22
Vicksburg was a surrounded and besieged city, with only a few more days to exist as a Confederate stronghold—it would fall on July the 4th, after weeks of fighting, with the Confederate forces trapped there scarcely able to function, soldier and citizen alike staggering from sickness, exhaustion and hunger. Gettysburg would also be a major Union victory in July.
But in Tennessee, the fighting had just begun.
“Do you know a man named Aaron Layfield?” Jamie was asked.
Jamie thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. I’m not familiar with that name. Why?”
“He has sworn to kill you,” Captain Malone said. “Says that if he only accomplishes one thing during this war, he will consider it a great event and a day for celebration if he kills you.”
“That’s odd. I never heard of the man. Who is he?”
“He’s from a town up in Pennsylvania named after him. He came South with a full brigade of cavalry. They’re called the Revengers.”
Jamie shook his head as he tightened the cinch on Satan. “Well, I have never met anyone named Layfield. This war is certainly producing some strange characters.”
“Including our beloved general,” Dupree said with a sour look.
Jamie couldn’t argue with that, for General Bragg was one of, if not the, most disliked man in all the Confederate army. He was a harsh disciplinarian, and constantly peevish. No tactician, to a man, his officers considered him incompetent, and more than one of them plotted, at one time or another, to kill him.
But still Davis would not replace him.
Jamie swung into the saddle. “I’m going to take a look around. I can’t believe that General Rosecrans has waited this long to attack.” It was June 23, and the sky was threatening rain.
The two great armies were lined up about thirty-five miles apart—the front was miles long, stretching north to south—and each side was constantly patrolling. Chattanooga was about ninety miles east of Bragg’s westernmost position, and Bragg was determined to hold the Yankees at bay. The Union forces under Rosecrans’ command now numbered around eighty thousand. Bragg’s troops had dwindled down to about thirty-eight thousand due to the shifting of much needed troops to various other hot spots, including Vicksburg.
Several miles out into no-man’s-land, Jamie spotted a small Union patrol and reined up in the timber, uncasing his field glasses and studying the patrol. He smiled, and then chuckled. Tying a white bandanna onto his rifle, he rode out of the timber and into the clearing. He was spotted immediately, and Jamie Ian recognized the rider as his father.
“Hold your fire,” he told his men. “I know who that is and we’re going to talk. Come on. I’ll introduce you to a living legend.”
“Who is it, Captain?” a sergeant asked.
“My father.”
“Howdy, boy,” Jamie said to his son.
“Pa.” The two men rode close, leaned out of the saddle, and hugged one another. “Matt told me he saw you some months back,” Ian said, wiping his eyes. “But his memory was sort of fuzzy about that night.”
“Is he all right?”
“Fiddle-fine, Pa. I got a batch of letters from Ma. Meet me here tomorrow and I’ll give them to you to read.”
“Best not, son. Your general might call that fraternizing with the enemy. You save them for me.”
“All right, Pa. Pa? You’re on the wrong side, damnit. You know what you’re doing isn’t right.”
“It is to my mind, boy. As well as Falcon and Jorge and Tomas.”
“All right, Pa. You seen my little brother lately?”
“Last week. He’s fine.”
“Who’s he ridin’ with?” the burly sergeant asked.
Jamie smiled at him, although he had taken an immediate dislike to the man. He returned his gaze to Ian and started to say something when the sergeant suddenly rammed his horse close to Jamie and said, “I asked you a question, Reb. And you’ll goddamn well answer it.”
Before Ian could order the man back, his father hit the sergeant, knocking him clean out of the saddle. The blow sounded like an overripe watermelon hit with the flat side of a shovel.
“Miller!” Ian shouted. “I’ll have you court-martialed for this. Colonel MacCallister rode up here under a flag of truce.”
The big sergeant got slowly to his boots, blood leaking from his smashed lips. He clawed for his pistol, and a corporal jumped his horse into the man, knocking him down. “Come on, Carl. You’re in the wrong and you know it.”
“Git off that hoss and I’ll kick your ass, Colonel Reb,” Miller snarled.
Jamie laughed at him. “You’re not worth the effort it would take, Sergeant. Now cool down before you get into real trouble.”
“I don’t take orders from no goddamn stinkin’ Reb!”
“You’re a fool,” Jamie told him.
“Place that man under arrest!” Ian shouted.
“Hell with you all!” Miller said, and jumped on his horse and galloped off.
“Chase him, Captain?” the corporal asked.
“No,” Ian said. “Let him go. We’ve seen the last of Carl Miller and good riddance. I never did like the man.”
“You’re not alone in that, sir,” another Union rider said. “No one liked him.”
“Sorry about that, Pa.”
“Forget it. I had a few men like him in my outfit at first. They didn’t last long.”
Ian could damn well believe that.
Father and son sat their saddles for a moment, looking at each other. Both of them had a lot they would have liked to say, but neither man could put their feelings into words.
“Going to start raining soon, boy,” Jamie finally broke the silence.
“Sure looks like it, Pa.”
There was another uncomfortable silence. Jamie sighed and said, “Well, boy, you take care of yourself and you be sure to write your mother whenever you have time.”
“I’ll sure do that, Pa.”
“I’ll tell Falcon I spoke to you.”
“Give him my best, Pa.”
Jamie turned his horse and rode slowly back toward his own sector. At timber’s edge, he turned in the saddle; Ian was leading his patrol back toward his own lines.
Father and son had passed no hard words, but the meeting had been a tad on the strained side. If they all came out of this war alive, Jamie felt it would take some time before the family was whole again. It would take a lot of healing.
For many families both north and south of the Mason-Dixon line, the invisible wounds would never heal.
* * *
The battle for Chattanooga began in a driving rain on the afternoon of June 24, 1863, when General Rosecrans threw his entire army at the Confederates. Rosecrans had armed many of his men with the relatively new seven-shot Spencer rifle, while most of the Rebels still used the older model single-shot rifles, and many of them had converted muskets and shotguns. The Confederate line broke at several points, and the Union forces swept through, cutting vital Rebel supply and communication links.
The rain did not stop. It rained almost constantly for three days, and for three days the heavily outnumbered Rebels took a beating from the Yankees.
The rain finally stopped, but the mud was knee-deep on many of the roads. Even that didn’t stop the determined Union forces; they marched on, taking only a few casualties, while inflicting some terrible damage on the Confederates. On the first of July, General Bragg ordered his men to start retreating into the mountains of East Tennessee, putting the Tennessee River between them and the slowly but steadily approaching Yankees.
Jamie and his men were on the north, or the right, side of the Rebel lines, and his scouts reported that a huge force of Union troops were fast advancing toward them, coming down from Kentucky.
“If we stay where we are,” Jamie mused, “we’re going to be caught in a trap.”
Two weeks later, Knoxville fell, and the troops there were ordered out and told to fall back to Chattanooga. Caught between two huge advancing armies, unable to reach Chattanooga, and without orders, Jamie and his Marauders slipped through enemy lines and rode into North Georgia. There, Jamie and his men linked up with a Rebel force advancing north to aid Bragg in his defense of East Tennessee—General James Longstreet and his army.
“The tracks have been destroyed from this point on,” Jamie told the general, after identifying himself. “It’s march from here on in.”
Longstreet nodded his head and pointed to a spot on the map. “You and your men spearhead, Colonel,” he told Jamie. “This place right here looks like a good spot to make a stand. It appears ideal. What’s it called?”
“It’s an Indian name, sir,” Jamie told the famous cavalry officer. “Chickamauga. It means the River of Blood.”