He trotted the arguments out smooth as you please. Ward remembered hearing he was a lawyer. But he couldn't talk around one thing: "This here is a Confederate state. If you aren't for the Confederacy, you're nothing but a dirty old traitor."
"My loyalty is the old one. I'll stick to it." Major Bradford looked down at his brother's grave. "If you ask me to love the cause that killed poor Theo, I'm afraid you ask too much."
"Quibble all you care to." Ward hefted his Enfield. "You damn well lost. "
"And isn't that the sad and sorry truth?" Bradford managed a mournful laugh. He had no weapon, but hefted the whiskey jug instead. "A sorrow I shall try to drown." He drank.
"You already look drowned," Ward told him. "Let me have some more of that."
"How can I say no? To the victor go the spoils." The Federal officer surrendered the whiskey. Ward raised the jug and took a long pull. Then he took another one.
Next thing he knew, he was sitting on the ground. He didn't know how he'd got there. The whiskey jug sat beside him, though. That was funny. Laughing, he got up and drank some more.
Bill Bradford laughed, too. Ward remembered that.
"Come on!" Nathan Bedford Forrest shouted. "We've got to empty this place out, and we don't have a whole lot of time."
He might have been-he was-the best cavalry general in the war. He was proud that his men would throw themselves at the damnyankees sooner than risking his displeasure. But even the mightiest man bumped up against the limits of his power. Forrest's men had fought like fiends. They'd licked the Federals, licked them and plundered them and slaughtered them. Now… Now they didn't want to do much more.
Oh, they'd taken the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry's horses. You could never have enough remounts. And they would haul off the half-dozen guns they'd captured. Taking the enemy's cannon was proof of your own triumph. But…
Bedford Forrest tried again: "We've got all these supplies here. We've got all these cartridges. We need to haul' em away."
Nobody felt like listening to him. His soldiers had grabbed what they wanted and what they needed as individuals. Right now, he was the only one who seemed worried about grabbing what his ragtag army wanted and needed.
A lot of Confederates had got into the whiskey the Federals put out to nerve their men. Forrest was angry at himself for not laying hold of that as soon as his troops got into Fort Pillow. He should have known better. He had known better, but he hung back to let his men have their way with the Negroes and homemade Yankees here. Now he was paying for it.
"Hey, General!" somebody called, his voice full of good cheer and tanglefoot. "Look! We brung you your horse!"
They must have led the animal up the side of the bluff. That surely took a lot of work and trouble. If only they would put so much work and trouble into the things that really needed doing. Bedford Forrest seethed. The worst part was, he had to make them think he was grateful. "Thanks, boys," he said as he climbed into the saddle. Maybe getting up there would do some good. A man on horseback was harder to ignore than a man on foot, even a big, loud man on foot.
Forrest rode over a wounded black man. He thought the fellow was dead, but groans and a feeble effort to get away told him otherwise. The horse snorted and sidestepped; it was no more eager to step on a body, live or otherwise, than any other beast would have been.
Down the slope toward the river, a Confederate who must have been talking to some V.S. prisoners said, "You damned rascals, if you had not fought us so hard but had stopped when we sent in a flag of truce, we would not have done anything to you."
"We didn't reckon we could trust you," came the reply, probably from a Negro's throat.
"How could you have done worse than you did?" the Confederate replied.
"Kill all the niggers," another Confederate said-an officer, by the authority in his voice. A gunshot rang out-a tongue of yellow fire stabbing out down there in the darkness. Somebody screamed.
"No!" another officer shouted. "Forrest says take them and carry them with him to wait on him, and put them in jail and send them to their masters."
He was confused, but he had the general idea. Forrest rode to the edge of the bluff and called, "Yes, I do say that! There's been enough killing, dammit."
A startled silence followed. "Godalmightydamn, that really is Bedford Forrest up there," somebody said.
"Yes, it is. Come on up and help take things out of the fort,” Forrest said.
But then someone shouted for him from over near the sutlers' stalls. He started over there. The animal hadn't taken more than three or four strides before more guns barked, down by the Mississippi. A voice floated out of the night: "There's another dead nigger."
Forrest swore softly. He shook his head. The men didn't want to heed him or the officers set directly over them. What could you do? The river had run with blood for two hundred yards when the slaughter was at its height-so someone had told him, anyhow. Maybe that would demonstrate to the Northern people that Negro soldiers could not cope with Southerners.
The horse walked over that colored artilleryman again. His leg was all bloody, and glistened in the flickering torchlight. "What is it?" Forrest called to the lieutenant waving to him from the stalls.
"Sir, I caught this man pilfering goods." The young officer held a pistol on a middle-aged man in civilian clothes.
"Well, what do you need me for?" Forrest said. "Deal with him like he deserves."
"I was not pilfering, by God! " the man said. "I am Hardy Revelle." He struck a pose that suggested Bedford Forrest was supposed to know who he was and what that meant. Forrest stared back stonily. The civilian deflated somewhat. "I am a dry-goods clerk for Harris and Company, whose establishment this is."
"And so?" Forrest growled. "Come to the point and make it snappy, or you'll be sorry."
"After what I've seen today, the murders in cold blood, I am already sorry," Hardy Revelle said. "But I am not pilfering. For one thing, this is my principal's property, so I have more right to it than-" He was likely going to say something like you thieving Rebs, but he thought better of it, which was wise. "-than you do," he finished. "For another thing, one of your captains already made me give him a pair of boots. And then after I did, that there captain took me to General McCullough's headquarters-"
"He's Colonel McCulloch." Forrest bore down hard on the last syllable of McCulloch's name.
"Whoever he is, that's where I went." Hardy Revelle didn't care about the correction. He went on, "His surgeon made me show him where the goods were, and a lieutenant with him made off with a bridle and saddle and some bits, and-"
"Wait." Forrest interrupted again, holding up a hand. "What is the name of Colonel McCulloch's surgeon?"
Hardy Revelle frowned. "Durrell? No, that's not right. Durrett." He nodded. "There. Now I have it. And the lieutenant was a big, gawky fellow called Hay. "
Bedford Forrest nodded, too, for he was convinced. F. R. Durrett was the Second Missouri Cavalry's regimental surgeon, while J. S. Hay was Colonel McCulloch's ordnance officer. That left only one thing unexplained. "All right, Mr. Revelle-you got these things for the officers, like you say-"
"I sure did." Hardy Revelle might have been the very picture of righteousness.
"Well, fine." Forrest sounded mild-till he suddenly pounced: "So what in blazes are you doing here all by your lonesome? Looks like pilfering to me, by God."
"No, sir. No, sirree. Not me." Now the dry-goods clerk shook his head. "I was just keeping things safe, like."
"Sure you were." Forrest laughed. "Tell me another one."
"What do you want me to do with him, sir?" the Confederate lieutenant asked. "Shall I give him what he deserves, like you said?" He made as if to pull the pistol's trigger. Hardy Revelle quailed.
But Forrest said, "No, let him go for now. These really are his goods to keep an eye on. But if you catch him with his hands full later on, bring him to me again, and we'll see if I change my mind." Of course Revelle was pilfering from his boss's stall. But he did it with enough style to amuse the Confederate general instead of angering him.