“And if he doesn’t go?”

“Oh, he’ll go,” Swynyard said grimly, “believe me, Nate, he’ll go. And once he’s gone I’ll put your boys into the Legion and give the whole lot to you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Swynyard looked over Starbuck’s shoulder and jerked his beard to suggest that there was someone needing Starbuck’s attention. Starbuck turned and, to his astonishment, saw it was Captain Dennison who, very formally, was reporting for duty.

“Where the hell were you?” Starbuck snapped.

Dennison glanced at Swynyard, then shrugged. “Where I was told to be, sir. In the graveyard.”

“Skulking?” Starbuck snarled.

“Sir!” Dennison protested. “Captain Tumlin ordered us there, sir. Said the Yankees had skirmishers attacking our wounded. So we went there, sir. Fought them, sir.” He patted the black-muzzled rifle that now hung from his shoulder. “Killed a few, sir.”

“Tumlin ordered you there?” Starbuck asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Son of a bitch,” Starbuck said. “Where the hell is Tumlin?”

“Don’t know, sir. Shall we fall in, sir?” Dennison asked innocently. A dozen men of A Company were with Dennison and none of them looked as tired, strained, or scared as the other survivors from the Yellowlegs.

“Fall in,” Starbuck said. “And Captain?”

“Sir?”

“I gave Case his stripes back.”

“He told me, sir.”

Starbuck watched Dennison go to join the remnant of his company. Sergeant Case was there, the buck’s tail still pinned to his gray hat, and, for a second, Starbuck wondered about that bullet in Caton Rothwell’s back. Then he dismissed the suspicion. There had been enough stray Yankees in the woods to account for that miserable death. If it was anyone’s fault, Starbuck thought, it was his for not leaving two men to watch from the wood’s edge.

“What was all that about?” Swynyard asked when Dennison had fallen in.

“God knows, sir. Either he’s lying, or Tumlin disobeyed me. But that bastard,” Starbuck jerked his head toward Dennison, “ain’t never been civil to me in the past, so the hell knows why he’s starting now.”

“Battle, Nate,” Swynyard said. “It changes men.”

A bugle sounded to the east. Starbuck turned and stared through the trees toward the horrid ground where so many had died. Till now he had been fighting an enemy who had come from the north, but the collapse of the rebel line in the cornfield meant that from now on they would be facing east. Another bugle called. “Bastards are coming again,” Starbuck said.

“Then let us make ready,” Swynyard said very formally.

Because the battle was still not lost, nor won, and the Yankees were coming again.

The first division of Union reinforcements came up from the creek in fine style, but when they reached the plateau there was no messenger to guide them to where they were needed. One Northern general was dead, another had gone back wounded, and so there was no one to tell the newly arrived troops where to attack. Their own general saw where the lingering gunsmoke hung thickest and pointed with his sword. “Keep going! That way! March!” A second Yankee division was climbing from the creek, but the general did not wait for it to join him. Instead he formed his men into three long lines of battle, one behind the other, and sent them through the East Woods. Once through the trees they reformed their lines and advanced across the cornfield where the wounded cried out to stop men treading on them.