FORT PILLOW

WHEN THE FIRING AT FORT Pillow finally slowed, Nathan Bedford Forrest rode forward. His men had had their fun, or enough of it. He knew he couldn't have stopped them even if he wanted to. And he didn't want to. He'd warned the Federals he wouldn't answer for the consequences if they didn't give up. Every time he used that warning up till now, they either surrendered or beat back his men, both of which rendered the threat moot.

But it wasn't moot here. Fort Pillow did fall, and so it had to take the consequences. If he tried to hold his men in check after the fall – and if he managed to do it, which wouldn't be easy by a long shot – what sort of threat could he make the next time he wanted to shift some Yankees? He shook his head. None at all.

“Major Booth-no, Major Bradford-you are a damn fool,” he muttered.

“What's that, sir?” one of his staff officers asked.

“Nothing. Never mind,” Forrest said, annoyed the other man overheard him. He wondered whether Bradford still lived. He was inclined to bet against it, when the Tennessee Tory had so many men who wanted him dead. Bradford's bully boys had harried loyal Confederates in west Tennessee almost as savagely as Colonel Fielding Hurst's outfit. Well, they wouldn't any more-and neither would Hurst for a while.

Forrest's own men cheered him as he neared the position they had stormed. They whooped and grinned and waved their slouch hats. Some of them showed off the shoes and trousers and weapons they'd taken from the Federals. Forrest only grinned when they did. The Confederates had to make war pay for itself when they fought the richer United States.

One trooper waved to Forrest with a fist full of greenbacks. Forrest grinned at him, too, but said, “For God's sake, Lucas, stick that in your pocket! You want somebody to knock you over the head and walk off with it?”

“Anybody tries, I reckon he'll be mighty sorry mighty fast,” Lucas answered. With a pistol on one hip and a Bowie knife on the other, he looked ready to raise large amounts of hell.

“Put it away anyhow,” Bedford Forrest said. “The less temptation you stir up, the better off everybody is.”

Lucas thought about telling him no, then visibly thought better of it. Anyone who told Forrest no was likely to be sorry for it, and in short order, too. If Major Bradford remained alive, he had to wish he'd surrendered. And if he didn't, he would have gone on wishing it till his dying breath.

At the top of the bluff, Forrest dismounted. His horse couldn't cross the trench in front of the U.S. earthworks. But several planks now spanned the ditch. His troopers went back and forth as they pleased.

Under their orders – and under their guns – Federal prisoners were throwing dead U.S. soldiers into the ditch. Bedford Forrest nodded to himself. Why bother digging graves when they already had a big trench handy?

Two Negro prisoners picked up a body. One of them turned to the closest C.S. soldier. “Suh, this here fella, he ain't dead,” he said. “I done seen his hand move.”

“That's a fac', suh,” the other black agreed. “I seen it, too.”

“Set him down,” the trooper said. The Negroes obeyed. The Confederate soldier stooped for a closer look. His knee joints clicked when he straightened. “Pitch him in,” he told the prisoners. “If he ain't dead, he's too far gone for a sawbones to help. He'll be gone by the time they throw dirt on him-and if he ain't, it'll put him out of his misery. Go on-get your lazy black asses moving.”

The captives looked at each other. Then, with almost identical sighs, they obeyed. Nathan Bedford Forrest nodded again. What would happen if they refused? Their bodies would lie at the bottom of the ditch-and so would that of the prisoner, who, if he was alive, wouldn't stay that way for long.

More prisoners, these white men, carried the body of a soldier in butternut to lie with his comrades. A junior officer stood over the Confederates' bodies. “What's our part of the butcher's bill?” Forrest called.

“Sir, we've got about twenty dead,” the lieutenant replied, stiffening to attention when he realized who'd asked the question. “About sixty wounded, I've heard, but don't hold me to that.”

“All right-thanks,” Bedford Forrest said. The young officer saluted. Forrest returned it with a gesture more than half a wave. Then he crossed into Fort Pillow. The planks that bridged the ditch groaned under his weight-he was half again as heavy as a lot of the men who served under him. Some Yankee general said small, young, single men made the best cavalry troopers. On the whole, Forrest agreed with him. But he was not small himself, he had a wife, and the pain from his many wounds reminded him he wasn't so young any more, either.