“Faulconer?” Evans barked a brief, humorless noise that might have been laughter or was maybe a growl. “You mean that bastard who thinks he’s too good to fight with my brigade? Faulconer doesn’t have men, boy, he has white-livered fairies. Milksops. Mudsills. Black-assed, shad-bellied, shit-faced, pussy-hearted trash. And you’re one of that scum, are you?”

Starbuck recoiled from the stream of insult, but somehow managed to persevere with his explanation. “I found northern troops in the woods beyond the Sudley Fords. A lot of them, and coming this way. I was on my way back to warn you.”

“Bastard’s lying like a rug, Colonel,” one of the two Louisianan cavalrymen interjected. They were whip-lean, rough-bearded horsemen with weather-darkened faces and wild scary eyes, reminding Starbuck of Sergeant Truslow. They were outrageously armed; each man carrying a carbine, two pistols, a saber and a bowie knife. One of the two cavalrymen had a bleeding cut of freshly slaughtered pork hanging from his saddle bow, while the other, who had efficiently relieved Starbuck of his three dollars and sixteen cents, had two unplucked chickens hanging from his crupper strap by their broken necks. That man had also found the letter from Starbuck’s father and his brother’s laissez-passer, but, being illiterate, he had taken no interest in the papers which he had carelessly shoved back into Starbuck’s shirt pocket. “He weren’t weaponed,” the laconic cavalryman continued, “and he didn’t have no uniform on him. I reckons he’s a spy, Colonel, sir. Just listen to the sumbitch’s voice. He ain’t no southron.”

A shell thumped into the meadow a dozen paces in front of the small group. It exploded, jarring a seismic thump through the soil and rooting up chunks of red dirt. The sound, even muffled by the earth, was a violent, scary crack that made Starbuck wince with shock. A scrap of stone or metal whistled close to Evans’s shabby brown hat, but the colonel did not even flinch. He just glanced at one of his orderlies who was mounted on a piebald horse. “Intact, Otto?”

“Ja, Colonel, intact.”

Evans looked back to Starbuck, who had struggled to his feet. “So where did you see these federal troops?”

“Maybe a half mile beyond the Sudley Fords, sir, on a road that leads east.”

“In the woods, you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

Evans picked with an opened penknife at his teeth, which were dark and rotten from chewing tobacco. His sceptical eyes looked up and down Starbuck, and did not seem to like what they saw. “So how many federal troops did you see, cuffee?”

“I don’t know, sir. A lot. And they’ve got cannon with them.”