And word might get back to Bedford Forrest. Forrest had gone easy on him for letting Major Bradford escape, but if the general commanding got the notion he was a drunk… He didn't know just what would happen then, and he didn't want to find out, either. It wouldn't be pretty. He was only too sure of that.

Here and there, down by the Mississippi, wounded Federals still groaned. Ward couldn't tell whether they were white or colored; all wounded men sounded pretty much the same. Some of them would be dead by the time the sun came up. Others… If the Federals sent gunboats up to Fort Pillow soon enough, they might be able to take away the survivors.

“Gunboats,” Ward muttered. He shivered, though the night was mild enough. With the blood throbbing inside his sodden brain every time his heart beat, he didn't want to think about cannon going off. If a shell burst close by, he feared his head would fall off regardless of whether any fragments struck him.

The moon sank toward the western horizon. Even its light seemed uncommonly bright, which told him how badly hung over he was. When the sun came up, he wondered if he would bleed to death through his eyes.

“Are you still with us?” Lieutenant Bottom tried to sneak up on him.

Matt Ward thought about coming back with a smart answer, the way Stonewall Jackson had-the way he would have himself had he felt better. But his headache wasn't the only thing that held him back. He had yet to earn the right to do that again, and Lieutenant Bottom did have the right-indeed, the duty-to check up on him. Feeling uncommonly small, Ward said, “Yes, sir, I'm still here.”

“Good.” Bottom nodded and walked on toward the next picket. Was it? Ward rubbed his throbbing temples, which didn't help much. If he felt this bad now, how much worse would he be come morning? He tried not to think about that. But a long, miserable night loomed ahead.

A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse! Bill Bradford remembered some ranting fool of a Shakespearean actor bellowing out the line when a traveling company put on Richard III in Memphis. The actor would have done best on a horse that usually pulled brewery wagons, for he was built like a beer barrel himself.

But the cry! The anguished cry! Bradford felt the truth of that, felt it in his very marrow, as he splashed and squelched south through the Hatchie bottoms, heading toward Memphis once again.

He was still wearing his shoes. The mud hadn't pulled them off yet, though it had certainly tried at least half a dozen times. His feet were soaked. In the darkness under the trees, or even out in the open when the moon went behind a cloud, he couldn't see puddles before he stepped in them. Half the time, he couldn't see his hand in front of his face. Pretty soon, the moon would set. He wanted to curl up under the nearest broad-spreading oak and sleep till morning.

He wanted to, but he didn't dare. Bedford Forrest's men would be looking for his trail, sure as hounds went after a raccoon. He'd broken his parole, so he had to make good his escape. The sport they had with him before they finally let him surrender gave a taste of what they'd do if they caught him now.

If he never saw another Confederate soldier, if he never heard the Rebel yell again, that wouldn't break his heart. So he thought for a moment, anyhow. But then he shook his head. Theodorick lay in the cold, wet ground, a shroud the only thing that kept the dirt out of his mouth and nose. The Rebs thought they were getting their revenge for what the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry had done to them, did they? Well, he aimed to show them they were nothing but amateurs when it came to revenge.

Maybe-no, probably-General Hurlbut wouldn't give him any sizable command, not after he'd lost Fort Pillow. But if he could have, oh, a company's worth of men who hated the Confederate States and everything they stood for and most especially hated all the people who followed the Stainless Banner just as much as he did… If he could have a company of men like that, what a vengeance he would wreak!

“I know where they live,” he muttered, and then swore when a hanging vine hit him in the face. And he did. He knew who the leading Confederate sympathizers were, from Paducah, Kentucky, all the way down to Pocahontas, Tennessee. He knew where their brothers lived, and their sons-yes, and their sisters and daughters, too. He hadn't ordered any outrages against their womenfolk. He hadn't, and he wouldn't. But if some happened anyway, he wouldn't shed a tear.

First, though, he had to get to Memphis. Remember that, Bill, he told himself sternly. One thing at a time. If he made a mistake on the road south, all his hopes for vengeance would go glimmering.

He kept hoping he would run across some homestead out in the middle of nowhere, some place where a farmer scratched out a living with a few crops and whatever he could shoot or trap in the swamps. If the bumpkin had any kind of nag…

But he didn't come across any farmhouses, or even trapper's huts. No one seemed to live in these swamps. He knew people did. But one of the reasons they lived in a place like this was that they didn't want anybody from the outside world bothering them. They didn't come out much, and the outside world didn't come in. Bill Bradford suddenly understood why it didn't. It couldn't find anybody here.

Something slithered over one of his shoes. Copperhead? Cottonmouth? Rattler? Only a garter snake? A figment of his overheated imagination? It could have been anything. Whatever it was, it didn't bite. And he didn't yell his head off, though he couldn't say why he didn't. He shuddered and pressed on.

Sooner or later, I have to come out 0/ the bottoms… don't I? he thought. When he did, he would surely find a farmhouse. And then, depending on whether the farmer backed the U.S.A. or the C.S.A., he would borrow a horse or talk his way into using one or simply steal one, whichever looked like the best idea.

And then, Memphis. Once he got there, Bedford Forrest's friends would find out they weren't the only ones who could strike by surprise at dawn. “Oh, yes,” Major Bradford muttered. “They'll find out, all right.”

When the distant thunder of guns woke Mack Leaming, his first reaction was astonishment that he'd been able to sleep at all. He'd thought the pain from his wound would keep him up all night. His second reaction was a groan as that pain, of which he'd been blissfully unaware since whenever he dozed off, flooded back into his consciousness. Did it hurt any less than it had before he fell asleep? Maybe a little, he decided, but maybe not, too. It was still plenty bad.

All around him, other wounded Union soldiers were coming back to themselves with almost identical groans. No one had done anything for any of them all through the night. The only mercy the Rebels showed was not bursting into this miserable hut and murdering them while they slept.

The guns sounded again, closer this time. “What the hell's going on?” somebody said. “Who's shooting at what?”

“Have men marched up from Memphis to chase the Rebs away?” someone else asked.

“Why couldn't they show up yesterday, God darnn their rotten souls to hell?” another wounded soldier said.

“It's not men marching-it's a gunboat, dog my cats if it ain't,” another man said.

As soon as Leaming heard that, he knew it had to be so. “I love gunboat sailors,” he said bitterly. “They sail away when we need 'em the most, but then they come back again after the fighting's done. They're heroes, all right, every darnn one of 'em.”

That touched off some vigorous and profane swearing from his fellow sufferers. The guns on the river boomed again. Yes, they were definitely closer this time. “You reckon that's the New Era comin' back?” somebody asked. “Even though I got me a hole in my leg, there's a few things I'd like to say to the high and mighty skipper who sailed off and left us in the lurch.”