Some of the troopers wore government – issue kepis. More used broad – brimmed slouch hats that did a better job of keeping the rain out of their faces.
“Come on, boys,” Leaming said. “Let's get out there for roll call. Don't want to keep Major Bradford waiting.”
Bill Bradford was a man with pull. The Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry was his creation. Recruitment and promotion were informal in these parts. Since Bradford came into U.S. service with a lot of men riding behind him, that won him the gold oak leaves on his shoulder straps. And he'd made an able enough commander so far.
Pulling his own slouch hat down low over his eyes, Mack Leaming went outside. Along with the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, four companies of heavy artillery and a section of light artillery were lining up for roll call and inspection. Leaming lips skinned back from his teeth in a mirthless grin. The artillerymen came from colored outfits. The officers and senior sergeants were white men, but the men they led had been slaves till they decided to take up arms against the whites who'd held them in bondage – and who wanted to keep on doing it.
Nigger soldiers, Leaming thought. He didn't like fighting on the same side as black men in arms – he was no nigger lover, even if he fought for the U.S.A. A Negro with a Springfield in his hands went dead against everything the South stood for. Leaming also wondered if the blacks would fight, if they could fight.
They looked impressive enough. They were, on average, both older and taller than the men in his own regiment. They drilled smartly, going through their evolutions with smooth precision. But could they fight? He'd believe it when he saw it.
Major Booth, who commanded them, seemed to have no doubts. Leaming might have trouble taking colored troops seriously. Nobody in his right mind, though, could lightly dismiss Lionel Booth. He was a veteran of the Regular Army, his face weathered though he was only in his mid – twenties, one cheek scarred by a bullet crease. Though he and his men came up from Memphis only a couple of weeks before, he was senior in grade to Major Bradford and in overall command at Fort Pillow.
Back when the war was new, Confederate General Gideon Pillow ordered the First Chickasaw Bluff of the Mississippi fortified. With customary modesty, he named the position after himself. As the crow flew, Fort Pillow lay not quite forty miles north of Memphis. Following the river's twists and turns, the crow would have flown twice as far, near enough.
General Pillow didn't think small when he built his works. His line ran for a couple of miles from Coal Creek on the north to the Mississippi on the west. The next Confederate officer who had to try to hold the place built a shorter line inside the one Pillow laid out.
That didn't do any good, either. When the Confederates in the West fell back in 1862, Federal troops occupied Fort Pillow. The U.S. Army kept nothing but the tip of the triangle between the Mississippi and Coal Creek. The present earthworks protected only the bluffs at the apex of the triangle and ran for perhaps four hundred feet. The Federals did keep pickets in rifle pits dug along the second, shorter, Confederate line.
These days, six pieces of field artillery aided the defenders: two six – pounders, two twelve – pounders, and two ten – pounder Parrott long guns. They were newly arrived with the colored troops from the Sixth U.S. Heavy Artillery and Second U.S. Light Artillery. Having come under artillery fire, Leaming liked it no better than anyone else in his right mind. He assumed the Confederates felt the same way.
Major Bradford strode up in front of the drawn – up ranks of cavalrymen. Leaming saluted him. “All men present and accounted for, sir,” he said. Military formality sounded good. Outside the perimeter defined by the soldiers in the rifle pits, where would the troopers of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry go? If they didn't ride out in force, they were asking to get bushwhacked, to get knocked over the head and tipped into the Mississippi or buried in shallow graves with their throats cut.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Bradford returned Leaming's salute with a grand flourish. He enjoyed being a major. He didn't much enjoy losing command of the fort to Major Booth. He couldn't do anything about it, though, not unless he wanted to arrange an accident for the younger man. Nodding to Leaming, he said, “Have the men fall out for sick call.”
“Fall out for sick call,” Leaming echoed.
Four or five men did. One of them shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Sir, permission to visit the latrines?” he said. When Leaming nodded, he scurried away.
Most of the sick men probably had some kind of flux of the bowels. Camp in one place for a while and that would happen, no matter how careful you were. Bad air or something, Leaming thought. Doctors couldn't do much about it. An opium plug might slow down the shits for a while.
If you were already plugged up, the surgeon would give you a bluemass suppository instead. Leaming didn't know what the hell blue mass was. By the way it shifted whatever you had inside you, he suspected it was related to gunpowder.
After roll call, he went up to Bradford and asked, “Any word of trouble from the Rebs?”
“Not here.” The other officer shook his head. “I reckon General Hurlbut started seeing shadows under his bed, that's all. Why else would he send us all those darnn niggers?” He had even less use for them than Leaming did.
“Worried about Forrest, I expect,” Leaming said. “Way he chased Fielding Hurst into Memphis…”
Colonel Hurst's Sixth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) had had the misfortune of running into a detachment from Forrest's force not long before. Hurst's men were rough and tough and nasty. They needed to be. Like the Thirteenth, they were homemade Yankees, and the hand of every Secesh man in the state was raised against them. However rough, tough, and nasty they were, they couldn't stand up to Forrest's troopers.
Major Bradford chuckled unkindly. “I hear tell Hurst ran away so hard, he galloped right out from under his hat.”
What could be more fun than hashing over another outfit's shortcomings? “I hear tell he left his white mistress behind,” Leaming said, “and his colored one, too.”
Now Bradford laughed a dirty laugh. “He had to have variety – unless he put 'em both in the same bed at the same time.” With a sigh, he pulled his mind back to matters military. “But anyway, Forrest isn't anywhere near here. He's off at Jackson, and that's got to be seventy miles away.”
“I was talking with one of the officers who came up with the coons,” Leaming said. “You know what Forrest had the nerve to do?”
“Son of a bitch has the nerve to do damn near anything. That's what makes him such a nuisance,” Major Bradford said. “What is it this time?”
“He sent Memphis a bill for the five thousand and however many dollars Colonel Hurst squeezed out of Jackson while he held it,” Leaming said.
Bradford laughed again, this time on a different note. “He better not hold his breath till he gets it, that's all I've got to say. He'll be a mighty blue man in a gray uniform if he does. Besides, that's not all Hurst has squeezed out of the Rebs – not even close.”
“Don't I know it!” Mack Leaming spoke more in admiration than anything else. Colonel Fielding Hurst had turned the war into a profitable business for himself. People said he'd taken more than $100,000 from Confederate sympathizers in western Tennessee. Leaming couldn't have said if that was true, but he wouldn't have been surprised. The Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry had done its share of squeezing, too, but the Sixth was way ahead of it.
“So anyhow,” Major Bradford went on, “I don't reckon we've got to do a whole lot of worrying about Bedford Forrest right this minute.”
“Sounds good to me, sir,” Leaming said.
Corporal Jack Jenkins had always hated Federals. Riding along these miserable roads in the rain did nothing to make him like them any better. Jenkins yawned in the saddle. The order from Jackson had reached Tyree Bell's brigade in Eaton in the middle of the night. Bell got his men in motion by midnight.