Even as she spoke, though, the door opened behind her and Thaddius saw a black man step onto the porch. He was nervous, glancing at the Union soldiers and then at the ground, afraid to meet anyone’s eye. “Lucius,” the woman said. “Get back in the house and make sure the others do too.”
But Lucius ignored her command and came down the stairs, past his mistress and toward Thaddius. He was barefoot, and his pants and shirt had been patched so many times it was hard to tell what color they’d originally been. “Y’all are real,” he said. “I been told I’d see devils in blue coats for so long I was expectin’ horns and tails. But you men, you look like God’s own angels to me. Are y’all men or angels?”
“We’re men,” Thaddius said. “Just men who are tired and hungry and trying to live through this damn war. Is there anyone else in the house?”
“My family, sir,” Lucius said. “My wife and our baby. Rest is in the pen, ’round back.”
“No more white men, no soldiers?”
“No, sir. Miz Lily’s husband was killed, and her boys are off with General Hood, hear tell. Ain’t been around in some weeks.”
“And there are more slaves, in a pen, you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Show me. You have a problem with that, ma’am?”
“Besides the fact that y’all are interfering with my private property?” she countered.
“Where I’m standing, old Lucius looks like a man,” Thaddius said. “You’re going to have to get over the idea that men are property you can buy and sell.”
She shifted the rifle in her grasp. “Not as long as I draw breath.”
“You’d best put down that gun,” Thaddius said. “Or you won’t have to worry about breathing for much longer. I told you we’re not here to hurt you or your kin, or damage your house. But we can’t hold with keeping human beings in a pen.”
“If I had a dog I suppose you’d take that too.”
“That would depend on the dog,” Railsback offered helpfully. “Yesterday we shot a hound that was used for tracking escaped slaves.”
“Y’all killed old Clarence?” Lucius asked, breaking into a grin for the first time. He displayed a ragged scar on his calf. “I wisht I’d’a been there for that. Dog has left his mark on me a few times.”
“I don’t know as it was Clarence,” Thaddius said. “But if it wasn’t, we’ll find him too. I’ll even give you the pleasure of pulling the trigger. Now let’s see that pen.”
Miz Lily didn’t stand in their way, so Lucius led the others to a low wooden structure behind the barn. It was unpainted, as if the slaves held inside were even less important than the animals in the neat, whitewashed barn. When Railsback broke off the padlock on the door and Lucius pulled it open, the stink washed over Thaddius like a wave. Inside, there were nineteen slaves, men, women, and children, in a space that might have accommodated six. They had wooden pails for toilets, a barrel with some water in it, and straw for beds. The men had been tied to beams with leather straps.
“These kind gentlemen is here to free us,” Lucius said. “Miz Lily don’t want none of it, but they won’t back down from her. It was a sight, I’ll tell you.”
The people inside burst into laughter and thanks, and some even began to cry, pray, or both. Children ran out into the yard and dashed in wild circles, exuberant at being let out of the pen without a chore assigned to them. One of the women told Lucius that she’d go into the big house to get his family out. He warned her to be careful of Miz Lily, but Frankie volunteered to go along to make sure she didn’t try anything.
“Where we gone go, suh?” one of the women asked Thaddius.
“Anywhere you want, I reckon,” he told her with a grin.
“Ain’t got nowhere special in mind,” she said. “But most places we go, someone will just catch us up again.”
“But you’re free now,” he said.
“You think so, and I might think so,” the woman argued. “Are most other folks in these parts gone think so?”
“I see your point,” Thaddius admitted. This had become a problem already—freed slaves, with no place better to go and no guarantee of safety anywhere in Georgia, had taken to following Sherman’s army around. But that meant more mouths to feed, slower progress, and more targets for Johnny Reb. There was no good solution to the problem, but Thaddius didn’t feel right about turning these people away now that he’d rescued them from a slave pen. “I reckon you can stay with us awhile if you’ve a mind to.”
The slave pen had been put to the torch and the smokehouse raided for stores of beef and pork. Livestock was shot and fire set to the edges of the fields and then, with twenty-two former slaves in tow, the foragers went to rejoin their regiment.
The trouble started on a wooden bridge over a slow, narrow river. From a copse of trees on the far side, shots rang out, and Private Joyce, one of Thaddius Riker’s men, was hit in the gut. He fell, and the rest flattened themselves, drawing their weapons. Thaddius waved the ex-slaves down. But then gunfire came from behind them, up a hillside that banked down toward the river.
“They got us pinned down here,” Railsback muttered. “It’ll be like target practice for ’em to pick us off.”
“That’s because we’re on the wrong side of the bridge,” Thaddius said.
“But they’re on both sides!”
“I’m talking about over and under,” Thaddius explained. “We’re over. We need to be under. Give ’em some hell, boys!” he shouted. “And let’s get wet!”
The men all started shooting then, setting up a covering barrage that drove the rebs back into the trees and those up on the hill into hiding while the Federals dove from the bridge into the lazily moving river. The water wasn’t very deep and the men were able to keep their guns and powder above its surface. In the shade of the bridge, they were at least somewhat protected from those on the hill, and the cut of the riverbank kept those in the trees from being able to see them, much less shoot them. But when the freed slaves joined them under the bridge, it became crowded, and the soldiers on the hill were able to pick off the people around the edges. Two of the slaves were hit, and Frankie took a ball in the shoulder, shattering bone and spraying blood into the water.
Thaddius knew this was only a temporary measure. They couldn’t stay in this water indefinitely, and the bridge would only offer protection for so long. It was just wood and eventually the Confederate shot would chew through it. Besides, when the men from the trees came to the river’s edge they’d be easy targets. He needed a plan, and he needed it fast.
“How many men you think they have?” he asked Railsback.
“Can’t be too many. We didn’t think they had any forces around here. My guess is this is a small patrol that spotted us and thought they’d make some trouble. A dozen, maybe, six in the trees and six up top.”
“That’s what I’m thinking too,” Thaddius said. “Which means they still outnumber us two to one and have the tactical advantage.”
“Unless you count the Negroes,” Railsback pointed out.
“They don’t have guns, but I was just getting to that,” Thaddius said. “How well can you swim?”
“I swim fine, I guess. What do you have in mind, sir?”
“Well, when we go underwater our rifles won’t do us any good. So we leave them behind with whatever of those slaves can shoot, and we just take bayonets.”
“Bayonets, sir? Against a dozen men? Or what we hope is only a dozenmen?”
“I know the odds aren’t great,” Thaddius Riker said with a smile. “But that’s their own fault for joining the Confederate Army.”
He recruited another soldier and three of the strongest, healthiest former slaves, including Lucius. Each man was assigned a bayonet, and a secondary hunting knife. Rifles were left with those who would stay behind. At Thaddius’s signal, the little force under the bridge began firing up the hill, distracting the rebels up there, and Thaddius, Railsback, Clancy, and three ex-slaves dove under the water, swimming for all they were worth. They swam underneath until their lungs were fit to burst, then came up close to the near bank, where they hoped the men up the hill wouldn’t be able to see them. Then they ducked under again, and swam another distance downriver. Finally, they dragged themselves out and up the bank, dripping, cold, and weighted down with all the water they’d taken on.