****
Settling down into the one chair that furnished the room, Philip wrote to his father and tried to relax. In the end, it hadn’t mattered that he had done the right thing—or what he supposed to be the right thing—and had nearly gotten himself killed in the process. His father wouldn’t understand the nuance, but it certainly was something that weighed heavily on his mind this evening. They had all felt the futility when Mule drowned. Did it matter that God must have known that Lewis was doomed? Or Mule?
The letter recounting the day’s experience was fitful, but he was too tired and angry to give it much cohesion. One line, however, stood out on the page.
I’ve learned, Sir, that death comes in many forms and no matter what man does to avoid it, it comes. I fancied I would avoid it entirely but the experience of the 26th instance has sharpened my thoughts to the inevitability. I would not have pondered death but of breathing my last in old age to ever occur this side of the Ohio River. A certain death is truly for us all in the end and then the judgment.
I have, however, decided to find where the recruiting party from the 21st Ohio is quartered and make my journey to Nashville with them so as to see to Paul’s deportment directly.
I am, sir, your obedient son.
Getting out another piece of paper, he addressed it to Elizabeth and stared at the blank page. Even if she wouldn’t read his letters, it would be good for him to write them. With Hopewell’s death fresh on his mind, he had gained a little more insight into the human condition, that state all men are born with and struggle against. He had been carrying Lee’s death around with him for months, cursing his own stubbornness and Lee’s intractable refusal to see the light. He couldn’t fight death, it just came. He couldn’t make anyone see the eternal either. He could only tell of what he knew.
War brings death, Philip concluded; a respecter of no one in uniform no matter how far away from the theater of war. As a soldier or a chaplain, death would follow him.
IUKA TO CORINTH
Book 3 of the Shiloh Series
Phillip M. Bryant
© 2014 Phillip M. Bryant. All rights reserved.
Cover photo:
Battery Robinett reconstruction (named in honor of Lieutenant Henry C. Robinett, 1st US Infantry), located at the Corinth Interpretive Center, Corinth MS.
Photography and art © 2013 Jennifer Bryant
Cover design by Anna Dykeman
ISBN-13: 978-1495360701
ISBN-10: 1495360709
LCCN: 2014902643
Chapter 1
Sweet Home Alabama
“Just fish out something from your saddlebag and bring it here,” Will repeated.
It was September 26, 1862, and Will Hunter and his traveling companion Stephen Murdoch were conversing along the railing of a paddle steamer just alighting at Pittsburg Landing along the Tennessee. Will was getting annoyed at his companion. The boy just wasn’t of the type to go along with scheming at all.
“It’s wrong. I can’t lie.”
“We’re going to get that nigger off the boat, and you’re gonna help with that. We ain’t Federal cavalrymen, but I still outrank you, Murdoch,” Will said under his breath.
It was good fortune that they had run into Seth after boarding the transport in Cincinnati, capping off their harrowing escape from Ohio and prison. Will wasn’t going to let this last chance get away.
“Sir, don’t make me do this. Don’t make me lie,” Stephen Murdoch pleaded.
“Just do it; bring me some of your stuff and do it quickly,” Will ordered. The deck was crawling with crewmen, and the horse stalls below were being readied by the Negroes for the release of their four-legged occupants. All of the crew would be busy, just the opportunity to slip into the nigger quarters and plant the theft.
Stephen returned, sulking, and handed Will a nice-looking flask, empty, and an ornamental crucifix of silver.
“Wait here,” Will said and slipped away. Going below the upper deck, he walked past the horse stalls, pausing at the one with his own mount as the groomsman was doing a brushing of the beast with practiced strokes.
“Last call, you can come along to Alabama,” Will said easily.
Seth looked up. “I’se thanks the good massah, but Seth goin’ to stay aboard dis ship. Cap’n Sperls a good man, a fair man.”
“You can find work in the army, better work and better food,” Will pressed the man. “But suit yourself. We disembark here shortly.”
