“Got ourselves a Yankee major,” a second man said, peering at Adam’s badges. “A real major.”

Someone kicked Adam’s right leg to see if he was conscious. Adam cried aloud in pain and opened his eyes to see a ring of bearded, suntanned faces. One of the men stooped and began searching Adam’s pockets, pulling his coat roughly and jarring pain through Adam’s side with each tug. “A doctor, please,” Adam managed to say.

“Sorry son of a bitch, ain’t he?” a man said, then laughed.

Another man had found the gold and that caused new whoops of excitement, and then a third man brought the wondrous saber from the field where Adam had discarded the blade. The leader of the rebels, a thin, clean-shaven man, took the saber and slid it from the scabbard. He read the inscription and, though he knew no French, he could recognize the names. “Faulconer,” he said aloud, then, with wonder in his voice, “Lafayette! Son of a bitch.” The man wore a black hilted saber at his side, a weapon as crude as a butcher’s blade, and now he replaced it with Adam’s belt and scabbard before looking again at the inscription on the French made blade. “Faulconer. That’s a Virginia name.”

“His name’s Faulconer,” the man who had searched Adam said. He had found the letter from the Inspector General’s Department in Washington that appointed Adam to McClellan’s army. The letter stated he was inspecting signal arrangements and it was the piece of paper designed by Colonel Thorne to explain Adam’s presence in the Federal Headquarters. Now it only served to make things worse.

“What the hell’s a signal inspector doing in Frederick?” the rebel leader asked.

“And carrying gold,” another man added.

The leader squatted at Adam’s feet and pushed the saber’s tip into the underside of Adam’s chin. “Are you a Virginian, Major?”

Adam stared up at the blue sky.

“I asked you a question, boy,” the leader said, giving the saber a prod.

“An American,” Adam said. He was feeling faint. He could sense the blood flowing out of his wound, seeping into the ground and making him delirious, but the pain was magically subsiding. He was warm, almost comfortable. “I’m an American,” he managed to say.

“Hell, we’re all Americans,” the rebels’ leader said. “But are you a Virginian?”

Adam said nothing. He was thinking of Bessie, who had looked so black and slim and beautiful as she had pulled the blue dress over her smiling face. He thought of Julia Gordon in Richmond. He thought of the dream in New England; the preacher’s house, the books, the kitchen, the sound of children laughing in a tree-shaded yard.

“Son of a bitch is crying,” one of the rebels crowed.

“So would you if your ass had been shot off,” another man said, provoking a gust of laughter.

“Hell of a shot, Sam,” a third man said admiringly, “must have been forty rods if it was an inch.”

“Fifty at least,” Sam said.