Lincoln's Dreams

When I got bored with Freeman, I picked up the galleys. Ben and Malachi ran into some of their own artillery and took cover behind it. I didn’t remember that. In the last version I’d read, they’d gotten separated, with Ben ending up on an ambulance detail, but in this version they were clear across the valley from where they should have been. I wondered if this was the scene Broun had written that afternoon after I’d accused him of being obsessed with the Lincoln book.

“Shouldn’t we ask somebody where our regiment is?” Ben asked.

Malachi pointed back across the cornfield to a road and a fence full of men. It wasn’t so smoky down there, and Ben could see the sun glinting off their bayonets. “They’re clear the hell over there, mebbe, and how do you conjure we get to ’em? We got ourselves separated and we’re gonna stay that way. ”

Malachi shouted the whole speech, but toward the end of it Ben could only tell what he was saying by reading his lips. The noise of the guns was getting louder every minute, and the firings and the shells landing had stopped making separate sounds and were roaring, like thunder. Ben could only tell when the guns fired by the smoke.

“Come on!” Malachi said. Ben didn’t hear that either, but they started to run, keeping their heads down as if to protect them from the noise.

They ran straight into one of the guns. Its barrel had exploded and there were men lying on their backs in a circle around it. A man wearing a straw hat, and a boy were trying to free the horses from the caisson. A lieutenant rode up and shouted, “Pull those horses back!” and Ben wondered how he was able to make himself heard. “You two there! Help him!” he said, pointing his sword at the boy, who was struggling with the reins.

The man wearing the straw hat had unbuckled the harnesses, but the horses had gotten themselves tangled in it. One of the girth straps was wrapped around the nearer horse’s hind leg. The harder he strained the tighter it pulled.

Ben grabbed hold of the horse’s dragging reins and tried to steady him. Malachi got alongside the horse and began to push him back against the caisson. The man in the straw hat reached under to cut the strap. The horse whinnied and reared up.

“Dang your hide, you crazy fool,” Malachi shouted at the horse. “Do you want to get kilt? ”

Ben stepped back out of the reach of the hoofs, grabbing for the reins. “Hold still, dang ya!” Malachi shouted.