Devil's Dream Part 21

April 1854 THIS A APRIL EVENING, close and sweet-in the course of the afternoon it had rained, hard and suddenly, driving the women into their houses, the men into barns and outbuildings, or under trees for shelter if they were caught in the wagons well out on the roads. When the rain had ended it grew much cooler, cool but somehow electrically close. Forrest sat at the end of a horsehair sofa, listening to the low clear voice of Mary Ann spooling poetry out of a book she held in a yellow orb of light from a whale oil lamp.

Then let winged Fancy wander Through the thoughts still spread beyond her Open wide the mind's cage door.

She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar O Sweet Fancy! Let her loose: Summer's joys are spoilt by use And the enjoying of the Spring Fades as does its blossoming; Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too, Blus.h.i.+ng through the mist and dew, Cloys with tasting; What do then?

The thick blue scent of lilac fumed in the half-open windows. In the short time since Forrest had settled in the Adams Street compound, the women had planted tight rows of lilac and broad trellises of fast-climbing wisteria, with the idea of screening 85 Adams, where the family lived, from 87 Adams, where the slave pens were, and both by sight and by the dense luxurious scent of erect or inverted cones of blue flowers ...

Fancy high-commission'd-send her!

She has va.s.sals to attend her: She will bring, in spite of frost, Beauties that the earth has lost; She will bring thee, all together, All delights of summer weather; All the buds and bells of May, From dewy sward or th.o.r.n.y spray: All the heaped Autumn's wealth, With a still mysterious stealth: She will mix these pleasures up Like three fit wines in a cup, And thou shalt quaff it- Bedford's brother John appeared entranced, his head rolled back on the high cus.h.i.+on of his armchair, eyes lidded and lips faintly parted, as if the limpid stream of words had eased his pain, or as if the heavy scent of the blue flowers muted it. Doubtless the laudanum also played its part.

Thou shalt, at one glance behold, The daisy and the marigold; White-plum'd lilies, and the first Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst Shaded hyacinth, always Sapphire queen of the mid-May And every leaf and every flower Pearled with the self-same shower.

Mrs. Montgomery s.h.i.+fted on the opposite end of the horsehair sofa. Biting a thread, she held her embroidery hoop at arm's length and studied it critically. An outline of a bluebird there, a couple of its wings filled in with thread, perched in a cl.u.s.ter of flowers and lurid bright red fruit.

Them berries look pizen, Forrest thought, turning his head toward the chair where Mary Ann went on reading, the open book obscuring her face, like a fan. The verses ran over him like water, without his picking much sense from them, though he found the rhythms of her voice to be soothing, as though indeed he floated in quiet water.

When the hen-bird's wing doth rest Quiet on her mossy nest; Then the hurry and alarm When the bee-hive casts its swarm; Acorns ripe down-pattering, While the autumn breezes sing...

Somehow Mary Ann's tone seemed to have become just faintly harsher. With a clatter of pitchers and cups Catharine had come into the room. She wore under her ap.r.o.n a dark gown, of a blue so deep it was almost black, picked out by bright points that might have been either red fruits or red coals. Forrest had issued her this fabric himself, from a store of rolls he'd recently bought to clothe his slaves.

Catharine stood tall, erect as a lion-hunter, the long neck holding her head up high, the weight of the many fine braids of her hair spreading and flowing over her shoulders. Only a slight rattle of the crockery betrayed a trace of nervousness. After a moment's hesitation she moved to serve Mrs. Montgomery first, bending her legs to bring the tray and its contents within this mistress's reach. Mrs. Montgomery served herself delicately from the steaming china pot, added two lumps of sugar, emitted a brittle smile.

Catharine pa.s.sed the tray then toward Mary Ann Forrest, who waved her off with the back of the book, and went on, a little louder, with her reading.

Oh Sweet Fancy! Let her loose.

Everything is spoiled by use: Where's the cheek that doth not fade Too much gaz'd at? Where's the maid Whose lip mature is ever new?

Where's the eye, however blue, Doth not weary? Where's the face One would meet in every place?

Where's the voice, however soft, One would hear so very oft?

Catharine lowered herself before Forrest now.

"Suh," she murmured, mola.s.ses slow. "What will you take, Mist' Fo'est?" Her brown eye caught his for an instant before slipping easily away. Forrest took his coffee black. She'd sewn her bodice firm and tight. A swatch of white muslin tucked in the V still permitted a view of the dark cleft between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her nipples pushed red berries up through the cloth.

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.

