Triumph (47 page)

Tia worked across from Brent, clamping an artery as he removed a minie ball.

He looked at her over the man’s body, shook his head. “We’ve lost this one.”

She lowered her eyes. There was no time for sorrow. The orderlies were already coming to take the man away and bring another in.

Flies buzzed all around them.

In a corner of the tent, a pile of limbs rose very high. The stench of the blood was almost overwhelming.

“Kneecap is shattered; the leg has to go,” Brent said.

There was a sudden, whizzing sound that made even Brent flinch. “Who the bloody hell is shooting off artillery into woods like that?” Brent swore.

Soon they began to hear the sounds of screaming.

Then, the smoke began. Worse than the powder, it began to fill the air.

One of the wounded men brought in was shouting wildly. “God, God, God, someone has to stop it, stop it! They’re burning alive out there, oh my God, burning alive, burning to death, sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus ...”

An orderly rushed over to Brent. “Colonel McKenzie! Colonel McKenzie, it’s true! The Wilderness is burning. Men are ... are burning to death. Caught in the trees. The fire is coming this way. We’ve got to move the hospital. Quickly!”

Taylor left the women at the first Yankee picket post, then turned and rode back for the main army lines. He rode into hell already taking shape.

Owing to the troop movements in place, Taylor rode around half of both armies before finding Grant’s headquarters.

He wasn’t assigned to ride with the cavalry, or to lead troops, though he discovered that both Jesse Halston and Ian were out there somewhere, both in the midst of the fighting. His orders from the unassuming Grant sent him circling around the rest of the action, trying to discern the positions and number of the enemy. By reaching the general alone, at his headquarters near the woods, he had gathered a lot of the information about the Rebel units that the command had needed.

General Grant, chomping on a cigar, told him quietly that he was weary of the Confederate numbers being exaggerated—something which had happened frequently from the days when McClellan had been leading the Yankee troops on down. Union officers had been far too cautious. And far too often, even after taking a victory, Union officers ordered a retreat.

“We’re not going to retreat, Colonel. We’re going to fight.”

By nightfall after the first day, Taylor had managed to circle a number of the Rebel divisions, discern the leadership, then meet back with Grant and his officers to point out their current situation and how they had come to it. After leaving the general, Taylor found out where some of the captured Rebels were being kept. A number of the men had been taken that morning, and he hoped that someone might have news about Brent McKenzie.

The Rebs were on a small hill, watched over by a number of Union infantrymen. Captured, they were at their leisure, many of them eating Yankee provisions, and most of them looking as if they needed many more decent meals. Their uniforms were more than frayed, and most of them were hardly regulation anymore. Many wore pants taken from dead Yankee soldiers, and ill-fitting boots taken from the feet of the fallen as well. Some were nearly barefoot. Yet when he first arrived among them, they remained defiant, no one answering when he first asked about the surgeon, Colonel Brent McKenzie.

“Why are you askin’, Colonel?” an infantry captain asked him.

He turned to the man. Tall, lean, and grave, he watched Taylor with careful eyes.

“Because he’s kin,” Taylor said. “And I believe that my wife is traveling with him.”

The captain was quiet for a minute, then told him. “McKenzie was working at the hospital just outside Richmond; he had been called out to work in a field hospital right after our first skirmishers ran into one another. Last I heard, he was doing just fine, setting up his surgery down the Plank Road.” The captain kept studying him. “You’re married to Tia?” he inquired.

Taylor had heard that note of skepticism so often. “Yes, captain, I am married to Tia McKenzie. The war does make for strange bedfellows. You know my wife?”

The captain nodded. “There was no finer place to be asked than Cimarron, sir. I hailed from South Georgia, and attended many a ball and barbecue at Cimarron. No one would ever forget the daughter of the house, sir. She possessed such beauty and grace in those days ... and yet I had heard that she quickly turned to compassion once the war began, discarding fashion and finery for blood and death. My congratulations, sir.”

“Thank you, Captain. You are certain she is with her cousin now?”

“No, I’m not certain. I did not see her myself, but I heard from mutual friends that she was with Brent, and I cannot imagine they would be wrong.”

