“Yes, sir, she is.” And the gun did indeed seem beautiful in the soft morning light that filtered past the long white drapes. The shape of the weapon was marvelously matched to function, a marriage of engineering and design so perfectly achieved that for a few seconds Starbuck even forgot exactly what the gun’s function was.

“Very beautiful,” Washington Faulconer said reverently. “I’ll take her to the Baltimore and Ohio in a couple of weeks.”

“The Baltimore…,” Starbuck began, then stopped as he realized he had not misheard. So the Colonel still wanted to lead his raid on the railroad? “But I thought our troops at Harper’s Ferry had blocked the line, sir.”

“So they have, Nate, but I’ve discovered the cars are still running as far as Cumberland, then they move their supplies on by road and canal.” Faulconer put the beautiful Adams revolver away. “And it still seems to me that the Confederacy is being too quiescent, too fearful. We need to attack, Nate, not sit around waiting for the North to strike at us. We need to set the South alight with a victory! We need to show the North that we’re men, not craven mudsills. We need a quick, absolute victory that will be written across every newspaper in America! Something to put our name in the history books! A victory to begin the Legion’s history.” He smiled. “How does that sound?”

“It sounds marvelous, sir.”

“And you’ll come with us, Nate, I promise. Bring me Truslow, then you and I will ride to the rails and break a few heads. But you need a gun first, so how about this beast?” The Colonel offered Nate a clumsy, long-barreled, ugly revolver with an old-fashioned hook-curved hilt, an awkward swan-necked hammer and two triggers. The Colonel explained that the lower ring trigger revolved the cylinder and cocked the hammer, while the upper lever fired the charge. “She’s a brute to fire,” Faulconer admitted, “until you learn the knack of releasing the lower trigger before you pull the upper one. But she’s a robust thing. She can take a knock or two and still go on killing. She’s heavy and that makes her difficult to aim, but you’ll get used to her. And she’ll scare the wits out of anyone you point her at.” The pistol was an American-made Savage, three and a half pounds in weight and over a foot in length. The lovely Adams, with its blue sheened barrel and soft white handle, was smaller and lighter, and fired the same size bullet, yet it was not nearly as frightening as the Savage.