"I thought we were supposed to be hiding from the Yankees?" Starbuck said.
"I guess we've hid long enough. Maybe Old Mad Jack reckons it's time to draw the Yankees on to us," Swynyard suggested. He looked up at the darkening sky and grimaced. "Not that they'll come tonight, but tomorrow?" He glanced over at Lucifer, who was crouched beside Starbuck's few possessions. "How's your darkie?" the Colonel asked gruffly.
"He seems willing enough."
"He looks a sly one to me. He's got soft hands, Starbuck, which like as not means he's been someone's house pet. And those pants he was wearing when you found him, the long-pocket ones, they ain't the pants of an honest man. If you want a good slave get yourself a bone-brained field hand who ain't afraid of a bit of work, but your boy looks more like the dangerous type of slave to me."
"What is the dangerous type?"
"The clever type. Not all the darkies have brains like mules, you know. Some of them are real sharp, and my father always reckoned it was the clever ones who needed breaking first. Whip 'em bloody, he'd say, then work them to death because if there's trouble among the people then you can be sure it's the clever ones who started it, so get rid of the clever ones and that way you'll have no trouble. That's the first and last rule of keeping slaves, Starbuck, and you're probably breaking it. I don't suppose it's Christian to beat a darkie without cause, so I won't suggest you do it, but I'd still advise you to send the boy away."
"I won't do that. I like Lucifer," Starbuck said.
"Lucifer? Is that what he calls himself? Dear Lord," Swynyard said, shocked by the name's impiety. "Find out what he's really called, Starbuck. Don't put up with that kind of nonsense! And have him cut his hair off. You don't want a black dandy. And for the Lord's sake take that gun off him! For a start it's illegal, but more important if you encourage him to think he's a cut above the other darkies he'll soon think he's a cut above you. Give a clever slave an inch and he'll take you for everything you've got." The Colonel checked this stream of advice to listen to the firing, which had reached a new intensity, almost as if the two sides were equally desperate to reach a victory before the sun dipped beneath the horizon. "Not our business, thank God. Get some sleep tonight, Starbuck, because I daresay we'll be neck deep in Yankees tomorrow."
The long-haired, gun-toting Lucifer watched the Colonel go. "What did he say about me?" he asked Starbuck.
"He gave me good advice," Starbuck said. "He told me to whip you bloody then work you to death."
Lucifer grinned. "You don't want to do that. I'm your good luck, Major." He turned back toward Swynyard's retreating figure and made a deliberately formal gesture with his clenched right fist, which, at the last moment, he uncurled to let fall a few scraps of fragile bone and powdery white dust.
Starbuck thought he recognized the ribs of a small bird among the litter Lucifer had let drop, but he did not like to ask what the strange gesture meant. He was afraid to know, so instead he looked out from the trees and saw, at last, Yankees. Horsemen were galloping across distant fields, spurring toward the firefight that still crackled in the west. The enemy was gathering like storm clouds heaping. And tomorrow they would fight.
The Reverend Elial Starbuck's hopes, which had plunged so low during the inconveniences of the rail journey, now soared again, and once again it was the acrid smoke of battle that filled him with that fierce exaltation. He had breakfasted with Major Galloway, and afterward, leaving his luggage in the farm, the preacher had ridden to Manassas Junction to see the damage done to the depot and to introduce himself to General Pope's headquarters. The General had been affability itself and had willingly given his permission for the famous preacher to stay with the army, even inviting him to share the headquarters' potluck suppers for the next few nights. Thus honored, the Reverend Starbuck had ridden south to Bristoe to commiserate with his old friend Nathaniel Banks, who had been given the undemanding task of guarding the rail depot. Banks, who still considered his action at Cedar Mountain a victory, complained bitterly about his present duties, but the Reverend Starbuck was in no mood to encourage such backbiting. His spirits were being revived by the arrival of train after train from Warrenton Junction, each train crammed with troops fetched from the Rappahannock defenses. The damage to the rail line north of Bristoe meant that the trains had to disgorge their passengers in the open country, and soon the line of parked locomotives and cars stretched for more than two miles. The men marched in from the fields where they had alighted and boasted that they had come to knock Stonewall down once and for all. The preacher liked their spirit. His own spirits rose even higher when, late in the afternoon, he heard the sound of gunfire coming from the north.
He took his tired horse toward the sound of the guns, passing through quiet fields and deserted woods until at last he came to the valley where the Warrenton Turnpike ran and where a rill of smoke showed where men fought in the valley's bottom. He rode toward the fighting, arriving just as an enemy regiment made an attack on the Yankees' open right flank.
The gray-coated attackers advanced in a line two ranks deep. Their rifles were tipped with bayonets that reflected the dying sun's scarlet light. They came in good order, kicking down a snake fence and then advancing across a pasture. The attack was silent, suggesting that these rebels planned to save their famous yell for the last few yards of their charge. Some rebels were screaming that weird sound off to the preacher's left, but that larger battle seemed stalemated between two opposing lines of riflemen.
The Northerners had seen the threat to their right flank and hurried three regiments to meet it. Two of the regiments were from Wisconsin and the third from New York. The Northerners formed their ranks in a fold of land where they crouched behind a fence. The attackers, oblivious to the number of Yankees facing their charge, began to hurry, and their first shrill yells yipped in the dusk. The defiant sound prompted the Northern line to stand behind their fence and fire a shattering volley across the pasture. The volley's noise ripped over the valley and rolled back. Rifle flames glittered in the failing light, while the layered cloud of powder smoke drifted across the meadow to where the Confederates had been brought to a sudden, astonished halt. The Reverend Starbuck, oblivious of the bullets that whipsawed around his horse, cheered his Northerners on. Their first volley had stopped the rebel attack dead, their second turned it into a bloody mess, and their third began to drive the gray-clad regiment backward. The rebel fire became ever more feeble as the Northern fire increased. One of the rebel's banners toppled, was plucked up, and immediately fell again as the new standard-bearer was thrown back by a dozen bullets. "That's the way to deal with devils, boys!" the Reverend Starbuck shouted. A heaped line of dead and injured men showed where the tide of the Confederate attack had stalled, and now the survivors grudgingly abandoned that writhing, bloody heap as they edged backward. Earlier in the day the preacher had equipped himself with a Colt revolver from among Galloway's stores, and now he remembered the weapon and drew it from his saddle pouch. He fired at the stubborn rebels who, though their line had been broken and bloodied, still tried to return the overwhelming Northern fire.
"By the left oblique! Forward!" a stentorian voice shouted, and the New York regiment swung forward like a gate that threatened to close on the remnants of the rebel attackers.
"Halt!" the New Yorkers' commanding officer called. "Aim!"