Thieves Of Mercy

TWENTY-EIGHT

If not already done, for God’s sake order the River Defense Fleet to defend every bend and dispute every mile of river from [Fort] Pillow here.

BRIGADIER GENERAL M. JEFF THOMPSON TO GENERAL DANIEL RUGGLES, CONFEDERA TE STATES ARMY

For Bowater, stepping into command was like pulling on an old, worn coat. Once he began issuing orders, he forgot about how utterly absurd it was that he should be in that situation. His mind was entirely taken up with strategy.

Yankee, water battery, current, steam, bow gun. His world was reduced to those elements, the only ones that mattered.

He leaned into the speaking tube that communicated with the engine room. “Mr. Taylor, are you there?” he shouted. He waited a moment, opened his mouth to speak again, when Taylor ’s voice echoed back up the tube. “I’m here, Cap’n.” That familiar tone of exasperation, it was good to hear it again.

“What do you have for steam?”

Another pause, a sigh of even deeper exasperation. “Still below

service gauge. I can give you one bell in five minutes.”

“Very well. As soon as you can.” Bowater straightened, looked out the wheelhouse window. They had no steam, but the current was with them. Worst case, they could cast off and drift down to the rest of the River Defense Fleet, anchored below Fort Pillow.

The guns of the fort were blasting away, the low water battery and now the guns higher up, sending a shower of metal across the river, but the Yankee was pressing on through it. He’s a cool one, Bowater thought. It was one of the rams he and Sullivan had seen upriver. A big letter Q hung between the chimneys.

What to do, what to do… Bowater stepped out of the wheelhouse, looked down the boat’s larboard side, the side pressed against the riverbank. The lines were all cast off, save for the bow and stern, and those were ready to slip. He turned to look where Sullivan and Guthrie had fallen. Their shipmates had carried them away, and all that remained of their fight was a pool of Mississippi Mike’s blood, and a splatter of Guthrie’s.

With his mind occupied, Bowater had not given them a second thought, but now he did. He recalled Guthrie’s big knife thrust into Mike’s gut. He had seen gut wounds before. There was not much hope for anything but a quick death, and even that was not likely.

Guthrie? Bowater could not tell. That hit he took to the side of the head might well have crushed his skull. Sullivan was strong enough to do it. In a day or two, they might both be dead.

What a God almighty waste, Bowater thought. The Confederacy could scarcely afford to have its own people killing each other. The Yankees were doing that fast enough.

He heard a creak, a groan behind him. The walking beam made its first agonizing move, up and down, with just steam enough to drive it. The paddle wheels began to turn, slowly, painfully, like an old man getting out of bed.

Good enough. Bowater strode back to the wheelhouse. “Cast off, fore and aft,” he said to Tarbox.

Tarbox stepped quickly to the larboard side. “Cast off, fore and aft!” he shouted and the bow and stern fasts, looped around trees ashore, came snaking through the low brush and whipped back aboard. The distance from boat to shore began to open up, a strip of muddy water between them. Bowater turned to the helmsman. “You have steerage?”

The helmsman grunted, spun the wheel a half turn. “A bit. Enough.”

“Very well. Make for the Yankee steamer.”

“Yankee steamer,” the helmsman repeated, gave a turn to starboard, steadied her up. The General Page could barely stem the current with the steam she had. They were a long way from having the momentum to ram, while the Yankee had a full head of steam and the current to boot. If she got a clean shot with her ram, it might be the end of the Page and Bowater’s brief tenure with the River Defense Fleet.

He grabbed the engine room bell cord, rang up three bells, could well imagine the string of profanities Hieronymus Taylor was pouring on his name.

They were crossing the river diagonally, closing with the Yankee. Fort Pillow was flinging shell and round shot across the water, but it seemed to have little effect on the intruder.

“Tell the bow gun to fire when ready,” Bowater said and Tar-box nodded, carried the order forward. In a minute the first mate was back. “You gonna fight this son of a bitch?” he asked, disinterested, as if the decision did not involve him.

“Perhaps…” As he said it, a cat’s-paw of wind enveloped the fort, lifted the smoke away, revealing the batteries, the turned earth of the redoubts climbing up the bank. And beyond that, another column of smoke, a double column, twisting together to form a single black line, rising from the river, upstream.

Oh, you tricky son of a bitch…

“It’s a trap, Mr. Tarbox,” Bowater said. “There is at least one more of these Yankee rams waiting upstream for us. See the smoke?”

Tarbox looked in the direction that Bowater indicated. He puffed his cheroot, nodded his head.

“Reckon we best get the hell outta here,” Tarbox said.

Bowater nearly said, “Reckon so,” but he stopped himself. “Yes, indeed.”

Forward, the Page’s bow gun fired, adding to the din from the fort. “Tell the men on the stern to fire when they bear,” Bowater said to Tarbox, then to the helmsman, “Bring her around. We’ll make for the rest of the fleet below the fort.”

The helmsman spun the wheel, and with the mounting steam and the current with them at last, the General Page seemed to fly downriver, leaving the Yankee in the hail of fire from Fort Pillow. The stern chaser, loaded and ready, fired upriver. They were almost up to their anchorage before the gun fired a second time.

Bowater conned the steamer to a place between the Colonel Lovell and the Little Rebel and ordered the anchor let go. The Yankee had turned on his heel and was steaming back upriver, with nothing to show for his efforts.

Doc appeared at the wheelhouse door. Dried blood formed a new layer of stains on his apron, on top of the rest of the filth. There was a smear of blood on his worried-looking face as well. “Cap’n Bowater?” he asked with more deference than Bowater would have thought he had in him. “Cap’n Sullivan, he’s askin for ya.”

“Very well.” Bowater looked into the cook’s blue eyes and saw trouble. “Have you been ministering to him? How is he?”

“He ain’t good. Well… hell, I don’t know. Gut wound’s a bad thing. Reckon you know that. Sullivan says he’ll be fine, but hell, I don’t see how.”

Bowater nodded. “Guthrie?”

“Still out cold.”

“Very well.” He gestured toward the forward ladder and Doc led the way down to the boiler deck, then aft to Sullivan’s cabin. Bowater stepped into the familiar room where he and Mississippi Mike had created their masterwork, then into the sleeping cabin beyond.

Sullivan was stretched out on his bunk, his shirt torn open, a pile of bloody bandage on his stomach. His skin looked white and waxy, and the dim lantern light shone on the film of perspiration that covered his body.

“Cap’n Bowater,” Sullivan said, his voice lacking the drive and timbre that Bowater had come to expect. “I would sure admire a drink of water.”

“No water!” Doc shrieked from behind Bowater’s back. “I done told you, no water!”

“Aw, hell, is he here?” Sullivan said. “How’s a fella supposed to live with no water?”

“I don’t know,” Doc said, with more of the old cussedness back in his voice. “I just know gut wound means no water.”

Sullivan let his head roll back in a way that implied resignation. “Doc told me you took command up there. What happened, Cap’n? With the Yankee, an all?”

Samuel stepped closer. He felt himself growing solicitous, as if it was all right to be genuine and caring in this instance, since the man was going to die anyway. He told him about the trap upriver, and the firing from the fort and their escape below Fort Pillow’s guns.

Sullivan nodded weakly. “You done a good job, Cap’n,” he said, and though Bowater found that Sullivan’s patronizing compliment rankled, he kept silent because of his current forgiving mood.

“Now see here,” Sullivan continued, his voice weak, his tone conspiratorial, “I need you to do me a favor, Cap’n, need it more’n I ever needed anything. You can’t tell Thompson or Montgomery or nobody about me being laid up here. You do, they’ll put me on