Evermore: A Saga of Slavery and Deliverance (The Plantation Series Book 3) (37 page)

Before dawn, his eyes gritty and red, Finn McKee climbed a
crude ladder to a tree-top platform. He hadn’t slept. Mortar fire meant to
soften up the Rebs before this morning’s attack had kept him and the other
30,000 Union soldiers on edge all night. Now, with the sun about to rise, the
land batteries chimed in, blindly bombarding the Confederate stronghold.

Two signal corpsmen climbed up and squeezed onto the
platform. “Keep your heads down, lads,” Finn told them. “First sun-ray to catch
your pearly whites, those Mississippi sharpshooters will get you.”

At first light, Finn trained his telescope toward the Rebel
fortifications. He’d been studying this terrain for days. What a mess. The
Mississippi was in full flood, backing up the creeks and filling the swamp on
the Federal right. Hursh had made a sport of killing the rattlers that wanted a
share of dry land. Got himself eight the day before, and another fellow fired a
shotgun blast into a nest of cottonmouths.

Finn surveyed the pontoon bridge the Union engineers had
built across swollen Little Sandy Creek, which would be helpful until the Rebel
artillery took it out. On the other side of the creek were deep ravines choked
with timber that the Rebs had deliberately felled every which way, then an open
killing field. Beyond that, Confederate earthworks shielded the Rebs and their
artillery for several hundred yards outside the actual fort.

Finn shook his head at the intricacy of natural defenses
around Port Hudson. Thank heavens for the Union’s artillery. Without cover from
mortar and cannon, it’d be a slaughter to advance across the creek, over the
hillocks, down the gullies, through the branches and logs, all under fire from
Rebel guns.

Before full light, Finn heard the jingle of harness, the
rattle of canteens and weaponry. General Weitzel had begun his advance.

“This is it, boys,” Finn said. “We take Port Hudson today,
we’ll be at Vicksburg within the week. You got a brother up there with Grant,
don’t you, Dudley?”

“No, sir. I got two.”

Federal soldiers ghosted under their tree, wisps of fog
deadening the sound of their passage through the deeper dark under the tree
canopy.

Without warning, the Rebs opened fire. Through the gray fog,
Finn saw the yellow flashes of rifle and musket fire, the puffs of smoke, then
heard the pop pop pop and
the cries of men caught by minié balls.

The Federals raised their battle cry and rushed the Rebs’
advance positions, firing as they ran.

Muskets, rifles, and artillery blazed. Tree limbs crashed
down, men cried out, red flames burst from the mouths of cannon.

“All right, boys,” Finn shouted.

Privates Dunston and Dudley raised their signal flags, ready
to send a wig wag message to pin point the action. Finn bit back the urge to
warn them,
Keep behind the flags!
As
if a strip of cloth could stop a minié ball.

The Union’s greater numbers at last pushed the Rebs back
until they made a run to shelter behind their forward earthworks. The Federals
had prevailed, thank God, but Finn’s telescope revealed Union infantrymen in
disarray, confused and stalled, their line broken by the steep ravines and the
thick virgin forest.

Stinging sweat trickled down Finn’s stubbled face. The
soldiers below him, laden with weapons and ammunition, must feel themselves in
the heat of hell. Yet go on they must despite the maze of obstacles before them
-- dense stands of pine, magnolia and willow, the creek itself, hillocks, deep
snake-infested gorges, and the Rebel’s abatis of
trees and branches felled into a massive tangle. Rifle shots from both sides
rang out as sharpshooters took aim.

To Finn’s left, an officer shouted out “Come on!” Finn searched
the battlefield and found Colonel Babcock in his lens. His spirits soared as
the colonel raised his sword and dashed ahead of his regiment in pursuit of the
enemy. In ragged form, men followed him into steady fire from Confederate
musketry. Then the Rebel gunners found their range. Twelve-pounders exploded
over and among the blue-clads.

Finn focused on a file of soldiers, running one behind the
other into the fight. In freakish carnage, a Rebel artillery shell tore through
the whole row, killing every man. He dropped the telescope, Dudley catching it
before it rolled off the platform. Finn leaned over the side and vomited, the
image of those mangled men forever imprinted in his mind.

