“Oh, I expect I will,” Cade replied.
“Damn, that’s really something when you think about it, isn’t it?” Gordon said. “I mean here these two men lived together in the same room, and now they’re tryin’ to kill one another. Why, that would be like us shooting at one another.”
“Sergeant Cosgrove has a brother in the Yankee army,” Cade said. “But at least they haven’t run across each other yet.”
There was enough soup that they all went back for seconds, but even as Cade and the others were cleaning their mess kit, Adam went back a third time.
“Damn, Adam, don’t you ever fill up?” Gordon asked.
“I can always find room for a little more,” Adam replied. “I look at it this way. What if some Yankee shot me dead, tomorrow? Why, I’d hate to go meet my Maker knowing that I had left some soup behind that I hadn’t eaten yet.”
Cade laughed. “I suppose that’s as good a reason as any to have a third bowl of soup.”
“Say, Cade, you got a letter from Melinda, today, didn’t you?” Gordon asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you goin’ to read it to us?”
“What? Hell no, I’m not goin’ to read it to you. Why should I? It’s a personal letter.”
“It might be personal, but you forget, she’s my sister. I got a right to know what my own sister says, don’t I?”
Cade smiled. “Not what she says to me, you don’t.”
Adam returned with his third bowl of soup, “I know what she said.” He slipped into falsetto. “Oh, Cade, I love you so much.”
“If you all already know what she said, why should I bother to read it?” Cade asked.
The others laughed.
The temperature dipped down into the high thirties during the night, and more than a thousand campfires were lit to push back some of the chill. There was no need for light discipline; General Scholfield’s army already knew that Hood’s army lay before them. The Confederate commanders urged that as many fires be built as could be sustained by the available fuel, believing that the great number of fires, indicating such a large body of troops, would have the effect of unnerving the Federals.
Cade, Adam, Gordon, Copley, Willis and Pogue, as well as the fifteen other men of their “mess” had put their blankets down around one of the fires, lying feet to the center, in order to make room for the maximum number of men to share the heat. Cade lay there, listening to the cracking of the fire, as well as the snores of the sleeping, watching the red sparks riding the heatwaves up to join with the blue stars in the dark sky. He was unable to sleep, his mind filled with thoughts evoked by the conversation that he and the others had over supper.
“One of the first things you have to put out of your mind,” Cade always told the new recruits, “is the idea that you might get killed. You have to become a fatalist about it. Why if it’s your time, you could be plowing a field, and get kicked in the head by a mule.”
That’s what Cade told the men who would be seeing battle for the first time, doing so to comfort himself as much as to comfort the neophytes. Thousands of men were bedding down tonight, both Union and Confederate, and Cade knew that for many of them, this would be their last night on earth. He thought of what Melinda had told him the night he announced that he was going to war.
“Oh, Cade, I don’t see anything good coming from this. I . . . I have the most awful feeling that you won’t be coming back.”
Would this be his last night? Damn Gordon for speaking out loud the fears all had to face.
To put such thoughts out of his mind, Cade reached down into his tunic pocket and took out the letter he had received earlier. Sitting up, he turned and put his back to the fire, so there would be enough light for him to be able to read. Before he read a line, though, he held the little lock of hair, the tresses held together with a small, gold strand. The lock of hair had arrived with the letter.
Dear Cade,
I am sending you a chevelure. That’s French for lock of hair. I want you to keep it, and that way a part of me will always be with you.
Mary Beth and her beau got married last week, then he went back to the war. I wish we had gotten married before you went back. You said you didn’t want to make me worry about you if you were my husband. Oh, Cade, dear Cade, do you think I worry about you any less because we aren’t married ?
I love you so much. Did you not know that when we were quite young, and I got a briar in my foot so that you had to carry me home, that I was so happy to be in your arms that there was no sting from the needles of the briar? It was then that I knew I was in love with you, but I couldn’t tell you, because you were too young.
