Fort Pillow

by Harry Turtledove

Would Bradford try surrendering now? Or would he have the nerve to fight to the death? Forrest had never heard anything suggesting that he was particularly brave. A slow smile spread over his face. He could hardly wait to find out.

  Lieutenant Mack Leaming crouched behind a bush halfway down the bluff from Fort Pillow to the Mississippi. He'd watched men in blue run back and forth along the riverbank, pursued first by one band of Confederate soldiers and then by another. They were getting chewed to pieces down there, and more Confederates at the edge of the bluff only made things worse for them.

  Part of Leaming wanted to go down by the river with the rest of the Union troops and share their fate. But he could see too clearly what that fate would be. They were getting picked off from three sides at once. The only direction from which nobody was shooting at them was from the Mississippi itself. Some of them threw away their weapons and waded out into the river to try to save themselves from the unending fusillade of lead. It didn't work. Bullets splashed into the water, kicking up little fountains. Although some men waded out up to their necks, that didn't keep them from getting hit.

  Trails of blood started appearing in the muddy river. Gators might have followed those trails to see what made them. This far north, though, gators were scarce. It was too early in the year, too cool, for them to be very lively anyhow. The wounded Federals were spared one torment, then. They weren't spared much else.

  Up at the top of the bluff, one Confederate trooper nudged the man next to him on the firing line. “Bet you four bits I can hit that nigger in the water there.” He pointed.

  “Which one?” his pal asked. “I can't see which way your blamed finger's goin'.”

  “The ugly bald coon, there behind that redhead.”

  “All right. I see him. You won't hit the son of a bitch.” They were both shouting, which let Leaming hear them. Gunfire had likely stunned their ears to anything less than shouts.

  “Hell I won't.” The first Confederate drew a bead and fired. He whooped. “Did I get him or did I get him? Bastard's headed for hell right now.”

  “If he is, I better go to heaven, on account of I don't want to spend forever with a stinkin' nigger.”

  “That's half a dollar you owe me.”

  “Dumb luck. Dumb fuckin' luck. Bet you can't hit the redheaded Yankee. Double or nothin', all right?”

  “Let me reload, by God, and I'll have me a dollar of your money.” Methodically, the first trooper started doing just that. He fired again. “There? You see? That damnyankee sank like a rock. I gave him what he had coming, and you can kindly give me a dollar.”

  “Here, dammit.” The other Confederate paid up.

  “This here is Secesh paper,” the first one grumbled. “It ain't hardly worth what it's printed on. I wanted a real U.S. greenback.”

  Even the Rebs knew U.S. money was better than their own. The second trooper shook his head. “You didn't say what kind of dollar we were bettin', and you wouldn't give me any better if I won a bet off you. Ought to be grateful you're getting any dollar at all. You sure won't see a different one, and that's the Lord's truth. “

  “Don't take His name in vain, Cyrus,” the first trooper said. “Bart, you tend to your own little shriveled-up mule turd of a soul, and I'll take care of mine. How does that sound?”

  Mack Leaming thought it sounded like good advice. He also thought it was about time to give himself up if he could. Here and there, stubborn U.S. soldiers, white and colored, were still banging away at Bedford Forrest's men. They would undoubtedly wound some, even kill some. They had no chance at all of changing the way the battle was going.

  Without even a pistol, he couldn't shoot back no matter how much he wanted to. He'd done what he could with a cavalry saber. He'd done more good for the U.S. cause with only a cavalry saber than he'd imagined he could. Now he had to trust to the mercy of enemies who weren't showing much. He watched a trooper in filthy butternut walk up to a wounded Negro crawling on the ground and blowout the black's brains.

  “There you go, Tyler!” another Confederate called as the grubby trooper reloaded.

  Up on top of the bluff, where the fighting was about done, things would be calmer. So Leaming reasoned, anyhow. He started crawling up the steep side again. If he could get someone to take his surrender…

  All I want to do is go on living, he thought. Is that too much to ask? Please, Jesus, tell me it isn't.

  He got to within perhaps fifteen paces of the top of the bluff before he dared to stand up. When he did, he looked at the saber he still held in his right hand. Then he looked up at the ground for which the Federals had fought, and which they'd lost. Three or four Rebs were watching him intently. They might have been wolves wondering when a sick deer they were chasing would stumble and fall.

