Thieves Of Mercy

“Oh, son of a bitch!” he shouted. A bullet plowed into the wood a few feet in front of him and he drew back, then pulled himself forward, reached out for the gun. The pain was starting to come now, rippling up from his left calf where the bullet had done God knew what damage. He wrapped his fingers around the walnut grip, rolled over, thumbed the hammer, and fired defiantly at the pilothouse. He heard the bullet ping against the iron and spin uselessly away.

The General Page was still blowing her steam whistle and Taylor wished they would stop. He pushed himself up on his elbow, looked over the edge of the casemate. The men from the Page were scrambling over the bulwark as the riverboat pulled away, drawing its iron ram free, the gap between Confederate and Yankee growing wider.

Aw, damn… last damn train to Memphis and I missed her…

No matter. That was as good a place to end it as any, sprawled out on the deck of a Yankee ironclad. He held the revolver close to his face. Two intact percussion caps that he could see, perhaps a third hidden from view. Two or three bullets if none misfired. He could take three Yankees with him, as long as the abolitionist bastards had the good grace to kill him in turn. He would not be a prisoner.

He pushed himself up until he was kneeling, clenched his teeth against the pain in his calf, aimed and fired at the pilothouse. His shooting was getting wild, and he cursed himself, told himself to concentrate, concentrate.

Behind him, he heard feet pounding deck, banging up the ladder. Here they come, he thought, tried to turn and face the attackers. A gun fired from the pilothouse, the bullet ripped through Taylor ’s shirt, grazed his skin, knocked him off balance. He fell forward, hands out, rolled on his back, gun up, aimed forward.

A voice, “It’s us! It’s us!” A hand wrapped around the barrel of the gun and pushed it aside as Taylor pulled the trigger. There was gunfire all around now, small arms peppering the pilothouse, and Taylor looked up into Samuel Bowater’s face.

“Tanner!” Bowater shouted. “Bear a hand!”

Here was salvation, and Taylor was white hot with rage. “Get out of here!” he shouted. “Leave me be!”

Bowater slipped an arm under Taylor ’s arm and Taylor felt Ruffin Tanner do the same and they hoisted him up, and he-exhausted, in agony-could do nothing about it but scream defiance.

“You fuckin peckerwood bastards! Let me be!” But they would not.

Now Taylor could see the men who had come up the ladder, his shipmates, ten or so, armed with pistols and the.58-caliber Mississippi rifles from the General Page’s arsenal. They fired away at the pilothouse, filling the air with the crack of percussion cap, the bang of the rifles, the metal-on-metal sound of minie balls bouncing off iron. The viewing ports in the pilothouse were empty-no one dared show his face to that fusillade.

Bowater and Tanner were dragging him along now, his one leg useless, his arms draped over their shoulders, held fast, and he could not pull them away. Someone had taken the pistol from his hand. He was shouting, cursing, struggling, but it did no good.

Underfoot the ironclad’s guns went off, three of the broadside guns, and the deck shook like an earthquake. Bowater and Tanner stumbled but kept their footing. The General Page was twenty feet off, backing away, taking a pounding from the Yankees as she drew back.

“Son of a bitch, where is that mick bastard going!” Taylor shouted but no one answered. They dragged him along, dragged him aft, past the pilothouse, with Tanner actually stepping up on the edge of the pilothouse, since there was no room otherwise for three abreast to pass. And even through the anger and the pain Taylor had a chance to wonder where they were taking him, leading him down the ironclad’s deck.

They moved past the chimneys, under an awning stretched over a ridgepole that ran the length of the ship. Something about the deck did not seem right, something about the way it looked against the shore and the river. Taylor thought he was going mad, and then he realized the ironclad was listing. She was sinking under them.

He wanted to curse again, then order them to lay him down, and he shouted, “Leave me here, you bastards,” but now the strength was out of him and the words came out as little more than a whisper, and halfway through the ironclad fired again and smothered every sound on the river.

At last they came to the big, half-round iron casemate over the centerline paddle wheels, and Taylor saw what they were going for. One of the ship’s boats, hung from davits, bumped against a short wooden bulwark that surrounded the hurricane deck. With no order given, Bowater’s men swarmed over the boat, peeling the canvas cover off, casting off the painter made fast to a stanchion, casting off the falls.

“Get him in!” Bowater shouted, relinquishing his grip on Taylor ’s arm as four sailors took him up and hoisted him into the boat.

“Get in, get in!” Bowater continued. Yankees were coming up out of the hatches, onto the hurricane deck, but they were there to escape the rising water below, and they shouted in surprise at the sight of the Rebels stealing their boat, and their shouts were met with small-arms fire.

The men piled in, Bowater last. The boat was swung outboard on the davits, the falls were slacked away smartly in a barely controlled plunge. The aftermost broadside gun went off, no more than five feet forward of the boat’s bow, the concussion and smoke and noise like the end of the world.

The boat slammed down on the water with a jar that made Taylor howl and curse, but no one paid him any attention. The oars came up with expert precision. Tanner in the bow shoved off, and the oars came down and the men on the thwarts pulled, pulled hard, bent into it like Taylor had never seen men bend into it, and they needed no encouragement from Bowater, who sat in the stern sheets, hand on the tiller.

Fifteen feet from the ironclad and they heard the crack of small-arms fire. A bullet smacked into a thwart by Bayard Quayle’s right thigh, causing him to jump and shout, but he did not miss his stroke. Another whipped by and Ruffin Tanner shouted and dropped his gun and clapped a hand over his left upper arm and an instant later the hand was red with blood.

Taylor was slumped on the bottom of the boat, looking aft. He saw Bowater reach to his belt, pull out his pistol. A silver, engraved Colt that Bowater kept in a polished wooden box when he was not carrying it, a weapon of the high-born, a gun of the gentry, and he hated the gun and he hated Captain Samuel Bowater and he hated all of them, all of the slave-owning, mint-julepsucking aristocracy who had got them into this horseshit war, hated them as much as he hated the Yankees, and he wondered where that left him now.

Bowater turned, leveled the gun at the ironclad, fired away, working the hammer with his thumb. Those who did not have oars joined in, firing off the Mississippi rifles at the crowd of Yankees on the hurricane deck.

The Yankees were still working the broadside guns, even with the ironclad sinking around them, and Taylor saw one of the big forty-two pounders run out, the muzzle aimed generally at them, and he thought, If those kangaroos are loaded with grape or cannister, that’s it for us.

The gun fired. Round shot, it passed close enough to the boat that they could feel the wind of its passing, but it did not hit them.

Taylor looked to his left. The General Page was steaming up, her paddle wheels slapping the water, as if she meant to cut the boat in two. The men at the oars bent into it again. The boat shot ahead and the Page passed just astern, tossing the boat with her wake, her wheels stopping dead, then slowing, grinding, for turns astern. Sullivan had interposed his ship between the boat and the Yankee ironclad.

Bowater pushed the tiller over. The men pulled again and Bowater ordered, “Toss oars,” as the pilfered Yankee boat came up alongside the General Page, a dozen men there to haul Bowater and his men aboard.

In the quiet as the boat came alongside, Taylor looked up into Bowater’s face and Bowater looked down at him. And Taylor said, “Don’t you think I’m gonna thank you for this, you patrician son of a bitch.”

Bowater smiled. “Patrician? That’s a hell of a word for an ignorant New Orleans peckerwood like you.”

Hands grabbed Taylor ’s shoulders and he was lifted up to the deck, and the rest of the men scrambled up after him. Mississippi Mike Sullivan was there, grinning wide. He shook his head. “That was the stupidest goddamn thing I ever seen.”