“So they are.” Starbuck would probably not have noticed if the Yankees had been firing at the moon, but now that Thaddeus Bird pointed it out he saw that most of the northern rifle fire was indeed clipping at the leaves above Adam’s head. “He’s a fool!” Starbuck said angrily. “He just wants to die!”

“He’s making up for his father,” Bird explained. “Faulconer ought to be here, but he’s not, so Adam is sustaining the family honor, though if his father had been here, Adam would probably be having a fit of conscience. I’ve noticed how Adam usually benefits from Faulconer’s absence, haven’t you?”

“I promised his mother I’d keep him safe.”

Bird yelped with laughter. “More fool you. How are you supposed to do that? Buy him one of those ridiculous iron breastplates that the newspapers advertise?” Bird shook his head. “My sister only charged you with that responsibility, Starbuck, to belittle Adam. I assume he was present?”

“Yes.”

“My sister, you understand, married into a family of serpents and has been teaching them the secrets of venom ever since.” Bird chuckled. “But Adam is the best of them,” he allowed, “the very best. And brave,” he added.

“Very,” Starbuck said, and felt ashamed of himself, for he had done nothing brave in this morning’s clash. The confidence that had so filled him in the railroad depot at Rosskill had evaporated, stolen by the sight of his country’s flag. He had still not fired the revolver, nor was he sure that he could shoot at his own countrymen, but neither was he willing to desert his friends within the Legion’s ranks. Instead he fidgeted at the wood’s edge and watched the far-off gouts of smoke spitting from the Yankee guns. He wanted to describe the smoke to Sally and so he had watched it carefully, seeing that it was white at first and how it darkened rapidly into a grayish blue. Once, gazing intently down the slope, Starbuck had sworn he could see the dark trace of a missile in the smoky air, and seconds later he had heard a shell clatter destructively through the branches overhead. One of the northern guns had been placed beside a hayrick in the farmyard at the bottom of the slope and the flame of the gun’s firing had set the hay alight. The flames leaped and curled furiously, pumping a darker smoke into the gun-fouled air.

“Did you hear that poor Jenkins is gone?” Major Bird said in the tone of voice he might have used to remark that the spring was early this year, or that the vegetable crop was looking good.

“Gone?” Starbuck asked, because the imprecision of the word had somehow suggested that Roswell Jenkins had simply walked away from the battlefield.