The Better Angels of Our Nature (20 page)

Instead, he gathered up his reins and charged in the direction of the thick oak forest. He didn’t make it. Abruptly Jesse heard a single shot. She saw Old Bob reel and then twist to the side as though slamming up against an invisible wall. The wounded animal went down on his front knees, swayed, and then keeled over, half-pinning his master’s left leg.

Jesse rode up as the colonel was crawling out from under the heaving animal. She shouted his name, then her own name, tore off her hat so that the startling color of her hair might help him know her, but he did not respond, did not even look at her now. She seemed to be in one world while he existed in another. He wrenched his sidearm from the saddle holster with clumsy fingers and staggered into the trees, using his free hand to wipe blood from his eyes.

Jesse dismounted and followed. She watched him weave like a drunken man over the uneven ground, stumbling, struck in the face again and again by the low brambles, almost tripping on the tangled undergrowth, willpower alone keeping him on his feet. Even in his injured, half-maddened state, he was in command, of himself and of his men. With no horse, he was pursuing the skulkers on foot. There they were, dozens of them, snatches of blue uniform, red eyes, pale sweating faces, cowering in the thickets, hiding behind oaks, beside logs, lying on their bellies in the tall grass, awaiting their fate, either at the hands of this apparently insane officer or the Rebels, they neither knew nor cared anymore. The colonel waved his army Colt in the air, threatening to shoot every last man, unless they obeyed. With a gargantuan effort, he got those who still carried a musket to their feet, and into the line of battle.

“Stand to it—” he kept saying, “stand to it—stand and fight—yes, that’s it—stand and fight. You’ll not dare run to the rear while I stand with you—” On his slurred command, they raised their weapons, aimed at where they supposed the enemy to be, and fired, enveloped briefly in a cloud of acrid blue smoke.

They fired once, but did not reload. Rather they stared at him as one man.

“What…what are…you waiting for?” he screamed, his cultured New England accent now reduced to a hysterical croak. “Load and fire—load and fire—and keep firing—don’t stop until we drive them into the river!”

One volley was all he would see. Jesse watched him sink exhausted to his knees and wave the gun weakly at chest level before he fell headlong into the grass and lay still. This was their cue. This was what the cowards had been waiting for; loss of blood had weakened the officer to unconsciousness.

Up they sprung, throwing their weapons aside and fleeing in every direction, urging each other to an effort they had never shown while facing the enemy.

Jesse, tearing a length of cloth from her shirt as she went, rushed to the colonel’s side. While she was trying to stanch the flow of blood from the dreadful gash on his scalp, two men appeared from nowhere, private soldiers, perhaps men of his own regiment. Without waiting for her to finish binding his wound, they bundled him onto a litter just before a Rebel battery started to pour charges of canister into the field. Explosions were ripping up trees by their very roots.

“Where are you taking him?” she shouted, grabbing one of their arms, as the earth seemed to shatter into pieces around them.

“To the Landing—to the Landing—” The man barely had time to reply before he trotted off, crouching low, beneath the whizzing lead, the canister and grape, the injured colonel raving and ranting, calling loudly for Old Bob and his sword, the already blood-soaked length of makeshift bandage trailing in the mud.

Jesse crouched behind a tree. She remained thus for a full minute, her hands pressed over her ears, her eyes tightly shut, then a moment longer. Her lips were atremble; her eyes had filled up with hot, burning tears. Her entire body was shaking, just as badly as those men she had nursed in the full throes of ague. She was suffering a different kind of fever. This was excitement, fear, exhilaration, a heating of her blood as it rushed to her temples, beating there with such force that she thought she would faint. She tried to breathe deeply, to calm herself, and stop her chest from heaving.

She listened. Silence.

Apart from the constant buzzing of the insects, was she alone in the world? Where were the enemy? Their six-pounders only moments before had been splitting the earth asunder. Where were the skulkers? Where was Thomas Ransom? What had happened to the guns, the two privates, the litter, and the raving colonel? All had disappeared.

She fell back against the tree and rubbed the palms of her hands over the hard, rough bark. That was real enough. She could hardly breathe and sweat was dripping from her face. Then she lowered her gaze and saw it. There in the long grass where it had slipped from his fingers lay evidence that the last ten minutes had been no nightmare.

