River of Blood (Shiloh Series Book 4) Page 3

  The receiving room of the house occupied by Allen and the other commanders of General Wheeler’s cavalry brigade suddenly felt cold and uninviting. Though a warm fire crackled along the far wall and the smell of fresh bread and fried onions wafted in from the back of the house, the atmosphere might as well have been an open sink in the middle of summer.

  Allen sat at a desk crowded by two other desks that had been lined up along the outer wall. The room was too small for such accommodation, and the desks covered the two windows that faced the yard. Further, they were occupied by officers from the 51st Alabama who now ceased what they were doing to look up at Will. Despite the fire snapping away, Will felt chilled.

  “Umm, sir, I wasn’t paroled nor exchanged. I escaped. I didn’t’ swallow the yellow dog, neither.” Will tried not to show how crestfallen he felt at the response. This was supposed to be the man who saw his potential as an officer, the one who always had his back against Kearns.

  Allen waved his hand and stated crisply, “I don’t have time to fool with you, Hunter. You need to report to the provost and be cleared for duty. I’ll not have you recaptured and shot for going against your oath or what have you. You’re still listed as a prisoner of war, and I’ve no place for you anyhow.”

  Will stood stark still as Allen returned to the papers spread before him on the desk. His cheeks burned and his eyes cast about for something to convince him that this was a dream.

  Allen grunted another dismissal and refused to further acknowledge Will’s presence until he got the hint and left.

  Standing on the porch, Will’s mind had raced through a thousand possibilities for his predicament. Allen was a no-nonsense officer, and if the regulations said to do something, he did it and be damned with the nuances. Will had little choice but to do exactly as he was told.

  Another two weeks of wandering about Murfreesboro and going from staff officer to staff officer finally got Will’s record set straight, his pay routed back to the regiment, and his commission with the 1st Alabama reinstated. Letters and telegrams were written and sent and anxious days spent in the company of those who’d been arrested for one reason or another and were in the brig. Mary had been getting his pay while he was in prison, but he needed it to purchase new uniforms and equipment, a horse, weapons, and another saber. He could have straightened out his status from Montgomery and had a soft bed and a warm wife had he gone home. Instead, while letters and telegrams were taking their time being answered, he had a hard cot and a cold tent.

  On December 23, 1862, he’d finally gotten his orders cleared. He took the steps of the house in La Vergne once more to report back to Allen. This time he was a little more cautious and cowed—and Allen’s reception was a little more agreeable. He had no squad leader billets open; for that matter, all officer billets were filled. He had his own staff officers and was not interested in retaining Will in a courier capacity. So what to do with him?

  Will’s own suggestion was finally settled upon: to attach him to Mitchell’s Troop G. He would be one of Mitchell’s troop officers in whatever capacity Mitchell chose to denote, but he wouldn’t be in command of a squad of troopers unless something happened to one of the other lieutenants. It was less than ideal, but it beat being sent back to General Joseph Wheeler’s HQ as a supernumerary and unattached officer no one wanted.

  Will’s summons to report to General Joseph Wheeler was another eye-opener, this time on the current state of the army and especially of the cavalry arm.

  General Wheeler was in command of one of Bragg’s cavalry brigades, but his forces were thin and spread out to cover all avenues that Rosecrans might take to move out of Nashville. An amiable fellow if he liked you, Wheeler was not in the mood to let Will roam about or attach himself to whomever he chose. He had no room on his staff for another lieutenant and would have preferred that Will just go away, but he did write a letter of recommendation that Will be returned to the 1st Alabama with his commission intact.

  Now, having experienced the new chain of command under Bragg’s army, Will was at least back in the saddle and doing what he’d been itching to do for many months: riding out with a troop of cavalry to which he belonged. Settling in with the men, Will heard the stories of life in the regiment since his capture at Shiloh. He wasn’t mollified by having missed some of the more mundane experiences. The army’s thrilling, then disappointing move into Kentucky to force Union General Buell’s men out of Nashville and gather recruits had given Allen’s 1st Alabama some active maneuvering around the Yankees flanks. Brief but sharp clashes with enemy cavalry brought promotions for Mitchell and Peters, but the army had not gained any lasting laurels and had to retreat from Kentucky in the end.

