The Shiloh Series: Books 1-3

by Phillip Bryant

  “No, but I don’t think the cavalry has done a very good job of really looking in these woods.”

  “Lead on, Tecumseh.” Paul motioned the way forward.

  “Keep a sharp eye on anything that looks disturbed or out of the ordinary; they have to make their way around the town somehow, and these trees would keep them invisible from a distance.”

  “You’d better be ready to shoot with that thing.”

  “This?” Philip held out the Sharps.

  “Yes, that!” Paul snapped.

  “Maybe I’ll chamber a round. Then will you feel safe?”

  “I think there’s a reason the army don’t arm its chaplains.”

  Philip winked. “Officer’s prerogative. Let’s split up, keep in sight of each other but off these trails. We’ve swung around the town as far as I could think of; now we jus’ need to look.”

  “Split up? This is your fool idea. You don’t even know how many of them there really are,” Paul protested.

  “Nor any real idea what we’d do with them if we found them, but we’re here.”

  Paul shook his head.

  His brother was right: Philip hadn’t a clue what he would do, or even a valid reason for traipsing into the woods looking for escaped prisoners of war. It was not a chaplain’s responsibility to hunt down fugitives and brandish a carbine like he was a trooper. He wasn’t.

  “Remember that Rebel officer I told you we met on our way down here? I think he’s one of these escaped prisoners.”

  “The one who said he was paroled.” Paul looked at Philip and snorted. “An’ you let him go, that one?”

  “Shut up and just go that way!”

  “This is stupid!” Paul called out. He stood a long moment, hands on his hips and looking belligerent. The woods were quiet and calm but for the occasional chirping of birds, and as far as he could see, there was nothing to see but trees.

  “Just go that way and keep an eye out!” Philip called back.

  Paul stomped off dutifully, if not reluctantly, and Philip took a few paces away from the trail. The forest was thick, though cut by patches of clearing for planted fields. By sticking to the trees, one could easily walk by unnoticed by anyone. The forest paths, cut by countless youths and families, were narrow, and the undergrowth to either side was inches deep with dead leaves, brush, thorns, and decay. It was not impossible that they might move right by anyone determined enough to stay concealed.

  The absurdity of the search was not lost upon Philip. Paul probably had more experience and a better eye for detail than he—Philip had never taken to hunting. The army had handed him his first weapon. The life of a traveling preacher was not fraught with the dangers others faced, and the livelihood was just enough to get by. The table had always had its share of fresh game, tithed from anyone who wanted to share of their haul. For Philip, killing was primarily a thing of duty when the man opposite was intent on killing you by the same means. This was different, even if he was armed with a carbine. Shooting it was easy: load and fire. Hitting his target like a hunter was something else. I should have given this to Paul, Philip told himself.

  Every pile of leaves could be hiding something; every shadowy bush could be someone crouching behind a tree. Every crunch of his foot upon the leaves became unnerving as he strained his eyes to take in all that was to be seen. Even if the escaped Rebs weren’t armed, they were going to be dangerous if cornered.

  “Paul?” Philip called.

  “What?” came the faint reply.

  “You told the posse where to find us, right?” The posse of his own imagination, the sudden thought that if the Confederates were nearby they’d be less likely to do something rash if they knew more people were on the way.

  “To find our bloody corpses? Would have been the thing to do,” Paul said under his breath. “They’re combing east of us!”

  “Right, good!” Philip called back. He tried to keep an eye behind him as well as in front. They could be alone, they could be in the company of desperate men; it was anyone’s guess. If the Rebels failed to stay out of sight, a confrontation was inevitable.

  “Make sure your pistol is loaded,” Philip called out.

  Paul rolled his eyes and cocked a finger. “Loaded for bear!”

  ****

  Jackson Kearns was enjoying the ride. Many months of painful recuperation and the weeks on foot made the jaunt on horseback something to sink his memory into: that the cavalryman was indeed the luckiest of men to be riding a horse and not slogging it on foot everywhere. The troopers were getting testy, however.