  Wishing that particular comparison hadn't occurred to him, Lieutenant Leaming tossed aside the saber. He didn't want the Confederates thinking he might make a mad dash up the slope and try to murder them all. He spread his hands and forced a smile he didn't feel across his face.

  “I surrender,” he called. “You've licked us. We can't fight any more.”

  Bedford Forrest's troopers glanced at one another. With slow, thoughtful deliberation, one of them raised his rifle musket to his shoulder and peered over the sights down the slope at Leaming. If he pulled the trigger at that range, he could hardly miss. And, Leaming realized with rising horror, he was going to pull the trigger.

  Leaming tried to turn away, tried to run. Too late. Too late. The Confederate fired. The minnie caught Leaming in the back, just below his right shoulder blade. His face hit the ground harder than he ever dreamt it could. Blackness covered him.

  XI

  A Federal-a white man-begged for his life on his knees in front of Matt Ward. He had no pride. He had no shame. “Please don't shoot me!” he whined. “I don't want to die!”

  Tears ran down his terrified face.

  “You one o' them bastards who learned niggers how to fight?” Ward demanded. For any Confederate soldier, that was the unpardonable crime.

  “No, sir,” the bluebelly answered. “Swear to God I ain't! My name's Henry Clay, like the big shot from way back when. I'm Company E, Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry.”

  A lot of Forrest's men were Tennesseans. They hated the homemade Yankees in the U.S. Thirteenth Cavalry at least as much as they hated Negro soldiers. Because Ward was from Missouri, he didn't hold so much against the white soldiers in blue. They were just damn yankees to him, not brothers and cousins and friends gone wrong.

  He gestured with his bayonet. “All right, Henry Clay. Get up. Turn out your pockets. Whatever you've got in there, it's mine now.”

  “I don't care,” Clay said. “Take it! I got me about ten dollars in greenbacks, and a couple of silver cartwheels, too. And you can have my spare cartridges-don't reckon I'll need 'em no more.” He was pathetically eager to give Ward everything he owned. “Got me some hardtack here, and some coffee beans.”

  “You're a walking sutler,” Ward said. He couldn't do anything with the coffee, not till he had a chance to crush or grind the beans. But he broke a chunk off a hardtack cracker, stuffed it in his mouth, and started to chew. The double-baked dough reminded him one of his teeth wasn't as good as it should have been; it twinged when he chewed. His belly growled. His side always seemed to be on short rations, but the Federals had plenty. After he swallowed, he gestured with his Enfield again. “Go on back to the rear. They'll take care of you there.”

  “Thank you. God bless you,” Henry Clay said, more tears drizzling down his cheeks. “You're a Christian gentleman, you are.”

  “Go on-git. Keep your hands high,” Ward said. Clay lurched away, south along the bank of the Mississippi.

  Do I feel better because I let him live? Ward wondered. He shrugged. He shook his head. The Federal just didn't seem worth killing. It wasn't the same thing at all. Clay was out of the fight now. That would do.

  Another blue-clad soldier tried to give up. Ward mig
ht have taken his surrender, too, but a Yankee minnie cracked past his head. His own reaction was automatic. He ducked. Even as he was ducking, he pulled the trigger. The Federal screamed. He thrashed on the ground like a snake with a broken back, clutching his belly and crying for his mother. Ward felt bad about that. He hadn't meant to gutshoot the man. Well, no matter what he'd meant, it was done now.

  He reloaded as fast as he could. Some of the colored soldiers and Tennessee Tories were still fighting, as that bullet proved. Fewer and fewer U.S. soldiers kept on shooting, though. A lot of them were down. Others went out into the Mississippi, mostly without their weapons, doing whatever they could to get away from Bedford Forrest's men. And quite a few were trying to give up.

  Some, like Henry Clay, succeeded. Others, like the fellow Matt Ward shot without even thinking about it, didn't. The ones who died had only their own officers to blame, as far as Ward was concerned. General Forrest told them he couldn't answer for what his own troops would do if he didn't get a surrender right then. The Confederates' blood was up. Considering the men the soldiers in butternut faced, that was as near inevitable as made no difference. Blacks as soldiers… Ward ground his teeth at the very idea-carefully, because the hardtack had shown that that one was tender.

