St. Vitus' dance. A few minutes earlier, gunfire would have drowned his voice and his younger brother's. Now they rang clearly, the loudest things on the suddenly quiet field.

“Leaming!” Bill Bradford shouted. “Are you there, Leaming?” The commandant couldn't have been standing more than twenty feet away from Leaming, but his back was turned so he could call to his signals officer. “I'm here, sir,” the adjutant replied.

Bradford turned. “Well, so you are,” he said with a sheepish smile. Pointing out toward the approaching Confederate truce party, he went on, “I want you to go find out what the enemy has in mind.”

“Yes, sir.” Leaming couldn't help blurting, “By myself, sir?” Major Bradford started to nod, but then checked himself. “Well, maybe not,” he allowed. “We don't want Forrest to reckon we can only spare the one man, do we now?”

“That's what 1 meant, sir,” Leaming said gratefully. And it was.. part of what he meant, anyhow. Going out there alone to face Forrest's fearsome fighters, even under flag of truce, also struck him as too much like sticking his head in the lion's mouth. If he didn't have to admit that out loud, he didn't want to.

“Fair enough,” Major Bradford said. “Take Captain Young with you, then. He's a sharp fellow, and solid as a rock. And”-he looked around and nodded toward the first other officer he saw-”take Lieutenant van Horn with you, too, and a few mounted men for swank.”

“Yes, sir.” Leaming nodded, too. He liked that a lot better. Easier to stay brave when you weren't trying to do it all by yourself. And bringing along Second Lieutenant Dan van Horn was a downright good idea. He came from the Sixth U.S. Heavy Artillery (Colored), and could report directly to his fellow officers-those of them left alive-about what went on.

Van Horn was a young man, younger than Mack Leaming. He still looked excited about the fighting, which was more than Leaming could say. John Young didn't, but he wasn't a man who would rattle easily, either-Bradford was right about that. As for the troopers… Leaming picked the first four men he saw and told them to get up on horseback.

Less than five minutes later, he and his companions, carrying their own flag of truce, went down from Fort Pillow toward the Confederates, who waited on the ground that sloped up toward the fort from the end of the battered rows of barracks buildings nearer the Mississippi. All the Rebs were mounted; Leaming, Young, and van Horn moved forward on foot.

“Good morning, gentlemen.” Polite as a cat, the C.S. officer holding the white flag saluted his U.S. opposite numbers. “I am Captain Walter Goodman, General Chalmers's adjutant general. Accompanying me are Captain Tom Henderson, commanding our scouts, and Lieutenant Frank Rogers.” He didn't bother naming the enlisted men with his party.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Captain Goodman.” Leaming saluted, too. The formal courtesies of war went on even while men did their best to murder one another. So did life in general: only a few feet away, a robin hopped over the muddy ground, now and then pausing to pull up a worm. Leaming introduced himself, continuing, “I have the honor to be post adjutant. With me are Captain John Young, our provost marshal, and Lieutenant Dan van Horn.” Captain Goodman hadn't said what Lieutenant Rogers did; Lieutenant Leaming didn't mention that Lieutenant van Horn led colored troops. He also didn't name the troopers from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry who'd come forward with him.

Goodman held out a folded sheet of paper. “Please take this to your commander, Lieutenant. It is General Forrest's demand for the surrender of the fort. “

“I will convey it to him, sir,” Leaming said. “May I read it first, so I can clear up with you any questions he is likely to have?”

“By all means.” Captain Goodman nodded and gestured. “Be my guest. “

Leaming unfolded the paper. From everything he'd heard, Bedford Forrest was not an educated man. By the smooth, flowing script he saw, he doubted the Confederate commander had written this note himself. But it held Forrest's fierce, arrogant tone all the same. “I do have a question,” Leaming said when he finished reading it.

“Ask, sir, ask.” Walter Goodman was the soul of politeness. He might have been trying to sell Leaming a phaeton or a surrey, not trying to talk him into going into captivity.

