Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [107]
Then Forrest came cantering up on a dapple gray horse he favored. He’d shed his coat and rolled his sleeves; the double-edged saber flashed in his left hand.
“Git round the left,” he shouted at the remnants of the Seventh. “Take the damnjobbernowlyankees in the rear there. Git on with ye—if ye’re feart to be shot ye best go forward for I’m well and goddam ready to shoot ye in the back if ye don’t.”
Henri stared as the dapple gray reared up in the middle of the open field, under a hard rain of shrapnel and minié balls. There seemed no possibility that both horse and rider would not instantly be killed. But no. Forrest leaned forward, the horse’s front hooves regained the ground, and with a forward sweep of his blade he cried, “I’ll lead ye!” The yell went up, behind, then beside him as what was left of the Seventh rushed past Forrest toward the Federals at the fence. Forrest had turned his horse out of the line to ride back to Bell’s brigade, which appeared to be retreating before the Yankee reinforcements constantly arriving on the field.
“Come on I tell ye,” Forrest screamed. “I tell ye them sonsabitches is too tired to fight. They was whupped afore they got here. Now git over thar and finish’m off.” He swatted a man across the shoulders with the flat of his blade. Again the hair-raising yell tore across the field as Bell’s brigade charged to join the Seventh. Rebels were jumping the fence now, fighting the Yankees hand-to-hand; Henri glimpsed Witherspoon again for a moment, gleefully trumping a Federal saber with his pistol. Further back in the woods, the Yankee line re-formed for a few minutes, attempting a rally, then as ammunition ran low it shattered in confusion.
Henri’s ears rang in the weird, muffled silence that followed. Presently he began to hear woodpeckers resuming their work, but as if the sound was wrapped in cotton batting. Matthew was walking on rubbery legs back toward him from the battle line, his face streaked with blood and burnt powder, apparently unhurt. Henri discovered he was holding Matthew’s horse.
Forrest was riding toward them now, his sword hand low. His coat was draped across the saddlebow, and his once white shirt was transparent with sweat. Distant firing broke out behind him, a long way off, down in some hollow through the woods toward the creek.
“That’ll be Barteau.” Forrest grinned. Colonel C. R. Barteau, detached from Bell’s brigade, had gone the long way round the Federal left to intercept their line of march from Stubbs Farm.
“Where’s John Morton?” Forrest raised his sword point toward Henri. Matthew had just now remounted. Henri turned his horse aside. He remembered seeing Morton, who’d dragged his handful of cannon eighteen miles that morning, the last third of that distance at close to a run, coming to support Bell’s charge at the end of the most recent action.
“That way,” he said, and he and Matthew fell in behind the dapple gray as Forrest rode in the direction indicated. Shortly they came upon the eight small cannon known to everyone now as Morton’s Bull Pups; the battery was still taking fire from the Yankees. John Morton’s pleasant moon face popped up from behind a gun carriage.
“General Forrest,” Morton said. “You had better go further down the hill, for you are apt to be hit where you are now.”
Henri had never seen Forrest meet such advice as that with anything other than furious dismissal. Now he looked irritably about himself, swiping one of his hands through the air as if he could bat down bullets like flies. Then, dropping his hand to his knee, he nodded.
“All right, John. I may rest awhile.” He rode down the slope where Morton had pointed, and dismounted beneath an old hickory tree. Matthew caught up the loose reins of the dapple gray horse. Forrest took his coat from the saddlebow, scraped