of Northern Virginia out there, and we'd still have to fight. Isn't that right, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir, I guess it is, when you put it like that,” Leaming answered.
“All right, then. We'll fight on, just the way we would have if Major Booth were still here.” Bradford hesitated, then blurted, “I wish he still were.” But Fort Pillow was his again, no matter what he wished.
Nathan Bedford Forrest rode toward the sound of the gunfire ahead. It was somewhere near ten in the morning. He'd been in the saddle since setting out from Jackson. He was so tired, he could hardly see straight. His horse had to be every bit as weary. The ideal cavalry trooper was a little bandy-legged fellow who didn't weight more than 140 pounds. Well over six feet tall and somewhere close to 200 pounds, Forrest didn't fit the bill. But he was what he was, and the horse had to put up with it.
He knew exhaustion would fall away from him like a discarded cloak once he got to the battlefield. Most of the time, he was a quiet, soft-spoken man. In a fight, everything changed. His voice rose to a roar that could span the field, no matter how wide. He became a furious and ingeniously profane swearer. Some men turned pale when they fought-they were afraid of what might happen to them. Forrest went hot and ruddy, like iron in a smith's forge. Instead of being hammered, though, he smashed the damnyankees himself.
His nostrils twitched. Yes, that was the brimstone reek of gunpowder in the air. It smelled like Old Scratch coming up from the infernal dominions for a look around. Forrest's lips skinned back from his teeth in a fierce, mirthless grin. He intended to make Fort Pillow into hell on earth, all right.
The ground around the fort was only indifferently cleared. A good many trees still stood, and stumps; fallen trunks lay scattered every which way. Even inside the outermost perimeter, plenty of cover still remained. He watched his men use it to good advantage, scooting forward from one stump to another as if they were in an Indian fight from the days before he was born.
Seeing a trooper not far away, Forrest called, “Where's General Chalmers?”
“Who wants to know?” the man answered, not looking up from the revolver he was reloading.
“Bedford Forrest, that's who.” Forrest's voice crackled with danger, the way the air will crackle just before lightning strikes. When the battle fit hit him, he was almost as hard on his own men as he was on the Federals. “Now where is he, you son of a bitch?”
The trooper hadn't been pale. Why should he be, when he was safely out of enemy rifle range? But he went white when he raised his head and saw General Forrest. He almost dropped a percussion cap, and had to fight to say, “He-He-He's over yonder, sir.” He pointed west and a little south.
“All right,” Forrest said. “I don't see you in the fight once you finish loading that hogleg, though, you'll answer to me, man to man. You hear?”
“Y-Y-Y-Yes; sir,” the man answered-not the first time Nathan Bedford Forrest had reduced a man from his own force to frightened stammering. But what he did to the Federals…
He found Brigadier General Chalmers about where the trooper said he would. Chalmers was urging his men forward-always a good thing for a general to do, especially when he wasn't far from the firing line himself. Nothing encouraged soldiers like officers who shared their risks.
“How's it look, Jim?” Forrest asked.
James Chalmers whirled. Even in the informal world of the Confederate army, even in the extra-informal world of Forrest's command, an officer who led a brigade didn't expect to be addressed by his Christian name… unless a superior did it. “Hello, sir,” Chalmers said, saluting. “So you finally made it up here, did you?”
“No, but I reckon I'll get here pretty soon,” Forrest answered dryly.
His brigade commander blinked, then decided he was joking and laughed. “Well, I'm glad to hear that, sir. We can use you.”
“It looks pretty good, from what I've seen of it,” Forrest said.
“I think so.” Brigadier General Chalmers nodded. “They sent out skirmishers after we started driving in their pickets, but we shifted them, too. Just about all the Federals are back inside the main position there. They should have hung on to some of the knobs around it. They should have, but they damn well didn't. Now we've got men on, em, and we can shoot down into their works. This isn't the best place for a fort with a small garrison, no matter what General Pillow thought when he set one here. “
“Already knew that myself,” Forrest said. “If the Yankees can't figure it out, too damn bad for them. The riffraff they've got in there, they're asking for everything we give 'em.”
