Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [140]
In the next moment they had overrun a Yankee battery as the gunners fled, and broken out through a last screen of trees, their bark splintered by shrapnel, into a field of corn stubble, snarled with withering pea vine. Liddell’s men pursued at a run, as bluecoats scattered in the next clump of woods to the west. Forrest galloped in a curve across the cornfield, swirling his sword to urge them on.
There was a hitch in Highlander’s stride. They had been fighting for three hours maybe, but it was too soon for this strong horse to tire. Yet he seemed to be fading, his power shrinking between Forrest’s legs, like a blown-up hog bladder with the air rushing out. Highlander was collapsing underneath him, and Forrest swung free, landing hard on his boot heels, as the horse’s big shoulder folded into the ground. One of the snapped reins hung from his hand.
Anderson pulled up behind them, eyes bleak with shock. Forrest looked down. Blood was pulsing out of his horse, soaking the bleached leaves of the crumpled corn. He couldn’t tell where the blood was coming from. It might as well have been coming from everywhere. He wasn’t going to be able to stop it. Highlander might be the finest horse he would ever ride. Rage at the waste of it clouded his mind.
Distantly he registered that concentrated firing had taken up again, not far to the west, where the Yankees must have been reinforced, or re-formed their lines without reinforcement. He could see himself, stark as a scarecrow, his reflection curving over the dim orb of the horse’s eye. He had just drawn his pistol to put an end to it, when a movement to the west distracted him. A lone grayback popped out of the trees to the west, weaponless, head down, fleeing the slaughter.
“Whar the damn hell ye think ye’re goen?” Forrest turned the pistol on the runaway, bracing his right hand over left wrist. A trace of breeze stirred the tails of his duster. He drew back the hammer with his thumb.
“General Forrest! Think what you’re doing—”
Anderson’s voice. Forrest wheeled toward him. Cocked pistol solid in his hand, sighted on Anderson across Highlander’s carcass. He needed to satisfy his feelings someway. “Let one start in to runnen and the rest of ’m will too,” he said. “How can you tell me not to shoot him? Son of a bitch is too sorry to live.”
“I never told you not to shoot him,” Anderson said levelly. “I asked you to think about it, is all.”
The barrel of Forrest’s pistol sank slowly. The weight of it dragged down his arm like a plumb weight. He noticed the scrap of leather still in his left hand and tossed it away. A couple of bluebottle flies had arrived to whir around the horse’s dead eye. With an effort Forrest raised his pistol and settled it back into the holster.
“I know you, General,” Anderson said. “I’d not tell you to do anything or not do it. If I had, you’d have shot him and me both.”
BETWEEN MIDNIGHT and morning Forrest woke with the certainty someone, something, was watching him. A wild bristling scent on the chilly night air. He hadn’t slept at all, more like, beyond an episode of very fitful dozing. If it had been all up to him he wouldn’t have taken even that much a lie-down, but his men were spent from a hard afternoon fighting dismounted through the thickets west of Chickamauga Creek. And Bragg of course was of no mind to recognize the victory others had won for him, much less to pursue it.
About the clearing lay the huddled shapes of other men. Willie, he thought, and Major Anderson. But the watching eyes were else-where—directly behind him, he sensed—he could feel them, boring into the crown of his head.
A horse whickered in the trees