I am sure that you are laughing at my declaration that you were too young, since you are a year older than I am. But souls have ages, as well as the body. I think that a woman’s soul ages more quickly than a man’s soul, and it was that old soul, in the body of a young girl, that fell in love.
I pray, nightly, that you be kept safe. You will have my love, always.
Sincerely,
Melinda
Reading Melinda’s letter brought comfort to him. Holding this very piece of paper, the page Melinda had also held, was almost as if she were right here with him.
He lifted the little lock of hair to his nose and sniffed it, then he stuck it down into his pocket.
“Goodnight, Melinda,” Cade said, speaking so quietly that his words were covered by the distant thump of artillery, and the more instant, and sharper crack of a gas bubble, trapped in a piece of wood that was being consumed by the fire.
4
CADE’S DIVISION was placed on the extreme right of the Columbia and Franklin Pike, making it the right wing of the front line of battle. The remainder of General Hood’s troops were formed in successive lines, one behind the other.
“Lookie there,” Pogue said, pointing in front of them.
There, across the field that separated the two armies, Cade could see several of the defenders, officers he assumed, standing on the breastworks, their blue uniforms clearly visible in the light of a sunny, November afternoon.
Before them was of a battery of thirty-six cannon on the main line of the Federal works. A little to the right of this main battery were six more pieces of artillery and these guns, Captain Hanner’s company had been told, would be their objective. In addition, to the left, were eight more cannon.
How, Cade wondered, were human beings, armed only with pistols and rifles, expected to assault fifty cannon that would be firing grape and canister?
Although Cade formed the question in his mind, he didn’t put voice to it because he knew that everyone else was thinking the same thing.
A number of mounted officers rode out in front of the formed battle lines. They were Generals Walthall, Loring, Cheatham, Quarles, Granberry, and Cleburne. The officers were holding a conference of some sort and, though they were too far away for Cade to hear, he could see them pointing to the enemy lines, then back to their own lines, then to the Federal artillery.
“Look at all them gen’ruls,” Jeter Willis said. “They see all them Yankee cannons, ‘n they know sure as we do, that we’re a’ fixin’ to get ourselves chewed up like runnin’ pork through a meat grinder.”
“Quiet in the ranks,” Cade said. He gave the order because such talk would be demoralizing for the others. He knew that, because it was demoralizing for him.
Cade, because he was a sergeant, stood slightly in front of the men under his charge, and he turned to look at his brother. Adam smiled, and nodded at Cade, who returned the nod.
Cade had faced death many times over the last two and a half years, and as he stood here now, waiting for the orders to advance across this open field, a calmness came over him. He might well be killed today, but then, everyone died, it was just a matter of when . . . and once you were dead, it didn’t really matter when you died. It was a prospect he faced with more acceptance than fear.
He knew he could not explain this calm accepta
nce to anyone who had never before experienced it, and he knew, also, that he wouldn’t have to explain it to anyone who had experienced it.
“Forward!” General Cleburne shouted, circling his hand over his head, then bringing it down to point toward the Yankee lines.
Holding his rifle with the bayonet pointed toward the Federal redoubts, Cade started across the field, part of a wave of thirty thousand men. Thirty thousand men couldn’t be stopped, could they?
When they reached the first of the two Yankee lines, it looked as if the attack would prevail. They swept over the trench, killing or routing the defenders. The Yankees turned and ran toward the second line of defense.
“Keep on ‘em!” Cade shouted to his men. “Keep as close as you can! We’ll follow them right into their lines!”
The Confederate troops blazed away, staying so close to the Yankees they were pursuing that they were able to club them down without wasting ammunition. Excited yells of triumph rose from the throats of the attackers, and Cade saw, ahead of him, General Cleburne, leaning down from his saddle to slash the retreating Federals with his sword.
Then, suddenly, it all changed.
