FORT PILLOW

“I'll do it.” Bradford did, without the least hesitation. Being robbed seemed much better than being killed. “Here you go, friend.” He handed the Confederate more than fifty dripping dollars. If he held back a double eagle… Well, you never could tell when twenty dollars in gold might come in handy.

“I ain't no friend of yours,” his captor said, snatching the bills and coins out of his hands. A nasty smile spread across the Reb's face. “No, I ain't no friend of yours, but I like your money just fine.”

“Take it, then, and welcome,” Bradford said. He could always make more money. He sneezed. The wind on his soaked clothes chilled him to the bone.

Forrest's trooper gestured with the muzzle of his rifle musket. “Up the hill you go, Bradford. I'd shoot you my own self, but I reckon there's others who want you even worse'n I do-starting with the menfolk whose women your damn traitors outraged.”

Bradford licked his lips. He tasted more mud; his mustache was wet. But his tongue and the inside of his mouth were dry with fear. “I never gave orders for anything like that,” he got out.

“Yeah, likely tell, likely tell,” the Confederate jeered. “Now let's

hear another story-one I'll maybe believe.”

“Before God, it's the truth.” Bradford held up his right hand, as if taking an oath. The soldier in butternut laughed. It wasn't a goodnatured, mirthful laugh. A cat with a human voice might have laughed like that playing with a cornered mouse. The Reb urged Bradford up the side of the bluff again. Shivering, Bradford went.

It was the truth. No one-no one in his right mind, anyway, ordered his men to abuse the women on the other side. But, as Bradford knew and as Pontius Pilate must also have known long ago, there was truth, and then there was truth. West Tennessee was and always had been a Rebel stronghold. Forrest's trooper called the soldiers of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) traitors. To Bradford's way of thinking, the men who were trying to break the Union in half were the real traitors.

If you stayed loyal to the United States, what did you do about treason? What could you do about it? You could put it down, that was what. If somebody wanted to see the Stars and Stripes cut down and the Stainless Banner flying in their place, what were you supposed to do? Stand by and watch while he took up arms against your country-against the country? Bradford shook his head as he climbed the steep slope. He didn't think so.

And sometimes the game got rough. It got rough on both sides. Plenty of men under his command had had relatives bushwhacked, houses burned, livestock killed or driven off. If they paid the Confederates back in the same coin, who could blame them? Not Bill Bradford, not for a minute. He wanted to make it hard on the Rebs, to remind them they were facing a power strong enough to defend itself, a power strong enough to make anyone who defied it sorry.

Some of the things that happened didn't happen officially. Taking women out behind the barn and doing what you wanted with them – to them – fell in that category. No, nobody would order it. But if you owed vengeance to a particular Reb, if you knew who he was, if you knew where his kin lived, wouldn't you do whatever you could to pay him back? Of course you would.

Some of the soldiers who did things like that bragged about them. Bradford had heard them going on about what they'd done. They fell silent when they noticed him, but often not soon enough. Had he done such things, he would have kept quiet about them till people shoveled dirt over his grave. But he was a lawyer-he knew that talking about something often made it twice as real. Being a lawyer, he also tended to forget that things stayed real even without testimony about them.

As he regained the top of the cliff, he saw a Negro wearing only shirt and drawers lying next to a white man who'd had all his outer clothes stolen. The colored soldier stirred. The white man never would, not till the Judgment Trump blew: Major Bradford recognized Lionel Booth.

Had the Rebs stripped Theodorick the same way? Bradford couldn't stand the idea. He hurried toward the place where Theo had fallen. “Where do you think you're going, you goddamn son of a bitch?” snarled the Confederate who'd captured him.

“To see my brother's body,” he answered, not slowing in the slightest. “Wouldn't you do the same for yours?”

The Confederate didn't answer. He also didn't fire. Bradford strode through the chaos of the sack of Fort Pillow. Rebs were busy stripping bodies and plundering sutlers' huts, stealing from the United States all the things their own gimcrack government couldn't give them.