Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [79]
With a grunt, Forrest swung astride the captured horse. Captain Anderson joined him for a scout of the perimeter. Henri fully intended to stay where he was, but Forrest beckoned him to follow. Henri climbed onto a brown jenny mule that had caught his eye in the Federal stock pen. The outermost works of Fort Pillow encompassed several hilltops and the terrain was cut this way and that by ravines. Henri liked the jenny’s sure step over the rough ground and he felt too that she had some particular instinct for self-preservation.
It would have been a pleasant spring morning, bright but cool. Outside the stock pen the hillsides were speckled with tiny white star-shaped flowers and the yolky yellow of new dandelions. Moving in a semicircle southeast from the Mississippi, they passed Ginral Jerry, just out of range of the guns of the fort, going along at a crouch and gathering the bitter greens. Chalmers had posted sharpshooters on the hills inside the outermost works and they were steadily exchanging fire with the Federals in the inner defenses.
Forrest rode halfway up the hillside and turned to face the river again, gathering the reins with one hand and shading his eyes with the other, though the sun was mostly in his back. Behind the zigzag breastworks, atop a bluff at the river’s edge, there was a U-shaped inner fort, refurbished with fresh dug earth, with slits for six cannon belching lead in their direction. They were out of cannon range where they were, but a couple of Federal long rifles carried further. Forrest’s unfamiliar horse was restless with the whistle of the balls, kept squirming sideways and trying to sit down. Henri stroked his jenny’s trembling neck, along the lines of the blue-hair cross that grew across her shoulders.
“Goddammit this oughtent to take all goddamn day!” Forrest remarked. “They ain’t that many of the scalawags in there nohow. We need to move some more riflemen up to make them sonsabitches put they goddamn heads down.”
“Look there,” Anderson said, and pointed down the slope. “McCulloch wants you.”
Henri could not tell if it was McCulloch or not, but someone was signaling from the zigzag breastworks, which McCulloch’s brigade had taken sometime before Forrest arrived. They rode up toward him. Forrest’s horse’s hooves tore up the grass and lost purchase in the loosened dirt. He arrived at McCulloch’s post at a scramble, and dismounted, tossing Henri the reins of his horse.
The horseshoe ring of the inner fort was no more than three hundred yards from the crest of the ridge, but still a few degrees above the point where they stood. The Confederates had reversed the log breastworks to give themselves some cover, and McCulloch’s riflemen were keeping up a frequent fire to discourage the Federals from taking clear aim from the top of the earthen parapet opposite. Beyond the fort Henri could see a Federal gunboat steaming along the river toward them.
“General,” McCulloch said. “Look yonder if you would.” He pointed down to his left, where the ravine behind them curled around the ridge toward the Mississippi. A string of log cabins lined a cove between them and the inner fort.
“I believe a charge would carry that place,” McCulloch said. “And from there we can distress their artillerymen a good deal.”
“If them cannon don’t blow ye to smithereens first,” Forrest said.
“Just look at the angle,” McCulloch said. “If we once gain the cabins they won’t be able to bring those guns to bear.”
Forrest squinted down the hill and nodded. It was the sort of move he favored, bold and no more risky than it needed to be.
“Get after’m,” he said briefly. He pulled a nickel-backed watch from