“I got me a devil feel,” Wylie said. He sounded uneasy. I had not expected that.
“The cautious come to rights,” Barnaby told him, with concern flecking his eyes. “That’s what me governor always said, and he lived to be fifty. Careful is clever, and clever is careful, Captain Wylie.”
Barnaby gave his mount a tap with the reins and we followed him into the gloaming.
The air felt cooler of a sudden. Perhaps it was the night drift off the swamp.
What if we rode smack into Lott’s command? Well, at least the Reverend Mr. Hitchens and his people would have some warning.
I knew I was riding with men who would fight. But the Colt in my hand felt like my only friend. The Colt, and the Testament thick in my pocket. My bloodied souvenir of Philadelphia.
Then I heard it.
Not a sound. But the absence of sound.
Nature reads man well.
The world had gone still as the grave.
Twas a world of eyes.
All watching.
The others sensed it, too. I felt them tighten.
The trees opened a little and I tried to sense our position. If I was right, the camp was just to our left, behind a rise. But shadows trick us. And we had ridden into a shadowed world.
The air was cool, but I was sweating a torrent. As I had done before a dozen battles and half a hundred nameless scraps in India. Twas hatefully familiar. I felt what I had prayed I might leave behind: The ready hand of Abel Jones the Killer.
Suddenly, a wonder pierced the evening. Twas voices raised in song, a sturdy hymn. As beautiful as Heaven on a Sunday it was. With harmonies as glorious as love.
The firing started but a moment later. The shooting and the shouting and the screams. We had no bugle, but we turned as one. And charged into the Valley of the Shadow.
FIFTEEN
THE INDIAN SHOT WYLIE DOWN THE MOMENT WE broke from the trees. But it was the reflex of a man surprised, not an ambush. Broke Stick had failed in his task. He failed to hear our coming.
Perched too close to the doings the Indian was, amid the wild alarm of the massacre, the howling and the gunfire, the hoof-thumps and whinnies, and the crackling of burning shacks. Perhaps he sensed no threat that night and relaxed his vigilance. Or perhaps he was tired from his midnight gadabouts. In any case, a fatal choice it was, that slackening of attention, and the Indian knew it the instant he saw us. A look of surprise spoiled his face as we burst from the darkness. There was death in his firelit eyes, and the death was his own. It made him seem a man like you or me.
He barely saw us in time to raise his revolver and fire. But shoot he did, before any of us could aim. He fired and barked a warning that went unheard in the bloody madness, doing his sentry’s duty at the last.
Wylie, who rode closest to the Indian, paid the price for us all.
Backward the captain fell, pistol spinning off as he clutched his face. His hat sailed away and blood plumed from his head. Even had I not seen the spew of gore, I would have known him dead by the way he tumbled. Lifeless men are rag dolls stuffed with lead. Wylie crashed to earth beside a shanty. Flames painted the walls and lit the captain’s features. His horse charged onward into the mêlée.
Broke Stick smiled.
For an instant he smiled, but no longer. Barnaby and Raines both gunned him down, the young man wheeling to fire a second time into the crumpled figure. A wall collapsed and flames reached for the Indian. A ribbon in Broke Stick’s hair took fire, then the hair itself lit up. But he was burning elsewhere now, among the damned, and did not even twitch as the fire explored him.
All these were the acts of crumpled seconds. The speed of violence slays the man untrained, the heart unready. For every shot that I report, a dozen more were fired. For every scream set down, a hundred sounded.
“Get off the horses,” I shouted. “Get down, for God’s sake.”
I swung out of the saddle, a clumsy pendulum, trying to stop my horse from rushing onward. I had the measure of the doings, see, although the details blurred. Beyond the burning huts the preaching ground had become a killing ground, as I foresaw. I did not know how many men Lott had with him, since some had fallen across the weeks and might not have been replaced. Still, there could be as many as a dozen.
I saw only three on horseback, herding the Negroes. The rest had dismounted to butcher with a method. For the cavalry will give you a fright, but the infantry does the killing. A pistol discharged from the saddle will not strike half so true as the one fired by a man with his heels planted. As long as we stayed on horseback, we were no more than targets on offer. And some of Lott’s disciples had seen us now.