"That'll do me," Forrest said, sitting back on the sofa, careful not to spill his cup, and Catharine caught him again with a sidelong smile as she rose, with a graceful turn away from him, but looking over her shoulder to say to him, "Suh, is that all you want?" As she moved off to serve the men sitting outside on the gallery, it occurred to Forrest that she might be slightly better tolerated by the white women of this household if she could only swing her hips a little less winsomely.

Catharine did not remain long on the gallery. The two Cowan men, Mary Ann's uncle and cousin, had gone outdoors to smoke cigars, perhaps for a discreet taste of whiskey. They did not care for coffee now.

Let, then, sweet Fancy find Thee a mistress to thy mind: Dulcet-eyed as Ceres' daughter, Ere the G.o.d of Torment taught her How to frown and how to chide; With a waist and with a side White as Hebe's when her zone Slipt its golden clasp and down Fell her kirtle at her feet- Mary Ann broke off, a little sharply, and without finis.h.i.+ng the last few lines of the poem. Again Catharine had appeared in the frame of the doorway. "Missus," she said. "Will they be anything else?"

Mary Ann glanced up without looking at the new housemaid directly. "We'll want no more of you tonight-you can go on to the quarters. But leave the tray with us."

Catharine seemed to smile obscurely as she stooped to settle the tray on a low table. The movement involved an undulation of her long back and brought her derriere in tight relief beneath the fabric.

Mrs. Montgomery had apparently p.r.i.c.ked herself with a needle. She sucked a droplet of blood from a fingertip. "Exotic costume for a house servant," she remarked, once Catharine had barely swayed out of the room. "A saucy wench if I make no mistake. I wonder you don't find her stout enough for the field."

Though the remark seemed generally addressed, Forrest rather took it to himself. I wonder if she's stout enough to stand up to your witchery, he thought, but had the good sense not to say it.

Mrs. Montgomery looked at her daughter then, somewhat askance. Mary Ann did no more than to lower her eyes over the verses she had not quite finished reading. Then she closed the book, with a startling slap.

"I believe I'll go up to my room," she said.

"Good night," Forrest said, looking at his wife's heels as they turned. He'd heard her use the phrase "my room" quite seldom, but often enough to know it meant he'd not be warmly received in the bed the two of them normally shared.

He gave her a five-minute lead up the stairs. The floorboards creaked as she moved about. Then stillness. He stood up, stopping himself from yawning or cracking his back, two perfectly natural actions his mother-in-law regarded as unseemly and uncouth.

"Good night, Mother Montgomery," he said.

A loose thread caught in her teeth again, she grimaced at him across the embroidery hoop, signifying her inability to reply. Forrest glanced up the stairs, then stepped out onto the porch. The scent of lilac lay heavy on the moist air, with a wisp of cigar smoke threaded into it. From a hidden perch in a new-leafed maple came the liquid trill of a mockingbird.

"Gentlemen," Forrest said. The two Cowans murmured some answer to this. A draw on his cigar brought a brief orange glow across the face of the young surgeon.

Forrest stepped down into the street, and raised his eyes for a moment to the bedroom window, dark, and for a moment he pictured the volume of poetry carefully placed on a doily by the extinguished lamp, then Mary Ann lying on her side in their bed, her shoulder jutting up through gown and coverlet like the tip of an iceberg.

And I didn't even do anything, he thought. I didn't do anything yet.

The men on the porch would suppose he was going to gamble, he thought, and was irked by thinking it. Ordinarily he acted with no consciousness of another's opinion, not even his own. Tonight he felt his kinsmen on the porch were watching him, considering him, and so were the dark windows upstairs in the house. When he unlocked the gate in the fence enclosing 87 Adams, it seemed to him dozens of eyes turned his way from the pens, though in fact scarcely anyone was about, only Aunt Sarah and a pair of girl-children drying crockery by the pump head in the light of a pine torch.

The chain clanked against the gatepost when he let it drop, and he covered it with one hand to still it. The fence was built so high and tight more to screen the pens from the neighbors than to discourage escape; escape was a discouraging prospect anyway and there were plenty worse places in Memphis than here. Catharine stood in the doorway of the cabin he'd a.s.signed her, gazing calmly across the yard at him, her round-eyed child riding on her hip. She'd put off her ap.r.o.n when she left the big house, and in the blend of torchlight and moonlight the dress sewn from the cloth he'd given her looked painted on. You can't have her lessen you force her You can't have her lessen you force her. The words dropped onto him out of nowhere, as if they'd tumbled out of the poetry book. Once in a brawl someone had managed to strike him between the eyes with a pistol b.u.t.t, and he had lost consciousness in a flash of white light, though apparently he'd continued to fight until he came to himself somewhat later, many hands dragging him back by his elbows, voices warning him he'd thrashed his a.s.sailant half-dead. He could picture himself turning away from the locked gate and going off to Mason's or another gambling house where he could throw his money down and feel the surge of excitement rising. A wave to carry him away. But he did such things without thinking about them; the thought had no appeal. He might simply return to the big house, then, where his son and his daughter had long been asleep.

