by Greg Hunt
He didn’t see any sign that their dead lieutenant might be missed. At this point they didn’t need anyone to give them orders. Only one course was left for them. Hold, fight, die.
A couple of officers, bloodied like the rest, still strode the open ground behind the barricades, but Mel couldn’t see Elliott or the cranky old colonel, who was the man responsible for this two-day turkey shoot. Both dead, Mel figured, but the only one he could bring himself to feel bad about was Elliott.
Eventually Mel drifted off to sleep with his head tilted back against the thick mulberry trunk and his legs stretched out on a broad limb. His dreams were choppy and broken. Mother calmly chopping weeds in the vegetable patch while the horrible carnage of war raged all around her. Daddy, bent with age and wracked with pain, trying feebly to right the careening cabin walls. Old Justice, half butchered, but still managing to stare up at Mel with those dumb, doleful eyes. Rifle sights settled in the middle of a man’s back, and the familiar feel of the grooved trigger as his finger slowly tightens.
The cannons down in the valley opened up unexpectedly, jolting Mel awake. Only two big guns behind the hilltop barricade were still able to answer back. On arrival, some of the cannonballs simply bumped across the ground at amazing speed, destroying everything in their path. Others exploded when they hit, or just before, or just after, hurling up great clouds of dirt, smoke, debris, and human remains, filling the air with deadly chunks and shards of metal. One ragged chunk about the size of an oak leaf lodged in the tree limb directly below Mel’s leg, and he dug it free with his knife. It was hot like it had just come from a forge, all sharp points and ragged edges that could rip through human flesh like a hatchet.
Down in White Tail Valley the smoke from the cannons began to drift across the clear ground like odd, unexpected fog. Then, like restless deadly daytime spirits, the lines of men began to emerge from the haze of cannon smoke. Even after all the killing that had gone on before, there were still hundreds of them, in no seeming hurry, spreading like a great blue blight over the valley floor.
Mel could imagine that if he was in that ragged mob down there behind the barricades, it must be a terrifying sight. But still they held instead of running off. He had to give them credit for that.
A cannonball landed almost directly in front of where an officer was standing behind the fighting line and immediately exploded. When the chunks of dirt stopped raining back down and the smoke drifted away, there was nothing left of him. It was like he had simply disappeared, or had never existed at all. But that wasn’t it, of course. He was still here, only now he was little chunks of skin, bone, meat and hair, scattered in a twenty-yard radius of where, seconds before, he had stood as a living, breathing man.
Mel figured that was a sight that would return to his mind, awake and asleep, many times in the coming years . . . that, and a lot of other things he had seen here in this gruesome, bloody killing ground that used to be his home.
As before in the previous attacks he’d watched, the men down in the valley began to yell and bolt forward about the time that they drew within range of the men behind the barricades. They were knocked down in droves by the defenders who, at least for these first few minutes, didn’t have to pause and reload because each of them had spare long guns within reach.
As before, the attack faltered then failed, but this time the attackers didn’t withdraw all the way down the valley. They simply moved back beyond easy rifle shot, leaving a new scattering of dead and wounded men atop the corpses from their previous charge. Some of the retreated soldiers fell flat on the ground to rest, and others knelt alone and in clusters, showing that they didn’t intend to have at it again any time soon.
Once again stillness settled over the battlefield. It was so quiet that Mel decided to climb down and get a drink of water while he had the chance. He deliberately avoided looking closely at the cabin as he walked past it to the pump. It was too heartbreaking to think of his family home in such a state. There would be time enough later to consider whether anything could be saved.
While he was at the pump a young soldier limped down the hill carrying two buckets. Mel recognized one of the buckets as his own handiwork, made to carry corn and slops down to the hogs.
The man’s soot-glazed features were tight with strain, shock and fear. He had a bullet crease on his scalp above one ear, but hadn’t bothered to tend to it. The stream of blood that flowed down his cheeks and neck, into his shirt, was dark and nearly dried. His eyes were flat and expressionless, as if the soul behind them had departed.
Mel worked the pump while the young soldier held one bucket, then the other, under the surging flow of water.
“They killed my daddy,” the young man said unexpectedly. “He’s laying up there with a hole in his chest you could stick your hand through. So what am I going to write home to Mama? Tell me that.”
Mel thought the man must be mistaking him for someone he knew, or at least a fellow soldier. “Sounds like you should head on home and take care of it in person,” he said.
“Nope, can’t do that. If I stay here and kill enough of these bastards, maybe I’ll get the one that killed my daddy.”
“That’s a lot of killing, boy,” Mel said. “You figger you can kill them all?”
“Just my share, and now Daddy’s share.”
Heading back to his mulberry tree, Mel decided he could understand the young soldier’s gut hatred easily enough. But in a mess like this, he stood as strong a chance of being killed right up there beside his dead daddy as he did in killing his share, whatever that might be. And then who would write home about the two of them?
By the time he reached his perch once again, gunfire was starting up in another direction, down the hill in the vicinity of the cornfield. He climbed one branch higher for a better look, and it didn’t take long to figure out that those men down there were about to be in a lot of trouble. But at this point, some of them didn’t even seem to realize it yet.
