There was a pause as Evans evidently uncapped a flask, pulled at it, then screwed the cap back into place. “Colonel,” he finally said, “why in hell’s name were you put out here? This is the left flank. We’re the last sons of bitches that anyone thought to position. We’re here, Colonel, in case the goddamned Yankees attack up the Warrenton Pike.”

“I have not yet received my orders,” Faulconer insisted.

“So what are you waiting for? A choir of goddamned angels? For Christ’s sake, Faulconer, we need men on this flank of the army!” Nathan Evans’s temper had plainly snapped, but he made an effort to explain matters calmly again. “Beauregard plans to push north on our right, so what if the shit-faced Yankees decided to push south on theirs? What am I supposed to do? Hurl kisses at them? Ask them to delay the war while you fetch your damned orders?”

“I shall fetch those orders from Beauregard,” Faulconer said stubbornly, “and no one else.”

“Then while you’re fetching your goddamned orders why don’t you move your goddamned Legion to the wooden bridge? Then if you’re needed you can march to the stone bridge over the Run and give my boys a hand.”

“I shall not move,” Faulconer insisted, “until I receive proper orders.”

“Oh, dear God,” Adam murmured for his father’s obduracy.

The argument went on two minutes more, but neither man would shift. Faulconer’s wealth had not accustomed him to taking orders, and least of all from diminutive, ill-smelling, bow-legged, coarse-tongued brutes like Nathan Evans, who, abandoning his attempts to snare the Legion into his brigade, stormed out of the tent and hauled himself into his saddle. “Come on, Meadows,” he snarled at his aide, and the two men galloped off into the darkness.

“Adam!” Faulconer shouted. “Pecker!”

“Ah, the second in command is summoned by the great leader,” Bird said caustically, then followed Adam into the tent.

“Did you hear that?” Faulconer demanded.

“Yes, Father.”

“So you understand, both of you, that whatever that man may order, you ignore. I shall bring you orders from Beauregard.”

“Yes, Father,” Adam said again.

Major Bird was not so obliging. “Are you ordering me to disobey a direct command from a superior officer?”

“I am saying that Nathan Evans is a lunkhead addicted to stone-jug whiskey,” the Colonel said, “and I did not spend a damned fortune on a fine regiment just to see it thrown away in his drink-sodden hands.”

“So I do disobey his orders?” Major Bird persisted.

“It means you obey my orders, and no one else’s,” the Colonel said. “Damn it, if the battle’s on the right then that’s where we should be, not stuck on the left with the dregs of the army. I want the Legion on parade in one hour. Tents struck, fighting order.”