Sumter to Shiloh

by Bob Mayer

  Cord closed his eyes for a moment as he put the telescope down and picked up the Lancaster. “Lord, this is war. Taking a life is part of it. I’m damn sorry to take a good man.”

  He opened his eyes and pulled back the hammer on the long rifle.

  Just as he pulled the trigger, Johnston’s horse twisted about.

  Sally Skull reloaded her pistols as she rode close to Johnston and his staff. His boot heel was dangling, a Yankee ball having torn through it during the charge. His clothes were nicked with near misses. She’d had a minie ball tear into her saddlebag, but without enough power to penetrate horseflesh.

  The Yankees were tough, she’d give them that.

  As he turned, Johnston reeled in the saddle, as if startled.

  “General, are you hurt?” one of the staff officers asked.

  “Yes, and I fear seriously,” Johnston said.

  Skull couldn’t see a wound, but a couple of the officers hustled the General away toward a gully and she anxiously followed. She hopped off her horse and helped them lower Johnston to the ground.

  “Where you hurt, sir?” Skull asked.

  Johnston shook his head. “I don’t know, Sally. I don’t know.” His face was pale and his hands were shaking.

  Skull began tearing at his clothes, looking for the wound. Some lieutenant offered the general a flask, but when he poured a dribble into Johnston’s mouth, it slid out the other side as the general’s head lolled back.

  “Where’s his surgeon?” Skull demanded.

  “Tending to some Yankees,” the lieutenant replied.

  “Damn you, Sidney Albert Johnston,” Skull hissed, leaning close to the old man, “don’t you die on us. We need you. Texas needs you.”

  Then she saw the blood filling his boot. She slid her hand along the back of that leg and found the wound. Through the artery in the back of the knee. The same damn leg in which he’d been wounded dueling old Sam Houston so many years ago. Skull ripped a kerchief off her neck and wrapped it around his thigh, preparing a knot. “Get me a stick.”

  When no one moved, she cursed. “Get me a stick, damn it.”

  “Ma’am,” the lieutenant said. “Won’t do no good. The general’s dead.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I want every cannon you have placed along the bluff here,” Grant ordered his chief of artillery.

  He was indicting the bluff to the east, overlooking the Tennessee and the land beyond. With Prentiss holding the center, Wallace coming from the west, one hoped, Grant could sense where his line was weakest as if the battlefield was speaking to him on some frequency those around him couldn’t hear.

  “This will be our last stand if it comes to it.” Grant turned to Rumble. “Lucius, I’ve moved the regiments forming the straggler line into the fight. Gather what cavalry you can find, and form a new straggler line. Turn every man around and send them back into the battle. We stand on the precipice. We have to hold just a few more hours.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rumble said. He fidgeted in the saddle, his thoughts elsewhere, but so were Grant’s.

  The General looked to the west. “Wallace should have been here hours ago. And where is Buell?”

  Grant and Rumble’s attention was diverted to a new development. Among the men still cowering beneath the bluff, a clergyman began berating the troops, his voice pitched pulpit, spewing inspiration and degradation. “For God and Country, men! For your sweethearts and your homes! For your flag! For your own souls, to be not be judged as a coward when you meet the most holy!”

  “Lucius.” Grant halted his friend. “Before you do what I asked, shut that fool up.”

  “General, the Union left is wide open,” Nathan Bedford Forrest implored General Beauregard. “You push there, you’ll have the Yankees in the river before dark.”

  Elijah Cord was so close, he could have hit the General with a rock, never mind the Lancaster. A cluster of officers surrounded Beauregard, who was trying to sort out the jumbled mess the Confederate attack had become. Forrest had just ridden up, his mount lathered from the exertion.

  “It might well be, Colonel,” Beauregard said, “but we’re already engaged past the point of being able to break contact in the center.”

  “But, sir—” Forrest began.

  Beauregard used a saber, not a tin cup, to punctuate his words. “I heard you, Colonel, and it isn’t possible now.” He drummed his fingers on the flat edge of his sword. “The question is, how far away is Buell?”

