The fire sputtered down the fuse's powder-packed tube to leave a small trickle of gray-white smoke. Galloway was already assembling another small charge to place in the next wagon while more of his men were heading toward the artillery park, which was guarded by a handful of unsuspecting gunners armed with carbines. Galloway placed his second charge, then pulled his cloak back to reveal his blue uniform. He tugged his saber free and turned back to the sheltering teamsters. "Make yourselves scarce, boys," he told them. "Go on, now. Run! We're Yankees!"
The first bag of powder exploded. It was not a loud explosion, merely a dull thump that momentarily lit up the interior of the wagon's hooped canvas cover with a lurid red glow. The canvas swelled for a second or two; then a fire began to flicker deep inside the stacked boxes. The teamsters were running. One of Galloway's men leaned from his saddle and plucked a burning brand from the remains of their fire and tossed the burning wood into a third ammunition cart. The first load of ammunition began to explode in a series of short sharp cracks that sounded as close together as the snaps of a Fourth of July firecracker string, and then the whole wagon seemed to evaporate in sudden flame. The wet canvas cover flew into the air, flapping like a monstrous bat with wings dripping sparks. One of Galloway's men whooped in delight and tossed a firebrand into a stack of muskets.
"Keep 'em burning, boys!" Galloway shouted at those of his men who had been detailed as incendiarists; then he led the rest of his troop in a charge toward the startled gunners. The Major's saber reflected the flamelight. An artillery sergeant was still trying to prime his carbine as the saber sliced across his face. The man screamed, but all Galloway knew of the blow was a slight jar up his right arm and the juddering friction of steel scraping on bone; then the saber was free and he swung it forward to spear its tip into the neck of a running man. Two of Galloway's troopers were already dismounted and starting to hammer soft nails into the cannons' touchholes, others were setting fire to limbers crammed with ammunition, while still more were cutting loose picketed team horses and stampeding them into the night. Saddle horses were being captured and led back to the road. A powder charge exploded, shooting sparks high into the night air. Men were shouting in the dark. A bullet screamed high over Galloway's head. "Bugler!" the Major shouted.
"Here, sir!" The man put his instrument to his lips.
"Not yet!" Galloway said. He only wanted to make sure the bugler was staying close, for he knew he must sound the retreat very soon. He sheathed his saber and drew out the repeating rifle, which he fired toward the shadows of men beyond the guns. The wagon park was an inferno, the sky above it bright with flame and writhing plumes of firelit smoke. A dog barked and a wounded horse screamed. In the light of the fires Galloway could see rebel gunners gathering in the darkness, and he knew that at any moment a counterattack would swarm across the artillery park. He turned to his bugler. "Now!" Galloway called, "now!" and the bugler's call rang clear in the night's fiery chaos. The Major backed his horse through the gunline, where the cannons were all spiked and the limbers burning.
"Back, lads! Back!" Galloway called his men. "Back!"
Adam was inside the farmhouse when he heard the bugle call. He had found the house empty except for two of his father's cooks, whom he had ordered to run away. Sergeant Huxtable had meanwhile chased away a group of officers standing on the lawn, killing a captain dressed in riding boots and spurs, and Huxtable now had Adam's troop lining the ditch at the end of the farm's garden from where they were blazing rifle fire into the shadowy lines of the Brigade. The repeater rifles made it seem as if a whole company of infantry was attacking across the ditch.
Corporal Kemp joined Adam in the farmhouse. "Burn the place, sir?" he asked.
"Not yet," Adam said. He has found his father's precious revolver and priceless saber hanging in the hall. Explosions sounded outside, then the ripping noise of gunfire.
"Sir!" Sergeant Huxtable shouted. "We can't hold here much longer, sir!" The Faulconer Brigade had begun to fight back, and the rifle bullets were whipping thick above the farm's yard and orchard. Adam seized his father's sword and revolver, then turned as Kemp called him from the parlor.
