Matt Ward laughed when he heard that. “How many times has Black Bob talked about those Mississippi fellows?” he asked the man riding behind him. “He think maybe we forgot about 'em since ten minutes ago?”
“Beats me,” Zachary Bartlett answered. He was doing his best to keep a pipe going in the rain, and not having much luck. Ward had given up trying to smoke till he got somewhere dry. A splat and a hiss declared that the pipe had just taken another hit. “Goddamn thing,” Bartlett said without rancor.
“Goddamn rain,” Ward said, and his friend nodded. He went on,
“How long till we get to this Brownsville place, anyway?”
“Shouldn't be much longer,” Bartlett said. He'd said the same thing the last time Ward asked, about an hour earlier. Ward decided that meant he didn't know where the hell Brownsville was, either.
Somewhere between Jackson and Fort Pillow, Ward thought. That took in — what? About seventy miles of ground, anyway. The Second Missouri had been riding west since before daybreak. Ward had done a lot of hard riding in his time. This grinding slog through mud and through streams without bridges was as rough as anything he'd ever tried.
Somebody'd said Bedford Forrest was coming, too, coming after all. He'd started out after the Second Missouri headed for Fort Pillow. Could he catch up? How soon? Was he really coming at all? Or was it just another rumor, one of the nine million that soldiers invented and passed around to give themselves something to do and something to talk about? Ward didn't know. He didn't waste a lot of time worrying about it, either. If Forrest decided to ride west from Jackson, he did, that was all. If he didn't, they could whip the turncoats and coons in Fort Pillow just fine without him. General Chalmers knew what he was doing. And besides…
“You own niggers, Zach?” he asked.
“Me?” Bartlett laughed mirthlessly. “Likely tell! My wife's brother bought himself a couple — three, and he's so goddamn proud of it, it's like his shit don't stink. How about you?”
“Nope.” Ward shook his head, which made water drip from the brim of his slouch hat. “I got a cousin who does, but he's down in Arkansas somewhere. But I reckon you've been to a slave auction or two, same as I have. “
“Well, hell, who ain't been?” Bartlett said. “Good way to kill an afternoon, even if the likes of us ain't got the money to buy. Some of the gals are damn fine lookin', too.” His frown looked meaner than it was, for it pulled tight a knife scar at the corner of his mouth. “What you aimin' at, anyways?”
“You've seen all them niggers standing up there on the block,” Ward said. “I'm not talking about the wenches, now — I mean the bucks. You reckon somebody you can buy and sell like a sack of flour… You reckon somebody like that can fight?”
“Not so it matters,” his friend answered without hesitation.“ I tell you this, though — any nigger who tries pointing a gun at me, that's one dead nigger right there.”
“Well, you can sing that in church.” Ward was slimmer and darker than Bartlett, and envied the other trooper his scar. He didn't want to get cut or shot himself. He'd seen wounded men, and dead men, too. He knew bullets and knives hurt. But he wanted a mark to show the world — and maybe show himself — he'd been to war.
All over the Confederacy, whites believed Negroes couldn't fight. They believed the Federals were a pack of monsters for putting Negroes in uniform, giving them guns, and letting them fight. And they maintained elaborate organizations designed to crush slave uprisings before they really got started.
Those organizations worked. Rebellions were suppressed so ruthlessly, they didn't happen very often. But having plans to put down revolts said Negroes might fight after all if they ever got the chance.
Matt Ward didn't recognize the contradiction, not with the top part of his mind. Hardly any white Southerners did. But it was there, inescapably there, and it nagged at him the way a tooth will when it hasn't started to ache yet but isn't quite right, either. He sensed it was there, and he wished he didn't.
McCulloch's brigade got into Brownsville a little past noon, riding in from the west. Brigadier General Bell's brigade had just come into town from the northwest. Between them, the two forces stretched Brownsville to overflowing.
Quite a few Negroes were on the muddy streets. There seemed to be more slaves in this part of Tennessee than anywhere else in the state — and there must have been more still before it started slipping back and forth between the C.S.A. and the U.S.A.