But Catharine had handed her child to Aunt Sarah and was moving silkily toward the gate, still watching him evenly-her face was turned a little to the side but her eyes were straight on his. A n.i.g.g.e.r wench might be whipped for the boldness of that gaze. He felt the child's eyes on him too, but then Aunt Sarah clucked and crooked her finger and teased the child's attention to herself.

"It's all right," he said to her, as Catharine stepped out between the gateposts, as if Aunt Sarah might challenge her departure with the master, as if he had to explain to her what he did. The old woman's eyes were lost in the pockets of wrinkle and shadow below the tight band of her head cloth. She swiveled away as he shut the gate, the child's weight pulling her. His hands felt thick and awkward, manipulating chain and lock. His keys fell into his pocket like lead weights.

"What air we doen?" he seemed to have asked her.

"You the mastah," Catharine said.

"I ain't the master of this," he said.

She made some sound, not quite a word, then turned from him and walked into the shadows. Inertia broke and he went after her. She seemed in fact to be leading the way. Or she was walking a pace or two ahead of him to afford him that view she knew he enjoyed, the--I haven't done anything yet, he thought. Only imagined crowding her into a corner of the dark smoky cabin, exchange of hot breath, flesh straining against the cloth, collapsing to a shuck tick on the floor. Instead he was walking through this cool, flower-scented night, not quite close enough to touch her. A closed carriage pa.s.sed them; he didn't bother to notice whose. There were lights at some of the windows they pa.s.sed and surely people sat invisibly in the shadows of their porches too, observing Forrest walking with his slave girl, and let them think what they d.a.m.n well pleased. They were walking toward the southern edge of town.

Words skittered around the inside of his head like ants, like he'd kicked over an anthill in there. Fancy Fancy was a word that kept lighting up. From the poem. Forrest had never taken pleasure from reading himself and knew nothing of poetry at all except in some way he seemed to know that Mrs. Montgomery preferred other even duller poets than the one Mary Ann had chosen to read. He hadn't known his mind had captured so many of those words. was a word that kept lighting up. From the poem. Forrest had never taken pleasure from reading himself and knew nothing of poetry at all except in some way he seemed to know that Mrs. Montgomery preferred other even duller poets than the one Mary Ann had chosen to read. He hadn't known his mind had captured so many of those words. Oh sweet fancy let her loose everything is spoilt by use Oh sweet fancy let her loose everything is spoilt by use.

Now they were leaving the ragged southern border of the town, where moonlight splintered through the skeletons of new-framed houses, on streets as yet unnamed. The road they walked tended in the direction of Hernando. He had a mental glimpse of Mary Ann's eyes, flicking at him for a moment over the top of the poetry book where's the eye however blue ... where's the eye however blue ... But he could not turn back from the other woman who still walked a pace or two ahead of him, glancing back now over her shoulder, her dark visage calm and serious, perhaps a hint of a smile tucked into her collarbone where he couldn't really see. But he could not turn back from the other woman who still walked a pace or two ahead of him, glancing back now over her shoulder, her dark visage calm and serious, perhaps a hint of a smile tucked into her collarbone where he couldn't really see.

The moon a day or so past full, an oblong rather than a circle. A rag of cloud slipped across the lower half of it, hurrying back toward Memphis. She was leading him on, each dip of her step pulling his foot forward as if they were linked by some invisible magnetic shackle. Or it was the force of his intention propelling her forward; how to know? He tried again to think of returning, but could not imagine any sort of future. As near as five minutes from now was a black hole. Deep gravity seemed to be pulling him down, although in fact the road was ascending, climbing to the gateposts of Elmwood Cemetery, which were coming up pale before them in the moonlight.

