"Well, Jeremiah?" Winfield asked.

"Ah, let's see."

Confused, he looked down at his map and then at Winfield.

"I'm waiting, Jeremiah," Winfield said calmly.

"Mr. Bartlett, I am hereby appointing you as my assistant and commander of the Washington Colored Volunteers," he blurted out.

There was a chorus of chuckles from those gathered round, a few cheers, and offers of congratulations to Jim.

"I want you to start organizing your men into groups of a hundred. Appoint a…" he hesitated, "a captain to command each group of a hundred, and that captain to appoint sergeants who will command ten men. I'll have my men down here within thirty minutes. One of my men will then lead each group of a hundred and will be assigned a section that we'll start to stake out, and your men are to, well, start digging in and cutting out trees to create fields of fire."

"What we came here for, boss," someone in the crowd shouted, and there was another chorus of cheers.

Jeremiah, still a bit flustered, looked over at Winfield, who simply nodded.

"I'll be back in thirty minutes, so I think you better get busy, Mr. Bartlett."

"Some of the boys are mighty hungry," Jim said. "They've walked all night."

Winfield stepped up and motioned to the men off-loading the barrels of salt pork.

"Our infantry came up with five days of rations. I think we can use the reserves for your men," Winfield said. "Mr. Bartlett, have someone who was a cook pick out fifty men to stay behind from the digging. They can set up kitchen areas down here."

He pointed to the ground between the canal and the river.

"Also, appoint another hundred men to work on setting up encampments, digging latrines, and making shelters for your volunteers."

"A lot of orders," Jim said.

"Welcome to command, Mr. Bartlett," Winfield said with a smile. "I'll countermand only one of the major's orders. You don't answer to him. From now on you will report di-recdy to me."

"Yes, sir," Jim said.

Winfield nodded and limped off, Jeremiah following him.

"What a blessing," Winfield said. "A message caught up to me from Elihu Washburne during the night, said that the colored men of Washington are pouring out by the thousands, maybe ten thousand or more, to volunteer their help up here."

"Lord knows, we can use them," Jeremiah replied, "but, sir, getting them organized, setting them to organized work. Building entrenchments, bastions, and clearing fields of fire isn't just simply digging a ditch."

"Who do you think built most of the fortifications around Washington? No one ever gives them the credit. I'm willing to bet, sir, you will find some damn good engineers, not formally educated but practical and experienced, back in that crowd."

"And what if the rebs come?"

"They will come."

"I mean, sir, what if they come and break through? Those men-" and he motioned to the volunteers who were now milling around Jim, shouting, asking for orders, asking for command positions, arguing with him that they didn't hike fifty miles just to be cooks.

"What about them?" Jeremiah asked.

"If it comes to a breakthrough, I'll tell them to fight, and they will fight. They walked here to help win their own freedom and their relatives' freedom. They are prepared to risk their lives as well as their sweat."

Two Miles North of Hauling Ferry 9:30 A.M.

Phil Duvall slipped up cautiously to the edge of the tree line. Yankee troopers and infantry occupied the ground just ahead, spread out in a thick skirmish line, hunkered down behind a low split-rail fence bordering an open pasture. It had cost him seven men to get up this far, and he knew he'd only have a few minutes before the Yankees began to push back.

He scanned the sloping ground ahead, this low crest dropping down into an open pasture, then undulating back up to a low rise a half mile away. An open ravine with a creek weaving through it dropped down to his right, leaving an open vista to the Potomac. He could barely see the canal. If he had had the nerve, he might have tried to climb a tree for a better view, but the Yankees on the other side of the pasture were proving to be damn good shots. He wouldn't last long in a tree.

One of his troopers, providing covering fire for him, knelt, took aim, and fired, and a split second later crumpled over, shot in the head.

Phil raised his field glasses and scanned the opposite slope and his heart dropped. All along the opposite low-lying ridge men were at work. He could see dirt flying into the air, the diggers invisible below their thighs in places. Curiously, many wore blue trousers, their uniform jackets discarded, white shirts standing out clear, but mingled in, in far greater numbers, were colored men. An entire woodlot of several acres was rapidly being cut down, trees crashing, teams of a dozen men harnessed to ropes, laboriously dragging trimmed logs up the slope. Others were taking the branches and weaving them into large oversize baskets, as thick around as a barrel and nearly as tall as a man, setting them in place atop the earthworks while others then shoveled dirt into them.

One crew, of well over a hundred men, working with a team of a half dozen mules, was slowly dragging what appeared to be a long black tube along the crest. He tried to focus in on it. It looked to be the biggest gun he had ever seen, one of the legendary hundred-pound Parrotts.

It was. Behind them, coming into view, was another crew of a hundred colored men, dragging a heavy iron gun carriage, the mount for the piece.

A spray of bark and splinters and tree sap smacked against the side of his face. He ducked back behind the tree. Two more minie" balls whizzed in, kicking up dirt to either side of him.

"Major, sir, I didn't ride with you for two years just to see you killed now," Sergeant Lucas hissed, lying flat on his stomach behind the tree next to him.

Phil looked up.

Damn, mounted troops, a hundred or more, were coming down from the crest, riding hard.

"Major, sir, really I think it's time we got the hell out of here."

Phil forced a tight smile and nodded. He had seen what he had been sent to see, and now it was time, as Lucas said, to get "the hell out of here."

"Come on!"

He stood up and sprinted to the rear.

Headquarters of the Army of Northern Virginia Monocacy Creek

10:00 A.M.

Why don't they come on?" Lee asked impatiently, pacing back and forth, looking over at Pete, who paced alongside of him. The firing had been going on since dawn. Of the hundred guns down at McCausland Farm, barely half were still firing. Ten thousand shells or more had turned the ground around the farm into a plowed-up wasteland, the brick farmhouse pounded into wreckage.

All along the riverfront the firing was continuing, both sides taking losses, but nothing that would even begin to indicate a clear decision.

A thunderclap rolled up from the south, another caisson going up, and that decided it for him.

"Walter, my compliments to General Alexander. Tell him to pass the word down to the battery commanders at McCausland to mount up and withdraw out of range."

Walter almost seemed to breathe a sigh of relief with that order. The men all along the ridge had been watching the duel since dawn, cheering when an enemy gun was wiped out, groaning when two, three, and four of those at McCausland fell victim.

Walter mounted and rode off.

It was impossible to see anything now. The entire riverfront for miles was enveloped in a dank, yellow-gray smoke.

"Perhaps that will draw him in," Lee said. Longstreet did not reply.

This fight was proving to be different. Grant was showing a cagey side, the hours of bombardment, as if to indicate he had ammunition to burn. And I do, too, and more will be on its way from Baltimore once the tangle of trains is unsnarled.