Up ahead, Black Bob McCulloch was shouting, “A guide! We need a guide to Fort Pillow!” His thick, dark beard, with luxuriant mustaches that almost swallowed his mouth, helped give him his nickname.

“I should say you do,” a woman told him. “All the swamps and bogs and marshes and I don't know what all between here and the Mississippi, you'd get lost faster'n greased lightning if you tried to go without one.”

“Yes, ma'am.” The brigade commander lowered his voice to answer her, then raised it again to a bellow that could carry across a battlefield: “A guide! We need a guide!”

Other officers took up the call, till Brownsville seemed to echo with it. Mter what the local woman said, Ward hoped they found one. If they bogged down… He didn't want to think about what General Forrest would do to them then. He was far more afraid of his own commanding officer than of the damnyankees, and he wasn't ashamed to admit it.

“I can get you there.” The answer came almost from Matt Ward's elbow. The man who made it looked as if he'd been through the mill. He wore a collarless shirt with no jacket and a ragged pair of homespun trousers. His eyes were wild in a pale face; his hair stuck out in all directions.

“Who the devil are you?” Ward said.

“My name is Shaw, WJ. Shaw,” the wild – eyed man replied. “That Bradford son of a bitch had me shut up in Fort Pillow till yesterday. I managed to sneak off, and I just got here this morning. You bet I can take you back there. Give me a rifle and I'll shoot some of those bastards myself. “

He wanted to do it. The eagerness all but blazed off him. It was so hot, Matt Ward was surprised Shaw didn't steam in the rain. The trooper raised his voice: “Colonel! Hey, Colonel! Here's your man, I reckon! “

Black Bob McCulloch had to fight his way back against the tide of cavalrymen moving west. Even when he shouted at the men to get out of his way, they couldn't always. And quite a few of them weren't inclined to, either. Confederate soldiers were always convinced they were just as good and just as smart as the officers who led them.