Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [138]
The stand of oak trees was at the head of a little rise, and to the west a couple of acres of cleared ground rolled down to meet a denser tree line at the bottom. There, a couple of human shadows detached themselves from the shadows of trees: ostensible deserters who’d already managed to slip away from the Yankee camps to the west. From the other direction, toward Alexander’s Bridge where Bragg’s headquarters was, a narrow ray of yellow light came rocking along—an aide carrying a dark lantern to light the way for General John Bell Hood.
“Shut that light,” Forrest said as they came up. As the aide closed the metal cover over the lantern’s beam, he reached for Hood’s right hand and clasped it briefly. Hood was a tall man, fair, with a wide fan of beard and deep-set sorrowful eyes, like a bloodhound. His left arm hung limp in a brown-stained sling.
“Proud to see ye,” Forrest said. “Is Longstreet here yet?” Word was that General Longstreet had been dispatched by General Lee from the disaster at Gettysburg, to support Bragg at Chattanooga with the divisions of Hood and McLaws.
“On his way,” Hood said, and began to relay Bragg’s orders, for he had just come from a conference with the chief of the Army of Tennessee. The plan called for Forrest to lead a flanking attack on the Federal left, the first of a series of movements intended to roll the blue line south along the bank of Chickamauga Creek till it would be crushed into McLemore’s Cove.
Forrest listened, but his eyes were on a single shadow approaching him now, up the cleared slope, stepping out over the rows of dried corn stubble, now overgrown with late-summer purslane. “Hold up a minute,” he said to Hood, raising one finger. Matthew came up and leaned into him, whispering as his eyes lingered, over Forrest’s shoulder, on the unfamiliar face of Hood.
“You done good, boy,” Forrest called in a stage whisper as he moved away. Matthew paused a moment, maybe turned his head, but in the floating darkness his expression was illegible; he moved on.
“A fine order of battle,” Forrest said, returning to Hood. “If only the damyankees would jest stick whar they was at last week.”
“What are you thinking?” Hood said.
“Thar’s subject to be a whole lot more of’m up here now on this end of the line than what that d——what General Bragg is counten on.”
“You have intelligence?” Hood said.
“Some,” Forrest said. “Come mornen we’re apt to git all the intelligence we can swaller.” He looked up and down Hood’s long body in the starlight. “How about that arm you got thar?”
Hood shrugged, then winced at the pain the movement brought. “It’ll either get better or I’ll get it sawed off.”
Forrest released a short barking laugh. “I’ll be glad when Longstreet gits in,” he said. “Fer I know he ain’t one to dawdle.” He looked into the dark woods rising into the ridges to the west. From somewhere out there came a few liquid notes of a whippoorwill.
“Hit’s a fine chance we got here, by damn,” Forrest said. “What frets me is, have we already done missed it?”
THERE WAS FOG the next morning and Forrest rode through it, north again in the direction of Jay’s Sawmill, which was more or less due west of Reed’s Bridge, though it was hard to figure just where anything was in the pea-soup atmosphere.
“They can’t see us, anyway,” Anderson responded to Forrest’s cursing of the weather.
“That’s a red-eyed fact, and we can’t see them neither,” Forrest said, and twisted in the saddle to ease his healing wound. Then with a rasping laugh—“Why it’s worse than having to fight in the mountains, by damn—and we still got to fight in the mountains too.”
Near ten the mist lifted to unveil a mass of Federal infantry maneuvering through the woods.
“Sonsabitches won’t stay put, will they?” Forrest said, reining up Highlander. “By