As they entered he wondered how she knew her way; was it possible she'd come here freely? Certainly she seemed sure of her direction. He overtook her now and walked beside her, on her right, near enough he could have reached for her hand. In the way of such things they'd come to call her Catharine Forrest, he thought, and her children would be called Forrest too, if he didn't sell her or sell them. In time of need or simply for profit he might sell a saddle horse, even a fine one he'd known huge and bold and rippling between his legs ...

"Ain't you afeart?" he asked her. For a moment he seemed to be asking it of himself. But Bedford Forrest had not been afraid of anything since when he was twelve he got first word that his father was dead. He couldn't remember many times before that either.

"Feart of what?" Her voice low, a hint of laughter in it maybe.

"Haints." By d.a.m.n, by Satan's h.o.r.n.y cloven hooves, he might as well be twelve again and trying to spark some scrawny girl in a gunny sack for a dress.

Catharine's laugh came low and husky. "This buryen ground too young fo' haints." He saw the white of her teeth as she smiled in the dark. "Not no scary scary ones, no way." ones, no way."

It was true-Elmwood had been dedicated just two years before and thus far was most commonly used as a park. Of a Sunday he'd driven the rambles himself, with Mary Ann and the children and sometimes a grandmother. He'd not known of n.i.g.g.e.rs coming here much, though Catharine seemed to know her way.

The air was heavy with c.r.a.pe myrtle aroma, and all the dogwoods were in bloom; white quatrefoil leaves trembling up to the moon. The giddy myrtle scent caught in the back of his gullet. He followed her under a spray of dogwood and stopped beside a waist-high marble slab.

She turned to face him. His fingertips trailed the surface of the stone, dipped into indentations of the letters there. "You're not afraid," he said.

"Of haints?"

"Of me."

Again the warm syrup of her laughter. "You think I don't know what a man is?" She shook back her hair and stood with her back arched, hands c.o.c.ked at her waist. "I seen how you looks at me. I knows what you wants."

"But what do you want?" It could not be himself who said these words-asking a black slave wench what she wanted.

She loosed some hidden clasp and all at once the dress fell from her, pooling at her feet. When she stepped out of it, toward him, the warm loamy scent of her seemed to wash over him already.

"What I can git," she told him.

And with a smile, though her almond eyes were not entirely smiling. She looked to him sleek as a seal in the fractured moonlight that fell through the dogwood. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s rose toward him as she breathed. He had not touched her yet, not ever, not even when he'd seen her the first time, chained to a ring on a post of that stall. In a flash before he reached for her he wondered why he would choose this. To be no longer master of anyone, and least of all himself.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE.

April 1863 MELEE. A ricochet whine brought Henri to a heightened state of consciousness, focused as if on the rust-red pain of a wasp sting. The horses bunched, Forrest's charger jostling Henri's mount. A string of curses A ricochet whine brought Henri to a heightened state of consciousness, focused as if on the rust-red pain of a wasp sting. The horses bunched, Forrest's charger jostling Henri's mount. A string of curses why that slipslidenfleabittenwormriddeneggsuckenliv-erblownhorsestealengraverobben son of Satan I'll tie his skinny legs around his neck in a sweet bow knot afore I'm done ... why that slipslidenfleabittenwormriddeneggsuckenliv-erblownhorsestealengraverobben son of Satan I'll tie his skinny legs around his neck in a sweet bow knot afore I'm done ... It seemed the shooting came from all sides now, three hundred and sixty degrees of a circle closing in. The point of Forrest's double-ground sword stuck up, revolved, as if to cut little crescents from the clouds in the blue sky overhead. It seemed the shooting came from all sides now, three hundred and sixty degrees of a circle closing in. The point of Forrest's double-ground sword stuck up, revolved, as if to cut little crescents from the clouds in the blue sky overhead.

Henri looked at Forrest's magnificent bay war horse and couldn't think of the animal's name, couldn't seem to remember if this was the fifth or the fifteenth horse Forrest would have shot from under him-and was that an event that had already happened, or was it still to come?

From the rear or what had been their rear a cannon coughed up thunder and grapeshot. Henri was shocked to a slightly clearer sense of the occasion and its time and place. It was spring, green gra.s.s and the pillowy fresh air told him that much, the fields so lush their horses risked foundering if they overgrazed. Last night Ginral Jerry had come into camp with half a dozen young rabbits slung over his shoulder, so dazed with spring fever, Jerry had claimed, he had only to s.n.a.t.c.h them up by their ears.

The pitch of the ringing in Henri's ears s.h.i.+fted, and near him he saw a corporal clap a hand around his upper arm. Blood leaked through the cracks between his fingers as the gray cloth stained. To the corporal's woebegone expression Forrest bit off a few words. "Hold yer horse in, son, ye ain't bad hurt till yet."

