Another storm of missiles flicked at the ground and snatched men back like puppets caught on whiplashed strings. The Yankee gunners were doing well, aiming their canister just short of the advancing rebels so that the massed musket balls bounced up into their faces. The taste of vomit was sour in Starbuck’s throat, but somehow he was managing to say the Twenty-Third Psalm to himself, and the realization that he was falling back on the faith of his father both surprised him and gave him a steadying moment. He saw that the battalion had crossed the floor of the valley and was beginning to climb its farther slope. The Northern infantry had almost disappeared, not by retreating, but by taking cover among the rocks and bushes on the crest. Below them the Yankee skirmishers were hurrying back up the slope between the smoke bursts of the rebel shells, then suddenly the crest itself was crowned by smoke as the defending infantry opened fire. The sound rippled across the valley, a splintering crackle that came an instant after the smoke appeared. The bullets whistled overhead, though a few thumped into bodies with a dull sound like a butcher’s cleaver falling. Blood misted as men fell backward. “Keep moving!” someone shouted behind Starbuck. “Keep moving! Go on! Go on!” Starbuck was in the broken ranks now, pushing on ahead, his body behaving like a leader even if his mind was still reeling between terror and the need to keep his left-hand companies moving up the slope.

Confederate artillery at last targeted the Yankee guns and shell-bursts cracked in the hot air above the sweating gunners. “Come on!” Starbuck screamed, amazed he could speak at all, “come on!” Every nerve in his body was screaming for him to turn and run, to find a hole and shelter for the rest of his life while the world went mad about him, but the shreds of pride and stubbornness kept him going and even made him go faster. He turned to shout encouragement to his stark-faced, clumsy men encumbered by bedrolls and packs and pouches and scabbards so that they lumbered forward with open mouths. “Come on!” he called, anger in his voice, though the anger was only at himself. The battalion was still two hundred yards from the crest, too far to order the charge, but he sensed that if he did not keep the battalion moving now, then it would go to ground and refuse to advance ever again. The Yellowlegs had already achieved far more than they had in their first battle, but to wipe the stain off their reputation they needed to keep going to victory. Rebel shells were screaming close overhead, their explosions punching the eardrums and throwing up fountains of dirt and smoke along the crest. The Yankee rifle fire had become ragged as men fired whenever they were loaded and Starbuck, seeing how sporadic were the bursts of muzzle smoke, realized that there was little more than a heavy skirmish line left on the crest. The Yankees were not going to fight for this ridgeline, but just inflict some casualties before slipping away and that thought gave him encouragement. Maybe he would not die in this cow-dunged pasture, but maybe he would give the despised battalion the victory it so badly needed, and he shouted again for his men to keep going forward, only this time the shout turned into a rebel yell and suddenly the remaining attackers were shrilling the sound with him as they broke into a clumsy run.