All I want to do is go on living, he thought. Is that too much to ask? Please, Jesus, tell me it isn't.
He got to within perhaps fifteen paces of the top of the bluff before he dared to stand up. When he did, he looked at the saber he still held in his right hand. Then he looked up at the ground for which the Federals had fought, and which they'd lost. Three or four Rebs were watching him intently. They might have been wolves wondering when a sick deer they were chasing would stumble and fall.
Wishing that particular comparison hadn't occurred to him, Lieutenant Leaming tossed aside the saber. He didn't want the Confederates thinking he might make a mad dash up the slope and try to murder them all. He spread his hands and forced a smile he didn't feel across his face.
“I surrender,” he called. “You've licked us. We can't fight any more.”
Bedford Forrest's troopers glanced at one another. With slow, thoughtful deliberation, one of them raised his rifle musket to his shoulder and peered over the sights down the slope at Leaming. If he pulled the trigger at that range, he could hardly miss. And, Leaming realized with rising horror, he was going to pull the trigger.
Leaming tried to turn away, tried to run. Too late. Too late. The Confederate fired. The minnie caught Leaming in the back, just below his right shoulder blade. His face hit the ground harder than he ever dreamt it could. Blackness covered him.
XI
A Federal-a white man-begged for his life on his knees in front of Matt Ward. He had no pride. He had no shame. “Please don't shoot me!” he whined. “I don't want to die!”
Tears ran down his terrified face.
“You one o' them bastards who learned niggers how to fight?” Ward demanded. For any Confederate soldier, that was the unpardonable crime.
“No, sir,” the bluebelly answered. “Swear to God I ain't! My name's Henry Clay, like the big shot from way back when. I'm Company E, Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry.”
A lot of Forrest's men were Tennesseans. They hated the homemade Yankees in the U.S. Thirteenth Cavalry at least as much as they hated Negro soldiers. Because Ward was from Missouri, he didn't hold so much against the white soldiers in blue. They were just damn yankees to him, not brothers and cousins and friends gone wrong.
He gestured with his bayonet. “All right, Henry Clay. Get up. Turn out your pockets. Whatever you've got in there, it's mine now.”
“I don't care,” Clay said. “Take it! I got me about ten dollars in greenbacks, and a couple of silver cartwheels, too. And you can have my spare cartridges-don't reckon I'll need 'em no more.” He was pathetically eager to give Ward everything he owned. “Got me some hardtack here, and some coffee beans.”
“You're a walking sutler,” Ward said. He couldn't do anything with the coffee, not till he had a chance to crush or grind the beans. But he broke a chunk off a hardtack cracker, stuffed it in his mouth, and started to chew. The double-baked dough reminded him one of his teeth wasn't as good as it should have been; it twinged when he chewed. His belly growled. His side always seemed to be on short rations, but the Federals had plenty. After he swallowed, he gestured with his Enfield again. “Go on back to the rear. They'll take care of you there.”
“Thank you. God bless you,” Henry Clay said, more tears drizzling down his cheeks. “You're a Christian gentleman, you are.”
“Go on-git. Keep your hands high,” Ward said. Clay lurched away, south along the bank of the Mississippi.
Do I feel better because I let him live? Ward wondered. He shrugged. He shook his head. The Federal just didn't seem worth killing. It wasn't the same thing at all. Clay was out of the fight now. That would do.
Another blue-clad soldier tried to give up. Ward might have taken his surrender, too, but a Yankee minnie cracked past his head. His own reaction was automatic. He ducked. Even as he was ducking, he pulled the trigger. The Federal screamed. He thrashed on the ground like a snake with a broken back, clutching his belly and crying for his mother. Ward felt bad about that. He hadn't meant to gutshoot the man. Well, no matter what he'd meant, it was done now.
He reloaded as fast as he could. Some of the colored soldiers and Tennessee Tories were still fighting, as that bullet proved. Fewer and fewer U.S. soldiers kept on shooting, though. A lot of them were down. Others went out into the Mississippi, mostly without their weapons, doing whatever they could to get away from Bedford Forrest's men. And quite a few were trying to give up.
Some, like Henry Clay, succeeded. Others, like the fellow Matt Ward shot without even thinking about it, didn't. The ones who died had only their own officers to blame, as far as Ward was concerned. General Forrest told them he couldn't answer for what his own troops would do if he didn't get a surrender right then. The Confederates' blood was up. Considering the men the soldiers in butternut faced, that was as near inevitable as made no difference. Blacks as soldiers… Ward ground his teeth at the very idea-carefully, because the hardtack had shown that that one was tender.
A handful of the bluebellies in the Mississippi were really trying to swim, or at least to float away, letting the current carry them downstream past the C.S. lines. Most just waded out and stayed there. Everybody said ostriches stuck their heads in the sand and left the rest of themselves in plain sight. The Union soldiers were just the opposite. Only their heads stuck out of the water.
Ward aimed at a Negro who had to be unusually tall to have waded as far out into the Mississippi as he had. Before he could fire, somebody else hit the black man. He shrugged. He had plenty of other targets to choose from. He had to swing his rifle musket only a little to the right to bring it to bear on a blond man with a long beard. He fired. The Federal sank into the river.
Bedford Forrest's troopers had already started plundering the enemy. Some of that was rifling pockets, the same kind of thing Ward did to Henry Clay. (The homemade Yankee's name still made him smile.) But much of it was more serious, more essential. Barefoot Confederates stole dead bluebellies' shoes. Troopers in ragged shirts and trousers took what they needed from men who wouldn't be worrying about clothes any more. And fine Springfields lay scattered on the ground like oversized jackstraws. Troopers who'd joined Forrest's force with nothing better than a squirrel gun or a shotgun got weapons as good as any their foes carried.
As good as any their foes here carried, anyhow-Ward silently corrected himself. He longed for a repeating rifle, a Henry or a Spencer. What Confederate cavalry trooper didn't? But the only way to keep a rifle like that in cartridges was to capture them. The Confederate States weren't up to making those fancy brass cases.
Just when Ward thought the fighting was over, it flared up again. A few Federals down here by the riverbank didn't want to give up and didn't think they could get away with surrendering. They seemed bound and determined to take as many Confederates with them as they could.
Ward didn't run toward the new skirmish. Plenty of other troopers were closer to it than he was. He'd already put himself in enough danger for one day. And those coons wouldn't last long any which way.
Sergeant Ben Robinson wondered if he would be the last soldier from Fort Pillow to go down fighting. He could do without the honor; he didn't want to go down at all. Sandy Cole had fallen with a bullet in the right thigh and another in the arm. Charlie Key was shot in the arm, too-if that bone wasn't broken, Robinson had never seen one that was. Aaron Fentis was down with bullet wounds in both legs. He lay groaning somewhere not far away. And somebody'd shot poor Nate Hunter right in the ass.
The little knot of Federals who were still fighting had Bedford Forrest's troopers coming at them from along the Mississippi and from the direction of Coal Creek. More Confederates went on shooting down at them from the bluff. By any reasonable measure, the fight was hopeless.