Starbuck laughed, then a warning cry from the mix of Georgians and Louisianians who lay to his left made him peer over the corpse, on which the flies were already crawling and laying their eggs. The Yankees were in the cornfield again. He could not see them yet, but he could see a trio of banners showing over the shattered field and it would only be a few seconds before the Northern skirmishers came into sight. He pulled back his rifle’s hammer and waited. The flags, two Stars and Stripes and a regimental color, were well to his left, suggesting that these attackers were staying close to the turnpike rather than spreading across the whole cornfield. Still no skirmishers appeared. He could hear a band playing somewhere in the Yankee lines, its melody diluted to a delicate threnody by the insistent percussion of shells, canister, and rifle fire. Where the hell were the Yankee skirmishers? The heads of the leading rank of attackers were in view now and Starbuck suddenly realized that there were no skirmishers coming, just a column of formed troops advancing carelessly in the open. Maybe they believed the real battle was being fought in the West Woods where the cacophony of shell fire and rifles was loudest, but they were about to discover that the battered line of rebels in the pasture was not all dead men.

“Stand up!” a voice shouted from among the Georgian survivors.

“Stand!” Starbuck took up the cry and heard Swynyard echo it.

“Fire!” Starbuck shouted, and on either side of him the ragged remnants of the rebel line stood like scarecrows from among the bloodied dead and poured a volley into the compact Yankee formation. The attacker’s front file collapsed, then a roundshot ripped through the remaining ranks like a ball thumping into skittles.

Starbuck rammed a bullet home, propped the ramrod against his body, fired, and loaded again. The Yankees were spreading out, running crablike across the cornfield to match the rebel line with a line of their own. More blue uniforms were streaming up behind. God, he thought, but was there no end to the bastards? The rebel line coalesced into groups as men instinctively sought the company of others, but then, when the Yankee fire became torrid, they lay down again to fight from behind the corpses. Men lying down fired more slowly than men standing, and the slackening of rebel fire persuaded the Northern officers to shout their men forward, but the advance was checked when the rebel guns opened fire with case shot—metal balls that exploded in the air to rain down a shower of musket balls—and that deadly shower persuaded the Yankees to lie down. Truslow’s company was firing at the Yankees’ open flank, evidence that no Northerners had attacked down the East Woods, but then Starbuck saw Bob Decker running zigzag in the pasture, crouching low and evidently looking for someone. “Bob!” Starbuck shouted to attract his attention.

Decker ran to Starbuck and dropped beside him. “I’m looking for Swynyard, sir.”