Black Cloud Rising by David Wright Falade

Author:David Wright Falade
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2022-01-14T18:44:39+00:00

If we were to overtake Fields, we needed horses. There was a stable on Jones Street, one street over, that would have mounts enough for our group. I figured Fields to have procured his own from there, and the stablemaster confirmed my suspicion.

It hadn’t occurred to me to have Hews compose the detachment of men with experience with the great big beasts. He and Single Phillips and Josh Land turned out to be pretty good horsebackers, but the others, well . . . The rest were not cavalry and showed no disposition toward it. They rode unsteadily, managing the reins with two hands while barely keeping their rifles balanced across their laps. Along with Hews, Phillips, and Land were Harvey Hill and Zach Gregory, fine privates who I knew would one day rank, and also Briscoe Young, plus three more whose names I could not on the spot find.

I didn’t need to order my troops to maintain silence, as our susceptibility to attack was generally understood. Only the beat of our horses’ hooves made a sound. We endeavored to keep some semblance of military formation, with me at the head and two abreast, staggered five-deep behind, on the chance that we might encounter a guerrilla band—or worse, a large unit of Confederate regulars. A week into our foray, it wasn’t unreasonable to imagine that the regulars had organized to challenge the African Brigade’s incursion into the neighborhood and were out here somewhere.

A brush with Rebel irregulars wouldn’t portend much better for us, truth be told. Wild’s military escalation—sacking John Elliott’s camp; taking hostages, for that is what those women were, and holding them under colored guard, prominently, for all to see—was having the effect the general desired, that of rousening the bushwhackers to greater anger. Last night’s increase of enemy gunfire evidenced this. It wouldn’t play to my detachment’s favor, as Draper had forewarned. A modest-sized band of vengeful-minded men would wipe out the ten of us before support could arrive.

Crossing Trunks Bridge over Newbegun Creek, I recalled having come this way before, on an errand with John B. This gave some comfort, though there was no logic to it. We were no safer on the road for me recognizing it.

The more distance we gained from Elizabeth, the more my mind cleared. I realized that my object, once we overtook Fields, was not to stop him or attempt to turn him back. It had maybe begun thusly, but ceased to be so the farther we got from the city. No, Riley and Lawrence were out here, likely other Midgett colored, too. I would see them freed. But I wanted it done by a proper unit, not just one man run off, absent without the leave to be. If we were found out, punishment by Colonel Draper was guaranteed. I remembered bucked-and-gagged Leon Bember atop that scaffold on the parade ground at Fortress Freedom, imagined a similarly contorted Fields on display on the square in Elizabeth City, disgraced and humiliated. This way, if punishment was coming, it would fall on me.

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