Seth nodded and returned to his work. Will walked down the stalls and slipped down a narrow passageway leading to the windowless belowdecks where the crew quarters were. A large room directly below the horse stalls, filled with hay and bags of oats and strung with hammocks, was empty. Will surveyed each little pile of personal effects belonging to the Negroes who tended the horses and did other work and spied the belongings of his target, a rough collection of clothing and a hat he’d seen Seth wearing one evening as the man was headed belowdecks.
****
Seth finished his last remaining mount for grooming and retreated to the stuffy belowdecks. Outside, the smell of rotting corpses still hung heavily over the scene of the horrific battle, a breeze occasionally bringing the odor through the open animal deck. The intervening months had done little to cleanse the landscape of the scars or the cost in human and animal flesh. The army was gone, having left behind a cemetery and hospital. The fields once cut for plantings were fallow and growing tall grasses and weeds; the woods still filled with unexploded ordnance and cast-off gear. Hogs still rooted around the decomposed horses forgotten in the brush. Someone had regaled Seth once with tales of huge bonfires used to incinerate the hundreds of dead horses as they were dragged into heaps and lit, causing a stench the speaker swore he’d never forget. Though the belowdecks still smelled of hay-soaked horse urine, it was better than the smell of death hanging about the open decks.
Pittsburg Landing was still in use to supply the Federal armies now miles away in Corinth. Wagons upon wagons waited at the landing, a low spot in the Tennessee River that was a natural supply point for the region and had once been an active commercial enterprise run by the Pitt family. The commercial concerns were now gone, as well as the farmsteads that had dotted the landscape, leaving behind the wild hogs and the rubble of a terrific battle.
Abe hailed Seth as he ducked into their common berth. “Dem Yankees disembark?”
The common pot was burbling and bubbling with soaked hardtack and something that approximated meat. The Negro workers were each issued from the ship’s commissary a cracker and a slice of salt beef or salt pork each day, and they had whatever they wished to spend their meager wages on whenever the paddle wheel touched earth. The repast smelled more appetizing as Seth realized how hungry he was. The other colored hands were lounging and waiting for the paddle wheel to get underway once again.
“I finks so.”
“You not thinkin’ of trustin’ that white feller?”
“No, but be nice to see de chillren agin.”
“Not wort’ it to trust dis cav’reyman.”
Trust was a tall order - how did anyone completely trust a white man regardless of uniform or state of birth, the man was gone and off ship and it no longer mattered if he trusted him or not. Seth was not dissuaded by the thought of striking out, but he would not go alone and not through Tennessee where bushwhackers still roamed the roads and hid away. He might find protection with the two troopers, as otherwise the army could not be everywhere at once to offer a sense of safety.
There would be several hours of listlessness when all of the deck chores were done before the boat put back into the river and headed back to Cincinnati. The midday meal was ready, and the other men in the hold eagerly spooned out their portions and ate silently. Seth was lost in thought, dreaming of a chance journey home, but in freedom and not fear.
“Seth, c’mere.” A familiar face appeared in the doorway to the hold. Captain Sperls’s presence filled the narrow door openin
g and looked about sternly.
“Cap’n Sperls?” Seth exclaimed midbite.
“Seth, step out into the passageway.”
Ten pairs of eyes followed his progress, his own eyes looking uneasily at Sperls.
“They’s a man what say you stole something o’ his.” Sperls lost no time in coming to the point as soon as Seth was in the passage.
“What? No suh, Seth did not take nothing from nobody.” Seth felt a tremble in his gut. It didn’t matter that he was innocent of any crime; the man with the power to have him arrested or punished on the yardarm was not a man to be trifled with if there was an infraction aboard.
“Did you take anything from anyone aboard? They’s a man what say you did. Go search his stuff,” Sperls said to the surly-looking crewman standing behind him, the bosun’s mate.
