Again Dan’s guide said, “Come on.” He halted at last before a pair of booted legs stuck out of a weedy tangle alongside the cemetery fence. The air smelled … my dead horse, Dan thought. No. It is at home. There must be more of them … Lieutenant Schmidt saluted the sprawling legs. “Colonel Yotes. Lieutenant Schmidt reporting, sir.”

The legs moved reluctantly and a wan, bearded face pushed up out of the weeds. “Yes, Schmidt.”

“This man just entered our lines. Says he’s a civilian, sir.”

Slowly the colonel turned his head. He blinked at Dan. Bale told him, My name’s Bale, live in Gettysburg, I had to come inside the Union lines and this was the only way I could come.

“Why did you have to come?”

“It was necessary for me to see one of your officers.”

“My—officers?” The colonel’s jaws creaked.

Lieutenant Schmidt said, uninterestedly: “He says he’s looking for the Seventy-second Pennsylvania Volunteers, sir.”

“They’re not in this corps, my man.”

“I don’t know. It’s the Second Corps.”

“What ails your forehead?”

“Someone threw a stone.”

Colonel Yotes looked at Dan’s legs. The robins yodeled behind him; in the southeast the dawn kept crumbling among sodden powder-charges. “Why are you wearing those pants?” he asked.

“I thought it would make it easier,” Dan answered. “Your men came near shooting me as it was. I was on the hillside all night.”

The officer lay down suddenly; there was water in his eyes, and now Dan saw that one sleeve of his blouse was black and sticky. He said through a narcotic weariness, “Perhaps you are a spy. Deliver him to the provost, Schmidt.”

“Yes, sir,” snapped the lieutenant. He saluted and left-faced as crisply as if made of stiff paper. “This way,” he ordered Dan. They went through the gate into the graveyard; ahead loomed the barrels of cannon, smooth surprises amid the acacias. Men were polishing out he big tubes with greasy rags. The shod hoofs of tethered horses grated against gravestones. “Here,” Lieutenant Schmidt cracked out, suddenly. He flung a glance over his shoulder, and the rounded slope hid his regiment and his commander. He looked Bale squarely in the eyes for the first time since they had left the stone wall.

“His Congressman got this regiment for him three weeks ago. Spy! Provost!” He laughed; his face was twenty years old, his eyes were forty, and when he spoke it was with no discernible accent. “Get to hell out of this, and don’t come back. I want some breakfast. Raus!” He double-quicked back down the incline, holding his scabbard with one hand and hurdling trimly over a dead mule in his path.