“May I ask how your commander replies, sir?” Goodman remained polite.
“We will not surrender,” Leaming answered.
Captain Goodman's eyebrows leaped. “Won't you reconsider? We can take that place, and it will be terrible if we do. Our men have good reason not to love nigger soldiers and galvanized Yankees. I speak from a concern for the unnecessary effusion of blood, and that effusion will be very great when Fort Pillow falls.”
“Major Br-Booth is of the opinion that it will not fall.” Leaming corrected himself fast enough to keep the Confederate from noticing his near slip.
“Well, Lieutenant, all I can tell you is that when a Yankee commander believes one thing and General Forrest believes another, General Forrest commonly proves right,” Goodman said. “Your superior will not change his mind?”
“He is determined,” Leaming replied.
Captain Goodman sighed. “On his head be it. Very well, sir. I shall take his answer to General Forrest, and after that… after that, we shall see what we shall see. Good afternoon, gentlemen. A pleasure making your acquaintance.” He saluted. So did Captain Henderson and Lieutenant Rodgers.
Leaming returned the courtesy, along with Captain Young and Lieutenant van Horn. Then they and the common soldiers with them turned around and started back toward Fort Pillow. “Can we really hold this place?” Young asked quietly. “The Confederates' confidence doesn't strike me as their usual bluff and bluster.”
“Major Bradford thinks we can. Between the parapet and the New Era, he believes we have enough to beat back the Confederates.” Leaming paused a moment; leaving it there didn't seem just to the commandant. “He held an officers' council before sending me out with his reply. No one opposed continuing resistance.”
“All right.” By the frown that further darkened Young's face, it wasn't even close to all right, but he couldn't do anything about it. “We're going to have a hot time of it, a devil of a hot time, but with God's help we'll come through.”
He didn't say anything about the gunboat's help. The New Era was right down there on the Mississippi. Leaming hoped God was close by, too.
Bedford Forrest watched Captain Goodman ride back toward him. When the junior officer got within hailing distance, Forrest called, “Well, Captain? What will it be?”
Goodman held up a scrap of paper. “You'd better see for yourself, Sir.
“That doesn't sound good,” Charles Anderson said at Forrest's side. “No, it doesn't.” Forrest nodded. “If the Federals in there think they can hold us out, they've even bigger fools than I credit them for.” As Goodman came up, Forrest held out his hand. “Give me the note.” “Yes, sir.” Goodman passed it to him.
“ ‘General-I will not surrender.' “ Forrest read it aloud. He slowly nodded a couple of times. Major Booth obliged him on one point: he could not doubt the other man's meaning. “Well, we gave them a chance. If they're such blockheads that they won't take it, it's their hard luck, not ours.” Even to himself, he sounded like a judge passing sentence.
“It's their funeral, is what it is,” Waiter Goodman said. “I tried to tell that to Leaming, but he didn't want to hear it. Reckon he's got his orders, and that's that.” He shrugged. “That'll be that, all right. “
“I thought they would give up. I really did,” Forrest said. “Everybody knows we don't mistreat people who surrender to us. The way our men feel about those damned Federal Tennesseans, and about niggers with guns in their hands… Well, Booth'll find out he's made a worse bargain than the one I tried to give him.”
Captain Anderson pointed out toward the Mississippi. “What about the gunboat, sir? If the enemy goes down by the river, it's in good position to rake our boys hard.”
“We've handled gunboats before. I expect we'll deal with this one the same way,” Bedford Forrest answered. “She has to open her gunports to use her cannon. If we've got men blazing away at 'em every time they do open up, she'll lose gunners too quick to stay in the fight for long. Shoot everything blue betwixt wind and water until their flag comes down.”
“All right, sir. I'll tend to it,” Anderson said. “Colonel Barteau ought to have the same order, in case the gunboat shifts so her guns bear on his men.”
“Well, Captain, I can't very well tell you you're wrong, on account of you're right.” Forrest called for a runner. He gave the man oral orders to deliver to Barteau over by Coal Creek. When the runner had them straight, he saluted and loped away.
What would the U.S. soldiers be doing, up inside Fort Pillow? Pontius Pilate might have shrugged the shrug Forrest shrugged then. He washed his hands of the Federals. He didn't see what they could do to hold him out except what they were already doing-and that wouldn't be enough.
“General Chalmers!” Forrest said.
Chalmers was talking with Captain Goodman a few feet away. He broke off and nodded to his superior. “Yes, sir? What do you need?”
“Your men ready?”
“Oh, yes, sir. No doubt about it,” Chalmers said. “When Gaus blows his bugle, they'll go forward as if it were Gabriel's trumpet.”
Jacob Gaus looked at the beat-up instrument he held in his right hand. “God can afford to issue Gabriel something better than this,” he said, which set all the officers around him laughing. The bugler added, “Or if He can't, then I am afraid Satan is ahead in the race.”
Bedford Forrest was a steadfast believer. That didn't stop him from laughing his head off now; the words, and Gaus's guttural accent, were too funny to resist. Aiming a forefinger at the German, he said, “You are a blasphemous toad, Jacob.”
“Ja,” Gaus agreed placidly. “But I am your blasphemous toad, General. “
“That you are-who else would have you?” Forrest needed a moment to bring his mind back to the business at hand. But when he did, he pointed toward the high ground the Confederates had won early in the fight. “You still have plenty of sharpshooters on those little knolls, General? “
“Oh, yes, sir,” Chalmers said. “I wouldn't move men off 'em, not when they're up higher than the Federals' position. They can shoot right into the fort, and the troops inside can't do a thing to stop 'em.”
“I know. That's why I want 'em there. That's why only a damn fool would reckon he could hang on to Fort Pillow unless he had a big enough garrison for the outer line.” Now Forrest pointed ahead, to the ditch in front of the earthwork the U.S. soldiers still held. “And that's why only a damn fool would reckon a no-account trench like that one would keep our boys out of his works, too.”
“Easier fighting a damn fool than someone who knows what he's doing,” Chalmers observed.
“That's a fact,” Forrest said. “All the same, even a galvanized Yankee ought to have eyes to see this. By God, Chalmers, even a nigger ought to have eyes to see this. Your sharpshooters over yonder can fire at that stretch of the Federal works so they're shooting along the Yankee's firing line instead of straight at it, and the sharpshooters over there can do the same to the other stretch.”
“The technical term is enfilading fire, sir,” Chalmers said.
Was he slyly poking fun at Forrest or really trying to teach him something? Chalmers was not a West Point man, but he'd been to college; he was a lawyer in Mississippi when secession came, and helped lead his state out of the Union. He doubtless looked down his nose at an unschooled nigger-trader like Forrest-he might, but he'd better not show it, not when that un schooled nigger-trader outranked him.
“I don't care much about the technical term, Jim,” Forrest said. “I know what I want to do, and I can get it done just fine without fancy talk.” He snorted, thinking of the evasive answer the Federals in Fort Pillow tried to palm off on him. Well, they wouldn't get away with it, by God.
“We've all seen that, sir,” Chalmers said.