The man brushed unceremoniously past Seth and went to his hammock, collecting everything that looked like it was a possession. He returned with an armful of clothing, Seth’s pocket Bible, and a flask marked with a man’s name. The bosun’s mate took a look at the Bible and then at Seth and handed it to Sperls as well as the flask.
“Dat Seth’s, dat’s my Bible,” Seth protested.
“Impossible; niggers can’t read.”
“Dat not Seth’s, never see’d dat flask afore.”
“Clearly not his, has a man’s name on it. Silas Millidge.”
“Man said he was missing his good flask, and a crucifix,” Sperls said.
“This?” The bosun’s mate handed over an ornate crucifix, about the size of the palm of a hand, on a string.
“You, come on.” Sperls motioned to Seth. To the bosun’s mate, “Get the sergeant at arms and lock him up in the hold till we get back to Cincinnati.”
Seth stood motionless. His compatriots merely crowded the hatchway and watched, unable or unwilling to come to his defense. It was a sense of futility that descended upon Seth, that no matter what he might say, it was not going to matter. The articles not his had been found in his possessions. Imagination took the rest.
As the man charged with ship’s discipline came down the passage from one direction, followed by several other crewmen, Will Hunter came down the opposite way.
“Captain Sperls, did you find the missing articles?”
“Yes, upon this man.” Sperls nodded at the sergeant at arms, and he grabbed Seth by the arm and was forcing him forward when Will stood in the way.
“What do you plan to do with him?” Will asked.
“Lock him up in the hold till we get to Cincy.”
“He stole from a soldier; he should be punished by the army.”
“This for the civil authorities,” Sperls protested.
“And I says since he stole from a soldier that he needs to be punished by the military. Let me take him ashore and see that he gets his restitution taken care of.” Will held his hand out.
Sperls looked at Will, unpersuaded that he had the authority to demand anything. “No, we take care of it. Here’s the items found.”
“The nigger will need to answer first to the military,” Will stated firmly. “I will take him.”
Seth didn’t want to go with either man. Captain Sperls wasn’t a friend, far from it. But he was a fair man who treated his deckhands at least like men and not beasts, even the black ones. He was about to hand Seth over to be punished for no reason, without any forethought. And this cavalryman claiming he stole; he was just betraying his real purpose to haul Seth away. He could trust that Captain Sperls was being used and reacting as any white man might. This other man, Hunter, was up to something else. Seth felt ashamed. He had let his guard down.
“Captain, let me take him off your hands. He needs to come with us to face his punishment,” Will repeated.
Sperls looked at Seth for a moment and then shrugged. “Hand him over.”
The other Negro deckhands silently watched as Seth was handed to the cavalryman and led away. They had never known Seth to steal, but that wasn’t the point. It was their own necks if someone decided to increase the blame any.
Seth allowed himself to be led up the gangway and out on the deck. He knew what he knew; he hadn’t taken anything. What if one of his mates had stolen the things and planted them in his own belongings? Someone was playing him rotten, but the questions of why and what could he do about it kept his feet moving.
“I didn’t take dese fings,” Seth said as Will led him down the gangplank.
“Someone did; they was with your stuff. Army don’t like thieves,” Will said.
On shore, Stephen met Will leading Seth along by the arm. Stephen looked up and then quickly away from Seth as Will handed him the flask and Bible.
“This isn’t my Bible,” Stephen said.
“I tole de Cap’n Sperls it mine,” Seth stated resolutely.
“You read?” Will said, shaking his head.
Stephen handed Seth the book but couldn’t look him in the eye.
“What you going to do wif me?” Seth asked.
“You comin’ with us fer punishment,” Will said. “Hold him here, I’ll get us another mount.”
