“Name?” Swynyard snapped, standing up.

“Case,” Case said defiantly, then slung the rifle. “And there ain’t no bloody law ’gainst shooting niggers, sir. Specially niggers with guns.”

“There is a law, Case, about shooting your own officers,” Swynyard said.

Case shook his head. “Hell, Colonel, me and the Captain were firing at a pair of bloody Yankees out in the field.” He jerked his beard toward the Smoketown Road. “Out there, Colonel. I reckon they killed Starbuck. Weren’t me.”

A second figure stood up beside Case. Swynyard recognized Captain Dennison, who licked his lips nervously, then nodded his head to support Case’s statement. “In that patch of brush, Colonel,” Dennison said, pointing toward the road. “Pair of Yankee skirmishers. I reckon we killed them both.”

Swynyard turned. About three hundred yards away, just beside the Smoketown Road, there was a small patch of thorns where a mess of bodies lay thick under the pall of filmy smoke that smothered the field. Not enough smoke, Swynyard reckoned, to show that a pair of Yankee skirmishers had fired from the bushes, but he felt a terrible weariness as he understood that the two men would stick by their story and it would be a hard one to disprove. He turned back to them. He would put them under arrest anyway. There had been a time, he knew, when he would have shot them down like dogs, but he obeyed a higher law now. He would do the proper thing even though he guessed it would be useless.

He opened his mouth to speak, then saw a look of utter horror show on both men’s’ faces. They were staring past him and Swynyard turned to see what had scared them.

Starbuck was standing. The left side of his face was a horror of blood. He staggered, then spat a great gob of thick blood and scraps of broken teeth. The bullet had gone through his open mouth, scored across his tongue, torn away four teeth from his upper jaw, then ripped out through his cheek. He walked unsteadily toward the two men, then paused beside Lucifer. He knelt by the boy and Swynyard saw the tears rolling down to mix with the blood. “Nate,” Swynyard said, but Starbuck shook his head as if he did not want anything said. He stroked Lucifer’s dead face with his hand, then untied the whimpering puppy from the boy’s belt. He stood and walked toward Case and Dennison. He spoke to them, but the wound made his words a blood-curdled mumble. He spat again, then pointed toward the clump of bushes. “Go,” he managed to say.

Swynyard understood. “Go and find the men you killed,” he ordered the two.

“Hell,” Case said, “there’s a bunch of dead Yankees there!”

“Then bring me two warm bodies!” Swynyard snapped. “Because if they aren’t warm, Captain Dennison, I’ll know you’re lying. And if you are lying, Captain Dennison, I’ll have the two of you in front of a firing squad.”