Amid the tortured Negroes, amid the fallen and falling, Lott stood out. Hat off and hair awry, his beard waved and his stony features glistened. A pistol stretched his left hand, while a cutlass in his right hacked into man-meat. Wherever he went, blood rained. He slashed at praying hands and fleeing backs. His lips moved, but the noise destroyed his words. It looked as though no human could withstand him.
If this was not the end of days, it was a hint of Hell.
Alone of all his men, Lott cared nothing for us. Slaughter was his purpose on this earth. But the others saw us clearly now, for the fires drew our outlines. While they were creatures flirting through the shadows, too far and faint and quick for our revolvers.
“Get down!” I screamed as loudly as I could. Barnaby was out of the saddle and scampering. He, too, saw things with a survivor’s eyes. But young Raines was at risk, with his fine horse rearing up as he wasted bullets avenging a fallen friend.
Perhaps, for that one moment, death enticed him.
The shifts of combat come as quick as lightning. Of a sudden, we were at a disadvantage. Momentum had been on our side when we flashed out of the trees, but the Indian had blunted the shock before it had any effect. Three men in a muddle was all we were now.
We had not made a plan, see. I like a plan, like any proper soldier, but there are times, and this was one, when all you can do is go forward and trust your arm. It is a dangerous course, but not all battle fits into a staff tent. And I know how to do it, how to hit an enemy from behind and cut into him. But losing Wylie broke our charge, and Raines was new to fighting. If Shiloh had been his first real scrap, it only would have confused him. It is in your second or third fight that you start to learn.
Raines would not see another fight if he did not dismount. Rifles turned toward him, willing to interrupt their Negro-killing with a gray coat on offer.
A white man darted from the trees, running to where Raines strained in his saddle. The attacker held a pistol in each hand.
I shot low, beneath the rearing belly of the horse. I saw the wince of the hip, the stutter of the leg, and the man went down. I let go of my mount and ran for Raines, for I realized he could not hear me. I am not sure he would have heard any man. He looked the cavalier, he did, valiant on his stallion. But such men die for nothing. And I needed him.
His horse nearly trampled me, though I had plenty of ginger in my step. I tugged the boy’s spur then grabbed his boot. His wild face turned toward me. He almost shot me, finger tightening on his trigger, before he realized who I was.
“Get down!” I shouted. “You’re naught but a target, boy.”
Then I ran for the shadows, as fast as my bad leg could go. Along the way, I put another bullet into the man I had brought down. He was armed and alive, see, until my bullet bit into his spine. I snatched up one of his pistols, the one in his left hand. For he had led with his right as he ran toward us. The pistol from his left hand would be the richer, by one round at least, perhaps by more, for some men will fire the gun in their favored hand empty before they remember the other paw is armed.
I felt a presence behind me, as soldiers do, and turned to fire.
Twas Raines. Following me obediently. Behind his back, his horse pranced off and settled.
I could not see Barnaby, but knew he could handle himself. A man popped
up with a rifle and I fired at him quickly, without aiming. I could not hit him at the range he offered, but I wanted to unsettle his own aim. And when he saw the pistol flame, he faltered, cringing for cover. Just long enough to get us into the darkness of the undergrowth.
Some Negroes ran. I saw them. Breaking through the cordon we had spoiled. Some would be saved. We had done that, at least. But I could not get a clear look at our situation. For the flaming shacks had filled my eyes too long. Though my back was turned toward the fires, they still burned in my vision. There is a rule of fighting in the dark, see. You never look toward the source of light. But time had been the fiercest of our enemies, and the flames had been our guide unto our enemies. Now the darkness trapped me like a cave. I needed time to heal my eyes. And Raines would, too.