He thanked the captain again, then asked him if there was anything he could do for him. The captain hesitated, then pointed to a man seated by a tree. “Private Simms received a wound some time ago that continues to plague him. I know that we will probably be sent to different prison camps in the North ... is there any way you can see to it that he goes to Old Capitol? I have heard it is the best, since it is beneath the nose of many Southern sympathizers, and that Old Abe is actually a man of compassion himself.”

“I will see to it,” Taylor told him. “You have my word. And for yourself—”

The captain offered him a hand. “For myself, I am in good health. I am nothing more than weary. I will survive the war and return home, and until then, I will go to bed nightly praying for it all to end.”

“Amen to that!” Taylor told him and, soon after, left the man for what sleep he might acquire during the night.

Tomorrow ...

Tomorrow would bring more savage fighting. And he would follow orders, and do his duty to his country.

And yet ...

God help him, he would also try to find his wife.

Musket flashes ignited dry timber. Pine and scrub oak immediately caught fire. The woods were blazing.

Pandemonium broke out in the hospital at first. Tia, trying to calm a soldier with a shattered leg, heard her cousin’s voice rise above the shouts in a deep tone of command. Order began to return; those who could walk were up. Ambulances were loaded; soldiers threw wet towels over the heads of the panicking horses. The conveyances began to leave. There were still soldiers to be moved when the trees surrounding the hospital began to smoke, smolder, and catch. Tia was busy tying a temporary bandage when Brent came behind her, picked her up by the waist, and set her on one of the wagons next to a soldier with an arm wound.

“Get going.”

“Not until you leave.”

“Stay on that wagon!”

“Brent—”

“I’m right behind you. I’ll make it out much easier without worrying about you. For the love of God! Corporal O’Malley!” he said, addressing the man at her side. “Keep her there beside you! Get her out of these woods!”

“Yessir!” the slender, graying O’Malley said.

“Brent—”

Brent stepped back, shouting to the driver. The reins snapped, and the wagon started off along the trail.

“Brent ...” Tia said, ready to hop off the rear of the wagon and race back for her cousin, no matter what his command. But she couldn’t do so. The soldier at her side had her in a firm grip with his one good arm. “Miss Tia, I’ve been told to get you out of these woods. That was an order, ma’am.”

The wagon moved down the road. Tia stared back toward the place where their field hospital had been. Her cousin was back there. Brent wouldn’t leave until every last man had been moved from the path of the fire.

She heard the snaps and crackling sounds of the blaze as more and more of the brush and trees caught fire. The air began to fill more and more with the blinding smoke.

And even as they moved along the trail, above the din of the creaking wagons and the gunfire that remained, they could hear the screams of the dying.

Men caught in the field of trees. Hurt, fallen, not dead ... seeing the flames.

“Oh, God!” Tia cried, covering her ears with her hands. But she couldn’t block out the sounds, and she was suddenly certain that a cry she was hearing was coming from just ahead.

Taking Corporal O’Malley by surprise, she leapt down from the wagon. “Wait! Give me just a few seconds!” she shouted to the driver.

“Miss Tia!” O’Malley shouted from behind her.

“A few seconds!”

She ran along the trail, desperately seeking the source of the cries she’d heard. Were the cries real? Or were they just more of the awful sounds of the forest, the rat-tat-tat of guns, the thuds, and bumps and crackling of burning, falling trees?

“Help, Jesus, oh sweet Jesus, oh God, if I only had a bullet ...”

The words were real. She burst through the shrub on the side of the road. “Where are you?”

“Here, here ... help! Oh, Mother of God, help me! Sweet Jesus, pray for us poor sinners now ... oh, God, oh, God, and at the hour of our death ... Amen ...”

“Where are you! Talk to me, help me find you!” Tia shouted.

“Here, here; are you real, please, for the love of God, my leg ... can’t move it, caught, the branch is burning. The heat, here, here, please, please ...”

She burst through the trees into a little copse. She saw that already the tinder-dry fallen leaves on the ground were beginning to catch in clumps. Then, across the copse, she saw him,

A Yankee infantryman, down against the bark of one tree, the gunfire-severed limb of another tree down upon him. She rushed across the copse.

