“At your service in every way, Captain Marshall says,” Theodorick told his brother.
“That's good. Thanks a lot, Theo.” Bradford took off his hat and waved it in salute to the gunboat, though the sailors far below probably wouldn't notice.
More than a little reluctantly, he made his way back toward the firing. Nothing had hit him yet. Nothing would hit him. He kept telling himself so, over and over again. Whenever the law had to say something repeatedly, it was a sign nobody was paying attention to it. As an attorney, Bill Bradford understood that principle. Applying it to his own case didn't occur to him, which might have been just as well.
“Captain Young!” he shouted. “Where are you, Captain?”
“I'm here, sir,” John Young answered after Bradford called his name several times. Fort Pillow's provost marshal was a large, solidly built man with a habitual scowl and a black beard so thick it was almost like a pelt. “What do you need?”
Bradford pointed toward the New Era. “I want you to get some men to take a store of cartridges down to the riverbank. If we have to fight down there, 1 don't want it to be just with whatever ammunition we chance to carry with us.”
Captain Young's frown deepened. “If we have to fight by the riverbank, that will mean the Rebs have carried the fort,” he said. Major Bradford waited with a scowl of his own. After a pause that stretched, Young added, “Sir.”
“Yes, I know it will,” Bradford said. “Would you rather not nail new shingles on the roof in case of rain?”
Young grunted. “Well, when you put it that way-”
“That is precisely how I put it, Captain.” Bradford drew himself up again.
He didn't have to wait so long this time. With a crisp salute, Young said, “Yes, sir. I'll take care of it.” He started shouting for soldiers. Before long, he had men lurching and staggering down the side of the bluff, two of them carrying each heavy crate. “All right, sir,” he reported when the job was done. “We've got half a dozen cases of minnies down there. If those aren't enough to keep up the fight, God help us all.”
“Yes,” Major Bradford said. “God help us all.”
Bedford Forrest watched the fighting at Fort Pillow from a swell of ground about a quarter of a mile from the Federal earthworks. Sharpshooters from Colonel McCulloch's brigade not far away sniped at the Union men. Unlike the troops farther forward, who simply fired as fast as they could, the sharpshooters took their time and made sure they had good targets before they pulled the trigger.
“There you go!” Forrest shouted encouragement. “Keep banging away at them. They'll fall down.”
One of the sharpshooters whooped, so maybe the soldier he'd aimed at did fall over. Forrest hoped so. The men in blue inside the fort were putting up a stronger fight than he'd expected. He still thought he could overrun their works-with his men on so many high spots around Fort Pillow, they could fire into the fort with devastating effect, and could keep the enemy from doing as much as he would want to when the final assault came. Still, that final assault was liable to prove more costly than he looked for when he set out from Jackson. And so… A slow smile spread over his face. Even if the colored troops and homemade Yankees inside the fort hadn't fought unusually well, he supposed he would have trotted out one of his favorite ploys. He used it for one simple reason: it worked often enough to make it worthwhile.
“Captain Anderson!” he yelled. “Where in the tarnation is Captain Anderson?” Then he laughed at himself. “To hell with me if I didn't send him down to the riverbank my very own self.” He called to one of the soldiers on the little rise with him: “Hey, Zach! Go down to the river and bring Captain Anderson here, will you?”
“Sure will, General.” Zach hurried away. Bedford Forrest smiled. Sometimes an order phrased as a request worked better than any other kind. Touchy about their personal pride, a lot of Confederates resented being flat-out told what to do.
Rough, steeply sloping ground and fallen trees made Zach's trip down to the riverbank slower than it might have been. Captain Anderson couldn't come back up much faster, even if he was on horseback. Sketching a salute to Forrest, he said, “What's up, sir?”
Forrest pointed toward the fort. “I'm going to give those people in there a chance to surrender. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.”
“Sure worked in Union City three weeks ago.” A smile stole over Anderson's face. “Poor Colonel Hawkins has surrendered to you twice now, even though you were only there once.”
“Well, so he has.” Forrest. grinned, too. His detachment under Colonel Duckworth that intimidated-buffaloed, really-the luckless Isaac Hawkins into yielding Union City was a good deal weaker than the force that surrendered to it. A lot of the Federal officers who went into captivity were furious at their commander-which did them no good at all.
“All right, sir. Let's see if they'll throw in the sponge.” Captain Anderson always had paper and pencil handy. “Go ahead.”
“Headquarters Forrest's Cavalry. Before Fort Pillow, April twelfth, eighteen sixty-four.” Forrest had sent in a lot of surrender demands; he could begin one without even needing to think about it. His aide-de-camp scribbled furiously. Then the general commanding paused. “What's the name of the Yankee son of a bitch in charge there?”
Charles Anderson always had such minutiae at his fingertips; he made a good aide-de-camp. “Booth, Sir — Lionel Booth. He's a major.”
“Yes, I remembered that. Well, then.” He paused again. Captain Anderson poised the pencil. Forrest resumed: “Major Booth, commanding United States forces, Fort Pillow. Major…” He weighed phrases in his mind. “The officers and men of Fort Pillow have fought well…” As usual, fought came out as fit. This time, he shook his head. “No, that won't do. It hasn't got the right pitch to it.”
“Start again, sir?” Anderson asked; he'd seen Forrest edit despatches on the fly before.
“Reckon I'd better. How's this…?” Forrest said. “The conduct of the officers and men garrisoning Fort Pillow has been…” the delay this time was to let Anderson's pencil catch up “… such as to entitle them to being treated as prisoners of war.” Listening, he nodded. “Yes, that'll do.”
''I'm up with you, sir,” Captain Anderson said. “What next?”
“I demand the unconditional surrender of this garrison, promising you that you shall be treated as prisoners of war.” Forrest knew he'd repeated himself, but let it go. The Federals were bound to be anxious about the point. He went on, “My men have received a fresh supply of ammunition, and from their present position can easily assault and capture the fort.”
“Every word of that's true,” his aide-de-camp said when he caught up with Forrest's dictation. He grinned again; Forrest and the commanders who served under him had lied like Ananias in several surrender demands, most recently the one that bagged Union City. They didn't always work, either; the fortress up at Paducah, Kentucky, had held out against his forces not long before, even though his men controlled most of the town for half a day. “Now for the warning?” Anderson asked.
“Oh, yes.” Even though the Federals inside Fort Pillow couldn't hear him, Bedford Forrest sounded lion-fierce as he continued.
“Should my demand be refused, I cannot be responsible for the fate of your command. Respectfully, N.B. Forrest, Major-General commanding… Read that back to me, Anderson.”
“Yes, sir,” Anderson said, and then, when it was done, “Does it suit you?”
“Yes, it'll do,” Forrest said.
“Shall I deliver it to the enemy myself?” Anderson asked.
“No, I want you back down by the river, fast as you can get there,”
Forrest replied. “I'll send somebody else.” He looked around for another man and spotted one of General Chalmers's staff officers not far away, ready to do anything Chalmers might require of him. Well I need him more than Jim does now, Forrest thought. “Captain Goodman!” he called.