Andersonville Read Free Page A

called.
    Barclay watched the white soldiers in line nearby grumbling and whispering as they waited and shivered through the roll call. The bearded captain watched, too, and was obviously annoyed by their unruliness. Three times he interrupted Sergeant Beam to tell the white soldiers to shut up.
    Beam called out: “Private Earl Stevens.”
    There was no answer.
    “Earl Stevens?”
    Barclay saw his opportunity.
    “Present!” he called.
    A few of the men glanced at him suspiciously. Men who had known the real Stevens, maybe. Well, he was Stevens now. He ignored them. No one said a word.
    The roll call continued, and then Beam moved over to the last white group.
    He didn’t get five names deep before one of the men in the front row suddenly pitched forward as if his legs had jellified. He crumbled onto the planks and began shaking and thrashing wildly in some kind of fit.
    “Oh, shit,” whispered one of the black soldiers in earshot of Barclay. “He hainted?”
    Another, older soldier sucked his teeth testily.
    “He ain’t hainted, field hand. He sick. Probably got the Saint Vitus’ dance.”
    “Get back in line!” the captain roared down from his horse.
    The man flipped on his back and undulated, foaming at the mouth now.
    “Get your Yankee ass back in line!” the captain insisted.
    Two of the other soldiers in line broke rank, and one knelt beside the man and attempted to hold his head over his knees to keep him from banging it.
    “Jesus, Cap’n! Can’t you see he’s havin’ a fit?” one of them said before kneeling at the man’s feet.
    The captain flipped up the flap on his holster and drew his bulky-looking revolver. A LeMat nine-shot.
    Sergeant Beam looked back at his superior and jumped aside as the captain leveled the pistol.
    It barked twice, and the two men who had broken rank to help the other fell dead, spouting blood from the sides of their heads.
    The captain cocked the pistol and took deliberate aim at the third man jumping all over the boards between the two corpses. He ended the unfortunate’s seizure with a thunderclap and a flash.
    The other white soldiers began to tense, and a few shuffled forward, muttering hotly.
    Instantly the Rebel riflemen rushed into a firing line in front of the mounted officer and primed their muskets.
    The prisoners stiffened. The blood of the three men was like seeping oil in the dark.
    “Now you see how it is!” the captain spit, wild-eyed. The whole time he spoke, he tucked his LeMat under his useless arm, broke it open, and reloaded a spare cylinder from his coat. “You are not on some holiday here! You are the pitiful damned, naked at your last judgment, and I am the Lord. So quake and mutter and curse me under your breath, but I will have order or I will have blood!”
    He snapped his pistol closed, dropped it back into its holster, and slapped the cover down with finality.
    “Sergeant Beam. You may finish the roll call.”
    “Yessir, Captain.”
    The white soldiers glared up at the captain the entire time, and he stared back at them unafraid, regarding them like some medieval tyrant unassailable on his regal charger.
    But they responded to their names and otherwise stood at quiet attention.
    When it was all over, he said something to the sergeant and turned around.
    “All right, fall in!” Beam ordered.
    “That a hard man,” mumbled one of the black soldiers.
    “That ain’t no man,” another said. “That a one-armed devil.”

Chapter 3
    They were marched in an easterly direction down a dirt road into the pitch-black forest, and Barclay was reminded again of a medieval king leading his serfs to some pagan rite. Flanking the road were blazing pine knot torches jammed into the earth.
    The fresh smell of pine, which should have been a relief after the stifling closeness of the prison car, was thick around them, the dark impenetrable beyond the glow of the brands.
    They were near the front of the line now, and Barclay could see the captain on the