by Bob Mayer
He jumped his horse over the body of one of the bluebellies, intent on finding General Johnston so he could get his men into the fight.
The horse’s hooves cleared Ben easily. The shadow of horse and rider flashed over him, and then there was light again. Ben remained still, letting the riders put some distance between. With great effort, he opened his eyes. Then he looked about. Dead and dying. Man and beast. A peach orchard beckoned cover and the tracks of the survivors from his unit headed that way.
Ben tried to move, but the reins were wrapped tight around his right arm. He tried pulling his arm free, but the dead weight of the horse didn’t give an inch. Ben grabbed the Bowie with his left hand and slashed, slicing through the leather bindings. He finally cut through the entanglement and rolled away from the dead beast. In his haste, he dropped the Bowie.
Grabbing the Henry, Ben began to low crawl in that direction weaving his way through the dead like a worm.
Having toured the entire Union front, Grant was back on the bluff overlooking Pittsburgh Landing. There was no sign of Lew Wallace’s Division, nor Buell’s Army.
“Too much daylight left,” Grant said to Rumble.
“Prentiss will hold fast,” Rumble said.
“I know,” Grant said. “But can he hold long enough?”
A courier came riding up, horse panting. “General Sherman’s compliments, sir!” He held out a slip of paper.
Grant took it, read, then passed it to Rumble.
We are holding them pretty well just now—but it’s hot as hell.
Grant was looking to the west. “Where is Wallace?”
There was no sign of Wallace’s Division coming on the road from Crump’s Landing to Pittsburgh Landing. Cord clenched the reins tighter with each mile he rode. He should have met them by now. He raced through a thicket of trees and then saw a line of blue.
Heading to the left, up another road that would take them directly into the rebels, not reinforce Grant. Cord spurred his horse, moving along the blue snake, trying to find Wallace.
He found the General perusing a map two miles up, the column ahead disappearing into a swamp.
“General!” Cord didn’t bother to dismount.
Wallace looked up from the map. “Yes?”
“You’re on the wrong road. You should have branched left at the last crossroads. You’ll run into rebels if you continue on, not Grant’s flank.”
Wallace slapped the map against his thigh. “Sherman’s fallen back that far?”
“Yes, sir. It’s rough fighting. Grant needs you in the center, not the flank.”
Wallace grabbed a staff officer. “Ride to the lead. Counter-march!”
Cord took a moment to consider his own situation. Wallace would not make it before dark. Not turning his column back on itself. And if Cord took the same route back, his time would double too. Wallace wasn’t going to make it before dark.
“I’ll give the counter-march order, sir,” he told Wallace, then he galloped forward.
It took him fifteen minutes of hard riding to reach the lead regiment and relay Wallace’s order. Then, instead of heading back, he rode forward, heading toward the sound of the firing by the most direct route, counting on his buckskins and his skills to get him through the Confederate lines and to Ben.
Ben squirmed through the dead and wounded, the bodies graced with pink peach petals, as if God himself were ornamenting the bodies. The ground was moist with blood and sweat and urine. He kept his eyes averted from those he clambered over and through. There were whispers and cries from the wounded. Praying, calling for their mother, cursing the generals, the war, their fate. Someone was screaming, high pitched, an inarticulate plea. He saw a man from his unit, shot through several times like a turkey in a Thanksgiving contest, lying half-buried under his horse.
Glancing to the right, Ben saw men, blue and gray, side-by-side, clustered at the edge of a pond, like desperate animals drawn to the water, lapping it up. The surface of the pond glistened red. Ben finally cleared the orchard of the dead and dying and made it into a field. He picked up the pace as there was a temporary slackening in the firing. He could see the trail of hooves from the remnants of his unit.
He heard orders being shouted behind him. Units being maneuvered. Ben got to his knees and risked a look back. Lines of gray were spreading out about a quarter mile away, preparing for the attack. Throwing his slow approach away, Ben jumped to his feet and raced hard toward a line of trees bordering a road. He could see the glint of steel from bayonets and prayed his blue coat would keep him alive.
