Chapter 16: More From Before -- Johnsonville

How do you hunt a man who’s hunting you?

I hearkened back to my time with Uncle Sammie. He’d said that one of the best ways to deal with an enemy who is pursuing you is to leave just enough sign to lure him into an ambush. However, I wasn’t sure how to do that with a river separating me from my enemy.

I weighed the possibility of crossing the river. But the western shore was an armed camp. I might just as well surrender at Andersonville and save a lot of bother. There were four or five thousand Reb soldiers encamped within a five mile strip between Johnsonville and Reynoldsburg Island.

Except, I realized, that wasn’t exactly accurate. The shoreline itself, and the land adjoining it, back to the base of the bluffs, most of that ground was under the guns of our artillery and sharpshooters. For that matter, any soldier with a rifle could fire at enemy troops three or four hundred yards away, though actual rifles were in short supply among the colored garrison troops, who were armed with the old smoothbore muskets.

Of course, simply gaining the shoreline would be of little value to me if my quarry occupied the heights amid all his fellow Rebs. But maybe he, or they, didn’t.

I had to wonder: were the Reb sharpshooters shooting from atop the bluffs? High angle shooting, whether up or down threw off most rifle sights, which are sighted in for level shooting. Aiming at things much higher or lower would send your bullet high, above your aim point.

Captain Eddy explained this to me. Something about the angle of the shot causing gravity’s effect to no longer be in accord with what the sights were intended to deal with. The effect of gravity didn’t change, but the rifle’s sight anticipated a bullet drop over a level field with the target at the same level. When you moved the target a lot higher or lower, the rifle’s sights tended to over-correct. He drew a diagram in the sand and I’d pretended to understand what he was showing me. I mean, I knew of the problem from Uncle Sammie simply telling me. Captain Eddy was trying to tell me why. I sort of understood. But what I actually knew for certain was that shooting at extreme angles necessitated even more guesswork, or estimating, as the army called it. So I wondered if the Reb shooters really were on that high perch.

I asked Sergeant Lange if they had any idea where the Reb shooters were positioning themselves.

“A couple of the boys said they were pretty sure the shot that got Billy Morgan came from among some boulders at the base of the bluff. They saw powder smoke there and they claimed the sound of the shot came from there, not from up the hill. Nobody saw anything with the one who got Leprechaun. He was the first one shot. I don’t know about Sergeant Jones.”

“Are there other Reb sharpshooters besides those with Whitworths?”

“Oh, yeah. They’ve mostly been shooting at anyone out on the boats or barges tied up at the docks.”

I’d bathed in colder water in the wintertime, in the Mohawk River. For that matter, the Tennessee’s water felt warmer than the cold rain we’d had falling on us all day, up to and including now. Besides, for most of the crossing, so far, I’d been able to just wade, or at least walk on the bottom as it got deeper. But I knew the current in the center would be stronger, so I was wading upstream even more than across.

The seemingly endless rain clouds denied even the sliver of the waxing moon from lighting the midnight darkness. Only a few days past new, that sliver of moon would be setting before long, in any event.

I was naked. Everything else was on a small raft that I had tied to me with a rope looped over my right shoulder and under my left arm. I’d only brought my bow and arrows; no firearms. I’d left a note pinned to my bedroll:

Sgt. Odette,

Gone hunting. Back in a day or two. Ask Zeke to take care of my kit.

I figured, if I didn’t make it back, Zeke could make best use of the Whitworth.

I hadn’t asked permission or discussed my plan with anyone. Sergeant Lange told me to hunt them down and that’s what I was doing.

I felt the push of the increasing current. Now came the fun part.

I was dry, having used some sack cloth as a towel. Now if only I could stop shivering.

The swim was just that -- a long, long swim. Three or four times farther than it really was because mostly I was swimming upstream, trying to be kept from being swept all the way to Paducah. As it was, I’d been carried at least a mile, down to the shoreline facing Johnsonville. Then I’d allowed myself to be carried a bit further, past where I thought the Reb sharpshooters had their hides.

I figured the Rebs were coming down to their positions from the south, as the terrain was much steeper facing Johnsonville and even steeper toward the north, as it approached the narrow channel at Reynoldsburg Island. I only hoped I was right, because I was going to have to get some sleep, if I could. And I didn’t relish the idea of being awoken by pokes in the ribs from a Reb bayonet.

On the positive side, I found a relatively dry spot under an overhanging rock ledge. Along with the flour sacking, I’d brought a blanket in the bundle of clothes and gear I’d wrapped in a sheet of oiled canvas, to keep everything relatively dry on the small raft I’d towed -- or which had towed me.

I pulled some brush in front of my hidey-hole, wrapped myself in the blanket and the oilcloth, and sat there, trying to remember if Uncle Sammie had told me of a remedy for chattering teeth. All I could think of was a nice, warm fire. On a hearth. In a snug little cabin. And a winter-deep bear skin slung on a rope-lattice bed. The firelight dancing on the underside of the cedar roof shingles. Uncle Sammie smoking his pipe.

