FORT PILLOW

SERGEANT BEN ROBINSON LAY ON the ground watching the gunboat steam up the Mississippi toward Fort Pillow. Every so often, the gunboat's cannon would boom, and a shell would come down somewhere near the Confederates posted in and near the fort. Some of the Rebs fired back at the ship. It ignored them and kept on thundering away. Robinson's mouth twisted with a pain that had nothing to do with his wounded leg. If only the New Era showed that kind of spirit the day before!

Of course, far fewer Confederate soldiers were firing at this ship than had aimed at the New Era. That made a difference. But the New Era really could have done the garrison in Fort Pillow some good. This gunboat could cannonade from now till doomsday without retaking the place. Too late for that now.

Too late for most of the garrison, too. Not sated by the slaughter the afternoon before, the Confederate pickets were still killing wounded Federals, mostly Negroes. Whenever Rebs came close, Robinson played dead and prayed as hard as he could. He didn't know which worked better, but they hadn't murdered him yet.

The bombardment and the occasional return fire from the river bank had gone on for a couple of hours when one of the Confederates said, “Here comes an officer with a flag of truce!”

Hearing that, Robinson turned his head. Sure enough, a Confederate officer waving a white flag rode toward the Mississippi at a trot. Ben didn't believe he was one of the Rebs who'd parleyed the day before. With him came three other C.S. officers-and Captain Young, the provost marshal at Fort Pillow.

“Ahoy, the gunboat!” the Confederate shouted, reining in not far from where Ben Robinson lay. The Reb cupped his hands to his mouth to make his voice carry farther. “Ahoy, the Silver Cloud!” That was how Robinson learned the ship's name. He'd seen it painted on her, but seeing letters wasn't the same as reading them, as he knew too well. “Will you parley?” the officer yelled.

After a couple of minutes, the answer came back, thin over the water: “What have you got to say, Reb?”

“I am Captain Anderson, General Forrest's assistant adjutant general,” the Confederate shouted. “I offer you a truce to take off the wounded. I tried to do the same with the New Era yesterday afternoon, but Captain Marshall would not hear me. He sailed away.”

One more reason to damn Captain Marshall to the hottest pits in hell, Ben Robinson thought savagely. What was Marshall afraid of? That the Rebs would swarm onto his ship while he was loading casualties? That was a coward's way of thinking, nothing else but.

Again, Captain Anderson had to wait a little while for a response. This time, the men on the Silver Cloud said, “I'll come to you in a boat. That way, we don't have to keep screaming our heads off at each other. “

Anderson bowed in the saddle. “I am at your service, sir!” he bawled politely.

Four sailors rowed an officer toward the shore. The officer was a young man, and wore two gold stripes near the cuff of each sleeve. “I am Acting Master William Ferguson, Captain,” he said. “I'm skipper of the Silver Cloud. What do you propose?”

“You came yourself?” Anderson said.

“Here I am,” Ferguson replied.

“Well, good for you. As I told you, Captain Marshall showed me only his heels yesterday,” the Confederate officer said. “We will give you a truce until, say, five this afternoon. General Forrest desires to place the wounded, white or black, aboard your boat. We have few men still close by, but they will give you what help they may.”

Acting Master Ferguson frowned. “White or black, you say? We heard tell you went and killed every nigger you could.”

“We killed a lot of 'em,” Anderson said matter-of-factly, “but some are left alive. Take a look at this here buck.” He pointed to Ben Robinson.

“Oh, yeah?” Ferguson eyed Ben in surprise. The colored artilleryman swore at himself. When he played possum, he fooled the officer on his own side but not the Reb. Much good that would have done him. “You really alive?” Ferguson asked.

What would he do if I said, “No, suh, I's dead”? Robinson wondered. But the whimsy died stillborn. This was not the time or place. “Yes, suh, I's here,” Robinson answered. “I got shot, but I's here.”

“Well, all right,” Ferguson said. He turned back to Anderson.

“Fair enough, Captain. You can have your truce-on one condition.”

“What's that?” the Confederate asked.

“Keep your armed men out of gunshot range of my ship for as long as the truce lasts,” Ferguson said. “They were taking potshots at us, and I don't want any damn fool keeping it up while we're in no fit state to defend ourselves.”

“Suppose I say that no armed men come within the outermost perimeter of Fort Pillow?” Captain Anderson suggested. “That's about half a mile. There's not a chance in church anyone could hit you from farther off, even if some hothead should try it. And I will issue orders against any such thing.”

“Seems acceptable,” said Ferguson, nodding. “And you would want this truce to last till five o'clock, you said?”