This Scorched Earth

by William Gear

  What had been fields were now trampled mud flats, and word was that all the stock had been snatched up by either Federal or Confederate troops during the battle. Where the Clemons family was going to find a draft animal to pull their plow was anybody’s guess, but until they did, their once proud fields were going to remain weed patches.

  Sarah pointed west beyond the tavern into the savaged trees. “You ought to see out beyond Little Mountain and down to Morgan’s Woods. They paid me to haul dead men out of the woods and off of Oberson’s fields.” She made a face. “I didn’t tell Maw. And don’t you, neither. But the things I saw? Billy, they was the most horrible mutilated corpses. Don’t you never go off to war to be marched out and shot like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean pieces of men, others with their guts blown out, mangled.” She shrugged, gaze distant. “Wasn’t nothing like the ones what died at the farm.” Expression clearing, she added, “And now I’ve seen it, and I don’t want to see it never again. When I find the right man, I’m leaving Arkansas. Going someplace fancy. Maybe New Orleans where they don’t have no war. Or New York, or Philadelphia.”

  “Back to satin dresses, huh? Well, at least you can court this gentleman caller with your belly full. Assuming he ever comes.” Billy smiled widely, his chest feeling as if it were about to burst with pride. The Hancocks, because of him, not only had their horses, but a future. Whenever Paw got back, he was going to have to fetch up with that new rifle.

  Billy drove the wagon onto the Telegraph Wire Road, surprised to find that what had been a country lane was now a low and wide swale. The clearing around Elkhorn Tavern had to be four or five times the size it had been, the ground trampled and trails worn into the dirt where lines of tents had stood.

  Sarah pulled her bonnet up to cover her gold-blond hair as they pulled into the rutted yard. Billy set the brake, jumping down to offer her his hand.

  Pointedly, she ignored it, dropping lightly beside him in a puffing wave of gingham.

  Old Ezra Taylor, long-stemmed pipe in hand, stepped out the door, calling, “Well, well, it’s Billy Hancock and the lovely young Sarah. What can we do for you today?”

  “Got hides to sell,” Billy told him as he clumped up the steps. “That and we’re looking for flour, cornmeal, candles, and lard.”

  Taylor cocked his head, peering first at Billy and then at Sarah, his dark brown eyes amused. “Well, first off, the tanyard’s closed. Maybe forever. Had their belly full of the fighting and packed up and left. Flour? Cornmeal? Haw! Good luck.”

  He waved the pipe stem. “Oh, they’s some. But it’s hidden away in the woods by individual families and dipped into for special occasions. Now, candles? Yankees took every one. God Hisself knows when we’ll see more. Can’t even make ’em. Sure, we can spin wicks, but where you gonna get the tallow? Every cotton-picking beef cow in the country’s been eaten. There’s nothing to render for the tallow. Same thing with the pigs. Or do you still have that old sow hid away?”

  “Yankees got her the second day they was at our place,” Sarah confided.

  “Well, there you have it.”

  Billy wrinkled his nose. “What are you smoking?”

  “Smells wretched, don’t it?” Old man Taylor looked askance at his pipe. “Chokecherry bark and grape leaves. You can’t find a twist of tobacco in this country to save your life. So I made this up. It ain’t the same, but at least it feels like normal.”

  “Well, maybe we’ll find something down to Pratt’s store,” Sarah said, voice soft to mask her disappointment.

  “I’ll save you the trip, Miss Hancock,” Taylor told her. “There’s nothing to be had. Shelves are empty but for some crockery. Same in Bentonville and Fayetteville.” He paused for effect. “Come right down to it, bellies is going to grow a mite tight until crops come up.”

  “We don’t need much,” Sarah insisted, giving him her best beguiling smile. “Just a jar of flour. Maybe the same of cornmeal. Maw’s birthday is coming up, and we wanted to make her a special celebration.”

  “Ah, you must have had good news then. I’d been worried.”

  “About what?” Billy crossed his arms.

  “About the battle. Knowing your Paw, James, and Butler was involved, and given the number of the dead…”

  “They’re in Mississippi,” Sarah insisted. “They were nowhere close to here, sir.”

