“I do, yes.” But this was hardly the time to explain how quixotic that decision was, nor why the sight of the axemen in the woods had prompted his sudden decision. It was not, he knew, a rational choice, but rather a revulsion against his family, and Starbuck was suddenly amazed at the way in which life presented such choices, and the carelessness with which those choices could be taken even though the resultant decision might utterly change everything that would ever follow, right down to the grave itself. How much history, he wondered, had been made by such flippant choices? How many important decisions were taken from mere pride or from lust or even out of sloth? All Starbuck’s religion, all his upbringing, had taught him that there was a plan to life and a divine purpose to man’s existence, yet this morning he had taken a shotgun to that idea and had blasted it clean out of God’s firmament, and it seemed to Starbuck that his world, as a result, was a better and clearer place.

“Since you are on our side,” Thaddeus Bird spoke from beside Starbuck’s left stirrup, “would you ride ahead and stop the men at the open land you promised me? I’d rather we didn’t stream into battle like a flock of sinners scurrying for repentance.” He waved Starbuck forward with a flourish of the Le Mat pistol.

By the time Starbuck reached the column’s head Sergeant Truslow had already ordered his men off the road. Company K had reached the crest of the hill where Starbuck had been expelled from the Legion by the Colonel and where the trees gave way to a long, gentle slope of empty pastureland. Truslow was lining his men in two ranks just short of a zigzag rail fence that had been placed to keep cattle from straying out of the grassland and into the trees. K Company’s commanding officer was nowhere to be seen, but Truslow did not need officers. He needed targets. “Make certain you’re loaded!” he growled at his men.

“Sergeant! Look!” A man at the right flank of the company pointed to the open country where a horde of oddly dressed troops had suddenly appeared from among the trees. The strange troops wore baggy bright red shirts, voluminous black and white pantaloons tucked into white gaiters, and floppy red caps tipped with long blue tassels. It was a regiment in fashionable Zouave uniform that aped the famous light infantry of France.