Then, from the northern part of the East Woods, a new volley crashed.

And the rebel line collapsed.

It had fought since dawn, but now, in the face of yet more Yankee attackers, the defense disintegrated. The collapse began with one battalion, then the panic spread to the neighboring units and suddenly a whole brigade was running. Starbuck was not aware of the panic at first. He had heard the massive volley off to his right and he was aware of screams and cheers from the edge of the woods, but he doggedly went on loading his rifle while the Georgian officer pleaded for death, but then a nearby man called out a warning and Starbuck saw Yankees running through the smoke. He snatched up his ramrod and ran with the other rebels. Some Yankees sprinted ahead, angling in front of Starbuck in their eagerness to cut off a retreating flag. He let the ramrod drop and dragged the revolver from behind his back and fired wildly into the blue coats. A rebel sergeant swung his rifle by the barrel to bring its heavy stock down on a Yankee head. Starbuck heard the impact of the rifle butt just as a bearded Yankee lunged at him with a bayonet. Starbuck stepped aside so that the blade went past him, he thrust the revolver into the man’s belly, and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. In despair, screaming, he swung his clumsy rifle so that the bullet-shattered stock slammed into the side of the Yankee’s head. Starbuck could smell the man’s uniform, the tobacco on his breath, then the man stumbled. Starbuck kicked him hard and ran on. He stumbled over cornstalks, canister balls, and bodies. There were cheers behind and panic in front. He expected a bullet at any second and dropped the broken rifle to gain a mite of speed.

The momentum of the Yankees’ attack carried them down through the East Woods and caused more rebels to join the flight. The Northern guns on the Hagerstown Pike hurried the fugitives along with round after round of case shot. The rebels tumbled out of the yard of the burned farm, they abandoned the graveyard, they fled for the trees in the west and so abandoned the morning’s hard-fought battlefield to the Yankees. Here and there groups of men retreated slowly, in ranks, firing as they went, but most of the gray-clad infantry simply ran and only slowed when they realized that there was no Yankee pursuit. The Northerners were as confused as the rebels and, though some men pushed doggedly on, more stopped in the cornfield to reload and fire at the rapidly vanishing enemy. Starbuck recognized some men from Faulconer’s Legion and joined them. He plucked up a Springfield rifle from a dead Texan and checked that it worked. A handful of the Yellowlegs were still with him, and then, on the Smoketown Road, he saw Lucifer and Imp walking west with Potter’s company. He joined them, then crossed the dirt ruts of the Hagerstown Pike to reach the shadows of the trees beyond.