Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [72]
Forrest looked at Doctor Cowan and the doctor shook his head. Forrest slipped free the thong of the doubloon Jeffrey wore around his neck and put it over his own head. He covered his brother’s face with his hat and stood up. Henri saw his eyes turn yellow, saw his whole body ripple and compress. The bugle sounded. Perhaps Forrest had ordered the sound to occur. He leapt onto his horse without touching the saddle and ran screaming headlong upon the enemy.
Matthew stooped, unfolding a white handkerchief from his pocket. It occurred to Henri to wonder how he had saved it clean and whole through the last months of running and fighting, as if he had preserved it for this doom. He lifted the hat and spread the white cloth over his dead uncle’s face and lowered the hat back down. Major Strange was helping Doctor Cowan to his feet saying We must go after him, Doctor, or he will surely be killed, and Cowan: He won’t be the only one killed—you know if he only loses a horse he won’t stop until he has killed a Yankee bare-handed and young Jeff was his favorite brother.
There were days when being already dead wasn’t much comfort, and today appeared to be one of them. Henri found himself riding with Matthew, Cowan and Major Strange up the hill into the teeth of the enemy, well out in front of McCulloch’s brigade, which had just sounded a charge behind them. Though only a handful of the escort had gone with Forrest in his first mad rush, they’d broken clean through the first Federal line, and the point they’d punctured was a melee. Forrest stood with his legs locked straight in the stirrups, his horse trampling corpses of men he’d shot down, and by then his pistols must have been empty for he was slicing one enemy trooper to ribbons with the double-edged sword in his left hand while simply choking another to death with his right. Meanwhile half a dozen of the enemy were reaching to pull him down from the back but just before that could happen the wave of McCulloch’s charge washed over them.
Forrest tucked his bloody sword under his elbow like an umbrella and set about reloading his pistols as he charged after the Yankees fleeing through the barns of Ivy’s Hill and down the other side of it. They were running pell-mell up the road toward Pontotoc till suddenly they struck a point where the Federals had drawn three lines across a field. Forrest drove into them without a pause, but within the first few seconds of contact his horse was downed by five bullets, the saddle shattered by as many more, and Forrest ran forward on foot firing his pistols with both hands until Benjamin had brought him another mount. No sooner was he well astride than the new horse too was slain in a crossfire and Forrest went down, dead himself maybe, lost anyway to Henri’s sight. Henri was trying to get to Matthew, who had got himself into a tangle his father would have been proud of, emptying his pistols into a dozen odd Federal troopers surrounding him, then socking them with his elbows and the shoulders of his quickly turning horse. Sound of screaming just to the rear and King Philip’s iron-gray hide broke through the line like the skin of a breaching whale, Jerry not so much bringing him to Forrest as being dragged by him hollering Whoa goddamn slow down you hellion while King Philip’s neck stretched out straight as a snake’s reaching to bite through any blue cloth that he saw. That was what they were all screaming about Henri would have supposed but he paid no mind for he still could not reach Matthew and there was one of Smith’s troopers carefully lining up a pistol to shoot him