Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [59]
At dusk he stood up, shrugged into his coat, and in the company of Sam Donelson rode over to scout the Yankees at Verona. Under cover of darkness they rode all through the camp, counting wagons and guns at their leisure and with such a boldness no one thought to challenge them. They’d adopted no disguise but the poor light hid their Rebel gray. The two of them were on their way out when finally a dozen Federal pickets called them to halt. Forrest raised his voice to shout HOW DARE YOU ARREST YOUR COMMANDING OFFICER! and in the split second of the pickets’ hesitation he and Donelson laid on the spurs and rode over them, wrapped tight to their horses’ necks like a pair of wild Indians and Forrest’s tailbone sticking up high in the wind as the minié balls showered down all around them. When they were once out of range and had caught their breath, Lieutenant Donelson remarked that the scrape had been a mite close for comfort. Forrest shot him a yellow grin through the dark and said, “If a bullet had jest of bust one of these godforsaken devilish boils, I might have got me a little relief.”
Today as they cantered through the last outskirts of Cowan they passed a tall rawboned woman standing in her dooryard, pounding shelled corn in a dugout mortar with a pestle half again as long as she was tall. As he drew level with the cabin Forrest’s head swiveled around to regard her. She raked a hank of hair from her face and flung out him. “Whynt ye stand and fight like a man, stead of runnen away like a rascally dog? I wisht Ole Forrest was here, I do. Ole Forrest’d make ye fight!” They’d gone another half a mile before Anderson cleared dust from his throat to speak. “The cat has got Ole Forrest’s tongue, I reckon.”
Forrest raised his eyes to the wooded ridge of their horizon and smiled in the tatters of his beard. “Ole Forrest don’t want to git whupped with that fence post she’s handlen,” he said, and they rode on.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
June 1854
IT WAS SOMETIME after midnight when Forrest came out of the gambling house, but maybe, he hoped, not very long after. There was not light enough to see his watch, but at least he did still have his watch. He walked over to the riverfront for the stirring of air on the water. Someone hissed at him from the shadow of a low shed.
Hi you! Step over here a minute.
Forrest stopped, searching toward the voice. He stepped into the shadow of a building behind him, to hide his silhouette. One of the men across the way stepped clear of the shed and beckoned. Forrest paid gold coins through the fingers of his right hand in his pocket while with his left he touched the grip of a pistol in his waistband and then settled his grasp on the haft of his long knife—just as deadly and a whole lot quieter. He could see two of them now, just their heads and shoulders visible against the glow of slow-moving river behind them. A pale patch at the throat of one, a cravat maybe. These riverboat agents dressed like dandies oftentimes. They came and went like driftwood on the stream. There might have been a third man in the shadow of the shed. Come on, he thought, raising a heel to the sill behind him, setting himself for the first shock, Come ahead if ye mean to come. He felt keen, alert, the master of himself. He’d quit for once when he was ahead, and it would need more than a swarm of these river rats to rob him of his winnings. But the rats decided to stay where they were, whispering and scrabbling in the dark.
Forrest turned the corner and walked back into town. At the next corner he stopped and looked back once, then released his hold on his knife and went on, turning gold pieces over in his pocket. When he came in view of his house and saw the lamp still burning in the sickroom, his bubble of elation burst. He would have liked to go in the back gate and sit by himself a while maybe, on the edge of the cistern among the nigger pens. Aunt Sarah might come out and bring him water then. But the white folks had already seen him, looking down from his front porch.
The eerie twittering