But the men in gray were looser than the men in blue. People on both sides said so. The damnyankees tried to lord it over everybody, their own soldiers included. Outfits like Forrest's, on the other hand, were even looser than the loose Confederate average. Officers won respect — when they did win respect — because of the men they were, not because they wore bars or stars on their collars.
“No wonder the Yankees want nigger soldiers!” Jenkins exclaimed, all but blinded by the flash of his own insight. H he weren't so tired, it might not have struck him such a blow. As things were, it seemed a truth of Biblical proportions.
“What do you mean?” asked somebody not far away.
“What's a nigger good for? Doin' what he's told, and that's the long and short of it.” So said the cavalry corporal, with the assurance of the Pope speaking ex cathedra. That he'd had little to do with Negroes bothered him not a bit. He went on, “The Federals, they want everybody to do what they say all the damn time. So niggers with guns are perfect for them.”
“Could be,” said the other voice in the night. “Just one thing wrong with it, though.”
“What's that?” Jenkins demanded, angry that his brilliant perception should be challenged in any way. He was almost too weary to stay in the saddle, but not to ride his hobby-horse.
“You can give a coon a rifle. Hell, you can give a coon a cannon and call the nigger son of a bitch an artilleryman,” the other soldier said. “But even if you do, you can't make the black bastard fight.”
Jenkins considered that. A yawn almost swallowed his consideration. He welcomed the next wet vine or branch or whatever it was that hit him in the nose; it woke him up a little. “Well, hell,” he said, thus revived. “You know that, an' I know that. But what do the damnyankees know, anyways?” He was convinced he'd proved his point. And the other trooper didn't argue any more, so maybe he had.
On they rode, on and on and on. They paused for a few minutes every so often, to let the horses rest a little, drink from streams and puddles, and eat the handfuls of oats their riders doled out to them. The way Jenkins's mount hung its head told him how weary it had to be: as weary as he was, or maybe more, because he didn't have so much on his back.
He patted the horse's neck. “Don't worry about it,” he said. “Don't you worry about a thing. We got to be gettin' close to the damn fort.. don't we?” He wished he hadn't added the last couple of words. They only reminded him he had no idea how far off Fort Pillow was.
With luck, the horse wouldn't know he was bluffing.
It sighed like a tired old man when he swung up into the saddle
again. So did he. He felt like a tired old man, though he was only twenty — five. Bedford Forrest drove everybody like hell, himself included. Jenkins had never gone on a ride to compare with this one. He hoped to God he never did again.
On some roads, he might have dozed in the saddle, confident the horse would keep heading the right way even if he didn't pay attention. He nodded off a couple of times, but jerked back to consciousness whenever he did. Too easy to go astray here, to get lost in the swamps. He didn't want to give the officers any excuse to come down on his head.
Every so often, he heard voices stiff with authority screaming at troopers who blundered. No, he didn't want that happening to him. But whenever he yawned, he had to fight to stay awake. And he yawned more and more often now.
Little by little, the rain eased and then stopped. Jenkins needed a while to realize it had. All the leaves and branches were still soaking wet, and drips pattered down on his hat. Some of them slid down the back of his neck, too. He couldn't figure out how they did that. The brim of the hat was supposed to keep it from happening. No matter what it was supposed to do, the back of his neck got wet.
Little by little, also, the shape of the horse in front of him grew more distinct. Little by little, he began to make out the man atop the horse. Up above the clouds that still hid the stars even if they no longer wept, dawn was on the way. It wasn't here yet, but it was coming.
“How much longer?” somebody asked. The words weren't far from a groan. If the answer was anything like another half day, despair, if not mutiny, would soak through the ranks.
Alarmed at the thought, Jenkins looked around now that he could see a little farther. Men and horses all had their heads down. No one seemed any peppier than he felt. But no one seemed ready to give up or give out, either. That was good. He didn't want to have to try to turn the troopers around if they decided they'd had enough.
Of course, if they decided they'd had enough, they would have to let Major General Forrest know it. If you were brave enough to do that, weren't you brave enough to face the Federals, too?
“Rein in! Rein in!” The call from up ahead was soft but urgent. “We need the horse holders!” When mounted troops went forward to fight, some of their comrades had to stay behind to hang on to the horses. The usual proportion was about one in four. Forrest used far fewer. He always aimed to get as many of his men into the fight as he could.
“Big Pete, Burrhead, it's your turn,” Jenkins called to the men he led. Excitement tingled through him. If they were dismounting, they had to be ready to go into battle, which meant they'd got to Fort Pillow after all, and before the sun came up.
“Big Pete's horse went lame. He's way the hell back there somewhere,” a trooper said.
Jenkins swore. He told off another soldier to take Big Pete's place. The soldier swore, too — he wanted to get up there and fight. Few people who didn't want to get up there and fight joined Forrest's cavalry. “Somebody's got to do it, Clem,” Jenkins said. “I picked you.”
Not far ahead, rifle muskets began to bang.
III
Lieutenant Mack Leaming lay on his cot, happily halfway between slumber and wakefulness. Part of him knew reveille would sound soon. The rest was warm and comfortable under a thick wool blanket on an iron — framed bed with a tolerable, or even a little better than tolerable, mattress. A little earlier, he'd been dreaming of a redheaded woman he'd seen in Brownsville. The dream was more exciting than the brief glimpse he'd got of her. He knew he wouldn't get it back — you never did — but he kept trying.
The bugler's horn didn't wake him. The sounds of running feet and shouting men did. “Oh, Jesus Christ!” he said, sitting up in bed and groping for his shoes — like most soldiers, he slept in the rest of his uniform.
His first thought was that some of the men had got into the sutlers' whiskey, of which there was more inside the perimeter of the fort than he would have liked. Dawn was a hell of a time for a drunken riot to start, but you never could tell. That was true of his own troopers. He thought it was bound to be even more true of the colored soldiers just up from Memphis.
Then he heard gunfire, and he flung himself into his shoes and dashed out of the barracks. If his men and the coons were going at each other, then all hell had broken loose. He would have to figure out in a hurry whether to try to put out the fire or to make damn sure the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry ended up on top.
But the gunshots weren't coming from inside the earthwork. As soon as he left the barracks, he realized that. The fire was coming from farther away. He looked around, gauging the growing light. It couldn't be later than half past five. A sergeant ran by, as fast as if the seat of his pants were on fire.
“What the hell's going on, Gunter?” Leaming shouted.
“Sir, there's Rebs outside the fort,” Sergeant Gunter answered.
“They're shooting at our pickets in the rifle pits.”
“Rebels?” Leaming shook his head. “There can't be. There aren't any Rebels closer than Jackson.”
As if to make a liar out of him, brisk fire came from the south and east. “We sure as hell ain't shooting at each other,” Gunter said.
Since Leaming had wondered if the men in the garrison were doing exactly that, he wasn't completely convinced. But the distant catamount screech of the Rebel yell persuaded him that Sergeant Gunter knew what he was talking about.
“What in the name of damnation is going on out there?” Major Bradford asked from behind Leaming. Bradford had taken his own sweet time getting out of bed.
