“They could see the unfinished Capitol dome shining above the battlefield.” His eyes were dancing, and he used his hands in broad, fluttering gestures. “They could see workmen on the scaffolds.” Waddell wished he’d been there himself, shoulder to shoulder with Bill Kenan, watching the president’s black stovepipe hat sticking up above the parapet, shivering in a breeze of musket fire. “When the battle began, Lincoln was inspecting the troops at Fort Stevens. Captain Kenan—Lieutenant Kenan then—led the sharpshooters to within hollering distance of the fort. Took a shot at Abe Lincoln himself.”

Gray Ellen said, “He missed, I take it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Waddell said, missing the joke. “Killed the boy next to the president—a head shot.”

“Oh, my.”

“Kenan was wounded at Charleston, but he stayed with the regiment till Appomattox. Wasn’t a single deserter in that outfit all during the War.” He said it as if he himself were personally responsible.

The train rumbled over the trestle at Smith’s Creek.

Sam said, “You were with the Forty-third?”

“Do I look like a foot soldier?”

No. He looked like a Collier’s ink sketch of an antebellum cavalier, an aristocrat—hawk nose, receding hair, silver goatee.

“The Forty-first Regiment of the Third North Carolina—cavalry, sir.”

Sam nodded. “Those fellows in the red shirts—that some kind of uniform?”

Waddell smiled and fingered the brass head of his cane. “An Irish fraternal group, I gather. Poor-bockers. Men who can’t find work.”

“Poor-bockers?”

“Local slang.”

“What do they call themselves?” Sam asked.

“What else? The Red Shirts.” He smiled, as if amused by the obvious lack of imagination. “Those boys are from out of town—lots of strangers coming in these days.”

Like us, Sam thought. “I’m a newspaperman,” he said. “A reporter.”

“Bright young man might go far, he keeps his head.” There was a twinkle in Waddell’s eye. “Somebody who could tell the story of this place. Write it for the whole world.”

“I’ll remember that.”

The train was out in the open now, running fast on good track. Across the river, another channel flowed into the Cape Fear under a high spit of land.

In the back of the carriage, the Red Shirts were stirring. They trundled up the aisle carrying cloth bags and string-tied bundles in brown paper. Two of them had Winchester rifles slung across their backs. They passed the preacher, but the last one stopped beside Gray Ellen. He leaned down and pointed across her body and out the window toward the river. “See that point of land yonder? They call that Nigger Head Point, sweetheart.” He grinned. “Care to know how it got that name?”

“That’s enough,” Sam said. “Move along.”

The Red Shirt joined his companions in the forward vestibule.