Smoke to the west-the Yankees had been burning barns and fields. A courier came galloping in amongst them: "Stanley's run over Armstrong's rear! Captured a mess of guns, and Captain Freeman!"

"Is he in Armstrong's rear G.o.dd.a.m.n him!" But for once Henri had a suspicion that Forrest's battle joy might be just slightly feigned. "By the b.l.o.o.d.y burning horns of the Devil that's jest whar I been tryen to git him all day! Come on, boys, we'll be in his his rear terrectly-" rear terrectly-"

The event a.s.sembled itself in Henri's mind. Today they were in Middle Tennessee, south of Franklin on the Lewisburg Pike, riding out from Spring Hill for a reconnaissance coordinated with Van Dorn. In this region the road was embraced by bends of the Harpeth River, one of which the Federal General Stanley had unexpectedly crossed, overrunning Freeman's hastily formed battery before he could get off a shot, then moving into Armstrong's rear. The Confederates would have been set for a rout if Forrest had not rallied his escort to charge back on the attackers-by the first shock of contact most of the riders had persuaded themselves that Stanley really had fallen into a trap set by Forrest, and their wildcat shrieking turned triumphant: Yyyyyyaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!

They'd overrun Freeman's cannons now, though not the Federals who were rus.h.i.+ng back toward the river crossing with their prisoners. Forrest, his bearded face in a genuine battle blaze, leaned toward Henri from his saddle and said, "Ornery, did I git around to tellen ye the time this puts me in mind of-" while on the other side of him Matthew turned his horse in closer, risking a collision to capture the anecdotal pearl- Harried by their mounted captors, prisoners from Freeman's battery ran or tried to run in a herky-jerky slow motion across the field to the water maples lining the riverbank. Something bad was going to happen or already had. Freeman was heavy, used to riding with his caissons; he could not keep the pace. He sank to one knee, blowing in the sodden gra.s.s, a Federal soldier turned back, raised a pistol; the captured surgeon there at Freeman's side threw up one of his hands-Forrest was going to finish his story later, or no, he had already finished it, at Parker's Crossroads in December, about four months before. Was the past the part that had already happened, the future still to come? That battle would be, had been similar to this one, at least in some of its particulars ...

They'd spent the days around Christmas tearing up railroad track up and down the line between Jackson and Union City, rolling kettledrums and building ghost campfires each night to make their weakness look like strength. Forrest had come into West Tennessee short of two thousand men, and made the Federals believe he had ten times that many. In fact the Federals in the region outnumbered him by five to one and were doing their clumsy best to hem him in against their gunboats on the Tennessee River. Forrest, meanwhile, slipped east toward McKenzie, meaning to hook around and strike the railroad again south of Jackson, if he could avoid a fight till then.

Year-end weather was miserable with icy rain. Crossing the Obion River they had to use captured sacks of coffee and flour to give the wagon wheels traction through the mud-a sacrifice which depressed the quartermasters. But they still had plunder enough to slow them down and when Forrest saw he was on a collision course with the Federals south of McLemoresville, he concluded to give them a whuppen if they wanted one. The Clarksburg and McLemoresville roads crossed in the front yard of the Reverend John Parker's house; Forrest sent his brother Bill with his Forty Thieves to lure the Federals under Dunham toward the crossroads. On the morning of New Year's Eve, he opened fire on Dunham's line, first with a single cannon rushed to a ridge above the Federal position, and then with Freeman's and John Morton's batteries working in close concert. By afternoon the artillery barrage and a couple of charges had separated Dunham from his own cannon and trapped him in a timber lot a little ways south of the Parker house. Forrest sent in a demand for surrender and was resting and waiting for a reply when rifle fire broke in their rear.

A courier rode up with his horse in a lather to announce that fresh Federal troops under Sullivan had broken in among Forrest's horse-holders in the peach orchard on the back side of the Parker house. Dunham must have been stalling for this development; from having his enemy surrounded Forrest was now pinned between two lines of hostile infantry.

"What'll we do, General?" the messenger panted, and Forrest snapped back at him, "Charge both ways." "Charge both ways."

He drew out the double-edged sword he'd taken at Trenton a week or so back, and spurred up his horse to ride to the rear. Henri followed him, with Kelley and Anderson. At their heels ran men who'd dismounted to do battle with Dunham's infantry, now desperate to recover their horses from the Federal surprise, but this movement looked less like a charge than a panic.

