FORT PILLOW

Out in the darkness beyond, a whip-poor-will said its name. Jenkins said Lieutenant Pennell's name, loudly and foully. Nothing was going to happen out here. This was all a waste of time. Here he was, stuck. "I'll pay you back for this, Pennell. See if I don't," he muttered.

XIV

WHEREVER THE REBEL OFFICER WHO was a Freemason had gone, it didn't look as if he was coming back. Mack Leaming lay where the two Negroes who carried him up to the top of the bluff had left him. He was chilly. The gunshot wound pained him and gnawed at his vitality. But he believed he would live. Maybe the water the Reb gave him helped that much. Maybe his bleeding had stopped. Or maybe he was just tougher than he thought after first getting hit.

Every so often, a Confederate would walk by and look him over. Seeing him barefoot and without his trousers, each Reb in turn would realize he'd already been picked clean and go away. A couple of them thought he was dead. They wanted to put him on the pile of bodies not far away.

“I'm still here,” Leaming said when one of Forrest's troopers bent to take hold of his ankles.

The man jerked back in surprise-and, if Leaming was any judge, in fear as well. “Goddarnn!” he exclaimed. “For a second there, I reckoned you was a dead man talkin' to me.”

“Not quite,” Leaming answered. “I'm only a wounded prisoner.”

He wanted to remind the Reb that Bedford Forrest had taken prisoners; just because he wasn't dead now, that didn't mean the trooper couldn't kill him in a hurry.

“Gave me quite a turn,” the enemy soldier said.

“Do you have a canteen? Could I have some water, please?” Leaming asked. Perhaps because of the blood he'd lost, he'd stayed thirsty even after the Confederate Freemason's kindness.

“Sorry. I drank it dry myself during the fight.” Unlike a lot of his comrades, this Rebel didn't sound actively hostile.

That encouraged Leaming to say, “Could you get me some water, please? Would you be so good?”

He watched Forrest's trooper think it over. “No, I don't believe I would,” the Reb said at last. “You're a homemade Yankee, a Tennessee Tory, a damned renegade. If you was standing here and I was laying there, would you get me water?”

“I hope I would,” Leaming said. But he might as well have kept quiet, for the other man went on, “I don't think so. I expect you'd give me a sermon instead, and tell me how wonderful it was to lick Abe Lincoln's boots and kiss a nigger's ass. I don't care to murder a helpless man, but you get no help from me, neither.” He walked off.

If I die because I get no water, won't you have murdered me? Leaming thought. But he did doubt he would die now. He was alive and suffering, and likely to go on suffering for quite a while. The white-hot agony he'd known after he first got shot was duller now, but taking a Mini? ball still hurt much worse than anything else that had ever happened to him-and he'd had a toothache that kept him sleepless for two days and nights before a dentist finally did his bloody work.

A couple of white Federals-prisoners, of course-paused to look at him. “Isn't that Lieutenant Leaming?” one of them asked.

“Sure looks like him, poor devil,” the other said. “So he got it, too, eh?”

Leaming opened and closed his right hand. “I'm not dead,” he said.

Both men from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) started as violently as the Confederate trooper did a few minutes before. “Jesus Christ!” one exploded. His laugh was shaky. “You gave us a hell of a jolt there, Lieutenant.”

“That's a fact,” the other agreed.

“You're Bill Ryder,” Leaming said to him. The Federal nodded.

Leaming had to think about the other man's name: “And Elmer Haynes.” He got it at last. “What have the Rebs done to you?”

“We been totin' bodies,” Haynes answered.

“Hell of a lot of 'em,” Ryder added. “They took all the money I had, too. Only good thing about that is, I didn't have much.”

“I'm sorry. They robbed me, too.” Leaming wished he hadn't had much money. It was gone now, into that thieving Reb's pocket, and his gold watch, too. He asked, “Is there any place where they're taking care of wounded Federals?”

The two troopers looked at each other. Slowly, Haynes said, “They've got some of 'em down in the barracks we tried to burn this morning. “

“They've got 'em there, yeah.” Bill Ryder seemed content to comment on what Haynes said. “They've got' em, but I don't know what they're doing for 'em. Don't know that they're doing anything for, em, tell you the truth.”

“Could you men carry me there?” Leaming asked. “Lying on a floor, lying under a roof, has to be better than this.”

Ryder and Haynes looked at each other again. They both sighed. They both shrugged. “Reckon we could,” Haynes said resignedly. “One more toting job-what the hell?”

“You want the head end or the feet end, Elmer?” Ryder said.

“I had the head last time,” Haynes said. “Your turn for that.”