Down there the defenders had built their defenses facing west, across the cornfield and straddling the post road. At the time it made good sense to Mel. If the enemy army was to the west, wouldn’t that be the direction they would come from, and wouldn’t they spread out and attack once they were close enough? The scattering of bodies across the cornfield, leftovers from this morning’s attack down there, was proof enough that the strategy was correct.
After this morning’s fight, Mel had realized that any man had to have rocks for brains to attack across that long open field toward armed men hiding behind a long mound of dirt. It was way beyond what any sensible person would consider heroic. Plainly, it was nothing more than a fast, easy way to get shot.
The leader of those men on the other side seemed to have reached the same conclusion, although it seemed a shame to only see the light after so many had already died. This time the soldiers didn’t rush out on another terrifying, bloody race across open ground. Instead they used stealth. A large number of them slipped around in a broad loop to the south, and when they did attack, it was across the cow pasture on the southern side of Mel’s farm. That meant that instead of charging head-on against a long, well-protected line of men behind the berm, they hit the line from one end. The dirt berm was of no use to the defenders then, and they were caught completely off guard.
The attackers burst through the line of trees and brush that separated the pasture and the cornfield, made quick work of Mel’s split-rail fence, and began the slaughter. Within a couple of minutes clusters of men all over the field were fighting face-to-face, hand-to-hand, and Mel witnessed firsthand how deadly one of those long bayonets at the end of a rifle could be in seasoned hands.
Meanwhile the cannons down in White Tail Valley opened up again, and the troops who had been waiting there started forward with an enthusiastic cheer, as if the battle was won already. And maybe it was, Mel thought. Things didn’t look promising for the men who had taken over his farm three days ago. Outnumbered, outgunned and outflanked, he
didn’t see how they could hold out much longer.
But at least when they were all gone, dead or run off, he could head over to the Adderly place and see how Rochelle and her family had fared. Then when he was satisfied that they were alive and well, he’d come back here and pretty much start over, like his daddy and mother had done in the first place. It would take years of hardship and hard work to rebuild and put things right again. But they’d done it back then, and he could do it now. With any luck, Rochelle might be right there with him through it all.
Mel knew the end was close when he noticed a sprinkling of men turn and bolt as the fighting became unbearable and they started hearing the devil whispering their names. They scattered back through their own camp, then past the wagons, fleeing east down the post road. Others joined them a few at a time, until at last a full-scale rout was under way. Among those who stayed behind, a few surrendered, throwing down their weapons and raising their arms high.
Some others fought on to the death, which wasn’t long in coming. That seemed pointless to Mel, although he understood that their blood was up, and it just wasn’t in some men to ever give up or turn tail.
When the men at the barricades behind the house realized that their comrades down in the cornfield were whipped and scattering, it came to them how hopeless this whole mess was. Mel could see the panic wash over the thin defensive line as they faced the real possibility of attack from both front and back. At that moment they stopped being an army and turned into a frantic mob of scared, desperate, exhausted men whose only thought was to escape and somehow survive. They threw down weapons and left wounded comrades pleading behind, stampeding down the hillside toward the road that represented their only hope of survival.
As before a few reckless souls stayed behind to fight on, but they didn’t hold out long before the waves of enemy soldiers poured over the barricades.
The two attacking groups met and merged at the road, then raced on after their panicked, fleeing enemies. They no longer seemed satisfied by taking the hilltop farm. Now they were determined to wipe out the straggling survivors who had fought to keep them from it.
The sound of scattered gunfire down the road moved farther and farther away. Mel wondered how long the chase would continue before the winners satisfied their appetite for victory. Would they chase their enemies on down to Palestine, or maybe even all the way back into Arkansas? To Mel’s thinking that would be just fine. That Arkansas bunch had no business coming up here into Missouri and stirring up this kind of trouble anyway. What was the use in taking over a man’s farm and making this kind of mess of it?
Things seemed eerily calm in his vicinity now. No one had yet showed up to attend the wounded, and dead men lay everywhere. Far down White Tail Valley the cannon crews loafed around their silent guns, their duty completed for a time. Except for them, there was no one else in sight who was alive and fit.
Mel decided it was time to climb down and scout around. He hadn’t tasted a bite of food since the night before, and the stinging ache in his shoulder reminded him that his wound needed dressing.
Over near the ruins of his cabin he came across the body of the Arkansas colonel who had led this bunch here, or at least what was left of him. One leg and part of an arm were gone, and the rest of him looked like it had been chewed on by wolves. His one remaining dead eye stared up at heaven as if hoping that was the direction his soul was heading. But Mel had his doubts. It didn’t seem reasonable that any man responsible for this much death and misery deserved to sit at Jesus’s feet.
Mel knelt by the colonel’s body and removed the belt that supported his sword, holstered pistol, and cartridge case. They were fine, expensive weapons, and he felt he deserved them after all the trouble this pompous little man had brought into his life. There was little else in the colonel’s pockets except a few coins and a letter so soaked in blood that nobody was ever likely to make out what it said.
