Devil's Dream (38 page)

“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. Hell 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. “Goddammit!” 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?”

Forrest calmed his mount and took off his hat. A minié ball had notched the brim. “By the hardest,” he said. “That was mighty damn close.”

“Are we not going to charge them both ways, then?” Henri blurted.

“Today?” Forrest laughed shortly. “Today we won’t and say we did.”

T
ODAY WAS
the spring of 1863 and Captain Freeman could not keep up his lumbering run. He sank to one knee, breathless in the trampled pasture short of the bank of the Harpeth River. Doctor Skelton raised his hand to ward off the shot and the bullet passed through the center of his palm before it smashed into Freeman’s face.

When Forrest overtook the scene, Freeman’s body lay bulky as a bear’s. He got down to raise the dead man’s head; the exit wound was so engulfing it bloodied his arm to the elbow. His face twisted.

“That’s dirty work by damn,” he said. Tears ran from his eye sockets down into his beard. He would not see Forrest weep again, Henri realized. Not for Lieutenant Gould. Not for his brother Jeffrey. Whose deaths were still to come.

“By damn I’ll get some for ye,” Forrest said as he withdrew his hand from Freeman’s head. “Goddamme if I don’t.” He wiped his forearm on the flank of his horse, remounted and rode toward the riverbank.

H
E COULD HARDLY
believe the dogs could keep up with the panicked ponies, frightened beyond a gallop into a dead run. But some of the dogs were long-legged, tall enough to snap at Forrest’s bare heels. He was riding bareback too, and he could feel himself losing his seat as the pony bucked, kicked at the dogs, landed in still a faster run, leaving Forrest in the empty air behind his whipping tail.

He landed on his back with a slam, half his breath knocked out of him, but curling up his head automatically so it wouldn’t strike the ground. The dogs scattered, startled by his landing in their midst like a bombshell. A stone came under one hand and he threw it. A stick under the other; he flailed it, screaming in their jaws.
Keep up the skeer
. The dog pack broke and ran yipping into cover of the thornbushes all around. “Hell,” Forrest said, with his rasping laugh. “Them dogs was more afeart than me.”

November 1864

A
CLEAR NIGHT:
Orion masterfully striding across the dome of the winter sky. Among the others of Forrest’s escort, Henri and Matthew lay wrapped each in the remaining tatters of his blanket, on the same ground their hobbled horses nuzzled for pale shreds of winter grass. Since they crossed into Tennessee they’d had some kind of fight every day, trying to slow the retreat toward Nashville of the Yankee troops under Schofield and scout their movement and intentions for General Hood at the same time. Just as darkness fell that evening they’d laid an ambush that had thrown the Yankees into disarray, and more than likely they’d be moving again before dawn—maybe toward Mount Pleasant where the Yankees were supposed to have a depot, thinly guarded.

So Henri should have been taking these couple of hours to soak up all the sleep he could, yet he lay wakeful, eyes open, expectant of something. Forrest’s tent was nearby, its canvas glowing from the orb of a lantern inside, and Henri could hear muttered voices of a conference between Forrest and Majors Anderson and Strange. The tent went quiet when the two officers came out, but Forrest didn’t snuff his light.

There was something watching from a line of pale and leafless oaks, flanked by dark cedars, and when Forrest’s conference had ended it detached itself and moved softly toward the tent. Man-sized, something familiar in the step. Matthew rolled to a crouch. There’d been rumors for months that Sherman had assassins on Forrest’s trail, though now that Atlanta had fallen to the Yankees, Forrest’s threat to the railroads that ran south from Nashville mattered less than it did before.

As Matthew darted forward, Henri drew a short knife and went after him. Cold ground shocked the arches of his bare feet. The prowler was beside the tent when he turned quickly, showed his empty hands. The lamp glow through the canvas caught the unscarred side of Benjamin’s handsome head.

“You were
gone,”
Matthew hissed, and Ben motioned furiously for silence.

Henri beckoned them away from the tent. “It’s all right,” he said to Ben. “He’s not going anywhere.”

All three of them returned among the horses. Matthew’s mount raised its head to snuffle and blow hot air into the bib of Benjamin’s overalls.

“You were
good
gone,” Matthew said.

“Halfway home,” Ben said. “Ain’t it the truth? But I kept feelen that cold down my back. Ain’t right to run off without taken no leave. Ain’t like I was runnen north noway.” He turned sideways, slipping the horse’s muzzle from his chest. “Got no sugar for you today,” he said. “Ain’t got no nothen.”

Henri found a chunk of cold cornbread in his sack and handed it to Ben, who bit into it sharply, nodding his thanks.