  Cord pushed forward. “Hey there, General. I just came from the other side of the Tennessee.”

  Beauregard focused on Cord. “Who the blazes are you?”

  “Just a traveler, sir.”

  Beauregard frowned. “What unit are you with?”

  “None, sir.”

  “What are you doing here? What were you doing on the other side of the river?”

  Cord decided truth could work here. “Looking for my son, General. I got no part of this fight.”

  “Everyone has a part of this fight,” Beauregard said, “if they have any sense of honor.”

  “I fought in California and Mexico,” Cord lied. “My fighting days are over.”

  Beauregard waved a hand, blowing away Cord’s reasoning under the stress of battle and command. Forrest was fidgeting on his horse.

  “And what did you see on the other side of the river?” Beauregard asked.

  “Whole bunch of Federals stuck trying to cross the Duck River up by Columbia, Tennessee.”

  Beauregard leaned eagerly toward Cord. “When did you see this?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “You believe this fellow?” Forrest demanded.

  A courier came galloping up, a telegram flimsy in hand. Beauregard took it, read it, then looked back at Cord. “Curious. Regardless of where he is right now, the command in Alabama believes Buell isn’t even headed here. That he’s been diverted to Decatur.”

  Cord shrugged. “I don’t know where Buell’s going, General. I just know where he is and he isn’t close.”

  Beauregard slapped the flat of his sword on his thigh. “I have Grant just where I want him.” He turned to another officer. “Gather every piece of artillery, put them wheel to wheel, and blast the hell out of that pocket of resistance. Then we’ll form our own line for the night and finish them in the morning.”

  “General—” Forrest began, but Beauregard waved him off, like he had Cord. The General and his coterie of staff rode off.

  All except Forrest. The Confederate cavalryman ran a hand across the stubble on his chin. “Your boy. What side he on?” Forrest asked.

  “I don’t rightly know,” Cord lied. “I’ve been out west a number of years. That’s why I’m looking all over.”

  Forrest frowned. “I seen you somewhere.”

  “I been around,” Cord said.

  “Fancy long rifle,” Forrest said.

  “It does the job.”

  “What job is that?” Forrest’s hand casually dropped to the hilt of his double-edged saber.

  “Kills what needs to be killed,” Cord said.

  “What or who?”

  Cord’s thumb ran over the hammer of the Lancaster. “Whichever.”

  Forrest wagged a finger at Cord. “I know your type. Beauregard believes you because he wants to believe you. They all want to believe they’ve already won. They aint. I don’t know what your game is, but I see you around this battlefield again, you won’t be riding away.”

  Sally Skull finished fastening the top button on General Sidney Albert Johnston’s coat. The old man looked almost peaceful, his face pale in the fading light. Just two officers remained with the general, the rest having ridden off to continue the battle.

  “He ready,” Skull told them.

  The two lifted the stretcher and slid it onto the back of a wagon.

  “You can take him back home to Texas now,” Skull said.

  “Permission to move forward, sir.”

  Grant looked up from the ma
p he was perusing with his staff. “Ben?”

  “Yes, sir,” Rumble replied.

  Grant gestured for his staff to disperse. “Things are grim, Lucius. Wallace still hasn’t arrived. I don’t know how long Prentiss can hold. They break through our center, they’ll break the entire army.”

  “The 5th Ohio is with Prentiss. I’ll relay that to the General, sir.”

  Grant’s head drooped for a moment. “It’s been a very bad day.”

  Lucius placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You’ve just got to hold until dark, Sam.”

  Grant took a deep breath. “Permission granted, Sergeant Major. You see General Prentiss, convey my appreciation for all he’s accomplished up to this time.”

  “Yes, sir.” Rumble put spurs to horse and raced against the tide of retreating troops toward the sound of the firing.

  “Come.” Gabriel kicked St. George’s boot.

