Chapter 13
Carrying his empty canteen, Zeb Rawlings made his way through the trees. The smell of death mingled with the scent of peach blossoms and the cool dampness of night.
He almost fell over the body of a dead man and had scarcely recovered his balance when a voice near him spoke. “You tasted this water yet?” “No.”
“Try it.”
Zeb cupped his hand in the pool where the spring emptied and took a tentative swallow. He heard others coming through the woods toward the spring and the creek into which it flowed.
“Taste funny?”
“It does … sort of.”
“I seen it before sundown. It was pink, pinker’n sassafras tea.” Zeb gagged, drawing back from the water. He hung his empty canteen back on his belt, and the soldier came nearer.
“Don’t seem fittin’ a man should have to drink water like this. In fact, it don’t seem fittin’ a man should do a lot of the things we done today. Did you kill anybody?”
“I don’t think so,” Zeb said. “We had just run up when a shell exploded, and when I could see for the smoke and dirt I’d lost my gun, and then a horse soldier stuck me in the arm with a sword … up by the shoulder, here. The rest is all mixed up. Somebody hit me with the butt of a gun, and when I came to, the fightin’ was over.”
“I ain’t kilt nobody neither, and I don’t aim to. Where you from?”
“Below the falls of the Ohio.”
“This fool war started back east. What’s us westerners doin’ in it, anyways?” “It ain’t like I expected. There ain’t much glory in seein’ men’s guts hangin’ out. Where you from?”
“Texas.”
Zeb drew back slowly. “Say, you ain’t a Reb, are you?”
“I was this mornin’. Tonight I ain’t so sure.”
“Seems like I oughta be shootin’ at you.”
“You got anything to shoot with?” the man asked mildly. “I got a pistol. Took it off’n a dead officer.”
“I’ve got a bayonet.”
“Look … why don’t we skedaddle out of here? Leave this here war to those that want it.”
Zeb hesitated. “They say there’s no war in California.” His thoughts returned to his mother, and he remembered her trying so desperately to make him listen, that letter from Aunt Lilith in her hand. And all the time she knew he had to go. Together they moved away from the river. The Texan leaned closer to Zeb.
“There’s a spring over yonder. I seen some Yankee officers drinking there.” Once they paused to let some stretcher-bearers pass, and afterward, hearing voices, they stopped at the edge of a clearing. Two men with their backs to them were seated on a fallen log some distance away. Even in the dim light there was something familiar about them to Zeb.
“I’m planning to move Rousseau’s brigade to this place. They can be situated well before dawn. Do you approve?”
“I’ll approve any dispositions you want to make. If you hadn’t held the flank today we’d have been whipped for fair.” The speaker hesitated. “Sherman, there’s something I want to say to you.” He paused again. “You may find yourself in command here.”
“Why?”
“I’ve seen some of the despatches the newspaper correspondents filed today.
They’re saying I was taken by surprise this morning.”
“You weren’t taken by surprise. I was.”
“No matter. They’re saying I was drunk again last night.”
“Were you?”
“No, but a man can’t fight enemies on both sides. Win or lose tomorrow, I intend to resign.”
“Because of the newspapers?”
“Because,” Grant replied, “of their complete lack of confidence in me.” Zeb and the Texan remained silent, listening. Zeb could see the two men in the firelight that flickered on their bodies from campfires beyond the trees. Evidently they had walked to this place, a few yards back of the camp, for a quiet talk. He had seen both men before, and even in the half-light he could recognize Grant’s square figure and the battered hat he customarily wore. “Don’t you think I’ve felt that way?” Sherman asked. “A month ago they were saying I was crazy. Today they call me a hero. Crazy or a hero, I’m still the same man, so what difference does it make what people think? It’s what you think, Grant.”
The Texan grabbed Zeb’s arm and whispered: “Y’ mean that’s Grant?”
Zeb nodded, straining his ears to hear.
“You know this war’s going to be won or lost in the west,” Sherman said, “and you’re the one man who knows how to win it. Everything you’ve done proves that.” The Texan undid the flap on his holster, with great care to make no sound, then drew his pistol. Zeb, whose full attention was centered on the two men seated on the log, did not notice.
“A man has the privilege to resign only when he knows he’s wrong,” Sherman argued, “not when he’s right.”
The Texan lifted the pistol and aimed directly at the back of Grant’s head, and for the first time Zeb saw the gun.
“What d’ you think you’re doin’?” he demanded in a hoarse whisper.
“But it’s Grant!”
Zeb grabbed the gun with his one good hand, twisting it down and around, forcing the Texan off balance with his sudden attack, and throwing his shoulder into him. Briefly they struggled, making no sound, then Zeb drew his wounded arm from its improvised sling and reached down for the bayonet. The Texan was wiry but less powerful, for years of farm work had built uncommon power into Zeb’s muscles. It was only that superior strength that enabled him to hold the Texan long enough to draw the bayonet. As they struggled silently, Zeb heard Grant say, “I’ll think it over. You may be right.”
A match flared briefly as Sherman lighted his pipe. “You know this army is better off with you than without you,” he said. “There’s nothing to think about.”
Zeb felt his grip on the pistol slipping, but as the Texan twisted him around, the bayonet came almost naturally from its scabbard, and just as the Texan tore his gun hand free the blade went home.
The blow was a short, wicked thrust with a blade that Zeb had himself honed until the point was fine as a needle, the edge like a razor. The Texas soldier gasped and fell back, tearing the hilt of the bayonet from Zeb’s hand. The hilt pointed downward from the Texan’s diaphragm. He was dead before his body touched the ground.
Stooping, Zeb took the pistol from the dead man’s fingers. “Why’d you make me do it?” he asked brokenly. “Why? I’d nothing against you.” When he finished searching the dead man for pistol ammunition, Zeb got to his feet. Sherman and Grant had gone, unaware of the brief, desperate struggle that had taken place only a few yards behind them in the darkness. Zeb’s mouth was dry and his shoulder was hurting him. The Texan had said there was a spring somewhere around, and he went on through the trees, listening for the sound of water.
Finally, he heard it. A mere trickle it was, falling from a pipe somebody had thrust into the rocks to conduct the water into a basin about the size of a washtub. He knelt and filled his canteen first, not knowing what might happen to drive him from the spot; and then he drank. The water was cold and clear. He drank, and drank again, and then sat down in darkness. He was going back to his outfit if he could find it. He had joined up to do a job and, like it or not, the job was unfinished. What would pa say if he knew his son had thought of quitting? Pa never had much use for quitters. In after years he never quite remembered the sequence of things—the marching, the camping, the fighting, and the marching again were all lumped into one great designless mass in his memory.
He returned to his outfit to find himself the only non-commissioned officer left alive, and there was but one officer. He became a sergeant at Chickamauga, and shortly after that an officer by virtue of a battlefield commission. He became an officer not because of any feat of bravery or because of any sterling quality, but simply because he was the highest-ranking man left alive in his unit. This, he discovered, was the usual reason for battlefield commissions. At Lookout Mountain he made first lieutenant, learning about combat the hard way … except for what he had learned from pa’s stories, for during the long winter evenings Linus had told his boys many a tale of Indian fighting, and Zeb had learned more than he realized.
It was at Chickamauga that he learned of his father’s death. There had been no mail for some time, and he first heard of it when a lean, stoop-shouldered Kentuckian came as a replacement to the company. “It was Kelly who was with him there at the end … I’d gone on up the hill. We taken the hill just like he planned, ‘spite of the charge they made. There as he lay dyin’ your pa said some-thin’ mighty strange … somethin’ about ‘seein’ the varmint.’ Whatever that might mean.”