Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [29]
Then Captain Bill Forrest came pelting back along the road with word that the Federal rear guard was just around the bend ahead, and someone, maybe Captain Starnes, called out, “Will somebody send that wild filly home before she gets herself killed out here?” But the girl was gone; she’d jumped her sleek gelding over a rail fence and was cantering away across a field of corn stubble. Terry, staring after her, flourished her blue-ribbon favor in his fist, but the girl did not look back, and Forrest had forgotten her altogether, was hissing orders for Starnes and Kelley to leave the road on either side to flank the Federals, now forming to advance. Forrest himself drew out his saber with his right hand and stood up in the stirrups as he yelled for a charge on the Federal center.
Henri rode in his wake, closing his left hand over the reins, drawing a Navy Colt with his right. His horse was good but not the best in the vanguard. Private Terry and Captain Merriweather were well out in front of him, neck and neck with Forrest practically, when Henri saw the back of Merriweather’s head come off just in time to duck and to miss it splashing into his own face. Merriweather crashed down dead in the road and his horse shied off into a thicket of blackberry bramble. Henri, still leaning low, got off a shot between his horse’s ears, aiming as best he could at a clutch of brass buttons and a patch of blue, not seeing the effect. Forrest’s saber had somehow traveled from his right hand to his left and was running through the Federal Captain Bacon as Forrest shot another man off to his right with a six-shooter. Bacon had barely time to fall dead from his horse before Forrest barreled into the Federal Captain Davis, a second too late to stop him killing Private Terry with his saber (Terry had ridden between the two at a moment when Forrest’s head was turned the other way), too close and too quick to bring his blade to bear; Forrest struck Davis with all his weight and the weight of his horse, flinging the Federal Captain hard to the ground and riding through him till his mount tripped over another fallen Federal horse and fell, sending Forrest flying twenty feet forward over its head. Henri swept by, carried by his own momentum, firing his revolver into another melee surrounding Starnes; Forrest had already rolled to his feet, or had landed on his feet like a cat, and Starnes hurled his empty revolver at the back of a fleeing Federal—they were all on the run now.
Henri pulled up his horse and turned. Forrest stood in the roadway, saber sheathed somehow, training his pistol on Captain Davis, who clutched his broken shoulder with one hand as the other weakly signaled his submission. Forrest’s face had turned the color of hot iron and the two little scars above his right eyebrow glowed like two red chinks in a stove, but his eyes burned liquid yellow. “A wild Indian!” Kelley yelled, bursting from a thicket left of the road. “No, a panther. My God, do we even know this man?”
“Name of the Lord, Chaplain,” Starnes said cheerfully, dismounting to recover the pistol he had thrown. But Henri was thinking of something else he had seen. Forrest, still aiming his pistol firmly with one hand, had crouched by the still warm corpse of Private Terry and touched the boy briefly with the other, on the wrist just below the fist still gripping the blue scrap of ribbon, and when he did so his face was pale and tranquil as a dreamer’s. Henri didn’t know when it had time to happen but he knew that it had.
“I’m no chaplain,” Kelley was saying. “A chaplain is a useless thing in war. I’ll fight when the fight’s on and preach when it ain’t.” He watched Forrest carefully as his burning eyes cooled and he lowered his pistol,