Triumph (48 page)

He meant either to find Brent and Tia, or at least locate someone who could tell them that the hospital had been moved, and that his wife and kin were safe.

Yet as time went on, the danger grew ever greater, and although he was aware that there were still men caught and trapped, soon, looking for anyone alive in the wildfire of the Wilderness would be madness. By now, every breath of air was filled with smoke.

And worse.

He could not inhale without breathing in the horrible scent of charred and burning human flesh. What devil had thought up this day’s outcome to the battle? He could not believe that any man living would have wished such a fate on his enemy. And despite the horrible losses in the burning woods, neither side had gained a real advantage.

Hearing screams ahead, Taylor left the road, moving into the thicket. The smoke was so thick he could barely see. Friar began fidgeting at last. “Just a bit forward, boy, just a bit.”

But a wall of flame suddenly rose before him. Beyond it, he could hear shouts. “To the south, see there, a clearing!”

“Take it, men, take it—”

“Try there east—”

“No, see the flames rising?”

“Friar, which way, boy?” he said to the horse. “And I don’t mean hightailing it out of the woods.”

Friar inched forward, reared back. Finally, the horse turned southward. Taylor allowed him to keep the lead, finally coming around to where he found a space in the wall of flames. “Hello! This way—if you’re trapped, there’s a space through here ...”

He broke off, surveying the area. There were no flames there now because the scrub had burned itself out. He gritted his teeth, seeing that what had appeared to be a log were the remnants of a man, blackened beyond recognition.

And beyond North and South. What color he had worn in life, no one would ever know.

He nudged Friar through the slender trail. Coming around into the copse, he found the pocket of men. They had stopped speaking because they were coughing and choking. One had fallen. “This way, through the trail here!” he called out. Dismounting from Friar, he took his canteen, soaked the scarf of one of the men with water, pressed it to the man’s face, then offered the canteen around. “Soak your kerchiefs! Head that way, quickly. It looks like a wall of flame but there’s a trail through. Go! I’ll get the sergeant!”

While the others obeyed him, soaking cloths and turning desperately toward the trail, one of the men came back to him. “Colonel, sir, I’ll help with the old timer there!”

Taylor realized suddenly that this man, remaining in the inferno, ready to help the old sergeant who had fallen, was a Rebel captain. The smoke, ash, and constant soot had blinded him to this strange grouping at first.

“You’re a Reb,” Taylor said.

“Two of us, sir, are Rebs. Three Yanks.” He shrugged. “We were busy killing one another in a crossfire when a tree went down. Fellow screamed so that we all dropped our weapons. Then the whole place was burning.”

Caught in the flames together, they had looked for a way to live, rather than die.

Taylor studied the man and nodded slowly, looking back at the sergeant. The old, winded man probably didn’t have a chance of surviving much more smoke.

“Let me take him, sir. I’ll follow your orders; you can lead on!”

“Fine, Captain!” Taylor said, allowing the captain to take the sergeant. He headed toward Friar, took his horse’s reins, and pointed out their route of escape. He looked at the young Rebel. “I won’t be leading you anywhere. I’m going on a bit farther, looking for—others. You, sir, will give me your word that you’ll be leading yourself toward Union forces,” he said quietly.

The captain grinned. “Sir, you can lead me straight into prison camp, if you send me from this inferno. I will go, and gladly. Sergeant Foster, we’re going to make it. Hang on, old man, hang on!”

Friar was beginning to react badly to the flames, and still, Taylor thought that the horse might be the sergeant’s only salvation. He called out to the captain. “Get the sergeant up on my horse. I’ll lead the way out and you go on. And so help me, Captain, come hell or high water, you take care of my horse!”

“Aye, sir!” the captain called.

With the sergeant up on Friar, Taylor led his horse out of the forest trail onto the road. Flames were shooting all around them, all but making an archway over the remaining passable road.

He should have gotten out. Gone with the captain and old Sergeant Foster. He could not. He felt a strange restlessness in his spirit, as if he knew he could find Tia. And that she would be in trouble.

He heard more cries of anguish, terror, pain. He hesitated on the road, looking back.

“Sir, you should lead your horse out. I’ll go back there for you.”

“No, Captain, that won’t be necessary. You take the sergeant out, sir. But tell me, do you know what troops were back there, and who was leading them?”

