“Good for you, Nate.” Faulconer snapped back the cock of the lethal-looking revolver, pulled the trigger, then decided that gun was not right either. “You’ll need a gun, of course. Most of the rogues in the mountains don’t like Yankees. You’ve got your pass, of course, but it’s a rare creature who can read up there. I’d tell you to wear the uniform, except folk like Truslow associate uniforms with excise men or tax collectors, so you’re much safer in ordinary clothes. You’ll just have to bluff your way if you’re challenged, and if that doesn’t work, shoot one of them.” He chuckled, and Starbuck shuddered at the errand that now faced him. Not six months before he had been a student at Yale Theological College, immersed in an intricate study of the Pauline doctrine of atonement, and now he was supposed to shoot his way through a countryside of illiterate Yankee haters in search of the district’s most feared horse thief and murderer? Faulconer must have sensed his premonition, for he grinned. “Don’t worry, he won’t kill you, not unless you try and take his daughter or, worse, his horse.”

“I’m glad to hear that, sir,” Starbuck said drily.

“I’ll write you a letter for the brute, though God only knows if he can read. I’ll explain you’re an honorary southron, and I’ll make him an offer. Say fifty dollars as a signing bounty? Don’t offer him anything more, and for God’s sake don’t encourage him into thinking I want him to be an officer. Truslow will make a good sergeant, but you’d hardly want him at your supper table. His wife’s dead, so she won’t be a problem, but he’s got a daughter who might be a nuisance. Tell him I’ll find her a position in Richmond if he wants her placed. She’s probably a filthy piece of work, but no doubt she can sew or tend store.” Faulconer had laid a walnut box on his desk, which he now turned round so that the lid’s catch faced Starbuck. “I don’t think this is for you, Nate, but take a look at her. She’s very pretty.”

Starbuck raised the walnut lid to reveal a beautiful ivory-handled revolver that lay in a specially shaped compartment lined with blue velvet. Other velvet-lined compartments held the gun’s silver-rimmed powder horn, bullet mold and crimper. The gold-lettered label inside the lid read “R. Adams, Patentee of the Revolver, 79 King William Street, London EC.” “I bought her in England two years ago.” The Colonel lifted the gun and caressed its barrel. “She’s a lovely thing, isn’t she?”