He stood, unlooped Pocahontas’s reins, and walked slowly northward. He took off the hat and fanned his face. The horse followed placidly, its hooves falling heavily on the dirt road, which ran gently downhill between unfenced woodland and small pastures. The shadows of the trees stretched hugely long on the summer-bleached meadows. Way off to Starbuck’s right was a white farmhouse and a huge hayrick. The farm appeared deserted. The sound of rifle fire faded in the heavy air like a brushfire dying, and Starbuck thought how happy he had been in these last weeks. They had been healthy outdoor weeks, playing at soldiers and now it was all over. A wave of self-pity engulfed him. He was friendless, unwanted, useless; a victim, just as Sally was a victim, and he thought of the promise to revenge Sally by killing Ridley. So many stupid dreams, he thought, so many stupid dreams.

The road climbed into more woods, then dropped to an unfinished railway embankment beyond which lay the twin Sudley Fords. He mounted Pocahontas and crossed the smaller stream, glanced up at the white-boarded church on the hill above, then turned east across the wider, deeper Bull Run. He let the horse drink. The water flowed fast across rounded pebbles. The sun was in his eyes, huge, brilliant, blinding, like the fire of Ezekiel that would melt metal in the furnace.

He urged the horse out of the stream, across a pasture and into the welcome shadow of more woods where he slowed his pace, instinctively rebelling against the life of propriety that his father’s letter described. He would not do it, he would not do it! Instead, Starbuck decided, he would join the northern army. He would enlist as a private in some regiment of strangers. He thought of his promise to Sally, that he would kill Ethan, and he was sorry that the promise could not now be kept, and then he imagined meeting Ridley in battle and stabbing forward with a bayonet to pin his enemy to the ground. He rode slowly on, imagining himself a northern soldier, fighting for his own people.

The sound of musketry had changed subtly. The noise had been fading on the summer air, but now the sound became louder again, and more rhythmic and harder edged. He had not given the change any real thought, being too immersed in his own self-pity, but as he turned a slight bend in the road he saw that the new sound was not the sound of musketry at all, but the noise of axes.

Soldiers’ axes.