By the time he reached the sunken road, he was breathing hard. He tumbled into the road between two men from his company.
“How many made it?” Ben asked as he caught his breath.
“Not even half,” one of the men replied.
“Best get that quick shooter ready,” the other said, peering over the muzzle of his own musket. “The Rebs be coming.”
Ben turned and looked back the way he’d come. A long line of gray was approaching, battle flags waving. He looked left and right. The rebels were stretched out as far as he could see. It was a magnificent sight, which under other circumstances, Ben would have marveled at.
Ben put the stock of the Henry to his shoulder and ratcheted a round into the chamber. His finger curled around the trigger. Drops of sweat threatened to blind him and he blinked his eyes clear and took a deep breath, holding in the cough.
A lieutenant from the company was pacing back and forth along the sunken road. “Let ‘em come, boys. Just a little bit closer. Then we’ll give ‘em hell. We aint running no more. We hold here until relieved or dead!”
Chapter Fifteen
6 April 1862, Shiloh, Tennessee
“We’re sweeping the field,” Johnston said to General Beauregard, gesturing with his tin cup toward the sound of the heaviest firing, “and I think we shall press them to the river.”
Skull had been repulsed by Beauregard the first time she saw him. She sensed his black, dyed hair and droopy eyes hid something dark buried deep inside him. She’d met the like before.
“General,” Beauregard said, in turn waving his saber to the east, “we need to press the plan and slide to the right. We’re being drawn into a damned hornet’s nest in the center.”
“Too late for that,” Johnston said. He squinted up at the sun. “We’ve got to push them into the river by nightfall. Buell’s out there somewhere. We must play out the hand the Lord has given us today before he arrives.”
The sound of firing from directly ahead rose to a crescendo. For a moment everyone, generals and staff, fell silent, each man leaning slightly forward as if they could determine the outcome from the noise.
An officer, a bloodied bandage wrapped around one hand, galloped up. “Sir, we have a brigade that refuses to move forward!”
“Remain here,” Johnston ordered Beauregard. Johnston paused as his personal surgeon grabbed his elbow.
“Sir, there are wounded, mostly Yankee, over yonder. I can be of service.”
Johnston nodded and dismissed his surgeon with a wave of the tin cup, his focus ahead.
“Sir!” Beauregard protested. “You’re acting like a regimental commander, not an army commander.”
“Watch your mouth, general,” Johnston snapped. He rode off with the officer who’d brought the report and Skull followed, having no desire to be around Beauregard and wanting to get closer to the fighting.
Cord crossed back over Owl Creek at the same spot. He could tell how badly the day was going from the fact that when he’d gone west earlier, the fighting had been to the south of this position, but now it was to the north, meaning he was behind rebel lines. He pulled the Lancaster out of its buckskin scabbard and laid it across the pommel, making sure it was ready for action.
A string of rags lay in the middle of a field to the right. Cord knew they were not rags, but men, mowed down while advancing, or retreating. More dead and wounded appeared as he went east. He pa
ssed through an abandoned Union camp, rebels scattered about, gorged on food, some drunk. No one spared him and his shoddy outfit more than glance.
He came upon another camp and saw a wagon marked with 5th Ohio Cav. Swallowing tightly, Cord rode about, checking the bodies in blue. He dismounted several times to turn a corpse over. He widened his search, but didn’t discover Ben. Heartened, he followed the trail of the riders who’d survived.
As he went north, he passed more over-run Union camps. A considerable number of Confederate soldiers were taking advantage of the spoils of war. The small church near where Sherman had made his headquarters just this morning was to the left.