  Taylor narrowed an eye. “It’s the big battle at Shiloh Church that I’m talking about. Pittsburg Landing. That one.”

  Billy and Sarah glanced at each other, mystified.

  Billy spoke first: “Where’s Shiloh Church?”

  “Tennessee, just north of Corinth, Mississippi. Albert Sidney Johnston marched forty thousand men up to beat the Federals. They fought for nearly three days. Near two thousand Secesh killed … another eight thousand wounded. A quarter of the Reb army … gone. Just like that.”

  He waved his pipe stem at the surroundings. “Makes what happened around here seem like child’s play. Van Dorn only lost fifteen hundred dead and wounded. Not even a tenth of his army.”

  Sarah had gone white, swallowing hard. “We hadn’t heard. God, I hope Paw and Butler are all right. And we have another brother there. Philip. He’s a surgeon with the Fourth Tennessee.”

  “At least he’d have been out of the fight and safe.”

  She shook her head slowly, and Billy could see the pain and panic behind her eyes as she said, “I know what it’s like, Mr. Taylor. Caring for them while they’re crying and dying. Washing away the blood, seeing the life drain out of them. It’s a horror if Paw or Butler was shot or butchered, but a nightmare if Philip had to watch them die.”

  “So.” Billy shifted uneasily, wondering if Paw were even alive to bring him that new rifle. “Did the South surrender? Does this mean they’re whipped and the war’s over?”

  “Just the opposite, young Billy.” He pointed at the telegraph wire, recently fixed after the battle. “The Confederate congress passed a conscription bill a week or so back. They are going to fight it out to the bitter end.”

  “What’s a conscription bill?” Billy cocked his head.

  “Conscription,” Sarah told him. “It means they can order you to be a soldier with a stroke of the pen.”

  “Anyone over eighteen,” Taylor agreed. “Local governments, mayors, county men, the voting precincts. The government can impress you into the service.”

  “Then, since I’m fifteen, they can’t touch me.”

  Taylor shrugged, but Sarah turned on him, eyes fiery blue. She jabbed a finger into his chest. “You listen to me, Billy Hancock. Don’t let ’em catch you. I was with them soldiers, and I know it as God’s truth. Some of them were fifteen, and they didn’t look nothing like as old as you do. We got enough men in the fight with Paw, Butler, and Philip. We’re doing our share.”

  Taylor pulled the pipe from his mouth, adding, “I’d listen to your sister, Billy. I’ve had just about everybody through here, Confederates, Yankees, state militia, Indian regiments, and God alone knows who’s going to be next. This I can tell you, having heard them all: it’s going to be a long war, and before it’s over, they’re going to be putting every man in the fight who can hold a rifle. Reckon they’re going to want you, Billy. Strong as you are, tough as we all know you to be, they’ll make you fight for one side or the other.”

  Sarah took a deep breath. “It’d break Maw’s heart.”

  Billy scuffed the worn wood on the stair tread. “Guess they’d have to find me first, huh? Ain’t nobody better than me when it comes to hiding in the woods.”

  When he met Sarah’s eyes, he almost flinched. It hit him that he’d never seen Sarah so scared.

  25

  May 30, 1862

  The last time that Butler had set foot in Little Rock’s imposing Anthony House Hotel it had been as a supplicant to Thomas Carmichael Hindman. Now he strode imperiously into the lobby as First Lieutenant Hancock, a member of Major General Hin
dman’s staff. The gold piping on his sleeves and the polished buttons added to the dashing effect.

  Paw would have called him a strutting peacock—a thought that brought a heartbroken smile to Butler’s lips. Paw—along with more than six hundred others from Bragg’s Second Corps—was listed among the missing after the bloody disaster at Shiloh.

  As a tonic to his constant worry, Butler imagined Paw’s amused distaste for his current sartorial affectations. Could see his father’s face screw up as the old man muttered, “You look like a damned popinjay.”

  Yes, he would have loved that with all his heart. It would mean old James was still alive instead of blown to pieces or rotting in a brush thicket where he had crawled away to die.

  Stop it! Don’t go there.

