“But what about Burnside?” Nathan asked. Twenty thousand reserves were sitting in the army's rear, doing nothing.

“Stuart is probing around the supply depots. Burnside is to hold while the rest of the army passes through him. Burnside's role is changing from reserve to rear guard.” With that, McClellan nodded and walked away, surrounded by a host of staff officers.

It didn't make sense to Nathan. The Union left was fresh while the center was holding. Burnside's force was more than enough to both secure the depots and to reinforce Porter, especially if Porter was falling back in good order. It struck Nathan as a chance to chew up the Confederates while they attacked, instead of the Union host being chewed on while it retreated. Retreats were chancy things. Even a well-run retreat could easily turn into a rout.

And what would happen to the thousands of tons of food, ammunition, guns, and other supplies that were stacked around the Union rear? They could save the men, but how could they move the supplies? The answer was simple: They couldn't and wouldn't.

McClellan was giving up.

“Why?” Billy Harwell asked, and the question was taken up by a score of outraged voices. They had fought for the right to own the bloody field and saw no reason to leave it.

Captain Melcher shrugged at the minor display of disrespect. “Orders. That's all I know. Orders.”

Word had come down that they were to retreat. In front of them lay a field littered with Confederate dead and dying. They had stood up to the best Lee had and kicked it in the ass. And now they were being told to fall back. It didn't make sense. However, it was the army. It didn't have to make sense.

They gathered their belongings and started to walk back to the rear. They looked behind them to where the Confederates had once stood. There was nothing. Around them, scores of other companies were doing the same thing in a vast migration northward.

“Jesus Christ,” Billy wondered, “if there's so many of us, how'd we get beat?”

He'd found Otto, who wondered the same thing, Otto had a bad cut on his arm and had wrapped it in a dirty cloth, Neither young man thought war was fun anymore,

They came to an aid station, where Sergeant Grimes joined them. He was on a crutch and his left leg was bandaged around the knee. He moved the leg stiffly and groaned. He looked haunted and scared, Billy didn't feel the least bit sorry for him.

Then Billy wondered if Grimes was faking it, He had gotten “wounded” just as the rebs were beginning their first attack, How convenient, he thought,

Captain Melcher was behind them, Billy gestured to the captain to watch him. Then he gave Grimes a nudge that almost knocked him off his feet and down a gravel slope, Grimes threw away the crutch and hopped nimbly down the slope, all the while keeping his balance and swearing at Billy,

“Praise the Lord, a miracle,” said Billy while Melcher watched in angry disbelief, “He's healed, sir, Our beloved Sergeant Grimes is healed, God bless him, sir, he's saved,”

The rest of the company had stopped and stood in a rough circle around them, “Come here,” said Melcher to Grimes,

“I need my crutch,” mumbled Grimes and someone threw it to him, He lurched awkwardly to the captain and stood with his head down.

“Unwrap the bandage,” Melcher ordered,

“I'll bleed to death,” said Grimes and there was snickering from the men.

“Do it,” snarled Melcher.

Slowly, grudgingly, Grimes unwrapped the bandage. It covered a knee that was clean and unhurt.

“Glory hallelujah,” yelled Billy. “Another fucking miracle. My beloved sergeant has been cured. Now we can go and win the war.”

Melcher glared at Grimes. “Sergeant, you are a disgusting piece of shit. You have two choices. You can be court-martialed and shot for desertion in the face of the enemy, or you can be broken to the rank of private and never again command men. What's your choice? Now!”

Grimes looked around him. There wasn't a single sympathetic face there. “Private,” he muttered.

Melcher walked over and ripped the stripes off Grimes's shirt. “Now you're Private Grimes, you rotten son of a bitch.”

Melcher looked at his depleted company. A third of them had fallen in the day's fighting. “Harwell!”

“Yessir.”

“Private Harwell, you're a big-mouth smartass and probably worthless to boot. But you're Corporal Harwell from now on and you've got the squad, You treat Private Grimes well now,”

Nathan had become separated from Lieutenant Winton, which was a relief to him and probably to Winton, He wasn't concerned about getting lost, The army was a vast migration, All he had to do was follow its lead. The army was an enormous herd of human cattle, all heading north.

Like the rest of the army, Nathan had been headed in that direction for a couple of days. The front lines and the Confederate army were well to his south and rear. Now_: however, the scent of smoke filled the air and soon eye-stinging clouds of the stuff played hell with his vision, Curious, Nathan urged his horse in the direction from which it came,

After a few minutes he rode into a large clearing along a railroad siding. The ground around the tracks was piled high with small mountains of crates and bags, many of which were burning. Where they could, soldiers were strewing the contents about like trash, Scores of other Union soldiers ran about, setting fires and smashing into crates, while still others loaded goods onto flatcars.

Nathan found an officer and asked the obvious: What was going on?

The officer, a short, stout lieutenant with glasses, spat angrily on the ground, “Our orders are to leave nothing to the damned rebs, What we can't take back, we destroy,”

With that, the lieutenant turned and stalked away. He had better things to do than talk with nosy civilians.

Nathan tethered his horse and walked around the activity for a few minutes. The wastage of material was incredible. Clothing was being burned and food containers, particularly bags of flour and coffee, were being ripped open, their contents strewn about or mixed with dirt, Some imaginative soldiers had even made a point of urinating and defecating where they could to spoil some of the rest. It was organized vandalism by a group of angry adult delinquents.

Nathan had just decided he had better things to do when there was the sound of shots, followed by hollers and shrieks. He turned to see a small group of horsemen charging towards him. Some of Jeb Stuart's rebel cavalry didn't want the supplies burned.

Nathan's immediate response was to flee, but he had wandered too far from his horse. Several cavalrymen were bearing down on where he stood, but, with his bad leg, he didn't think he had a ghost of a chance of escaping on foot. Most of the Union soldiers had laid down their rifles to better destroy the supplies, and were running about in confusion looking for them. Nathan found a rifle laying alongside a crate and grabbed it.

Quickly_: he checked that it was loaded and cocked it. A rider was almost on him_: howling and waving a sabre.

Nathan raised it to his shoulder and fired. The recoil knocked him back a step_: but when the smoke cleared both horse and rider were on the ground. He had shot the horse through the skull.

The rebel cavalryman was dazed but conscious, and was trying to get a pistol out of his belt. Nathan ran up and smashed the rifle butt against his skull and then hit him a second time to make sure he was dead. He picked up the fallen man's revolver, cursing the fact that he wasn't carrying his own. It was in his saddlebag.

Again, he checked his weapon and saw that it was loaded. He heard another howl and a second horseman bore down on him. Nathan gripped the pistol with both hands, and fired at close range. There was a scream of animal pain and anger and, as before, both horse and man fell to the ground. They were so close that Nathan had to jump aside to avoid getting crushed.