"The same weather for both us and them."

His gaze fixed on Ely, who said nothing.

"No orders from General Grant this morning?" Sickles asked.

"You know the orders, sir."

"I have a beaten foe in retreat, Colonel. My duty this day is clear. Once I'm finished, General Grant may come down and claim what he wishes."

Ely did not rise to the bait and the scornful looks of Sick-les's staff.

Sickles mounted.

"I want a general advance all along the line. Push the men on the double, if need be, until we establish contact I want to force them off those roads and to form a rear guard. Then we will overrun them. Gentlemen, this will be a footrace, and to the fastest runner goes the victory!"

A ragged cheer erupted as he spurred his mount and headed forward.

Ely reined up beside Birney, who was mounting as well.

"Do you think all of Lee's army is in retreat?" Ely asked.

"It's not my opinion that counts, Colonel," Birney replied coolly. "But I'll tell you this. This army has been misused too many times, mostly through temerity. We just might be on to Lee in retreat, his forces spread out We could see that at Antietam, at Second Manassas, at Chancellorsville-hell, in damn near every battle we've ever been in. If General Sickles is right, we could finish it this day, before they retreat into the fortifications at Baltimore."

"And what does General Lee think at this moment?"

Bimey looked at him, saying nothing.

"There is a third corps, Beauregard's. Have you marked their position?".

Bimey shook his head.

"I would be concerned."

"Every battle is a concern," Birney replied, now into his saddle, bringing his mount about, facing south.

"You might not believe this, General," Ely said, "but I actually do pray that your General Sickles is right"

"So do I," Bimey said with a smile. Spurring his mount, he galloped off, following his commander down into the open plains.

Six Miles to the West,

in the Valley of the Gunpowder River, Maryland

August 20,1863 7:30 AM.

The vast columns were deployed, the twenty thousand men of Beauregard's brigades. For the men who had fought in the swamps and heat in defense of Charleston, this was nothing new, another day that promised temperatures near a hundred degrees. They had long ago grown used to it, or died. For the militia regiments, the home guards, some of them from the cool mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, the last day had been a torture, their ranks already thinned by half from straggling, scores of their comrades dead, collapsing from heatstroke.

They had filed west and north throughout the previous day, following back tracks and farm lanes, a route that Lee and Jed Hotchkiss had ridden over the week before, while contemplating what to do if Sickles should indeed jump first.

Though Lee loathed analogies with Napoleon, especially when applied to himself and his army, he had to admit it was indeed something like Austerlitz. He had picked this ground long before the battle and analyzed it. He had conceded what Sickles would perceive to be the good ground, on the banks of the Gunpowder River down close to the Chesapeake. If he had fought him there, he would have held the good ground, to be certain, but it would have been a bloody, senseless fight, with severe casualties and little to show once Sickles was beaten and had retreated. Granted, he had lost five times the number he had wished for yesterday, but it had indeed lured Sickles across that stream.

And now Sickles was pushing south. A courier had just come in reporting that the Union commander had increased the pace of his advance, was pressing into the rear of Hood's and Longstreet's supposed retreat. In another two miles he would finally run up against what the rebel forces were already calling "the line," a hundred and thirty-five guns concealed behind a reverse slope.

Stuart was shadowing the flank, keeping any probing eyes back. All civilians, painful as it might be, had been rousted out, ordered, "for their own welfare," to abandon their homes and retreat toward Baltimore. In Virginia he would not have worried, but here in Maryland, one or two civilians bearing tidings of a rebel column having disappeared late the day before, marching to the northwest, might have been warning enough to stop Sickles.

Sickles was playing his hand as Lee thought he would. The tantalizing chance to finally catch the Army of Northern Virginia on the march would be too much for Wm to not grab for.

All they needed to do now was to wait for the sound of the guns.

August 20,1863 9:00 am

‘Sir, I think we got a problem ahead!" Dan looked over at the courier riding in, a cavalryman, John Buford's old division. "What is it?"

"Sir, we're moving ahead of the Second Division of the Third Corps, and we seen a hell of a lot of guns." "What kind of guns?"

"Artillery, sir, rows of 'em. Maybe twenty or more batteries. One of the boys climbed a church steeple to get a look around and he seen them down in the next valley. I was ordered to come back here and find you."

"Are they moving?"

"No, sir, that's just it. Their gunners are standing ready." "I'm coming."

Following the cavalryman, his staff trailing, they rode across an open pasture. Some stragglers dotted the field, men already dropping out because of the heat and exhaustion. A few wounded in the field, an ambulance up to retrieve them, one of them a rebel officer, sitting on the ground, holding a leg up as a hospital orderly tightened a tourniquet. The man grimaced, saw Dan, and offered a salute, which Dan returned.

"Hot day, General."

'That it is, Captain."

"Gonna get a hell of a lot hotter for you soon, General."

The rebel was grinning now, and Dan rode on.

He came to a split-rail fence, rode parallel to it for fifty yards until he found a place where it had been knocked down, a few more casualties, Union and Confederate together, sitting and lying under the shade of an apple tree, the men who had fought each other only minutes before now talking, a rebel holding a canteen for a young Yankee cavalryman, the boy gut-shot.

He rode up through the orchard, its lower branches picked clean even in the middle of a running fight; soldiers of both sides would forage even if the apples were still green.

More men ahead, a ragged combination of columns and lines, white insignia of the Third Corps, Second Division, on their caps. Few if any still had on field packs or blanket rolls. Many, against usual custom, had their bluejackets off in the heat, but they still carried rifles and cartridge boxes, which was all that mattered to him at this moment.

The column was stalled as he rode past. He caught sight of a regimental commander.

"Why are you stopped?" Dan shouted.

"Sir, we just got word from the skirmish line up front that there's trouble ahead."

"What, damn it?"

"Artillery."

"Then go forward and take it!" Dan shouted.

He pushed ahead of the column. Looking to his left and right he saw where the entire division was stalled, formation ragged, some still in battle line, some in column by company front, flags hanging limp in the still, humid air.

Ahead he could see a heavy skirmish line atop a low crest, each man several feet apart from comrade to left or right, some standing, others crouching. He rode up to them, men looking back as they heard his approach.

"Keep this line moving, goddamn it! We are going to Baltimore by tonight. Keep it moving!"

August 20,1863 9:10 AM.

‘They’ve slowed Sir, Porter Alexander, at General Longstreet's side, pointed to the low crest six hundred yards away. A Yankee skirmish line was atop the crest having appeared only minutes ago, and the sight that greeted them had undoubtedly caused their coming to a halt.