Adam Duffey put his hand on the younger man’s bare arm, pressing his broad fingers deep into the firm, hot flesh. “Before it’s too late to speak, I ask as a friend that you’ll be telling me what the to-do was with Quagger. If I can help—”

“Oh, Doc. Let it be.”

A dozen soldiers swung out along the Fairfield road, their horses at the trot. The remainder of the advancing troop stopped for a moment beyond the roadside fence; horses huddled in a close, milling group as if they whispered horse secrets; then two men sprang down and began to tug at the rails. Now you could see the shimmer of their faded blue breeches, hear the muffled hoofs and all the sound of their deliberate approach. Two harp-shaped elms beyond the field were tranquil, motionless: the sun made feathers of their highest leaves … an officer said something, metal and unavoidable word, a word said for the millionth time. Behind this clustered outpost, the shallow wheat fields seethed with the smoke of travel, travel—more horses than had ever trotted those roads before. The sound this army made was not the dull, portentous murmur of a Confederate brigade coming over McPherson’s ridge on a dark afternoon. The valley throbbed with echoes; men squawked to one another, the horses were glinting with sturdy harness, and no caravans of plunder came gypsying behind.

Duffey said, with conviction, “They look like they was expecting war any moment. Indeed, they want to see it come.”

Bale turned, and looked searchingly toward the Fanning house: Demon was out in the garden, a squat brown shape, rooted there forever. The upper windows shone hot and glassy … no one moved.

“I wonder if these would be Tyler Fanning’s men, Dan?” It was a brutal truth, but his simple question made Daniel suddenly angry and hateful. “What nonsense, Doc,” he heard himself snapping. “Tyler’s in the infantry!” The dust wound close above the southeast world, a long stair-carpet over the road from Emmetsburg. Inside her house, Mrs. Knouse was scampering about like a beetle in a box. They heard her limping steps, the quick gaspings and exclamations she made to herself as she hastened to perform some suddenly important chore. She popped her brown face through the rear doorway. “It’s Union ones, Daniel—I heard you say so. Maybe I can put my bulb-roots back out in the garden where they ought to be. The Lord sends us now a quick answer to prayer.” Then she clapped the door shut; the nearest soldiers were hunting speedily across her weedy pasture. Their horses were all chestnuts except for one gray. Eight men—tight and squat in their saddles—the survivors of the herd which had cut across from the smoky farms behind.