Ben Robinson got ready to try. How he could fight when he couldn't even walk was beyond him, but he aimed to give it his best shot. Maybe he could pull one of them down, and then… And then what? he wondered. Then they shoot me or stick me, that's what. But he couldn't just let them murder him.
"General Forrest says we've killed enough of 'em for now," the second Reb said. Ben had never thought he would bless Bedford Forrest's name, but he did then.
The first trooper said something unflattering to his commanding officer. But he said it in a low voice, as if he didn't want Forrest to have any chance of hearing it. Robinson wouldn't have wanted Forrest to hear anything like that, either. The Reb went on, "Well, what the devil shall we do with him, then?"
"There's that hut over yonder, not too far," his friend answered. "We can tote him over there, leave him for the night, and kill him in the mornin'. Nobody'll give a damn about it then, chances are."
"Sounds like a pretty good scheme," the first trooper said, an opinion Robinson didn't share. "Let's do it."
They half carried, half dragged him to the hut. He bit his lip against the pain, but didn't cry out. He was damned if he wanted to show weakness in front of these white men. His wound did start bleeding again; he felt the warm blood trickling down his leg. But there didn't seem to be that much of it. If he could lie still for a bit, he thought it would stop.
When the Rebs got him inside, they dropped him like a sack of potatoes. He did groan then-he couldn't help it. "So long, nigger," one of the troopers said. They vanished into the night.
In spite of the torment from his wound, Ben Robinson started to laugh. Whites reckoned blacks were stupid. As often as not, that meant whites thought they could talk around blacks as freely as if they were by themselves. And thinking they could talk so freely made whites as stupid in truth as they thought blacks were.
We can put him in the hut. We'll come back tomorrow and kill him. Did Forrest's troopers really imagine he'd stick around once he heard that? If they did, they were dumb as rocks. Maybe they figured he was too badly hurt to move. Any which way, they'd be mighty disappointed when morning came and they found their blackbird had flown the coop.
Robinson still couldn't walk. That didn't mean he couldn't move. He wouldn't stick around here for anything, not if he had to crawl on his belly like a reptile to get away. And he damn near did: he hitched himself along on his elbows and one knee. They'd be raw and bloody before he got very far. He didn't care. He'd be a lot bloodier if he didn't get out while the getting was good.
Which way? he wondered once he made it out of the hut. Up on top of the bluff, the Rebs were still doing whatever they wanted. Things seemed quieter down by the Mississippi. And if rescue ever came, it would come by way of the river. Down, then.
Mosquitoes buzzed around him. They came out at dusk. They'd be worse a little further into spring, but they were bad enough now. He didn't care. Confederates with guns were worse than mosquitoes with pointy beaks.
When he went down the side of the bluff, he went slowly-slowly even for a crawling man. He could have rolled down the steep slope in nothing flat, but he didn't know what he'd fetch up against on the way to the bottom. He wasn't in a hurry. Every minute farther away from the hut and those Rebs felt as if it added another year to his life.
Here and there, wounded men groaned in the darkness. Once, Ben heard someone say, "Oh, shut the hell up, you goddamn nigger son of a bitch bastard!" The noise that followed might have been a rock falling on a pumpkin from a tall roof. It might have been, but it wasn't. It came again and again and again. Then the white man grunted-the sort of animal noise he might have made as he spent himself inside a woman-and said, "He ain't makin' any more noise."
Another Confederate's voice floated out of the dusk: "You heard what Lieutenant Pennell said about killing people, Jack."
"Yeah, I heard it. So what?" Jack answered. "That's Pennell. You gonna tell me a nigger in a Yankee uniform's a person? My ass! A nigger in a Yankee uniform is a snake, is what he is, an' I kill snakes every chance I get."
And snakes'll bite you, too, Ben Robinson thought. He knew damn well he'd killed and wounded his share – more than his share – of Bedford Forrest's troopers, both with the twelve-pounder and in the melee after the Rebs swarmed into Fort Pillow. He knew plenty of other colored soldiers had, too. Yes, they'd lost. But his fellow Negroes hadn't fought any worse than the whites who battled alongside them. The garrison was badly outnumbered, and commanded by a major who wasn't fit to carry General Forrest's boots. Of course they'd lost.
If he lived, if his leg healed up, Ben Robinson was ready to take on the Rebs again. He hated the trooper who'd just beaten a helpless black man to death. He hated him, yes, but he understood him, too. If he got the chance, he'd bite the Confederate States even harder next time.
Ragged wisps of cloud scudded past the moon, now hiding it, now letting it shine down on Fort Pillow. Nearing first quarter, it rode high in the sky, a little west of south. Its pale light would have been better suited to a happier scene, but Bill Bradford couldn't do anything about that.
His head spun. He wasn't so steady on his feet as he wished he were. He'd had to drink a good deal of the vile whiskey he took from the sutler's stall. He'd had to drink a good deal, yes, but he drank a lot less than he pretended to. He might be tiddly, but he wasn't smashed.
The Reb who was supposed to be keeping an eye on him, on the other hand… Bradford eyed the young cavalry trooper. The Confederate was still on his feet. All by itself, that said he was a man of impressive capacity. With so much redeye in him, Bradford knew he would have curled up asleep somewhere, like a cat in front of a fire.
Asleep the Reb was not. He was singing "0, Susanna"-loudly, and out of tune, in a voice most of an octave deeper than the one he used for ordinary speech. If he'd really had a banjo on his knee, Bradford would have plucked it off and broken it over his head.
Then the trooper stopped. He looked at Bradford. "You're not singing," he said, as if he'd noticed only now. He probably had. He'd been caterwauling away himself for quite a while.
"I just put my brother in the ground," Bradford said. "I don't feel like singing."
"You're a lousy homemade Yankee," the Reb said. "I bet you don't know how to shing-uh, sing."
"I sing in the church choir," Bradford retorted. That was true, even if he hadn't done much of it lately.
"Well, la-de-da," said the Reb-his name was Ward, Bradford remembered. "If you sing there, you can sing here." He wasn't too drunk to remember where his rifle musket lay. "You can sing, or I can blow your fucking head off. Who'd miss you?"
Bill Bradford fought the fear that welled up in him. "Your officers told you to keep me safe."
Ward only laughed. "If I tell 'em you tried to run off, nobody'll give a damn. Hell and breakfast, they'll likely promote me. You stupid son of a bitch, don't you understand that everybody in this whole state wants you dead?"
Everybody in this whole state wants you dead. Bradford knew it was an exaggeration. Tennessee did have its share of Union sympathizers-not enough to keep it from seceding, but enough to make trouble for the Confederate authorities. Even so, the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) and other outfits like it were a long way from popular with their neighbors. Ward might be exaggerating, but he wasn't lying.
"I can't sing-it wouldn't be right," Bradford insisted.