Two Negro prisoners picked up a body. One of them turned to the closest C.S. soldier. “Suh, this here fella, he ain't dead,” he said. “I done seen his hand move.”
“That's a fac', suh,” the other black agreed. “I seen it, too.”
“Set him down,” the trooper said. The Negroes obeyed. The Confederate soldier stooped for a closer look. His knee joints clicked when he straightened. “Pitch him in,” he told the prisoners. “If he ain't dead, he's too far gone for a sawbones to help. He'll be gone by the time they throw dirt on him-and if he ain't, it'll put him out of his misery. Go on-get your lazy black asses moving.”
The captives looked at each other. Then, with almost identical sighs, they obeyed. Nathan Bedford Forrest nodded again. What would happen if they refused? Their bodies would lie at the bottom of the ditch-and so would that of the prisoner, who, if he was alive, wouldn't stay that way for long.
More prisoners, these white men, carried the body of a soldier in butternut to lie with his comrades. A junior officer stood over the Confederates' bodies. “What's our part of the butcher's bill?” Forrest called.
“Sir, we've got about twenty dead,” the lieutenant replied, stiffening to attention when he realized who'd asked the question. “About sixty wounded, I've heard, but don't hold me to that.”
“All right-thanks,” Bedford Forrest said. The young officer saluted. Forrest returned it with a gesture more than half a wave. Then he crossed into Fort Pillow. The planks that bridged the ditch groaned under his weight-he was half again as heavy as a lot of the men who served under him. Some Yankee general said small, young, single men made the best cavalry troopers. On the whole, Forrest agreed with him. But he was not small himself, he had a wife, and the pain from his many wounds reminded him he wasn't so young any more, either.
He jumped down from the broad parapet into the fort. Men in blue carried the bodies of their comrades toward the ditch. Forrest's troopers urged them along. If the soldiers in butternut urged blacks more roughly than whites.. well, too bad. Bedford Forrest shrugged a broad-shouldered shrug. He had no love for Negroes trying to soldier, either.
Other Confederates went on robbing dead and living Federals. Forrest did nothing to stop them. Without Yankee loot, the Confederacy would long since have folded up and died. Having to plunder the enemy to keep fighting him made the war harder, but it went on.
And some of Forrest's troopers went on killing the men they'd overcome. Forrest scowled. “That's enough!” he shouted. “Enough, damn your black hearts! Stop it, or I'll make you sorry!”
Without looking over his shoulder to see who had spoken, a Confederate growled, “Who the hell do you think you are, to try and give an order like that?”
Bedford Forrest trotted up to him and knocked him to the muddy ground, then stood over him with fists clenched. “I'm your general, that's who,” he said. “Who the hell d'you think you are, to try and disobey me?”
He waited. If the trooper wanted a fight, he could have one. But he quailed instead. Few men did anything but quail in the face of an angry Nathan Bedford Forrest. “I'm sorry, sir,” the man mumbled.
“I'll make you sorrier than you ever thought you could be if you go disobeying orders again,” Forrest said. “You hear me?” Miserably, the soldier in butternut nodded. Forrest thought about stirring him with his foot, but held back. Treating the trooper like a nigger might make him lash out with no thought for what happened next. Instead, Forrest told him, “Get up and do what you're supposed to do, then.”
As the trooper rose, a gunshot rang out not far away. Somebody let out a shriek: a Negro clutching a smashed and bleeding hand. The Confederate soldier who'd shot him cussed a blue streak and started to reload. He'd been aiming for the black man's head, not his hand.
“General Forrest said that's enough,” a captain snapped. “You shoot anybody else, or you shoot this miserable son of a bitch again, I'll put you under arrest. Do you want a court-martial?”
“No, sir,” the soldier said grudgingly. “But I don't want some dumb fucking nigger trying to kill me, neither.” Forrest turned away so the trooper wouldn't see him smile. The captain was right, no doubt about it. Even so, you could always rely on a Southern soldier to speak his mind.
Forrest started to turn back, then stopped short. His pale eyes narrowed. The U.S. officer crouching beside a body had gold oak leaves on his shoulder straps. That made him a major. With Lionel Booth dead, he had to be Bill Bradford. Face grim as death, Forrest stalked toward him.
Major William Bradford had given his parole to a Confederate colonel. The Rebs deigned to take it after they couldn't quite kill him. The officer even gave him something to eat, though Bradford still had his soaked uniform on.
He didn't notice the thump of boots on damp ground till the noise was almost on top of him. He looked up in surprise-and up and up, for he didn't see such a tall man every day, or every week, either. That dark chin beard, that hard mouth, those smoldering eyes… With Theo dead, with Fort Pillow fallen, he hadn't thought any worse disaster could befall him. Now, as Nathan Bedford Forrest scowled at him, he wondered how long he could stay even as lucky as he had been.
His knees clicked when he straightened. Even on his feet, he still looked up at Forrest, who was at least six inches taller. “General,” Bradford said with such spirit as he could muster, and held out his hand.
The Confederate commander did not take it. Slowly, Bradford let it fall, his face hot with shame and rage. “You damned fool, why didn't you give up when you could?” Forrest demanded.
“Why?” Bradford shrugged. “Because I thought I could hold your men out. And because I feared they would act like beasts if they got in. And I was right, by God!” He pointed toward the heaped and tumbled corpses of Union soldiers, and toward the prisoners carrying bodies to the parapet and flinging them into the ditch.
“That never would have happened if you surrendered,” Forrest said.
“So you say now,” Major Bradford answered.
For a moment, he wondered if Bedford Forrest would strike him down where he stood. When Forrest grew angry, his whole countenance changed. He went red as hot iron, and seemed to swell so that he looked even larger than he was. “Are you calling me a liar, Major?” he asked softly.
If Bradford answered yes, he was a dead man. He could see that. “I did not trust your earlier assurances, sir,” he replied with lawyerly evasion.
“When I say I'll take prisoners, I mean it,” Forrest growled, some of that furious color ebbing from his face-some, but not all. “Over at Union City, Colonel Hawkins knew as much. He surrendered to my forces, and he and his men are safe today.”
“This makes twice he's surrendered to you,” Bradford said scornfully. “He's had practice, you might say.”
“Well, you're a damn sight worse off now than if you did show the white flag,” Forrest said, and Bradford winced. He could hardly deny that. The Confederate commander went on, “I told you I'd let you surrender, didn't I? Good Lord, I even said I'd let your niggers surrender, and that's something I've never done before and I'm not likely to do again.”
“I… had trouble crediting it when you did.” Bill Bradford picked his words with care, not wanting to inflame Forrest again.
“Too bad for you.” Forrest waved back toward the rises outside the Federal perimeter. “As soon as I got men on that high ground, I could cut you to pieces easy as you please. Your soldiers couldn't stick their heads up over the earthwork without giving my sharpshooters perfect targets. Any man with an ounce of sense would have seen as much, and thrown in the sponge.” One corner of his mouth twisted into a mocking smile. “Well, I reckon that leaves you out.”