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By Root 899 0

In the darkness by the tree line a muzzle flashed red and he saw the ball lift from the barrel and arc toward them like a meteorite, growing till it blotted out the sky. A kind of astral music accompanied it, ringing, shimmering: the music of the spheres. The bullet moved with a terrible dark lethargy toward them, but Henri could not seem to move any faster. He wanted to snatch Green out of the way, while his arms felt like they were trapped in molasses. He was himself bound to the pace of this world that embraced him in its awful slowness. The bullet lumbered into Sam Green’s left temple before Henri could reach him, and he pulled him down among the sacks already dead.

Matthew rolled over and opened Green’s collar, feeling around his throat for a pulse. Henri watched blood soaking through the burlap under the dead man’s head, trickling down among hard pellets of white beans. Events resumed their previous hectic speed. Some of the routed Federals were pausing to set supply wagons on fire before flinging themselves into Tishomingo Creek. Some of Forrest’s units had crossed ahead of them, upstream, and were picking the Yankees off as they tried to come out of the water on the other side.

Then Forrest himself rode clattering onto the bridge, eyes flashing yellow like a wildcat’s. “BytheblackflamenassholeoftheDevilhisselftheseshitsuckendamnyankees’re burnen my wagons, Goddammit!” he shouted.

Oh, Henri thought, they’re your wagons now.

“Git up, son,” Forrest said to Matthew. “You can’t jest lay thar. That man is dead.”

Matthew took his hand from Sam Green’s throat and straightened as if waking from a dream. “Where’s Willie,” he said.

“I don’t know,” Henri said. “I haven’t seen him. I don’t think he’s here.”

Forrest had already passed them, was directing a squad of men to heave the jammed wagon out of its place and tumble it over into the stream. More men of their company flowed over Sam Green’s wagon, carrying away the bacon and beans, automatic as a file of ants. Sam Green’s body flopped onto a few wisps of straw that still lay on the stripped boards of the wagon bed. Then Benjamin’s grave face appeared above the rails. Matthew got out and took the reins of the two horses Benjamin had led back to them. Benjamin pulled Sam Green’s ankles to straighten his body, then folded the dead man’s hands across his breastbone. Other men were already lifting the wagon clear of the bridge, releasing it above the creek. It fell straight down, the wheels grooving into the surface of the water. Henri was somehow back in his saddle without quite knowing how he had got there. He leaned to see water filling the wagon bed, so that Green’s body floated calm and free for a moment, still within the frame of the rails. Then the wagon spiraled away in the current and was gone.

FORREST AND his men pursued in relays, some chasing Federals up the road to Ripley and picking up prisoners from the exhausted enemy falling down by the roadside, while others rested and ate boiled beans and bacon from the captured wagons. Forrest himself was still on the trail of Sturgis’s scattered remnants when daylight picked out the party he led. There was not much of the joy of victory on his countenance.

“Why don’t you look happy,” Anderson asked him. “We’ve had a big day.”

“We ought to had all of’m,” Forrest said shortly.

“I’ll say we got plenty,” Nath Boone said. “And still picken up more.”

Forrest’s hard eyes were scanning the ground like the eyes of a hunter looking for sign. Others of his men kept dismounting to collect discarded packs and weapons. Now and then on the roadway appeared one of those Remember Fort Pillow badges men had torn from their uniforms as they fled.

“I’ll say one thing, them ornery ole niggers can fight—when they back’s to the wall.” Forrest shook his head, the point of his beard jerking side to side above the hardpack of the road. “If not for them we’d have et up every last scrap of this army.” In his mind already he was contemplating a letter to be sent to the Federal General Washburn at Memphis, a few jagged phrases which Anderson