American Front (36 page)

The front door opened and closed. Anne glanced at a clock. Half past eleven: time for the postman to come. She hurried toward the front hallway—and almost bumped into the butler, who was bringing the mail on a silver tray. “Thank you, Scipio,” she said, more warmly than she was in the habit of speaking to servants.

“My pleasure, madam,” he replied, deep voice grave as usual.

She took the tray from him. His sober features were as familiar to her as anything else at Marshlands, and more comfortable than a lot of the furniture. She wondered for the briefest moment how she would run the plantation if Scipio took a position elsewhere. But no. It was inconceivable. Born and bred here, a fixture since the days when Negro slavery remained the law of the land, Scipio was as much a part of Marshlands as she was herself.
Nice to have something on which I can rely
, she thought.

After setting the tray on a stained mahogany table, she sorted rapidly through the mail. She discarded advertising circulars unread, as not deserving anything better. Invoices and correspondence pertaining to the business side of Marshlands she set aside for later consideration. That left half a dozen personal letters.

“Do you require anything else of me, madam?” Scipio asked.

He had already started to turn to go when Anne said, “Wait. As a matter of fact, I should like to discuss something with you in a few minutes.” Obediently, the butler froze into immobility. He would stay frozen till she let him know he could move, however long that took.

To her disappointment, none of the letters was from her brothers. They were both in combat. Neither, so far, had been hurt, but she knew that was only by the grace of the God in Whom she believed so sporadically. Notes from friends and distant cousins were welcome, but could not take the place of news of her own flesh and blood.

And whom did she know in Guaymas? The grimy port and railroad town wasn’t anyplace you’d want to go on holiday, especially not when the United States were still liable to cut the railroad line that linked it to the rest of the Confederacy. Making it back to civilization through the bandit-ridden hinterlands of the Empire of Mexico struck her as adventurous without being enjoyable.

Curious, she used a letter opener shaped like a miniature cavalry saber to slit the envelope. The letter inside was in the same firm, clear, unfamiliar hand as the outer address.
Dear Anne
, it read,
I hope this finds you as well as I found you on the train to New Orleans and in the town. As you will see, I remain there no longer, that not being a primary center for one of my training—not enough beasts to hunt. I can’t say that here, having shot at several big ones and hit a few. Well, there’s hunting and there’s hunting, as the saying goes. I find I enjoy both kinds, and hope to pursue the other if I am ever out your way
. By contrast with the rest of the letter, the signature below was almost a scrawl:
Roger Kimball
.

Anne Colleton folded the letter again. The submariner had discretion; she gave him that much. No spy would be able to infer what he did from that letter. She could see why New Orleans was not a chief submarine base: the Gulf of Mexico being a Confederate lake, enemy ships were probably few and far between, Not so at Guaymas; the USA had a much longer Pacific coastline than the CSA.

No spy would be sure they’d been lovers, either. She worried about that less than most women might have, but it remained in her mind. She wondered whether to answer the letter or pretend she’d never got it. The latter choice was surely safer, but Anne had not got where she was by always playing safe. Either way, she didn’t have to decide right now.

And, in fact, she didn’t want to decide now. “Scipio,” she said, and the butler began to move, seemingly began to breathe, for the first time since she’d started going through her mail. “Scipio,” she repeated, gathering her thoughts, and then, “Do you know of anything special that’s driving so many niggers out of the fields and into the factories? Besides money, I mean—I know what money does.”

“I had not really thought about it, past endeavoring to see that we always have enough hands to perform the required labor,” Scipio replied after a momentary hesitation: perhaps for thought, perhaps not.

Could she believe that? She did some fast thinking of her own, and decided she could. Scipio’s duties centered on the mansion, and on keeping it and its staff in smooth working order. The field hands weren’t his main concern. “Let me ask that another way,” she said. “Have you noticed unusual unrest among any of the hands? I’m especially concerned about the new ones, you understand. I’m sure the bucks and wenches who’ve grown up on this plantation are contented with their lot: again, except possibly over money.”

