Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [51]
“Hand me up that whiskey,” Cowan said to the boys. “I think we got the bleeding stopped.”
“Never tetched hit,” Forrest said blearily. “Never will.”
Major Strange ran up, eyes widening as he took in the situation, then dashed back down, calling out, “Hold’m, boys!” Troopers who’d been anxiously peering up to see the condition of their general lowered their heads to the work of fighting once more.
“Don’t want no goddamn whiskey no-way,” Forrest said.
In the course of the summer Cowan had been obliged to lance a boil on Forrest’s backside, which he counted as his most dangerous duty in the war so far. Forcing whiskey on the man might rival it. He spun the cap off the flask with his thumb.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” he said. “If you don’t—”
Forrest fainted, slumping back into Anderson’s arms, and a low cry came from Matthew or Willie, perhaps both of them. Cowan jammed the rim of the flask against Forrest’s teeth and tipped it up. Some ran out, spilling over his knuckles, but some had run in for he saw the Adam’s apple pump. He handed the flask back to Willie and picked up Forrest’s limp left hand, running his fingertips to the inside of the wrist.
Forrest’s eyes came open and he coughed and struggled to sit up straighter. “Ye don’t need to go holden my hand,” he said. “I ain’t so bad off as that till yet.”
“All right,” Cowan said. “What if I’m just hunting a pulse?”
“I’ll let ye know I got a damn pulse,” Forrest said. “I ain’t no baby needs a nursen.”
“No,” said Cowan. “But comes a day in your life when you need to let somebody take care of you if you don’t want to die. And nothing you can do about it.”
“I’m obliged to ye,” Forrest said, “for that thought.”
And never mind stopping another hole in you, Cowan said to himself. Behind them Matthew rose, then offered a hand to help Willie up. It was remarkable how the notorious hostility between the two seemed to have dwindled in the last few months.
Forrest clambered to his feet and reached around to feel the bandage on his back.
“I’ll counsel you to let that plug alone,” Cowan said. “You don’t have a lot of blood left in you.”
Forrest grinned at him. There was a bit of whisky-shine in his eyes, for he was truly unaccustomed to it. Matthew handed him his sword, and Forrest closed his hand on the hilt.
“Whar’s my horse at?” he said. “Don’t tell me I had another horse shot out from under me this mornen.”
Willy pointed to where the horse stood snuffling at the stony dirt.
“That much to the good then.” Forrest winced slightly as he stooped to gather the reins from the ground. “Ain’t I done tolt ye not to let the leathers trail thataway?” he snapped. “Well, never mind. Hit’s still a fight on our hands, ain’t it.”
Cowan watched him as he mounted, then began to repack his saddlebag. He thought of other times when there was nothing Forrest could do about whatever it was. There weren’t very many but it hurt to recall them. He took a small dram of whiskey for himself before he put the flask away.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
April 1863
THE GIRL SWUNG up behind him without missing a beat. In the doorway across the yard her mother dropped her picking basket and raised a hand to the corner of her mouth.
“Emma, what do you mean?” she said. “You cain’t just be a-goen off with such a man as that.”
“Momma …” she began, but Forrest had already swung his horse around in the direction the girl had shown before she mounted. She hung her chin over his right shoulder and pressed her whole long torso snug against his back. In her middle teens, she must have been, and a likely-looking gal, though he had barely looked at her before she jumped on, being more interested in what she had to say.
“Go along the back side of that branch,” she told him, her breath teasing the whorls