He wondered in passing what had happened to the major. Elliott had treated him decently through this entire tribulation, and Mel wished him well. He hoped that Elliott had the common sense to take off when the others had, and that somehow he managed to survive the slaughter on down the road. But he would probably never know.
With its crazy tilting walls and gaping holes, the cabin was a sorry mess. But it didn’t seem in immediate danger of falling down in the next few minutes, and there were things inside that he needed.
He crawled on hands and knees through the hole that had been the back door and sat up to take a look at the wreckage. Everything inside looked like it had been stirred and battered around by a giant hand. All the familiar things that he used in his everyday life, the furniture, utensils, keepsakes and belongings that made this place a home, lay scattered and damaged. It was heartbreaking, but Mel set his disappointment aside and concentrated on what he needed to do.
Crawling on his belly under a fallen beam, he reached the area of his narrow bed and was able to sit up again. He found the whiskey jug over behind the bed where he left it and took a healthy slug, then another, and then another. It burned in a pleasant, satisfying familiar way going down, and he could feel it starting to relax the tension in his body.
He took off his shirt and gingerly peeled away the crusty bandage that covered his arm wound. It hadn’t started to heal yet, and the skin around it was swollen to an angry red. The seepage that started to ooze out was a mixture of blood and milky pus. That wasn’t an encouraging sign. Untended, a man could lose an arm from less than this.
He couldn’t locate the cheesecloth he had used to dress the wound before, so he tore off a strip of bedsheet and doused it in whiskey. He scrubbed the festering wound until it was raw and painful and oozing healthy dark blood. After a splash of whiskey for his injury and a couple of slugs for his insides, he fashioned a new bandage from more of the bedsheet.
Crawling back to the cooking area of the cabin, he located a few scraps of meat, bread and vegetables scattered on the floor and wolfed them down. A smoke-blackened pot provided some middling sops of gravy, and an overturned bucket with an inch of water remaining helped quench his thirst.
Mel had to chuckle at the thought of what Mother would have said if she’d seen him eating off the floor like a dog. She had always kept a clean, well-mannered household. More than once she’d sent him out to the barn to, as she termed it, “sleep with the other farm animals” when his conduct at the dinner table had crossed her boundaries.
But what use were manners in a fix like this?
A soldier’s kit bag he found in a kitchen corner offered a treasure of useful things. On top was a briar pipe with silver trim and a deep, distinctive curve. He had seen the colonel smoking this very same pipe. Mel filled the pipe from a tobacco pouch he found and lit it with an ember from the smoldering fireplace, then settled in to explore his find.
The skinny old man’s clothes were useless to Mel because they’d never fit his lanky frame. There was a folding knife, much too small for farm work, but nicely made anyway, with a finely carved bone handle and a keen edge. Carefully wrapped in a felt cloth were a shaving kit, gold-trimmed comb and brush, and a fine-smelling toilet water that Mel thought he might be able to use someday if he ever went courting. There were spare parts for the revolver he’d confiscated, including two extra cylinders and three boxes of cartridges. He found letter-writing materials, a journal, and a small framed tintype of a stiff, drab woman who looked like she was constipated.
Down in the bottom of the kit Mel found a fat leather wallet. He was excited at first to see that it was full of paper money, but most of it proved to be Confederate script that wasn’t good for much in Missouri except starting a fire. But there were coins in there too, including some gold, and those had value just about anyplace.
Mel stashed his new bounty behind his bed, figuring not too many men would be willing to crawl in here and plunder around like he had.
The unexpected sound of voices outside startled Mel and kept him frozen in place
.
“Just look at the corpses, John. God in heaven, we must have killed half their regiment since the battle started.”
“I’ve never seen worse, sir.”
“What made them think they could hold this ground, John? We had them outmanned by two or maybe three to one, and after we brought up the batteries the outcome was never in question.”
“Could have been poor leadership, sir. Or maybe sheer bullheadedness. Not many of these Arkansas boys are big on being pushed back the way they’ve just come.”
“Maybe so, but I hate to think that we’ll have to kill every blasted one of them to have this thing over with. Good Lord, John, how I’d love to head home to my children and my books and my practice.”
“In God’s own time, General.”
Mel decided it wasn’t the best time to crawl out from the wrecked cabin and make his presence known. He might not be able to make these newcomers understand that he didn’t belong to the bunch they had defeated, and that he had no part in this fight beyond owning the land they were fighting over. If he crawled out now, with their general so close at hand, he’d be shot straightaway.
“Since all the buildings are down, I suppose we can locate the field hospital in their officers’ tents. But I want our wounded moved to the rear as soon as possible. Tell the quartermaster he’s to set up headquarters on that patch of ground behind their artillery emplacement.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Organize a graves detail, a big one, as soon as possible. If we don’t get these bodies underground soon this place will smell like hell itself by breakfast.”
“What about the prisoners, sir? We’ll have two or three hundred, maybe more, when they’re all rounded up.”
“There’s no good place, is there, John? I guess you can circle those wagons out in that field and put them in the center. Place guards all around the outside. We’ll try to move them to the rear tomorrow . . . if we’re not fighting off a counterattack by then.”