Cord tensed as he spotted a dead horse, the rigging clearly Union. As he got closer, he relaxed when he didn’t see the body of the rider. The glint of sunlight on steel caught his attention. Dismounting, Cord’s breath caught in his throat as he recognized his Bowie. He picked it up, wiping the dirt off the blade. He slid the large blade into his belt. Then he inspected the horse and rigging. A single shot through the head had done the horse in. There was no sign of blood, other than the horse’s.
Kneeling, Cord traced his fingers over the trail moving away, toward the north. A man crawling. No blood trail.
A positive sign.
Holding his horse’s rein in one hand, Cord began to follow the track.
Ben’s fever was doubled by the heat of battle. As each wave of Confederates came within a hundred yards of the sunken road, he’d begin firing as fast as he could. Sixteen rounds hit the line of gray in less than a minute. He’d sink back down and begin shoving bullets into the breech, reloading the tube under the barrel.
Ten times the Rebels came.
Ten times the Yankees stopped them.
But each time there were less and less men in blue along the sunken road, and each time, there were more Confederate battle flags crossing the field.
Shoving the last bullet in, Ben looked at the dead littering the field. There was no cheering from his fellow soldiers. Every man could do the inevitable math. Many looked over their shoulders, to the north and west, hoping to see reinforcements. In vain.
General Sidney Albert Johnston, West Point class of 1826, rode along the reluctant brigade’s front line, clanging his tin cup on the men’s bayonets. “I will lead you, men!”
Sally Skull watched, tears forming in her eyes, as the men roared with renewed courage, their backs straightening, a glint replacing the fear that had glazed their pupils. Johnston pointed the tin cup toward the haze of gun smoke that indicated the Yankee line.
“Men, they are stubborn. We must use the bayonet!”
The brigade, and the ones on either side, surged forward. The problem was, and had been all afternoon during every assault, was that only the three brigades charged. While the massed Confederates outnumbered the Yankees in the Hornet’s nest ten to one, the attacks had never been coordinated, so each assault sent only a portion of the rebel strength at the Yankees, and thus each assault had been beaten back.
Skull spurred her horse, falling behind the ranks of gray. The rebel yell split air, but otherwise it was strangely quiet, no sparks of fire poking through the gray smoke. Perhaps the Yankees had finally broken?
Ben couldn’t believe the Rebels were coming again. Eleven times already. Each charge had taken its toll on the Union side. First in dead and wounded, and then, here and there, a man would just give in. It had had happened so often, one could see the progression. A dull look came into the man’s eyes, replacing the anger and courage. His shoulders slumped. He cast furtive glances at those around him. Then he eventually began walking toward the rear, not running, never running. In some ways, the walking was worse, the resignation of it. The boy to Ben’s right had been giving the look for a minute. As the Confederates approached, he simply turned and began skulking away. Ben took two steps to the right, covering the hole in the line.
“Steady, steady,” the lieutenant kept repeating, as if convincing himself as much as ordering the men in the sunken road.
No one said anything to the boy who left. Each knew they’d each be walking back soon or be dead.
Ben levered a round into the chamber of the Henry repeating rifle.
The Confederates were closing and there was a pattern to their actions also. The banshee screech of their Rebel Yell, the way each man leaned further and further forward at the waist as they closed, as if breasting a strong wind. How some also angled their bodies, running awkwardly, presenting slightly less of a front.
“Fire!”
Ben pulled the trigger and the Union line hurled lead.
A shiver rippled along the length of the rebel front, but they kept coming. As the men around him began to reload, Ben fired steadily, aiming each shot. He had ten rounds discharged before the others finished reloading their muskets. Aiming wasn’t any particular problem as there were so many coming; so many, that maybe this time, they wouldn’t stop.
Yankee cannon belched grape shot and canister, clearing bloody gaps in the Confederate lines. Thousands of little metal balls whirring through the air, little birds on flights of death. Screams, more torturous to the ears than the Rebel yells, cut through the smoke.
Still they came.