  A handful of the bluebellies in the Mississippi were really trying to swim, or at least to float away, letting the current carry them downstream past the C.S. lines. Most just waded out and stayed there. Everybody said ostriches stuck their heads in the sand and left the rest of themselves in plain sight. The Union soldiers were just the opposite. Only their heads stuck out of the water.

  Ward aimed at a Negro who had to be unusually tall to have waded as far out into the Mississippi as he had. Before he could fire, somebody else hit the black man. He shrugged. He had plenty of other targets to choose from. He had to swing his rifle musket only a little to the right to bring it to bear on a blond man with a long beard. He fired. The Federal sank into the river.

  Bedford Forrest's troopers had already started plundering the enemy. Some of that was rifling pockets, the same kind of thing Ward did to Henry Clay. (The homemade Yankee's name still made him smile.) But much of it was more serious, more essential. Barefoot Confederates stole dead bluebellies' shoes. Troopers in ragged shirts and trousers took what they needed from men who wouldn't be worrying about clothes any more. And fine Springfields lay scattered on the ground like oversized jackstraws. Troopers who'd joined Forrest's force with nothing better than a squirrel gun or a shotgun got weapons as good as any their foes carried.

  As good as any their foes here carried, anyhow-Ward silently corrected himself. He longed for a repeating rifle, a Henry or a Spencer. What Confederate cavalry trooper didn't? But the only way to keep a rifle like that in cartridges was to capture them. The Confederate States weren't up to making those fancy brass cases.

  Just when Ward thought the fighting was over, it flared up again. A few Federals down here by the riverbank didn't want to give up and didn't think they could get away with surrendering. They seemed bound and determined to take as many Confederates with them as they could.

  Ward didn't run toward the new skirmish. Plenty of other troopers were closer to it than he was. He'd already put himself in enough danger for one day. And those coons wouldn't last long any which way.

  Sergeant Ben Robinson wondered if he would be the last soldier from Fort Pillow to go down fighting. He could do without the honor; he didn't want to go down at all. Sandy Cole had fallen with a bullet in the right thigh and another in the arm. Charlie Key was shot in the arm, too-if that bone wasn't broken, Robinson had never seen one that was. Aaron Fentis was down with bullet wounds in both legs. He lay groaning somewhere not far away. And somebody'd shot poor Nate Hunter right in the ass.

  The little knot of Federals who were still fighting had Bedford Forrest's troopers coming at them from along the Mississippi and from the direction of Coal Creek. More Confederates went on shooting down at them from the bluff. By any reasonable measure, the fight was hopeless.

  No matter how hopeless it was, the U.S. soldiers kept on loading and firing, loading and firing. Some were Negroes who'd seen what happened when other colored men tried to surrender. Robinson preferred dying with a gun in his hand to being murdered in cold blood. And some were whites from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry who'd avenged themselves on the Confederates whenever they found the chance and now feared like vengeance would fall on them.

  They were a band of brothers now, those last couple of squads' worth of struggling Union soldiers. Race didn't matter any more; neither did rank. Some of them were wounded. Those men loaded Springfields and passed them to others hale enough to use them.

  “Here they come!” somebody yelled-the Rebs from the Coal Creek side were dashing forward. The defenders fired a ragged volley of four or five shots to make them keep their distance. The Federals might have wounded one man. Robinson wasn't even sure of that. It didn't matter. The gunshots showed the men in blue hadn't given up. That was enough to stop the Confederate rush.

  As if to make up for stopping, one of Forrest's men shouted,

  “Gonna kill you bastards!”

  “Gonna shoot you!” another Secesh soldier added.

  “Gonna stick you!” said another.

  Another Confederate flavored his words with almost obscene anticipation: “Gonna stick you sons o' bitches slow and watch you die an inch at a time.” Still others yelled more bloodthirsty endearments.

  The white man closest to Ben Robinson grinned crookedly. “Really makes you want to throw down your piece and give up, don't it?”

  “Huh!” Robinson said, a syllable half despair, half startled laughter. So many men were down… “Easiest thing to do might be to throw down your piece, all right, an' play possum in wid all the bodies.”