  “You tole us they’d be this way,” Sergeant Millidge said with a frown.

  “I said I thought they’d be in this area. It was a guess, Sergeant,” Jackson replied.

  “You led us north of town, an’ we worked from there an’ nuthin’. You better not be playin’ us for fools,” Millidge griped.

  “I’m just doing what Lieutenant Fisher wanted me to. I’ve given myself up willingly. This was the way they were headed when I led you to Hopewell.”

  Millidge grunted and rested his hands on the pommel of his horse. There was no sign that anyone had been by here in a while. The leaves were thick upon the footpath. But the trails went this way and that and circled around upon themselves, some ending on side roads between breaks in the trees and others fading into thick tree and brush growth and ending abruptly.

  “We been lookin’ fer days, Sergeant, and not seen anything. Maybe he’s lyin’ to us and there ain’t no other prisoners out here,” one of the privates said as he shuffled through the thick leaves and kicked around a bush.

  “I assure you, Private, there’s two more out here, and one dangerous one too.” Jackson replied.

  Jackass probably is leading us in the wrong direction, Millidge thought to himself. “Come back, we’ll move further down.” He ordered his three troopers back into the saddle.

  “They definitely around here,” Jackson repeated, trying to sound like he knew he was on the right track.

  “They better be,” Millidge snapped.

  Chapter 21

  Woods West of Germantown, Ohio, August 20, 1862

  The trussing of Lewis to the tree had been the last straw, and Will knew it. The enemy would find Lewis without much delay. The note, cheeky in tone, was Will’s coup de gras. If it was his only accomplishment after eight days of skulking about in the dark of night, so be it, he thought. If Kearns was still about, he was keeping himself hidden. As long as he didn’t interfere with their movement, Will didn’t care where he was. He and Stephen were moving in daylight now, hoping against hope to put Germantown behind them. The trails were easy to follow in broad daylight, but caution told him to go slow, as more than once they were almost seen by farmers and children. Once, two men stood and talked for what seemed an eternity. He and Stephen were well hidden and close enough to judge what each man had eaten for breakfast. The going was slow.

  Stephen was troubled. Fredrick had been an easygoing companion, a friend for the four months in the stockade, not too puffed up by book learning, and in him Stephen had felt like he’d found another soul to commune with after his pard William fell at Shiloh. Now he too was gone, for reasons that defied understanding. There was little to chat about with Hunter, so he was alone with his thoughts, a strange place to be after being so long in the company of other soldiers. He’d seen many things since enlisting, but out-and-out murder was something new. He’d seen some of the men in the 6th Mississippi treat prisoners roughly or rifle the pockets of the wounded as they advanced on the Union camps at Shiloh, but nothing compared to having one of his own murder not one, but two of their number. Strangely, he felt sorry for Lewis Hopewell.

  The lieutenant had wanted to kill Lewis—retribution for his misdeeds. Stephen couldn’t argue with the logic of the judgment, but somehow he knew it wouldn’t be right to carry it out. He was secretly glad when the lieutenant tied Lewis to the tree instead. Even though it meant that he would eventually be found and t
heir own plans might come to nothing.

  “What you gonna do, Lieutenant?” Stephen had asked.

  “Leave ‘em.”

  “We ain’t gonna get out of here, are we?” Stephen asked, admitting it to himself.

  “Prolly; he gonna be found, an’ we got little time afore that.”

  “Think we should lay low till dark?”

  “No, we got to go now in the light.”

  Those were the last words exchanged between them these past hours as they dodged locals along the trails. They had been moving steadily, though cautiously, for more than forty-five minutes, and Stephen was beginning to think a little more hopefully about their chances when Will thrust an arm out, catching Stephen in the chest. They had just skirted a narrow band of trees between two plowed fields when the abrupt halt came. They were now back in a broad swath of forest with nothing but trees to either side.

  More farmers, Stephen thought. A faint crunching sound and then voices calling out to each other added urgency to their movements as both men stole off the path to find concealment.

