One hundred, two hundred, three hundred yards. That was asking a lot of a gun. Of course you could take any ordinary old shooting-iron and bang away up to half a mile, and trust to luck that the bullet might find lodgment in the ragged yeast of Yankees. But now there was no mass of purple Yanks, wheeling and sparkling; only an elusive row of smoke-stabs behind that stone fence and in the fringe of timber. On his left, Welch Myson called: “Hey, you Rufe.”

“Ya.”

“Yore so blame still Ah thought you was kilt.”

“Ah ain’t kilt yet.” The line of hidden rifles pecked at him.

He pushed the Spencer out, and rested its barrel in a green crotch of thistle. Through the higher woods he could see a huddle of riders who scouted mysteriously under the shade. Then they came into the smoke; half screened by fences and lone trees, they drifted along the ridge. Like to have me a big telescope, Rufe Canty thought—like that officer on the big horse. Like to have me a telescope big as a locomotive; reckon I could see all the way back home, with a telescope like that. If I aim mighty high, I reckon I could hit that horse.

He pulled the trigger, and the butt mauled his sore shoulder again. Watching through the hot mist, he could see the Yankee officer falling limply from the horse, half a side fall, half a backward fall, and his arms flying wide as he went. The horse leaped nervously and turned, sniffing. Then dull smoke got in the way—blurred all the dark blue shapes, and dulled the gleam of metal about them. Rufe Canty’s throat was suddenly dry. By God, he said to himself. What do you know.

He called, “Hi, Welch Myson. Jest got me a big Yank, clean on top that hill.”

“You did like so much hell.”

“Ah hope to shout, Ah did. He was hoss-back. Reckon he was captin.”

Then the yell and the orders pulled him out of his nest. He plunged forward through the thistle brake, bending low, holding the Spencer tight in both hands. He began to scream with the rest of them, burning his throat by the very friction of sound: whooooo … they made a few rods forward; it began to be muddy under foot; there were willows, bending, nodding, green tufts flying as the Yankees talked back. A solid volley chewed across their front—here was a new cry ahead, and the feeling of an unconscious enemy who suddenly roused up and hit out with both fists … They crouched along the willows, and peeked at the ridge ahead. “Thar come them ole black hats,” Welch Myson squawked. “That hain’t no milish—hit’s the Army of the Patomack, shore—”