A bullet cracked past. Chalmers flinched. So did Forrest; he was no more immune to that reflex than most of his soldiers were. It annoyed and angered him, but he couldn't do anything about it. However little he cared to admit it, even to himself, he was made of flesh and blood like any other man.
Straightening, Chalmers said, “You might do well to get down from that horse, sir. It makes you a target for the bastards holed up in there. You wouldn't want some damn nigger to be able to say he shot the great General Forrest, would you?”
“No, but I'm not going to worry about it, either,” Forrest answered. “And I want to see this place for my own self from one end to the other, and the horse'll tote me around faster'n I could go on shank's mare.” He always carried out his own reconnaissance when he could. More than once, he'd seen things nobody else did. He went on, “You keep crowding our boys forward, you hear, Jim?”
“I'm doing it,” Chalmers said shortly.
“I know you are. Keep doing it. Do more of it. Get' em close to the enemy. Use that high ground. I don't want the Federals moving around a lot in there. They should ought to be scared to death to step away from that parapet.”
“I'm doing it,” Chalmers repeated. This time, he smiled a little. “I've got sharpshooters picking off the Union officers whenever they see the chance, too.”
“There you go,” Forrest said. “That's what we need. If those coons and galvanized Yankees haven't got anybody to tell 'em what to do, they won't tend to something that needs tending, and we'll get the bulge on 'em that way. “
He started to ride on toward the Mississippi, but a minnie caught his horse in the neck. Blood gushed forth, hideously red and stinking like a smithy. Forrest tried jamming a finger in the wound, a trick that had kept another mount of his alive for some little while. This horse writhed and thrashed and reared, then crashed to the ground, pinning Forrest's leg beneath it.
Pain shot through him. He roared out curses, kicked at the animal with his free leg, and beat it with his fists. It rolled off him and thrashed away its life, kicking slower and more weakly as blood rivered out of it.
General Chalmers ran up to Forrest. “Are you all right, sir?” he asked, alarm making his voice almost as shrill as a woman's. “Can you get up?”
“Don't rightly know.” Forrest made himself try it. His breath hissed out between his teeth. Moving hurt like fire. But he could move, anyhow. “Don't reckon anything's broken,” he said.
His right trouser leg was torn. His flesh was bruised and scraped and battered. The whole leg would be purple and black and swollen tomorrow, if it wasn't already. But it bore his weight even if it screamed. He took a couple of limping steps. Yes, he could manage.
“You were lucky,” Chalmers said as he tried to walk off the worst of it.
“Lucky, my ass,” Forrest ground out. “If I was lucky, that damned Yankee minnie would've missed my horse. If it did hit the stupid critter, he wouldn't have fallen on me. That there's luck, General. This you can keep this.”
“The fall could have broken your leg-or your neck,” Chalmers said. “The minnie could have hit you instead of the horse.”
“All that would have been worse,” Forrest agreed. “Don't mean what happened was good.» He glowered at the beast that had brought him from Jackson. Its writhing was almost over now. Its blood pooled on the muddy ground and started soaking in. A man had an amazing lot of blood in him-you found out how much when he spilled it all at once. A horse had even more. Forrest had had plenty of horses shot out from under him, but he didn't think he'd ever had one hurt him so much when it went down. “Got to get me another animal. Will you tend to that for me?”
“Yes, sir,” Chalmers said, and then, stubbornly, “You'd still be safer on foot.”
“I'd be slower on foot,” Forrest said. “Nothing else matters now. And you don't think dismounted men are getting hit?” A wounded trooper howled and cursed as his friends led him back toward the surgeons. Forrest pointed to him the way a schoolmaster would have pointed to an example on the blackboard. He chuckled when
