For at last the Northern trap was swinging shut and the long day’s killing was coming to its climax.

The Yankees in the North and East Woods were quiet, but the northern flank of the federal advance on Sharpsburg was visible from the woods about the Dunker church and those men, like the larger mass that advanced from the captured sunken lane, were met by the horror of Lee’s artillery line. Some of Starbuck’s men fired their rifles at the distant enemy, but most were content to shelter in the trees and watch as the artillery explosions gouged the enemy. Their own gun, the Napoleon they had captured, stood fifty yards away. Potter had begun to carve a legend on the gun’s trail, “A gift from the Yellowlegs,” but the hardness of the wood had blunted his small pocket-knife and he had abandoned his efforts. “It’s odd,” he said to Starbuck now, “but one day this will all be in the history books.”

“Odd?” Starbuck frowned as he tried to wrench his thoughts from his parched weariness to Potter’s airy statement. “Why odd?”

“Because I guess I never thought of America as a place where history is made,” Potter said, “at least, not since the Revolution. History belongs to the rest of the world. Crimea, Napoleon, Garibaldi, the Indian mutiny.” He shrugged. “We came to America to escape history, isn’t that right?”

“We’re making it now,” Starbuck said curtly.

“Then we’d better make sure we win,” Potter said, “because history is written by the winners.” He yawned. “Do I have permission to get drunk?”

“Not yet. This thing ain’t over.”

Potter grimaced, then stared at the cannon. “I’ve always wanted to fire a cannon,” Potter said wistfully.

“Me too,” Starbuck said.

“How difficult can it be?” Potter inquired. “Ain’t nothing but an oversized rifle. A man don’t need a college degree.”

Starbuck gazed at the enemy, whose enthusiasm had been blunted by the day’s carnage so that their advance now wavered under the rain of artillery shells. Maybe another gun, opening from their flank, would push them back. “We can try,” he said, encouraged by the thought that the Yankees were far enough away for their skirmishers to be inaccurate. “A couple of shots, maybe.”

“It is our gun,” Potter said firmly. “We’d be sadly remiss not to check that it works before handing it over.”

“True.” Starbuck hesitated, once more gauging the distance between the Napoleon and the distant Yankees. “Let’s try it,” he decided.

Three of Potter’s company volunteered to serve as crew, one of them the Irish saddler, John Connolly, who had a bloody bandage round his left arm but insisted he was fit enough to fight; then Lucifer insisted that he knew something of artillery, though Starbuck suspected the boy simply wanted to join in the excitement of firing a cannon.

No Yankee noticed them as they ran forward. The gun was still pointing toward the woods by the Dunker church, so Potter and his men lifted the tail and maneuvered the heavy barrel around while Starbuck rummaged in the limber that had already yielded three full canteens of water and a boiled ham wrapped in canvas for his hungry men. Now he pulled out a bag of powder, a case shot, and a package of fuses. The instructions on the packet told him to tear off the paper, then press against the small end of the fuse. “I thought this was supposed to be easy,” Starbuck said. He had extracted one of the fuses, a simple paper tube filled with powder, but he could not relate the tube to the printed instructions.