The fifty Yankee cannon opened fire. Double-loaded with grape and canister, many of the guns were in enfilade, and the storm of hot steel swept men down like wheat before a scythe.
Cade had thought that by maintaining close contact with the enemy it would provide them with some protection from the Yankee cannon, but he was wrong. The Federal gunners did not differentiate between the Confederates and their own men. They fired into the mass of human bodies, delivering unbelievable carnage.
In addition to that was the fire of the rifleman along the parapet. The storm of missiles was so intense that scores of men were literally blown away, but the Tennesseans would not give up. While some sought shelter in the outside, others worked their way west along the line. Here, there was great confusion and disorder. Cade and his yelling troops jumped over the parapet. Added to the other Confederates already there, they begin fighting with a reckless fury. It became a great swelling mob of men, engulfing everything in front of it along the nearly sixty-five yards between the retrenched line and main earthworks east of the Columbia Pike.
Desperately, some of the Tennesseans captured a Yankee battery and attempted to fire the gun into the Federal ranks. It was the focal point of the crisis, a crucial point where momentum tottered precariously and the battle might be won or lost. But the captured cannon couldn’t be fired without friction primers, and when the Yankee gunners had run away they removed the primers and the lanyards. In the confusion of the moment, none could be found amid the debris. Some of the men broke open musket cartridges and poured powder into the vent tubes, thinking that by lighting the powder they might fire the cannon by hand.
Before they were able to do this, however, a surging wall of blue smacked into the Confederate ranks. For five minutes it was a hand-to-hand combat. Bayonets, clubbed muskets, revolvers, broken gun stocks, even bare hands became the weapons of the moment. A Yankee officer who had broken his sword picked up a hatchet and brought it down on the head of Gordon Waters. Gordon’s blood and brains were splattered over Cade.
“No!” Cade shouted in shock, rage, and sorrow. Cade shot the Yankee officer in the face, and even after he was down, Cade bashed in his head with the butt of his rifle. This was no longer Tennessee, this was hell!
Like the men in his command, General Cleburne was now on foot, his horse having been shot from under him. “Follow me, men!” he shouted, waving his saber above his head and leading the way. Cade and the others disengaged from the useless, captured cannon in response to the general’s call, but the smoke was so thick that the enemy’s works could barely be seen.
The objective was the cotton gin. There, the Federal ranks were five or six men deep, with those in the rear loading and passing the muskets to those at the front to fire. Behind these men was a second rank waiting with loaded rifles. By now the ditch was so filled with dead that Cade crossed it by walking on the bodies. Only a few feet of earth separated the combatants, and the contest became most desperate
At about 40 yards from the works, and nearly in front of the salient at the cotton gin, in one shocking moment, a Minié ball struck just below and to the left of General Cleburne’s heart, shredding veins and arteries like tissue paper as it ripped through his body. With his saber firmly gripped in his hand, he fell, the front of his gray tunic covered with blood.
“They killed the General!” Clint Copley shouted, but those words were no sooner out of his mouth that he was struck in the head and fell dead alongside the general. Now Gordon and Copley were gone and Cade looked around to see if he could locate Adam. He had been side by side with Jeter Willis the last time Cade saw him, but now neither Adam nor Jeter were anywhere to be seen.
The greatly depleted line reached the abatis where the defenders, now following the pre-determined tactic of final defensive fire, were cutting down attacking rebels and fleeing Yankees without discrimination. One of the Yankee soldiers, having been killed by his own men, fell in front of Cade. Cade had just fired his rifle and the fallen Yankee had two charged and capped pistols, so Cade reached down to pick them up. As soon as he did, two Federal soldiers stood up behind the works, and Cade killed both of them, one with each pistol.
Now the Confederates were at the base of the rampart, sticking their weapons into the small space between the earthen mound and the head-log to fire. The Yankees, without showing themselves, were holding their rifles out over the top of the head-log, shooting straight down. Cade saw Pogue lash out with his bayonet to slice off the hand of one of the defenders.
