Truslow shambled over. "Just Truslow's good enough," he

said.

"Your company's at the rear," Starbuck said, "and you know what to do if you find stragglers." He paused. "And that includes straggling officers." Truslow nodded his bleak assent. In addition to commanding Company H Truslow also had command of the regiment's eight surviving draught horses that had once pulled the ammunition wagons and supply carts. Now, without any vehicles to drag, they would serve as ambulances for the men who genuinely could not keep up the pace.

The Legion marched at dawn. The order to leave their heavy baggage behind had alerted the men to the fact that this was to be no ordinary march, no stroll through the countryside from one bivouac to another, but no one had been prepared for a march as hard as this. Thomas Jackson usually allowed his men a ten-minute rest every hour, but not today. Today they marched without any rest stops, and there were staff officers beside the road to make sure no one dawdled, and there were more staff officers waiting at the first ford to make certain no man paused to take off his boots or roll up his pants. "Just keep marching!" the staff officers shouted. "Keep going! Come on!" The troops obeyed, squelching out of the ford to leave wet footprints that dried swiftly under the hot August sun.

The sun rose still higher. It had been one of the hottest summers in living memory, yet today it seemed as though the heat would reach new heights of discomfort. Sweat drove trickles through the layers of dust that caked men's faces. Sometimes, when the road ran across the summit of a shallow crest, they would see the line of infantry stretching far ahead and far behind, and they guessed that a whole corps was on the march, but where it was going only God and Old Jack knew. They did not march in step but loped along in the gait of experienced infantrymen who knew they would have to endure this agony a whole day through. "Close up!" the sergeants shouted whenever a gap appeared in a company's files, and the call would echo up and down the long shambling line. "Close up! Close up!" They passed parched fields, dried ponds, and empty barns. Farm dogs growled from the road's verges and sometimes started fights with the soldiers' pet dogs; such fights were usually popular diversions, but today the sergeants kicked the beasts apart and beat the country dogs away with rifle butts. "Keep going! Close up!" Every hour or so one of the cavalry patrols that were screening the march from the enemy's horsemen would canter past the Legion on its way to take up new positions far ahead of the long column, and the horsemen would answer the infantrymen's questions by saying they had seen no enemy. So far, it seemed, the Yankees were oblivious to Jackson's men as they moved across the hot summer landscape.

Men hobbled as muscles first tightened and then seized with cramp. The pain began in the calves, then spread to the thighs. Some men, like Starbuck, wore boots they had taken at Cedar Mountain, and within a few miles those new boots had worn men's heels and toes to bloody blisters. Starbuck took his boots off and tied them round his neck, then marched barefoot. For a few hundred yards he left small bloody footprints in the dust; then the blisters dried but went on hurting. His feet hurt, his legs ached, there was a stitch in his side, his throat burned, his bad tooth throbbed, his lips were cracked, his eyes stung with the sweat and dust, and this was just the start of the march.

Some officers rode horses. Swynyard was mounted, as were Major Medlicott and Captain Moxey. Moxey was now back with the Legion. Starbuck had not wanted him, but nor did Swynyard want him to stay as an aide, and so Moxey was now the Captain of Company B. The newly promoted Major Medlicott had gone to Company A with the consolatory honor of commanding the Legion's four right-flank companies. Moxey had the next company, Sergeant Patterson, now Lieutenant Patterson, had command of C, while Murphy's old Lieutenant, Ezra Pine, was now the Captain of D Company. The left four companies had Sergeant Howes, now a Lieutenant, in command of E, a Captain Leighton, who had been borrowed from Haxall's Arkansas regiment to command Company F, Captain Davies took over Medlicott's old Company G, and Truslow, whom Starbuck had insisted on promoting into a full Captain, was in charge of Company H.

It was a ramshackle list of officers, cobbled together from disaster, and the men in the Legion knew it was makeshift and did not like it. Starbuck understood the disquiet. Most men did not want to be soldiers. They did not want to be torn away from home and women and familiarity, and even the most reckless young man's sense of adventure could be quickly eroded by miniй bullets and Parrott gun shells. What held these reluctant warriors to their duty were discipline, friendship, and victory. Give them those things, Starbuck knew, and the men of the Faulconer Legion would believe they were the best damn soldiers in all the damned world and that there was not a man alive or dead, in any uniform in any country of any era, who could lick them in a fight.

But the Legion had no such belief now. Its sense of comradeship had been shattered by Galloway's raid and by the disappearance of Washington Faulconer. Most of the Legion's men had known Faulconer since childhood; he had dominated their civilian lives as he had their military existence, and, whatever his faults, unkindness had never been among them. Faulconer had been an easy master because he had wanted to be liked, and his disappearance had unsettled the ranks. They were ashamed, too, because the Legion was the only regiment that marched without colors. Every other unit marched with flying banners, but the Legion, to its disgrace, had none.

So, as they marched, Starbuck spent time with each company. He did not force himself on them but instead began by ordering them to close up and march faster, and then he would just march alongside and endure the embarrassed or unfriendly looks that told him most of his men believed he was too young to be their commanding officer. He knew those looks did not mean he was unpopular, for in the spring, when the Legion had held its final election for field officers, nearly two-thirds of the men had written Starbuck's name on their ballots despite Washington Faulconer's opposition, but that springtime defiance had not meant they wanted the young Northern rebel to be their commanding officer. Not at twenty-two, and not at the expense of men from their own Virginian community. And so Starbuck marched with them and waited for someone to throw the first question. The conversation he had with Company G was typical enough. "Where are we going?" Billy Sutton, newly made up to Sergeant, wanted to know. "Old Jack knows and he ain't saying." "Are we going to see General Faulconer again?" That question came from a man who had once worked on Washington Faulconer's land and who doubtless wanted to know that his old job would be waiting for him at the war's end.

"Reckon you will," Starbuck answered. "He's just gone on to higher things. Can't keep a man like General Faulconer down, you should know that."

"So where's he gone?" The question was hostile. "Richmond."

There was another silence, except for the sound of boots slapping the road, rifle stocks knocking against tin canteens, and the hoarse rasp of men breathing. Dust drifted off the road to coat the bushes a reddish gray. "Story is that Old Jack gave Faulconer the back of his hand," Sergeant Berrigan asked. "Is that what you hear, Major?"

Starbuck noted the use of his new rank and guessed that Berrigan was a supporter. He shook his head. "Way I hear it is that Old Jack just reckoned General Faulconer could be more use in Richmond. Faulconer weren't never happy with all this marching and sleeping rough, you all know that. He wasn't reared to it and he never got a taste for it, and Old Jack just agreed with him." That was a shrewd enough reply, intimating that Faulconer was not as tough as his men. Most of the Legion did not really want to believe that their General had been dismissed, for that truth reflected on themselves, and so they were ready enough to embrace Starbuck's kinder version of Faulconer's sudden disappearance.