He might have been, but he wasn't. “General Forrest says, 'I demand the unconditional surrender of this garrison, promising you that you shall be treated as prisoners of war,''' Leaming read. Captain Goodman nodded again. The Federal officer went on, “You will know we have colored troops inside the fort. Does this promise extend to them as well? They too will be treated as prisoners of war, and will not be killed out of hand or re-enslaved?”

“Yes, sir. That is correct. The niggers will be treated as prisoners of war, on the same terms as white men, if you surrender now,” Walter Goodman said. “As it happens, I raised this point myself with both General Forrest and General Chalmers, wanting to make sure no unfortunate misunderstandings arose from it. They both stated very clearly that they will accept the colored soldiers under the terms of this demand.” Goodman leaned toward Leaming. His politesse did not slip, not quite, but he let the hostility below show through. “Bear in mind also, sir, that if you refuse we shall not answer for the safety of any man within Fort Pillow, black or white. Is that plain?”

“It could scarcely be plainer, Captain.” With Captain Young and Lieutenant van Horn beside him, Leaming had to affect a nonchalance he did not feel.

“Very well. Any further questions?” Goodman asked.

“No, sir. I will carry this message to my commanding officer.” Leaming had seen that the demand was addressed to Major Booth. Booth would be reading it from the Pearly Gates, from which place his comments were unlikely to return. But the Confederates didn't need to know command had devolved upon a less experienced man. Leaming did not mention Major Bradford's name. He just turned to his companions and said, “Let's go.”

“I expect Major Booth's answer in short order,” Goodman warned, proving again that he didn't know Booth was dead. “No delay here will be tolerated.”

“I will make that very plain, sir,” Leaming said. Once more, he said not a word about to whom he would make it plain.

His footfalls and those of the two officers with him and the clop of the horses' hooves and jingle of their harness were the only sounds he heard as he walked back up to Fort Pillow. Guns had been thundering and cannon roaring since first light. The silence now felt almost eerie.

Major Bradford waited just inside the gun port from which the truce party had set out. “What do they want?” he called.

“About what you'd expect, sir.” Mack Leaming held out the paper Captain Goodman had handed him. “Here is Forrest's demand.”

Bradford rapidly read through it. When he finished, he asked the same question Leaming had: “What about the colored troops?”

“Sir, they are to be included among the prisoners of war,” Leaming answered. “I raised the point with Captain Goodman, who delivered the note to me. He said both General Chalmers, whom he serves, and General Forrest agreed they will accept the Negroes' surrender.”

“I am not going to decide this all at once,” Bradford said. “Have you got paper and a pencil, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir.” Leaming took the writing tools from his pocket.

“All right, then. Take this down…” Major Bradford hesitated for a moment, perhaps communing with his muse. “To General Forrest, commanding C.S. forces,” he said. Mack Leaming wrote it down. Bradford went on. “Sir-I respectfully ask one hour for consultation with my officers and the officers of the gunboat. In the meantime no preparation to be made on either side.” He hesitated again, then asked, “Do the Confederates know Major Booth is dead?”

“No, sir,” Leaming said. “As you see, their demand is addressed to him. I didn't tell them he'd been hit, and neither did anyone else in the party.”

“Likely just as well. They'll think better of Booth than they will of me. He was a real soldier, and I'm just a lawyer, and a Tennessee Tory to boot,” Bradford said. Lieutenant Leaming found himself nodding; those were the main reasons he hadn't informed the Confederates of Booth's death. Bill Bradford went on, “As long as they don't know, let's keep them in the dark. Sign it, 'Very respectfully, L.F. Booth, Major Commanding.' “

“Yes, sir.” Leaming did as he was asked.

“Good, good. Now-do you have an envelope?” Bradford seemed endlessly worried about tiny procedural details.

“Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, I do.” Leaming took one from the left breast pocket of his tunic. He put Bradford's response into it.

“Good. Good. Seal it up. Seal it up tight,” Major Bradford said. “And, with a little luck, Bedford Forrest'll give us the hour, and we'll have reinforcements in place by the time it's up, and then we really will be able to tell him to go to the Devil.”

“I hope so, sir,” Leaming said. Along with the other members of the truce party, he went out of Fort Pillow toward the waiting Captain Goodman once more.

