FORT PILLOW

“That's right kind of you,” Shaw said. “Right kind.” Somebody led up one of the remounts – not a great horse, but not an old screw, either. He swung up into the saddle. Colonel McCulloch nodded. So did Matt Ward. A glance was plenty to show that Shaw knew what to do on horseback.

Black Bob thumped Ward on the shoulder. “Reckon you found us a good one, Matt.” Before Ward could answer, the colonel cocked his head to one side. He looked east. “Something going on back there. You make out what?”

Ward looked back the way he'd come, too. Somebody was… A broad grin spread across his face. “General Forrest's here, sir!”

Nathan Bedford Forrest stayed happy about sending someone else off to deal with Fort Pillow while he stayed behind in Jackson for about ten minutes. After that, he started to fume. After that, he started another round of restless pacing. And after that…

He could feel that he was wearing himself down. “If you want something done right, do it yourself,” he muttered, there in the parlor of the house that had held General Grant and now held him.

He'd lived by that notion his whole life long. He'd had to, since his father died young and left him the man of a large family. He'd farmed that way, he'd bought and sold slaves that way – and he'd got rich doing it, too – and he'd used the same rule when he was on the Memphis city council not long before the war.

And he'd used that rule when he fought. He'd enlisted as a private. Now, less than three years later, he was a major general. He had no formal military training. He had next to no formal education of any sort, which was why he so disliked picking up a pen. He couldn't hold a train of thought when he wrote, and he spelled by ear. He knew no other way to do it, but he also knew educated men laughed when someone spelled that way. If he hated anything, it was being laughed at.

But regardless of whether he could spell, he could damn well fight. He'd whipped uncounted officers trained at West Point. They all thought the same way. They all did the same things. They all looked for their foes to do the same things. When somebody did something different, they didn't know how to cope with it.

He had nothing against Jim Chalmers except his – Forrest-like problem with subordination. The Virginian made as good a division commander as he had. In the end, though, Forrest lost the struggle with himself. If you want something done right, do it yourself

He shouted for Captain Anderson and Dr. Cowan and the rest of his staff officers. “What the devil are we sitting around here for?” he shouted. “We need to get them damnyankees and our runaway niggers out of Fort Pillow.”

The surgeon held out his hand to Forrest's chief of staff. “Told you so,” he said. Anderson ruefully passed him a brown Confederate banknote.

Forrest turned away so they wouldn't see him smile. So Cowan had expected he wouldn't be able to stay away from a fight, had he? Well, they'd all served with him for a while now, surgeon and chief of staff, paymaster and engineering officer, and the more junior men as well. They had a pretty good notion of how he thought.

He swung back toward them. “What are you waiting for?” he said. “Get your horses saddled up. We've got some powerful riding to do if we're going to catch up with McCulloch's brigade.”

Dr. J. B. Cowan gave him a courtly bow. “Sir, most of us have our horses ready. We've been waiting on you.”

“Well… shit,” Forrest said, and the officers laughed. He went on, “While I'm saddling my beast, gather up as much of the Nineteenth Tennessee Cavalry as you can. We'll take some of Colonel Wisdom's regiment along with us so nobody can say we just came along for the fight. “

“Even if we did.” Dr. Cowan enjoyed poking fun at him, and probably did it more than anyone else had the nerve to.

“Even if we did,” Forrest agreed good-naturedly. “Come on. Let's move.”

Riding hurt. It had for some time now, and he feared it would till the end of his days. He'd taken several wounds, including one at Shiloh the doctors had thought would kill him and one from the pistol of a junior officer of his. He'd thought that one had killed him, and he'd given the lieutenant a knife wound in the belly that brought his end from blood poisoning. Forrest himself, meanwhile, went on.

He went on, and no one but he knew the price he paid. John Bell Hood had lost an arm at Gettysburg and a leg at Chickamauga, and was a slave to laudanum to hold the pain at bay. Forrest, a stranger to whiskey and tobacco, had no more to do with opium in any form. If he hurt, he hurt – and he went on.

On days when he hurt badly, he was apt to be meaner than usual.

If he met the Federals on those days, he took it out on them. He'd lost track of how many U.S. soldiers he'd killed himself; something on the order of a couple of dozen. He didn't think any other general officer on either side could come close to matching his score. If no Yankees were close by when the pain got bad, his own men had to walk soft.