The three of them rode into the yard and, dismounting, tied their horses to a peach tree. They walked across to the house, boots squishing in the water-soaked grass, and Jem hammered on the door. After a moment it opened and the familiar face of Mrs. Crisp looked out at them.
“Jem Hardaway!” she exclaimed. “I’m tickled to see you up and about again, young man. How’s the hip?”
“Better, ma’am. Almost well now. I’ll be back on duty in a day or two. You reckon we could bother you for a bite to eat before we ride on?”
“Why, surely! Come on in, you and your friend. Your darkie can go around to the back of the house and they’ll feed him out of the kitchen.”
It was a pleasant and restful interlude after the long, difficult ride, warming their cold, damp trousers in front of Mrs. Crisp’s open fire. Vick identified himself as a traveling merchant from Nashville and Jem and Mrs. Crisp talked mostly about family and community matters during the meal.
“Now, Jem, if you’re not goin’ straight to the fort you be careful,” Mrs. Crisp admonished as they prepared to mount and leave. “Some Yankee scouts were seen in these parts this momin’, I hear tell, and the word goin’ around is that the Yankees have taken Fort Henry an’ are on their way here.”
Jem and Vick exchanged glances. Vick was on the money so far.
“They’ll be landing reinforcements down the river, about six miles away,” Vick said when they rode out of the yard and turned back west. If Vick was right, Grant would stand tomorrow before the fire where they had warmed themselves. “What’s the best road up there? The road Grant would take to the steamboat landing?”
“Road we were on,” said Jem. “And that one’ll be miserable enough, after all this rain. You want a spot where you can be sure somebody on that road’ll be stickin’ to it? Where Telegraph Road curls around the end of Hickman’s Creek. He’d for certain be on the road there.”
They headed up Telegraph Road and Jem lapsed into thought. It remained to be seen whether Grant actually did ride up that road into ambush in four days but so far Vick had shown remarkable knowledge of the overall situation and apparently had been right on the likely timing of the Yankee troops’ arrival in the area from Fort Henry.
They negotiated the waterlogged road until it curved eastward and Jem announced they had passed Hickman’s Creek.
“You seem to know what the Yankees plan to do and you say they’ll be movin’ into this area this afternoon,” Jem said. “How’ll they be positionin’ their troops? If you know.”
“All of them south of the creek, with Smith on the left and McClernand on the right cutting off the road to Nashville,” said Vick positively. “Wallace will come up to till in the center later. They’re coming in two prongs, along this road through the timber and on a more southerly road—I think the one that runs into this one west of Mrs. Crisp’s farm.”
“Then they’ll likely have outriders through the woods on both sides of both roads,” said Jem. “Be safer if we go into the woods east of here, direction of the river, so we won’t get caught between them.”
“Sounds right. We ought to go deep enough into the woods to be sure we’ll be safe, for camping out. Grant won’t ride up this way almost alone until February 15th, in the morning. So we can take it easy and find a spot the afternoon before that’s close enough to the road for a good shot.”
Going east from the road for their bivouac, with every step they took deeper into the forest they came that much closer to the swollen Cumberland. There was a swampy backwater north of the fort where Hickman’s Creek flowed into the river and this flooded terrain stretched the length of the creek to Telegraph Road. Riding eastward they splashed through some pretty deep water in search of high ground on which they could camp for the next two nights.
“I’ve hunted this country,” said Jem. “There’s a little ol’ hill farther on where we used to camp out when the creek was up. It’s far enough from the road to be safe from Yankee outriders. We’ll go there.”
Rich knew the way too, and it was he as much as Jem who led them there. The two white men sat down on a log sheltered from the cold wind to have a smoke while Rich began unpacking and organizing for a bivouac.
“This must be a fine place to camp out and hunt when the river’s not up,” suggested Vick, looking around at the leafless oaks, sweetgums, and hackberry that crowded in around them. “I’ve seen several deer and a bear off to one side before we reached Mrs. Crisp’s house. And there are squirrels all over the place.”
“Foxes too, and wolves,” said Jem. Probably Vick was a city boy and unfamiliar with backwoods such as this. “Wolves have got a few of the stock now and then but they don’t like to come in close to a house. In the woods, though, one thing you have to watch out for is pigs that’ve got loose and run wild. If you’re afoot and you come on a sow, you better get up a tree, fast.”
Rich, unpacking saddlebags, chuckled.
“Yas suh, Mistuh Jem,” he said. “You ’member that old lady with little ’uns we ran on in the back thicket when we was little scapers? Lawdy, she like to got both of us!”
“I sure do remember that, Rich—and I remember you pushin’ me up to the tree fork before you started climbin’.”
“I’ve done some hunting in woods like these,” said Vick. “It’s this kind of thing the damn Northerners are going to ruin for us with their industry.”
Jem never had been north of the Mason-Dixon line, so he wasn’t sure how Northern industry entered into the picture. Rather than attempt to pursue the subject, he turned to Rich.
“Rich,” he said, “you set up the big tent for the two of us and the little one for you and build a fire between them for cookin’ and warmin’.”
Rich went to work. Vick sat down on a log near the fire with Jem, and with a stick sketched out in the damp dirt what he said were the current conditions—familiar terrain for Jem except for limning in the lineup of Federal troops.
“This is where Smith will have his division, southeast of us across the creek,” said Vick, pointing with his stick. “Over here in front of Dover will be McClernand. Lew Wallace will bring up some regiments to attach to Smith’s command and fill in the center between them. The X marked by the arrow is where I plan to shoot Grant. One nice thing about this high water is, there won’t be any troops northwest of the fort. That’s our way in after I’ve taken care of Grant.”
“Maybe you don’t know what a flooded backwater’s like,” said Jem dubiously. “It may be possible but we’ll have to leave the horses and pole across to the fort on a raft. They won’t fire on two men in Confederate uniform and a slave. Anyhow, if you’re right about where the Yankee divisions are positionin’ themselves it’s the only way we could get in past them.”
He glanced around the woods.
“I doubt there’ll be scouts from either side sloshin’ through this backwater but we better keep a light watch,” he said. “You take it till midnight, Rich, then I’ll spell you.”
“I’ll do my share keeping watch,” offered Vick “It’s my project, after all.”
“You won’t get a fight out of me on that. This leg’s botherin’ me some after all that ridin’ today and I ’spect sleep’ll be the best thing for it.”
“When you get ready to turn into yo’ blankets, Mistuh Jem, you pull yo’ britches down so I can rub yo’ hip with sa’ve,” said Rich. “Miss Prudence, she had me bring some of that sa’ve along and I can heat it over the coals to make it feel better.”
It was a pleasant night and all of them slept well, with no alarms. After breakfast, Rich took his musket out to see if he could bag a few squirrels nearby—there was some gunfire from the direction of the fort and a few additional shots out here in the water-soaked woods would hardly be noticed under the circumstances. While Rich was gone, Vick pulled a paper from inside his coveralls and held the document out to Jem.