Major William Bradford's dream of reinforcements was Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest's nightmare. Not long after his ultimatum to the men inside Fort Pillow went forward, that nightmare looked like it was coming true. A trooper from down by the Mississippi came up to Forrest, calling, “General! General Forrest, sir! There's smoke on the river, sir! Looks like a steamboat's coming up!”

Bedford Forrest swore horribly. That was the last thing he wanted to hear. “God damn it to hell and gone!” he shouted, and then, hoping against hope, “Are you sure?”

“Sure as I am that I'm Hank Tibbs,” the cavalryman answered. “Come see for yourself if you don't believe me.”

“I think I'd better,” Forrest said grimly, and rode down toward the broad river. He didn't get there as fast as he would have liked; the steeply sloping ground and the number of felled tree trunks made his horse pick its way along. He needed almost fifteen minutes to come to the eastern bank of the Mississippi and peer downstream toward Memphis.

Hank Tibbs didn't have to worry that anyone would fear he wasn't entitled to his own name. Bedford Forrest did some more profane swearing when he spied the steamer coming up from the south. As he'd feared they would be, its decks were blue with the uniforms of U.S. soldiers.

Just to make things worse, a glance north along the Mississippi showed more smoke, as if another steamboat was on the way with aid and comfort for the Federals in Fort Pillow. How was he supposed to take the place if they could pour men into it from the river?

Forrest looked from Fort Pillow out to the gunboat already floating on the Mississippi. The enemy warship was honoring the truce; it hadn't fired a shot since learning the white flag had gone in. But neither the gunboat nor the men in the fort were making any effort to stop the steamer crammed with troops from approaching. In their place, Forrest probably wouldn't have, either. That didn't make him love them any better.

“Captain Anderson!” he shouted.

“Yes, sir?” His aide-de-camp wasn't far away.

“Get as many men down by the riverbank as you can,” Forrest said. “Pull some of them down from those buildings we took, and use the little force you already gathered together.” He pointed down the river toward the oncoming steamboat. “Let those sons of bitches see they'll have a nasty time of it if they try to let their soldiers off.”

“I'll tend to it, sir.” Anderson saluted and hurried away.

A moment later, Forrest shouted for a runner. When the soldier came up to him, he said, “Get your fanny over to Colonel Barteau in Coal Creek Ravine. Tell him to bring his men out in the open and to take them down by the bank of Coal Creek. I want to make sure the Yankees in that there steamer”-he pointed to the vessel-”can't swing in and land by the creek any more than they can here along the river. Have you got that?”

“Yes, sir,” the runner said. When Forrest raised an eyebrow, the man gave back the instructions with tolerable accuracy. Forrest nodded. The runner trotted off toward the far side of the battlefield.

Men in gray and butternut rushed to make themselves visible on the low ground by the base of the bluff. Some of them came up along the riverbank, others down from the buildings they'd gained when the Federals failed to burn them all. Watching, Forrest nodded again, this time to himself. An officer would have to be crazy to try to land in the face of opposition like that.

“General! General! You there, General?” Forrest's head came up like that of a hound taking a scent-he knew WaIter Goodman's voice when he heard it.

“I'm here, Goodman!” he called, pitching his voice to carry. He could always make himself heard, even on the maddest, noisiest field. With the guns fallen silent, Yankees out on that steamboat might have heard him. “What do the Federals in the fort say?”

“Here is their answer, sir.” Captain Goodman held out a sealed envelope.

“What a pack of foolishness. You could have seen it,” Forrest said scornfully. He opened the envelope and took out the note inside. Once he'd read it, he shook his head. “The son of a bitch in there is playing for time, and to hell with me if I aim to let him have any. Can you write down my answer to take back to the U.S. truce party?”

“Yes, sir.” Goodman produced pencil and paper. Forrest had thought he would be able to; he served General Chalmers much as Captain Anderson served Forrest himself. “Go ahead, sir.”

