“So you have read something other than your sacred texts.” Bird seemed disappointed, but then recovered his malevolence as he lowered his voice into a confiding hiss, saying, “But I shall tell you, Starbuck, that the slave of nature will marry the Colonel’s daughter! Why does that family contract such marriages? God knows, and he is not saying, though at present, mark my words, young Ridley is in bad odor with the Colonel. He has failed to recruit Truslow! Ah-ha!” Bird crashed a demonic and celebratory discord on the piano. “No Truslow! Ridley had better look to his laurels, had he not? The Colonel is not best pleased.”

“Who is Truslow?” Starbuck asked somewhat despairingly.

“Truslow!” Bird said portentously, then paused to play a foreboding couplet of bass notes. “Truslow, Starbuck, is our county’s murderer! Our outlaw! Our hardscrabble demon from the hills! Our beast, our creature of darkness, our fiend!” Bird cackled at this fine catalog of mischief, then twisted on the piano bench to face Starbuck. “Thomas Truslow is a rogue, and my brother-in-law the Colonel, who lacks common sense, wishes to recruit Truslow into the Legion because, he says, Truslow served as a soldier in Mexico. And so Truslow did, but the real reason, mark my words well, Starbuck, is that my brother-in-law believes that by recruiting him he can harness Truslow’s reputation to the greater glory of his ridiculous Legion. In brief, Starbuck, the great Washington Faulconer desires the murderer’s approval. The world is a strange place indeed. Shall we now go and buy petticoats?”

“You say Truslow’s a murderer?”

“I did indeed. He stole another man’s wife, and killed the man thus to obtain her. He then volunteered for the Mexican War to escape the constables, but after the war he took up where he left off. Truslow’s not a man to ignore his talents, you understand? He killed a man who insulted his wife, and cut the throat of another who tried to steal his horse, which is a rare jest, believe me, because Truslow must be the biggest horse thief this side of the Mississippi.” Bird took a thin and very dark cigar from one of his shabby pockets. He paused to bite the tip off the cigar, then spat the shred of tobacco across the room in the vague direction of a porcelain spittoon. “And he hates Yankees. Detests them! If he meets you in the Legion, Starbuck, he’ll probably hone his murdering talents still further!” Bird lit the cigar, puffed smoke and cackled amusement, his head nodding back and forth. “Have I satisfied your curiosity, Starbuck? Have we gossiped sufficiently? Good, then we shall go and see if the Colonel’s uniforms are truly ready and then we shall buy Anna her petticoats. To war, Starbuck, to war!”