No smoking, the order whispered off across the pasture. Bayonets twisted around steel barrels; the same sound was ringing ahead; there were advanced masses of troops. Them Looswanna boys goes fust. Dan thought, if I can get across the road before anyone turns back. The dead man’s pants made a tremendous brushing, swaddled over his own clothes as they were. He touched the rim of the wall: stones wedged firmly together, and not a one would slide. He squeezed across and crouched, holding his breath. A group of men loomed tall beside him, holding the sunset on their shoulders.

They did not see him. “Oui,” said one. It sounded as if he added: Le too onsommell. French, Dan thought. I don’t know it; whatever it means. Them Looswanna boys. The men fanned past with an eager crunching. He ran across the road and lay down; there was a post fence directly ahead lining somebody’s pasture-lot, and he hitched beneath the bottom rail. The grass lay thick, bent under a blanket of dust. Forward, came the mutter.

Another wall, a ruined one: it chased up the slope and continued as bushes. Dan came beside the ghostly line, and pressed ahead with them. They were far to the east and south of Gettysburg, swung half around the hump of the cemetery hill and now climbing toward it from a creek valley at the Culp farm. On the height ahead there was noise: hosts and horses dwelling among the rocks. A soldier began to cough. Stop that! and the man gagged in his effort to obey.

Gorilla loomed up, beyond the sultry breadth of bushes; gorilla walking slowly, taking a few steps backward, turning and marching forward again. He hissed at Dan, “Close up! They can’t dress on you!” and Bale crowded close beside the hedge. On the opposite side another man was working his way ahead; the Cougher; he still made odd chucklings. You couldn’t see buttons or buckles or the detailed shape of a weapon—only a smear, only smears trying to hold their breath and proceed as quietly as possible.

In front, surprisingly near, a man yelled: “Who’s there? Lutz, have you got skirmishers out in front?” A solitary musket banged, farther on the right: soor, said the air. Fire! A thin command. Fire—at will! All the way from the side of the valley came the stutter of guns, little scraps of orange splitting out. The rebels started, ahhhhhhhhh, and now the line was running.