“Mr. Shaw, we aim to be at Fort Pillow by sunup tomorrow morning,” McCulloch said. “You lead us there on time and we'll be in your debt, sir, not the other way around.”
“I can do it, but you'll have to ride through the night,” Shaw said. “You're damn near forty miles away, you know.”
McCulloch nodded. “Oh, yes, Mr. Shaw, I know that very well. But wherever you go, we'll go with you. You don't need to worry about that, not one bit. Some of us rode all through last night. If we have to do it again to clear those niggers and homemade Yankees out of Fort Pillow, we will.”
“Colonel, we have a bargain.” W.J. Shaw stuck out his hand. Robert McCulloch leaned down in the saddle to clasp it. Shaw went on, “I'd be honored to join this force, not just to guide it.”
“And we'd be honored to have you,” McCulloch replied. “You do what you say you can do and you won't join as a soldier, either — you'll be an officer straight from the start.”
“That's right kind of you,” Shaw said. “Right kind.” Somebody led up one of the remounts — not a great horse, but not an old screw, either. He swung up into the saddle. Colonel McCulloch nodded. So did Matt Ward. A glance was plenty to show that Shaw knew what to do on horseback.
Black Bob thumped Ward on the shoulder. “Reckon you found us a good one, Matt.” Before Ward could answer, the colonel cocked his head to one side. He looked east. “Something going on back there. You make out what?”
Ward looked back the way he'd come, too. Somebody was… A broad grin spread across his face. “General Forrest's here, sir!”
Nathan Bedford Forrest stayed happy about sending someone else off to deal with Fort Pillow while he stayed behind in Jackson for about ten minutes. After that, he started to fume. After that, he started another round of restless pacing. And after that…
He could feel that he was wearing himself down. “If you want something done right, do it yourself,” he muttered, there in the parlor of the house that had held General Grant and now held him.
He'd lived by that notion his whole life long. He'd had to, since his father died young and left him the man of a large family. He'd farmed that way, he'd bought and sold slaves that way — and he'd got rich doing it, too — and he'd used the same rule when he was on the Memphis city council not long before the war.
And he'd used that rule when he fought. He'd enlisted as a private. Now, less than three years later, he was a major general. He had no formal military training. He had next to no formal education of any sort, which was why he so disliked picking up a pen. He couldn't hold a train of thought when he wrote, and he spelled by ear. He knew no other way to do it, but he also knew educated men laughed when someone spelled that way. If he hated anything, it was being laughed at.
But regardless of whether he could spell, he could damn well fight. He'd whipped uncounted officers trained at West Point. They all thought the same way. They all did the same things. They all looked for their foes to do the same things. When somebody did something different, they didn't know how to cope with it.
He had nothing against Jim Chalmers except his — Forrest-like problem with subordination. The Virginian made as good a division commander as he had. In the end, though, Forrest lost the struggle with himself. If you want something done right, do it yourself
He shouted for Captain Anderson and Dr. Cowan and the rest of his staff officers. “What the devil are we sitting around here for?” he shouted. “We need to get them damnyankees and our runaway niggers out of Fort Pillow.”
The surgeon held out his hand to Forrest's chief of staff. “Told you so,” he said. Anderson ruefully passed him a brown Confederate banknote.
Forrest turned away so they wouldn't see him smile. So Cowan had expected he wouldn't be able to stay away from a fight, had he? Well, they'd all served with him for a while now, surgeon and chief of staff, paymaster and engineering officer, and the more junior men as well. They had a pretty good notion of how he thought.
He swung back toward them. “What are you waiting for?” he said. “Get your horses saddled up. We've got some powerful riding to do if we're going to catch up with McCulloch's brigade.”
Dr. J. B. Cowan gave him a courtly bow. “Sir, most of us have our horses ready. We've been waiting on you.”
“Well… shit,” Forrest said, and the officers laughed. He went on, “While I'm saddling my beast, gather up as much of the Nineteenth Tennessee Cavalry as you can. We'll take some of Colonel Wisdom's regiment along with us so nobody can say we just came along for the fight. “
“Even if we did.” Dr. Cowan enjoyed poking fun at him, and probably did it more than anyone else had the nerve to.
“Even if we did,” Forrest agreed good-naturedly. “Come on. Let's move.”
Riding hurt. It had for some time now, and he feared it would till the end of his days. He'd taken several wounds, including one at Shiloh the doctors had thought would kill him and one from the pistol of a junior officer of his. He'd thought that one had killed him, and he'd given the lieutenant a knife wound in the belly that brought his end from blood poisoning. Forrest himself, meanwhile, went on.
He went on, and no one but he knew the price he paid. John Bell Hood had lost an arm at Gettysburg and a leg at Chickamauga, and was a slave to laudanum to hold the pain at bay. Forrest, a stranger to whiskey and tobacco, had no more to do with opium in any form. If he hurt, he hurt — and he went on.
On days when he hurt badly, he was apt to be meaner than usual.
If he met the Federals on those days, he took it out on them. He'd lost track of how many U.S. soldiers he'd killed himself; something on the order of a couple of dozen. He didn't think any other general officer on either side could come close to matching his score. If no Yankees were close by when the pain got bad, his own men had to walk soft.
Forrest patted his horse's neck as he rode west. McCulloch's troopers had left the road a chewed — up ribbon of mud. Like any good cavalryman, Forrest took care of his mount before he took care of himself… when he wasn't in combat. When he was… He wasn't sure whether he'd had more horses shot out from under him than he'd killed damnyankees. It was close, one way or the other.
Bullets that hit the horses were mostly meant for him. He didn't intend to let himself get killed till he whipped the invaders from the north out of the Confederate States. Too bad for the animals, but the country needed him more than it needed them.
“Invaders,” he said, and then something more sulfurous still. The garrison in Fort Pillow wasn't even made up of invaders. Yankees at least fought for their own side. You could respect that, even if you thought they'd chosen a bad cause. But the men of the Thirteen Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.)…
What could you call them but traitors? They sold out their own land to join the enemy. Some of them had fought for him in earlier campaigns. Maybe they thought they could lord it over their friends and neighbors and kin if they switched sides. Maybe they just thought they'd get easier duty and better rations if they wore blue instead of butternut.
Whatever they thought, he aimed to show them just how big a mistake they were making.
As for the rest of the soldiers in Fort Pillow… Forrest muttered again, loud enough to make Captain Anderson send him a curious glance. Angrily, Nathan Bedford Forrest shook his head. Negroes had no business being soldiers, and the damnyankees had no business trying to turn them into soldiers.
Negroes were property, like horses and mules and cattle. If any man believed that to the bottom of his soul, Bedford Forrest did. How not, when he'd got rich trading in them? If you put horses and mules and cattle into blue uniforms and gave them rifles, could they fight? Of course not — the idea was ridiculous. Nigger soldiers were just as ridiculous to Forrest.
He hated the Yankees who armed Negroes and tried to train them to fight, not the blacks themselves. He wouldn't have been surprised if some of the bucks in Fort Pillow had been through his slave pens in Memphis one time or another. He had no trouble with blacks — as long as they worked in the fields or in the kitchen or somewhere like that. Deep down in his belly, he was convinced Northerners didn't know anything about Negroes, or they wouldn't try to put weapons in their hands. How could they know, when they didn't live side by side with them the way Southern whites did?
His own slaves had gone to war with him, as teamsters and jacks of- all- trades. He'd promised to free them when the fighting was over, which no doubt went a long way toward keeping them quiet. In three years of warfare, only a handful had seized any of the countless chances to run off. He took that to mean they were satisfied with
