Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [139]
Where the mist still lingered, half a mile to the south, the rattle of rifle fire began. Highlander sidestepped and raised his head toward the sound.
“Devil take’m down to the brimstone pit!” Forrest burst out. “They done hit Davidson’s brigade afore he got set.” He and Anderson had passed Davidson, at the far right of General Pegram’s division, scarcely fifteen minutes before, when the fog was so dense the men were finding each other by touch. “Go get us some help and get it right quick,” Forrest told Anderson. “Don’t and they’re about to do us like we meant to do them.”
Anderson spurred away, and Forrest rode to find Pegram. Between them they got Davidson’s men into some kind of order and held a line till Dibrell’s brigade arrived to support them. By the hardest, the right flank had not yet been turned. Forrest could see just that much as the morning mist began to lift from the struggling lines of battle.
“Dibrell—that’s all you brung me?” Forrest said to Anderson. “I sent for Armstrong’s whole division.”
“General Polk cannot send more because General Bragg—”
“Damnfool General Bragg wants to fight ’m where they was yestiddy! Don’t he know they’re all up here right now?” Forrest, who had turned his customary fired-brick color during the morning’s action, tore off his hat and made to fling it. When Highlander bridled, Forrest smoothed his hat brim over the horse’s mane. “Hit’s more than one division coming in us right here—” He caught sight of John Morton and subsided slightly, put on his hat and rode over to meet him.
“Good thing at least you got here, John. Now get your puppies up to the front and give the damyankees something to think about.”
Forrest fought his men dismounted, side by side with the infantry. They knew how to use cover and were marksmen enough to make their shots tell. Pushed to the front, Morton’s Bull Pups spat grapeshot to discourage the Federal advance for a time. But the weight of numbers was overbearing. Mistrusting any messenger, Forrest rode for reinforcement himself, and came back shortly with Walker’s brigade to throw into the line.
He’d ordered Pegram to hold his position at whatever cost, and while Forrest was off hunting Walker, Pegram had lost fully a quarter of his men. The Federal tide ebbed for a little when Walker’s brigade slammed into the position. Then it began to rise again.
“Where in the hell do they keep coming from?” Forrest howled at the smoke-blocked sky. “They’re going to run us right into the creek, next thing.”
He sent for General Ector’s brigade and put it in to fill a gap between a line of his dismounted horsemen and another of regular infantry. The fog had long lifted but was now replaced by swirls of gunpowder smoke and the dust the boots and hooves swirled up. Forrest rode to the left, peering into the murk. One of Ector’s aides overtook him as he paused behind John Morton’s battery.
“Sir! General Ector sends me to say he is uneasy about his right flank.”
“He don’t need to worry,” Forrest said, without turning. “Go tell him I’ll look after it.”
The Lafayette road ran parallel to the creek, and Forrest rode up it away to see what chance there might be of turning the Yankee left. All he saw was more and more Federal reserves piling up behind the fighting lines. They kept coming like ants toward a spill of molasses. As he returned to Morton’s battery, the same aide rode up to him again.
“General Ector is concerned for his left flank, sir—”
“Go tell General Ector I am by God here and will see to his left and his right flank both,” Forrest snapped. As the aide rushed away, he brushed at his duster—white that morning, it was now covered with a silt of burnt powder, blood spray and dust. Automatically he cleaned his palm on the sweating hide of Highlander’s shoulder. John Morton was shouting for more ammunition; at that moment Benjamin and Matthew rolled up with a caisson and jumped down to unload it.
Ector’s brigade, though