“He done give free papers to some,” Ben said thickly, through his food. “I knows it. Some from Coahoma plantation same as me.”

“You came all the way back for a piece of paper?” Henri said. “When you’ve got as good a chance at a hanging noose or a ball between your eyes?”

“I come back for an understanden,” Ben said. “Look the man in the eye one time. Like he do me.”

“He never gave me any free paper,” Matthew said.

“Huh.” Ben looked at him carefully, in the watery light of the winter stars. “You ax for one?”

“Not exactly,” Matthew said.

“Come on with me when I goes in there,” Ben said.

“What makes you think I have any pull with General Nathan Bedford Forrest,” Matthew said. “I’m a thing he owns the same as you.”

“I ain’t but his slave and he got plenty,” Ben said. “You his blood son. You knows it. He knows it. Everbody knows it. They might not say it but they knows it.”

Matthew stared at him.

“You ain’t obliged to say a mumblen word,” Ben told him. “You’ll stand there with me, won’t you?”

Henri followed them to Forrest’s tent. When the other two were admitted he hung back, but he could see plain enough through the open flap. Forrest was studying maps by the light of his lantern; his papers spread on a folding camp table. He looked at Ben.

“Brought ye a whole delegation, I see.”

Ben pulled himself straight and caught his lower lip in his teeth. “Thought you done left me,” Forrest said.

“Reckon I started,” Ben said. “Next I thought I cain’t do that. I needs to ax leave.”

“Aint like ye was a sojer,” Forrest said. “You’re a teamster, more like.”

“Hell if a mule deserts you go after him,” Ben said. “Never mind a man.”

“Notice I ain’t come after
you,”
Forrest said.

Ben laughed almost inaudibly. “Figured you jest hadn’t come
yet.”

“Don’t think I didn’t notice though,” Forrest said, as if he hadn’t heard. “Watching you leave was like seeing birds go before a storm. Low to the ground and fast as a bullet. Hit’s a sign.”

He laced his fingers behind his head, and looked up at the sag of canvas over his head. “We’ve looked right po’ly for quite a spell, since Atlanta went down, and I know what all Sherman’s doen down to Georgia—I might of stopped that bastard if they let me. But right now, I’d still say we got a chance to whup it. We’re bout to get the drop on Schofield, and if Hood can take back Nashville after that, why boys, hit’s gone be a whole new day.”

He looked at Ben inquiringly, out from under the deep shade of his brows.

Ben straightened again. “I come to ax your leave to go home, General Forrest.”

“All right.” Forrest leaned into his camp table, dug awkwardly at a clean sheet of paper with a pen crabbed painfully in his left hand. He took a long time to finish and sign.

“Benjamin,” he said. “I’ll give ye this here free paper. No, I won’t say that. I’ll say ye earned it.”

Ben reached for the document. “Thank you, sir.”

“Say hidy to Nancy and the chirren when ye git thar,” Forrest said.

“I’ll be sure and do that,” Benjamin said. Forrest still held the paper not quite in his reach.

“If ye’ll wait till morning I’ll have Major Anderson copy it out fair.” Forrest grinned. “Ye know I hadn’t got much of a hand fer writen.”

“That’s all right,” Benjamin said. “I’ll be more’n happy with what you wrote.”

T
HE ASHES
of Ginral Jerry’s fire had gone cold. He hunkered on his heels, scouring the iron with a handful of sand, without looking at the work his hands were doing. Instead he peered across the dead embers into the hollow of the dead tree there on the hilltop, white-stubbled chin lifted, his watery brown eyes alert.

From the stump on which he sat, Henri followed the direction of Jerry’s gaze. The candle that sometimes burned in the hollow had gone out—it looked as if the wick had consumed itself all the way to the end, leaving lacy, wraithlike wings of white wax melted to the wood. Around the wax came a cold boneless movement, muscle pouring itself through a loop inside the hollow of the tree. Henri was startled enough that he froze, and his breath stopped for a moment when he realized it was a snake that wore those colored bands. In these parts he could recognize the copperhead, moccasin and rattler, also the green garter snake and the speckled chicken snake. The serpent in the tree was none of these, and Henri could not find its head, to know if it had the wedge shape of a viper. Then presently the snake’s head rose up from a crockery bowl that had been set at the bottom of the hollow place. The head was narrow and its color was duller than the rest, as if it had been dipped in … milk. How would Jerry have come by milk in this country?—which between the Rebels and the Yanks had been scraped as dry as that black skillet scoured with sand. The ribbon of black tongue flicked in, out of the scaled mouth slot. The colored body of the snake dripped off the convolutions of the inner wood, until the whole creature had disappeared into a lower crevice of the tree.