Scipio’s dark, handsome features reflected nothing but meticulous attention to her words. So he had been trained, and no one could deny the training was a success. Not even Anne, who had caused that perfect mask to be made, could hope to lift up one edge, so to speak, and see what lay behind it. And his beautifully modulated voice revealed only a polite lack of curiosity as he replied, “Madam, I assure you I make every effort to weed out any undesirable influences before they find positions here. And, as you say, the loyalty of your longtime staff is of course unquestioning.”

“Thank you, Scipio. You do relieve my mind,” Anne said, With a gracious nod, she released him to pursue the rest of his duties. He’d told her exactly what she wanted to hear.

The Confederates had the U.S. soldiers exactly where they wanted them, or so they thought. Captain Irving Morrell wondered how—wondered if—he was going to prove them wrong. The war to which he’d returned two and a half months before bore only a faint resemblance to the one from which he’d been carried in Sonora back in August. For that matter, the heavily forested Kentucky hill country in which he was operating now wasn’t anything like the dusty desert where he’d been wounded.

His leg throbbed. He ignored it, as he’d been ignoring it ever since he hiked out of Shelbiana. Somewhere ahead, a good many miles ahead, lay Jenkins right by the Virginia border. In between seemed to be nothing but mountains and valleys and tiny coal-mining towns and even tinier farming hamlets and enough Rebels with guns to make advancing slow, hard, painful work.

Atop the hill ahead and in the trenches at its base were enough Confederates not just to slow the U.S. advance but to bring it to a halt. With the lieutenants and sergeants under him, Morrell slipped from one tree to another, drawing as close to the Rebel line as he could.

The sergeants would have been doing that job anyhow, but both lieutenants—their names were Craddock and Buhl—looked notably unhappy. “See for yourself,” Morrell said as they sheltered behind a gnarled oak. He spoke as if he were in the pulpit expounding on Holy Writ. “See for yourself. Without good reconnaissance, your force is only half as useful as it would be otherwise—sometimes less than half as useful.”

They couldn’t argue with him—he outranked them. But they didn’t look convinced, either. It wasn’t that they were cowards; he’d already seen them fighting with all the courage any superior officer could want from his men. What they lacked was imagination. The way the war was chewing up the officer corps, they’d make captain if they lived. He supposed they might even end up majors. He was damned, though, if he saw them going any further, not if the war lasted till they were ninety.

Bill Craddock pointed out to the cleared ground in front of the Confederate line. “How are we supposed to cross that, sir?” he said, clearly with the expectation that Morrell would have no answer. “Rebel machine guns’ll chew us up like termites gnawing on an old house.”

“We’ll have to bring our own machine guns forward before we move,” Morrell said. “We can bring them up within a hundred yards of their trenches, and concentrate our fire on the places where we want to break in. And…Lieutenant, have you ever gone down to the Empire of Mexico and watched a bullfight?”

“Uh—no, sir,” Craddock answered. His broad, stolid face showed he hadn’t the faintest idea what Morrell was driving at, either.

With a mental sigh, the captain explained: “The fellow in the bull ring has a sword. That doesn’t sound like enough against an angry bull with sharp horns, does it? But he also has a cape. The cape can’t hurt the bull, not in a million years. But it’s bright and it’s showy, and so the bull runs right at it—and the bullfighter sticks the sword in before the bull even notices.”

Karl Buhl was marginally quicker than Craddock. “You want us to feint from one direction and hit them from the other, is that what you’re saying, sir?”

Morrell glanced at his noncoms. They all understood what he was talking about without his having to draw them any pictures. Some of them were liable to end up with higher ranks than either of their present platoon commanders. But Buhl and Craddock were doing their best, so he answered, “That’s right. We’ll try going around the right flank, and then, as soon as they’re all hot and bothered, the main force will come straight at ’em, with the machine guns delivering suppressive fire. We can assemble back there”—he pointed—“on the little reverse slope they’ve been kind enough to leave us.”

