“Drop the coat, Billy,” Starbuck said, grinding the foresight of the Adams into the bulging flesh. “You don’t deserve to wear that coat. You ain’t a man, Billy Tumlin, you’re a coward. Drop the coat.” Blythe let the coat fall and Starbuck pulled the revolver back and lowered its hammer, making the gun safe. Blythe looked relieved, but then Starbuck whipped the pistol’s heavy barrel across Blythe’s face to open a cut on Blythe’s right cheekbone. “Now you’re really wounded, Billy,” Starbuck said. “And get the hell out of my sight. Go on, go!”

Blythe stooped to retrieve his revolver, but Starbuck put his foot on the belt. “Without a weapon?” Blythe asked.

“Go!” Starbuck shouted again and watched the heavy man blunder away.

Starbuck picked up the revolver and walked in the other direction. “Lucifer!” He saw the boy leading his new dog. “Here! New gun for you.” He tossed Tumlin’s belt to the boy. “Now get out of here before a Yankee shoots you.” He saw Truslow shouting at men to stop looting the dead and get themselves up to the wood’s edge, then he heard something far worse. Drums and cheers. He turned and ran back to where Rothwell’s body lay. Then swore.

Because the Yankees were coming again.

Billy Blythe was weeping as he worked his way back north through the woods. He was not weeping because of the cut on his face, but for shame at being humiliated by Starbuck. He imagined an exquisite revenge, but first he had to survive the horror of this battle and get back where he belonged—in the North.

He found the body he had been stripping of its jacket and, after checking that Starbuck was not in sight, he dragged the coat free. He looked for his revolver, but it was gone. He cursed, then pulled on the bloody gray coat, which still lay beside the elm tree. He bundled the blue jacket under his arm, then, touching his pants pocket to make sure his precious United States commission was still safe, went on northward. Men were running past him, going to the wood’s eastern margin, where a new rattle of rifle fire was filling the trees with sound. They ignored Billy Blythe, taking him for another wounded man.

He went as far north as he dared and there discovered what he had been seeking. He found a log pile, and behind it were three Northern bodies, still warm, all of them bloody and all of them dead. Blythe crouched, peeled off the gray coat and pulled on the blue, then wriggled down beside the logs and heaved the three corpses on top of him. He knew the Yankees were attacking again, and this time, he reckoned, the rebels would not stand. Blythe believed the battle was turning, and it was time for him to turn with it. A shell whipcracked through the trees overhead, making him whimper, but then at last he was deep in the leaf mold beside the logs and protected by the warm bodies above. He lay still, feeling a dead man’s blood trickle onto his back. He wished he could repay Starbuck for that blow across the face, but guessed Starbuck would not be alive to take the repayment. He hoped Starbuck’s death was agonizing, and that thought consoled him as he waited under the corpses for rescue.