Every so often, he heard voices stiff with authority screaming at troopers who blundered. No, he didn't want that happening to him. But whenever he yawned, he had to fight to stay awake. And he yawned more and more often now.
Little by little, the rain eased and then stopped. Jenkins needed a while to realize it had. All the leaves and branches were still soaking wet, and drips pattered down on his hat. Some of them slid down the back of his neck, too. He couldn't figure out how they did that. The brim of the hat was supposed to keep it from happening. No matter what it was supposed to do, the back of his neck got wet.
Little by little, also, the shape of the horse in front of him grew more distinct. Little by little, he began to make out the man atop the horse. Up above the clouds that still hid the stars even if they no longer wept, dawn was on the way. It wasn't here yet, but it was coming.
“How much longer?” somebody asked. The words weren't far from a groan. If the answer was anything like another half day, despair, if not mutiny, would soak through the ranks.
Alarmed at the thought, Jenkins looked around now that he could see a little farther. Men and horses all had their heads down. No one seemed any peppier than he felt. But no one seemed ready to give up or give out, either. That was good. He didn't want to have to try to turn the troopers around if they decided they'd had enough.
Of course, if they decided they'd had enough, they would have to let Major General Forrest know it. If you were brave enough to do that, weren't you brave enough to face the Federals, too?
“Rein in! Rein in!” The call from up ahead was soft but urgent. “We need the horse holders!” When mounted troops went forward to fight, some of their comrades had to stay behind to hang on to the horses. The usual proportion was about one in four. Forrest used far fewer. He always aimed to get as many of his men into the fight as he could.
“Big Pete, Burrhead, it's your turn,” Jenkins called to the men he led. Excitement tingled through him. If they were dismounting, they had to be ready to go into battle, which meant they'd got to Fort Pillow after all, and before the sun came up.
“Big Pete's horse went lame. He's way the hell back there somewhere,” a trooper said.
Jenkins swore. He told off another soldier to take Big Pete's place. The soldier swore, too – he wanted to get up there and fight. Few people who didn't want to get up there and fight joined Forrest's cavalry. “Somebody's got to do it, Clem,” Jenkins said. “I picked you.”
Not far ahead, rifle muskets began to bang.
III
LIEUTENANT MACK LEAMING LAY ON his cot, happily halfway between slumber and wakefulness. Part of him knew reveille would sound soon. The rest was warm and comfortable under a thick wool blanket on an iron – framed bed with a tolerable, or even a little better than tolerable, mattress. A little earlier, he'd been dreaming of a redheaded woman he'd seen in Brownsville. The dream was more exciting than the brief glimpse he'd got of her. He knew he wouldn't get it back – you never did – but he kept trying.
The bugler's horn didn't wake him. The sounds of running feet and shouting men did. “Oh, Jesus Christ!” he said, sitting up in bed and groping for his shoes – like most soldiers, he slept in the rest of his uniform.
His first thought was that some of the men had got into the sutlers' whiskey, of which there was more inside the perimeter of the fort than he would have liked. Dawn was a hell of a time for a drunken riot to start, but you never could tell. That was true of his own troopers. He thought it was bound to be even more true of the colored soldiers just up from Memphis.
Then he heard gunfire, and he flung himself into his shoes and dashed out of the barracks. If his men and the coons were going at each other, then all hell had broken loose. He would have to figure out in a hurry whether to try to put out the fire or to make damn sure the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry ended up on top.
But the gunshots weren't coming from inside the earthwork. As soon as he left the barracks, he realized that. The fire was coming from farther away. He looked around, gauging the growing light. It couldn't be later than half past five. A sergeant ran by, as fast as if the seat of his pants were on fire.
“What the hell's going on, Gunter?” Leaming shouted.
“Sir, there's Rebs outside the fort,” Sergeant Gunter answered.
“They're shooting at our pickets in the rifle pits.”
“Rebels?” Leaming shook his head. “There can't be. There aren't any Rebels closer than Jackson.”
As if to make a liar out of him, brisk fire came from the south and east. “We sure as hell ain't shooting at each other,” Gunter said.
Since Leaming had wondered if the men in the garrison were doing exactly that, he wasn't completely convinced. But the distant catamount screech of the Rebel yell persuaded him that Sergeant Gunter knew what he was talking about.
“What in the name of damnation is going on out there?” Major Bradford asked from behind Leaming. Bradford had taken his own sweet time getting out of bed.
“Sir, the Confederates are attacking the fort,” Leaming answered. “What? Have you gone clean round the bend?” Bradford yelped. “There's no Secesh soldiers within seventy miles of this place.”
“I thought the same thing, sir,” Leaming said. “But listen.”
Major Bradford did. Even in the pale, uncertain light of first dawn, Leaming watched the color drain from his face. How? Bradford's lips silently shaped the word. “How could they get here without anybody knowing?” he managed aloud. “Maybe Forrest really did sell his soul to the Devil, the way the niggers say.”
“What are we going to do, sir?” Lieutenant Leaming asked.
“I don't know,” Bradford said, which struck his adjutant as a fundamentally honest response, but not what he wanted to hear from the regimental commander. Bradford gathered himself, or tried to: “I don't see how we can surrender, though. Lord only knows what Forrest's men would do to us, let alone to the niggers here.”
“Didn't Major Booth say we could hold this fort against anybody and anything for a couple of days?” Leaming asked, perhaps incautiously.
“He said it, yes. How old were you, Lieutenant, before you found out what people say isn't necessarily so?” Major Bradford loaded his words with all the scorn his courtroom training could pile onto them. Mack Leaming's cheeks and ears heated. He hoped the light was still too dim to let Bradford notice him flush. He was in luck – the regimental commander had stopped paying attention to him. Bradford was looking toward the tents that housed the newly arrived colored troops and their white superiors. “Where in tarnation is Major Booth, anyway?”
Booth chose that moment to pop out of his tent like a jack-in-the-box. The senior officer's tunic had several buttons undone. He wore no hat. His hair was all awry. But his eyes flashed fire even in the gray light before sunrise. “So the Rebs have shown up, have they?” he shouted, a fierce and unmistakable joy in his voice. “Well, good! “
“Good?” Major Bradford might have been looking around for a judge with whom he could lodge an objection.
“Good!” Major Booth shouted again. Mack Leaming inclined toward Bradford's opinion; no visit from Bedford Forrest was good news for anyone who followed the Stars and Stripes. But Booth went on, “We'll give the bastards a bloody nose and a black eye, and we'll send 'em back to Mama with their tail between their legs! Isn't that right, boys?”
The Negro soldiers spilling out of their tents screeched and capered and carried on. But the screeches were defiance hurled at the Confederates. Many of the capers the black men cut were lewd, but also showed they intended to fight. And the way the colored troops carried on brought smiles to the faces of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry's troopers, many of whom had seemed as uncertain and afraid as Major Bradford and Mack Leaming himself.