The shabbily dressed prisoner jerked on the horse to which he was tied. He recognized Jenkins's voice. The Confederate captain in charge of the captives nodded. “Sure, Corporal. You can come along.” Jenkins smiled like Christmas.
XVIII
MATT WARD HAD WATCHED THE Silver Cloud and the Platte Valley steam away late the afternoon before. Chugging north against the current, the gunboat and the steamer she escorted weren't very fast, but they looked as if they would get where they were going.
Here today, Fort Pillow wasn't a fort any more. It was nothing but a bluff next to the Mississippi. Captain Charles Anderson looked around and nodded in satisfaction. “That about does it,” he said to Ward and the rest of the Confederates still at the battle site. “I reckon we've done every single thing we set out to do.”
Bedford Forrest's aide was bound to be right about that. Forrest's men hadn't just taken the place. They'd run off the Federals' horses and captured all the cannon here. They'd taken more than three hundred rifle muskets; the rest probably lay in the river. They had as much of the rest of the movable property as they could carry away. And now they'd wrecked and burned all the buildings and huts in and around the fort. The Federals wouldn't have anything at all to use if they tried to put men in here again.
Another Federal steamer went by. Maybe it would find Union soldiers who'd got away and were hiding along the river. Ward eyed the smoke pouring from its stack, which mixed with the smoke still in the air from the fires of the day before. “We ought to have boats on the Mississippi ourselves,” he said.
Captain Anderson still stood close enough to hear him. “We've got a few,” he said. “We can move things across from Louisiana and Arkansas now and again. But we have to sneak, because we can't make ironclads to fight the damn yankees.”
“Why not, sir?” Ward said. “They can do it.”
“They can build them anywhere along the Ohio or the Mississippi and send them downriver,” Anderson answered. “We haven't got any foundries on the river to do the job.” He made a sour face. “Hell's bells, we haven't got any towns on this side of the river. The damnyankees sail up and down, doing as they please. They've cut us in half, may they rot in hell for it.”
“That's not good,” Ward said.
“No, it isn't,” Captain Anderson agreed. “Kirby Smith is doing everything he can over in the Trans-Mississippi, but what he does and what we do don't have a whole lot to do with each other on account of all those Federal gunboats in between.”
“What can we do about that, sir?” Matt Ward could look across the Mississippi into Arkansas. If he cared to, he could take a rowboat and get across to the other side-to the Trans-Mississippi, Captain Anderson called it. But if you wanted to move an army's worth of soldiers from one side of the Big Muddy to the other, how would you go about it? You couldn't, not unless you wanted those damn gunboats swarming around you like flies around a fried chicken in summertime.
“What can we do about it?” Anderson echoed. “Keep fighting the Yankees as hard as we can. Keep licking them. Keep making them sweat. Keep making them bleed. Abe Lincoln is up for reelection this fall. If we make the North decide the war is more expensive than it's worth, if we make it decide the war is more goddamn trouble than it's worth, they'll throw that Lincoln son of a bitch out on his ear. Whichever Democrat they put in will make peace and send the blue bellies home. And we'll have our own country then. That's what we can do, by God.”
“I understand, sir.” Ward looked respectfully at the officer, who wasn't that much older than he was. “I really do understand. When I joined up, I did it so I could fight the damnyankees.”
“Who doesn't?” Anderson said.
“Yes, sir. But that was all I thought about, you know what I mean?
What you said, I didn't think about that even a little bit. How the war and politics fit together, I mean. And they do. They truly do.”
“You'd best believe they do,” Charles Anderson agreed. “Way things are now, we won't ever drive the United States off our land with guns. Maybe we could have once upon a time, but we lost too many chances. But if we can make those Yankee bastards sick of fighting us, they'll give up and go home. And we win that way, too. So that's what we've got to try and do.”
Ward looked at the remains of what had been Fort Pillow. “Well, sir, seems to me we gave them a pretty good tweak right here.”
“Seems the same way to me.” Captain Anderson eyed him. “When you let Bradford liquor you up so he could get away, I reckoned you were one of those fellows who' re good in a brawl but not so good at thinking, if you'll forgive me. But you aren't that way, are you?”
“I hope not, sir. I like to find out how things tick,” Ward answered. “Bradford… He tricked me, God damn him. I wonder if the son of a bitch got away. Sweet Jesus, I hope not. I'd feel like hell. “
“If he did, he'll run into a minnie some other way, that's all.” To Matt's relief, Anderson didn't seem to hate him. “For now, we've still got our own war to fight. You ready?”
“Yes, sir!” Matt said.
It's all in your mind, Major William Bradford told himself over. You're making it up to give yourself something to worry about. He laughed sourly. As if he didn't have enough already! Here he was, locked up in the Brownsville jail the way he had been the night before in Covington. Some time tomorrow, he'd head for Jackson and a new confrontation with Nathan Bedford Forrest. That wasn't anything to look forward to with joy and eager anticipation.
But right now it seemed the least of his troubles. He couldn't shake the feeling that the corporal who'd volunteered to join the guards on the way to Jackson was the fellow he'd cozened into letting him out past the original, extended works around Fort Pillow.
Had that fellow out there on sentry had two stripes on his sleeve? For the life of him-yes, for the life of him-Bradford wasn't sure. His voice seemed much too familiar, though. And the man had a devil of a nasty leer, the kind of leer that said he might not have known who Bill Bradford was before but by Christ now he did, and somebody was going to pay because he knew.
“Somebody,” Bradford muttered. “Me!” What had the Rebs done to that corporal when they found out he'd let the enemy commander get away? How much did he have to pay back? And how much did he hate Bradford for tricking him, for taking away his pride? A lot of Southern men were touchy as so many greasers about their pride. If you wounded it, they would pay you back no matter what it cost.
Maybe he's not the one. Bradford tried to make himself believe it. He stretched out on the lumpy, musty-smelling cot in the little cell and tried to rest. It'll be fine tomorrow, his mind insisted. You're getting yourself all worn to a frazzle over nothing. But even though he closed his eyes, sleep wouldn't come.
Except it did. When his eyes came open again, the gray light of dawn seeped into the cell through the little barred window. Outside, a mockingbird trilled and whistled. Why not? The bird was free.
The jailer gave him bread and butter for breakfast. The butter was just starting to go off. He could eat it, but it left a sour aftertaste on his palate that the bad coffee he drank with it couldn't erase. The jailer watched him eat through the window set into the door. As soon as he finished, the man unlocked the door to get the cup back. He had a pistol. Two more men with guns also covered Bradford. “I wasn't going anywhere,” Bradford said.
“Not while we can shoot you if you try,” one of the guards said. At noon, Bradford got more bread and butter and coffee. The butter was further gone by then. He ate it anyhow. Time dragged on. The cell got warm and close. Sweat rolled off him. At last, late in the afternoon, the jailer unlocked the door again. “Come on out.” That pistol added persuasion to the words.