A bugle called to the north, summoning the raiders to their retreat, but Blythe had his enemy trapped like rats in a burning barrel, and like rats, he decided, they would die. He fired again and again while the flames spread through the tavern, leaping up the gauze curtains, devouring the ancient wooden floors, exploding barrels of liquor, and hissing where it met the blood that was spilt so thick across the planks.
A man with burning clothes crawled across the porch, then fell shuddering as bullets ripped at him. A roof beam collapsed, showering sparks into the night, and Billy Blythe, his mouth open and eyes bright, watched enthralled.
Major Galloway arrived at the head of his raiders. "Come on, Billy! Didn't you hear the bugle?"
"Too busy," Blythe said, his eyes wide and fixed on the glorious destruction. Flames writhed out of collapsing liquor barrels and flared fierce and brief when they caught a dead man's hair. Ammunition crackled in the flames, each cartridge flashing white like a miniature firecracker.
"What happened?" Galloway stared in awe at the burning house.
"Sons of bitches fired on us," Blythe said, still gazing enraptured at the horror he had engendered, "so we taught the sons of bitches a lesson."
"Let's go, Billy," Galloway said, then seized Blythe's bridle and dragged his second-in-command away from the fire. "Come on, Billy!"
A figure stirred under the porch, and two horsemen emptied their rifles' revolving cylinders into the man. A woman screamed at the tavern's rear; then the kitchen roof collapsed and the scream was cut sharply off. "It was a horse," Blythe assured Galloway, who had frowned when he heard the woman's distress, "just a dying horse, Joe, and dying horses can sound uncommon like women."
"Let's go," Galloway said. There was a smell of roasting meat from the tavern, and horrid things twitching in the furnace heat, and Galloway turned away, not wanting to know what horrors he abandoned.
The horsemen rode west, leaving the sparks whirling cloudward and a whole brigade whipped.
Starbuck had wanted to challenge the raiders, but Swynyard stopped him from leaving the tent. "They'll slash you down like a dog. Ever been chased by a cavalryman?"
"No."
"You'll end up saber-cut to ribbons. Keep quiet."
"We must do something!"
"Sometimes it's best to do nothing. They won't stay long."
Yet the wait seemed forever to Starbuck as he crouched in the tent; then at last he heard a bugle call and voices shouting orders to retreat. Hooves thumped close by the tent, which suddenly twitched and half collapsed as its guy ropes were cut. Starbuck squirmed out of the sagging wet canvas and saw Adam on horseback not five paces away.
"Adam!" Starbuck shouted, not really believing his own eyes.
But Adam was already spurring south, his horse's hooves throwing up great gobs of mud and water as he went. Starbuck saw the headquarters house burning and more fires flaring skyward among the supply wagons. The sentry guarding Swynyard's tent had vanished.
"So how did they cross the river?" Colonel Swynyard asked as he crawled out from the tent's wreckage.
"The same way they'll go back," Starbuck said. The horsemen might have withdrawn southward, but he had no doubt they would be riding a half-circle to get back to the unguarded ford, which meant a man on foot might just be able to cut them off. General Faulconer was shouting for water, but Starbuck ignored the orders. He leaped over the ditch that separated the headquarters from the bivouac lines and shouted for Sergeant Truslow. "Turn out! Fast now!"
H Company fell into ranks. "Load!" Starbuck ordered.
Truslow had rescued Starbuck's rifle and now threw it to him with an ammunition pouch. "The General says we're not to take orders from you," the Sergeant said.
"The General can go to hell." Starbuck bit a cartridge and poured powder down the barrel.
"That's what I reckoned too," Truslow said.
Swynyard arrived, panting. "Where are you going?"
Starbuck spat the bullet into the muzzle. "We're going to Dead Mary's Ford," he said, then rammed the bullet hard down, slotted the ramrod back into place, and slung the rifle from his shoulder.
"Why Dead Mary's Ford?" Swynyard asked, puzzled.
"Because, damn it, we saw one of the bastards there last night. Ain't that right, Mallory?"
"Saw him plain as daylight," Sergeant Mallory confirmed.
"Besides," Starbuck went on, "where else would they cross the river? Every other ford's guarded. Follow me!" Starbuck shouted, and the men ran through a darkness made livid by the great fires that burned uncontrollably in the Brigade lines. The farmhouse roof collapsed to spew a gout of flames skyward, but that inflagration was dwarfed by the huge fires in the ammunition park. Every few seconds another powder cask would explode to send a ball of fire soaring up into the low clouds. Shells cracked apart, rifle ammunition stuttered, and dogs howled in terror. The inferno lit Starbuck's path across the waterlogged meadow and into the trees, but the deeper he ran into the woods the darker it became and the harder it was to find the path. He had to slow down and feel his way forward.
Sergeant Truslow wanted to know just what had happened at headquarters. Colonel Swynyard told him about the Northern raiders, and Starbuck added that he had seen Adam Faulconer among the enemy horsemen. "Are you sure?" Colonel Swynyard asked.
"Pretty damn sure, yes."
Truslow spat into the dark. "I said we should have shot the bastard when he crossed the lines. This way."
They stumbled on through the woods; then, when they were still a quarter-mile short of the river, Starbuck heard hoofbeats and saw a glimmer of flamelight showing through the black tangled silhouette of the trees. "Run!" he shouted. He feared his company would arrive too late and that the Northern horsemen would escape before he could reach the line of rifle pits at the wood's edge.
Then he saw the riders milling at the river's nearer bank. Someone had made a torch by strapping dead twigs to a length of timber, and the torch lit the horsemen's passage through a ford made dangerously deep by storm water. Starbuck guessed most of the riders had long crossed the river, but a dozen cavalrymen were still waiting on the southern bank as he slipped and skidded into a flooded rifle pit. He held his weapon up high to keep it dry and saw the nearest horsemen turn in alarm as they heard the splash of his fall. "Spread out!" Starbuck shouted to his men, "and open fire!" Three horses were in the middle of the ford with the river up past their bellies. One of the cavalrymen cut with a whip to urge his horse on. "Fire!" Starbuck shouted again, then aimed his own rifle at the nearest enemy. He pulled the trigger and felt a surge of relief that at last they were fighting back.
Someone fired from Starbuck's right. The woods were full of trampling feet, and the edge of the meadow was suddenly black with rebel infantry. The ruined house where Mad Silas lived was a dark shadow in the meadow's center, beyond which the Yankee carried his flaming torch high; then the man suddenly realized that he was illuminating the target, and so he hurled the brand into the river to plunge the night into instant and utter blackness. A horse was screaming in the dark. More rifles cracked, their flames stabbing the sudden dark.
The Yankees returned the fire. Rifles flared on the far bank. Men were shouting in panic, calling on each other to get the hell across the water. Northern bullets whipped through the leaves over Starbuck's head. He was up to his thighs in the flooded rifle pit. He rammed a new bullet down the rifle's barrel, then fired again. He could not see his targets because the muzzle flashes were dazzling him. The night was a chaos of gun flames, screams, and splashes. Something or someone floundered in the water, and Starbuck could hear desperate shouts as the horsemen tried to rescue their comrade. "Cease fire!" he shouted, not because he wanted to help the rescuers, but because it was time to take prisoners. "Cease fire!" he shouted again and heard Sergeant Truslow take up the call. "H Company!" Starbuck called when the rifles had fallen silent. "Forward!"