Ransom’s sidearm.

She reached out with a shaking hand.

She turned and walked back into the clearing, retracing the officer’s erratic steps. In a while, she found his sword, and, if further proof were needed, there was Old Bob, blood seeping from the bayonet wound in his side and pouring from a hole in his hindquarters. The animal’s big, moist eyes were still open, pleading with her to end his agony. She knew what must be done and she would not flinch from doing it. She checked the colonel’s pistol as Captain Van Allen had taught her. It was loaded. With tears streaming from her eyes she placed the muzzle to the side of the animal’s head, cocked the hammer, and pulled the trigger. The loud report and kick of the gun drove her off her feet. She sat there with closed, burning eyes, muttering to herself. Was it wrong to mourn the loss of so faithful a creature when thousands were falling in these golden cornfields?

She struggled up. Ironsides was trotting toward her, watching her, gratitude in those old eyes. Now he knew if, like Old Bob, he took a wound, he would not be abandoned to his suffering. As Jesse fastened the colonel’s sword and pistol securely to her saddle the animal nudged her gently with his head. “I know—” she said softly, weeping, “
—I know—
”

She arrived back at Sherman’s side to hear the shocking news of Prentiss’s surrender in the sunken road.

Prentiss had held out all day and had only now given in to save the lives of his remaining two thousand men. Hurlbut, it was said, in defending the peach orchard, had placed his men on their stomachs in a double row to shoot Johnston’s men like rabbits. Grant, using the men who had broken from ranks, had patched up a solid front line again, Sherman and McClernand had fallen back into a more solid array, and the Federals were waiting for the next assault.

It never came. There was a rumor that the Rebel general Johnston was dead. Perhaps Beauregard succeeding to command realized his men had also had enough. The Rebels had not driven the Federals into either Owl or Snake creek as they had predicted, or into the Tennessee River. The Union force had established a strong line of defense around Pittsburg Landing and now that was how the day would end.

The battle dwindled as twilight spread. But members of Sherman’s staff were to witness the mystery of yet another narrow escape by their commander. Swinging into his saddle, the Ohioan’s horse pranced sufficiently to tangle the reins around the animal’s neck, as they were being held by Major Hammond. As the general leaned down to retrieve them a minié ball cut the straps two inches below the major’s hand, and tore the crown and back rim of Sherman’s hat.

There were no tents, even for the wounded, so orderlies had thrown a sheet of canvas across low-hanging branches to make a fly tent, under which the division commander was now sitting on an empty hardtack box, surrounded by staff and messengers, all of whom appeared to be talking at once. While Jesse lay out bandages, lint, and the contents of her small surgical kit, Captain Jackson arrived to confirm the fate of the Rebel commander. During the vicious fighting at the peach orchard Albert Sidney Johnston was mortally wounded. He had bled to death for want of any officer who knew how to apply a tourniquet.

Far more important and tragic for the Federals was the loss of General William Wallace, shot in the head and left for dead at a place the Rebels called the “Hornet’s Nest” when a sudden advance by the enemy had forced a retreat.

“Sherman!” It was a very evidently relieved Grant, pushing his way through the throng of officers. “They told me you’d been mortally wounded and was dying in your tent. Then they said your hand was shot off!”

“Well, Grant, I have no tent in which to expire, I hear that Beauregard now occupies it, and as for my hand, sir, that as you can see, is still attached to my arm.” He wiggled it for Grant’s benefit, despite the blood and stiffness before Jesse laid it carefully on the upturned barrel beside the surgical instruments, and requested respectfully, if insistently, that he keep it still. But it was like asking the world to stop spinning on its axis for a second.

Grant’s uniform was spattered with the brains of an aide who had been decapitated earlier by a six-pounder, but apart from being blackened in the face by gunpowder he looked no different from the usual crumpled little man with the chewed cigar.

Sherman shifted his weight so that Captain Jackson could light his stub of a cigar. He took the tin cup that Marcus gave him and swallowed a mouthful. He knew better than to offer Grant, who licked his lips. Although Rawlins was not around to scold and lecture, now was not the time to partake of intoxicating liquor. The Tennessee Army chief watched as Jesse examined the entrance wound in Sherman’s hand, palpating the buckshot between the skin and bone, pressing the nail bed for a second or two, as Dr. Cartwright had shown her.

