“Wish it would,” Barteau agreed. “But if it doesn't, I reckon we'll make it sorry. And I think you're right. I think that whole swarm of niggers and Tennessee Tories'll come pelting down to the Mississippi once we get inside their works. And when they do…”
“I see, sir!” Jenkins wasn't a man to admire officers just because they were officers. When they showed they were on the ball, that was a different story. “You thought that through real pretty.”
“Glad you approve,” Barteau said dryly. “If you do see what I mean, perhaps you'll want to stay here.” Quite a few troopers were already moving away from Coal Creek along the ravine to get in position to swarm up the bluff against Fort Pillow.
“Reckon I will. It'll be just like coon-hunting back home.” Jenkins laughed at his joke, even if he'd made it by accident. “Be just like coon-hunting back home.”
Colonel Barteau rewarded him with a thin smile. “All right, Jenkins. Maybe you'll have some coons to hunt. You'd best remember one thing, though.”
“What's that, sir?”
“These coons can fight back.”
“Sir, any coon'll fight back. Bastards are all teeth and claws and mean. A coon dog's a lot bigger'n any coon ever born, but sometimes they'll come out of a hunt lookin' like they been through a meat grinder. Haven't you seen that yourself?”
“More times than I wish I had. I've lost some good dogs that way, who hasn't?-and I've had to doctor plenty more. But I would've had a lot more to worry about if the ordinary kind of coon carried rifle muskets like the ones in there.” Barteau pointed up toward Fort Pillow. “I'll leave doctoring bullet wounds to a real sawbones.”
Jenkins shivered. Sawbones was a name that held too much truth. Too often, amputation gave the only hope of saving a wounded man's life. He clutched his own rifle musket. It is better to give than to receive, he thought.
Ben Robinson stared out toward the Confederate officers gathered under the flag of truce. The rest of the colored soldiers in the gun crew were doing the same thing. Some of the Negroes inside Fort Pillow went on jeering at the ragged, skinny white men in butternut outside. Others grew more serious as the gravity of the situation sank in.
Pointing to one officer in particular, Robinson asked, “You reckon that there fella's really and truly Forrest?”
Sandy Cole nodded gloomily. “Reckon he is,” he said. “Ain't no use to say Forrest ain't here. I knows him too well fo' that. Any place where there's big trouble, Bedford Forrest, he gonna be there.”
“You seen the man yourself? You know his face?” Robinson asked.
“I seen him, all right,” Cole answered. “Ain't I a Tennessee nigger? Any Tennessee nigger ever been sold, chances are he been sold through 01' Bedford Forrest's slave lots in Memphis. Yeah, I seen him.”
“How'd he treat you when you was there?” Having been sold himself, Robinson had a morbid curiosity about such things. No part of slavery was good, not from the slave's point of view. But being in a dealer's hands, being between masters, was worse than most of the rest. A dealer didn't need to worry about you for the long haul. He just wanted to turn you into cash as fast as he could.
But Sandy Cole said, “Coulda been worse. He give us enough to eat-not fancy, but enough. We had mattresses-didn't got to sleep on the ground. He let us wash-now and again, anyways. Weren't too crowded. Yeah, coulda been worse. “
“Sounds like it,” Robinson agreed. He'd known slave pens where none of what Sandy said held true. But it gibed with other things he'd heard about the C.S. general. Forrest wasn't cruel for the sake of being cruel, the way some dealers were. He was in the business for money, not for sport, and he'd made a pile of it. Even so, the colored sergeant said, “Shame we gots to keep the truce.”
“What you mean?” Cole asked.
Robinson pointed out toward Forrest. “There he is, damn him.
That man deal in slaves. He deal in niggers. You done said so your ownself. Powerful good general, too-likely the bes' general the Rebs got in this part 0' the country. An' there he is. Don't got to be no great shot to put a minnie through the God-damned son of a bitch. Can't hardly miss, not at this range.” He mimed sighting a Springfield at the big man on horseback, mimed pulling the trigger, mimed Bedford Forrest falling over dead.
Sandy Cole laughed, but he sounded a little scandalized, or maybe more than a little. “Can't do that, Sergeant, not with the white flags up.”
“I know.” Robinson sighed. “But dat's how come it's a shame we gots to keep it.”
He might as well not have spoken. Cole went on, “'Sides, s'pose we shoots the general. An' s'pose the Secesh gets inside the fort then. What you reckon they do to us after that? You tell me they don't shoot everyone of us, 'less mebbe they hangs some or burns some? I ain't brave enough to shoot no Bedford Forrest with the truce flags flyin'.”
He had a point. Ben Robinson wished he didn't have to admit, even to himself, how strong a point it was. But he said, “Do Jesus, Sandy, what you reckon the Rebs do to us if they gets in even if we don't shoot Forrest? We ain't sojers to them. We's jus' niggers. Onliest difference 'tween us an' the pigs is, they don't smoke us fo' bacon.”
“No, sub.” Sandy Cole shook his head. “No, suh. There's another difference-damn big difference, too.” He patted the barrel of the gun they served. After more than half an hour of quiet, it was cool enough not to burn his palm. “Difference is, now we kin shoot back. “
“Uh-huh.” Sergeant Robinson had thought that was a wonderful thing when he first put on the blue uniform. He still did. But it had a drawback he hadn't seen then: “What if we shoots back an' they licks us anyways?”
By the way Cole's face puckered, he might have bitten down on a green persimmon. “Can't let them bastards lick us. Can't do it, Sergeant. They licks us, it's like they really is better'n we is, like they say.”
“Long as I kin serve this gun, ain't no white man better'n me,” Robinson said. “Mebbe they kin kill me. Do Jesus, I knows they kin kill me. Like I say, they kin lick us. They gots mo' men out there'n we gots in here. But if they kill me, they gots to kill a man who's fightin' back. They ain't gonna kill no nigger, no darkie, no coon. You hear what I'm tellin' you, Sandy?”
“I hears you, Sergeant.”
“You believe me?”
“I… I'm tryin' to, Sergeant,” Sandy Cole said, which struck Robinson as honest enough. The other colored artilleryman eyed him. “You believe your ownself?”
'Course I do. The automatic reply sprang to Ben Robinson's lips. But Cole had given him the truth-or he thought so, anyway. He felt obligated to pay back the same coin: “I's tryin' to, too.”
A Federal lieutenant approached the Confederate truce party on foot. Quietly, Captain Goodman said, “That's their post adjutant, sir. His name is Leaming, Mack Leaming. He's been carrying messages back and forth. “
“I thank you,” Nathan Bedford Forrest said, also quietly. Then he raised his voice so it would carry: “Well, Lieutenant Leaming? What does Major Booth say? He used up all the time I gave him, by God!”
And it didn't do him one damn bit of good, either, Forrest thought. Booth must have been banking on the Olive Branch. Too bad for him-that bank had gone bust. The steamboat full of soldiers was leaving Fort Pillow behind. The plumes of smoke on the Mississippi to the north were closer now. Forrest didn't worry about those ships. If this skipper didn't dare to try forcing a landing, theirs wouldn't, either.
Mack Leaming started when Forrest called to him. Forrest wondered what he was so nervous about. Had Major Booth made up his mind to fight? Forrest wouldn't have, not in the Union man's position. But if he had, he had.
“Here is my commandant's reply, sir.” Leaming held out a grimy scrap of paper.