But the lieutenant shook his head. “No, no, no-of course not, “ he said impatiently. “Up till this combat, I wouldn't've reckoned niggers could fight at alclass="underline" fight like soldiers, I mean.” He sounded faintly, or maybe more than faintly, troubled at having to admit even that much, and more troubled as he went on, “They've done better than anybody imagined they could, I'm afraid.”
“Well, I'm not afraid, sir. To hell with 'em. To hell with 'em all, and with the homemade Yankees, too,” Jenkins said. “Way they were scornin' us and cursin' us during the truce, they must've thought they were somethin' special. They ain't special enough, by Jesus, and they don't fight good enough, neither.”
“That's the spirit, Corporal,” the lieutenant said. “Don't let anything bother you, do you?”
“Not if I can help it, sir,” Jenkins said. “Anything in a blue uniform does bother me, reckon I've got an answer, too.” He held up his rifle musket.
The officer smiled. “Good. If it weren't for you and soldiers like you, we'd never get ourselves a free Confederacy.”
“Well, hell. We'll manage.” Jenkins had as much faith in that as he did in the Resurrection and the Second Coming. “Ain't we whipping the damnyankees out of their shoes here?” He hoped he found a dead Federal with feet his size. His own shoes were falling to pieces.
Around the bend, on the Mississippi River side of the bluff, the gunfire suddenly picked up. So did the shouts and yells. Jenkins had listened with much amusement to the Federals' cries of dismay when their precious gunboat left them in the lurch. After it steamed away, the coons and the homemade Yankees quieted down for a while. Now the fighting picked up again. And by the way the Federals moaned and wailed, things weren't going any too well for them. The Rebel yells that also rang out said those other Confederates on the far side of the enemy were having fun.
And the Federals were heading this way: the shouts were getting louder. For the first time, they also sounded frightened. Gauging things by ear-which was all he could do-Jenkins thought the Federals had put up a pretty fair fight until now. But the men heading this way didn't sound like soldiers under control. They seemed like men who'd had everything they could take, and a litde more besides.
Any Union soldier who saw Jack Jenkins's smile would no doubt have called it nasty. No matter how much the bluebellies had taken, they were about to get some more.
“You see, boys?” that know-it-all lieutenant sang out. “We didn't need to go to the fight. It's coming right to us. Y'all ready to give those Federals a little taste of Southern hospitality?”
“We'll give 'em just what they deserve, by God!” Jenkins said, and the lieutenant didn't grumble or fuss one bit. He only nodded. And his smile was every bit as predatory as the corporal's.
“Here they come!” Half a dozen troopers sang out at the same time as the Federals rushed up to Coal Creek and started away from the Mississippi along its southern bank.
They didn't find the safety they hoped for. They were in no kind of order, and didn't seem to be under any officers' control. Jenkins shot the lieutenant a glance of mingled annoyance and respect. Maybe the men who told ordinary soldiers what to do had some uses after all. Maybe.
“Let 'em get close,” the lieutenant said now. “Let 'em get close, and then give 'em a good volley at my command. May I face eternal damnation if we don't break those sons of bitches. Hold your fire till I give the order, y'all hear?”
Nobody said no. Even more to the point, nobody started shooting. On came the men in blue. Their “Hurrah!” made a poor excuse for a battle cry, but they used it when they were in good spirits. They weren't cheering now-oh, no. Some of them skidded to a stop when they saw a line of Confederates in front of them. Others kept coming-not so much because they were eager to attack, Jenkins judged, as because they didn't know what else to do.
Only a handful of Federals raised Springfields to their shoulders and fired, trying to clear the way of Bedford Forrest's men. One luckless Confederate howled and crumpled, clutching at a shattered knee. “At my order…,” the lieutenant said, and then, “Fire!”
Jenkins's rifle musket bucked against his shoulder. Smoke and flames belched from the muzzle. He took off his hat and fanned the air in front of him, trying to clear it enough to see not just through his own piece's smoke but that from the rest of the rifle muskets as well. The Union charge, such as it was, shattered like crockery on a big rock. Only eight or ten men in blue were down, but even the ones who didn't take a minnie felt the Angel of Death brush them with his dark wings.
“Charge!” the lieutenant shouted. A revolver in one hand and his ceremonial saber in the other, he set his own example.
Against determined foes, it would have been madness. It would have been suicide. But the Federals had no fight left in them. Some turned and pelted back in the direction from which they'd come. Others threw down their guns and tried to surrender.
Sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn't. Jack Jenkins saw some of his comrades send Federals back toward the rear-often with a kick in the rear as they went. Others shot men in blue uniforms at point-blank range or bayoneted them even as they got down on their knees and begged for mercy.
“Don't shoot! Sweet Jesus, please don't shoot!” a Federal sergeant called to Jenkins. He held out empty hands. “See? I ain't got no gun.”
He also didn't have an accent like Jenkins's. He was no Tennessean, no homemade Yankee. He really did come from up North; he seemed to pronounce every letter in every word. And that likely meant… “You one of those fellows who tell nigger soldiers what to do?” Jenkins barked.
“Yes, that's right,” the sergeant answered. “But-”
He got no further. Jenkins pulled the trigger. The minnie caught the Yankee right in the middle of the chest. The man stared in astonished reproach for a moment, as if to say, What did you have to go and do that for? He opened his mouth, as if to ask the question. His knees buckled instead. He flopped and thrashed on the ground like a sunfish just pulled from a stream.
“Hold still, God damn you,” Jenkins said, and used his bayonet. He stabbed several times, till the U.S. sergeant finally stopped moving. “You turn niggers into soldiers, you deserve worse'n I just gave you.
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a bullet cracked past his head. For all he knew, a colored soldier fired it. He reloaded his own piece in feverish haste. He felt naked if he couldn't shoot back at the enemy. Some Yankee cavalrymen and even foot soldiers were getting repeating rifles that gave a company almost a regiment's worth of firepower. He thanked heaven nobody in Fort Pillow seemed to have guns like that. The lead they put in the air would have made storming the place gruesomely, maybe impossibly, expensive.
As he stowed his ramrod in its tube under the rifle musket's barrel, he wondered why the Confederacy couldn't make repeating rifles for its troopers. U.S. soldiers weren't any braver than their C.S. counterparts; with his own fierce pride, Jenkins refused to believe they were as brave. But the Federals would never lose the war because they ran short on things. Guns, ammunition, uniforms, railroads to take men where they needed to go, gunboats… The men in blue seemed to pull such things out of their back pockets, along with more food than they knew what to do with.
As for the Confederates… How many of Bedford Forrest's men were wearing captured clothing? Quite a few had blue trousers. A standing order required shirts to be dyed butternut right away, to keep the troopers from shooting at one another by mistake. A lot of Confederates carried captured weapons, too. The South simply couldn't make or bring in enough to meet its need.