Billy Blythe was talking to Dennison now. The two men had found a private hollow just below the crest and settled there to smoke cigars. “I lost my ma and pa, just like you,” Billy Blythe told Dennison. In truth his father had not been lost so much as never found after impregnating Blythe’s mother, who was still very much alive but very far from her son’s thoughts. “Hard being an orphan,” Blythe said.

Dennison, grateful for the sympathy, but still sullen, shrugged.

“Reckon it was harder for you, Tom, than for me,” Blythe said generously.

Dennison gave a slight nod, then sucked on the cigar. From far away came the muted thud of big guns bruising the air. He guessed it was a federal battery shelling the rebels on the hills north of the trapped garrison. “I survived,” he said grimly.

“Oh, sure, we survive,” Blythe agreed energetically, “but it’s more than that, Tom. What people like Starbuck never see is that we orphans are harder than most. Tougher. Got to be. I mean you and I didn’t have proper homes, did we? Not like Starbuck. Or maybe he does see. Maybe he does understand that we’re tougher, which is why he’s jealous.”

“Jealous?” Dennison asked. He had never thought Starbuck jealous of him. Scornful, maybe, but never jealous.

“Stands out a mile,” Blythe said seriously. “That’s why he holds you down, Tom.” Blythe paused to pluck a shred of tobacco from his mouth. “Hell, he knows you ought to have been the battalion commander. The thing about these men,” here Blythe jerked his cigar toward the men crowded about the stalled cannon, “is that they need discipline. Real hard discipline. Starbuck plays up to them, wants them to like him. He’s easy on them. Hell, you or I would have whipped the rank off Potter the moment he got drunk, but not Starbuck. He went easy on him. Soft. But being soft with this sort of battalion won’t work, not in battle. You know that and I know that.”

Dennison nodded agreement. “Starbuck let Rothwell off the horse. The day he arrived at Camp Lee. Soft, you’re right,” he said.

“Rothwell!” Blythe said. “Now there’s a dangerous man.” He fell silent, apparently thinking. “Don’t help, not being soft on men like Rothwell,” he went on. “Not that I’m the right fellow to bring discipline. I know that. I’m too easygoing. I can see what’s wrong, but I ain’t got the nature to do anything about it, but then I ain’t aiming to stay on here anyway.”

“You’re not?” Dennison inquired a little too eagerly.

“Hell, no. I’m fixing to go back to Louisiana. That’s my patch, Tom, not Virginia. I didn’t ask to be put here, I wanted to go home where I belong, and just as soon as this campaign’s done I aim to be going south. Five weeks? Six, maybe? Then Billy Tumlin goes home. I’d rather be fighting Yankees in Louisiana than up here, and besides, a Virginia regiment ought to be led by a Virginian, don’t you reckon?”