Twas odd. All others blurred, but I saw Lott. He stood in the very center of the preaching ground, a musket shot from where we crouched in the brush. His cutlass rose, and then the blade descended. With a machine’s regularity. Now and then the blade caught in flesh and bone, and his shoulders turned to wrench the metal free. He splashed the fresh blue night with stars of blood. Despite the range and my dazzled eyes, I would have fired on him. But trapped and wounded Negroes surged between us, running to and fro, crying horridly. My round would not hit Lott, but might hit them.
Seconds. All this happened in seconds.
“What do we do?” Raines asked me.
“Don’t look toward the flames. Just follow after.” I dashed, if so I may describe my blundering scuttle, deeper into the trees. The young man’s footfalls crashed at my heels. Bullets chased us.
The world flickered and raged.
Lott’s men were good killers. But they were not good soldiers. They did not shout out messages of cooperation. Some hunted for us, but others turned back to the Negroes, each man to his chosen delight.
Then I saw one tumble from a horse. I thought Barnaby had dropped him. But Cupid rushed from the shadows, his old dragoon pistol a great chop in his hand. He used it to beat the fallen rider to death, then wrenched a revolver from his victim’s grip.
He charged into the maelstrom. Twas all wrong. He ran for Lott, blasting at others as he went, not counting his rounds, surely unaware of how many bullets remained in the captured gun. He brought a rifleman down and leapt the body. Heading straight for Lott. Fighting off the clutch of his wounded fellows, shoving all flesh from his path, trampling the dead and the dying.
He raised the pistol.
Lott saw him late. Cupid’s pistol almost touched his head. I could not see the Negro’s fingers, but felt him pull the trigger.
Then he stopped cold. Astounded at the failure of the gun.
Before the Negro moved again, Lott shot him. Muzzle to his torso. Cupid staggered backward. He almost tripped at a corpse, but kept himself upright. Fighting to steady himself. Amazed at what had happened to his body, he stared down at the hand clapped below his heart.
Lott’s cutlass flashed. It met the base of the Negro’s neck and hewed deep into his collar. One dark hand closed over the steel, then went limp. When Cupid fell, he took the blade down with him. Lott had to bend over and place a boot on the fellow’s chest to retrieve it.
All of Lott’s men had dismounted now. Or perhaps the horsemen had fallen to those Negroes who fought back. My vision was returning, but battle always keeps its share of secrets. I could not place or number all our enemies. And Mr. Barnaby had gone missing.
Seconds sprawled and minutes widened. A woman with her arms hacked to stumps staggered off with her babe in her teeth as a cat will. Blood covered all, luminous as ice. Children thought they could hide in the near, afraid to stray too far from dying parents. Lott’s men cleared the brush of them with Bowie knives. They might have been the innocents of Bethlehem. Negro men, and women, too, fought back. But bare fists are no match for blades and bullets.
I had not seen the Reverend Mr. Hitchens.
Then Lott’s men made a mistake. The riflemen nearest us turned back from the hunt to resume the killing of Negroes. Perhaps they thought that we were dead or running. I never will know.
“Keep you from me so we are not one target,” I told Raines, as I prepared to rise and plunge into the stew of it. “And do not shoot until close enough to hit.”
Even then, I thought our plight near hopeless. But I could not watch more of such a slaughter. Not without one last attempt at justice.
I knew the boy would come, for he had heart.
We charged out of the dark. The enemy’s eyes suffered from the firelight now. When they turned again to meet us, it was too late. I killed one man a body length away, before he could swing his rifle for my head. My bullet sought his heart, if heart he had. And Raines brought down the man who blocked his path, shooting him between the hips, then clubbing his skull with the pistol’s butt.
How many were left? I saw but three white faces on that field, not counting Lott or Raines. And Lott was no longer white, but painted crimson. His face and beard were seared with blood, and his hands were crusted brown. Flames blazed in his endless depth of eyes.
I heard a different scream. It come from Raines. Shrieking like a banshee he was. Twas the cry we all would come to know, that Rebel yell.
He had surpassed my progress. I could not match the pace of his good legs.
He ran for Lott.
But he could not clear his aim. Limb-robbed bodies, sculpted by the Devil, collided with the boy, smearing him with blood. Others wraithed across his line of fire.