But the advancing line of butternut and gray wasn’t as solid, wasn’t moving as fast. Men were clustering together, instinct merging them. The Confederates were slowing, torn between courage and fear and pressed by the even stronger esprit to see it through with their fellows, which was the reverse side to the secret lure of cowardice.
A bullet hit the man to Ben’s left, staggering him back a few feet. He grasped his stomach, blood pouring out of him, disbelief on his face. Ben turned back to the front. As the second volley of Union musket fire wreaked more havoc on the advancing men, Ben fired his last six rounds, then knelt to reload.
“Kill ‘em. Kill ‘em all,” a soldier was chanting. Ben felt the blood pounding in his head as he thumbed the rounds in. The wounded man was moaning, crying something pre-speech, animal in its desperation.
Ben stood. The apex of the rebels attack was approaching his position, the foremost soldier less than twenty feet away. Mouth wide open, rebel yelling, insane screaming. Death or victory with no possibility in between.
Ben fired and the open mouth exploded in a shower of blood. As his comrades fired a volley and hastened to reload, Ben ratcheted in bullet after bullet and fired again and again, scything down the lead rebels, stopping the pinnacle of the assault that would have broken the Union line and smashed the Hornet’s Nest.
Finally, another part of the pattern from the previous eleven charges held, as the Rebel line wavered, then began to melt away, retreating. Except for the last man Ben shot. He kept coming at a dead run. A tall, gangly fellow, dressed in butternut and a battered felt hat. He had no musket in his hands. And he ran stiff legged; in a way Ben had never seen. Every Union soldier who could see him paused to watch.
The reb was dead, but he was still running, the way an animal sometimes did after being killed. The legs still working, but the mind already dead, the body just not aware yet. The reb made it within ten feet of the sunken road, his eyes empty, his jaw slack, before he finally collapsed to his knees. Instead of tumbling forward, his upper torso tilted in reverse, the back of his head thumping into the ground, leaving his body in an obscene position.
Ben resumed reloading.
“They sure take killing better than any I’ve ever seen,” a soldier near Ben muttered as he also reloaded.
St. George didn’t like this skulking about much, but it seemed second nature to Gabriel. This entire war thing was quite outside anything he’d ever imagined, not that imagination had ever been his strong suit. He was leading his horse along a trail, not quite sure where he was, simply keeping Gabriel in sight. She, in turn, was keeping the elder Rumble in sight, as she’d been doing for a couple of hours. A bloody hand reached out from underneath a bush, clawing at his boot. St. George kicked the hand away.
&n
bsp; “Please.”
A Yankee soldier was under the bush. The left side of his head was caved in, a furrow from a bullet having taken off a good part of his skull. St. George was surprised the man was alive, never mind speaking.
“Please what?”
“Kill me.”
“You be dying soon anyway.”
“Kill me.”
St. George kicked the man, rolling him further under the bush. “Suffer bluebelly.”
Gabriel knelt down next to the man. She placed a comforting hand on his forehead while she drew Tiberius’ dagger with the other. She sliced it across the man’s neck.
St. George said nothing as Gabriel wiped the blade off on the soldier’s shirt, then slid it back into the sheath.
There was sporadic firing in every direction. St. George rubbed his forehead. That Grant fellow was issuing orders left and right, but St. George could make no sense of what was happening, so he couldn’t understand how that fellow could. But he seemed mighty calm.
Rumble looked nervous. Which comforted St. George. He knew the elder boy. He knew he’d go looking for the young one, first chance he got. Some people were too easy to read.
And when father met son, St. George could finish it once and for all.
Cord watched the rebels fall back. He was flat on his belly, his horse tethered in a gully behind him. He pulled out the telescope and extended it. He saw the wounded being helped back, the fear in the men’s faces. Officers screaming commands, reforming, preparing the men to go back one more time into hell.
He spotted an officer with gray hair, a weathered face and recognized Johnston from his time in the west. The General was, of all things, swinging a cup about, issuing orders to the flock of officers surrounding him.