“Worried about Forrest, I expect,” Leaming said. “Way he chased Fielding Hurst into Memphis…”

Colonel Hurst's Sixth Tennessee Cavalry (U.S.) had had the misfortune of running into a detachment from Forrest's force not long before. Hurst's men were rough and tough and nasty. They needed to be. Like the Thirteenth, they were homemade Yankees, and the hand of every Secesh man in the state was raised against them. However rough, tough, and nasty they were, they couldn't stand up to Forrest's troopers.

Major Bradford chuckled unkindly. “I hear tell Hurst ran away so hard, he galloped right out from under his hat.”

What could be more fun than hashing over another outfit's shortcomings? “I hear tell he left his white mistress behind,” Leaming said, “and his colored one, too.”

Now Bradford laughed a dirty laugh. “He had to have variety – unless he put 'em both in the same bed at the same time.” With a sigh, he pulled his mind back to matters military. “But anyway, Forrest isn't anywhere near here. He's off at Jackson, and that's got to be seventy miles away.”

“I was talking with one of the officers who came up with the coons,” Leaming said. “You know what Forrest had the nerve to do?”

“Son of a bitch has the nerve to do damn near anything. That's what makes him such a nuisance,” Major Bradford said. “What is it this time?”

“He sent Memphis a bill for the five thousand and however many dollars Colonel Hurst squeezed out of Jackson while he held it,” Leaming said.

Bradford laughed again, this time on a different note. “He better not hold his breath till he gets it, that's all I've got to say. He'll be a mighty blue man in a gray uniform if he does. Besides, that's not all Hurst has squeezed out of the Rebs – not even close.”

“Don't I know it!” Mack Leaming spoke more in admiration than anything else. Colonel Fielding Hurst had turned the war into a profitable business for himself. People said he'd taken more than $100,000 from Confederate sympathizers in western Tennessee. Leaming couldn't have said if that was true, but he wouldn't have been surprised. The Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry had done its share of squeezing, too, but the Sixth was way ahead of it.