Dust, Sweat, and Blood
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Southern cavalrymen, mounted and concealed behind a wooden bridge, waited eagerly for their leader’s signal. The morning was quiet except for the soft sound of falling rain and an occasional nicker from one of the horses; battle seasoned, they too anticipated the coming action. The hidden riders concentrated their attention on a dismounted group of their own men withdrawing along the road through the cotton field. Acting as decoys, the small group offered only enough resistance to keep the attention of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s advancing two companies of Ohio infantry skirmishers. Not far behind the Federal skirmishers rode the Fourth Illinois Cavalry, carbines at the ready, and two hundred yards behind them came the remainder of the infantry. As the Union cavalry picked their way through the half-mile wide swampy field with jagged stumps and felled trees crisscrossing the route, they encountered the swollen stream the rebels had crossed the previous evening and fell into temporary disorder. That was all the opportunity the watchful Forrest needed. Standing in his stirrups and waving his sword, Forrest shouted ‘Charge’ in an electrifying voice that rang like hammer on anvil; as one man, the three hundred fifty horsemen, outnumbered five to one, swooped from concealment to spring their ambush. The sudden appearance of unexpected enemy riders on their flank caught the Ohio skirmishers by surprise. The air filled with terrifying rebel yells as the Buckeyes fired a hasty round from their muskets and then stood in a ragged double line as startled officers screamed for them to get bayonets in place. The attacking horsemen and their fierce yell were too much, too quick; the surprise attack led to a wild stampede. Some of the skirmishers dropped their bayonets, others their muskets; they all turned and ran.
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About the Book
Dust, Sweat, and Blood is the second in a series of books by Nick Wright fictionalizing a biography of his great-grandfather, Timothy John Barnes, who ‘rode with Forrest’. It begins where his first book, Spirits Remembered ended—after the bitterly contested battle at Pea Ridge in northwest Arkansas. The story follows Barnes and the remnants of three experimental companies formed by the Texas legend, General Benjamin McCulloch, before his death on the first day at Pea Ridge, or as some call it, the battle at Elk Horn Tavern. The few remaining Scouts and Raiders unite with the Rangers under Barnes’ leadership forming the nucleus of a band of ordinary men called upon to perform extraordinary tasks. They make their way out of the Ozark Mountains, across Arkansas, and into the northern Mississippi railroad town of Corinth where they join with Nathan Bedford Forrest. Soon they become involved in the fighting at Shiloh Meeting House and assisting Forrest’s coverage of the Confederate Army’s withdrawal. Following the devastation at Shiloh, Forrest places Barnes and the Rangers on special assignment in western Tennessee, where there adventures continue.
About the Author
Nick Wright is a retired educator and high school athletic director with a variety of interests, which include reading and travel. Many of his recent destinations have been Civil War battle sites throughout the war’s Western Theater to do research for his books. Born in Arkadelphia, Arkansas and raised in Benton, Arkansas, he moved to Melbourne, Florida upon graduation from college where he taught thirty years and retired after teaching and working in high school athletics in the public school system. He and his wife, Ginger, also an educator, maintain homes in central Arkansas and coastal Florida and plan to travel and divide their time equally between their two homes upon her retirement in 2008. Dust, Sweat, and Blood is the second in a projected series of books by the author fictionalizing a biography of his great-grandfather, Timothy John Barnes, who ‘rode with Forrest’. It begins where Spirits Remembered ended, in the bitter and confusing days following the Confederate defeat at Pea Ridge in northwest Arkansas and continues through the summer of 1862.