Adam sighed. He had ridden with the rebel army as late as the spring campaign and knew there could never be 170,000 men in gray coats. “How many were bivouacked at Frederick City?” he asked.

James looked owlishly solemn. “At least a hundred thousand. We have direct reports from the town.”

Adam suspected the townspeople’s reports were about as much use as the rumors printed in the newspapers. “What does our cavalry say?” he asked.

James frowned and probed his cheek with a forefinger before extracting another sliver of bone. “Very skeletal, this chicken,” he said disapprovingly.

“Maybe it’s rabbit,” Adam said. “So what did the cavalry say?”

James peered at his food in the candlelight. “Don’t think it’s rabbit. Rabbits don’t possess wishbones, do they? I’m sure they don’t. And I don’t think our cavalry were ordered as far as Frederick City today. In fact, I’m sure they weren’t. Maybe the problem is that our cooks can’t joint chickens properly. I found one kitchen fellow attacking a carcass with a cleaver! Can you credit that? With a cleaver! No attempt to joint the bird, just hacking it apart. Never seen such behavior. Wasn’t even plucked properly either. I told him, do as your mother does, I said, run the skin over a candle flame and that will get rid of the feather-gristle, but I don’t think he listened.”

“So why don’t you and I go to Frederick City,” Adam ignored the culinary problems, “tomorrow morning. At dawn.”

James blinked at Adam. “For what purpose?”

“Because if a hundred thousand men were encamped at Frederick,” Adam said, “they’ll have left traces. Fire-marks. Say ten men to a campfire? So if we count the scorched patches in the fields we’ll have a shrewd idea of Lee’s numbers.”

James laughed gently. “My dear Adam, do you have any idea how long it would take two men to count ten thousand burned patches of grass?” He shook his head. “I appreciate your interest, I surely do, but I don’t think we need, if you’ll forgive my bluntness, amateur help in the Secret Service. Mind you, if you can help us with some signaling problems, we would be grateful. You’re something of an expert on telegraphy, aren’t you? Our fellows seem unable to grasp the equipment. They probably send their messages with cleavers!” He snorted with amusement at the thought.

But Adam had no time for heavy-fisted telegraphers, but only to indulge his dull anger at the slowness of the North’s army and the plodding obtuseness of its Secret Service. He decided he would ride to Frederick City himself in the dawn, not to count fire patches, but to talk to the people in the town who might give him some indication of Lee’s numbers. Civilians, Adam knew, usually overestimated numbers of troops, but maybe there was someone in the town who could give him some facts that the U.S. Cavalry had not found time to seek out themselves.

He saddled his horse before the dawn and was well through the picket line by the time the sun blazed up behind to cast the horse and rider’s shadow long across the verge of the white dusty road. He breakfasted as he rode, eating bread and honey and drinking cold tea as his path wended north eastward in parallel with the unfinished railbed of the Metropolitan Rail Road. He felt redundant and useless. In truth he had small purpose for visiting Frederick, for he knew that whatever he discovered, if he found anything at all, would be discounted by Pinkerton’s staff, who were busy constructing their own elaborate picture of the rebel army, but Adam was filling in time because any activity was better than another indolent day in McClellan’s camp.