“Wait!” Swynyard was loping along the back of his line. His men were lying down and, at a casual glance, they looked like a solid brigade, but Swynyard knew that too many of the prone men were already dead. They had been killed in the first attack, and too many of the living would soon share their fate. Swynyard looked behind but could see no more reinforcements. “We hold them here, boys,” he called aloud. “Hold them here. Wait till you see their belt buckles. Don’t waste bullets. Hold hard, boys, hold hard.”

More Yankees were pushing through the East Woods. The rebels had nothing there but Truslow’s heavy skirmish line, and after trading a handful of shots, that line pulled back rather than be overrun. Starbuck saw Potter emerge from the trees and ran over to join him. “What’s happening?”

“Thousands of the sons of bitches,” Potter said breathlessly. His eyes were bright, his face drawn, and his breath hoarse.

“Brigade attack,” Truslow, who had followed Potter from the trees, offered more usefully. He put his men at the end of Swynyard’s line where they crouched, waiting for the storm to break.

The rebel gunners had seen the gray skirmishers come out of the East Woods and, reckoning that there were Yankees to be killed, switched some of their fire onto the trees. Shells hammered into the timber where great elms swayed as if caught in a hurricane. Branches splintered down with the iron shards of shell fragments, leaf scraps blew like rain. More shells poured into the woods while the other rebel guns cracked their loads of canister at the Yankees in the cornfield, who were at last in range of the waiting rifles.

“Fire!” Swynyard called.

The rifles began their work, but every downed Yankee was replaced by more men from the rear ranks. The edge of the wood was infested by Yankees, who hid behind trees and shot at the rebels in the open pasture. The Northern skirmishers targeted the rebel gunners, trying to suppress the deadly canister, and minute by minute their bullets did their work. The Northern line came forward in small groups, knelt, opened fire, then darted forward again. The sound of the Northern volleys was like shredding calico or like a canebrake burning. There was no beginning and no end to the rifles’ noise, just a continuous splintering horror that filled the air with whistling lead. The rebels began to glance behind, wondering where salvation lay in this open-air hell. The smoke stretched in another thin cloud above the cornfield.