Up from the muddy slope of Pittsburg Landing that leveled off to a flat plain stood a tent city. Rows of tents served as the sleeping quarters of the soldiers who oversaw the loading and storage of the vast amounts of stores that flowed in and were sent down the Corinth road daily. The larger tents stood with their canvass sides rolled up, revealing tables of equipment, boxes of hardtack stacked three deep, barrels of molasses, salt pork, boxes of desiccated vegetables, and burlap sacks of green coffee beans. These tents were manned by soldiers cataloging, tracking, and loading cargo onto waiting wagons while others wheeled on pushcarts the stores brought up from the steamers waiting to shove off. The grass was gone, replaced by a constant churning of the dust and dirt around the paths from the landing to the tents and then to the road around them. An army of whites all intent upon their chores. Other tents held powder, arms, and harness, and there were several more with uniforms, shoes, and leathers.
For a length of hundreds of yards to one side of the Corinth road the tents extended. There were black men manning the wagons of the quartermaster, jawing and haranguing stubborn mule teams and one another in a ceaseless call of shouts and muffled conversations. The white crew members were lolling along the railings with nothing to do, waiting for the next order to shove off.
The horse corral was well watched, despite all of the activity in and around the other tents. Will could have wandered into any and helped himself. The enemy didn’t want any of their horses just wandering off, apparently. Will wasn’t going to be able to produce anything that would allow him to walk away with another horse. Several men were lounging by the fenced-in horses, and others were busily shoeing and branding. A long line of horses nibbled on the oats laid out in a row along the fence line, and several men were hauling sacks of feed from a tent to the fence and back again with each successive bag. The horse park held, to his count, fifty or more healthy-looking animals. One wouldn’t be missed.
“Can I get some feed for my mount?” Will asked one of the quartermaster’s men, who was hefting a sack over his shoulder. The man shrugged in reply and continued on his errand, dumping his sack over the fence and elongating the line. The soldiers were dumping the feed too far into the fence line for Will to get his horse close enough to nibble, and those inside the corral were already nosing their way to the feed. Two soldiers were sitting and jawing at the gated entrance as Will led his mount up to it.
Without a word, Will opened the gate and walked his horse inside as the two men watched silently. The fence was lined with horses now, and more were walking up as the feed line began to stretch the entire length of the fence as fast as it was laid down. Will led his mount to a spot and nudged his way in, patting down the beast and looking this way and that as if bored. Stephen stood some distance away, looking nervous and keeping an eye on Will and the other soldiers nearby. Any horse in the lot was a prize and mere
ly had to be led away.
The quartermaster’s men continued the feeding and looked up at him occasionally as if surprised to see something behind the fence besides a horse’s face. The mounts had all been broken and seemed unconcerned by the routine, all waiting to be shipped off to some Yankee cavalry outfit, perhaps even the one Will was pretending to be from. There were no bridles nor saddles within sight; he would have to lead a horse out by the mane. That Yankee sergeant had a good supply of processed sugarcane formed into cones in his saddlebag, and as his mount nuzzled the mound of oats, Will retrieved a well-licked cone and broke off some into his gloved hand. He gently reached under the neck of the horse closest to him and lifted its head. Stamping slightly in protest, the beast went back to its feeding.
Will gave it another go. Shaking its head and flapping its mane into his face, the horse again snorted and dove back into the pile. Will waited a few minutes and tried again. This time the animal bobbed its head upright, and Will shoved his hand in its nostrils. Sensing the presence of something sweet, the horse licked his gloved hand clean and snorted. Will smiled. As he led his own mount out of the feeding line and gave it some of the sugar, the other horse followed, nuzzling his arm impatiently for another nibble.
Soon both were nibbling in turn, and as he led his own mount back the way they’d come, the other horse followed close at his heels without much in the way of nudging. Against one of the rails hung a halter and bit. Will quickly slipped the bit into his new friend’s mouth, set the reins loosely on its neck, and continued leading his own horse to the gate. Grabbing both reins, he led his two horses out the gate without so much as a word from the two men “guarding” the corral.
The Shiloh Series: Books 1-3 Page 70