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.Henri rode north over from one glade, thicket or pasture to the next, toward the hills above the Tennessee River, scanning the shifting horizons for Matthew.No battle lines had been clearly drawn anywhere but there appeared to have been hot fighting everywhere.It was late afternoon, the light beginning to turn amber, when he rode into the remnants of the peach orchard.Half the little trees were shredded by shrapnel and the ground was carpeted with pink blossoms that shifted, rustling, as Henri rode through.A little further on he passed a solitary riding boot standing by itself in a shallow ravine where Isham Harris had poured it empty of Joe Johnston’s blood.Henri set his teeth and rode toward the rumble of cannon on the ridge.Soon he could make out the gray horse’s speckled and bluish hide moving along the slope below the Federal battery.A little nearer to him he saw Matthew sitting his horse and shading his eyes with one hand against the setting sun.When Henri rode up, Matthew lowered his hand and blinked at him.“Go tell him Willie’s all right, if you want,” Henri said.Matthew’s face rippled as he thought it over.Then he steered his horse up the hill.Henri watched him claim Forrest’s attention, saw Forrest briefly lay his hand on Matthew’s shoulder.When the contact had broken, he rode up to join them.“Did ye happen to see General Johnston back thar?” Forrest inquired.Not exactly, Henri thought.“Polk? Beauregard? Anything at all as looks like a commander?” Forest squinted toward where some fifty Federal cannon were fisted tight together on the ridge.“Goddammit! I can smell the river.If somebody would just send me a few more men we could tumble all them bastards over the banks afore dark.”But instead the order came for them to fall back, and Forrest, grumbling bitterly, obeyed it.They camped a short way south near the banks of the river, just out of range of the gunboats that had shelled their retreat from the ridge of Pittsburgh Landing, where Grant’s army was making what looked like a last stand.As dusk thickened, those closest to Forrest’s bedroll ate crawdads hot and pink from Jerry’s skillet, too ravenous to bother picking meat from crunchy shell.Jerry dressed Henri’s hurt thumb with spiderweb.At moonrise, Forrest clothed him and Matthew and Major Strange in blue coats salvaged from the dead during the day, and sent them to reconnoiter up the river.They met one post of Federal pickets who let them pass with scant examination.In the vague moonlight shining on the slow flat surface of the river they could see the brushy southern tip of the oval island opposite Pittsburgh Landing.Henri covered a bullet hole in the captured coat with the ball of his hurt thumb.It felt like all the crawdads he had swallowed had woken up to scrabble around the inside of his gut.Fresh Federal troops were ferrying across the river by the thousand.“We got to jump’m afore day,” Forrest said when he heard the news.“Else they’ll do us like they done us at Donelson.” He thought for a moment.“Like we done ourselves.”He left the camp alone and was gone for hours.The moon had traveled half the sky when Henri propped up on an elbow to hear Forrest muttering mostly to himself.“Cain’t find nobody to listen to me.” Air puffed out of him as he settled on his back.“This battle’s our’n to piss away, and we done pissed it.”· · ·TWO RAIN-SOGGY DAYS LATER, General William Tecumseh Sherman and his infantry command set out in pursuit of Rebel soldiers retreating down the road from Shiloh toward Corinth—abandoning all of the ground they’d won in the first phase of the battle.The Federals were four miles out of their camp when they came upon a long wide hollow strewn with timber.The trees had been felled in this long swale the year before but never hauled off to the sawmill.Bark flaking from them, covered with a fresh growth of spring vine, the logs lay every which way, crisscrossed just as they’d first fallen.On the ridge beyond appeared a couple of Rebel horsemen.Sherman raised his glass to his eye.The riders didn’t altogether look like white men, and that puzzled him for a moment, but they were Rebels sure enough.He had no way of telling how many cavalry lay on the far side of that ridge, but it hardly mattered.The swale of fallen timbers would make a charge impossible; his foot soldiers would certainly have the advantage there.“Yankees,” Matthew called, trotting his horse down toward Forrest.“Lots of them.”“How many?” Forrest reined his gray around, pulled down the brim.“Fifteen hundred and maybe more,” Henri said.“I don’t know.They’re still coming out of the trees.”Forrest coughed.“That’s five to one on us.I wonder where in Hell they keep coming from.” He had a hundred fifty of his own men on hand and two hundred other horsemen Breckenridge had assigned to him for the rearguard actions of the day.He began dismounting these men now and ordering to the cover of trees or boulders along the top of the ridge.“Yankees can’t ride for … beans,” Matthew piped up.He was still astride his horse and exposed on the open backbone of the hill.“Git down from thar, and mind out for sharpshooters,” Forrest snapped.Then he stopped to look down the hill.“No, wait a minute [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]