FORT PILLOW

Only a handful of Federals raised Springfields to their shoulders and fired, trying to clear the way of Bedford Forrest's men. One luckless Confederate howled and crumpled, clutching at a shattered knee. “At my order…,” the lieutenant said, and then, “Fire!”

Jenkins's rifle musket bucked against his shoulder. Smoke and flames belched from the muzzle. He took off his hat and fanned the air in front of him, trying to clear it enough to see not just through his own piece's smoke but that from the rest of the rifle muskets as well. The Union charge, such as it was, shattered like crockery on a big rock. Only eight or ten men in blue were down, but even the ones who didn't take a minnie felt the Angel of Death brush them with his dark wings.

“Charge!” the lieutenant shouted. A revolver in one hand and his ceremonial saber in the other, he set his own example.

Against determined foes, it would have been madness. It would have been suicide. But the Federals had no fight left in them. Some turned and pelted back in the direction from which they'd come. Others threw down their guns and tried to surrender.

Sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn't. Jack Jenkins saw some of his comrades send Federals back toward the rear-often with a kick in the rear as they went. Others shot men in blue uniforms at point-blank range or bayoneted them even as they got down on their knees and begged for mercy.

“Don't shoot! Sweet Jesus, please don't shoot!” a Federal sergeant called to Jenkins. He held out empty hands. “See? I ain't got no gun.”

He also didn't have an accent like Jenkins's. He was no Tennessean, no homemade Yankee. He really did come from up North; he seemed to pronounce every letter in every word. And that likely meant… “You one of those fellows who tell nigger soldiers what to do?” Jenkins barked.

“Yes, that's right,” the sergeant answered. “But-”

He got no further. Jenkins pulled the trigger. The minnie caught the Yankee right in the middle of the chest. The man stared in astonished reproach for a moment, as if to say, What did you have to go and do that for? He opened his mouth, as if to ask the question. His knees buckled instead. He flopped and thrashed on the ground like a sunfish just pulled from a stream.

“Hold still, God damn you,” Jenkins said, and used his bayonet. He stabbed several times, till the U.S. sergeant finally stopped moving. “You turn niggers into soldiers, you deserve worse'n I just gave you.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a bullet cracked past his head. For all he knew, a colored soldier fired it. He reloaded his own piece in feverish haste. He felt naked if he couldn't shoot back at the enemy. Some Yankee cavalrymen and even foot soldiers were getting repeating rifles that gave a company almost a regiment's worth of firepower. He thanked heaven nobody in Fort Pillow seemed to have guns like that. The lead they put in the air would have made storming the place gruesomely, maybe impossibly, expensive.

As he stowed his ramrod in its tube under the rifle musket's barrel, he wondered why the Confederacy couldn't make repeating rifles for its troopers. U.S. soldiers weren't any braver than their C.S. counterparts; with his own fierce pride, Jenkins refused to believe they were as brave. But the Federals would never lose the war because they ran short on things. Guns, ammunition, uniforms, railroads to take men where they needed to go, gunboats… The men in blue seemed to pull such things out of their back pockets, along with more food than they knew what to do with.

As for the Confederates… How many of Bedford Forrest's men were wearing captured clothing? Quite a few had blue trousers. A standing order required shirts to be dyed butternut right away, to keep the troopers from shooting at one another by mistake. A lot of Confederates carried captured weapons, too. The South simply couldn't make or bring in enough to meet its need.

Before the war, Southerners sneered at Yankees as nothing more than merchants and factory hands. The charge was true enough. But the South hadn't realized it brought strengths as well as weaknesses. Men fought wars, but they fought them with things. No matter how brave you were, you'd lose if you didn't have food in your belly, if you didn't have bullets in your rifle musket, if you didn't have gunboats to control the rivers. The Federals didn't have to worry about anything like that. The Confederates did, more and more as the fight dragged on.

But not right here, not right now. Forrest's motto was Get there first with the most men. He had the most men here, right where he needed them, and the Federals were melting away like snow in the hot sun.

A Negro running in front of Jenkins gave a despairing screech, threw his hands in the air, and wailed, “Do Jesus, don't kill me! I ain't done nothin' to nobody!”

“You one of those niggers yellin' you wouldn't give us quarter?” Jenkins growled.