FORT PILLOW

Horrible screams rose from a tent the Federals had been using as a hospital for their wounded. Mixed in with them were shouts of hoarse, drunken laughter. Some of Forrest's troopers must have got into the whiskey Major Booth had ordered put out to fortify the garrison's courage. A couple of soldiers in butternut lurched from the tent. They both carried cavalry sabers dripping blood.

“You scalped that coon just like an Injun would!” one of them told the other. They both thought that was the funniest thing they'd ever heard. They had to hold each other up, or they would have fallen on their faces.

An officious-looking young Confederate second lieutenant rushed over to Bradford. “Where do you think you're going?” he demanded.

Then, recognizing the man to whom he spoke, he did a classic double take. “You!”

“He said the same thing.” Bradford jerked a thumb back over his shoulder at the trooper behind him. “I think I'm going to tend to my brother's body, that's what, and see that he gets Christian burial. You are a Christian, I hope?” By the way he said it, he had his doubts.

“I ought to blow your head off right here,” the lieutenant said, scowling. If he was a Christian, he didn't believe in turning the other cheek.

“I have surrendered. This gentleman accepted my surrender.” Bradford pointed to the trooper again. “If you care to make yourself infamous before God and man, pull the trigger. I shall not run.” Soaked and weary though he was, he struck a pose. He'd pleaded for lives before, but never for his own. All the courtroom tricks he'd used for others came back to help him now.

He succeeded in confusing the lieutenant, anyhow. “Don't you go nowhere,” the youngster squeaked.

“I am going to find my brother's body,” Bradford insisted. “I am going to see him properly buried.” And what I do after that is nobody's business but my own. When the Confederate lieutenant didn't tell him no, his hopes began to rise.

Mack Leaming lay where he'd fallen. He'd stuffed a pocket handkerchief into the hole below his shoulder blade. The linen square was soggy with blood now, but he did think he was losing less than he had before.

Secesh soldiers and their Federal captives scampered down the side of the bluff and trudged up it. Confederates plundered the dead and robbed the living. They weren't murdering so many as they had in the mad moments after the fort fell, but they hadn't stopped, either. A Negro dashed down to the Mississippi and tried to take refuge in the river. One of Forrest's troopers shot him just as he splashed into the water. His blood mingled with the greater flow of the stream.

Two more Confederates ran over and pulled him out of the water. “Come on, you stinking shitheel!” one of them shouted. “Get up and walk!”

Whatever the Negro said, Leaming couldn't make it out-it was too feeble. “You'd better get up, or you'll never have another chance,” the second Reb warned. The Negro managed to reach his hands and knees. Both Confederates laughed. “He crawls like a dog,” the second one said.

“He can die like a damned dog.” The first Reb put a revolver to the Negro's head and fired once. The colored soldier flopped down, dead. Bedford Forrest's men walked off, laughing still.

A soldier in ragged gray crouched down by Lieutenant Leaming.

“Got any greenbacks, Yank?” he asked hoarsely.

Groaning with the effort, Leaming reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “Here,” he said, biting his lip against the pain. “Take it. Can I have some water, please?”

He might as well have saved his breath. The Reb was too busy counting his loot to pay any attention to the man the loot came from. “… Sixty… eighty… ninety… ninety-five… a hundred… a hundred an' one… two… three,” the trooper said in an awed voice. “A hundred an' three dollars! Goddamn! I'm rich!” He let out a whoop of joy. Then, like a fox that wanted more than one chicken from the coop, he stared hungrily at Leaming again. “All that money! What else you got?”

“Water?” Leaming said again. His throat felt rough as shagreen.

Forrest's trooper didn't care. He frisked the Union officer with ungentle hands, and whooped again when he found Leaming's gold watch. It disappeared into his pocket, along with its heavy golden chain. “Godalmightydamn!” he said, as reverent a blasphemy as Leaming had ever heard. “Wish I had me more days like this here one since I joined up. I am a made man, I am. If you wasn't so ugly, I'd kiss you. “

“Give me water,” Leaming told him. “I don't need a kiss.” Maybe because he was still bleeding, he felt drier every minute. He wondered how long he could last. It seemed to matter only in an abstract way, which probably wasn't a good sign.