Thaddeus Bird managed to hold his laughter in check, though his head did jerk nervously back and forth as if he was about to burst into a fit of devilish cackles. “Am I to understand,” he finally managed to speak without laughing, “that you are also to be congratulated?”

The Colonel hid his anger at his brother-in-law’s effrontery. “I think you and I know each other well enough to dispense with an exchange of admiration, Thaddeus. Just be assured I’ll put your name forward when I’m in Richmond.”

“I didn’t come here to offer you admiration,” Thaddeus Bird said with tactless honesty, “but to suggest we send a work party to find some water. The men are parched.”

“Water? By all means, water. Then you and I should put our heads together and decide what’s needed for the future. Mr. Little tells me we’ve lost some band instruments, and we can’t afford to lose as many officers’ horses as we did today.”

Band instruments? Horses? Thaddeus Bird gaped at his brother-in-law, wondering if the broken bone had somehow drained Faulconer of his wits. What the Legion needed, Thaddeus Bird decided as the Colonel meandered on, was a McGuffey’s Reader in elementary soldiering, a child’s primer in rifle-fire and drill, but he knew it would be no good saying as much. Faulconer’s huge complacency had been puffed up by some fool’s praise, and he was already seeing himself as the conqueror of New York. Bird tried to sober the Colonel with a small dose of reality. “You’ll want the butcher’s bill, Faulconer?” He interrupted the Colonel. “The list of our dead and wounded?”

Washington Faulconer again had to hide his irritation. “Is it bad?” he asked guardedly.

“I have nothing with which to compare it, and sadly it’s incomplete. We misplaced a lot of men in the course of your brave victory, but we know for sure that at least a score are dead. Captain Jenkins is gone, and poor Burroughs, of course. I assume you’ll write to the widow?” Bird paused, but received no answer, so just shrugged and carried on. “Of course there can be other dead ones still out there. We know of twenty-two wounded fellows, some of them atrociously bad—”

“Twenty-three,” the Colonel interrupted, and offered Thaddeus Bird a modest smile. “I count myself a member of the Legion, Thaddeus.”

“So do I, Faulconer, and had already numbered you among its heroes. As I said, twenty-two, some of them grievously. Masterson won’t survive, and Norton has lost both his legs so…”

“I don’t need every detail,” Faulconer said peevishly.