“Give it me,” Lucifer said, and he tore the fuse into halves and pushed one half into a drilled copper plug that formed part of the case shot. “Five seconds is too long,” Lucifer said, judging the distance to the enemy. “Give it two and a half.”

“How the hell do you know all this?” Starbuck asked.

“Just do,” Lucifer said, once again hiding his past. His dog was tied to his belt by its leash of rifle slings that almost tangled Lucifer’s legs as he carried the shell to the gun. “You have to put the powder in first,” he told Starbuck.

Starbuck pushed the powder bag into the tube, then Lucifer plugged the case shot into the muzzle. A bullet whistled overhead. Starbuck guessed it was an errant shot, not deliberately aimed at his men.

Lucifer had taken charge now. He had found the friction primer and a vent pick and, once the charge had been rammed down the barrel, he leaned over the muzzle and pushed the pick hard down to pierce the canvas bag of powder. He inserted the friction primer, attached the lanyard that had been in the dead gunner’s hand, then stepped back. “Ready,” he said.

“What about the elevation?” Colonel Swynyard had seen the activity about the gun and come to join the makeshift crew. “Looks low to me,” he added, gesturing at the wormed elevating screw.

Starbuck gave the screw a pair of turns, but it seemed to make little difference. Maybe a man did need a college degree after all. “Let’s just fire the damn thing,” he said, then held up a hand. “Wait.” The dead gunner with his wife’s picture still on his lap had fallen behind the wheel and Starbuck first dragged the body clear, then picked up the tintype. It seemed sacrilegious to throw it away, so he put the picture in his pocket, then nodded at Lucifer. “You fire it,” he said.

Fifty yards behind the gun Sergeant Case took aim. He had found Lieutenant Dennison and the two men were in the brush at the wood’s edge. Case had almost given up hope of finding an opportunity to kill Starbuck, but suddenly Starbuck was fifty yards away and in the open while Case and Dennison were hidden deep in brush. “Fire when the nigger pulls the string,” Case told the Lieutenant. “You go for the bastard’s body, I’ll go for a head shot.”

Dennison, dry mouthed, could not answer, so just nodded. He was desperately nervous. He was about to commit murder and his hand was shaking as he rested his rifle on a small hillock. The men about the cannon had their backs to him and he was suddenly unsure which was Starbuck, but then he recognized the revolver holster Starbuck always wore at the small of his back and he aimed a few inches above it, where the gray jacket was darkened by a smear of blood. Case, calmer than Dennison, aimed at Starbuck’s black hair. “Wait till they fire,” he warned Dennison.