“Depress 'em, you mean.”
“Depress 'em. Thank you kindly.” Robinson was always glad to
pick up a technical term. “We can't depress 'em enough to shoot at the Rebs when they is gettin' close to we. Almost like not havin' no guns at all, you know what I's sayin', suh?”
Hennissey scratched his beard. Once he started scratching, he seemed to have trouble stopping — he wasn't scratching for thought any more, but because he itched. Seeing him scratch made Ben want to scratch, too. He was lousy. Most of the men at the fort were.
“We can't be doin' much about where the guns are at,” the Irishman said at last. “But I wouldn't worry my head about it too much, Ben me boy. For one thing, we can hit the Secesh bastards while they're still a ways away, so they'll have the Devil's own time coming close at all, at all. Am I right or am I wrong?”
“Reckon you's right, suh,” Robinson said.
“Reckon I am, too,” Hennissey said smugly. “And even if them sons of bitches do come close, have we got the New Era down there
on the river, or have we not? Be after tellin' me, if you'd be so kind.”
“The gunboat, she there, suh,” Ben Robinson agreed. Hennissey clapped him on the back. “All right, then. You'll fret yourself no more about it, will you now?”
“Reckon I won't,” Robinson said.
“Good. That's good, then.” Hennissey walked away.
Was it good, then? Still not convinced, Robinson walked over to the edge of the bluff and looked down at the Mississippi. Sure enough, the gunboat floated there. Seen from more than four hundred feet above the river, the New Era seemed as small — and as flimsy — as a toy boat floating in a barrel of water. Could its presence make up for the problems with the field guns? Well, he could hope so, anyhow.
Major William Bradford was a lawyer before the war turned western Tennessee upside down and inside out. Since then, he'd stayed busy doing the same thing as a lot of other Tennesseans on both sides: paying back anybody with whom he had a score to settle.
He'd done a good job — better than most. Because of that, he and the troopers of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) he led were marked men whenever they rode out of Fort Pillow. He didn't mind. If anything, it made him proud. They were marked men because they'd left their mark on their enemies. And when those enemies also happened to be enemies of the United States, well, so much the better.
He made himself nod to Lionel Booth when their paths crossed. “Good morning, Major,” he said, his voice as smooth as if he were in a courtroom.
“Morning, Major,” Booth replied. He spoke with a Missouri twang. He'd been a sergeant major in a Missouri regiment before winning officer's rank. He was shorter and squatter than Bradford — homelier, too, thought the Tennessean, who was vain of his looks. But Booth was also senior to him even if younger, and so commanded inside Fort Pillow. Bradford didn't like that, but couldn't do anything overt about it. “Can your niggers really fight?” he asked Booth.
“I expect they can,” the other man said. “And I expect they won't have to. All's quiet around these parts. It'll likely stay that way.”
“General Hurlbut doesn't think so, or he wouldn't have sent you up here,” Bradford said. Was that bitterness? He knew damn well it was. Fort Pillow had been his ever since the Thirteenth Tennessee came down from Paducah in January. Now it wasn't any more. The loss stung. Better not to show it, though. He couldn't get rid of Booth, however much he wished he could.
The senior officer shrugged. “When you build yourself a house, you're smart to dig a storm cellar down underneath. Maybe you won't need it. Chances are you won't, matter of fact. But if you ever do, you'll need it bad. So that's what we are — we're your storm cellar.”
Bradford's eyes flicked to the Negroes who'd come north a couple of weeks before. They were going about their business, much as any other soldiers would have. They paraded smartly enough. They probably marched better than the men from his own command, for whom spit and polish was a distinct afterthought. But marching in step didn't make their skins any less dusky or their hair any less frizzy. Bradford had just asked if they could fight. He didn't want to do it again, not in so many words. He tried a different question that amounted to the same thing: “If Bedford Forrest did show up here some kind of way, could we hold him off?”
To a Union man from west Tennessee, that was always the question. A preacher face — to — face with the Devil would have had the same worry. How could he help wondering, Am I strong enough? Fielding Hurst hadn't been, and Bradford was uneasily aware that the Sixth Tennessee was a bigger, tougher outfit than the one he led.
On the other hand, Forrest's men had caught Fielding Hurst out in the open. The garrison here had Fort Pillow to protect it. And Lionel Booth, maybe because he came from Missouri, didn't hold Forrest in the same fearful regard as local men did. “Major, if he showed up here, we would whip him back to wherever he came from,” Booth said, not the tiniest trace of doubt in his voice. “We can hold this fort against anybody in the world — in the world, mind you — for two days.”
“I like the sound of that,” Bradford said, which would do for an understatement till a bigger one came along.
“No reason you shouldn't. The truth always has a good sound to it.” Major Booth tipped his hat and went on his way. He sounded like a preacher who was ready to wrestle with the Devil, all right.
Despite his reassurances, Bradford hoped the Devil stayed far, far away. He was no coward, but he didn't care to borrow trouble, either. And Nathan Bedford Forrest was trouble with a capital T.
Bradford climbed up onto the earthworks enclosing the Federal garrison and peered east. His nerves sent him up there, not his common sense. He knew that. The drizzle — sometimes it was real rain — coming down drastically shortened his range of vision. He could barely make out the two rows of wooden barracks still left from the fort's earlier, larger incarnation, let alone the rifle pits beyond them. He knew those pits were there, and also knew soldiers in blue manned them. But they might have been a mile beyond the moon for all his eyes told him.
What else was out there that his eyes couldn't see? From everything Major Booth said, he didn't think any Rebel soldiers were within forty miles of Fort Pillow. Bradford hoped the younger man was right, and had no particular reason to think him wrong. He found himself worrying even so.
Nerves, he thought again, and made himself walk along the parapet for a while before coming down again. A few soldiers, both white and colored, sent him curious looks. He ignored them — he seemed to ignore them, anyhow. Lionel Booth, now… He thought Booth really was nerveless. Bradford envied him for that as well as for his seniority. Maybe such calm really did come with combat experience. Bradford hoped so. He'd raised the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry only the autumn before. None of the men in it had much.
None of them had much experience in a U.S. uniform, anyhow. More than a few had fought for the Confederacy before switching sides. They'd ridden whichever horse looked like a winner at the moment. Bill Bradford didn't worry about that. They weren't likely to change sides again. Nobody on the other side would trust them now. Whenever they came out of the fort, in fact, they needed to worry about bushwhackers who resented their changing sides once.
A colored sergeant bawled out a private for going around with filthy boots. But for his dialect, he sounded like every other sergeant Bradford had ever heard. The major wondered how often either Negro had worn shoes before joining the U.S. Army. Not very, not unless he missed his guess. They had them now, though.
And they acted like soldiers now. Would they act like soldiers when bullets flew and cannonballs screamed through the air? Bradford shook his head. He had a hard time believing it.
He shrugged. Before long, Forrest was bound to go back down to Mississippi. Then these coons would go away, too, and whether they could fight or not wouldn't matter a bit.
II
“Come on, ride hard!” Colonel Robert McCulloch called as the Second Missouri Cavalry (C.S.) squelched west toward Brownsville, Tennessee. “You don't want those bastards from Mississippi to get ahead of you, do you?”
