Forrest rode over a wounded black man. He thought the fellow was dead, but groans and a feeble effort to get away told him otherwise. The horse snorted and sidestepped; it was no more eager to step on a body, live or otherwise, than any other beast would have been.
Down the slope toward the river, a Confederate who must have been talking to some V.S. prisoners said, "You damned rascals, if you had not fought us so hard but had stopped when we sent in a flag of truce, we would not have done anything to you."
"We didn't reckon we could trust you," came the reply, probably from a Negro's throat.
"How could you have done worse than you did?" the Confederate replied.
"Kill all the niggers," another Confederate said-an officer, by the authority in his voice. A gunshot rang out-a tongue of yellow fire stabbing out down there in the darkness. Somebody screamed.
"No!" another officer shouted. "Forrest says take them and carry them with him to wait on him, and put them in jail and send them to their masters."
He was confused, but he had the general idea. Forrest rode to the edge of the bluff and called, "Yes, I do say that! There's been enough killing, dammit."
A startled silence followed. "Godalmightydamn, that really is Bedford Forrest up there," somebody said.
"Yes, it is. Come on up and help take things out of the fort,” Forrest said.
But then someone shouted for him from over near the sutlers' stalls. He started over there. The animal hadn't taken more than three or four strides before more guns barked, down by the Mississippi. A voice floated out of the night: "There's another dead nigger."
Forrest swore softly. He shook his head. The men didn't want to heed him or the officers set directly over them. What could you do? The river had run with blood for two hundred yards when the slaughter was at its height-so someone had told him, anyhow. Maybe that would demonstrate to the Northern people that Negro soldiers could not cope with Southerners.
The horse walked over that colored artilleryman again. His leg was all bloody, and glistened in the flickering torchlight. "What is it?" Forrest called to the lieutenant waving to him from the stalls.
"Sir, I caught this man pilfering goods." The young officer held a pistol on a middle-aged man in civilian clothes.
"Well, what do you need me for?" Forrest said. "Deal with him like he deserves."
"I was not pilfering, by God! " the man said. "I am Hardy Revelle." He struck a pose that suggested Bedford Forrest was supposed to know who he was and what that meant. Forrest stared back stonily. The civilian deflated somewhat. "I am a dry-goods clerk for Harris and Company, whose establishment this is."
"And so?" Forrest growled. "Come to the point and make it snappy, or you'll be sorry."
"After what I've seen today, the murders in cold blood, I am already sorry," Hardy Revelle said. "But I am not pilfering. For one thing, this is my principal's property, so I have more right to it than-" He was likely going to say something like you thieving Rebs, but he thought better of it, which was wise. "-than you do," he finished. "For another thing, one of your captains already made me give him a pair of boots. And then after I did, that there captain took me to General McCullough's headquarters-"
"He's Colonel McCulloch." Forrest bore down hard on the last syllable of McCulloch's name.
"Whoever he is, that's where I went." Hardy Revelle didn't care about the correction. He went on, "His surgeon made me show him where the goods were, and a lieutenant with him made off with a bridle and saddle and some bits, and-"
"Wait." Forrest interrupted again, holding up a hand. "What is the name of Colonel McCulloch's surgeon?"
Hardy Revelle frowned. "Durrell? No, that's not right. Durrett." He nodded. "There. Now I have it. And the lieutenant was a big, gawky fellow called Hay. "
Bedford Forrest nodded, too, for he was convinced. F. R. Durrett was the Second Missouri Cavalry's regimental surgeon, while J. S. Hay was Colonel McCulloch's ordnance officer. That left only one thing unexplained. "All right, Mr. Revelle-you got these things for the officers, like you say-"
"I sure did." Hardy Revelle might have been the very picture of righteousness.
"Well, fine." Forrest sounded mild-till he suddenly pounced: "So what in blazes are you doing here all by your lonesome? Looks like pilfering to me, by God."
"No, sir. No, sirree. Not me." Now the dry-goods clerk shook his head. "I was just keeping things safe, like."
"Sure you were." Forrest laughed. "Tell me another one."
"What do you want me to do with him, sir?" the Confederate lieutenant asked. "Shall I give him what he deserves, like you said?" He made as if to pull the pistol's trigger. Hardy Revelle quailed.
But Forrest said, "No, let him go for now. These really are his goods to keep an eye on. But if you catch him with his hands full later on, bring him to me again, and we'll see if I change my mind." Of course Revelle was pilfering from his boss's stall. But he did it with enough style to amuse the Confederate general instead of angering him.
"Thank you kindly, sir," Revelle said. "Good to see an honest man can still make his way, it is indeed."
"When you find one, let me know," Forrest told him. Hardy Revelle scratched his head. Forrest laughed some more.
Here came that damned horse again. Ben Robinson couldn't do anything to get out of its way. He had to lie there while Bedford Forrest rode over him for the third-or was it the fourth?-time. Forrest was telling somebody how he got rich trading niggers in Memphis, which wasn't exactly what the wounded black sergeant wanted to hear.
Don't step on me, he thought. Please don't. The horse didn't. It had missed him every single time. If it got him, wouldn't that be what they called adding insult to injury? He'd heard the phrase before, but never understood it till now. Getting stepped on by a horse was insulting, sure as hell, and he was already injured.
If he had to get shot to grasp a subtlety of the English language, he would just as soon have stayed ignorant. The wound to his leg hurt worse than anything that had ever happened to him before. It had finally stopped bleeding, or at least slowed down, but he didn't want to do a whole lot of moving around. He was sure that would start it again. Of course, with a gouge bitten out of his thigh he damn well couldn't do a whole lot of moving around.
And, at that, he was luckier than most. He could have been screaming for his mother, the way some horribly wounded soldier down by the Mississippi was. Or he could have been dead, the way so much of the Federal garrison was. Every so often, a new body would thud into the ditch beyond the rampart that hadn't helped.
He must have dozed off, because he almost jumped out of his skin when somebody said, "Here's another one of these goddamn nigger sons of bitches. "
"Well, you take his feet, and I'll take his head, and we'll fling him in the ditch," another Reb said. "The buzzards and the pigs can squabble over who gets more meat off him, and just what he deserves, too."
"Please don't throw me in dat ditch!" Robinson said. "I ain't dead-I'm only shot."
"Hell," one of the Confederates said, at the same time as the other was going, "Aw, shit." The first one added, "We can kill the bastard pretty damn quick. He ain't dead, but he's sure shot. It ain't like he can fight back."