  The men were interested to hear of his own experiences through Mississippi and in the fighting around Corinth. These were just misadventures to their superiors, but all had learned of the tragic defeat, and to hear about it from someone who was there confirmed some of the rumors. Will learned that Van Dorn had been summoned to a court-martial to answer charges leveled by one of his own brigade commanders, John Bowen, who had commanded the regiment Stephen Murdoch rejoined and ultimately died with.

  Before dawn this morning, Will had reported to his friend Captain Mitchell as the latter was seated before a roaring campfire reading a thin piece of paper. Mitchell looked up and smiled his usual warming, nonverbal greeting. Reaching around Will, he pulled out a roll of paper and spread it out on his knees.

  “We gonna try to leave the Nashville pike about here,” Mitchell indicated on the crude map, “then we find the nearest post to the road and surprise ’em. We march ’em back and be done for the day.”

  “Be faster if we had mounts to bring them off on,” Will suggested.

  “Maybe we leave a rear guard in ambush in case they pursue?” Mitchell asked with a quick nod of his head.

  “Those that need to surrender their mount? Hard order to give,” Will replied.

  “Might be an option once we find a party to surprise.”

  Will had suggested it, but he wasn’t one to volunteer his own mount to the cause for some Yankee rear to ride in style. “I guess I get to stay behind?”

  Mitchell smiled, having had the same thought. “If we need to get the haul back in a hurry. Need someone to command the rear element.”

  “I’ll remember to keep my damn ideas to myself.” Will shook his head in mock disgust.

  “You thinkin’ like a commander,” Mitchell said. “Keep thinkin’ like a commander an’ you’ll get a troop yet.”

  A coffee, hard bread, and a visit to the sinks later, Will and the troop were headed west along the Nashville pike.

  It was still dark as Mitchell’s troop moved out on their daily errand. The regiment had been up and down this road hundreds of times as they daily pushed forward to harass the enemy pickets or watch over his preparations for marching out of the city. The Tennessee countryside was rolling, cut by Stewart’s Creek on the western side of La Vergne, a further ten miles from Murfreesboro. Instead of snow, they had been treated with a daily dose of rain and frost that soon turned to mud and a fog that rolled in suddenly. The fog kept the men wary of blundering into an enemy picket post.

  This morning’s work was to push as close to Nashville as they deemed practical and try to gather some prisoners. This was usually risky: the enemy pickets were alert and clustered together in squads of up to ten infantrymen at a time, and pulling one or two out was impractical. You had to bag the whole lot or go on and find some other game to prey on. Leaving early enough and with enough stealth, one might succeed in surprising a whole party before they were fully awake.

  They took their time moving, keeping quiet. The ride toward Nashville could be taken in an easy day’s ride in good weather with no need for care, but with the enemy making all preparation for moving out toward them, he could be anywhere close by—especially in the dark of early morning.

  “Sir, think this is where we want off the road.” A sergeant pulled his horse
up to Mitchell and Will as they moved slowly down the middle of the road. The morning fog obscured both the left and right so that even this familiar road was unrecognizable.

  Mitchell nodded and signaled for the men to move off. A break in the fence led to a rough two-track lane, rutted by wagons and hooves, a no-name passage that local farmers used to gain the main road from their barns. In single file the troop turned off the pike and took to the track, operating in extreme silence but for the gentle clopping of hooves in the soft earth. They were talking in whispers, the closeness of the fog and claustrophobic atmosphere giving them the feeling that a sleeping bear might be nearby. Even the beasts they were riding seemed to sense the need for quiet, and the usual snuffles and grunts of the horses were few.

