Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [57]
Two hundred yards downriver, the ferryboat struck a snag and began to rotate as it drifted away. The Federal scouts stared after it dolefully. “There’s supposed to be a bridge at Gaylesville,” one of them said.
AT NINE O’CLOCK the next morning Forrest overtook Streight at Lawrence Plantation, where he’d stopped to try to feed his mounts and men. The Federals were inside twenty miles of Rome but one of Forrest’s detachments had beaten them to the bridge there. When Streight ordered his men into a battle line, they lay down on the ground and went to sleep, scarcely disturbed by the balls of Confederate skirmishers buzzing over like low-flying bumblebees.
“He’s a hard man to whup,” Forrest said, all the same. “Let’s see cain’t we fox him.” The numbers were still running a long way against him, though he knew Brother Bill and others who’d been captured would do all they could to inflate the enemy’s idea of his strength.
He looked behind him. What men he had left were drawn up in cover of a fringe of trees on a low ridge. To the left was a space where a gap in the tree line left about fifteen yards of bare hilltop. Forrest turned to Henri with a grin.
“Ornery!” he said. “How many cannon has kept up?”
Henri didn’t want to answer. Over his shoulder, Matthew spoke up: “Two.”
The shadow of a frown flicked across Forrest’s face. “Hit don’t matter,” he said, and again showed his teeth. “I want ye to bring’m acrost that knob whar the Yankees can see. And I don’t mean just the one time neither.”
Streight’s men, Forrest saw when he went in to parley, were so beat they lay facedown snoring in the mud and the officers kicking them could not get them up. Streight himself looked like he might have some fight in him yet. He was burlier than Forrest, though not as tall, with a thin mustache and a heavy black beard. His hair receded on either side of a high pale forehead, leaving an island in the middle. Maybe his hair had been falling out faster the last few days, Forrest hoped. But there was a set to Streight’s blunt features that put him in mind of a snapping turtle.
“I won’t surrender unless you show me your force,” he said.
“That’ll be blood on your head, then,” Forrest said. “Yore own boys’ blood. I got men enough to whup ye outen yore boots.”
He shifted his weight to his heels as he saw Streight was peering over his shoulder. He’d set his back to his own line, so that Streight could see the progress of his supposed artillery, and by now the single pair of cannon must have crossed that gap more than a dozen times. Forrest’s officers had amplified the stratagem by marching a few dozen men around the same circuit, till their numbers appeared to mount in the hundreds.
“All right, then,” Streight breathed.
“That’s the way,” Forrest said, and pointed to a tree. “Ye can jest have yore boys stack their guns right thar.”
There were not quite four hundred of Forrest’s men who had kept up with him still, and when they came forward to take charge of the captured arms, Streight dashed his hat onto the ground. “Give me back my guns and we’ll fight it out.”
Forrest laughed and tapped him on the shoulder.
“You tricked me,” Streight said bitterly. “You lied.”
“I’ll tell ye what.” Forrest’s voice hardened. “I never ast ye to come down here no-way. I’m sorry if ye feel ye been hard used.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
July 1863
WHEN POSSIBLE Henri liked to find a rock to sleep on, though of course he often couldn’t do it. But there were plenty of limestone shelves all over North Georgia and North Alabama and West Tennessee. If it was dry he didn’t mind the hardness of it, and he believed a stone pallet gave him a little advantage over whatever might come crawling while he slept. One dawn he’d opened his eyes on the sight of Nath Boone cautiously pouring a copperhead out of his boot. Another time it was a shout that roused him and there was Willie Forrest, gabbling and shuddering as he flung a foot-long writhing red millipede from his clothes.
If Henri slept well, the slab of stone would turn beneath him, rising and falling