“Arkansas scrip?” Maw asked distastefully.
The sergeant’s smile was back. “No, ma’am. Good Confederate dollars, backed by the government.”
“What if I want coins?” she asked, crossing her arms.
“You’ll get bills, ma’am.”
“And if I really do put my foot down and say no?”
Sarah felt her heart begin to beat as she read Maw’s brewing anger.
The sergeant took a deep breath. “One way or another, ma’am, I will follow my orders.” He paused. “Where are the men, ma’am?”
Maw drew herself to her full five feet and four inches. “My husband is a major in a Mississippi regiment. My son is a lieutenant with Hardee’s division in Tennessee.”
The growing glacial blue in the sergeant’s eyes softened again, relieving Sarah’s worry.
“That being the case, ma’am,” he told her cheerfully, “we shall take only what we need. I was starting to worry that you might have been black Republicans, Union by predisposition, in which case, we’d have stripped the place bare.”
To Sarah’s horror, as she stood shivering and watching the sergeant’s skilled foragers go about their work, it seemed as if her loyalty to the Confederacy might have been suspect.
After the heavily laden wagons finally pulled out, she and Maw walked in devastation past the corn crib, cleaned out down to the board floor, through the chicken coop where but three hens of the twenty-two remained, and then into the barn.
Were there any bright side, it was that she no longer had any tobacco to knot into twists.
As Maw shook her head, she slowly counted the Confederate bills. “Girl, it’s a fair sum, but let’s hope this actually spends.”
“What if they had stripped the place bare?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know. But thank God your brother wasn’t here.”
“Dear God, Mother. What’s he going to say?”
Maw’s jaw had hardened. “If we can keep that boy from getting himself killed, it’ll be a miracle. But you’ve got to help me, Sarah.” She shook the Confederate bills suggestively. “No matter what this is really worth, we tell him we sold everything to the government.”
“I understand.”
But the cold was due to more than just the blustery December day. A crawling sensation of disaster began to eat at her.
10
February 8, 1862
Candles and oil lamps illuminated the spacious drawing room with a warm yellow glow that defied the dark rain falling in the frigid Kentucky night outside. Lieutenant Butler Hancock stood beside Brigadier General Thomas C. Hindman. The table before them was spread with maps, the corners held in place by silver candlestick holders.
The house occupied by Major General Hardee’s staff was a grand two-story affair, generously offered by a Kentucky gentleman with strong Southern sympathies. The mansion, along with his plantation’s grounds, now served as General Hardee’s headquarters. Slaves provided most of the labor, hauling firewood and water to the bivouacked troops. But for the hideous winter storms, the regiments would have considered the plantation perfect winter quarters. Located on the Green River at Munfordville, Kentucky, the cantonment was eighteen miles north of Bowling Green, where General Albert Sidney Johnston had established his headquarters for the newly fashioned Army of Central Kentucky.
As Butler and Thomas Hindman pored over the maps, they awaited the arrival of General Johnston and some of his staff officers.
Hindman’s Second Arkansas had already been bloodied in battle with Federal forces at Rowlett’s Station on the Green River last December 17 after having reinforced Buckner. Now they waited, deployed, knowing the Federals under General Don Carlos Buell were building a great army just north of the trees and fields beyond their pickets.
“Libations,” General William Hardee called as he stepped into the room; a bottle of brandy dangled by the neck from his left hand. Hardee was a Georgian in his late forties, a graduate of West Point, a Mexican War veteran, and career soldier. Prior to the war he had returned to West Point where he both taught and wrote about tactics. Butler had immediately obtained and avidly devoured Hardee’s Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics: For the Exercise and Manoeuvres of Troops When Acting as Light Infantry or Riflemen.
The reading had been as ponderous as the work’s title. While Butler understood in theory how troops were supposed to move, maneuver, and attack, he was delighted to remain at headquarters and allow others to implement the field orders he wrote out and distributed.
Back in Arkansas, General Hardee had taken command of the volunteer regiments assembling at Pocahontas in northeastern Arkansas. Hardee had trained them, drilled them, and cleverly solved serious problems with supply, arms, and munitions. The Arkansas troops had taken to calling him “Old Reliable,” and the name stuck.
Atop the general’s broad forehead his blond hair had already begun to shade into silver, and his eyebrows had thickened into tufts. A reddish beard shaded with white and a full mustache obscured his jawline, but didn’t hide the smile that rode his lips as he stepped over to the glasses and poured.
“Our noble leader is late,” Hindman noted, glancing up at the mantel clock as he took a glass from Hardee. Hindman rarely so much as took a sip, having once been active in the temperance movement, but he was politically savvy enough to know the value of maintaining the convivial atmosphere.
“The weather out there is miserable,” Hardee replied. “And something always comes up. He may have gotten a late start from Bowling Green.”
Butler could agree. Something did always come up. Somehow—since his meeting with Colonel Hindman that day in Little Rock—life reminded him of riding a rocket skyward. Every day had turned into a virtual blizzard of activity. Not only had Butler managed to prove himself able at correspondence, but Hindman admired his organizational abilities, and delighted in Butler’s quotations of Caesar, Shakespeare, and Xenophon. As Hindman’s staff officer, Butler rarely got a full night’s sleep. He had come to understand that just doubling the size of a military command led to an exponential increase in the number of details, problems, and interruptions with which a commander had to deal.
The sound of voices, along with the
