A very few men shuffled to attention, but most just stayed on the ground, supposing that Pecker had fallen off his perch as he had used to do in the schoolroom after he had been teased or otherwise goaded into a fury. Many of the Legion’s officers were having difficulty in suppressing their laughter and some, like Ridley, were jerking their heads back and forth like feeding birds.

“Nate.” Adam turned to his friend. “Will you please explain exactly what’s happening?”

“The enemy has got round our rear,” Nate explained loudly enough for the nearest companies to hear, “and Colonel Evans needs this regiment to help head off their attack. There’s no one but us and Colonel Evans’s men who can stop them, and if we don’t move, the day’s lost.”

“Like shit.” That was Ethan Ridley. “You’re a goddamned Yankee and you’re doing a Yankee’s work. There’s no enemy over there.”

Adam put a hand on Starbuck’s arm to restrain him. Then he stared north across the turnpike. Nothing moved there. Not even a leaf stirred. The landscape was heavy, somnolent, empty.

“I think we’d better stay here,” Adam suggested. Sergeant Major Proctor nodded agreement, and Major Bird looked up at Starbuck, appeal in his eyes.

“I saw the northerners,” Starbuck said.

“I’m not moving,” Ridley announced, and a murmur of agreement supported his stand.

“Why don’t we send an officer to have Evans’s orders confirmed?” Captain Hinton suggested sensibly. Hinton, like a dozen other officers and sergeants, had come to join the discussion.

“Don’t you have written orders, Nate?” Anthony Murphy asked.

“There wasn’t time to put anything in writing,” Starbuck said.

Ridley laughed sourly, while Thaddeus Bird looked uncertain, as though wondering if he had made the right decision.

“Where’s Evans now?” Hinton asked.

“He’s moving his men from the stone bridge to the Sudley Road.” Starbuck was feeling increasingly desperate.

“Is that the Sudley Road?” Thomas Truslow’s growl interrupted the proceedings.

“Yes,” Starbuck said. Truslow had been pointing north across the shallow valley.

“And you saw Yankees out there?”

“Beyond the fords, yes.”

Truslow nodded, but to Starbuck’s disappointment said nothing more. Across the turnpike a small group of gray-clad horsemen galloped up to the far crest, their horses leaving dark hoofprints in the turf. The Legion’s officers watched until the horsemen disappeared into the far trees. The horsemen were the only sign that anything might be happening beyond the army’s left flank, but there were so few of the cavalry that their maneuver was hardly convincing evidence. “It means nothing,” Adam said dubiously.