MacRae sat on his big bay hunter, one leg crossed over the pommel of the English saddle, looking bored and irritated. His high, soft boots were spattered with mud, and his hair was windblown and disheveled, as if he’d just galloped miles cross-country. In fact, he had ridden less than a block, in no particular hurry.

“Want to come along to the party?” Dowling said. He could not get his horse to stand still—she was prancing all over the road.

MacRae waited patiently for him to get his mount under control. His own hunter, seventeen hands tall, dwarfed the skittish sorrel. “Just what do you think you are up to?”

Dowling sawed at the reins, cursed, and half-stood in the stirrups. “You heard Colonel Waddell last night—we’ve waited long enough. We’re going to take back this town.” Dowling looked over his shoulder for support and saw the sullen faces of his men. They all knew Hugh MacRae.

“Just how do you propose to do that?” MacRae’s hunter remained so still the two of them could have been a monument. Waddell was getting out of hand—these poor-bockers were starting to take him literally. His first instinct had been right: keep Waddell out of it. Rountree had agreed. It had been the others, dazzled by the myth of the Confederacy, who had insisted. Well, whenever you went against your best instincts, sooner or later you paid.

“Burn down that nigger paper,” Dowling said. “It ain’t very complicated. Lynch that dandy little monkey that runs it.”

“Quite a plan,” MacRae said. Turn him on his side, MacRae thought, and the sawdust would run out his ear.

“We’d be glad to have you along.”

“But you’re overlooking other considerations.”

“Such as?”

Off his right flank came a sound that stopped Dowling’s heart: the metallic slap of eighty rifle bolts. The Wilmington Light Infantry, armed with high-powered Krag-Jorgensen carbines, had double-timed up Market underground, in the tunnel, and come out ahead of the Red Shirts. Now, they were formed up in ranks, three deep, blocking Seventh Street. The front two ranks, kneeling and standing, aimed their rifles for volley fire. The third rank stood in reserve.

Behind the milling Red Shirts, Captain Kenan and his crew had quietly drawn up the Gatling gun, taken the tarp off, and leveled the gun at the mounted Red Shirts. Between the Gatling gun and the ranks of riflemen, they’d have the Red Shirts in a deadly crossfire.

Don’t do anything stupid, Kenan thought. Don’t make me crank this fine brass handle. Go slow. Listen to Mr. MacRae. If we fire on you, we’ll kill a lot of good horses.

Behind the wagon, sixty Naval Reserves, bayonets fixed, stood ready to deploy as skirmishers.

Dowling twisted his neck, taking it all in. “How did you know—?”