“Coffee, Massa?” Nelson, Faulconer’s servant, brought two tin mugs of coffee from the fire he had tended all night behind the Colonel’s tent.

“You’re a great and good man, Nelson.” Starbuck sat up and reached for the coffee.

Sergeant Truslow was shouting at Company K, where someone had complained that there was no bucket with which to fetch water and Truslow was bellowing at the man to stop complaining and go steal a damned bucket.

“You don’t seem nervous.” Adam sipped the coffee, then grimaced at its harsh taste.

“Of course I’m nervous,” Starbuck said. In fact the apprehension was writhing in his belly like snakes boiling in a pit. “But I have an idea that I might be a good soldier.” Was that true, he wondered, or was he just saying it because he wanted it to be true? Or because he had boasted of it to Sally? And was that all it had been? A boast to impress a girl?

“I shouldn’t even be here,” Adam said.

“Nonsense,” Starbuck said briskly. “Survive one day, Adam, just one day, then help make peace.”

A few minutes past three o’clock two horsemen appeared in the regiment’s lines. One man was carrying a lantern with which he had lit his way across the hilltop. “Who are you?” the second man shouted.

“The Faulconer Legion!” Adam called back the answer.

“The Faulconer Legion? Jesus wept! We’ve got a Legion on our goddamned side now? The damned Yankees might as well give up.” The speaker was a short balding man with intense, button-black eyes that scowled from an unwashed face above a dirty black mustache and a ragged spade beard. He slid out of his saddle and paced into the firelight to reveal skeletally thin legs bowed like razor clam shells that looked entirely inadequate to support the weight of his big belly and broad, muscled torso. “So who’s in command here?” the strange man demanded.

“My father,” Adam said, “Colonel Faulconer.” He gestured at his father’s tent.

“Faulconer!” The stranger turned toward the tent. He was wearing a shabby Confederate uniform and was clutching a brown felt hat so battered and filthy that it might have been spurned by a sharecropper.

“Here!” The Colonel’s tent was lit within by lanterns that cast grotesque shadows every time he moved in front of their flames. “Who is it?”

“Evans. Colonel Nathan Evans.” Evans did not wait for an invitation but pushed through Faulconer’s tent flap. “I heard troops arrived here last night and I thought I’d say howdy. I’ve got half a brigade up by the stone bridge and if the bastard Yankees decide to use the Warrenton Pike then you and I are all that stands between Abe Lincoln and the whores in New Orleans. Is that coffee, Faulconer, or whiskey?”

“Coffee.” Faulconer’s voice was distant, suggesting he did not like Evans’s brusque familiarity.