Starbuck crouched in the woods. Sweat poured down his face and stung his eyes. The remains of the Yellowlegs were back at the edge of the trees near the Dunker church and it was plain that the Yankees were also back in force about the small building, for when Potter’s skirmishers had run forward they had been greeted by a withering blast of rifle fire that had spun one man down and persuaded the others to seek cover. Yankee bullets whipped through the trees as more rebel battalions were brought back to make the assault on the church. To Starbuck this fight for the church was like a private skirmish that had little connection with the storm of fire that sounded further south. If the battle did have a pattern, then he had long lost all understanding of it; instead it seemed like a series of desperate, bloody, and accidental clashes that flared, flourished, and died without meaning.

This new fight for the church also promised to be bloody for, while Starbuck waited in the trees, the Yankees brought up two guns that unlimbered just across the turnpike from the Dunker church. The horses were taken back while the gunners rammed their weapons, but instead of opening fire, the gun’s commander ran toward the church. He was evidently seeking orders. The nearest gun was no more than two hundred yards away and Starbuck knew that one blast of canister would be sufficient to destroy what remained of his battalion.

The idea came to him then, but he was so befuddled and tired that it took some few seconds for him to realize that the idea could work, then more seconds while he debated whether he had the energy to make the necessary effort. The temptation was to do as little as possible. His men had fought beyond the expectations of anyone in the army and no one could blame them now for letting other men do the dying and fighting, but the appeal of the idea was irresistible. He twisted and saw Lucifer crouching with his dog. “I want the officers here,” he told the boy, “all except Mister Potter.”

The boy darted away through the brush while Starbuck turned back to stare at the nearest gun. It was a Napoleon, the French-designed cannon that was the workhorse for both armies. Its flared muzzle could fire a twelve-pound roundshot, canister, shell, or case shot, but it was the canister that the infantry feared most. The Napoleon might not have the range and power of the big rifled cannon, but its smoothbore barrel spat canister in a regular, killing pattern where the larger rifled guns could skew the shower of lead into strange shapes that sometimes flew safely overhead. The Napoleon, so far as the infantry was concerned, was a giant shotgun mounted on massive wheels.

The Yankee gunners were relaxed, plainly unaware that enemy infantry was close. A faded Stars and Stripes hung on the limber, which stood with its lid open. A shirtsleeved man carried ammunition and stacked it close to the gun, where another man leaned on the barrel and cleaned his fingernails with a knife. Every now and then he glanced over his right shoulder toward the east as if he expected to see reinforcements coming, but all he saw were his gun’s horses cropping the pasture’s bloodied grass a hundred yards away. After a time he yawned, folded the knife, and fanned his face with his hat.