  “You go ahead,” Mitchell whispered to Will. “Catch up with the lead rider and lead the troop forward. In this fog it’ll be hard to gauge, but we want to get as close as we can to their line while keeping our mounts close.”

  “Aye,” Will replied and touched the bill of his hat. Quietly he moved his horse along the track and tried to push a little faster than those who were still peeling off the road. Every man was alert and straining to see in the fog.

  Catching up to the troop’s first sergeant, Will turned his horse off the track and into a fallow field. Last year’s gleanings of corn still stood in rows of two-foot-high stalks and acres of husks and trampled ears too worm-eaten to be bothered with. Somewhere across these fields the enemy had his posts. He moved now and again so that no one really knew where or when his line might be encountered. Their own picket posts were also out and about, but they were not as thickly attended to since the main force of the Rebel army was in Murfreesboro.

  Cedar trees grew in thick clusters about the roadways and sometimes along the fence lines separating property, as well as along the farmer’s livestock pens and his planted fields. The trees loomed suddenly out of the mist, a line marking the end of this cornfield. A little trail, the width of a horse and rider, cut through the trees and led into a cotton field, it too nothing but rows of dead plants and tufts of unpicked cotton balls still clinging to their heads. A cotton field marked the no-man’s-land between the foes, but in the dark and fog it was not clear whether this was that field. Will hesitated at the edge. He could only see a few feet before him.

  “Spread the first squad out, three-horse interval,” Will whispered to the sergeant.

  The sergeant moved out of the way and waved the man behind him forward, directing his line of march and letting each of the next fifteen men pass. Will caught the next man in line and spread the next element out in similar fashion. A third of the troop aligned in two files, and Will halted the rest as they came out of the narrow defile. Catching another sergeant by the arm, he whispered his instructions for the rest to fan out and wait at the edge of the field.

  Somewhere, or nowhere as far as they could see, the enemy line of picket and rifle pits were ranged, sheltering in the cedar forests and brakes that grew like weeds all over the countryside. Will dismounted and signaled for the others to follow suit. They could make the time more quietly on foot. This cut his force down to ten troopers, with the remainder holding reins and keeping the animals stationary. The ground grabbed at their feet as each footfall sank an inch or two in the muddy field.

  Sabers were left behind, slung across pommels or strapped to saddles, useless to a dismounted trooper and risking too much noise if the long scabbards dragged the ground or clanged noisily against boots and equipment. Armed with carbines and hidden by the mist, Will hoped that he and his men would at least have some warning before they walked right into a picket camp. Keeping paced at five-step intervals, they would either walk right through the posts or come across one on the flank or center, with enough surprise on their side to disarm the defenders quietly.

  Mitchell didn’t have to give Will the honor of leading the party, and he knew it: this was Mitchell’s command, and anything Will did would devolve on Mitchell as success or failure. He was nonetheless grateful to be in the lead and not waiting from behind at this moment. His friend trusted in his instincts despite some of the self-inflicted tight spots Will had been in before Shiloh. His brashness had gotten him and his squads into trouble, trouble a more cautious man would have avoided.

  The thick fog was lightening slightly, the advent of dawn bringing clarity to what was out there in the shadowy forms of trees. The ten troopers were also becoming more visible, the haze that had hidden them from view now becoming a liability. The time was nigh to succeed or return home empty-handed. They had to be close by now, having counted several hundred footsteps and trying to remember the shape of the field. Were they drifting too far to the left? Was the field several hundred yards across or several thousand? The cedar brakes—were they a solid row of trees or clusters? As Will racked his brain for the answers and tried to peer through the haze for a clearer view, the odor of a campfire drifted across to them.

  His small line of skirmishers halted as if by command as all came to the same intelligence. Will stood still, frozen midstep, and sniffed the air: mugginess, the smell of muddied and wet leather, the odor of decaying cotton plants and that acrid smell of a nearby fire. The forms of the cedars ahead marked the beginning of the brake, and somewhere nestled within was a picket party—or several. On the outskirts of the trees would be the first sentinels, who would at any moment see them and raise the alarm.

