Starbuck had heard too many testimonies of repentant sinners to be either moved or even convinced by the Colonel's change of heart. Doubtless Swynyard had received a shock, and doubtless he intended to reform his life, but Starbuck was equally convinced that Swynyard's conversion would prove soluble in alcohol before the sun went down. "I wish you well," he muttered grudgingly.

"No, no, you don't understand." Swynyard spoke with some of his old savage force and laid his maimed left hand on Starbuck's elbow to prevent the younger man from turning away. "When I recovered my senses, Starbuck, I found my sword stuck into the turf beside my head and there was a message impaled on the sword. This message." The Colonel took from his pocket a crumpled and torn pamphlet, which he pushed into Starbuck's hand.

Starbuck smoothed the tract to see that it was called Freeing the Oppressed and had been printed in Anne Street, Boston. The cover showed a picture of a half-naked black man springing free from broken manacles toward a cross that was infused with a heavenly light. The shattered manacles were attached to great iron weights labeled "Slavocracy," "Ignorance," and "Wickedness," and beneath those iron weights was written the name of the pamphlet's author: the Reverend Doctor Elial Starbuck. Starbuck felt his usual tremor of distaste at any reminder of his father's existence, then handed the tract back to the Colonel. "So what was your message?" he asked sourly. "That slavery is a sin against God? That America's blacks have to be returned to Africa? Is that what you're going to do with your pair? Set them free?" And never, Starbuck reflected, had two slaves more deserved freedom.

Swynyard shook his head to show that Starbuck was still misunderstanding him. "I don't know what to believe about slavery. Dear God, Starbuck, but everything in my life has to be changed, can't you understand that? Slavery, too, but that wasn't the reason God left the tract beside me last night. Don't you see? He left it there to give me a task!" "No," Starbuck said, "I don't see."

"My dear Starbuck," Swynyard said very earnestly. "I have been brought back from the path of sin at the very last moment. At that very instant when I was poised on the edge of hell's fire, I was saved. The road to hell is a terrible path, Starbuck, yet at its beginning the journey was enjoyable. Do you understand now what I'm saying?"

"No," Starbuck said, who feared that he understood exactly what the Colonel was saying.

"I think you do," Swynyard said fervently. "Because I think that you are on the first easy steps of that downward path. I look at you, Starbuck, and I see myself thirty years ago, which is why God sent me a pamphlet with your name on it. It's a sign telling me to save you from sin and from the agonies of eternal punishment. I'm going to do that, Starbuck. Instead of killing you as Faulconer wanted I am going to bring you to eternal life."

Starbuck paused to light a cigar he had plundered from the white-haired Pennsylvanian officer who had tried so hard to protect his flags. Then he sighed as he blew smoke past Swynyard's bruised face. "You know, Colonel? I think I really preferred you as a sinner."

Swynyard grimaced. "How long have I known you?"

Starbuck shrugged. "Six months."

"And in all that time, Captain Starbuck, have you ever called me 'sir'?"

Starbuck looked into the Colonel's eyes. "No, and I don't intend to either."

Swynyard smiled. "You will, Starbuck, you will. We're going to be friends, you and I, and I shall draw you back from the paths of sin."

Starbuck blew another plume of smoke into the damp wind. "I never did understand, Colonel, just why some son of a bitch can have a lifetime of sin and then, the moment he gets scared, turn around and try to stop other folks from enjoying themselves."

"Are you telling me the path of righteousness is not enjoyable?"

"I'm telling you I've got to get back to my company," Starbuck said. "I'll see you, Colonel." He touched his hat with a deliberate air of insolence, then walked back to his

men.

"So?" Sergeant Truslow greeted Starbuck, the inflection of the word inviting news of the Colonel.

"You were right," Starbuck said. "He's gibbering mad."

"So what's changed?"

"He's got drunk on God," Starbuck said, "that's what's changed." He was trying to sound dismissive of Swynyard, but a part of him was sensing the same fires of hell that had brought the Colonel to God. "But I'll give him till sundown," he went on. "Then he'll be tight on whiskey instead."

"Whiskey works faster than God," Truslow said, but he heard something wistful in his Captain's voice, and so he thrust a pewter flask at him. "Drink some of this," the Sergeant ordered.

"What is it?"

"The best spill-skull. Five cents a quart. Tom Canby made it two weeks back."

Starbuck took the flask. "Don't you know it's against army regulations to drink homemade whiskey?"

"It's probably against army regulations to go caterwauling with the wives of serving officers," Truslow said, "but that ain't ever stopped you yet."

"Too true, Sergeant, too true," Starbuck said. He drank, and the fierce liquor momentarily doused the fear of hellfire, and then, beneath a lowering sky, he slept.

The federal government's bureaucrats might have been reluctant to fund Major Galloway's Horse, but General Pope immediately saw the value of having Southern horsemen scouting behind Southern lines, and so he gave the Major such a slew of tasks that a cavalry force ten times larger would have been hard-pressed to fulfill them inside a month, let alone the one week that General Pope offered Galloway.

The chief task was to determine whether General Robert Lee was moving his troops from Richmond. The Northern headquarters in Washington had ordered Lee's opponent, McClellan, to withdraw his army from its camps close to the rebel capital, and Pope feared that Lee, hearing of that order, might already be marching north to reinforce Jackson. He also feared that the rebels could be building up troops in the Shenandoah Valley and had asked Galloway to make a reconnaissance across the Blue Ridge Mountains. And, as if those two tasks were not sufficient, Pope also wanted to know more about Jackson's dispositions, and so Galloway found himself under pressure to send horsemen south, east, and west. He compromised as best he could, taking his own troop south toward Richmond while Billy Blythe was ordered to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains and sniff out the rebel dispositions in the valley of the Shenandoah.

Adam, meanwhile, needed to replace the horses Blythe had wished on him. Major Galloway tried to reassure Adam that Blythe had meant no harm in buying such spavined hacks. "I'm sure he did his best," the Major said, trying to knit the unity of his squadron.

"I'm sure he did, too," Adam agreed, "and that's what worries me." But Adam at least knew where his troop could acquire more horses, and Galloway had given Adam permission to make his raid on condition that on Adam's way back he reconnoitred the western flank of Jackson's army. Adam left to perform both tasks three days after the far-off sound of the battle at Cedar Mountain had bruised the summer's heavy air.

Two miles beyond the Manassas farmhouse that was Galloway's headquarters Adam found Billy Blythe's troop waiting. "Thought we'd ride with you, Faulconer," Blythe said, "seeing as how you and I are going in the same direction."

"Are we?" Adam asked coldly. "Hell, why not?" Blythe said.

"The Shenandoah Valley's that way," Adam said, pointing west, "while we're going south."

"Well now," Blythe said with his lazy smile, "where I come from a gentleman doesn't go around teaching other gentlemen how to suck a tit. I'll choose my own route to the valley, if that's all right with you."