He wiped his mouth and held his hand out to Dudley for the
telescope. The battle had not halted for his lapse of attention.

The noise of cannon and rifle, of the terrified shrieking of
bullet riddled horses and exploding grenades stunned him. The assault force,
diminished but determined, continued through the killing artillery fire,
closing on the Rebel position.

Finn focused his lens on the Confederate line under the 1st
Alabama flag. They carried outdated flintlocks. They’d be no match for the
Federals’ Springfields and Enfields. Finn’s
confidence evaporated as the Federals got within forty yards of the
Confederate’s forward breastworks. As one, the Rebels rose from behind their
cover and blazed a volley of musketry directly into the Union line.

With no time to reload, the Confederates ran full tilt to
the fortifications behind them. The Federals rallied and pursued.

Everywhere Finn trained his telescope, some valiant action,
some deadly event filled his lens. A youth carried the 75th New York’s flag,
running and leaping over fallen comrades. A ball took him and he dropped, the
flag clasped to his chest. Immediately a soldier rescued the flag and charged
ahead. Further on, a shell cut a soldier in two. Near him, a minié caught another in the throat, the spray of blood
visible through Finn’s eye piece. He closed his eyes, just for a moment,
wishing the vision could be washed from his mind.

But he had his part to play. In the confusion of smoke and
movement and deafening noise, Finn tried to make sense of the battle scene to
signal the next tower and the next, on to General Banks himself: the 1st Maine
battery took a direct hit, men and horses blasted and dead; an overheated
cannon at Battery F exploded, the installation simply gone; Rebel cannon
dismounted two guns at Battery A leaving the bodies of men and horses strewn about
in bloody heaps.

Unbelievably, the Confederate resistance quelled the advance
of the greater Union force. The Rebs didn’t seem to care how outnumbered they
were, they fought like Titans. In frustration, Finn pounded his fist against
the deck of the platform as, by platoon and squad, the Federals’ fragmented
attacks failed.

A trumpeting bugle announced the stirring of another
regiment to Finn’s rear. He trained his glass behind him, northward. From this
angle, Finn spotted the white crosses Rebs had nailed to the trees to mark
their artillery range. The enemy had had weeks and weeks to prepare for this
day.

Peering over and through the trees, Finn caught the waving
flag of the Louisiana Native Guards, anchoring the far right of the Union line.
With dread, Finn realized the colored regiments were about to draw fire. André
Cailloux was to have his wish.

The most rugged and treacherous terrain along the whole
front lay before the Guards. Beyond the swamp and gullies and abatis-filled ravines lay rifle pits and sharp-eyed Rebs.
Beyond them, a heavily fortified redoubt of Confederate cannon filled with
grape aimed right at the ground the Guards were to cross.

Hundreds of black troops crossed the pontoon bridge, marched
through thick stands of willow knee deep in water, and emerged from the trees
to advance at quick time, then double-quick. They formed a long line, two men
deep, rushing toward the Rebels, screaming the battle yell of defiance and
blood-lust.

Confederate fire tore into their line. Men fell, arms
stretched to the sky.

Unbelievably, the line pushed on.

Finn scoured the ranks for Captain Cailloux. He found him in
the forefront, sword raised, exhorting his men onward.

The Guard dove into deep gullies full of brambles and a confusion
of limbs and vines. Some made it through, crawling once more into the barrage
from rifles, muskets, and howitzers.

Finn found André in his lens again.

“Jesus,” he breathed. André’s left arm dangled from a hit
above the elbow, the odd angle sickening to behold. But André pressed on, his
mouth open in a shout.
En
avant, mes enfants!
Follow me! Men dropping all around, his troops
rallied behind him.

My God, what courage!

Finn’s hands trembled, the telescope wavering. Courage would
not be enough. No force on earth could cross that fearful terrain under the
constant, deadly fusillade from the Confederates. Banks had thrown those men
into hell.

Finn forgot the snipers, the whizzing artillery. He stood
his full height and screamed “Turn back!”

Private Dudley pulled him down.

Finn fumbled with his telescope, searching for the giant of
a man leading the Native Guards.

Found him. Focused.

André’s big body suddenly whirled round like a doll on a
string.

“Get up, André! Get up,” Finn shouted, his voice breaking.
“Get them out of there!”