“Infantry troops ... and there was a Rebel field hospital back in a copse. I know, because I was in at first when my calf was hit.”

Looking down, Taylor saw that the man had been wounded. Blood seeped from a bandage around his calf. Despite his wound, the young captain had apparently come back into the fighting.

“Why the hell did you leave?” he asked harshly.

“They were busy. Colonel, we haven’t time to debate. I can’t just leave, I have to find what men I can. You can shoot me in the back, or let me go do what I can.”

“Sir, you can get up on my horse, and get your bleeding leg and this man to some help—I’ll go back for your Rebs.”

“They might shoot you on sight.”

“I’ll take my chances. Look after my horse!”

“Aye, sir.”

A field hospital.

There were bound to be scores of physicians on the field today, Taylor thought but his heart was pounding. This was where the Reb prisoner had said he would find Brent.

“Captain, do you know, by any chance, was a Dr. McKenzie at that site?”

“Dr. McKenzie was in charge of the site, sir. He ordered me not to move,” the captain said with a shrug. “But then ... well, there were so many men who were really badly injured. I think the ball passed right through my leg.”

“And you may still bleed to death if you don’t get help. Go.”

The captain saluted him. “On my honor, sir. I’ll bring the sergeant to the Yanks, and turn myself in—and take damned good care of the horse.”

Taylor nodded, turned, and started down the road. He was a fool. All around him now, the woods were burning. The sky itself seemed like a sheet of flame. Even if he could avoid the blaze, he’d soon die of smoke inhalation, no matter how he’d soaked his neckpiece.

His lungs were already burning. Brent had surely had the sense to get out by now.

He kept walking.

Finally, ahead of him, he could see the remains of the field hospital, in a copse. At first, it appeared, the hospital hadn’t caught fire because it was enough in a clearing to be away from the dry shrubbery that filled the woods. But now, flame had leaped to canvas, the whole of the place had collapsed, and a huge, ancient tree from the forest flank had fallen. Smoke rose everywhere. A team of mules, caught when the tree had covered their wagon, whinnied and neighed with a vengeance, fighting their restraints. From the stalled wagon, wounded men, near death, groaned, their signs of life pale against the onslaught and fury of the fire.

“McKenzie!” Taylor called out. “Brent McKenzie!”

He headed first toward the wagon, saw the charred oak limb that trapped it, and the men lying in the rear of the conveyance.

Some were dead already. He looked away from their faces, from the eyes left wide open in death, and strained to move the fallen tree. Too heavy. Burned wood crumpled in his hands. He tried for better leverage, saw a downed pole from the canvas tenting, and worked it under the limb. Throwing his weight against the pole, he shifted the limb. It fell to the ground in a hail of ash. The heat around him was growing intense. He returned to the wagon, searching the bodies in it. No sign of Brent McKenzie.

Taylor heard the sounds of movement. One of the men in the rear of the wagon had stirred. Taylor shifted to the man’s position. “Soldier, can you hear me?”

The man’s eyes opened. His face was nearly black from the ash.

“The doctor, soldier, Dr. McKenzie. What happened to him?”

The wounded man tried to respond. His mouth moved. Taylor reached for his canteen, praying he had water enough let after soaking the scarves of the other men. Yes. He moistened the fellow’s lips. The man drank then, slowly, carefully. “The ... tent ... collapsed,” the man said. His eyes closed again.

“Hang on,” Taylor said. “We’re going to get out of here. I’m going to find McKenzie. We’ll make it out.”

He didn’t know if he was believed or not; the soldier’s eyes closed. But then the man spoke again. “Three of them. The boy the doc went back for ... and the woman. The nurse ... she went after him when the pole snapped and the canvas fell.”

The woman.

Tia.

Who else would have gone after a McKenzie when threatened with certain death, trapped under canvas in the wake of a roaring inferno?

A shudder ripped through him and he turned, looking at the field of charred canvas. He raced for the fallen field hospital roofing, grabbed it firmly with both hands, and started pulling it, managing to move it no more than a few inches.
Naturally, fool,
he charged himself.
It took a dozen men to set it up!

The woods were burning hotter, closer. He raged against the impotency of his own strength, then he gritted his teeth, his anger calming with the realization that he would lose this battle for sure if he didn’t gain control of his fear and fight with logic.

