“I'll draft the orders, sir, and I'll send them out as soon as you approve them,” Captain Anderson said.

“Good. That's good. Tell General Bell especially not to sit around there lollygagging. He's got a long way to travel if he's going to get there by morning after next. He'd better set out just as fast as he can.”

Anderson's pen scratched across a sheet of paper. “I'll make it very plain,” Forrest's aide – de – camp promised. Forrest nodded. Anderson was a good writer, a confident writer. He made things sound the way they were supposed to. As for Forrest himself, he would sooner pick up a snake than a pen.

Fort Pillow was not a prime post. When it rained, as it was raining this Monday morning, Lieutenant Mack Leaming's barracks leaked. Pots and bowls on the floor caught the drips. The plink and splat of water falling into them was often better at getting men of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) out of bed than reveille would have been.

One of the troopers in the regiment swore as he sat up. “Listen to that for a while and you reckon you've got to piss, even if you just went and did,” he grumbled.

“Piss on the Rebs,” said the fellow in the next cot.

“Pipe down, both of you,” Leaming hissed. He was about twenty – five, with a round face, surprisingly innocent blue eyes, and a scraggly, corn – yellow mustache that curled down around the corners of his mouth. “Some of the boys are still sleeping.” Snores proved him right. Quite a few of the “boys” were older than he was.

The bugler's horn sounded a few minutes later. Some of the men slept in their uniforms. The ones who'd stripped to their long johns climbed into Federal blue once more. Some of them had worn gray earlier in the war. Most of those troopers were all the more eager to punish backers of the Confederacy. A few, perhaps, might put on gray again if they saw the chance.