“Are we going to fight those Secesh bastards?” Major Booth bellowed.

“Yes, suh!” the colored artillerymen yelled back.

“Are we going to whip those Secesh bastards?” Booth bellowed, even louder than before.

“Yes, suh!” The Negroes got louder, too. Lieutenant Leaming hadn't imagined they could.

Eyes still blazing, Booth peered this way and that. “Bradford!” he shouted. “Where in God's name are you, Bradford?”

“I'm here, sir,” Major Bradford answered. He had to say it again before he could make Major Booth hear him. “What do you require of me?”

“We don't want to let Forrest's men drive our pickets back into the fort right away, do we?” Booth demanded.

Bradford hesitated. Mack Leaming didn't think the Federal garrison wanted to do any such thing. Some of the ground within the large perimeter Gideon Pillow first laid out was higher than the position at the juncture of Coal Creek and the Mississippi the garrison now held. If the Confederates got sharpshooters on that high ground, they could fire down on the U.S. soldiers inside the present small earthwork. That wouldn't be good at all.

“Do we?” Major Booth repeated, more sharply than before. He knew the right answer, whether Bill Bradford did or not.

“Uh, no, sir.” Major Bradford might not know the answer, but he could take a hint.

“All right, then, goddammit,” Booth said. “Get some skirmishers out to help the pickets.” He cocked his head to one side, listening to the gunfire out beyond the breastwork. “Don't send a boy to do a man's job, either, Major. The Confederates sound like they're here in numbers. “

“Very well, major,” Bradford said, and turned to Mack Leaming.

“Order Companies B and C out to the picket line.”

“Companies Band C. Yes, sir.” Leaming dashed away, shouting, “Company B forward to the picket line! Company C forward to the picket line! We have to hold off the Rebs at long range!”

The men inside Fort Pillow were running around like ants after their hill is kicked. The colored troops' white officers screamed for gun crews to man the half – dozen cannon that had come north from Memphis with them. Negroes not serving the guns took their places along the earthwork with the whites from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry. They started banging away at whatever was out there.

They didn't just shoot at the Confederates, either. To show their scorn for the men who might have owned them in the not – too – distant past, they shouted filthy obscenities out toward the enemy, and backed them up with more lewd gestures.

“Don't you act like those niggers!” Leaming shouted to his white troopers. “Forrest's men are bad enough any which way. You see any sense to ticking 'em off worse?” He spotted one of the officers in Company C. “Logan! Get your men moving faster!”

“Yes, sir!” the young lieutenant answered. “We're doing our best, sir! “

“Never mind your best, dammit,” Leaming said. “Just do what you've got to do.”

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Logan said again – what else could he say? Before long, about fifty men carrying rifle muskets and cartridge boxes stumbled out through the mud toward the rifle pits beyond the two rows of disused barracks outside the perimeter.

As Major Booth had before him, Mack Leaming paused to listen to the gunfire out there. Booth had it straight – the Confederates were putting a lot of lead in the air. How many men had Bedford Forrest brought through the swamps east of Fort Pillow, anyhow?

Too many, Leaming thought worriedly. That had hardly gone through his mind before one of the troopers going out to the picket line caught a bullet in the face and crumpled, his Springfield falling from his fingers. Another soldier also fell, grabbing at his leg. His howl of pain pierced the gravel- on-a-tin-roof rattle of musketry.

How many men have they got out there? Leaming wondered, and shivered. One way or another, the garrison would find out.

“Fire!” Captain Carron shouted.

Sergeant Mike Clark pulled the lanyard – the white man was in charge of the gun. A friction primer already stood in the touchhole: a goose quill filled with gunpowder and topped with shredded match. A looped steel pin was fixed in the primer, and the lanyard hooked to the loop. When Clark yanked it out, the match caught and set off the powder below. There was a hiss when the finely ground powder in the friction primer caught, then a roar as the main charge went off. Fire and smoke belched from the twelve – pounder's muzzle. Away flew a shrapnel round, to come down – with luck – on the advancing Confederates' heads.

Sergeant Ben Robinson watched for the burst along with Carron and Clark and with the rest of the colored artillerymen who served the gun. “Long!” the captain said, and then something more pungent. “Robinson! Bring the range down fifty yards!”

“Down fifty yards! Yes, suh!” Robinson said. Fifty yards was two turns of the altitude screw. He had to make sure he turned it the one way and not the other. He didn't want to raise the gun's muzzle instead of lowering it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the crew got the twelve – pounder ready to fire again. One Negro soldier used the worm – a giant two – pronged corkscrew on the end of a pole – to bring smoldering bits of wadding and cartridge bag out of the barrel. Another shoved a dripping sponge down the gun's iron throat to douse any bits of fire that remained. When the sponge was withdrawn, yet another black man shoved in the cartridge full of black powder. While he was loading the next round of shrapnel and the wadding that helped give it a tight seal, Sergeant Clark jabbed a sharp awl through the touchhole and punctured the cartridge bag again and again.

The whole colored gun crew manhandled the piece back into its proper position; even in the mud, recoil had shoved it several feet to the rear. When Captain Carron nodded in satisfaction, Sergeant Clark inserted another friction primer and fixed the lanyard to it.

“Fire!” Carron yelled again. The twelve – pounder roared and jerked backward. Nobody in the gun crew stood behind it when it went off. The heavy carriage could crush a man almost like a man squashing a bug.

Fireworks – smelling smoke made Robinson cough. The shrapnel round burst somewhere between a quarter mile and half a mile away: red fire at the heart of another burst of smoke. A savage glee filled Ben Robinson's soul. That burst and the balls flying from it might maim men who'd bought and sold Negroes with no more thought or care than if they were cattle. What could be sweeter?

“Hey, Charlie!” Ben called to the loader. “Ain't this grand?”

“We finally gits to shoot the buckra, you mean?” Charlie Key said.

Robinson nodded. The loader's grin showed a lot of white teeth – one missing in front – in his black face. “The gun go off the first time, I aIm os' quit this world altogedder.”

“Gun go off the first time, I almos' go off myself,” Robinson said.

Charlie Key laughed. His grin got wider.

“Bring it down again, about a gnat's hair,” Captain Carron said.

“A gnat's hair. Yes, suh.” Robinson gave the altitude screw half a turn. That was about as small a change as would mean anything at all. Then, grunting with effort, he helped shove the twelve-pounder back up to the parapet.

“Fire!” the white officer yelled. The white sergeant pulled the lanyard. The gun boomed and rolled back. The Negroes who crewed the piece reloaded it and muscled it into position again.

They worked a lot harder than the whites set over them. Ben Robinson had worked harder than the whites above him his whole life long. He knew that wasn't always so. On small farms where the landowner could barely scrape up the cash for a Negro or two, everybody worked like a mule. On plantations like the one where he'd grown up, though, blacks worked hard so whites didn't have to. Whites made no bones about it, either.