until he caught up with someone blocking the path — a tiny soldier, limping and holding tight to the blue-enameled rim of a drum. Bent reached for the narrow shoulders of the drummer boy, caught hold, flung the boy to one side, but not before he saw the glare the youngster gave him, scared and scathing at the same time. The boy lost his balance and pitched to the ground beside the path. Bent ran on.
His panic grew worse as he plunged through thicker trees and across a creek. He heard a shell whining in. He leaped to a tree, flung his arms around it, closed his eyes, and buried his face. The instant before everything blew up, he realized who had screamed 'Oh, God, no' just before the line broke.
He was the one who had screamed.
He awoke, pelted with rain. In the first incoherent moments he imagined he was dead. Then he began to hear the cries in the dark. Moans. Sudden shrieks. Snuffling, he groped everywhere from his ankles to his groin to his throat, feeling for injuries. He was soaked, stiff, hideously sore. But whole.
Lightning flashed above budding tree limbs. As the thunder followed, he started to crawl. He bumped his head against a trunk, went around it, then through some vicious briars. The ground in front of him sloped downward. He thought he smelled water. Crawled faster.
Lightning again; thunder; and with it the constant chorus of the injured. Thousands must be lying in the meadows and woodlands round about Shiloh Meeting House. Who had won the battle? He didn't know or care.
His hands sank in mud. He reached out and plunged them into the water. His mouth was parched. He scooped water in both palms, drank, retched, and nearly threw up. What was wrong with the water?
Lightning glittered. He saw bodies bobbing. Red liquid trickled out of his cupped hands. He doubled over and gagged. Nothing came up. He was confused.
He staggered up, crossed the little stream, gagging at each gentle bump of the floating dead against his legs. He ran through more trees, tripped over a rock, went down with a gasp. One outflung hand struck something, tightened on it, helped check his fall.
From the feel, he believed it to be a bayonet socket. Strings of hair in his eyes, he struggled to his knees. Lucky he hadn't grabbed the bayonet itself.
White light lit everything. The bayonet had pinned another drummer boy to the earth, through the neck. Bent screamed until he had no more strength.
He started on. The shocks piled one upon another began to have a reverse effect: mental clarity returned. He didn't want that. Better to be numb, unaware. It happened anyway, forcing him to examine the realities.
Though he had behaved exactly like the Ohioans — broken, and fled — his was the greater crime because he was in command. Worse, he had been among the first to bolt. He knew the Ohioans would spread the story. The stigma would ruin him. He couldn't let that happen.
Snorting, soaking his trousers with his own urine and not caring, he doubled back in the dark, searching the underbrush. He found the wrong body the first time — put his hand deep into a blown-open chest, a reb's this time, and shrieked. When he was able, he went on and located the little drummer.
I can't, he thought, gazing at the impaled throat in a flicker of lightning.
Sweating and panting, he grasped the bayonet and gently pulled, gently twisted, gently freed it from the boy's flesh. Then, bracing his back against a tree, he steadied himself and gathered his nerve.
Once more he turned his head to the side and shut his eyes. By feel, he placed the point of the bayonet against the front of his left thigh.
Then he pushed.
Both sides claimed victory at Shiloh. But Grant had conducted the offensive on the second day, and ultimately the Confederate Army retired to Corinth, with one of its great heroes, Albert Sidney Johnston, a fatality of the battle. Those facts said more than the declarations of either side.
In the hospital, Elkanah Bent learned that the behavior of the Ohioans was not an isolated instance. Thousands had run. Pieces of regiments had been found all along the bank of the Tennessee, lounging in safety and listening to the pound and roar of the Sunday battle that was a defeat until the Union turned it around on Monday and produced a victory.
None of that alleviated the threat confronting Bent, however. He was soon under investigation for his conduct while in command of the regiment. He grew expert at repeating his story. 'I was indeed running, sir. To stop my men. To stop the rout.'
To the question about the place where he had been found unconscious — a small tributary of Owl Creek, nearly a mile from the regiment's position — he would reply: 'The reb I fought — the one who bayoneted me — caught me right near our original line. I was facing him, not running away. The location of my wound proves that. I have few recollections of what happened after he stabbed me, except that I cut him down, then ran to stop the rout.'
The inquiry went all the way to Sherman, to whom he said, 'I was running to stop my men. To stop the rout.'
'The allegation of some witnesses,' said the general coldly, 'is that you were among the first to break.'
'I did not break, sir. I was attempting to stop those who did. If you wish to convene a general court-martial, I will repeat those statements to that body — and to any witnesses called to accuse me. Let them step forward. The regiment to which you assigned me consisted of men never before in battle. Like many others at Shiloh, they ran. I ran to stop them. To stop the rout.'
'God above, will you spare me, Colonel?' Cump Sherman said, and leaned over to spit on the ground beside his camp desk. 'I don't want you in any command of mine.'
'Does that mean you intend —?'
'You'll find out what it means when I'm ready for you to find out. Dismissed.'
Bent saluted and hobbled out on his padded crutch.
His nerves hurt worse than his wound. What would the little madman do to punish him?
On the peninsula southeast of Richmond, McClellan was sparring with Joe Johnston with little result. In the Shenandoah, Stonewall Jackson was maneuvering brilliantly, whipping the Yankees and expunging some of the shame of Shiloh. Down the Mississippi, Admiral Farragut ran past Confederate batteries to New Orleans. Virtually unprotected, the city surrendered to him on April 25. Within a week — almost a month after his thorny meeting with Sherman — Bent was reassigned.
'Staff duty with the Army of the Gulf?' said Elmsdale when Bent told him the news during a chance meeting. 'That's principally an army of occupation. A safe berth, but it won't do much for your career.'
'Neither did this,' Bent growled, pointing at his trouser leg. Some seepage from the dressing stained the fabric.
Elmsdale shook his hand and wished him well, but Bent saw a smugness in the colonel's eyes. Elmsdale had taken a shoulder wound at a section of the battlefield christened the Hornet's Nest; he had received a citation in general orders. Bent had been plunged into new ignominy, for which he held others responsible, everyone from Sherman, the little madman with the scrubby beard, to the drab, drunken architect of the Shiloh victory, Unconditional Surrender Grant.
Elkanah Bent felt his star was descending, and there was little he could do about it.
54
'Bring those wagons up,' Billy yelled. 'We need boats!'
In mud halfway to his boot tops, Lije Farmer bumped the younger man's arm. 'Not so loud, my lad. There may be enemy pickets on the other side.'