“To Major L.F. Booth, commanding U.S. forces, Fort Pillow.” Forrest paused for a moment, then went on, “Sir-I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note asking for one hour to consider my demand for your surrender. Your request cannot be granted. I will allow you twenty minutes from the receipt of this note for consideration; if at the expiration of that time the fort is not surrendered, I shall assault it. I do not demand the surrender of the gunboat. Very respectfully, N.B. Forrest, Major-General.“

“That should do the job, sir,” Goodman said. “Let me read it back to you.” He did. Forrest nodded. “I'll deliver it, then,” Goodman told him, and rode up toward the spot where the truce parties from the two sides were meeting.

Up on the fortified bluff, colored and white soldiers mocked the men emerging from cover to thwart the troop-laden steamship. The men in blue didn't fire on Forrest's troopers, but did their best to provoke them in every other way they could. “We won't give you no quarter if you comes at us!” a drunken Negro bawled.

“After we git you, we git your sisters, too!” another Negro shouted. Forrest could imagine nothing better calculated to inflame his men. The colored soldier probably wasn't joking, either. White troopers from Fort Pillow had ranged through western Tennessee. They'd insulted more than a few women dear to Forrest's soldiers, and outraged more than one. Why wouldn't a black man want to imitate them?

A corporal not far from Forrest growled. “Those sons of bitches'll laugh out of the other side of their faces when we get in amongst 'em.” A couple of soldiers shook their fists at the U.S. soldiers inside Fort Pillow, but no one raised a rifle musket to his shoulder and tried to avenge himself upon them. Unlike the Federals, his men showed good discipline-or maybe they were more worried about what he would do to them for going against orders than they were angry at the enemy.

Captain Goodman rode back to him sooner than he'd expected. “What's going on?” Forrest called to him. “Has Booth given you an answer already?”

“No, sir-sorry,” Goodman answered. “But some of the Federals in the truce party are saying maybe you aren't really here at all. They're saying it's a bluff like the one Colonel Duckworth used in Union City.”

“Oh, they are, are they?” Forrest said. “Will it make ’em happy if I advance and be recognized?”

Goodman's lips quirked upward into something that looked like a smile but was knowing and unamused. “Well, sir, I don't reckon it'll make ‘em very happy, if you know what I mean, but it'll sure enough take their doubts away.”

“Then I'll do it,” Forrest said at once. “Lead on, Captain. I think things here are tolerable good-the Yankees won't be able to land, and it looks like they know it.”

He followed the junior officer forward, past the barracks buildings and up onto the higher ground that led to the inner position the United States had fortified. The U.S. flag still floated defiantly above Fort Pillow. Forrest felt a peculiar prickling of the skin above his breastbone. If a Federal sharpshooter wanted him dead badly enough to violate the truce, he was within range for a decent shot. But U.S. soldiers had tried to kill him since the war was new. His own horse had come closer to doing it a few hours earlier than most of them had. Captain Goodman pointed. “There they are, sir.”

“I see ‘em,” Forrest said.

“The big dark one is Captain Young-their provost marshal,”

Goodman said. “The other officer's Lieutenant van Horn. I don't see Lieutenant Leaming-he's the post adjutant. He must still be inside the fort, talking things over with Major Booth.”

“These fellows here can testify for me.” Forrest spurred past Goodman and rode up to the Federals. “I am General Forrest,” he said. “Will any of you know me by sight?”

“I do, sir.” The dark officer sketched a salute. “Captain John Young, Twenty-fourth Missouri Cavalry. Not the way I'd care to meet you, but…” He shrugged.

“You do know I am who I say I am?” Forrest persisted.

“Yes, sir.” Young did not seem afraid. He probably was — Forrest would have been, in his shoes — but he didn't show it. Most of the time, that was what mattered on the field. Forrest nodded with reluctant respect.

Captain Goodman pointed west toward the Mississippi, where the steamer moving up from the south had come level with Fort Pillow. Her name was painted on her side in huge letters: Olive Branch. Bedford Forrest chuckled under his breath.

“Look how many men she's got aboard her, sir,” Goodman said.

“They can give us a lot of trouble if she lands.”

“Don't worry, Captain,” Forrest said quietly. “She won't land.”