The other companies, seeing the extra snap and pride in Company K, had begun to lengthen their own time on the parade ground. Major Pelham was delighted, the Colonel held his peace, while Sergeant Major Proctor, who had been Washington Faulconer’s bailiff, deviled through his drill books to find new and more complicated maneuvers for the rapidly improving Legion to practice. Soon even old Benjamin Ridley, Ethan’s father, who had been a militia officer in his younger days, but who was now so fat and ill that he could scarcely walk, grudgingly admitted that the Legion was at last beginning to look like real soldiers.

Ethan Ridley had returned from Richmond with caissons, limbers and ammunition for the two artillery pieces. The Legion was now fully equipped. Each man had a double-breasted gray jacket with two rows of brass buttons, a pair of ankle-high boots, gray trousers and a round cap with a crown and visor stiffened with pasteboard. He carried a knapsack for his spare clothes and personal belongings, a haversack for his food, a canteen for water, a tin cup, a cap box on his belt to hold the percussion caps that fired his rifle, and a cartridge box for the ammunition. His weapons were one walnut-stocked 1841 Model Rifle, a sword-handled bayonet and whatever personal weapons he chose to carry. Nearly all the men carried bowie knives, which they were certain would prove lethal in the hand-to-hand combat they confidently expected. Some men had revolvers, and indeed, as the June days lengthened and the rumors of impending battle intensified, more and more parents provided their soldier sons with revolvers in the belief that the weapon would be a life-saver in battle.

“What you need,” Truslow told his men, “is one rifle, one mug, one haversack, and damn all else.” He carried a bowie knife, but only for scavenging and cutting brush. Everything else, he told them, was just weight.

The men ignored Truslow, trusting instead in the Colonel’s largesse. Each man was issued an oilcloth groundsheet in which he rolled two gray blankets. Washington Faulconer’s only economy was a refusal to buy the Legion any greatcoats. The war, he declared, could not possibly last into the cold weather, and he was not spending his money to provide the men of Faulconer County with churchgoing coats, but only to make a great name for themselves in the history of southern independence. He did provide each man with a sewing kit, towels and a clothes brush, while Doctor Billy Danson insisted that every Legionnaire also carry a roll of cotton strips for bandages.