Bradford licked his lips. He tasted more mud; his mustache was wet. But his tongue and the inside of his mouth were dry with fear. “I never gave orders for anything like that,” he got out.
“Yeah, likely tell, likely tell,” the Confederate jeered. “Now let's
hear another story-one I'll maybe believe.”
“Before God, it's the truth.” Bradford held up his right hand, as if taking an oath. The soldier in butternut laughed. It wasn't a goodnatured, mirthful laugh. A cat with a human voice might have laughed like that playing with a cornered mouse. The Reb urged Bradford up the side of the bluff again. Shivering, Bradford went.
It was the truth. No one-no one in his right mind, anyway, ordered his men to abuse the women on the other side. But, as Bradford knew and as Pontius Pilate must also have known long ago, there was truth, and then there was truth. West Tennessee was and always had been a Rebel stronghold. Forrest's trooper called the soldiers of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) traitors. To Bradford's way of thinking, the men who were trying to break the Union in half were the real traitors.
If you stayed loyal to the United States, what did you do about treason? What could you do about it? You could put it down, that was what. If somebody wanted to see the Stars and Stripes cut down and the Stainless Banner flying in their place, what were you supposed to do? Stand by and watch while he took up arms against your country-against the country? Bradford shook his head as he climbed the steep slope. He didn't think so.
And sometimes the game got rough. It got rough on both sides. Plenty of men under his command had had relatives bushwhacked, houses burned, livestock killed or driven off. If they paid the Confederates back in the same coin, who could blame them? Not Bill Bradford, not for a minute. He wanted to make it hard on the Rebs, to remind them they were facing a power strong enough to defend itself, a power strong enough to make anyone who defied it sorry.
Some of the things that happened didn't happen officially. Taking women out behind the barn and doing what you wanted with them — to them — fell in that category. No, nobody would order it. But if you owed vengeance to a particular Reb, if you knew who he was, if you knew where his kin lived, wouldn't you do whatever you could to pay him back? Of course you would.
Some of the soldiers who did things like that bragged about them. Bradford had heard them going on about what they'd done. They fell silent when they noticed him, but often not soon enough. Had he done such things, he would have kept quiet about them till people shoveled dirt over his grave. But he was a lawyer-he knew that talking about something often made it twice as real. Being a lawyer, he also tended to forget that things stayed real even without testimony about them.
As he regained the top of the cliff, he saw a Negro wearing only shirt and drawers lying next to a white man who'd had all his outer clothes stolen. The colored soldier stirred. The white man never would, not till the Judgment Trump blew: Major Bradford recognized Lionel Booth.
Had the Rebs stripped Theodorick the same way? Bradford couldn't stand the idea. He hurried toward the place where Theo had fallen. “Where do you think you're going, you goddamn son of a bitch?” snarled the Confederate who'd captured him.
“To see my brother's body,” he answered, not slowing in the slightest. “Wouldn't you do the same for yours?”
The Confederate didn't answer. He also didn't fire. Bradford strode through the chaos of the sack of Fort Pillow. Rebs were busy stripping bodies and plundering sutlers' huts, stealing from the United States all the things their own gimcrack government couldn't give them.
Horrible screams rose from a tent the Federals had been using as a hospital for their wounded. Mixed in with them were shouts of hoarse, drunken laughter. Some of Forrest's troopers must have got into the whiskey Major Booth had ordered put out to fortify the garrison's courage. A couple of soldiers in butternut lurched from the tent. They both carried cavalry sabers dripping blood.
“You scalped that coon just like an Injun would!” one of them told the other. They both thought that was the funniest thing they'd ever heard. They had to hold each other up, or they would have fallen on their faces.
An officious-looking young Confederate second lieutenant rushed over to Bradford. “Where do you think you're going?” he demanded.
Then, recognizing the man to whom he spoke, he did a classic double take. “You!”
“He said the same thing.” Bradford jerked a thumb back over his shoulder at the trooper behind him. “I think I'm going to tend to my brother's body, that's what, and see that he gets Christian burial. You are a Christian, I hope?” By the way he said it, he had his doubts.
“I ought to blow your head off right here,” the lieutenant said, scowling. If he was a Christian, he didn't believe in turning the other cheek.
“I have surrendered. This gentleman accepted my surrender.” Bradford pointed to the trooper again. “If you care to make yourself infamous before God and man, pull the trigger. I shall not run.” Soaked and weary though he was, he struck a pose. He'd pleaded for lives before, but never for his own. All the courtroom tricks he'd used for others came back to help him now.
He succeeded in confusing the lieutenant, anyhow. “Don't you go nowhere,” the youngster squeaked.
“I am going to find my brother's body,” Bradford insisted. “I am going to see him properly buried.” And what I do after that is nobody's business but my own. When the Confederate lieutenant didn't tell him no, his hopes began to rise.
Mack Leaming lay where he'd fallen. He'd stuffed a pocket handkerchief into the hole below his shoulder blade. The linen square was soggy with blood now, but he did think he was losing less than he had before.
Secesh soldiers and their Federal captives scampered down the side of the bluff and trudged up it. Confederates plundered the dead and robbed the living. They weren't murdering so many as they had in the mad moments after the fort fell, but they hadn't stopped, either. A Negro dashed down to the Mississippi and tried to take refuge in the river. One of Forrest's troopers shot him just as he splashed into the water. His blood mingled with the greater flow of the stream.
Two more Confederates ran over and pulled him out of the water. “Come on, you stinking shitheel!” one of them shouted. “Get up and walk!”
Whatever the Negro said, Leaming couldn't make it out-it was too feeble. “You'd better get up, or you'll never have another chance,” the second Reb warned. The Negro managed to reach his hands and knees. Both Confederates laughed. “He crawls like a dog,” the second one said.
“He can die like a damned dog.” The first Reb put a revolver to the Negro's head and fired once. The colored soldier flopped down, dead. Bedford Forrest's men walked off, laughing still.
A soldier in ragged gray crouched down by Lieutenant Leaming.
“Got any greenbacks, Yank?” he asked hoarsely.
Groaning with the effort, Leaming reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “Here,” he said, biting his lip against the pain. “Take it. Can I have some water, please?”
He might as well have saved his breath. The Reb was too busy counting his loot to pay any attention to the man the loot came from. “… Sixty… eighty… ninety… ninety-five… a hundred… a hundred an' one… two… three,” the trooper said in an awed voice. “A hundred an' three dollars! Goddamn! I'm rich!” He let out a whoop of joy. Then, like a fox that wanted more than one chicken from the coop, he stared hungrily at Leaming again. “All that money! What else you got?”
“Water?” Leaming said again. His throat felt rough as shagreen.
Forrest's trooper didn't care. He frisked the Union officer with ungentle hands, and whooped again when he found Leaming's gold watch. It disappeared into his pocket, along with its heavy golden chain. “Godalmightydamn!” he said, as reverent a blasphemy as Leaming had ever heard. “Wish I had me more days like this here one since I joined up. I am a made man, I am. If you wasn't so ugly, I'd kiss you. “