  The fire was burning somewhere nearby, but shadows and trees obscured its light. Will motioned to the troopers to continue forward. He picked up his own steps.

  They still had tens of yards to go to make it to the trees when the first shot rang out from the tree line.

  ”Move!” Will said, just loud enough for the troopers nearest him to hear. He ran forward. Without a sound save for the heavy tromping through the mud, the troopers rushed ahead. If the enemy pickets were straight ahead, they were going to bag at least those men within the line of trees. If the posts were further to the left or the right, he and his men were going to be prisoners themselves soon. The light of morning would illuminate the whole field, making escape impossible without being shot in the back.

  Another shot sent its charge whistling past Will’s ear—no accident. He was clearly visible enough to the shooter. The discharges were going to wake and rouse any picket post within supporting distance, and soon the whole neighborhood would be alerted to their presence. If the enemy were not within easy reach once they reached the trees, Will would have to abandon the enterprise.

  Will reached the tree line first and almost ran over a Yankee hurriedly reloading. The man was too nervous to look forward but was concentrating on each step of the loading process. Will himself was looking this way and that before he came face-to-face with the man. Nearby was another Yankee just running up. Will took the last two steps and put his shoulder into the Yankee reloading, sending the man to the ground, and grabbed the other soldier before the man could react. He intended to use his momentum and surprise to throw the man to the ground, but he tripped and sent both of them to the earth instead.

  Will gripped the man in a bear hug as both fell, and in a moment his other troopers had gained the wood and were collecting anyone they could grab. Several Yankees were in the stages of loading or running up as Will’s men grabbed a surprised soldier each. The picket post was several yards into the cedar brake, and from the noise emanating from that quarter, there were at least Will’s number of men in the trees if not a few more.

  Will let go of his surprised Yankee as another trooper rousted the man to his feet. He gained his own quickly enough to survey the scene and make a quick call. The early warning shots had dispelled any thought of bagging the whole lot. Now it was going to be a race to get across the field to their horses before morning light made targets of them all.

  “Grab who you have and get back across the field, quick!” Will shouted. Five dazed and confused Yankees were produced, and Will grabbed his carbine while the others manhandled
their captives back out of the trees. As the others were setting off, another soldier in blue came up from the area of the Yankee camp, appearing so suddenly that both Will and the man were stunned. They had been in the trees less than a minute, and the Yank was approaching at carry arms, the musket held in his right hand at its center and evenly balanced but useless for in any offensive manner. He clearly hadn’t expected to meet anything despite the two warning shots.

  Will didn’t have time to parley. He was of the mind to wait a moment or two as the others made their way back to see that anyone who was going to follow might be dissuaded or dispatched. The man wore only his greatcoat and a blanket over his shoulders and still had on his camp hat. The look of surprise on his face might have been comical—save for the deadly earnestness of the situation. Two men, suddenly gripped by fear, might do anything in the next few moments to survive one more.

  Will hadn’t intended to shoot anyone, perhaps just ward off followers with a warning shot over a head. But he already had the carbine to his shoulder as the man blundered into view. The Yankee was still several paces away, but a clear shot, unobstructed by any trees, was possible. He was too far to reach out and grab, too far to run toward without getting shot or clubbed, too far away from safety for Will to bring off a sixth prisoner.

  Will fired, then turned and ran. Only the sound of something heavy tumbling through the wet leaves could be heard behind him. The others were several paces ahead. The tree line, now fairly visible for a hundred yards in either direction, was coming alive with scattered musket shots that all went wild. The game was certainly up, and they were all visible now.

  The sounds of heavy hooves came to them first, then the rest of Mitchell’s troop, mounted, burst through the mist. A quick skirmish line formed ahead of the party racing to get clear of the now-increasing musketry behind. The troopers fired over their comrades’ heads into the trees wherever the flash of a musket was seen.