“No change?” Leaming asked.
“I'm afraid not,” Dr. Vail answered. “With a head wound like that, he's in God's hands, not mine. And God hasn't doled out many miracles lately. Potter's almost hopeless. I wish I could tell you different, but…” He spread his hands.
While Leaming was digesting that, the secretary who'd accompanied Messrs. Wade and Gooch to Mound City came into the ward. He spoke with Vail; the surgeon led him over to Leaming's bed. “Good morning, Lieutenant,” the secretary murmured. His voice and clothes were prissily precise. A cornholer? Leaming wondered. Wouldn't be surprised.
But that was neither here nor there. “Good morning,” Leaming said.
“I hope you continue to improve,” the secretary told him.
“He's making good progress,” Dr. Vail put in. “His prognosis is favorable, unlike poor Captain Potter's.”
“I am glad to hear it.” The secretary gave his attention back to Leaming. “The gentlemen from the Joint Committee are most desirous-most desirous, sir-of presenting the massacre at Fort Pillow to the people of the United States in terms as emphatic, and as condemnatory of Bedford Forrest and his brigands, as possible. Any assistance you can offer towards that end will be greatly appreciated. Do I make myself plain?”
“I think you do, sir,” Leaming answered. Wade and Gooch wanted him to slang the Rebs, and they wouldn't mind if he stretched things a little to do it. Neither would he. After everything that had happened at Fort Pillow, he wanted to pay them back any way he could.
The effete secretary withdrew, to return a few minutes later with the Senator and the Congressman. He administered the oath to Leaming, then took out his notebook and pen while Daniel Gooch started the questioning. With the secretary's encouragement, Leaming wasn't above stretching things when he talked about the truce. He complained that the Rebs who'd come down to the riverside to meet the Olive Branch took advantage of the white flag to improve their position. Because the steamer was not a party to the cease-fire, that wasn't exactly so, but it felt as if it ought to be. Congressman Gooch nodded gravely. The secretary's pen slid across the paper.
Leaming told how he'd been shot and robbed and succored only by his fellow Freemason. When he described how he'd been carried aboard the Platte Valley, Senator Wade took over for Gooch. He wanted to know who'd been drinking with the Rebs. Leaming hesitated about putting U.S. officers in hot water, and truthfully said he hadn't seen anyone doing so. Wade did not look happy. Leaming got the idea he seldom looked happy, but he looked even less so now.
“Do you know what became of Major Bradford?” Wade asked. “He escaped unhurt, as far as the battle was concerned,” Leaming answered. “I was told the next morning on the boat that he had been paroled. I did not see him after that night. “
A little later, Congressman Gooch asked, “What do you estimate Forrest's force to have been?”
“From all I could see and learn, I should suppose he had from seven thousand to ten thousand men,” Leaming answered. Major Booth hadn't thought so, but Major Booth was dead… and the larger number better suited the Union cause. A few questions later, Leaming got the chance to trot out one more rumor: “I have been told that Major Bradford was afterwards taken out by the Rebels and shot. That seems to be the general impression, and I presume it was so.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Gooch and Wade said together. “No further questions,” Wade added.
After the secretary closed his notebook and put away his pen, Daniel Gooch nodded to Leaming. “Thank you, Lieutenant,” he said.
“That was very effective testimony.”
“I was doing my best to help, Your Excellency,” Leaming replied.
“Well, your best is damned good, son,” Ben Wade rumbled.
“We'll hold Bedford Forrest's toes to the fire with what you had to say-just see if we don't.” His face darkened with anger. “And we'll put a stop to the despicable practice some of our officers have of treating white men on the other side better than they treat colored soldiers in their own uniform. Despicable, I say, and we will stamp it out.”
“Er – yes, sir.” Till he'd seen the Negro artillerymen at Fort Pillow fight, Mack Leaming would have been that kind of Federal officer himself. Fighting for the Union and fighting for the Negro had seemed two very different things to him. They still did, as a matter of fact-but he had more sense than to admit it to the implacable Senator from Ohio.
“If I may be permitted to say so, Lieutenant, your testimony was exactly along the lines envisioned by the committee when it voted to send Senator Wade and Congressman Gooch west to investigate this tragic incident,” the secretary observed.
You told them what they wanted to hear. Leaming heard the words behind the words. “Good,” he said. The secretary had told him what the distinguished gentlemen wanted, and he was glad to oblige. This was a war of soldiers and cannons and gunboats, yes. But it was also a war of politics. He could see November ahead, just as Wade and Gooch could. If Lincoln failed then, if the Democrats prevailed then, all the Union's sacrifices would be for nothing.
He and his comrades had lost the battle at Fort Pillow. They might yet win the struggle to define what happened there, and winning that struggle would go some little way toward winning the war as a whole. Leaming shifted carefully on the cot. His wound still pained him. Wounded or not, though, he might still pain Nathan Bedford Forrest.
“Shot trying to get away, was he?” Bedford Forrest said, stalking through the parlor of the Duke house in Jackson as he had while ordering the attack on Fort Pillow.
“Yes, sir,” Captain Anderson said stolidly. “So the men who were bringing Major Bradford and the other prisoners here report.”
“Well, Lord knows he's no loss. He's a gain, by God.” But Forrest studied his assistant adjutant general. “So they say, eh? But you don't believe 'em, do you?” Anderson shook his head. “How come you don't?” Forrest asked.
“Well, sir, for one thing, among the men who were supposed to be bringing him in was Corporal Jack Jenkins,” Anderson answered.
“Corporal…? Oh!” A fortnight after the fight at Fort Pillow, Forrest needed a moment to place the name, but only a moment. “The fellow he gave the slip to getting out of the fort!”
“The very same,” Anderson said.
“You reckon Jenkins got his own back, then?”
“Sir, I can't prove a thing. All the men tell the same story,” Anderson replied. “And it certainly is something Bradford might have done, when you consider that he did break his parole in leaving Fort Pillow. “
“Uh-huh.” Forrest wondered what to do-but, again, not for long.
“Well, Charlie, I don't suppose I need to ask any more questions. Bradford got what was coming to him, and by my lights he earned it. If anybody ever kicks up a stink about it-and who would kick up a stink about a skunk like that?-'shot trying to escape' ought to quiet things down, eh?”
“Yes, sir. I suppose so.” Captain Anderson didn't sound overjoyed at his decision, but he didn't sound as if he wanted to make a fuss, either. That suited Bedford Forrest fine. Major Bradford hadn't been worth a fuss while he was alive, and sure as hell he wasn't worth one dead.
“Anything else I need to know?” Forrest asked.
“News from Memphis is that a couple of Federal Congressmen are nosing around, trying to figure out where the blame goes for losing Fort Pillow,” Anderson said.
“Are they, by God?” Forrest said. His aide nodded. Forrest threw back his head and laughed. “I'm glad to hear it, the Devil fry me black as a nigger if I'm not. I was starting to believe our side was the only one with fools in Congress.”