“Give me water,” Leaming told him. “I don't need a kiss.” Maybe because he was still bleeding, he felt drier every minute. He wondered how long he could last. It seemed to matter only in an abstract way, which probably wasn't a good sign.
He might have been a bank to the Confederate soldier, but he wasn't a human being. The Reb got to his feet. “I find me another Federal even half as loaded as you are, reckon I'm set for life.” Away he went, whistling the “Battle Cry of Freedom.” Both sides used that tune in this war, though they set different words to it. The U.S. chorus went,
The Union forever; Hurrah, boys, Hurrah!
Down with the traitor; up with the star.
While we rally 'round the flag, boys,
Rally once again.
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.
By contrast, the Rebs sang,
Our Dixie forever; she's never at a loss
Down with the eagle, up with the cross.
We'll rally' round the bonnie flags,
We'll rally once again,
Shout, shout the battle cry of Freedom.
To the Confederates in Fort Pillow, freedom seemed to mean freedom to loot. Another Secesh soldier called on Leaming a few minutes after the first one left. “Give me your money, you lousy Tennessee Tory, or you'll be sorry,” he said.
“Then I'll have to be sorry,” Leaming answered. “Another one of your fellows already took everything I had. “
“Now tell me one I'll believe,” the Reb said, and searched him with practiced ease that suggested he was either a sheriff or a bandit by trade. Leaming knew which way he would have bet. The Confederate swore when he found Leaming was telling the truth. “Well, I'll get something for myself, anyways,” he said, and stripped off Leaming's shoes. They proved too small, which made him swear again.
Then he cheered up a little. “Maybe I can swap 'em with somebody else who's got a bigger pair.”
“If you are a Christian man, please let me have some water,” Leaming said.
“I am a Christian man, and I hope to go to heaven,” the C.S. trooper replied. “But if we met in hell and you were on fire, I'd give you kerosene instead of water. That's what you deserve, you cowardly Yankee piece of shit, for putting guns in niggers' hands and making, em think they can rise up against their masters. God and Bedford Forrest will punish you for that.”
He didn't say whether he trusted more in the Deity or his commanding officer. He did go away, Leaming's shoes in his hand.
The right side of his torso one vast stabbing ache, Leaming lay where he had fallen. He looked up at the sky. The sun was sinking toward the western horizon, but hadn't got there yet. He wondered if he would die before it did. So much had happened so fast. Only a few hours earlier, he was parleying with Nathan Bedford Forrest himself. He'd never imagined it would come to this, to Fort Pillow lost, to finding out what having a bullet hole in him was like.
He grimaced. Some kinds of knowledge were too dearly bought. He'd always been a bright and curious man, but this once he wouldn't have minded ignorance.
A shadow fell across his face. It wasn't a vulture circling close to see if he was dead yet, although the way he felt he wouldn't have been surprised if it were. Not a vulture with feathers, anyhow: another Reb, seeing if he had anything worth stealing.
The Confederate soldier gave him a rueful grin. “Looks like I'm just about too late,” he said. “My pals done took all the good stuff off'n you.”
“Water?” The more Leaming asked for it, the more he was refused, the more he craved it.
He asked in vain again. The Reb might as well not have heard him. “Reckon I can get more use out of them trousers'n you ever will,” he said. “Hike your bottom up so's I can get' em off you.”
“I'm wounded,” Leaming got out through clenched teeth.
“I can see that-it's why I don't want your damned tunic,” Forrest's trooper said. “Ain't nothin' wrong with your pants, though — hardly any blood on them. So hike up and let me have 'em.”
Leaming's wound mattered to him only in so far as it made thievery inconvenient. The Federal officer didn't — couldn't — hike up. His tormentor stole his trousers anyway. Leaming begged for water one more time. He might as well have talked to a deaf man. The Confederate went right on ignoring his pleas. He thought of trying to shame the man, thought of it and decided not to. The trooper who'd stolen his shoes had his own brand of righteousness, however twisted it seemed to Mack Leaming. This fellow might also. And if he did, he might decide to use bullet or bayonet to silence what he didn't want to hear.
And even with the anguish of his wound, Leaming wanted to live. He aimed to die at home, at a ripe age, surrounded by a large and loving family. This muddy bluffside in the flower of his youth? This had nothing to do with what he had in mind. What God had in mind for him… he asked himself more and more often as the sun slid toward setting.
XII
When the firing at fort Pillow finally slowed, Nathan Bedford Forrest rode forward. His men had had their fun, or enough of it. He knew he couldn't have stopped them even if he wanted to. And he didn't want to. He'd warned the Federals he wouldn't answer for the consequences if they didn't give up. Every time he used that warning up till now, they either surrendered or beat back his men, both of which rendered the threat moot.
But it wasn't moot here. Fort Pillow did fall, and so it had to take the consequences. If he tried to hold his men in check after the fall — and if he managed to do it, which wouldn't be easy by a long shot — what sort of threat could he make the next time he wanted to shift some Yankees? He shook his head. None at all.
“Major Booth-no, Major Bradford-you are a damn fool,” he muttered.
“What's that, sir?” one of his staff officers asked.
“Nothing. Never mind,” Forrest said, annoyed the other man overheard him. He wondered whether Bradford still lived. He was inclined to bet against it, when the Tennessee Tory had so many men who wanted him dead. Bradford's bully boys had harried loyal Confederates in west Tennessee almost as savagely as Colonel Fielding Hurst's outfit. Well, they wouldn't any more-and neither would Hurst for a while.
Forrest's own men cheered him as he neared the position they had stormed. They whooped and grinned and waved their slouch hats. Some of them showed off the shoes and trousers and weapons they'd taken from the Federals. Forrest only grinned when they did. The Confederates had to make war pay for itself when they fought the richer United States.
One trooper waved to Forrest with a fist full of greenbacks. Forrest grinned at him, too, but said, “For God's sake, Lucas, stick that in your pocket! You want somebody to knock you over the head and walk off with it?”
“Anybody tries, I reckon he'll be mighty sorry mighty fast,” Lucas answered. With a pistol on one hip and a Bowie knife on the other, he looked ready to raise large amounts of hell.
“Put it away anyhow,” Bedford Forrest said. “The less temptation you stir up, the better off everybody is.”
Lucas thought about telling him no, then visibly thought better of it. Anyone who told Forrest no was likely to be sorry for it, and in short order, too. If Major Bradford remained alive, he had to wish he'd surrendered. And if he didn't, he would have gone on wishing it till his dying breath.
At the top of the bluff, Forrest dismounted. His horse couldn't cross the trench in front of the U.S. earthworks. But several planks now spanned the ditch. His troopers went back and forth as they pleased.
Under their orders — and under their guns — Federal prisoners were throwing dead U.S. soldiers into the ditch. Bedford Forrest nodded to himself. Why bother digging graves when they already had a big trench handy?