Elijah began, “Now, listen to me. I never was crazy about being a soldier until the war broke out. I never—”

“Oh, bother. We played soldier by the hour, and you were always captain.”

The other man cried, “Yes, and I’ll be a captain if I can get enough recruits! They have to be from eighteen to sixty years old: of course many of the younger ones lie. If I brought in forty men, I’d get to be a captain right away. Twenty-five—I get a lieutenancy. Fifteen, second lieutenant. I call that a handsome opportunity.”

“Handsome opportunity to get shot by some poor farmer from Tennessee, if that nets the world anything. No militia commission is worth—”

“Listen,” declared Elijah savagely, “we’re not going to be state troops. We’re going to be a United States organization from the start. The government’ll pay us.”

“How long do you have to sign up?”

“For the existing emergency.”

Bale emptied his pipe. A torrent of fireflies. “Who said this was an emergency? What do they want in Pennsylvania, anyway? I suppose they want Pock’s store and your house, and mine; I suppose they’d throw away their lives to capture the seminary or Codoris’ farm or Little Round Top. Don’t be a fool, Hud. If they go after anything it will be Philadelphia or Baltimore or Washington.”

“You must know all about it.”

“Well,” said Dan.

They were silent. You could hear them breathing through the gloom. Over in the mountains the ground rumbled.

“Thunder,” Elijah decided. “I’m going home before I get wet.” He started away, crushing through the weeds. In the hollow beyond him, frogs went glahh … glahh. “You’re not going to sit out in this field all night, are you?”

“Just awhile.”

They said, “Goodnight.” The rail fence creaked as Huddlestone crawled over it.

In Irene’s mouth was the taste of blood. She slid out her tongue and let its tip trace along the pattern of her mouth; she wondered if her lips were red, wet and dripping with the sap which had come out of her arm … Juice of my life, she thought again. They want to spill it. Huddlestone wants to open the bodies of men he’s never seen and doesn’t know, and rob them of a strange tonic which keeps them alive.

The mountains lunged together once more; the ground trembled softly. There was a blank, lavender spasm along the horizon.