André Cailloux lay motionless.

Men nearby stopped, stunned. How could this man die? Not
this man!

Their uncertainty spread. Confusion and fear seized those
brave soldiers. They ran for the line of willows if they could, sheltered in
the snaky abatis if they could not. Even fleeing
through the willows, the Native Guards fell as Rebel artillery rained down on
them, shattering trees and hurling killer splinters through the ranks.

Some heroic soldiers tried to wade through the swamp water
to launch another attack, some joined them, scaling a ridge. All were cut down.

Finn bent over his knees, the telescope forgotten.

Inside the Rebel fortifications, Nicolette lived with two
intentions. Killing Murphy and Franks never left her mind, but in a camp of
thousands spread over a large area, she had not yet found either of them. Her
other intent, to live through these days with purpose. She showed up at the
surgeon’s tent at dawn every morning.

Another skirmish at the battlements had sent a fresh surge
of wounded to the tent. Nicolette dripped chloroform onto a paper cone, then
lowered it toward an ashen faced boy. The boy panicked, struck at her hands,
his eyes on the surgeon’s looming scalpel.

“Dammit!” the surgeon roared, holding the man down with the
weight of his body. “Get that mask on him!”

Nicolette jammed the cone over the soldier’s face and in
seconds he was out. She turned her head to the side, anticipating the surgeon’s
quick slice into the man’s thigh above the shattered bone.

Ten minutes or less, that was the goal. Put him out, pick
out the lint the man’s fellows had packed into the wound, cut through bone and
sinew, sew the wound closed, and say a quick prayer the man would fight off the
inevitable infection.

Odd, she thought, all this pain, suffering, horror taking
place in such quiet. After hours of deafening cannon, her head felt like it was
stuffed with straw. Sounds seemed distant and muffled, even the scrape of saw
on bone. The surgeons used hand signals to indicate they were ready for the
next man. The men, quieted by shock and chloroform, hardly groaned.

Nicolette pushed sweat-soaked hair off her face, the other
hand holding the chloroform cone in place. Flies flitted above the surgeon’s
hands, hovering, then lighting on a bit of raw flesh. A drop of sweat fell from
the doctor’s nose into the open wound.

The smell of burnt powder and blood and fear hung in the
air. If only there were a breeze, Nicolette thought. A little air stirring so
she could breathe.

“I said, You from New Orleans, ain’t you?” Mrs. Brickell
shouted into her ear.

Mrs. Brickell carried a basin on her way to the growing pile
of limbs outside the tent. Nicolette knew better than to look into that basin,
but she couldn’t stop herself in time. A hand, grimy, with close-bit nails,
nestled in a puddle of watery blood.

She closed her eyes. Mrs. Brickell shouted into her ear.
“Fella from the front line says the Federals are sending them black troops from
New Orleans into the fight. They’s getting desperate, you ask me.” Mrs.
Brickell hurried on her with her basin to be ready for the next separated
appendage.

André’s regiment. And
William with him.
Not quite aware she was doing it, Nicolette untied the
bloody apron that covered the pistol at her waist, and left the tent. She
quickened her steps, walking faster, trotting, then running to the barricades
north of the surgeons’ tent.

At the earthworks, men shot and loaded, aimed, shot and loaded.
Nicolette climbed over a fallen mule, deaf, a little crazed. She stepped onto a
bale of hay, about to hoist herself up so that she could see over the
barricade. If she could see them, she could keep André and William safe through
the force of her will.

A lad elbowed her aside, raised his musket, and fired. Some
other man grabbed her by the arm and whirled her around.

Adam Johnston. His face was red and contorted. He shouted at
her, but she couldn’t hear him. With his one hand, he pulled her off the
rampart, hustled her past the mule, and nearly dragged her across the field
toward the village.

He shoved her into the front door of Mrs. Brickell’s house.
“What the hell you think you were doing?”

His voice came through thin and reedy. Her own voice seemed
as distant as his. “Did you see? The Native Guard?”

“The colored troops? It’s over, Nicolette. They’re
finished.”

Adam still had hold of her arm, squeezing it. It hurt,
vaguely.

“André Cailloux,” Nicolette said. “He led the Native
Guards.”