None Shall Look Back by Caroline Gordon

Author:Caroline Gordon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: J.S. Sanders books
Published: 1992-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Part

Three

1

RIVES had expected to rejoin Colonel Forrest’s command at Huntsville where he had been furloughed but on his way up from Dalton he heard that the colonel had been incapacitated by a wound in the thigh and his command disbanded. Rives therefore went straight to Chattanooga. There he met Colonel Lawton, a friend of the family, who arranged to have him enrolled in his regiment, the Second Georgia. In the office where the men were mustered in, he met a man whom he had known at Donelson, Joe Troup. The two soldiers, after their papers were made out, set off on a stroll about the town.

They walked along Market Street but progress was difficult. The street was crowded with citizens who had gathered to watch the parade of some incoming regiments. Brass bands blared. The military police kept soldiers and citizens alike moving on constantly. Joe was disgusted. “Come in,” he said, “less get out of here.”

The place to which he led Rives—“Hell’s Half Acre” it was called by the citizens of the town—was the favorite rendezvous of soldiers off duty. It was crowded tonight. Lanterns swung from the boughs of trees and pine knot torches flared. The crowd, which included women in frayed finery, oscillated between the sutlers’ wagons drawn up in rows on the edge of the field and the roulette wheels and faro and chuckaluck spreads.

Rives and Joe, too restless to settle down to any particular pleasure, passed by a roulette wheel operating under the light of a pine knot torch. A crowd surrounded it, those on the outside reaching over the shoulders of those nearest the wheel to lay their bundles of Confederate currency on their favorite color. A little way off a ragged, Ishmaelitish-looking man was preaching.

Rives and Joe passed on to where a group of men were gathered under an oak tree. There was a tall man in the center whom Rives recognized as one of the men who had come out from Fort Donelson with Forrest. Rives knew this man by reputation as an experienced scout. He was a man who knew his own value but tonight his bearing was more assured than usual, perhaps because he was telling the assembled men something that seemed to interest them greatly.

“Yes, sir,” he said, “it was the middle of the night when the message come but it was all over camp before morning. There was a hot time around there for awhile, I tell you.”

Rives pressed nearer. “What’s he talking about?” he asked of the man next him.

The man clicked shut the blade of an enormous knife. “He’s talking about General Forrest,” he said, “when he come up from Corinth.”

“What?” Rives said. “Have they made him a general?”

The man nodded. “They done put him in command of all the cavalry round here. But they wouldn’t let him take his old regiment with him, just let him pick out ten men for his escort. Tom Miles there, he was one of ’em. He’s my brother.”

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