“Leave ’em alone!” Truslow bellowed. “They’re our clowns!” He had spotted the Confederate flag in the center of the weirdly uniformed troops. “Face front!” he shouted. More of the Legion’s men were emerging from the road to form on the right of Truslow’s company, while the Legion’s officers, unsure exactly what was happening or who was commanding this sudden deployment, huddled excitedly at the edge of the trees. Major Bird shouted at the officers to join their companies, then looked to his right to see still more Confederate troops emerging from the trees to fill the wide gap between the Legion and the brightly uniformed Zouaves. The newcomers wore gray, and their arrival meant that a hasty defensive line was forming at the wood’s northern edge to face a long wide stretch of open ground that fell softly away from the zigzag fence, past a farmhouse and hayrick, to where a farther belt of woodland hid the distant Sudley Fords. The long open slope seemed designed for the defenders’ rifles, a killing ground lit by a merciless sun.

Colonel Evans galloped on his borrowed gray horse to where the Faulconer Legion was still forming its ranks. “Well done, Boston! Well done!” He greeted Starbuck, then added gesture to the congratulations by swerving his horse close by the northerner and slapping him hard on the back. “Well done! Is Colonel Faulconer here?”

“No, sir.”

“Who’s commanding?”

“Major Bird. By the colors, sir.”

“Bird!” Evans turned his horse hard, slewing soil and grass up from its hooves. “We just have to hold the bastards here. We have to give the bastards hell.” His nervous horse had stopped, blowing and shivering as Evans stared northward down the long open slope. “If they’re coming,” he added the words softly. His left hand was drumming nervously on his thigh. The German orderly with the “barrelito” of whiskey reined in behind the Colonel, as did a dozen staff officers and a mounted standard-bearer who carried the palmetto flag of South Carolina. “I’ve got two guns coming,” Evans told Bird, “but no more infantry, so what we’ve got here will have to do the job until Beauregard wakes up to what’s happening. Those gaudy thieves,” he nodded toward the far Zouaves, “are Wheat’s Louisiana Tigers. I know they look like whores on a picnic, but Wheat says they’re mean sons of bitches in a fight. The nearer fellows are Sloan’s South Carolinians, and I know they’ll fight. I’ve promised them all Yankee meat for their supper. How are your rogues?”

“Eager, sir, eager.” Major Bird, panting and hot after the fast pace of the advance, took off his hat and pushed a hand through his long, thinning hair. Behind him the thirsty men of the Legion were draining their canteens.