"Look here! Look at this!" Kemp had discovered the twin standards of the Faulconer Legion on the parlor wall.
Huxtable called again from the dark outside. "Hurry, sir! For God's sake, hurry!" The bugle sounded again from the artillery park, its call sweet and pure in the night's angry fusillades.
Adam and Kemp pulled the two crossed flagstaffs off their nails. "Come on!" Adam ordered.
"We're to burn the house, sir, you heard the Major," Kemp insisted. He saw Adam's reluctance. "Belongs to a family called Pearce, sir," Kemp went on, "rebels through and through."
Adam had forgotten that Corporal Kemp was a local man. A bullet smacked into the upper floor, splintering wood. "Go! Take the flags!" Adam told him, then snatched up some papers that lay on a claw-footed table and held their corners into a flickering candle flame. He held the papers there, letting the fire take a good hold, then dropped the burning documents among the slew of other papers. There was a brandy bottle open on the table, and Adam spilt it across the floor's rush matting, then threw a burning paper onto the floor. Flames leaped up.
Adam ran outside. A bullet whipped past his head to shatter a window. He jumped the veranda's rail. The pair of captured rebel flags trailed huge and bright across the flanks of Corporal Kemp's horse. Sergeant Huxtable had the bridle of Adam's mare. "Here, sir!"
"Back!" Adam shouted as he pulled himself into the saddle.
The horsemen retreated past the farmhouse, where a fiery glow was already suffusing the parlor windows. Kemp had managed to furl the captured flags and now handed them to one of the troopers, then drew his saber to slash at the guy ropes of the nearest tents. A voice was shouting for water. Another voice shouted Adam's name, but Adam ignored the summons as he galloped toward the wagon park that now looked like a corner of hell. Flames were searing sixty feet high while the exploding ammunition spat trails of vivid smoke in every direction. The bugle sounded again, and Adam and his men spurred down the road toward Major Galloway's party. "Count!" Adam shouted.
"One!" That was Sergeant Huxtable.
"Two!" Corporal Kemp.
"Three!" the next man called, and so on through the whole troop. Every man was present.
"Anyone hurt?" Adam asked. Not one man was hurt, and Adam felt his heart leap with exultation.
"Well done, Adam!" Galloway greeted him just beyond the small stand of trees. "All well?"
"Everyone's present, sir! No one's hurt."
"And us!" Galloway sounded triumphant. Another limber of ammunition exploded, punching red fire across the wounded camp. Then, from the southern darkness, there sounded a crash of rifle fire so sudden and furious that Galloway looked momentarily alarmed. He feared his men were being cut off, then realized the noise was coming from the tavern at the crossroads, which meant that Billy Blythe and his men were in a fight. "Come on!" he shouted, dug in his spurs, and galloped to the rescue.
"I don't feel fifty," Major Hinton told Captain Murphy. "I don't even feel like forty. But I'm fifty! An old man!" "Nonsense!" Murphy said. "Fifty's not old." "Ancient," Hinton lamented. "I can't believe I'm fifty." "You will tomorrow morning, God willing," Murphy answered. "Have another drink."
A dozen officers had walked to McComb's Tavern to celebrate the Major's half-century. It was not much of a tavern, merely a cavernous house where ale and home-distilled whiskey were sold and where two whores worked upstairs and two kitchen slaves served huge plates of dumplings, bacon, and corn bread downstairs. Major Hinton's private supper party was held in a back room, where the day's menu, such as it was, was crudely chalked on the plank wall. Not that the Major needed to read the bill of fare, for his officers had generously subscribed to buy a rare and expensive ham that Liam McComb's cooks had boiled especially for the dinner. Captain Murphy asked for Irish potatoes to accompany the ham, but McComb had refused the request by saying that he would be happy if he never saw another damned potato in all his born days. "Unless it's been liquidated, if you follow my meaning, Captain," he said. McComb was a giant man, more than sixty years old and with a belly on him like one of his own beer barrels.