“Oh, sweet Jesus!” he cried, seeing her. He was young. As young as some of the Rebel soldiers newly rushed into the ranks of the Florida militia. His hair was platinum-white, his whiskers nonexistent, his eyes powder-blue, making him appear even younger. His pale face was sooted and streaked with tears. “Please ...” he said, reaching a hand to her.

She came to her knees at his side, aware of the ever-encroaching fire. “I’ve got to get the branch first,” she told him, and she locked her arms around it, straining. Sweat broke out on her forehead. It had not looked so heavy. She changed position, trying to drag it from his thigh. He let out a horrible scream—and passed out. She saw that his leg was not just broken, but a bullet had probably lodged somewhere in his thigh. “God help me!” she whispered, tugging at the branch, again. She wasn’t going to make it. She could feel the heat of the flames beginning to lick at her now. “Miss Tia!”

She turned around. Corporal O’Malley had followed her. “Miss Tia, it’s going to burn!”

“Help me.”

“He’s a Yankee.”

“He’s a boy.”

“Big Yank, little Yank—”

“I’m not leaving him.”

O’Malley sighed, anxiously coming to her side. He gripped the tree limb with his good arm. Gritted his teeth.

The boy’s head began to wobble. His blue eyes opened. He quickly realized his situation and looked up at O’Malley. “Shoot me, sir, please shoot me before the fire ...”

“Both of us at once,” Tia said. “For the love of God, O’Malley! Come, man, please, you’re a good Irish Catholic, aren’t you? You should have heard him saying his Rosary just now. God could be watching this very minute—”

“Miss Tia, you know where to strike a man as the Yanks do not. On the count of three!” O’Malley told her. They both gripped the tree limb. O’Malley counted. The limb moved. They leapt quickly to their feet. “I can’t lift him; my arm’s broken,” O’Malley said,

“Soldier, you’ll have to limp with me.”

They got the boy to his feet. Aware of the flames close behind, they hurried toward the road. Suddenly, before them, a tree fell, sending sparks flying everywhere. “Turn!” O’Malley commanded. “Run!”

They did so, the young Yankee screaming at the agony in his leg. They burst upon the road. The wagon had already started moving. “Help him!” Tia called to a number of the men. They did so without question, reaching for the boy. She didn’t know if they were so weary and hurt that they didn’t care that they reached their hands out to the enemy—or if they just simply couldn’t tell what he was anymore. The boy was covered in dirt and soot and ash, making his uniform appear to be made of gray, Confederate-issue cloth. Now, the sounds of men coughing were almost loud enough to cover up the terrible crackling that continued to fill the air.

“Get O’Malley!” she cried loudly when the boy was up. “He can’t use his arm!” Despite their own wounds, the injured soldiers responded. When O’Malley was boarded, the shattering sounds of trees exploding came from behind them.

Tia gasped. The crash had come from the site of the hospital. And Brent was still back there. The mules, pulling the wagon, bolted.

She heard the driver shouting, “Whoa!” The wagon was taking flight as if suddenly airborne.

“Miss Tia!”

She heard O’Malley’s cry. And she ignored it. Her cousin was back in the flames. She was not leaving without him.

The wagon continued its wild race from the inferno.

Tia started to run back.

The continual twists and turns in the path of the fire had left many men lost, with no perception of the locations of the poor trails through the woods. Taylor Douglas had been ordered into the Wilderness, to find the various officers and commanders caught in scattered pockets in the woods and escort them out.

Moving into the smoke and fire, Taylor thanked God for Friar; his warhorse was an experienced animal as seasoned as any soldier. Instinct must have warned the horse to steer clear of the flames, but he stalwartly followed the course Taylor commanded.

At first, his mission seemed somewhat feasible. And he was glad of it. His orders coincided with the direction in which he had anxiously longed to ride—toward what had been the Rebel line.

He found able-bodied men caught in copses who were able to carry some of the wounded to the roads, and toward safety. Naturally, he had been ordered to salvage what he could of the Union fighting force. But no one had ordered that he should leave any Rebels in danger of burning, and he was more determined than ever to find Brent McKenzie and his field hospital—and Tia. With the fires raging so furiously, he knew that he was on a course that would take him far beyond his basic orders.