He’d deal with Young James on that subject when it came around. Surely his friend would understand.
“Of course I will. Come hell or high creek water! When is the event?”
“Perhaps next spring. For the time being, I’m sort of looking after her brother, James. He’s in A Company. The Shelby Grays. Meantime, I’m saving every penny, hoping to purchase a building where I can open a surgery in Memphis. I’m hoping that by then the war will be over, and we can all go back to our lives.”
Butler’s lips pursed in that old familiar way.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“I know that look. You used to get it when you were hiding something. Like the time you let those horses Paw bought in Fayetteville get away because you didn’t latch the corral gate.”
Butler glanced around as if for reassurance, and leaned forward. He indicated the surgical case, and, voice low, said, “I think you’re going to be needing that soon. A Federal army is building at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River about twenty-five miles north of here. Meanwhile our old friend Don Carlos Buell is marching his army to join Grant’s. We’re going to crush Grant before Buell can arrive. And that, brother, is information as privileged as what you told me about Sally Spears.”
“And when is this happening?”
“We’re moving within days. If all goes according to plan, Grant’s army will be destroyed in the first week of April. Then we’ll catch Buell on the other side of the river, and send him reeling back in defeat. By the end of May, we should be back in Nashville, reestablishing our northern line. And, best of all, the British and French, seeing the Union take yet another licking, will grant recognition and protection to the Confederacy.”
“And you can come be my best man,” Doc said with finality.
“As Paw’d say, here’s to it, you ol’ coon,” Butler agreed, clicking his tin cup to Doc’s in toast.
21
11:00 A.M., April 6, 1862
Insanity! It brewed and stormed, boiling around Butler’s head. Lost in the instant, to Butler it seemed that the world had splintered. Blown apart. As if reality had vanished in this ear-shattering banging, screaming, and shrieking.
Time had been consumed in the whirlwind of hideous images, sounds, and smells. Rational thought no longer existed. Reality had funneled down to terror, thirst, confusion, and the frantic beating of his heart.
They were making another of the endless assaults on Union General Prentiss’s retreating forces. It had started in the morning when they caught the sleepy Yankee camp by surprise. All day they’d been driving them northward toward Pittsburg Landing, launching one bloody assault after another on the wavering Yankee lines.
Until they’d reached this place: a sloping open field. Someone said it belonged to a farmer named Duncan. At its crest a little-used and sunken road crossed before a thick stand of vine-laced brown timber.
The Federals finally had managed to hold the line at the sunken road just across the bloody and torn field. At Hindman’s side, Butler watched the Arkansas brigade—its ranks already thinned by the morning’s fighting—charge with the shrieking scream of banshees. So far they’d broken every formation the Federals had thrown together to stop them.
“Come on, boys,” Butler whispered as the gray and butternut formations surged out of the trees and into the body-dotted field. The Arkansas companies made no more than ten paces before the first rounds of canister and grape tore into them. Butler winced at the mayhem as bodies were torn and tossed. Gaps, like swaths, cut through the ranks.
And then a volley of musketry exploded from the sunken road. Whizzing death made a pattering sound as men were shot down.
They’d made it less than halfway across the open field before great clouds of blue-gray smoke spurted and puffed along the Federal line of fire, and a blizzard of lead savaged the ranks. Men dropped. Spun. Staggered. Shrieked in pain. As if of its own accord, the gray mass stopped, hesitated. All the while, the Yankee batteries blasted death and carnage as the Federal infantry shot at will, their position hidden by a wall of expanding smoke.
“By the Lord God!” Hindman cried as his troops staggered back, the once-tight formation breaking into confusion. “Arkansas! You shall not break!”
When Hindman spurred his horse forward, Butler followed, keeping Red to the general’s rear.
Dear God, what are we doing? A cold wash of fear, like a winter wave, ran through Butler’s soul.
Hindman’s mount dashed out before the milling ranks of confused, frightened, and disorganized Arkansas regiments. In his dress uniform, little Tom Hindman lifted his sword on high, shouting, “Re-form your ranks! One more charge and they’ll break! Arkansas! Follow me!”
Hindman kept swinging his sword, heedless of the balls that cut the air around him in rasping whirs.
Butler, terrified to the point of tears, Red plunging and prancing, shouted his encouragement. As the Arkansas regiments rallied at the sight of their commanding general, Hindman turned his horse to face the enemy.
What the hell are you doing, Tom? Charging them headlong? You won’t make ten paces.
A wreath of thick gray smoke, like a miasmic fog, hung over the sunken road and hid the Federal soldiers. Lances of fire and the bang of the Union artillery in the trees added to the hellish scene.
Red shied as she stepped on the dead and screaming wounded that lay strewn across the bruised grass. The smell of gunpowder, blood, and brutalized guts mixed with the scent of crushed grass.
It happened in an instant. Butler would replay it again and again in his memory. Hindman laid spurs to his horse, the big black gathering itself, muscles bunching under the sleek and sweaty hide.
In a blink, the animal exploded. The horse’s head and neck shot up. The muscular
