“These kind gentlemen is here to free us,” Lucius said. “Miz Lily don’t want none of it, but they won’t back down from her. It was a sight, I’ll tell you.”
The people inside burst into laughter and thanks, and some even began to cry, pray, or both. Children ran out into the yard and dashed in wild circles, exuberant at being let out of the pen without a chore assigned to them. One of the women told Lucius that she’d go into the big house to get his family out. He warned her to be careful of Miz Lily, but Frankie volunteered to go along to make sure she didn’t try anything.
“Where we gone go, suh?” one of the women asked Thaddius.
“Anywhere you want, I reckon,” he told her with a grin.
“Ain’t got nowhere special in mind,” she said. “But most places we go, someone will just catch us up again.”
“But you’re free now,” he said.
“You think so, and I might think so,” the woman argued. “Are most other folks in these parts gone think so?”
“I see your point,” Thaddius admitted. This had become a problem already—freed slaves, with no place better to go and no guarantee of safety anywhere in Georgia, had taken to following Sherman’s army around. But that meant more mouths to feed, slower progress, and more targets for Johnny Reb. There was no good solution to the problem, but Thaddius didn’t feel right about turning these people away now that he’d rescued them from a slave pen. “I reckon you can stay with us awhile if you’ve a mind to.”
The slave pen had been put to the torch and the smokehouse raided for stores of beef and pork. Livestock was shot and fire set to the edges of the fields and then, with twenty-two former slaves in tow, the foragers went to rejoin their regiment.
The trouble started on a wooden bridge over a slow, narrow river. From a copse of trees on the far side, shots rang out, and Private Joyce, one of Thaddius Riker’s men, was hit in the gut. He fell, and the rest flattened themselves, drawing their weapons. Thaddius waved the ex-slaves down. But then gunfire came from behind them, up a hillside that banked down toward the river.
“They got us pinned down here,” Railsback muttered. “It’ll be like target practice for ’em to pick us off.”
“That’s because we’re on the wrong side of the bridge,” Thaddius said.
“But they’re on both sides!”
“I’m talking about over and under,” Thaddius explained. “We’re over. We need to be under. Give ’em some hell, boys!” he shouted. “And let’s get wet!”
The men all started shooting then, setting up a covering barrage that drove the rebs back into the trees and those up on the hill into hiding while the Federals dove from the bridge into the lazily moving river. The water wasn’t very deep and the men were able to keep their guns and powder above its surface. In the shade of the bridge, they were at least somewhat protected from those on the hill, and the cut of the riverbank kept those in the trees from being able to see them, much less shoot them. But when the freed slaves joined them under the bridge, it became crowded, and the soldiers on the hill were able to pick off the people around the edges. Two of the slaves were hit, and Frankie took a ball in the shoulder, shattering bone and spraying blood into the water.
Thaddius knew this was only a temporary measure. They couldn’t stay in this water indefinitely, and the bridge would only offer protection for so long. It was just wood and eventually the Confederate shot would chew through it. Besides, when the men from the trees came to the river’s edge they’d be easy targets. He needed a plan, and he needed it fast.
“How many men you think they have?” he asked Railsback.
“Can’t be too many. We didn’t think they had any forces around here. My guess is this is a small patrol that spotted us and thought they’d make some trouble. A dozen, maybe, six in the trees and six up top.”
“That’s what I’m thinking too,” Thaddius said. “Which means they still outnumber us two to one and have the tactical advantage.”
“Unless you count the Negroes,” Railsback pointed out.
“They don’t have guns, but I was just getting to that,” Thaddius said. “How well can you swim?”
“I swim fine, I guess. What do you have in mind, sir?”
“Well, when we go underwater our rifles won’t do us any good. So we leave them behind with whatever of those slaves can shoot, and we just take bayonets.”
“Bayonets, sir? Against a dozen men? Or what we hope is only a dozenmen?”
“I know the odds aren’t great,” Thaddius Riker said with a smile. “But that’s their own fault for joining the Confederate Army.”
He recruited another soldier and three of the strongest, healthiest former slaves, including Lucius. Each man was assigned a bayonet, and a secondary hunting knife. Rifles were left with those who would stay behind. At Thaddius’s signal, the little force under the bridge began firing up the hill, distracting the rebels up there, and Thaddius, Railsback, Clancy, and three ex-slaves dove under the water, swimming for all they were worth. They swam underneath until their lungs were fit to burst, then came up close to the near bank, where they hoped the men up the hill wouldn’t be able to see them. Then they ducked under again, and swam another distance downriver. Finally, they dragged themselves out and up the bank, dripping, cold, and weighted down with all the water they’d taken on.
Thaddius led the men by example and hand signal. They climbed up the far side of the hill, and within a short while were slipping down behind the armed rebels, who had taken up positions behind large rocks and downed trees. But those bulwarks protected them only from bullets fired from below. At Thaddius’s signal, his tiny force attacked. There were eight rebels, not six. One of them got off a shot, which tore through the wrist of one of the ex-slaves. But the bayonets did their dirty work, and in a few short moments the Confederates were all on the ground, bleeding into the dirt.
The wounded slave grinned at Thaddius in spite of his injury. “I ain’t had so much fun in years,” he said. “Y’all get to do this every day?”
“Not quite like this,” Thaddius replied. “But if you can handle a gun as well as you do that bayonet you might could find a place in this army.”
“Be a little tricky with but one wing,” the man said. “But I’ll gladly give it a try.” He took a musket from one of the Confederate corpses and balanced it on a boulder, sighting down it toward the copse of trees. As Thaddius had hoped, the rebs there had grown restless and were creeping toward the riverbank, where they figured they would have easy pickings at those stuck in the water.
“Let’s see what you can do,” Thaddius urged. He helped himself to a gun and the other men did the same. The former slave fired first, and his target dropped. The others began firing, and the Confederates, all in the open now, were disposed of quickly. By the time Thaddius and his men came down from the hill, the rest of the Federals and freed slaves were out of the water, wringing out their clothes, stamping their feet, and helping themselves to weapons and ammunition from the rebel corpses.
Will Riker liked the tale because it demonstrated a trait that Thaddius Riker had in common with William Tecumseh Sherman, and one that he hoped he had as well—the ability to look unconventionally at a difficult situation and find a unique solution. Most leaders wouldn’t have abandoned their guns and attacked a larger force with lesser weapons. But without that creative response, the story of Thaddius Riker might well have ended in that cold, slow Georgia creek near Garner’s Ridge.
Maybe that was what he needed with Felicia, he realized. The two had talked for hours the other night, after they had made their peace. Since then he had seen her a couple more times, but usually in groups. They had touched a few times, hands coming together, but there had been little forward progress in the direction that Will had decided he wanted to go. He still didn’t know if it was what Felicia wanted, but he was more convinced than ever that it might be. He just needed to find out. And since he didn’t know quite how to go about it, he needed a creative way to force the issue.