The canister fire had stopped. Starbuck was aware of only the sounds he was making himself. The thump of boots, the harsh scrape of breath, the desperate yelping of the war cry, the clank of his tin mug against the cartridge box, the slapping of the revolver holster against the back of his thigh. Something was burning on the crest, pumping a thick smoke into the air. Another rebel shell burst, its blast bending a bush sideways and shredding leaves among the smoke. Potter’s men were in the ranks now and Potter himself was running close to Starbuck and screaming like a wild man. Starbuck blundered through a scorched, smoking patch where a shell had exploded. A Yankee skirmisher lay beyond, his head back, his hands curled, and his guts spilt into the churned dirt. Men were at last visible on the crest. They stood, aimed, fired, then dropped to reload. A bullet whistled its eerie minie sound near Starbuck, and he began to scream like Potter, a feral, terrible noise that came from the battle-mix of terror and glee. All he wanted to do now was punish the bastards who had so nearly unmanned him. He wanted to kill and kill.

“Come on!” he shouted, drawing out the last word as at last the attackers reached the gentle crest. Colonel Swynyard had been wrong and there were rifle pits along the ridge, but the Yankees were already abandoning them and going back to their next defense line, which lay on a farther ridge. The Yankee cannon were being dragged by horses back to that ridge where more guns waited and more infantry, but Starbuck had no orders to attack that far ridge. His job had been to push the Northern forces off this ridge and it was done, and he was running into clear air, blessed air, air untouched by bullets or shells, though he knew it would only be seconds before the far guns opened fire.

“Kill them!” he shouted, then leapt into a vacated rifle pit and leveled his rifle across the pile of soil at its rear. He aimed at a retreating Yankee and pulled the trigger. The hammer dropped onto a useless percussion cap and he swore, broke a fingernail levering the cap away, put another in its place, and tried again. The rifle hammered into his shoulder and its cloud of smoke hid his target. Potter was beside him, laughing. The rest of the battalion, those who had stayed the course, were in the other abandoned rifle pits and firing at the Yankee infantry as they hurried away.

The far Yankee cannon opened fire. The shells flashed overhead and thumped behind as Swynyard’s Brigade went to ground on the captured ridge. Starbuck reloaded the rifle then turned to see where his men were. He could see the color sticking up from a rifle pit, he could see a scatter of wounded men crawling slowly on the slope beyond, and he could see the Legion still climbing the hill. He turned to look north and was amazed to see the land drop away to where, between the shoulders of two humped hills, he could glimpse a silver river sliding eastward. Beyond the river, in Maryland, there was smoke on the hills where other Confederate troops were tightening Jackson’s grim ring about Harper’s Ferry.