“Will it have to come off?” Sherman asked matter-of-factly, not stipulating if he meant the finger, the hand, or indeed the entire arm. He might have been asking if it was raining or if the mail had arrived. He drained the liquid in the cup. As he moved, Jesse could smell the sweat on his body. Rather than offensive, it was exhilarating. The male smell of him.

“No sir,” she said, watching the nail bed pink up as blood returned to the small, vital arteries in the finger. “The blood supply is fine.”

“If Beauregard’s in command we’ll be finished for now. He’ll want to regroup, think it out, I know him well, he’s not a rash man, given to excitable outbursts, but not rash,” Sherman said as the girl began to scrub the wound with a small sponge moistened with clean water from her canteen.

Grant’s gaze was fixed on what Jesse was now confidently doing with the forceps. She was probing for the buckshot pellet that had struck the third finger of the general’s right hand, penetrating it to the bone. Dirt, small pieces of dead skin, and a slither of muscle dropped to the earth at her feet.

“Nelson’s division of Buell’s army has arrived.” Grant’s voice was more monotone than usual, he was fixated on Jesse’s ministering, almost hypnotized. “And Lew Wallace arrived ten minutes ago.”

“Better late than never,” Sherman replied, but he wasn’t meaning to be funny. The failure of Buell and Lew Wallace to arrive in time to fight on what would surely only be the first day of the battle was no matter for amusement. Wallace had started early on Sunday morning to cover the five miles to Shiloh Meeting House, but had wandered around the country all day within sound of the battle without being able to find it. Not even the combined entreaties of Rawlins and McPherson, sent to find him, could persuade the Indianan that he was marching in the wrong direction, and the farther he marched away the fainter grew the sound of battle. It had cost them dearly. Tonight they could have been celebrating a great victory instead of trying to see the best in what was almost an outright and disastrous defeat.

The notoriously squeamish Grant was now half-watching the operation, half-turning away. As confidently as any experienced surgeon, Jesse had now located the buckshot. She grasped it with the small bullet extractor and removed it, with little fuss and even less blood. If there was pain, Sherman was keeping it to himself. He winced very slightly and bit down on his cigar stub.

“Does the boy know what he’s doing, Sherman?” It was a reasonable question, since the last time Grant had seen Jesse it was not as a surgeon, wound dresser, or even medical orderly, but as a courier flying back across the field on a bowlegged nag after delivering a message to hurry forward more ammunition. This boy seemed to be everywhere and everything. Surely there was more than one of him? Had Mrs. Davis given birth to triplets, all of whom were serving at Sherman’s headquarters?

Sherman laughed and chewed hard on his cigar and squirmed about on the box, eager to be up and pacing, as always. “The boy’s bright as a silver dollar,” he said.

Jesse placed the pellet on the top of the barrel beside his hand. “There.”

At that moment, Colonel McPherson rode up, dismounted, and saluted both generals.

“What’d you have to tell me, Mac?” asked Grant.

“At least a third of the army is out of commission, sir, and the balance greatly disheartened. Those who fought bravely and were pushed back saw the skulkers and cowards along the bluff and it was all their officers could do to stop them shooting their own kind. I believe neither side can claim to have organized armies at this moment, sir, officers have lost their regiments, regiments are intermingled, and companies all scrambled together, Ohio with Iowa, and Indiana with Illinois and so on. Should we make preparations for a retreat, sir?” McPherson concluded, his mouth slightly open, and watched as Jesse confidently controlled the minor bleeding in Sherman’s hand with a styptic before closing the small neat wound with adhesive plaster strips.

“Retreat? No!” Grant was saying. “They can’t break our lines tonight, it’s too late, they’ve spent their force. Tomorrow we’ll attack them with fresh troops from Wallace and Buell, and drive them off. At Fort Donelson, when both sides seemed defeated, I saw that the one who took the offensive the next day won. I propose to attack at daylight and whip ’em!” He looked at Sherman, who, though obviously not as convinced as the commander, nodded his large head in agreement.