Corporal Jenkins took a shot at him. So did a couple of other Confederate troopers not far away. The smoke that burst from their rifles announced where they were. In moments, the Negro sent minnies whistling through the undergrowth close to each of the three men.
As Jenkins reloaded, he said, “To hell with me if that nigger's not too dumb to realize how much trouble he's in.”
“I wouldn't be crazy enough to stick myself out there, that's for damn sure,” one of the nearby Confederates agreed.
More bullets whipped past the colored man. Had he been white-even if he were only a homemade Yankee-Jenkins would have respected his courage. But the corporal didn't want to admit, even to himself, that a Negro had courage. If a black man could be brave, wasn't he much the same sort of man as a white? And if he was much the same as a white, how could he also naturally be a slave?
Those two things didn't fit together. Jenkins could see that as plainly as Abe Lincoln could. Where it forced the President of the United States to conclude that all men should be free, it forced the Southerner and most of his comrades to deny the possibility that Negroes could show the same sort of courage as white men.
If Jenkins saw a black man exposing himself to enemy fire, then, the blue-uniformed Negro couldn't be brave. He had to be stupid instead.
Another Minie ball clipped leaves and twigs a few feet away from Jenkins. “This here's warmer work than I reckoned it would be,” he said.
“We'll get 'em,” another trooper said. “Long as they don't get reinforced from down the river, we'll get' em. And even if they do, we've still got most of the high ground. We'll make' em sorry they holed up in there.”
Squelching through the mire at the bottom of Coal Creek Ravine, Jenkins thought of high ground as little more than a rumor. Something slithered over his boot and vanished in the bushes. Maybe it was just a water snake, not a copperhead or a cottonmouth. He hoped so, because he didn't know how far away it had slithered.
After what seemed like forever and was probably fifteen minutes or so, the Negro soldier let out a holler and scrambled back into the fort. “Somebody nailed the son of a bitch!” Jenkins exclaimed. “About time!”
“You see where he got it?” one of his friends asked gleefully.
“Not me.” Jenkins shook his head. “I was ramming a cartridge home.” That was true, but he wasn't sorry to have been screened off by the undergrowth. The damn coon had come too close to hitting him a couple of times. “So where?”
“They shot him right in the ass,” the other C.S. trooper said. “Probably give him a brain concussion,” Jenkins said. “Remember that Yankee general who said he was going to make his headquarters in the saddle?”
“That was General Pope. He had his headquarters in his hindquarters, just like that nigger,” the other man said. “Once he ran up against Bobby Lee, it didn't matter where his headquarters were at anyways.”
“You're sure right there,” Jenkins said. Every Federal general who'd operated against Robert E. Lee had come to grief. The Confederates' luck wasn't so good out here in the West. But they were still in the fight, and the Union troops holed up in Fort Pillow would pay for forgetting it.
A bullet cracked past Bill Bradford, close enough to make him duck. He imagined he felt the minnie tug at the brim of his slouch hat, but the hat seemed untouched when he took it off and looked at it. He set it back on his head, pulling it down low as if to make himself a smaller target.
Another Confederate fired at him. Again, the bullet made him flex his knees. This time, though, he felt no phantom tugs. He scowled at the cloud of black-powder smoke rising from one of the barracks in front of the fort. The Confederates seemed to infest both rows of wooden buildings.
“Captain Carron!” he called.
“Yes, sir?” the artilleryman answered, standing by his twelve-pounder.
“Will that piece of yours reach those barracks halls? The Rebs have got men in them, and they're close enough to make the fire annoying.” That was a polite way to put it. When the Rebs almost parted his hair with a Minie ball, Major Bradford wasn't just annoyed. He was scared green.
Captain Carron shook his head. “Sorry, Major, but I can't do it.
The gun won't depress far enough to hit those huts. “
“Damnation,” Bradford said. “How am I supposed to shift the devils sheltering in them, then?”
“You could burn them out,” Carron suggested.
Bradford hadn't thought of that. Now that the artillery officer planted the idea in his mind, though, he found that he liked it. “Lieutenant Leaming!” he said. “Where the-? Oh, there you are.”
“Yes, sir. Here I am,” his adjutant agreed. “What do you need from me, sir?”
“I want you to gather a-a storming party, I guess you'd call it,” Bradford answered. “The Rebs are shooting at us from those barracks.” He pointed. “I want the men to take torches along with their Springfields. They are to burn down the buildings and then return to the fort. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Leaming said. “Do you think fifty men will be enough? Shall I send some niggers along with our Tennessee troopers?”
“If fifty can't do the job, no larger number can,” Bradford said. “And no, leave the niggers here inside the fort. I don't know how well they'd fight out in the open, and they shouldn't go out where they can be captured, anyway. Forrest's men don't love colored soldiers.”
“All right, sir,” Leaming replied. “I'll tend to it.”
There was some small delay assembling the storming party. There was a larger delay equipping the troopers with torches. But they swarmed out of the fort bravely enough. “Hurrah!” they shouted as they went forward. “Hurrah!” The U.S. war cry wasn't so impressive as the Rebel yell, but they showed good spirit.
The Confederates didn't have many men in those barracks buildings. H they had, they could have slaughtered the onrushing men from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry. They did knock down a couple of soldiers, but only a couple. Then the men in blue reached the first row of barracks.
Major Bradford whooped when smoke began to rise. The rains of the past few days had soaked the wood; he'd feared it wouldn't catch. But two or three of the buildings started burning. His men also fired at the Confederates lurking there. And they'd gone out with fixed bayonets. They could skewer any Reb who got too close.
Most of the time, a bayonet made a good knife and a good candle holder, but not much else. In close combat where a foe might jump out any time, though…
The Federal assault naturally drew the enemy's notice. Confederates ran toward the two rows of barracks buildings, too. The Rebs rushing up had no kind of order, but they outnumbered the men from the U.S. storming party.
“Come on!” Bradford shouted to the Tennessee troopers inside Fort Pillow and to the colored artillerymen now fighting as infantry. “Shoot those Rebel bastards! Don't let them gain a lodgment there!” He wondered if the Negroes knew what a lodgment was. It didn't matter. They could see that letting the Confederates shoot at them from cover at close range wasn't a good idea.
As he ordered the black men to shift position behind the earthwork so more of them could fire at the wooden buildings, he paid them the highest compliment any officer from Tennessee could give: he forgot what color they were. He treated them the same way as he treated the troopers from his own regiment. In time of danger, they were all just.. soldiers.
Maybe some of the Negroes had dipped up a little too much Dutch courage. They capered and gestured to show their scorn for the enemy. Along with obscene taunts, they thumbed their noses and stuck their thumbs in their ears and waggled their fingers. They made ridiculous faces, their expressions all the more absurd because their teeth and tongues and eyeballs showed up so well against their dark hides.