Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [144]
Matthew, now he thought Matthew might make a good man too if he lived to get good grown—and Forrest had to mash down that idea right quick because they wouldn’t let Matthew be what a son of his ought to be, with his qualities. No matter how the war turned out, they wouldn’t let him. But who was they?
Cain’t afford to think about it. He was striking the crest of the ridge right now, pulling his horse up under a patch of tall pines, atop which some Federal forward observers were turning their field glasses this way and that. Some looked out over the road to the west where Forrest’s men were coming, while others peered down the eastern slope along the path their own comrades were pounding toward Chattanooga, abandoning the observers there like so many treed raccoons.
Here in a minute, he’d climb up there himself and have a looksee.
Meanwhile, he still needed to kill a Yankee to pay for his lost horse. He sheathed his sword and drew a pistol with his free left hand. But hell it was damn near next to impossible to draw a bead up a damn tree when he had to crouch down across his horse’s neck all the time.
By damn, Forrest said to himself, I might jest spend this entire war tryen to hold the whole world together with one finger.
Matthew and Willie and more and more of the others were reining up now, forming a loose circle around where Forrest had halted. A riderless horse broke through the ring, blood on the saddle, mane clotted with blood. Forrest recalled how Henri liked to ride stretched out along his horse’s neck, like he thought he was a wild Indian or I don’t know what. Like he thought that style would spare him a bullet.
He stuck his pistol in the holster and squinted up at the treetops again.
“Might as well come on down,” he called. “Y’all prisoners now. Ye won’t be harmed.”
He sat up straight and dismounted quickly. The blood spurt from his horse’s throat was not half the strength it had been at the start. Forrest’s right hand was black with drying blood. His left just speckled from his swordplay a couple of minutes before. He used the left hand to stroke the unnamed horse’s forehead. As the horse’s legs melted out from under it, Forrest cradled the whole head in his right arm, still stroking rhythmically with his other hand.
His mother had taught him to hate waste—sometimes with reason, sometimes with a strap. Softly as he could he laid the dead horse’s head down on the stony surface of the roadway.
“That there’s a horse done give everything he’s got.”
His mounted men faced him, haggard, exhilarated.
“And ye know that’s all I ask of the lot of ye—”
One hand pressed to the small of his back, he straightened up and looked across at his people.
“—all ye got. And ye give it too. But boys,” he said, and lowered his head to look again at the dead horse, wasted. “Hit’s sometimes I wonder, what in the Hell are we doen this for?”
A Chronology of the Life of
Nathan Bedford Forrest
JULY 13, 1821
Bedford Forrest and his twin sister, Fanny, are born in Bedford County, Tennessee, on Caney Spring Creek, fifty miles southeast of Nashville—the eldest children of William and Mariam Beck Forrest.
1833
After losing land in Tennessee, the Forrests move to Tippah County (now Benton), Mississippi, where they lease a farm.
1837
William Forrest dies; Mariam Beck Forrest becomes head of the Forrest household.
1841
Bedford Forrest joins a Mississippi military unit to go to fight for Sam Houston’s cause in Texas. He sees no military action there, and spends a period splitting rails to earn money to get home.
1842
With his mother soon to remarry, Forrest