  Will darted to the left and Stephen the right of the trail, and they burrowed under the musty layer of leaves. Voices faded in and out, followed by tense moments of dire silence. A wait of seconds would go by with nothing at all to be heard. Then, the sudden crack of a limb or a heavy footfall on dry leaves would remove any doubt that someone was approaching. It was now no longer a question of if they might get caught, but exactly when.

  The voices called out: two men, and they were approaching. The fugitives had become expert at concealment, but they’d never been approached so closely by anyone stumbling around in the woods, let alone intently looking for someone—as these men seemed to be. It was too late to run. Will cursed silently. It had been something of foolishness to risk tying Lewis up to the tree to be found as he surely had been. It was also foolish to disobey one’s captain and hope to move up the ladder of command. That had never stopped Will before.

  Will had lost sight of Stephen, and he dared not raise his head to see who was coming. They weren’t making any bones about approaching in the loudest manner possible. There were too few voices and footfalls to be an organized search party, but the intent was clear: they were looking. Off to Will’s right rear came the forward progress of someone; Will’s back was to the approach. Slowly, quietly, he tried to flatten his feet down and bury them, trying to sink into the earth as far as the ground would give. It had to give!

  Before now, they had avoided close calls by moving in the dead of night. If they had been seen, Will pondered, whoever was out there wouldn’t be thrashing about. There was a hope, a will for the searchers to be blind, to be careless, to be out wandering the woods for no particular reason, to be an imagination—and a fantastic one at that. A pang of guilt ebbed through him, the reversal of roles with the hapless runaway slave trying to cower in the leaves as the hunter closely examined the contours of the ground to spy anything that looked out of the ordinary. He waited and waited for the discovery, the sudden shout or gasp of surprise and then the rush upon him. It was coming. He lay still, trying to breathe shallowly, fearing that every heave of his chest caused the makeshift covering to undulate. He could remain perfectly still otherwise, but breathing he had to do.

  The tromping came close, parallel to where he lay, the sound drawing very near. Now. The man would see him now or not ever. The noise stopped. That annoying silence, delaying what had to be inevitable discovery. He couldn’t see his pursuer: he could only feel a burning in his back, like the stare of a man intent on carving his gaze into flesh. Will had the urge to burst out of his hide and run. If he was going to be seen—if indeed he hadn’t already been—why the pause? Why the dramatic pause in delivery of the line from the stage? Was it forgetfulness or was it intense concentration, exploring every fold of the ground, looking for the hiding Will Hunter?

  He could hear movement further away from him. The closeness of the first man was maddening, a trembling in his limbs and stutter to his breath as the silent wait drew on. He doesn’t see me, Will concluded, not yet, not for sure. He thinks he sees something but doesn’t know for sure. He has to know for sure.

  A hundred times? How many times had he been looking through a henhouse, a slave quarters, a barn, a shack for a carefully secreted slave? How many had he nosed out? All he’d been sent to retrieve—almost all. None had escaped but one, in these very woods perhaps, hidden by some farmer or do-good abolitionist. That one had gotten past Cincinnati and disappeared into unfriendly territory. Heart racing and breath coming in short, controlled bursts that whistled in his ears, sounding much louder to him than normal, Will found the change of role disquieting. Waiting, praying that whoever this was poking about would move on, would not think to look too closely, to look but not see the telltale lump in the leaves—this was what each slave he’d rooted out must have felt right before he sprung open the cover. Will could only hope whoever this was wasn’t as good as he was in finding what was hidden. It was not a good thing to be the hunted here.

  ****

  Philip paused in his search; there was nothing to be seen at all but leaves, shrubs, and trees. How far was he going to wander? There was no telling where the escapees were; he’d just picked a random spot in the woods to stop. Paul, further out, was still walking along, looking this way and that but obviously not very closely. If the Rebs were even around, they had gone to ground and would have to be physically tripped over to be found in this underbrush. He had thought he’d seen something, some bulge in the ground that might be a man, but after staring at it for some minutes he knew it was just the trunk of a fallen tree, rotten and like a man crouching. Starting to feel foolish, he called out.

