Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [54]
AT BLOUNT PLANTATION, fifteen miles out of Gadsden, Streight stopped again to try to feed his men and stock. They’d barely got their rations out when the rear guard was driven in upon them and Streight was forced to form a battle line.
It was mid-morning when the battle joined, just beginning to get hot. Forrest ordered a charge on the Yankee center, which bowed but a little and finally held. “Goddamn his liver and lights to the Devil!” Forrest screamed. “Sonofabitch knows how to fight.”
“Amen to that,” Kelley responded, and then when Forrest sent him a fishy look, “Well, what do you want me say?”
“We’ll turn his right for him,” Forrest said. He gave the order, but Streight’s right held stubbornly as the center had, and Forrest called a halt, to wait for a few more of his men to arrive on the field. The Federals had him outnumbered by near three to one, though Forrest was pretty sure Streight didn’t know it.
By the time they were set to press the attack, Streight had rolled up his line and was withdrawing again, leaving only skirmishers to cover his rear. They’d been skirmishing all the way across from Gadsden, anyway. In a barn lot on Blount Plantation, Forrest skipped down from his horse to inspect a scatter of cartridges fanned out from a box. The damp paper unraveled from the one he picked up.
“He’s got his powder wet, God rot him,” Forrest said. “Well, now we’ll see.”
Along with skirmishers the woods and pastures they crossed were sprinkled with runaway mules and with packs of the slaves that had been following Streight’s camp all the way from East Port, some of them. Forrest told these latter to go home, if they could find the way. “This ain’t no time to go see-en the world,” he told them.
Presently the road they were following made a dogleg turn through a dense stand of pines. At the second bend the Federals had raised a barricade. Gun barrels glinted amongst the brush and timber. It seemed logical to turn from that situation and cross an open field where an invitingly thin-looking line of skirmishers waited in the knee-high grass just short of a low rise.
“Hold up,” Forrest said. “We been bit thataway one time too many.” He shaded his eyes with his hand and stared toward the horizon of the field. “Boone!” he called sharply. “I want you to ride a hunnert men through those pines to the left thar. He’s filled’m up with sharpshooters, I don’t miss my guess. Knock down anything blue and don’t leave’m time to draw a bead, d’ye hear me? Mister Kelley, you do the same on the right. And then we’ll see what’s t’other side of that-air rise.”
Once gunfire and screaming had taken a good hold in the pines, Forrest slapped his mount with the flat of his sword and led the charge across the field. The skirmishers melted away, firing hardly a shot. The five hundred riflemen lying in wait beyond the grassy crest of the rise were struck from three directions and demolished, their commander killed. Some few survivors ran pell-mell toward Rome, flinging down their guns and ammunition.
At dusk they pulled up by a copse of oaks on the crown of a hill. There they’d stay, Forrest told them, to feed and rest their horses and themselves. He was satisfied Streight had been buffaloed into another all-night march, so best they should be fresh when they jumped back on his trail next morning. Only he would need a few details and scouts to go ahead. Somebody had to be sure to beat Streight to the bridge across the Coosa River to Rome. And there was a ferry crossing somewhere on the Chattooga River, which still lay between the Yankees and the Coosa.
“I’ll go,” Matthew said.
“Boy, you don’t know this country …” Forrest looked at him, considering. “I ain’t sending you alone no way.”
“I’ll go with him.” Henri couldn’t believe he’d just heard himself say that. In his mind he had already fallen off his mount into a blind ten-hour sleep.