FORT PILLOW

“Beats me,” Zachary Bartlett answered. He was doing his best to keep a pipe going in the rain, and not having much luck. Ward had given up trying to smoke till he got somewhere dry. A splat and a hiss declared that the pipe had just taken another hit. “Goddamn thing,” Bartlett said without rancor.

“Goddamn rain,” Ward said, and his friend nodded. He went on,

“How long till we get to this Brownsville place, anyway?”

“Shouldn't be much longer,” Bartlett said. He'd said the same thing the last time Ward asked, about an hour earlier. Ward decided that meant he didn't know where the hell Brownsville was, either.

Somewhere between Jackson and Fort Pillow, Ward thought. That took in – what? About seventy miles of ground, anyway. The Second Missouri had been riding west since before daybreak. Ward had done a lot of hard riding in his time. This grinding slog through mud and through streams without bridges was as rough as anything he'd ever tried.

Somebody'd said Bedford Forrest was coming, too, coming after all. He'd started out after the Second Missouri headed for Fort Pillow. Could he catch up? How soon? Was he really coming at all? Or was it just another rumor, one of the nine million that soldiers invented and passed around to give themselves something to do and something to talk about? Ward didn't know. He didn't waste a lot of time worrying about it, either. If Forrest decided to ride west from Jackson, he did, that was all. If he didn't, they could whip the turncoats and coons in Fort Pillow just fine without him. General Chalmers knew what he was doing. And besides…

“You own niggers, Zach?” he asked.

“Me?” Bartlett laughed mirthlessly. “Likely tell! My wife's brother bought himself a couple – three, and he's so goddamn proud of it, it's like his shit don't stink. How about you?”

“Nope.” Ward shook his head, which made water drip from the brim of his slouch hat. “I got a cousin who does, but he's down in Arkansas somewhere. But I reckon you've been to a slave auction or two, same as I have. “

“Well, hell, who ain't been?” Bartlett said. “Good way to kill an afternoon, even if the likes of us ain't got the money to buy. Some of the gals are damn fine lookin', too.” His frown looked meaner than it was, for it pulled tight a knife scar at the corner of his mouth. “What you aimin' at, anyways?”

“You've seen all them niggers standing up there on the block,” Ward said. “I'm not talking about the wenches, now – I mean the bucks. You reckon somebody you can buy and sell like a sack of flour… You reckon somebody like that can fight?”

“Not so it matters,” his friend answered without hesitation.“ I tell you this, though – any nigger who tries pointing a gun at me, that's one dead nigger right there.”

“Well, you can sing that in church.” Ward was slimmer and darker than Bartlett, and envied the other trooper his scar. He didn't want to get cut or shot himself. He'd seen wounded men, and dead men, too. He knew bullets and knives hurt. But he wanted a mark to show the world – and maybe show himself – he'd been to war.

All over the Confederacy, whites believed Negroes couldn't fight. They believed the Federals were a pack of monsters for putting Negroes in uniform, giving them guns, and letting them fight. And they maintained elaborate organizations designed to crush slave uprisings before they really got started.

Those organizations worked. Rebellions were suppressed so ruthlessly, they didn't happen very often. But having plans to put down revolts said Negroes might fight after all if they ever got the chance.

Matt Ward didn't recognize the contradiction, not with the top part of his mind. Hardly any white Southerners did. But it was there, inescapably there, and it nagged at him the way a tooth will when it hasn't started to ache yet but isn't quite right, either. He sensed it was there, and he wished he didn't.

McCulloch's brigade got into Brownsville a little past noon, riding in from the west. Brigadier General Bell's brigade had just come into town from the northwest. Between them, the two forces stretched Brownsville to overflowing.

Quite a few Negroes were on the muddy streets. There seemed to be more slaves in this part of Tennessee than anywhere else in the state – and there must have been more still before it started slipping back and forth between the C.S.A. and the U.S.A.

“Brunswick stew?” a white woman called, lifting a ladle out of a covered pot.

Ward's stomach was rubbing against his backbone. “Thank you kindly, ma' am.” He took the ladle and got his mouth around it like a snake engulfing a gopher. The stew was full of potatoes and mushrooms and some kind of meat. “Mighty fine,” he said when he'd swallowed some of it. “What's in there with the vegetables?”

“Squirrel,” the woman answered. “Reckon we've got the best Brunswick stew anywhere right here in Brownsville. If it wasn't rainin' like this, I'd give you a biscuit to dip in the gravy.”