Had he been commanding the Confederate defenders, he would have moved his line east from the base of the hill to the top of that reverse slope, so he’d have had men covering the ground Rebel bullets could not now reach. If the Rebs were going to be generous enough to give him a present like that, though, he wouldn’t turn it down.

“Flanking party will attack at 0530 tomorrow morning,” he said. “Buhl, you’ll lead that one. We’ll give you a couple of extra machine guns, too. If things go well, you won’t be only a feint: your attack will turn into the real McCoy. You understand what you’re to do?”

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant answered crisply. As long as you dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s for him, he did well enough.

“I’ll lead the main force myself, starting at 0545,” Morrell said. That left Craddock with no job but support. Morrell didn’t care. For that matter, support mattered here, and could easily turn into something more. Crossing the open space toward the Confederate trenches was liable to get expensive in a hurry, and Craddock, however imperfectly qualified for company command, was liable to have it thrust upon him.

The reconnaissance party slid along the front for a while, then drifted back through the forest to where the rest of the company waited. An overeager sentry almost took a potshot at them before they could call out the password. When the soldier started to apologize, Morrell praised him for his alertness.

After darkness fell, Morrell guided the machine-gun crews forward to the positions he wanted them to take. That was nerve-wracking work; Confederate patrols were prowling the woods, too, and he had to freeze in place more than once to keep from giving away his preparations for the assault.

It was well past midnight when everything was arranged to his satisfaction. He returned to his soldiers, huddled without fire on that chilly reverse slope, and wrapped himself in his green wool blanket. Try as he would, sleep refused to come. Moving pictures kept running behind his eyes: all the different ways the attack might go, all the different things that could go wrong.

At 0500, his orderly, a scar-faced laconic fellow named Hanley, came to tap him on the shoulder. “I’m already awake,” he whispered, and Hanley nodded and slipped away.

Just then, somebody fired a shot—a Tredegar by the sound of it, not a U.S. Springfield. The Rebel trenches came alive, with more gunfire ringing out. Morrell tensed, willing his men not to reply. They knew they shouldn’t, but—After a couple of minutes, the Confederates stopped shooting. Somebody had seen a shadow he’d misliked, that was all.

Lieutenant Buhl got his half of the attack going at 0530 on the dot. He was, if uninspired, at least reliable. And, with a couple of machine guns yammering away for fire support, he sounded as if he had a hell of a lot more than a platoon’s worth of men with him.

Morrell passed the word to the rest of his company: “All right, we move up now. No shooting unless the Rebs discover us, or until the time, whichever comes first. I’ll skin the man who opens up too soon and gives us away.”

Morning twilight was just beginning to seep through the branches of the trees. You could see a trunk a couple of paces before you’d walk into it, but not much farther than that.

The flank attack sounded as if it was going well, not only making progress but also, by the counterfire Morrell heard, drawing Rebels to their left, his right. He held his pocket watch up to his face. Another two minutes, another minute…He blew his whistle, a piercing blast easily audible through the racket of rifles and machine guns.

At the signal, the Maxims he’d sneaked up close to the Confederate lines started hammering at them. Morrell wouldn’t have cared to be under machine-gun fire at what was as close to point-blank range as made little difference. Screams and cries of dismay said the Rebs didn’t care for it, either.

“Narrow arc!” Morrell yelled. “Narrow arc!” The gunners were supposed to know that already; he’d told them their jobs the night before. If they made the Confederates stay under cover in the areas covered by those narrow arcs of fire, his men would have stretches of trench they could storm with minimal risk. If that didn’t happen, his men would get slaughtered.

And so would he. He blew the whistle again, this time twice, burst from the cover of the woods, and ran, bad leg aching under him, toward the Confederate trenches. If you led like that, your soldiers had no excuse not to follow. Follow they did, yelling like so many madmen, firing their Springfields from the hip as they came. You weren’t likely to hit anybody that way, but you made the fellows on the other team keep their heads down. That meant they couldn’t do as much shooting at you.

A few bullets did crack past Morrell. He fired a couple of shots himself, but made sure he kept a round in the chamber for when he’d really need it. Faster than he imagined possible, he jumped down into the enemy trench.