Free The Smoke at Dawn: A Novel of the Civil War by Jeff Shaara Page B

is … a convenience. Think nothing more of it.”
    Mackall made a silent gesture, ordering the aides away, the two men responding gratefully, a quick exit. Mackall sat on a small camp stool, still stared at the open doorway. More aides were there now, word spreading through the headquarters, and Mackall said, “Away! All of you! There is nothing of concern here!”
    The men obeyed, quick glances at Bragg, who sat back, his hands still quivering. He planted them in his lap, tried still to calm himself, said to Mackall, “There is work to be done, yes? The staff shall be kept busy. Do your duty, General. In the morning … the sun shall rise on this army, and it shall be a new day. We shall put our minds to work on solving what troubles us. Nothing further will be heard from General Forrest. And so, I am confident that this one … 
trouble
 … has been handled quite nicely.”

NEAR NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI—SEPTEMBER 25, 1863
    He had never been so bored in his life. The daily walks had become a drudgery, and he forced the pains from his legs, shoved through the weakness, pushed air in and out of his lungs, fighting the temptation to stop, to rest on some moldy tree stump. For all the boredom, he knew better than to complain, accepted easily that doing anything out of doors was far more satisfying than more dismal conversation with the doctors. And in their insistence that he take the lengthy walks, Bauer understood the message the doctors were giving him: After several agonizing weeks, he was finally healing.
    The illness had come to him at the end of July, and Bauer was one of many. It had to do with the swamps, the summer heat, the lack of clean drinking water from the lack of rain. The army seemed to plant the troops in a place guaranteed to create sickness. In Bauer’s case, what had seemed to be dysentery had turned even uglier. A fever spread through the entire brigade, long nights of drenching sweat, his joints stiff and swollen, which seemed to mystify the doctors. And there were deaths, Bauer absorbing the unavoidable sadness of a man beside him suddenly taken away, the tearful reaction of silent nurses,the dull stares from overworked stretcher bearers. The glorious mansions around Natchez had become crushingly depressing places, the finest homes now pressed into service as hospitals. To some, the death of the man beside you was welcome, a silent farewell as the man was taken away, the most devout reassuring themselves that one more man was now in that “better place,” their suffering ended. To Bauer, it just meant that, once again, death had missed
him
.
    The route was laid out, a wide path that carried him through the most dismal wood and swamp bottoms he had ever seen. If he needed some boost of enthusiasm, something to ease the monotony, it was first, that he was alive at all, and second, the aches and agonies from his illness were noticeably diminished.
    The orderly who followed him was there for discipline, to keep Bauer honest, a task that Bauer had to believe was as boring as his own. He glanced back from time to time, the orderly nowhere in sight, hanging back, he thought, to perhaps catch him in some improper disregard for the doctor’s instructions. Bauer had begun to imagine that the orderly might be back there performing some indiscreet act of his own, probably with a flask of spirits. It was speculation that offered Bauer at least some kind of break from the fog that still filled his head, what the doctor assured him was only the aftereffects of the drugs they had given him.
    He stared into a deep hole in the woods, a cavelike tunnel through dense brush over a carpet of black water. There was too much of that, too many places that reminded him of the endless swamps that seemed to fill every low place in this part of the world. Any soldier who had served this long close to the Mississippi River had seen for himself that such places held terrifying and dangerous creatures: alligators, snakes,