The Widow of the South Read Online Free

with the broad brim of his hat pulled over his face, shielding his sunken eyes and the cheekbones that seemed ready to burst through his sallow skin. He had boils and a cough. The years of battle had made him seem smaller, robbing his frame of its solidity and power and leaving behind a bony carcass that could only be roused by battle. Before Hood began his mad march into oblivion, Forrest had hoped to get some time to go back to Mississippi and recuperate. There was no time for that now. He rode on, swaying in his saddle and brooding.
    Yes, he knew something about chasing Yankees. Get ’em skeered and then keep the skeer on ’em. How he wished those Yankees up there in Franklin were scared. He could work with fear. Hell, he had won whole battles with little more than the fear in the eyes of trembling Union commanders peering out between the cracks of their forts. But it would be a queer thing if those Yankees were scared much right then, he figured. It was his men who were riding into the unknown.
Who’s got the skeer on ’em now?
    His staff wasn’t much to look at. He’d had so many of them come and go he sometimes forgot their names. They were skeletal and bone-tired like Forrest, but they had a certain irrational hope that Forrest could not share. They were riding with Forrest, by God! Hero of Shiloh and Brice’s Cross Roads! They had faith in him, and Forrest felt the burden of their faith. They could not see battlefields like he could; the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy were not as plain to them. He had come to resent that they could not read his mind and anticipate what he would do. This was unfair of him, but he could get wore out just like any man.
Why do I got to do all the thinking all the time?
They were loyal, at least. He could say that for them.
    Up the pike they went, gray and ragged, picking their way over the footprints of the enemy. The road rolled gently and straight, bordered on each side by farmhouses and fields lying rich and fallow. Faces watched warily from farmhouse windows.
Women used to run out of their homes in their bedclothes when we rode through, and now we get this. Shit. That pretty little bastard Jeff Davis should see this
.
    The whole world was queered, and Forrest no longer knew who loved him and who hated him. Well, that wasn’t exactly true: he knew the Yankees hated him. And the niggers. They could be Yankees and niggers behind those windows, homegrown goddamn Yankees and runaways, for all he knew.
    He stopped. He looked out at the farmland passing beside him, dormant brown humps rolling off as far as he could see. The remnants of old weeds poked out of the fields here and there and shook in the wind. He looked harder at the fields stretching out before him, and everything was familiar for a moment. He had almost forgotten that he’d been there before, right on that road. He’d fought there and won, way back almost two years before. He’d lost his favorite horse there, too, a big sorrel stallion named Roderick. Loyal and stupid. Wouldn’t stay out of the fight, even when Forrest had sent him to the rear with a gunshot wound. Broke loose and went galloping around the battlefield until he took a bullet in his head while leaping over a hedge. Just looking for his master. There was no lesson in that, Forrest thought. It just was what it was.
    They rode on. He expected to hear the sounds of cattle and chickens, the shouts of children, the creaking of wagons—but there were none. Except for the eyes peering out from the windows, everyone seemed to have vanished.
They know a fight’s comin’.
He spurred his horse on a little more. It wasn’t far to Franklin, but it seemed an endless slog over the hills. Forrest didn’t like how the road had begun to slope gently up toward the town, straight and unbroken by cover or protection. He called a halt, and his men’s horses came skittering and snorting to a stop around him. He scanned the sunburned and dirty faces staring