“Well, I'll try,” Theo Bradford said dubiously. He held up the pair of large wigwag flags and semaphored with great vigor. Leaming peered down, down, down to the New Era. From this distance, the gunboat seemed hardly bigger than a toy.
An officer-or maybe a sailor-on her deck signaled back.
“What's he say?” Leaming asked.
“Says they'll try-I think.” Captain Bradford sounded harried. “I wish to God I had a spyglass so I could make out his flags better. I can't be sure what he's telling me half the time.”
“Can he read you?” Leaming asked anxiously.
“I sure hope so,” Theodorick Bradford said-not the most encouraging response he could have given.
But the New Era had the request. The gunboat did its best to comply. Its guns swung in the direction of the twin rows of barracks halls. Leaming admired that-the sailors far below couldn't see what they were aiming at. One after another, the cannon went off. Fire and smoke belched from their muzzles. He watched the shells rise into the cloudy air, then descend toward their targets. Booms said they'd hit-somewhere.
“Were those on the mark?” Leaming asked.
Captain Bradford shrugged. “Damned if I know. I can see the gunboat, or else I can see what it's shooting at. I can't do both at once.” He waved the wigwag flags again. “The more shell the boat puts down, the better the chance that some of them will come down where we want them to.”
“I see,” Leaming said. He didn't say what he saw, which was bound to be just as well. Since he couldn't change anything, complaining wouldn't do him any good. But Major William Bradford plainly thought the New Era was a vital part of Fort Pillow's defenses against Forrest's men. And so the gunboat might have been-if only it could hit its targets with something resembling accuracy. As things were… Mack Leaming grimaced. As things were, the New Era was doing the best it could, and he had to hope that would be enough.
Not long after Nathan Bedford Forrest finished his reconnaissance of the ground in front of Fort Pillow, a soldier in a butternut tunic and blue trousers trotted up to him. He'd issued orders that shirts captured from the Yankees had to go into the dye pots right away so his men wouldn't shoot at one another by mistake. Trousers were supposed to be dyed, too, but that was less urgent.
“What's up, Red?” he asked.
About half a dozen men in his command answered to that nickname. This lanky Mississippian had hair the color of a newly minted copper penny and ears that stuck out a good four inches. He said, “Ammunition wagons just came up, General.”
“Did they, by heaven?” Forrest said. “About time!”
“Yes, sir,” Red said. He probably didn't worry about the struggle they'd had moving those wagons along the narrow, rutted, muddy roads that went through the Hatchie bottoms, especially the troubles they'd had moving them along in pitch darkness. He did have sense enough to ask, “Any special orders for 'em?”
“Just make goddamn sure you get those cartridges up to the men who need 'em the most,” Forrest answered.
Red sketched a salute and went back the way he'd come. Bedford Forrest slowly nodded to himself. Up till now, his men had had only the cartridges they carried with them. They were supposed to bring enough to fight with-a rifle musket and cartridges were all a soldier really needed. But some would have more ammunition, some less, and some none at all. Forrest knew only too well that plenty of soldiers were natural-born knuckleheads.
With the wagons here at last, though, he didn't have to worry about that any more. He wished he would have been able to bring field guns forward, too, but that just wasn't in the cards. One of the Federals' cannon roared. The guns in the fort and the ones on the boat in the river were nuisances, but they weren't anything worse than nuisances. If he could have dropped shells into that cramped space inside the U.S. earthwork, though…
He shrugged. Worrying about might-have-beens wasn't his style. Another cannon inside Fort Pillow fired at his men. Those really were niggers manning the guns in there. Easy enough to seem brave when they were shooting from inside an earthwork. They wouldn't act like such big men when they met his troopers face-to-face. His hands folded into fists. He was sure of that. Oh, yes.
For now, though, the coons were having a high old time, skylarking and fooling around and mocking Forrest's men as if the Confederate soldiers would never have the chance to pay them back. They gave the troopers obscene gestures. One Negro even turned around and dropped his pants to show them his bare brown backside.
Forrest hoped that Negro would take a bullet where it did him the most good. No doubt all the Confederates who saw him did their best to give him what he deserved. But he pulled his trousers up again, waggled his bottom at the attackers one last time, and jumped down behind the rampart again.
In spite of himself, Forrest laughed. Say what you would, that Negro had nerve-which only made him need killing more. Ordinary blacks were no great trouble. They did what they were told, the same way ordinary whites did.
An uppity nigger, though… An uppity nigger was trouble. He might as well have smallpox or measles or some other deadly, contagious disease. He could infect others with what he carried. And if he did, he made them dangerous to white men, too.
“We got here just in time, sir,” Captain Anderson said, coming up beside Forrest. Quiet fury filled the aide-de-camp's voice.
“How's that?” Forrest asked.
“Well, sir, the longer we let these niggers think they're soldiers, the longer they have the chance to believe it, the more trouble they'll be in the long run-not just facing us but spreading their nonsense to other coons,” Anderson said. “Better-much better-to nip all that in the bud.”
“I was thinking pretty much the same thing,” Forrest said.
“If we teach those sons of bitches a good lesson, every smoke who puts on a Federal uniform will remember it from here on out,” Anderson said.
“Don't know much about lessons. Don't care much about lessons, neither.” Forrest grimaced, remembering his own brief, irregular schooling. “I just want to get in there, clean this place out, and then go give the damn yankees another boot in the behind somewheres else.”
“A boot in the behind isn't what that one damnfool nigger deserved.” Captain Anderson still seethed. “A minnie up the cornholethat's more like it.”
“He'll get his,” Forrest said. “We can find out who he is and damn well make sure he gets his.”
“Yes, sir.” But Captain Anderson remained discontented. “He's not the only nigger acting that way-he's just the worst.”
“I know, I know.” A shell from the gunboat in the Mississippi crashed down not far from the row of wooden huts the Confederates had captured. The cannon in the fort wouldn't bear on those barracks buildings, but the gunboat kept pestering them. Another shell burst over there. Somebody screamed-a sliver of iron must have struck home. Forrest pointed that way. “Here's something for you to do, Captain. “
“What is it, sir?”
“Find yourself some men who don't look like they're busy doing anything else.” Bedford Forrest's mouth quirked in a wry grin-you could always find plenty of men like that on a battlefield. He pointed west, toward the great river. “Take' em over there. If we have to storm the fort, we'll want to grab the riverbank just as quick as we can. We'll be able to shoot back at that damn gunboat then, and we'll make sure the damnyankees can't land any reinforcements, too.”
“I'll do it,” Anderson said. “Reinforcements are about the only thing that can save that place, aren't they?”