“Brunswick stew?” a white woman called, lifting a ladle out of a covered pot.
Ward's stomach was rubbing against his backbone. “Thank you kindly, ma' am.” He took the ladle and got his mouth around it like a snake engulfing a gopher. The stew was full of potatoes and mushrooms and some kind of meat. “Mighty fine,” he said when he'd swallowed some of it. “What's in there with the vegetables?”
“Squirrel,” the woman answered. “Reckon we've got the best Brunswick stew anywhere right here in Brownsville. If it wasn't rainin' like this, I'd give you a biscuit to dip in the gravy.”
“I'll take anything I can get.” Ward eyed her. She was older than he was — she had to be close to thirty — but she wasn't bad looking. He tried a smile. She smiled back, but not that way. She'd already stuck the ladle into the pot again, and was offering it to somebody behind him. She'd give out Brunswick stew. She didn't seem inclined to give herself away.
With a shrug, Matt Ward rode on. Finding out didn't cost him anything. She might have been interested in a quick poke. Could he have got off his horse, mounted her, and then saddled up again fast enough not to land in trouble? He thought so; he'd gone without for quite a while.
More ladies with pots of stew and rhubarb pie and other good things to eat stood at the edge of the street. Brownsville seemed strongly pro — Confederate. Ward wasn't surprised. Any place where there were lots of blacks and not very many whites, the whites would want to keep them in line, and that meant backing the C.S.A.
He wondered what these nice women thought of the idea of nigger bucks with guns in their hands. Wouldn't they use those guns to outrage Southern womanhood? He'd wanted to outrage Southern womanhood himself only a couple of minutes earlier, but that was different. And he knew exactly how it was different, too: he wasn't a black.
Up ahead, Black Bob McCulloch was shouting, “A guide! We need a guide to Fort Pillow!” His thick, dark beard, with luxuriant mustaches that almost swallowed his mouth, helped give him his nickname.
“I should say you do,” a woman told him. “All the swamps and bogs and marshes and I don't know what all between here and the Mississippi, you'd get lost faster'n greased lightning if you tried to go without one.”
“Yes, ma'am.” The brigade commander lowered his voice to answer her, then raised it again to a bellow that could carry across a battlefield: “A guide! We need a guide!”
Other officers took up the call, till Brownsville seemed to echo with it. Mter what the local woman said, Ward hoped they found one. If they bogged down… He didn't want to think about what General Forrest would do to them then. He was far more afraid of his own commanding officer than of the damnyankees, and he wasn't ashamed to admit it.
“I can get you there.” The answer came almost from Matt Ward's elbow. The man who made it looked as if he'd been through the mill. He wore a collarless shirt with no jacket and a ragged pair of homespun trousers. His eyes were wild in a pale face; his hair stuck out in all directions.
“Who the devil are you?” Ward said.
“My name is Shaw, WJ. Shaw,” the wild — eyed man replied. “That Bradford son of a bitch had me shut up in Fort Pillow till yesterday. I managed to sneak off, and I just got here this morning. You bet I can take you back there. Give me a rifle and I'll shoot some of those bastards myself. “
He wanted to do it. The eagerness all but blazed off him. It was so hot, Matt Ward was surprised Shaw didn't steam in the rain. The trooper raised his voice: “Colonel! Hey, Colonel! Here's your man, I reckon! “
Black Bob McCulloch had to fight his way back against the tide of cavalrymen moving west. Even when he shouted at the men to get out of his way, they couldn't always. And quite a few of them weren't inclined to, either. Confederate soldiers were always convinced they were just as good and just as smart as the officers who led them.
When McCulloch finally did get to talk with W.]. Shaw, he didn't need long to decide that Shaw was the man they needed. “Give this man some food!” he yelled. “Get him a horse — get him a good horse, goddammit! Get him a rifle and some cartridges! “
“Much obliged, sir,” Shaw said with his mouth full — one of the ladies on the street was feeding him Brunswick stew. “I'll pay you back for your kindness. And I'll pay that Bradford shitheel back, too, only the other way. Oh, you bet I will.”