  He already wondered if his sanity was eroding. And the thought that it might be scared him to death. God, he couldn’t get the battle out of his mind or thoughts. The others didn’t seem to share his terrors. Hindman, despite the explosion of his horse, remained a rock. The others—though they often stared into space, expressions pinched—never let on that they were anything but pillars of strength.

  Ghosts. Too many damned ghosts.

  He thought he heard a scream—a man dying in pain and fear—and started to turn, only to have the sound cut off, as if it had never been. Several times he’d heard things. Voices. Sounds that others, when he asked about them, had not heard.

  Concentrate. You are here. In the hotel. An officer and a gentleman.

  Butler straightened his gold-piped sleeves, aware of the glances he and his party received from the folks idling in the lobby.

  With him were Hindman’s aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Jerome P. Wilson, a planter from Mississippi’s landed gentry. Following closely came Hindman’s new commissary officer, Major John Palmer. Palmer had been the general’s old law partner from Helena, Arkansas.

  Butler and his companions had just checked into their rooms at the Anthony House that afternoon. General Hindman himself, along with his young wife Mollie and their three children, were renting a house in Little Rock.

  Additionally, Hindman’s adjutant and chief of staff, the one-time Little Rock attorney Major Robert Newton, had his own residence in the city; after Shiloh the man’s family was more than delighted to have him at home.

  The final member of Hindman’s staff was Major Francis Shoup, who had been in charge of Hardee’s artillery at Shiloh and had now been conscripted into Hindman’s new command. A graduate of West Point, Shoup was an ordnance specialist and key to Hindman’s plans.

  Their task could be simply stated: save Arkansas from Union conquest. A curiously daunting prospect given the reality on the ground. After General Van Dorn’s defeat at Pea Ridge he had stripped just about everything of military value from the state, including men, small arms, artillery, equipment, and supplies. Hindman—come hell or high water—had been sent to save the situation.

  How? That was the question of the day. To Butler, it seemed that the only thing Tom Hindman had in his favor was an arrogant, vainglorious, and self-righteous belief in himself. If that was the single necessary criterion for success, the sawed-off little general had it in spades.

  Butler had had little more than fifteen minutes to refresh himself in his room when a knock came at his door.

  Lieutenant Wilson gave him a salute, saying, “The general sends his compliments, sir. He has just arrived for our meeting.”

  “Where?”

  Wilson’s smile enlarged. “The barroom, sir. Seven-thirty.”

  “I’ll see you there.” Butler closed the door. Leaned his head against it. Nearly two months had passed since he’d ridden from the disaster at the Hornet’s Nest, followed the Corinth Road south in the darkness, and finally located Tom Hindman’s battered body in a hospital tent outside of town.

  The notion that anyone could “barely survive the explosion of his horse” would have been ludicrous had Butler not witnessed it with his own eyes on Duncan Field. Let alone the other horrors that preyed on his mind after the battle.

  Since then, he’d been unable to sleep. The macabre images of blood-misty gore, the eerie shrieks and screams, the impossibility of things he’d seen with his own eyes, kept reaching out of his deepest brain to claw their way into his dreams.

  A soldier he’d seen dragging himself forward with his hands, his hips shattered, legs blown away, would look up as Butler rode past, but instead of the black-bearded man, it would be Paw’s face, or Philip’s. With a cry, Butler would jerk awake, heart hammering, skin gone clammy.

  The dreams were one thing. When the images popped into his head during waking moments, they left him scared and sweating, panting for breath.

  He’d given his report to Hindman outside Corinth, struggling to keep the tears from welling; but the general had lain there, his blue eyes distant. The only sign that he’d heard was the quivering at the corner of his mouth.

  When Butler had finished, Tom Hindman had said, “It’s all right, Lieutenant. If the cost of victory was our entire brigade, it was a price well paid.”

  That had been but hours before the first hints of disaster were carried down from the battlefield by broken and retreating soldiers. Despite that, in the following days the generals continued to hawk the carnage at Shiloh as a triumph of Confederate arms.

  “If we inflicted such a damaging defeat,” one squint-eyed sergeant who sipped from a tin cup filled with whiskey had asked, “wouldn’t the damned Federals be running for the Ohio instead of strengthening their forces up at Pittsburg Landing? And why are us graybacks digging trenches and building abatis around Corinth?”

