FORT PILLOW

“I'll take anything I can get.” Ward eyed her. She was older than he was – she had to be close to thirty – but she wasn't bad looking. He tried a smile. She smiled back, but not that way. She'd already stuck the ladle into the pot again, and was offering it to somebody behind him. She'd give out Brunswick stew. She didn't seem inclined to give herself away.

With a shrug, Matt Ward rode on. Finding out didn't cost him anything. She might have been interested in a quick poke. Could he have got off his horse, mounted her, and then saddled up again fast enough not to land in trouble? He thought so; he'd gone without for quite a while.

More ladies with pots of stew and rhubarb pie and other good things to eat stood at the edge of the street. Brownsville seemed strongly pro – Confederate. Ward wasn't surprised. Any place where there were lots of blacks and not very many whites, the whites would want to keep them in line, and that meant backing the C.S.A.

He wondered what these nice women thought of the idea of nigger bucks with guns in their hands. Wouldn't they use those guns to outrage Southern womanhood? He'd wanted to outrage Southern womanhood himself only a couple of minutes earlier, but that was different. And he knew exactly how it was different, too: he wasn't a black.

Up ahead, Black Bob McCulloch was shouting, “A guide! We need a guide to Fort Pillow!” His thick, dark beard, with luxuriant mustaches that almost swallowed his mouth, helped give him his nickname.

“I should say you do,” a woman told him. “All the swamps and bogs and marshes and I don't know what all between here and the Mississippi, you'd get lost faster'n greased lightning if you tried to go without one.”

“Yes, ma'am.” The brigade commander lowered his voice to answer her, then raised it again to a bellow that could carry across a battlefield: “A guide! We need a guide!”

Other officers took up the call, till Brownsville seemed to echo with it. Mter what the local woman said, Ward hoped they found one. If they bogged down… He didn't want to think about what General Forrest would do to them then. He was far more afraid of his own commanding officer than of the damnyankees, and he wasn't ashamed to admit it.

“I can get you there.” The answer came almost from Matt Ward's elbow. The man who made it looked as if he'd been through the mill. He wore a collarless shirt with no jacket and a ragged pair of homespun trousers. His eyes were wild in a pale face; his hair stuck out in all directions.

“Who the devil are you?” Ward said.

“My name is Shaw, WJ. Shaw,” the wild – eyed man replied. “That Bradford son of a bitch had me shut up in Fort Pillow till yesterday. I managed to sneak off, and I just got here this morning. You bet I can take you back there. Give me a rifle and I'll shoot some of those bastards myself. “

He wanted to do it. The eagerness all but blazed off him. It was so hot, Matt Ward was surprised Shaw didn't steam in the rain. The trooper raised his voice: “Colonel! Hey, Colonel! Here's your man, I reckon! “

Black Bob McCulloch had to fight his way back against the tide of cavalrymen moving west. Even when he shouted at the men to get out of his way, they couldn't always. And quite a few of them weren't inclined to, either. Confederate soldiers were always convinced they were just as good and just as smart as the officers who led them.

When McCulloch finally did get to talk with W.]. Shaw, he didn't need long to decide that Shaw was the man they needed. “Give this man some food!” he yelled. “Get him a horse – get him a good horse, goddammit! Get him a rifle and some cartridges! “

“Much obliged, sir,” Shaw said with his mouth full – one of the ladies on the street was feeding him Brunswick stew. “I'll pay you back for your kindness. And I'll pay that Bradford shitheel back, too, only the other way. Oh, you bet I will.”

“Mr. Shaw, we aim to be at Fort Pillow by sunup tomorrow morning,” McCulloch said. “You lead us there on time and we'll be in your debt, sir, not the other way around.”

“I can do it, but you'll have to ride through the night,” Shaw said. “You're damn near forty miles away, you know.”

McCulloch nodded. “Oh, yes, Mr. Shaw, I know that very well. But wherever you go, we'll go with you. You don't need to worry about that, not one bit. Some of us rode all through last night. If we have to do it again to clear those niggers and homemade Yankees out of Fort Pillow, we will.”

“Colonel, we have a bargain.” W.J. Shaw stuck out his hand. Robert McCulloch leaned down in the saddle to clasp it. Shaw went on, “I'd be honored to join this force, not just to guide it.”

“And we'd be honored to have you,” McCulloch replied. “You do what you say you can do and you won't join as a soldier, either – you'll be an officer straight from the start.”