Again, he saw the fallen pole, picked it up, searched until he found another, then slid both under the canvas. He could feel the heat around him continually intensifying as he worked, but he forced himself to take each step, securing the canvas to the poles with rope, then tying the poles to the wagon like a giant travois, and urging the mules farther and farther forward as the great canopy began to move, foot by foot, rather than inch by inch. The mule power gave him the strength he needed to move the fallen tent.

Then he saw her.

She lay on her back, rolled toward him by the shifting canvas, face white beneath the soot, black hair spread out in a giant fan beneath her. He hurried to her, kneeling at her side, brushing a strand of stray hair from her face and seeking a pulse at her throat. She shifted where she lay, groaned. Her eyes opened, and she stared up at him with disbelief.

“Taylor?” she said incredulously.

“Yes, it’s me.”

She shook her head. “Taylor, you can’t be here, you can’t. It’s a Rebel field hospital, the canvas collapsed, it’s all burning ...”

“Tia, I am here, you little fool, and it’s no strange quirk of fate. I’m here because I was looking for you. You’re not supposed to be here; you’re supposed to be in St Augustine.”

“I had to be here. There was no choice.”

“There’s always a choice. But we can’t argue now. Can you move?”

The words came out harshly, spoken with a mixture of fear and relief. Perhaps it was good that he sounded so blunt and angry—his words brought a spark to her dark eyes. “I can move, yes, and I have to—oh, God! Brent ... Brent!” She struggled up, using him to grab on to, then pushing him away to rise. “Brent, where in God’s name is Brent? I saw him, I was trying to help him with the last man when ...”

Taylor rose to his feet behind her. He realized that he was shaking; he was so very grateful that Tia was alive. She was racing toward a pile of rubble—cots, surgery tables that had fallen when the tent collapsed. Brent was facedown in the debris.

Taylor reached Brent right behind Tia. She fell down beside him, trying to move him carefully, calling his name.

“Brent, Brent ...”

Something nearby exploded, perhaps a discarded powder bag, a rifle gripped in a dead hand. Flames seemed to shoot all around them.

Taylor reached down for Brent. “Taylor, we don’t know his injury—”

“It’s death if we don’t move now, Tia!” He collected Brent swiftly in his arms, maneuvering through the rubble to get him to the wagon.

It was heavy laden with the dead.

The soldier who had spoken to him earlier had opened his eyes. He saw Taylor grit his teeth in a fleeting dilemma as he tried to find a place in the wagon for Brent.

“Colonel, roll young Ted Larkin there off the wagon. A funeral pyre here is as good as any. You’ll have to leave some of the dead, if we’re to get through with the living.”

The man was right, and finding the spirit and will to live now that there seemed to be hope, he rose as best he could with his newly amputated leg and shoved the body of the dead man off the wagon, making room for Brent. Not even sure that Brent was still breathing, Taylor turned back for Tia, knowing they were truly running out of time. The air was barely breathable at all; the oxygen was being surely sucked from it.

“Tia!”

She was in the rubble. He ran to her. She was trying to lift the shattered pieces of a camp cot from the body of a soldier. Taylor started to help her, then saw that the man’s eyes were open, staring heavenward. He was dead.

“He’s gone, Tia.”

“No, he just had a wound to his foot.”

“His lungs were crushed, Tia.”

“No—”

“Tia!”

She started struggling wildly against him. Desperate, he slapped her, hard. Stunned, she reeled back. He stepped forward, caught her arms, and threw her over his shoulder. He ran from the canvas and rubble toward the wagon. A large tree, the trunk ablaze, suddenly fell ahead of him. Tia screamed, and he jerked back just in time to avoid it.

“Colonel, move it, move it, move it, move it, sir!” the soldier from the wagon shouted above the renewed roar of the flame. He had dragged himself to the driver’s seat.

Taylor didn’t need any more encouragement. He ignored the instinctive fear of fire, made a running leap over the tree, and catapulted toward the wagon. He nearly threw Tia atop it, then crawled aboard himself, even as the soldier cracked the whip high over the mules’ heads. They leapt forward—spurred by panic and fear. In a matter of seconds, they were tearing down the trail like a pair of racehorses. Someone within the wagon screamed. Taylor, flat on his back at Tia’s side, gasped for air, glad at least that a few of the men were alive. He rose quickly then, but Tia had already staggered to a kneeling position in the wildly jolting wagon. She was seeking a pulse from Brent. She looked Taylor’s way. “He’s breathing!” she said.