  Before that question could be answered, Hindman had been given overall command of the Trans-Mississippi District, consisting of Arkansas, Louisiana north of the Red River, Indian Territory, and all of Missouri.

  They had traveled through Memphis—a city in panic and on the verge of being abandoned to the relentless advance of the Federal forces. There Hindman had requisitioned what few rifles, artillery rounds, and military supplies remained. In addition, he drew a million dollars in Confederate bills from the Memphis banks to cover his expected expenses in Arkansas.

  I am home, Butler thought in relief as he walked into the hotel’s bar—a brick establishment attached to the main building. He found the door guarded by two privates with Enfield muskets, and the interior cleared of patrons.

  Major General Hindman, still on crutches, was perched over one of the billiard tables, arranging the balls on the felt. Major Newton, consulting a map in his hand, was watching the placement of the balls. Shoup, arms crossed, was staring at the arrangement with a frown.

  Behind the bar, a single bartender was pouring what looked like sherry from a cut-crystal decanter.

  At Butler’s approach, Hindman cried, “Good to see you, Lieutenant. No need for a salute. This is an informal occasion.”

  As Butler looked down at the table he realized it was for pool, having six pockets. He’d heard the game was played with fifteen numbered balls, but this table had more than thirty, scrounged from other tables nearby. In addition, strings had been laid out in patterns that Butler recognized as representing Arkansas’s rivers.

  At that moment, Lieutenant Wilson entered—glanced around to make sure that everyone was accounted for—and crossed to the bar where he summarily dismissed the bartender.

  As the man exited, Hindman raised his hands, balancing on his crutches. “What do you think? Lamplight, velvet wallpaper, an ample supply of sherry, wine, and good spirits, and complete privacy. What better place to figure our way out of one hell of a nasty mess?”

  “And a mess it is,” Newton said, squinting at his map and comparing it with the balls on the pool table.

  Lieutenant Wilson brought a silver tray bearing glasses of sherry as Hindman gestured at the tabletop. “What do you see, gentlemen?”

  “Arkansas,” Butler noted. “With a lot of billiard balls in the northeast. And … Oh, I see. The striped ones are Fed
eral positions, aren’t they?”

  “Very good, Lieutenant,” Newton agreed. He pointed with a pool cue. “These few balls here at Helena, and here at Arkansas Point on the lower river, these at Little Rock, and this one at Fort Smith comprise the roughly fifteen hundred troops under our command.”

  He shifted his pointer to the huge collection of balls in the north-central region around what Butler recognized as the Batesville area. “That’s General Curtis and his estimated fifteen thousand men. Here, at Jacksonport, are General Fred Steel’s five thousand Yankees. These balls here on the northeast along the Mississippi are the Federal gunboats advancing on Memphis.” He looked from eye to eye. “Unless God grants us a miracle, Memphis can’t last the month.”

  “What’s the number eight ball down in the southwest?” Shoup asked, pointing.

  “That,” said Hindman dryly, “is my old bosom friend Governor Rector who abandoned Little Rock and fled to Hot Springs, taking the state government with him.”

  Shoup took a glass of sherry and sipped. “Is there any good news here?”

  Hindman shifted on his crutches. “Our predecessor, Brigadier General Roane, declared martial law in Pulaski County on May seventeenth. I have inherited that order.” He paused. “I am declaring martial law for the entire state.”

  Newton and Palmer, lawyers both, simultaneously said, “But that’s…” They looked at each other, surprised.

  “Illegal,” Newton finished. “According to the Confederate constitution, only the president, in this case, Jefferson Davis, can declare martial law.”

  Hindman raised an eyebrow. “Nevertheless, Roane did it with General Beauregard’s blessing and approval—in writing no less—and based on that precedent, I will extend it.” He raised a finger. “Now, I’m not in a position to question my commanding general. Nor would I dare to. Do you get my point, gentlemen?”

  Newton and Palmer were nodding. Butler looked at Lieutenant Wilson, who simply shrugged.

  “What about Rector?” Palmer asked. “He’s a bit of a prig. He won’t take well to this.”