Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [63]
HENRI WAS STANDING beside Benjamin’s wagon when Lieutenant Gould staggered out of the Masonic Hall, crumpled over the hand that clutched in his guts. A clear fluid, along with the blood, spilled through the cracks between his fingers, and the piercing chitterling smell was all wrong for the warm weather. The men from the quartermaster’s office overtook him and supported him by the elbows. None had gone after Forrest, for none yet realized that Forrest was hurt. They led Gould into a tailor’s shop across the way and set about making him comfortable, while a couple of other men ran further down the street to look for help.
Henri looked up at Benjamin, who was sitting on the wagon box, slack reins across his knees. “What do you think happened.”
“I ain’t know.” Benjamin shrugged and looked far off, between the revolving ears of his mule. “Might be Mist’ Forrest cut ’m.”
“But there was a shot,” Henri said.
“Might be they was,” Benjamin said. “Effen Mist’ Forrest shot ’m, he aint gone be walken away.”
A bat flicked out the door of the hall and took a crooked trajectory into the leafiest crown of the nearby trees. Henri pushed himself up from the wagon rails and walked up the steps into the hall. Once his eyes adjusted to the dim he saw Gould’s pistol lying cockeyed where it had fallen. A blood spoor ran away from it, toward the door on the other side of the building where he’d first seen Gould appear. Drawing his own pistol, Henri moved to the eastern door and peered out around the frame. The blood trail continued across the street and up the steps to Doctor Yandell’s porch.
THE SERVANTS HAD FLED, without a word, when they saw Forrest stalking toward them, his left trouser leg painting the porch steps with blood. Paying them no mind, Forrest rang the bell, then entered without waiting for any response. By the time Doctor Yandell came in, wide-eyed and shading his brow with one hand, Forrest had unfastened his britches and raised up his shirttail to display the wound.
“Well?” he said, with a fierce hook of his black beard.
“General Forrest …” Yandell seemed not to know where the sentence should proceed.
Where was Cowan when you wanted him Goddammit, Forrest was thinking just behind his teeth. Ye cain’t hardly trust the first goddamn one of these here other sawbones. “I need ye to tell me if this here bullet hole is like to cause me airy serious problem.”
Doctor Yandell bowed toward the wound. The ball had struck just above Forrest’s hip and it seemed to the doctor that it had pierced the external oblique abdominal muscle, whence it would enter the lower abdomen. The wound’s dark mouth was fringed with dark shreds of Forrest’s woolen trousers and lighter ones from the lieutenant’s duster.
“Yes, General,” Doctor Yandell gulped. “I must tell you that has the look of a dangerous wound. You must get to the hospital as soon as may be, for in this hot weather it may carry you off. But first if you would stretch out on this divan so that I may—”
“What!” Forrest was already fastening his trousers, though blood spilled over his waistband. “You don’t mean to tell me that yaller dog bastard has done kilt me. Not by all the fire and brimstone in Hell!”
HIS VOICE CARRIED easily across the street where Henri lurked still in the entryway of the Masonic Hall, raised pistol hidden behind the door frame. Forrest burst out of Yandell’s front door and bore down on him like a cyclone. His face was black as a thunderhead. His burning eyes seemed to center on Henri’s pistol, even though he surely couldn’t see it through the building wall, but as he crossed the threshold Forrest wrenched the weapon from him without even looking to see where it was, then stormed on down the hallway.
From Forrest’s hot eyes at that moment, Henri was left with a stream of dots across his own vision, as if he’d stared directly at the sun. Whenever this raging spirit took hold of the general there were only two