  He pulled the slouch hat away from his eyes. They were in a narrow gully, out of the way of the troops and the bullets.

  “What’s going on?” St. George got to his feet as Gabriel pressed forward through the undergrowth.

  “He moving,” Gabriel said.

  St. George followed her and they set off in pursuit of Rumble.

  The world exploded around Ben and the rest of the Union men in the Hornet’s Nest. Sixty-two Confederate cannons were lined up hub to hub, a quarter mile wide wall of guns hurling canister, grape shot, solid and exploding rounds. Trees were being cut down from the barrage and killing when the trunks fell on the men cowering in the sunken road. Over 180 shots per minute were tearing into the Union line. It was the fiercest artillery bombardment the continent had ever experienced.

  Men broke and ran, only to be torn apart by the fierce cannonade. Every button in Ben’s shirt felt massive as he pressed himself into the dirt, wishing he could burrow into the earth itself. He envied the earthworms.

  A half mile away from the sunken road, a rebel skirmisher stepped onto the cow path directly in front of Rumble’s horse, less than ten feet away. The soldier’s musket was pointed right at Rumble’s face as the man pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  Misfire.

  Rumble swung up his shotgun and let loose with both barrels. The blast knocked the man backward, dead before he hit the ground. Rumble spurred his horse and leapt over the body, racing down the path, dodging low hanging branches. He could hear soldiers all about in the woods: southern soldiers. General Prentiss’s pocket of resistance was just minutes from being completely surrounded.

  The thunder of cannon fire ahead was deafening. The ground shivered and as Rumble moved forward, shrapnel began whistling through the trees, clipping off branches and leaves and causing him to hunch over in the saddle.

  And, suddenly, there was silence.

  Behind Rumble the pincers of the rebel attack finally closed around the Hornet’s Nest. Prentiss and the Hornet Nest were surrounded.

  Ben’s ears were ringing, so it took a moment for the sudden stop of the bombardment to register. He was face down in the rut of the sunken road, the Henry clutched tight to his side. He blinked a few times, then shook his head, trying to clear his ears. He lifted his head.

  A Union major with a white flag was standing on top of the edge of the sunken road, waving it back and forth. Ben breathed a deep sigh of relief, which brought on a spate of coughing.

  Ben got to his feet. The field in front of the sunken road was paved with dead. Bodies torn to pieces, limbs scattered, men strewn in the place death had littered them. The bodies were so many, Ben felt he could walk across the field, stepping from corpse to corpse and never touch the ground.

  “We done our duty,” one the men nearby muttered. “No one can’t say we aint done our duty and more.”

  “I think they done their duty too,” Ben said.

  At his field headquarters, Grant was immediately aware of the slackening of fire from the center and knew what it meant. He looked up at the sun, sliding toward the western horizon, then lowered his eyes toward the road from Crumps Landing, once more disappointed not to see Wallace’s column. Then he looked over his shoulder. No sign of Buell’s army crossing the Tennessee.

  Cord rode forward through the wave of gray behind the cannons. The sudden halt of the artillery barrage chilled him as much as the firing had. It meant either annihilation or surrender.

  He focused on the trail that Ben had made crawling toward the Union lines, moving through exhausted Confederate troops who lacked the energy after so many charges to advance and take their hard-earned victory and their prisoners.

  Rumble could see both defeat and victory in the composure of the Union soldiers he began to encounter. Officers were ordering men to stack arms, telling them their fight was over. They’d held long enough. It was late afternoon and the sun was casting long shadows amongst the trees and over the dead.

  There was pride in holding as long as they had.

  There was also the reluctant acceptance of surrender.

  Rumble asked for the 5th Ohio Cavalry, anxious to find Ben before the first Confederate units rounded up what remained of General Prentiss’ unit. He reached the sunken road where bodies dressed in blue were sprawled in a line left and right as far as he could see, like a fence of death.

  “5th Ohio?” Rumble called out.

  “Yo!” a voice called out to the right.