In the peach orchard there was a sudden flurry of skirmis.h.i.+ng, but Forrest was directing a retreat rather than a real charge, as some of his men did recover their horses; there was still a path open to safety to the east. Sweeping the sword with his left arm, Forrest pointed them the way. As the troops began filtering out of the trees, he steered his horse nearer to Henri's.

"Ornery, did I never tell ye?" he began. "Back when I was naught but a s.h.i.+rttail boy, I had me a little spotted pony we called him Whiskey. Smarter'n a whip and mean as a snake. Did I kill me some snakes back in them days? Seem like Bedford County was all over snakes then, specially in the springtime. Copperheads, rattlers, cottonmouth too we used to see ... I wouldn't kill a black snake though, account of a black snake keeps down varmints."

Raising his sword, he twisted in the saddle to shout a command to Dibrell, who was forming up men for retreat along the road toward Lexington. Then he returned to Henri with his ordinary speaking tone.

"It warnt all work back in them days, when we still had that farm on Caney Spring Creek, back afore my Daddy died. Work aplenty, but we had good play times too. They was other boys had ponies round that way and we used to ride all over the county. Hit wasn't hardly fenced up then, not like it is now.

"They was one time a pack of dogs took after us. Nigh on a dozen of'm I wouldn't be surprised, and big, ugly too ... the biggest stood might near tall as our ponies. They got to running us and made our ponies run."

By now almost all their men had cleared the orchard. Forrest drew up his horse before a corpse splayed on its back: the young cavalier who'd objected to his sharpening the back side of the captured blade at Trenton.

There was something unlucky about peach orchards, Henri thought, remembering Joe Johnston's b.l.o.o.d.y boot. At this season the branches were wiry and bare; horseshoes had scuffed up a few bony pits. Forrest dismounted and planted his sword in the ground by the dead youth's head.

"Well now, Orville," he said. "How'd ye git yoreself kilt back here? I'd sooner thought to find ye forward, up front with the flags."

Kelley and Anderson exchanged a glance across his empty saddle. Forrest crouched, considered, then turned back the dead man's lapel. A whiff of lavender came with the handkerchief he drew from the inside pocket, as if it might have been a lady's favor. Forrest opened the cloth and covered the dead face. He stood up and shook the dirt from his sword.

"I never did take to a good-looken feller," he said with a frown. "I don't know why that is."

Between the orchard and the Parker house was a small cemetery set about with a hedge. Here they halted for a moment, looking down at the weather-worn humps of limestone. Kelley took off his hat and held it to his breast. His pale lips moved in a cold wind from the west. Forrest's face was still clouded from the meeting with the corpse.

"I tell ye panic oncet gits started good in a pack of what have ye," he said, "hit moves like fire afore the wind. Well I know you seen that yore own self plenty of times since we started in fighten these damyankees. That was a mean pack of dogs, that day I named. We all of us boys known'm. Half-wild. h.e.l.l I think some of'm was all the way wild. We known them to pull down cattle sometimes ..."

A squad of blue cavalry rode out of the orchard, an officer calling for them to surrender. Forrest turned his horse toward them.

"I already have done surrendered," he said. "I'm jest getten my people collected to come in."

The Federal officer hesitated. "If you've surrendered," he said, "then why is your sword unsheathed?"

As if in surprise Forrest glanced down at his left fist gripping the sword hilt. "It's right handy for explainen folks whar to go at." He grinned. "Don't fret-I'll fetch hit to ye fore ye know it."

With that he trotted his horse away around the Parker house toward the crossroads, the other three riders following him. Henri felt a cold spot between his shoulder blades that grew to the size of Jerry's black skillet. He forced himself not to look back.

When they'd once faded into the trees south of the roadway, Forrest wriggled his whole spine like a hound stretching. "Boys," he said, "I thought we was done for, back thar." But he was addressing Henri alone, for Kelley and Anderson had drifted away. "G.o.ddammit!" Forrest said suddenly. "It's scarce half an hour they was afixen to surrender to me."

John Morton swung in beside them then, his biscuit-pale face warm with action. He and Forrest saluted each other. Henri recalled how Forrest had sent him away when he first appeared to join their company, not wanting Freeman to be troubled by this whey-faced upstart. How Forrest would come to depend on Morton absolutely once Freeman had been killed. But Freeman would not die till April- Forrest's horse reared at the crack of a shot that sounded like it had gone off between Henri's ears.

"General," said Morton. "Are you all right?"