For the moment, however, he contented himself with confiscating the Pennsylvanian banner. "I'll return it to its rightful owners," he told Nelson, "but first I should visit Mother."

"And your sister," Nelson said, "she's upstairs, too. But don't be long, master. Young John can ride fast."

"I won't be long." Outside the study window Sergeant Huxtable's men were busy saddling their wonderful new horses. Adam smiled at the sight, then crossed to the study door. God willing, he thought, those horses would carry him to a coup that would make the North ring with triumph and the South cringe with shame.

Then, his mother's bell clanging loud, he climbed the stairs and nerved himself for combat.

By sunset Dead Mary's Ford was properly protected. At the edge of the woodland Starbuck had dug a line of fifteen rifle pits that were invisible from the river's far bank. The red excavated earth had all been thrown back into the undergrowth, and the pits' parapets disguised with brush and dead logs so that if an enemy did try to cross the river, they would be met with a blast of rifle fire from an apparently deserted tree line. The advance picket was hidden inside Silas's ruined house, where four men could keep a close watch on the far woods, but the majority of Starbuck's 130 men were bivouacked two hundred yards behind the rifle pits. There they had made their encampment, and there they would wait in case they were needed to reinforce the men serving their turn of duty in the ruins or in the rifle pits.

Colonel Swynyard approved all he saw. "Have you sent anyone over the river?" he asked.

"Sergeant Truslow!" Starbuck called, and Truslow came and told the Colonel what he had found on the far bank.

"Nothing," Truslow said. He spat tobacco juice, hitched his pants higher, then told how he had led a dozen men up the far track until the trees ended. "That's a fair ways, 'bout a long mile. Beyond that's a farm. Family called Kemp lived there, but they're gone." He spat again. "Yankee lovers," he explained both his expectoration and the absence of the Kemp family. "Saw a neighbor at the farm. She lives another half-mile north and says she ain't seen a live Yankee in weeks."

"So you're probably in for a restful time, Captain," Swynyard said. "Did you consider putting pickets on the far bank?"

"I'd rather not," Starbuck said. "I don't want anyone shooting one of our own men by mistake."

"I told the woman at the Kemp farm to stay away from the river," Truslow said. "And the Captain said the same to the old nigger."

"But a sentry post a hundred yards up that track would give you more time to rouse your reserves," Swynyard pointed out.

Truslow answered for his Captain. "I laid a dozen felled trees over the track, Colonel. There ain't a Yankee born who can come down that road without waking the dead."

Swynyard nodded his approval, then turned and gazed westward, where another track followed the riverbank. "Where does that lead?" he asked.

"To Lieutenant Davies and twelve men," Starbuck answered. "There's a ruined barn just out of sight. That's our western picket."

"You seem to have thought of everything!" Swynyard said approvingly. "Including, I hope, the need to provide me with supper? And after that, Captain, you'll doubtless allow me to lead a small prayer group for those men who care about their souls?"

Starbuck shrugged. "We're pretty short of food, Colonel. Not that you ain't welcome, but supper's nothing but rough rice, stewed squirrel, and pea coffee if you're lucky. But I'm staying here." He wanted to see the night fall across the river so he would know what to expect when he took the late sentry watch.

"Don't get too tired," Swynyard advised; then he strode back to where the cooking fires sifted their smoke into the leaves. Starbuck stayed at the tree line and watched as darkness fell and as the moon climbed above the far trees to silver the shallow water hurrying across its gravel bed. He walked along the rifle pits and was filled with pride because this was his first independent command. If a Yankee cavalry patrol should come south and prove foolish enough to force its way past the felled trees, then Starbuck would fight his very own battle, and if he recognized the truth, he wanted to fight that battle because he knew he would win. He would turn the silver ford bloody and add a pack of Yankee ghosts to join the unquiet spirit of poor Dead Mary.

The river ran quick, the moon threw black shadows, and Starbuck prayed that God would send him his own, his very own, small battle.

***

THERE WERE TIMES WHEN General Washington Faulconer needed to leave the problems of the Brigade behind him. Such times, he said, gave him an opportunity to assess his Brigade from what he called the distant perspective, though most of his officers suspected that the distant perspective merely served to relieve the General's distaste for the discomforts of campaigning. Washington Faulconer had been raised to luxury and had never lost his taste for cosseted living, and a month of bivouacs and army food inevitably drove him to discover a hotel where clean sheets were smoothed onto a properly stuffed mattress, where hot water was available at the pull of a bell rope, and where the food was not hardtack, worm-ridden, or rancid. The General even believed he deserved such trifling luxuries, for had he not raised the Legion with his own money? Other men had marched enthusiastically to war, but Washington Faulconer had added an open wallet to mere enthusiasm. Indeed, few men in all the Confederacy had spent as much on a regiment as Washington Faulconer, so why should he not reward himself with a few civilized trappings from time to time?

Thus, when his Brigade was properly settled into its bivouac on the western flank of Jackson's army, General Faulconer soon found reason to visit Gordonsville for a night of comfort. He was not supposed to leave his Brigade without General Jackson's permission, but in the certain knowledge that such permission would not be forthcoming, Faulconer found his own justification. "I need spectacles," he told Swynyard airily. "Can't see the fine detail on maps these days," and upon that medical excuse he mounted his horse and, with Captain Moxey in attendance, rode eastward. The town was barely three hours' ride away, so the dereliction was hardly serious, and Swynyard had been left with the strictest instructions that nothing was to be done without Faulconer's permission and that, if any emergency did arise, a messenger must be sent to Gordonsville immediately. The General considered that even a fool could understand those simple commands, and Swynyard, in the General's opinion, was a fool. The man had made an idiot of himself with the bottle but was now making himself an even more conspicuous idiot with his ludicrous addiction to the Holy Spirit.

The General's own spirits began to soar the moment he rode away from the encampment. He always felt such an elation when he could leave behind the small-minded irritations of the Brigade, where nothing was ever straightforward and where the simplest order provoked a flurry of queries, obstructions, misunderstandings, and even downright disobedience, and the more he pondered those frustrations, the more convinced he became that the root cause of all his problems lay in the hostility of men like Thaddeus Bird, Colonel Swynyard, and Nathaniel Starbuck. Especially Captain Nathaniel Starbuck. Take the simple matter of the crescent patches. It had been no small achievement to have the cloth badges made, for such furbelows were a luxury in the war-straitened Confederacy, yet Faulconer had succeeded in having the insignia manufactured in France and then smuggled into Wilmington on a swift blockade-runner. The cost of the badges alone demanded respect! And certainly the proposed function of the badges was admirable, for the red crescent had been intended both to foster pride in the Faulconer Brigade and to serve as an identification mark in the smoky chaos of battle.