“Cannon. Two six pounders that Faulconer discovered in Bowers Foundry. The guns were supposed to be melted down, but Faulconer’s bought them.”

“No profit for us there, then,” Delaney said.

“He needs ammunition”—Ridley paused to light a cigar—“and limbers. And caissons.”

“Ah! I hear the soft chink of dollars changing hands,” Belvedere Delaney said with delight, then turned to watch a regiment of Virginian militia march past with the fine precision of shuttles on a mechanical loom. “If all the troops were as good as that,” he told his half-brother, “then the war would be as good as won, but my Lord, you should see some of the rabble that turns up wanting to fight. Yesterday I saw a company that called itself McGarritty’s Mounted Lincoln Killers, McGarritty being their self-proclaimed colonel, you understand, and the fourteen mudsills shared ten horses, two swords, four shotguns and a hanging rope between them. The rope was twenty feet long, with a noose, and more than adequate for Abe, they told me.”

Ethan Ridley was not interested in the rarer breeds of southern soldier, but only in the profits he might make with his half-brother’s help. “You’ve got six-pounder ammunition?”

“In lavish quantities, I’m afraid,” Delaney confessed. “We’re virtually giving the round shot away. But we can certainly make an indecent profit on the canister and shell.” He paused to touch his hat to a state senator who had been avid for war before the first guns fired, but who had since discovered a lame leg, a crooked back and a troublesome liver. The invalid politician, propped up with lavish cushions in his carriage, feebly raised his gold-headed cane in response to Delaney’s salute. “And I can certainly find some limbers and caissons at a wicked profit,” Delaney went on happily.

His happiness was occasioned by the profits that stemmed from Washington Faulconer’s insistence that not one boot or button be bought for his Legion from the state, which obstinacy Delaney had seen as his opportunity. Delaney had used his extensive friendships within the state government to buy goods from the state armories himself, which goods he sold on to his half-brother, who acted as Washington Faulconer’s purchasing agent. The price of the goods invariably doubled or even quadrupled during the transaction, and the brothers shared the profits equally. It was a happy scheme that had, among other things, brought Washington Faulconer twelve thousand dollars’ worth of Mississippi rifles that had cost Belvedere Delaney just six thousand dollars, forty-dollar tents that had cost sixteen dollars, and a thousand pairs of two-dollar boots that the brothers had purchased for eighty cents a pair. “I imagine a gun limber must cost at least four hundred dollars,” Delaney now mused aloud. “Say eight hundred to Faulconer?”