Clatter, squeak of leather, the father and the son went out to the front door, and Dan followed slowly. A line of carts moved in the road, carts all alike, all small and enormously loaded with anvils and tubs and protruding bars of metal. “The farriers,” remarked the major, idly. “I didn’t think they’d be up yet.” Two horses stood in the yard chewing at the grass, reins trailing; one was the major’s; he climbed stiffly upon it. Light as a mounting Sioux, Billy was on the back of the sorrel gelding. He juggled the single rein and squeezed his knees; the sorrel whinnied nervously, swung high on its hind-legs, dropped its fore-feet and headed toward the fence, head low. It flashed over the short pickets, slipped on the dusty grass of the ditch-side, but rose before its belly had rubbed the ground. One creature, horse and boy, they galloped up the hill past the row of rumbling carts.

“Billy’s dug up your yard, Mr. Bale.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dan told him. He wondered through how many eternities he would be saying those words. The broad wheels, the shambling hoofs, dinned and ached in his ears. There was some commotion next door … Mrs. Knouse’s voice shrieked up—she was laughing, a delirious old-lady screech. She stood on her porch, a huge basket on her arm, and around her crowded a mob of soldiers to whom she was giving something. “I’d just like to give every boy of you a nice piece of bread-and-butter,” she cried. They laughed without humor. “Lady, if you did you’d spread more butter than ever woman did before—”

The major did not look toward them; he was settling his boots in the hooded stirrups, loosening the belt about his waist, and trying to make himself comfortable in the saddle. He flashed one glance at Dan—a shaft of baffled disapproval.

“You’re fortunate to have your son with you in the same regiment,” Bale said.

Glenn swung his hand against his hat rim. “I did have three,” he said. He cantered down the graveled path, past the dead horse, and rode away up the slope without looking back.

Chapter 7

7.

By six o’clock, Bale estimated that at least three thousand men had passed along the Chambersburg Pike and through adjacent fields—more men than he had ever seen at one time before. They were squatting on the seminary campus, in the upper end of Fannings’ pasture, and all along the Fairfield road. Dust had risen, a solid blanket to lie from valley wall to valley wall, and every tree baked in its powdered coating; beyond Oak Ridge the stirring of the soldiers and their horses could be heard—a constant, muddled resonance as of untold tribes gossiping and herding together.