  “Good luck,” the white trooper said. “What do you want to bet the Rebs go around and bayonet everybody on the ground? If you aren't dead beforehand, you will be by the time they get through with you.”

  “Huh,” Ben said again, on a different note: all despair this time. That struck him as much too likely.

  Some other white Tennesseans must have thought their chances were better if they laid down their arms. Two white men walked toward the closest Confederates with their hands in the air. Laughing, Bedford Forrest's troopers let them get close-and then shot them. The Federals' screams were as much of betrayal as of agony, though the Rebs put enough minnies into them to finish them in short order.

  “You see?” said the trooper by Robinson. “Reckon I do,” the Negro answered.

  Less than a minute later, a minnie thudded into the white man's chest. He fired one last shot at the enemy and died in grim, defiant silence. Only a few U.S. Springfields were still firing. The Confederates drew closer and closer.

  Robinson was in the middle of reloading when a C.S. trooper shouted, “Drop it, nigger! Drop it right now, or I'll shoot you down like the mad dog you are.” The man had friends behind him. All of them were aiming their rifle muskets at the colored sergeant. A wild charge with the bayonet would just get him killed.

  All the brave resolve leaked out of him. He let the Springfield fall in the mud. The Confederate hadn't said he'd kill him if he did surrender. Slowly, Robinson raised his hands.

  Grinning and laughing, Forrest's trooper shot him.

  “Do Jesus!” Robinson screamed, and fell heavily to the ground. Somebody might have dipped his right leg in tar and set it on fire-it hurt that much.

  “That'll learn you, you damn coon,” said the soldier in butternut. “Just what you deserve. You try takin' up arms against white men, you pay. You'd fuckin' best believe you pay. You hear me?”

  Only a groan came from Ben Robinson's lips. The Reb didn't seem to care. He walked on, looking for somebody else to kill. Robinson lay where he'd fallen, writhing and thrashing. He'd never imagined anything could hurt so bad. He clutched his thigh with both hands, as tight as he could. His own hot blood leaked o
ut between his fingers. It leaked, yes, but it didn't flood. Litde by litde, as his stunned wits began to work again, he realized it wasn't a fatal wound unless it festered.

  I'll live, he thought. Right at the moment, everything hurt so much, he wasn't sure he wanted to. A U.S. physician would have dosed him with opium or laudanum, or at least with a big slug of corn squeezings, to ease the pain. He didn't suppose a Secesh doctor would give him the time of day, let alone a painkiller. For one thing, the Rebs didn't have much in the way of medical supplies for their own wounded. For another, he was black. They were more likely to give him a bullet to bite on-or one through the head-than laudanum.

  Robinson tried holding still, wondering it that would ease him. It didn't, not even a little. And even if it would have, he couldn't do it. He had to move, and to keep moving. His pain insisted on it. Moving, of course, held dangers of its own. Several Confederate soldiers stalked past him. Anyone of them could have decided to finish him off, but none did. Maybe they enjoyed seeing him wriggle and hearing him moan. He wondered about that only later. At the moment, he just thanked heaven.

  “Hey, you! Hey, nigger!” The shout came from far away. For a while, Ben Robinson had no idea it was meant for him. Plenty of other colored soldiers were still alive. But then the cry came again: “Hey, nigger! Yeah, you down by the water, the one with the leg!”

  He looked toward the top of the bluff. A couple of Forrest's troopers up there were staring down at him. They might have been soaring vultures staring down at a dying donkey. He waved to show he heard them. He didn't want to do that, but he was afraid they would start using him for target practice if he didn't.

  One of the Rebs cupped his hands in front of his face. “Come on up here, boy!” he yelled.

  “I can't!” Robinson yelled back. “I been shot!”

  “You better, Sambo,” the Confederate said. “You don't want to get shot some more, you goddamn well better.”

  They could hit him at that range with no trouble at all. He'd seen them hit men who'd waded out into the river, who were farther away than he was and exposing less of themselves. “I try,” he said. Could he crawl? How much would the wound bleed if he let go of it? But that, suddenly, wasn't the biggest worry on his mind. How much would he bleed if they shot him again, and where would they? His belly? His head? He could get better after this wound. Another one might well do him in.