Starbuck said the Lord’s prayer, but before he had reached the words “Thy kingdom come” the sergeant died. His belly heaved up in a massive spasm and his mouth suddenly brimmed with blood that spilled down both cheeks. He shook his head, then slumped back still.

Starbuck prized the dead fingers away from his hand. He was shaking himself, terrified by the horror of Rothwell’s death, and when he looked up to stare across the fields where the Yankees had been formed he could not see because of the tears in his eyes. He cuffed the tears away and saw that the Yankees were still waiting at the far side of the two wide fields. Other Northerners were retreating toward those troops, pursued by rebel bullets. For the moment the Yankees had been hurled clean out of the East Woods, but not, it seemed, out of the cornfield, for Starbuck could still hear the full fury of rifle and cannon fire still thundering and cracking on the far side of the woods.

He stood and slung his rifle. It was time to sort out the chaos, to find the survivors of his battalion and report to Swynyard. He walked through the trees and back across the Smoketown Road. A Yankee reeled in front of him—dazed, whimpering, and wearing a mask of blood through which his frightened eyes showed white. Two prisoners were being prodded toward the rear by a small man with a bristly beard and a smoothbore musket. Two squirrels, killed by shellfire, hung from the rebel’s belt. “Dinner!” he called cheerfully to Starbuck, then pushed the two frightened Yankees onward. The wounded and dead lay in clumps where the fighting had been fiercest and everywhere a sheen of gunsmoke hung between the trees like a hint of autumn mist. So many scraps of leaf had been blown from the trees by shells and bullets that the ground between the trunks was green as parkland. Starbuck, suddenly overcome with weariness and with despair for Rothwell’s miserable death, leaned against a bullet-scarred trunk. Sweat trickled down his face.

He was feeling in his pouch, hopping to find a cigar among the handful of remaining cartridges, when a familiar figure showed among the distant trees. There were a score of rebels in sight, most of them searching the dead for plunder and ammunition, but there was something peculiarly furtive about the plumpish figure who advanced through the trees with an elaborate caution, then suddenly saw something and darted to one side and knelt on the ground.

Tumlin. God damn Billy Tumlin. Starbuck pushed away from the tree and stalked the big man. Tumlin glanced to left and right once in a while, but saw nothing to disturb him. He was stripping the blue coat from a Yankee corpse and was so intent on dragging the sleeves off the dead man’s awkward arms that he did not know Starbuck was near him until the warm rifle barrel touched the back of his neck. Then he jumped in alarm.