But Arkansas had changed since Van Dorn marched north to surprise Curtis at Pea Ridge earlier that year. The state’s loyalties were split; Union passion was driven by Hindman’s Draconian measures. Spies and scouts were everywhere. Up in Fayetteville, Blunt knew the moment that Hindman started his First Corps north into the Boston Mountains.
What should have been an overwhelming attack on Blunt’s five thousand Yankees at Cane Hill turned out to be a daylong brawl of a battle when Francis Herron’s reinforcing two divisions hit Hindman head-on at Prairie Grove Church just south of Fayetteville.
By dusk the two armies had fought to a draw.
Tom Hindman and his desperate, half-naked army had exhausted its limited ammunition. As the Federals dug in for the night, hundreds of wounded and dying lay in the bloody, burning, and shell-torn fields between the armies.
Butler had just delivered a message from General Marmaduke to Hindman at his headquarters in the Prairie Grove Church. He had waited while Francis Shoup finished his report on the few artillery rounds remaining among his batteries. Silence lay on the small gathering, broken only by the sporadic fire from the lines.
“Lieutenant Hancock, I need you to carry the flag of truce to the Yankees,” Hindman had told him. “Ask for a cease-fire in order that we may retrieve our dead and wounded.” Hindman’s cold blue glare had burned into Butler. “Then get back here, Lieutenant, because we’re out of ammunition, and we don’t have rations enough to get the men back to Van Buren as it is. I need you to figure out a plan to disengage this army tonight. How can we withdraw without them damn Yankees having a clue?”
As he rode Red back across the battlefield, his white flag sagging on his shoulder, he saw the hogs in the deepening evening light. In the beginning, he couldn’t figure what had drawn them to the burned and still-smoking haystacks. If they should have been at anything, they should have been worrying the tumbled corpses that were strewn across the battlefield.
The haystacks—set afire during the fighting—were nothing more than heaps of white-gray ash, oddly mounded with irregular-looking lumps.
Avoiding a pile of mixed Union and Confederate dead, Butler had ridden closer—pulled Red up and stared. In the dying winter twilight, he had seen the nearest hog biting at something round. The frigid air had carried the oddly sweet smell of cooked meat, like barbecue mixed with bitter smoke.
The hog gave a vigorous yank and pulled what looked like cooked tissue free from the round …
“Dear God!” Butler gasped. The pale bones of a stripped human skull gleamed in the half-light as the hog’s jaws snapped and chewed before going back for another bite. Yes, that swell of charred material was the chest, the legs and arms having been stirred from the powdery ash. Nor was that the only roasted corpse. To Butler’s horror, he could see three or four more just in this pool of ash alone.
No more than a stone’s throw to the east, more hogs were rooting in the ashes where another of the haystacks had burned.
Squealing and fighting, the hogs savaged long strips of human meat from men’s legs. With tusks they sliced bellies open and gulped down long strands of roasted intestines.
Could this be real? Was he really seeing this? His breath twisted whitely about his face in the cold December air.
How? Why?
A chill deeper than the winter air leached into his soul as he glanced down at the Confederate dead in their skimpy summer-weight clothing. Beside them, the dead Yankees wore thick coats made of wool. Frost was already settling on the grass.
The cold. That was it. They’d been wounded, crawled into the haystacks in search of warmth. Then they’d bled out or stiffened. Sparks, maybe from bursting artillery, maybe from rifles fired from the protection of the haystacks, had set the dry grass on fire.
“Dear God in heaven. The wounded … they burned alive in the haystacks!” Butler heard a keening sound, unaware it was his own horrified cry escaping the strangling knot in his throat.
Got to get back. Got to get the army away.
He was shaking, tears streaking his face, as he backed Red from the horrid porcine feast.
He almost lost his seat as Red shied, spooked at the half-frozen corpses she stepped on.
Butler laid spurs to her flanks.
The hogs would turn to the rest of the dead, but not until they’d finished the cooked meat.
How much can a man stand? he wondered, his thoughts spinning and sick. When does his soul finally break to leave him weeping and weak in defeat?
31
December 28, 1862
“I missed Butler’s visit in October,” Billy groused as he rode through the cold Arkansas night. “But then, not much is working out the way it’s supposed to in the whole damned war.”
“You’re telling me?” Danny Goodman said through a grunt. He rode half a horse length behind Billy on the right, his wary eyes on the darkened woods to either side of the narrow road. It had to be nigh onto midnight.
“Butler left Maw and Sarah with the impression that the Confederate army was going to carry the war up north to Missouri. Said that General Hindman’s forces would sweep in through the Yankee back door, turning the state into a staunch Rebel ally.”
Danny’s gray horse stumbled over a rock, Danny shifting to help the animal recover. “Yeah, well, Billy Hancock, the way that worked out was that two Union armies chased both Cooper’s and Shelby’s cavalry out of southwestern Missouri the way hounds chase coons out of a henhouse.”
Billy nodded. “One
