FORT PILLOW

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.

“Are we going to fight those Secesh bastards?” Major Booth bellowed.

“Yes, suh!” the colored artillerymen yelled back.

“Are we going to whip those Secesh bastards?” Booth bellowed, even louder than before.

“Yes, suh!” The Negroes got louder, too. Lieutenant Leaming hadn't imagined they could.

Eyes still blazing, Booth peered this way and that. “Bradford!” he shouted. “Where in God's name are you, Bradford?”

“I'm here, sir,” Major Bradford answered. He had to say it again before he could make Major Booth hear him. “What do you require of me?”

“We don't want to let Forrest's men drive our pickets back into the fort right away, do we?” Booth demanded.

Bradford hesitated. Mack Leaming didn't think the Federal garrison wanted to do any such thing. Some of the ground within the large perimeter Gideon Pillow first laid out was higher than the position at the juncture of Coal Creek and the Mississippi the garrison now held. If the Confederates got sharpshooters on that high ground, they could fire down on the U.S. soldiers inside the present small earthwork. That wouldn't be good at all.

“Do we?” Major Booth repeated, more sharply than before. He knew the right answer, whether Bill Bradford did or not.

“Uh, no, sir.” Major Bradford might not know the answer, but he could take a hint.

“All right, then, goddammit,” Booth said. “Get some skirmishers out to help the pickets.” He cocked his head to one side, listening to the gunfire out beyond the breastwork. “Don't send a boy to do a man's job, either, Major. The Confederates sound like they're here in numbers. “

“Very well, major,” Bradford said, and turned to Mack Leaming.