I glimpsed another fellow, a white man with a hatchet, rushing to take Raines from behind. Then another of Lott’s men appeared.
I had a clean line on the second man and put him down.
But Raines was running to his death. I saw it clearly. I shouted to him. But he was gone beyond my here and now.
I saw it as a soldier sees. Friends have died as I watched, nearby and helpless.
The fellow with the hatchet loomed at his back.
Raines wheeled with perfect instinct and pulled the trigger.
His gun was as empty as Cupid’s pistol had been.
Raines shoved the muzzle into the bearded face, stabbing the barrel at the fellow’s eyes. With his left hand he sought and grasped the wrist that guided the hatchet. But anyone could see Lott’s man was stronger. He looked as if he would break his opponent’s back at any moment. Raines fought desperately, but his feet lost purchase as his spine arched rearward. I saw his gritted face in profile. There was no hunger for death in him now, but a famished appetite for life.
I lurched to the side, trying to get in a shot, and collided with a child. The little fellow screamed as we both went down.
Still, I am quick, if clumsy of leg nowadays. I come up fast and aiming.
Wonder filled the hatchet wielder’s face. The tool dropped from his grasp and he collapsed, heavily, into Raines’s embrace.
Barnaby must have shot him, I thought. Or else one of the Negroes had armed himself.
Then I saw Lott. Lifting his revolver toward Raines. With a steady hand and nothing to block his aim.
I could not have gotten a clean line of fire in time to stop him. But I saw something else in that last second.
Lott’s son appeared, close by, in the human wreckage.
I shouted out his name:
“Isaac!”
The boy turned and I shot him. Twice. The first shot tore him, and the second slew him.
Lott had faltered when I called that name. As I had known he would. He swung about in time to see his son die.
He did not even try to take revenge. I never heard a man scream as he did. Twas a lamentation mighty as plagues and floods. Lott dropped his cutlass and his pistol, plunging toward the boy. Howling he was, until you thought shreds of lung must spit from his mouth.
His face summed up the torments of this earth.
The shooting stopped, although the shrieks continued, the calls of pain, of loss, of mortal dread.
Lott fell
to his knees before his son. The light from the fires lapped his blood-caked face. He might have been in hell or a burning slaughterhouse. A shriveling creature, he knelt among the slain. Clutching his boy by the shoulders, meaning to lift him. But a corpse is a selfish thing and will not help. Lott bent over the boy, all blood and agony. The burning shanties no longer lit his eyes. Now it was the heart’s inferno that made them glow so hugely, consuming him from within. Wailing, he gathered up the boy and pulled the heaviness to him. Drawing his son against his chest, he set to howling like the maddest dog.
He raised his tear-racked face toward the stars.
Lott found no ready Bible verses now. Only an animal’s bellow to summon God.
There was naught else under Heaven. Only his son. He held him as though he might squeeze life back into the body.
The boy’s head lolled, white-eyed, and his arms poked out like sticks.
Lott drew him up for a father’s kiss and stroked his hair as he buried the boy in his shoulder.
I saw Raines walk toward him. Slowly. Eyes hunting for the pistol or cutlass the old man had dropped.
I did not want Raines to have that deed in his memory. So I stepped forward and lifted my captured gun, my own Colt long shot empty.
But I would not have Lott on my conscience, either. Although the memory of the son is worse.
Cupid rose from the dead. His shirt was bibbed with gore and he made slow progress, staggering, almost as if he were blind and smelling his way. Raines shied off instantly, for his body understood deep matters that his brain could not. Cupid’s left arm dangled and his cloven shoulder drooped. But a Bowie knife gleamed in his strong right hand.
He moved as if guided by devils. Perhaps he was already dead, returned to earth to drag Lott down to Hell. His face did not look of this world at all. Twas cleansed of all the things that make us human.
Lott rocked his dead son in his arms and wept.
Cupid paused above him, blocking the firelight and casting Lott into the shadows. He raised the knife. Breathing hugely, fueling himself for the blow. Blood throbbed from his barely living carcass.
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