FORT PILLOW

They did load the twelve-pounder again. Jostling one another to peer down the barrel, they tried their best to aim the field piece at the gunboat-and to hold it on target with that flimsy pile of stuff raising the trail and depressing the muzzle.

“Here we go! This time for sure!” the sergeant shouted, and brought the hammer down on a third percussion cap.

Fire. Smoke. Thunder. The iron shot splashed into the Mississippi at least as far from its target as either of the earlier two. “Hell's bells!” somebody said in disgust. “We can see the son of a bitch down there. Why in blazes can't we hit it?”

“She,” said somebody who fancied himself an expert on things that had to do with ships. “Boats are always she. “

“She's a god damn bitch, is what she is. She don't hold still for no body,” another trooper said.

“Sounds like a woman, all right,” Ward said. His own experience in such things was limited-he'd been kissed twice, not counting cousins-but he got a laugh.

“Let's try again, boys.” Yes, the sergeant who'd taken charge of the twelve-pounder was as stubborn as they came.

No matter how stubborn he was, three misses made his crew start melting away. “Hell with it,” a trooper said as he stooped to pick up his carbine. “I'm gonna go shoot me some niggers and Tennessee Tories. I can damn well hit them bastards.”

“That's right.” Ward grabbed his Enfield, too. “I know how to aim this critter.”

The sergeant squawked, but they all went farther along the edge of the cliff till they looked down on the soldiers in blue scrambling down toward the riverbank. Ward raised the rifle musket and aimed at a white man descending feet first. The homemade Yankee saw him and waved desperately. “Don't shoot!” he cried. “I ain't done nothin' to you!”

Killing a man in the heat of battle was one thing. Killing a man in cold blood, killing a man begging for his life, killing a defenseless man-for the trooper in blue had dropped his piece-proved something else again. With a swallowed obscenity, Matt swung the Enfield away from the other man.

Not all the bluebellies going down the slope and already at the bottom had given up. A soldier down there fired at Ward. He didn't know how to gauge such a steep uphill shot, and the minnie slapped into the mud about ten feet below the Confederate.

If I don't kill' em, they'll kill me, Ward thought. He aimed at a Negro. This time, nothing stayed his trigger finger. The ball caught the black in the short ribs. Although the runaway slave-for what else could he be?-was halfway down toward the Mississippi, the howl he let out reached Ward up on the bluff. The black rolled and tumbled all the way down to the riverbank.

“Nice shot!” another Confederate trooper said. “He looked just like one o' them clowns in the circus, way he turned somersets there.”

“He did, didn't he?” Ward paused in reloading, though not for long-his hands knew what to do even without direction. “Let's see if I can get me another coon like that.”

“Well, it ain't like we don't have plenty to pick from,” said the other soldier in butternut.

“Yeah.” Ward brought the loaded Enfield up to his shoulder and found another target.

A colored soldier rolled past Sergeant Ben Robinson. The man was groaning and trying to clutch at his chest, but his arms and legs kept flying out every which way. “Poor bastard,” Sandy Cole said. “He ain't dead yet, he gonna be by the time he fetch up 'longside the river.

“Ain't it the truth?” Robinson said. A Mini? ball cracked past his head. A few inches lower and he would have rolled and slid all the way down to the Mississippi, too. The only difference was, nobody would have wondered if he was dead.

Aaron Fentis looked up the slope to the top of the bluff, where Bedford Forrest's troopers were taking potshots at the whites and Negroes below them. “Why the hell those officers of our'n want us to come down here?” he demanded. “Dem Secesh sojers, dey shoot us down like we was so many wild turkeys.”

“They say the gunboat keep the Rebs off us,” Robinson said.

“Dey say, dey say.” Fentis's voice went high and mocking. “I say dey don' know what dey talkin' 'bout. Dey say we hold out Forrest, too. Was dey right? How much good dat damn gunboat do us up till now? Any a-tall? I ain't seen it. You seen it, Sergeant?” Even in disaster, he remembered to stay respectful to Ben Robinson's chevrons.

He should have stayed respectful to the white officers in command at Fort Pillow, too. Robinson should have reproved him for not sounding respectful enough. He knew he should, but couldn't make himself do it. Aaron Fentis might be disrespectful, but that didn't mean he was wrong. The whites in command at Fort Pillow hadn't known what was going on. Well, maybe Major Booth had, but he got killed too soon for it to matter. Since then…