Ghosts. Too many damned ghosts.
He thought he heard a scream—a man dying in pain and fear—and started to turn, only to have the sound cut off, as if it had never been. Several times he’d heard things. Voices. Sounds that others, when he asked about them, had not heard.
Concentrate. You are here. In the hotel. An officer and a gentleman.
Butler straightened his gold-piped sleeves, aware of the glances he and his party received from the folks idling in the lobby.
With him were Hindman’s aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Jerome P. Wilson, a planter from Mississippi’s landed gentry. Following closely came Hindman’s new commissary officer, Major John Palmer. Palmer had been the general’s old law partner from Helena, Arkansas.
Butler and his companions had just checked into their rooms at the Anthony House that afternoon. General Hindman himself, along with his young wife Mollie and their three children, were renting a house in Little Rock.
Additionally, Hindman’s adjutant and chief of staff, the one-time Little Rock attorney Major Robert Newton, had his own residence in the city; after Shiloh the man’s family was more than delighted to have him at home.
The final member of Hindman’s staff was Major Francis Shoup, who had been in charge of Hardee’s artillery at Shiloh and had now been conscripted into Hindman’s new command. A graduate of West Point, Shoup was an ordnance specialist and key to Hindman’s plans.
Their task could be simply stated: save Arkansas from Union conquest. A curiously daunting prospect given the reality on the ground. After General Van Dorn’s defeat at Pea Ridge he had stripped just about everything of military value from the state, including men, small arms, artillery, equipment, and supplies. Hindman—come hell or high water—had been sent to save the situation.
How? That was the question of the day. To Butler, it seemed that the only thing Tom Hindman had in his favor was an arrogant, vainglorious, and self-righteous belief in himself. If that was the single necessary criterion for success, the sawed-off little general had it in spades.
Butler had had little more than fifteen minutes to refresh himself in his room when a knock came at his door.
Lieutenant Wilson gave him a salute, saying, “The general sends his compliments, sir. He has just arrived for our meeting.”
“Where?”
Wilson’s smile enlarged. “The barroom, sir. Seven-thirty.”
“I’ll see you there.” Butler closed the door. Leaned his head against it. Nearly two months had passed since he’d ridden from the disaster at the Hornet’s Nest, followed the Corinth Road south in the darkness, and finally located Tom Hindman’s battered body in a hospital tent outside of town.
The notion that anyone could “barely survive the explosion of his horse” would have been ludicrous had Butler not witnessed it with his own eyes on Duncan Field. Let alone the other horrors that preyed on his mind after the battle.
Since then, he’d been unable to sleep. The macabre images of blood-misty gore, the eerie shrieks and screams, the impossibility of things he’d seen with his own eyes, kept reaching out of his deepest brain to claw their way into his dreams.
A soldier he’d seen dragging himself forward with his hands, his hips shattered, legs blown away, would look up as Butler rode past, but instead of the black-bearded man, it would be Paw’s face, or Philip’s. With a cry, Butler would jerk awake, heart hammering, skin gone clammy.
The dreams were one thing. When the images popped into his head during waking moments, they left him scared and sweating, panting for breath.
He’d given his report to Hindman outside Corinth, struggling to keep the tears from welling; but the general had lain there, his blue eyes distant. The only sign that he’d heard was the quivering at the corner of his mouth.
When Butler had finished, Tom Hindman had said, “It’s all right, Lieutenant. If the cost of victory was our entire brigade, it was a price well paid.”
That had been but hours before the first hints of disaster were carried down from the battlefield by broken and retreating soldiers. Despite that, in the following days the generals continued to hawk the carnage at Shiloh as a triumph of Confederate arms.
“If we inflicted such a damaging defeat,” one squint-eyed sergeant who sipped from a tin cup filled with whiskey had asked, “wouldn’t the damned Federals be running for the Ohio instead of strengthening their forces up at Pittsburg Landing? And why are us graybacks digging trenches and building abatis around Corinth?”
Before that question could be answered, Hindman had been given overall command of the Trans-Mississippi District, consisting of Arkansas, Louisiana north of the Red River, Indian Territory, and all of Missouri.
They had traveled through Memphis—a city in panic and on the verge of being abandoned to the relentless advance of the Federal forces. There Hindman had requisitioned what few rifles, artillery rounds, and military supplies remained. In addition, he drew a million dollars in Confederate bills from the Memphis banks to cover his expected expenses in Arkansas.
I am home, Butler thought in relief as he walked into the hotel’s bar—a brick establishment attached to the main building. He found the door guarded by two privates with Enfield muskets, and the interior cleared of patrons.
Major General Hindman, still on crutches, was perched over one of the billiard tables, arranging the balls on the felt. Major Newton, consulting a map in his hand, was watching the placement of the balls. Shoup, arms crossed, was staring at the arrangement with a frown.
Behind the bar, a single bartender was pouring what looked like sherry from a cut-crystal decanter.
At Butler’s approach, Hindman cried, “Good to see you, Lieutenant. No need for a salute. This is an informal occasion.”
As Butler looked down at the table he realized it was for pool, having six pockets. He’d heard the game was played with fifteen numbered balls, but this table had more than thirty, scrounged from other tables nearby.
