THE THREE OF THEM set out south along the railroad, their blankets wrapped close around them, Indian-style. Even in the afternoon it was frosty enough they could see their breath, and the snorts of the horses made crystal flowers in the chilly air. South of Pontotoc the track had been torn up ahead of them and the rails and ties scattered about like outsize matchsticks—as thorough an uprooting as Forrest himself accomplished whenever he led such operations over ground that the enemy held.
Nearer to Okolona they came upon black men still at the work, lightly supervised by handfuls of Yankee soldiers here and there. The white soldiers made Henri uneasy and he felt perhaps that Matthew was too. Their uniforms were so tattered by now they could scarce be recognized, but their horses were still good, a little too good, maybe, for riders who preferred to pass unnoticed. On the other hand Henri began to take note that many of the black men were just as well mounted, on horses they’d taken from the stables round about. War had not breathed on this region before today, so the land was still fat, the horses sleek and glossy.
All the same they swung east of the track, to steer away from the Federal soldiers, though lines of fire now stood on the horizons all around. The blacks were pulling up track and burning the supply cribs under the direction of the Federal soldiers but they did not limit themselves to that. And what would you call them today? Henri wondered—not slaves, not runaways, not free men. They had passed into a kind of limbo and no one knew in what state they’d emerge beyond it. Today they galloped through tongues of flame and tendrils of smoke with the tails of their confiscated horses streaming out behind them.
A great spirit of destruction soared over this land, and Henri’s heart flew up to meet it. He rode with his knees guiding his horse, his palms turned up and arms raised high. At his right hand Matthew’s upturned face was bathed in a similar exaltation. “Koupé têt,” Henri called to him. “Boulé kay.” He knew the boy thrilled to the words even though he didn’t understand them. They had paused before a grand white-columned house whose brick was cracking under the heat of the fire that swirled between the open front and back doorways of the entrance hall, and rocketed up the helix of the spiral staircase. Soot-streaked blacks kicked their heels through heaps of ash in the yard, singing out a joyous rage. A Yankee officer cantered up to three of them, pale-faced.
“Make it stop,” he panted. “This—General Smith never ordered this. We’re supposed to destroy railroad and depots and supplies, not burn down the whole state of Mississippi. Even Sherman didn’t order this.”
Henri looked at him. “No human hand can make this stop.”
The Yankee officer gazed blankly at him for a few seconds more, then wheeled his horse and rode away. Presently the three of them prodded their mounts and set off, a bit more slowly, in the same direction the bluecoat had taken. The notion of strategy he had introduced was cutting into Henri’s transport of elation. He felt the leaden weight of Sherman, waiting for Smith to meet him at Meridian, wanting to rip the belly out of the whole South like a wild dog eating the viscera of its kill. Forrest knew full well that this was Sherman’s dear intention, and Forrest had it in mind to thwart it if he could. It was for that that Sherman hated and feared Forrest and would if possible have him killed.
“Koupé têt,” Henri said again in a lower tone; he didn’t really feel it now. “Boulé kay.” It didn’t feel the same.
“What’s that mean?” Matthew said, and Henri felt that the glow of the moment before had left him too.
“Cut off heads,” Henri said. “Burn down houses.” He sighed. “I’ll tell you later.”
As they rode into Okolona he began automatically to calculate numbers of cannon and wagons and men. Either side of them Matthew and Benjamin were doing the same, Henri felt sure. As Nath Boone predicted, bewilderment in the town was so general that the Yankees took no note of their passage.
But at the south edge of Okolona, Henri pulled his horse up sharply.
“Can somebody please tell me why we’re going back to Nathan Bedford Forrest right now?”
Benjamin looked at him sidelong. “They’s some as would like to ax you the