  “Paul, c’mon back.”

  “Right.”

  Philip took another look around. Nothing but what he’d expect to see in a forest. He wasn’t too far from the trail, and he gingerly made his way toward it. Fallen trees littered the way, trees that had been on the ground since his days of youth, rotted and fragile. Their decay made a pile of light brownish splinters and soft, spongy bark. As he made his way over another pile, the butt of the carbine struck something that gave. A flurry of movement took him off guard, and Philip found himself careening to the forest floor. Letting out a cry, he fell hard, finding himself facedown in the leaves and empty-handed.

  “What’s wrong?” Paul called out, still several yards away, his footfalls picking up to a run.

  Philip rolled over and tried to sit up, coming face-to-face with someone he’d not expected to find beneath his feet.

  “You?” Philip managed to stammer. His carbine lay out of reach and half-buried in the leaves. He couldn’t help himself: he took his eyes off the man in Confederate garb and put them onto his weapon. Will, seeing the worry in Philip’s eyes, quickly looked in the same direction and then back.

  Cursing his poor luck, Will fixed the man with a hard gaze—the chaplain he’d breakfasted with days before. He could move for the piece, he could play it safe, he could make a run for it. The man’s partner would be up in a moment, and he’d have two men to contend with. They stared at one another a moment longer, and both men struggled to right themselves and lunge for the weapon. Problem was they were tangled in each other’s legs. What commenced was a wild thrashing about, grasping, clawing, crawling. Will was exhausted already and lost the race. Philip struggled free, grasped the carbine first, and turned the business end of it on Will.

  “Where’d he come from? What happened?” Paul called as he ran up.

  “My foot found him,” Philip said blushing. He was still on the ground in a sitting position, the carbine leveled at Will.

  “Where’s the other one?” Philip asked Will.

  Will, gritting his teeth, remained silent. The change in his fortunes was happening too quickly to take it all in.

  “What other one?” Will croaked in reply, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

  “We know there’s two of you left. Saw the
one you tied to the tree, and a captain gave himself up; he’s out leading the cavalry around looking for you two. He’s not doing a very good job of it, or he doesn’t really know where you were.” Philip prodded.

  “He’s gone,” Will managed to whisper. He was too stunned to lie convincingly, though it shouldn’t surprise him that Kearns was ineptly leading the enemy in the hunt for him and Stephen.

  “I’ll watch him. Go poke around on the other side of the trail; I think the other is hiding in the leaves like he was,” Philip ordered.

  “You go kick around, and I’ll watch this one,” Paul objected.

  “I’ve got the carbine,” Philip countered.

  “If you give it to me, then I’ll have it,” Paul said, holding out his hand expectantly.

  “Just go!” Philip cried.

  As Paul wandered off, Philip turned his attention back to his accidental captive. “You spun a good story about being paroled. A cavalry patrol stopped by the house after you’d gone, and we figured out you’d played one on us.”

  “Can’t say as I’m sorry, Chaplain.”

  “They found your other man this morning with your note—I’m assuming it was your note. That captain led the cavalry to him.”

  “It were mine.”

  “I had some hunch you were in this area.”

  “Well, apparently you was correct,” Will answered glumly.

  “So it’s true that man murdered your other pards?”

  “I’m sure he said it was me,” Will replied. He rested his head on the back of a fallen trunk, closing his eyes. It was some relief to be found.

  “He did, but seeing as it was he who was captured, I didn’t believe anything he said. Though I’m not sure why I should believe you either.”

  “Believe what you want, Yank. Hopewell should hang for what he done, though. He’ll have two witnesses ag’in him.”

  “Two? So your other pard is hereabouts unless you mean that captain.”

  Will glared at Philip and pursed his lips. He was tired and coming down hard from the strain and stress of the chase. His tongue was a little too loose.