  Rumble rode that way, horse’s hooves picking carefully through the dead and wounded.

  “5th Ohio Cavalry?” Rumble asked a soldier’s whose face was sooted with black and uniform ripped and torn. Blood dripped from the man’s ear and his eyes were unfocused.

  “Some of us here,” the man said. He was rubbing his hands together as if washing them. “Some of us here. Some dead. Some ran. Some gone.”

  “Sergeant Major!” Ben was walking slowly down the road.

  Rumble jumped off the horse and ran to Ben. He wrapped his arms tight around him. “I’m so happy you’re alive.”

  Despite his exhaustion and illness, Ben smiled. “So am I. It was a hard day. But I fought.” As the older man let go of him, Ben indicated the Henry. “Thank you for the rifle. I fought. You’d have been proud of me.”

  Rumble stared at the rifle in confusion, then collected himself. “I’m glad you did your duty.”

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” Ben said. “General Prentiss has struck the colors. We’re to be prisoners.”

  Rumble ran a hand across Ben’s forehead. “You’re sweating and hot. Are you sick?”

  “A touch of something,” Ben admitted.

  A horse and rider came flying over the edge of the sunken road. Cord, buckskins stained with smoke and sweat, jerked back on the reins, taking in the bodies, then Rumble and Ben. He gestured north. “We need to get going.”

  Rumble shook his head. “We’re surrounded. I barely made it through.”

  “General Prentiss has ordered us to stack arms,” Ben added.

  “I don’t take well to orders or surrendering,” Cord said. “I just came through the entire Rebel army. Gonna take them a little bit to get organized. We can cut our way out, back to our lines.”

  Rumble reached out and grabbed the reins of Cord’s horse. “We must follow orders.”

  Cord ignored him and stared at Ben. “We move fast, we can get out of here before the rebels bag this bunch. Things are pretty disorganized.” He dismounted. “We can’t take the roads or trails. So we leave the horses, stay to thick growth. Come on, son.”

  Ben looked from Cord to Rumble. Then he took a step toward Cord. “I’m not surrendering. It wasn’t the way I was raised.”

  A twitch of a smile touched Rumble’s lips and he broke open his shotgun, checking to make sure he had two live rounds. “Let’s go.”

  Cord led the way into the woods behind the sunken road, Ben behind him, Rumble bringing up the rear. They slowly wove through the forest, staying off the paths, hearing occasional firing and the moans of the
wounded they passed.

  “Wallace is arriving, sir. He’s filling in on the right flank, anchoring on Owl Creek.”

  Ulysses S. Grant took the news from the courier without comment. Wallace was hours late, but he was finally here and sorely needed. Prentiss had surrendered, giving up over two thousand men in the Hornet’s Nest, but he’d held for five hours. Long enough for the army to survive today. Darkness was falling.

  “General, things are going decidedly against us,” one of the staff officers observed.

  Grant didn’t spare the man a glance. “Not at all, sir. We’re whipping them now. The enemy has done all he can do today. They can’t break our lines tonight. It’s too late.”

  Unseen by the others, Grant’s left hand was inside the pocket of his dusty blue blouse, fingers curled around Rumble’s flask. He ached to pull the flask out, because despite his words, he knew his army had been badly battered today. He had the entire Confederate army to his front. A river to his rear. And no sign of Buell’s reinforcements.

  “Has anyone seen Sergeant Major Rumble or Chief Scout Cord?” Grant asked.

  The replies were all negative. Grant’s hand tightened on the flask and he started to pull it out, but halted as Sherman rode up, bleeding from several minor wounds.

  “Cump,” Grant said. “How are you faring?”

  Sherman took Grant’s arm and steered him away from all the other officers. “We got beat up pretty bad, Sam. Prentiss is gone with all his men.”

  “I know.”

  “Where’s Buell?” Sherman asked.

  “No idea.”

  “What are you going to do, Sam?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  Sherman took a step back in surprise. “But—” he had no words.