Reloaded, now, the Yankee cannon let loose another barrage of grape and canister, again mowing down Rebels by the score.
The ravings of the mangled soldiers on both sides of the parapet where frenzied and heartrending. Crazed by pain, many had no idea what they were yelling. Cade heard some of the men shouting, “Cease fire! Cease fire!” as if by so ordering, they could bring about the result.
Within the Confederate ranks all continued to be chaos as the blast of canister from the Yankee cannon piled dead men in front of the works. At one point there were so many bodies heaped around the guns that the dead literally had to be dragged aside to clear the muzzles so the guns could be fired.
Despite the terrible fusillade, Cade and the others continued their assault, some attempting to squeeze through the narrow openings in the earthworks. Through it all, the guns continued to fire double and triple canister at point-blank range.
Cade saw Andy Pearson pick up a loose timber from the works and start toward one of the cannon. Andy was only fifteen years old, a drummer boy who, after beating the long roll was supposed to drop back to the rear when the actual fighting started.
“Andy, no!” Cade shouted. “Get back!”
Andy either didn’t hear Cade’s shout, or chose to ignore it, and reaching the Yankee cannon, he jammed the loose timber from the earthworks into the gun’s muzzle. But the cannon was already loaded, and the Yankee gunner jerked the lanyard. Andy was directly in front of the muzzle, and the muzzle blast distributed his bloody body parts in a ghastly rain.
“Cap’n Hanner! Sir, we have to surrender!” one of the soldiers shouted. “We are being slaughtered here!”
“Who has a white handkerchief?” Hanner called.
“I’m wearin’ a white shirt under this,” Pogue said.
The exchange had to be shouted, because of the noise of gunfire.
“Let me have it!”
Cade saw Captain Hanner tie a piece of the white shirt on a ramrod and lift it up. Then there was a huge explosion just to his right, and everything went black.
Adam McCall lay in bed, listening to the quiet now. The roar of guns and the screams and cries of dying and wounded men were just on the other side of his awareness. He looked through the hospital window out onto a Nashville scene that was dominated by men who were wearing Yankee blue.
“How are we doing this morning, Private McCall?”
Turning away from the window, Adam saw Dr. Barnes. The doctor was a surgeon in the Confederate army and, like Adam, was now a prisoner of war. But the Yankees had pressed the doctor into service, tending to the many Confederate wounded, a job he willingly accepted.
“If you mean my leg, it’s not bothering me all that much,” Adam said. “But there’s nothing about the rest of me that’s good.”
“I know, I know, being a prisoner of war, even in a hospital, is not a very pleasant thing. But compare your situation with that of over two thousand of our boys who were killed in the battle. Why, we lost six generals, did you know that?”
“I know General Cleburne was killed, because I saw that,” Adam replied.
“It wasn’t just Cleburne. Generals Drake, Hill, Granbury, Gist, and Strahl were also killed,” the doctor said.
“And so was my brother,” Adam said.
“Yes,” Dr. Barnes said. “I was told that your brother had been killed. Please forgive me, McCall, for carrying on about how many generals we lost, when you are still mourning your own brother.”
“Like you said, Doctor, there were two thousand who were killed. I can’t dwell on just one of them.”
Suddenly, and unexpectedly, the glum expression of Dr. Barnes’s face was replaced with a smile.
“On the other hand, I do have some good news for you,” the doctor said. “As a matter of fact, you could call it outstanding news!”
“It’s hard to see how any news could be good now. What is this good news you’re talking about?”
“The Yankees are giving a lot of the wounded paroles. You’re going home.”
“What? They’re just going to turn me loose, like that? I don’t believe it. They want something from me, don’t they?”
“All they want from you is your promise not to take up arms against them anymore.”
“You mean just go home, and sit the rest of the war out?”
The Western Adventures of Cade McCall Box Set Page 3
