“Kill that son of a bitch for me. Just kill him for me.” Sally paused. “It ain’t that I mind being here, Nate, in fact it’s probably the best place for me, but I hate that son of a bitch for telling me lies, and I hate that he thinks he got away with telling me lies, and I want that son of a bitch dead and I want the last thing he hears on this earth to be my name so he don’t ever forget why he’s gone to hell. Will you do that for me?”

Dear God, Starbuck thought, but how many sins were here brought into one foul bundle? How many entries would the Recording Angel be making in the Lamb’s Book of Life? What hope of redemption was there for a man who would contemplate murder, let alone commit it? How wide the gates of hell gaped, how searing the flames would be, how agonizing the lake of fire, and how long would all eternity stretch if he did not stand now, fetch his sword, and walk out from this den of iniquity into the cleansing rain. Dear God, he prayed, but this is a terrible thing, and if you will just save me now then I will never sin again, not ever.

He looked into Sally’s eyes, her lovely eyes. “Of course I’ll kill him for you,” he heard himself saying.

“You want to eat first, honey? Or later?”

Like a slash of lightning, white across the sky, he would be marvelous.

PART THREE

Orders Came From Richmond...

ORDERS CAME FROM RICHMOND THAT DIRECTED THE LEGION TO the rail junction at Manassas where the rails of the Orange and Alexandria met the Manassas Gap line. The orders did not arrive till three days after Washington Faulconer had returned from Richmond, and even then the permission seemed grudging. The order was addressed to the commanding officer of the Faulconer County Regiment, as though the Richmond authorities did not want to dignify Washington Faulconer’s achievement in raising the Legion, but at least they were allowing the Legion to join General Beauregard’s Army of Northern Virginia as Faulconer had requested. General Lee had enclosed a curt note regretting that it was not in his power to attach the “Faulconer County Regiment” to any one particular corps in Beauregard’s army, indeed he took care to note that, because the regiment’s availability had been made known to the authorities at such short notice and because the regiment had undertaken no brigade training of any kind, he doubted whether it could be used for anything other than detached duties. Washington Faulconer rather liked the sound of such duties until Major Pelham dryly noted that detached duties usually meant serving as baggage guards, railroad sentries or prisoner of war escorts.