A gunshot awoke me. A few seconds later, a cloud of powder smoke swept in through the brush that was hiding me. I must have been practically on top of a Reb sharpshooter’s hide.

It looked so bright out that I thought it was mid-day. Then I realized I was seeing actual sunlight streaming in from the east. And it wasn’t raining. But I couldn’t see any of the sky from where I was hidden.

The Reb shot again.

I moved quickly. His ears would be ringing and his attention would be drawn toward determining if he’d hit his target.

I poked my head out and saw him behind a tree about fifteen yards south of me. He had a cord tied around the tree trunk and his rifle, which maybe was a Sharps, was likely twisted into it on the far side of the tree. He was reloading the falling-block breech, telling me that it was a Sharps, and I stepped out, placing a tree between me and him while I restrung my bow.

I pulled an arrow from the quiver laying at my feet, and stepped around the tree -- just as a bullet zipped behind my head!

I wanted to throw myself to the ground, but my movement had caught the Reb’s eye and he looked over, apparently not grasping who I was. In any event, his rifle was effectively tied to the tree, so he was several seconds from being able to bring it to bear on me, even without the arrow I put into his neck.

Then I realized that the ball that had almost scrambled my brains had come from across the river, from a Union sharpshooter, likely one of the Fourteenth Ohio boys. Hell, I was going to have to hide from everybody.

Now keeping the tree between me and the Union side, I removed my blouse from my right arm, reached down for my quiver and slung it across my back, then put the blouse back on over it. I could reach the arrows just inside my collar.

I brought a paper-wrapped bundle of rice and beans from inside my blouse and ate it, then buried the paper.

Going down on my belly, I crawled back into my hole and retrieved the canteen, drinking about a third of it down. Then I bundled the blanket and the sacking into the oil cloth and stuffed it into the back of the cavity, tossing a little dirt on the visible portion. Enough stuck to the oil cloth to disguise its color. I fastened the canteen under my blouse in the small of my back, then crawled out of the hole and toward the Reb sharpshooter I’d hit with my arrow.

His hide was high enough that it afforded him a view over the roofs of the dockside warehouses and workshops across the river, as well as over the gunboats and barges tied to those docks, with only the multi-deck stern-wheeler transports blocking his view of the far shore. Less beneficial, at least from the way I saw it, was the view into his hide from this side of the river. He would have been easily visible from a number of locations in the shallow curve of the bluff that I was beginning to think of as Shooters’ Hollow. Other Rebs in shooting hides might be looking for him already.

After hearing more shots and seeing the smoke, I knew that there were at least two more Reb sharpshooters with hides in the Hollow, but neither was shooting a Whitworth, which rifle’s abrupt explosive roar was very familiar to me.

In any event, I decided to prop the Reb’s body up so that it looked like he was seeking targets. I put him on his knees, then used his rifle’s aiming cord to secure his left arm, which would be hidden when he was viewed from Shooters Hollow. I hung his right arm over his rifle’s stock to hold him up on the right, wedging his fingers into the trigger guard to hold his arm in place.

Then I used his canteen to refill mine, and took several swallows from what was left. I was surprised to find it tasted faintly of corn liquor. He had an apple in one pocket, the only food he was carrying. I wondered what that meant. Would he have gone back to camp for lunch or would a runner bring lunch to him? Or were they on short rations and the apple was all he’d get and he was lucky to have even that? The first two alternatives could mean I had a noon deadline. In any event, I pocketed the apple.

With one last appraisal of the scene I’d set up, I tucked my retrieved arrow into the quiver and began to belly-crawl toward the next Reb sharpshooter. It was a long crawl, as both men were on the far side of the deep pocket of flat ground. I couldn’t chance walking, even at a crouch, because I suspected there were other hides that I had yet to spot and Union sharpshooters I had to consider.

I reached the next man after a half hour slithering in the mud. He was shooting from a prone position on the flat surface of a large boulder. The charm of it was that the flat surface tilted gently upward so that his body was safely protected while only his head, hands, and his rifle, another Sharps, would be briefly visible when he took his shots.

Unfortunately for me, since I was below him, his prone position made hitting a vital spot with an arrow chancy at best. Without an angle to hit his heart or throat, or even his eye, he could end up yowling for help or, even worse, calling out a warning. An arrow wouldn’t work.

I was going to have to crawl up there and use my knife. Well, at least these boys weren’t using spotters.

I crawled over to the base of the shooter’s rock, at the foot end, where I was behind him. I rid myself of all my potentially noise-making gear: the quiver and canteen, my brass-buttoned blouse and its brass-buckled belt; all of that uniform brass would have scraped noisily against the rock as I slithered.