Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [77]
“Miz Forrest,” he said. “I got me a notion.”
She looked at him coolly, the soft light of the oil flame gilding the down on her left cheek.
“I about had enough of traden in folks,” Forrest said. “Got my eye on a piece down to Coahoma. That’s cotton country. We could build a brick house with white columns out front and live like the big bugs do.”
“All right,” she said. Her voice was cool as her regard. But she might have been hiding a smile as she turned from him.
Forrest walked out onto the front stoop and greeted his brother John, who sat within the orb of detachment his evening dose of laudanum provided him. Above the roofs across the way, the stars were beginning to come out, and another bat flicked between the tree-tops, snapping up mosquitoes. Forrest breathed into the darkness gathering before him. He felt like a weight had been lifted from him, maybe not all the way, but some. He knew it wasn’t exactly freedom, but he did feel lighter than before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
March 1863
FORREST COULDN’T at first understand why his horse was melting underneath him, and this in the midst of a charge at full gallop. They were just now beginning to turn the Yankee flank. But now Roderick stumbled again; Forrest looked down and saw the horse pumping blood from the withers. Well Hell-far he thought, might have shouted or screamed. Over his shoulder he saw Willie overtaking him and waved him to a halt as he slid down.
“Lemme have yore horse, son, I got to—I don’t want—” Forrest now took in that Roderick was bleeding not from just one wound but three. “—don’t want to lose this one, God-damn—” He was up in Willie’s saddle almost before the boy had vacated it. “Take him back and see to him.” During his last full-on engagement Forrest had had two good horses shot from under him in one day, but he was more partial to Roderick than to either of them. This horse would follow him around the camps, like an overgrown dog as some of the men said, nuzzling his coat collar or nipping at his sleeve, and often as not Forrest would find him a lump of linty sugar or a handful of grain.
Roderick reared, hooves raking the air, wanting to follow as Forrest spurred Willie’s horse forward to the fight again. Matthew rode up then and turned his own horse into Roderick’s shoulder to bring him back to earth.
“Help me get him back, will you? He’s hurt.”
Matthew got down and went to Roderick’s other side, hooking two fingers through the ring of his bit. The big horse shuddered, calmed a little. Willie looked balefully over his shoulder as they began leading Roderick away.
“Just about to whip’m too,” he said.
“I know that,” said Matthew. “Looks like we’ll both miss it.”
They were back among the horse-holders by then, for a good number of Forrest’s troopers had dismounted to get themselves in the rear of Coburn’s position. The Yankee colonel had struck into them where the road to Columbia passed through Thompson’s Station; he had near three thousand men in his command, but now, as the fight went into its fifth hour, Forrest and Van Dorn between them had got him crammed into a corner.
Willie hauled off Roderick’s saddle and stood back to look at the three seeping wounds. “Don’t look too deep, none of’m,” he muttered. “Let your head down, won’t you?”
Matthew moved toward Ben, who was coming from his wagon with rags and a blue glass bottle of liniment. Willie had just pulled the bridle loose from Roderick’s ears when a surge of battle noise made all three of them turn: a volley, shouts and the brute smack of horses slamming into each other as Forrest’s charge found its target. Roderick shook the bit out of his teeth, whinnied and lunged forward.
“Whoa, get him!” Willie shouted.
“I thought you had him!” Matthew caught Roderick’s forelock and was dragged off his feet, crooked fingers raking back over the mane—he knotted both hands in tight and managed to pull himself