“Uh, yes, sir.” Clark handed him the lanyard. Booth gave it a hearty tug. The gun thundered. Looking pleased with himself, Booth returned the match to the sergeant.
A couple of bullets thumped into the earthwork close by. More cracked past. Enemy fire always picked up when Major Booth was around. “Suh, you wants to be careful,” Ben Robinson told him. “They got sharpshooters out there tryin' to pick you off.”
Booth laughed lightheartedly. Ben always remembered that-how cheerful the commandant sounded, as if he'd just heard a good joke. “They can try, Sergeant,” he said-he was always careful to use colored underofficers' ranks when he spoke to them. “The bastards have been trying for a while, but they haven't got me yet.”
“Yes, suh.” Ben didn't see how he could say anything else. He couldn't very well tell Major Booth to go somewhere else because when the Rebs were shooting at Booth they were also shooting at him. He wanted to, but he couldn't.
And then he heard the unmistakable wet slap of a bullet striking flesh. “My God! I'm hit!” Major Booth exclaimed-a cry more of disbelief than of pain. Booth's hands clutched at his chest. Bright blood welled out between his fingers. “My God!” he said again, more weakly this time. Blood bubbled from his mouth and nose, too. That meant it was a bad wound, about as bad as a wound could be. The thought had hardly crossed Ben's mind before Major Booth's legs gave out and he crumpled to the ground.
“Lawd!” Ben Robinson whispered. Major Booth wasn't just the commandant here. He was the man who'd turned the Negroes he led from field hands into soldiers. If Booth couldn't go on leading, command would fall to Major Bradford. And Booth couldn't-that wound looked sure to kill him, and to kill him fast. As for Major Bradford.. A lot of the men in the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry had no more use for colored soldiers than the Confederates had. They didn't fight for the U.S.A. because they wanted emancipation; they fought for the U.S.A. because they couldn't get along with their neighbors who fought for the C.S.A.
Captain Carron came out of the horrified trance that seemed to grip everyone around the fallen Major Booth. “Take him to a surgeon!” he said. “Maybe the sawbones will be able to do… well, something, anyway.” His voice trailed off. A surgeon couldn't do much for a chest wound, any more than he could for one in the belly. A man either got better or he died.
Major Lionel Booth was going to die. The way he plucked at Robinson's sleeve when the Negro started to lift him told him as much. Booth tried to say something, but more blood came out instead of words. He fought to breathe-he was drowning in his own blood.
When Robinson and two other soldiers from the gun crew laid him in front of the green-sashed surgeon, the white man said, “Good God, it's the major!”
“Yes, suh,” Robinson said. “Help him if you can, suh.”
“Help,” Major Booth echoed feebly. “Please help. Please…” His eyes rolled up in his head.
“He gone?” Charlie Key asked.
The surgeon felt for a pulse at Booth's wrist. “Not yet,” he answered. “He's-” He broke off, then said something vile, aimed not at the Negroes but at fate. “Now he's gone.”
“Lawd!” Robinson said again. “What is we gonna do?”
Major William Bradford felt the weight of the world crashing down on his shoulders. He'd resented Major Booth when the younger officer brought his colored artillerymen up from Memphis. He'd resented him, yes, but he'd come to lean on him, too. Booth knew more about soldiering than he did, and that was all there was to it. Booth didn't get stuffy about passing on what he knew, and Bill Bradford knew he'd learned a lot in the couple of weeks since Booth arrived.
Rather more to the point at the moment, Lionel Booth had kept his head when the Confederates attacked-and when Bradford was on the edge of losing his. Now he was down. Now Fort Pillow was in Bradford's hands again, no matter how much he wished it weren't.
We can hold on. We will hold on, Bradford thought. And maybe
Booth isn't hit as badly as people say.
No sooner had that hopeful thought crossed his mind than a soldier came pelting toward him from where the surgeon was working. “He's dead!” the man shouted. “He's dead, sir!”
Well, so much for that, Major Bradford thought unhappily. It's all mine now. It was his before Booth and his coons got here. He didn't want it back, not like this, but what he wanted didn't seem to matter. He gathered himself, or tried to. “Keep firing!” he shouted to the embattled garrison, and immediately felt a fool. What were they going to do? Stop? Not likely, not with Bedford Forrest's wolves prowling out there. Bradford tried again: “We'll whip' em yet!”
“You tell 'em, Major!” That was one of his own troopers. They would follow where he led. But what about the niggers? They'd have to, wouldn't they? He was the senior officer left alive, no matter how little he wanted the distinction to land on him at this time in this way.
“Major! Major! Major Bradford, suh!” This time, one of Major Booth's colored soldiers-one of his colored soldiers now, for better or worse-dashed toward him from the parapet as if all the furies of hell were at his heels.
“What is it?” Bradford asked. What is it now? he almost said, but he swallowed the last word in the nick of time. It would have sounded too much like panic. He felt panic hammering hard inside him, but didn't want to show it. That would only make it spread.
“Suh, the Secesh done shot Lieutenant Hill through the head out by the old barracks,” the Negro answered. “He fall down, he twitch a few times, an' he dead now jus' like Major Booth.”
“Oh, good God!” Bradford exclaimed. “One thing on top of another!” Hill was-had been-Booth's adjutant, which meant he'd become post adjutant when Booth took command. Now… he hadn't outlived his superior by more than a couple of minutes.
“Yes, suh-one thing after another. But I reckon we's hurting the Rebs, too,” the Negro said. He still showed fight. That was good.
“We'll just have to carry on the best way we can,” Bradford said, and then, “Thank you for letting me know.”
“Yes, suh,” the colored sergeant answered. He gave Bradford a salute that would have won the heart of any drill sergeant on a practice field. Bradford tried to return it as smartly; he'd already seen the Negroes set more stock in such gestures than did the troopers he led. His salute was spoiled when a minnie cracked past overhead. Both he and the colored man ducked. He would have been humiliated if he did and the artilleryman didn't. As things were, they smiled at each other, both admitting that bullets could scare a man no matter what color he was.
After a bob of the head, the Negro trotted back to his station. “Lieutenant Leaming!” Bradford shouted, and then, when that didn't accomplish anything, “Mack! Where in damnation are you?”
“Right here, sir,” Leaming said. “What do you need?”
“A nigger just told me the Rebs have killed Lieutenant Hill outside the works. That makes you post adjutant again,” Major Bradford answered.
“Good Lord!” Leaming said. “I think their sharpshooters really are trying to pick off our officers. We're losing them too fast for anything else to make sense… Are you all right, sir?”
“Yes,” Bradford lied. He'd always been proud of his major's tunic with its two rows of seven brass buttons each. Now, like Joseph's coat of many colors, his tunic with the many shiny buttons-he made sure they stayed shiny-was liable to land him in danger. He imagined some skinny, mangy Rebel drawing a bead right between the rows, squeezing the trigger, and… He flinched, though no bullet came close.
“What are your orders, sir?” Lieutenant Leaming asked.
“What else can we do but keep on with what we've been doing?” Bradford replied. “Major Booth was sure help would come from Memphis. We just have to hang on till it gets here, that's all.”