“Go!” Starbuck snarled, spitting more blood.

The two men walked east. Starbuck waited till they were gone, then turned back to the gun. Blood was pouring down his face as he heaved on the handspike to turn the trail the few feet necessary so that the barrel was pointing toward the Smoketown Road.

“No, Nate,” Swynyard said. “No.”

Starbuck ignored the colonel. He went to the limber and brought back a bag of powder and a canister. Two of Potter’s men rammed the cannon while Connolly ran to retrieve the vent pick from Lucifer’s body.

Potter rolled over. He was crying. Swynyard, who had not expected his protest to work, knelt beside him. “Is it hurting, son?”

“Stone jug of whiskey,” Potter said, “best damn whiskey I ever saw. I was saving it, Colonel, and they bust it. God damn bust it. Now my back’s soaked in whiskey, but it’s all on the outside and I was praying so hard for it to be on the inside.”

Swynyard tried not to smile, but could not help it. “You ain’t hurt?” he asked.

“Had the breath knocked clean out of me,” Potter said, then sat up. He took Swynyard’s offered hand and hauled himself to his feet. “Had my back to them, Colonel,” he said, “and I was shot in the back.”

“There are proper procedures,” Swynyard said lamely.

Starbuck gave his opinion of proper procedures, an opinion so muffled by blood that it came out as a splutter of gore and bone. He bent, spat again, then straightened and cupped his hands about his shattered mouth. “Case!” he roared.

Case and Dennison had been advancing cautiously into the open, almost as scared of the distant Yankees as they were of what waited for them on their return to the battalion. Then they saw there would be no return. The cannon was fifty yards from them, and aimed straight for them. Dennison shook his head, Case began to run, and Starbuck whipped the lanyard back.

The smoke of the cannon enveloped the two men, but not until the blast of canister had turned them to red ribbons of flesh.

Starbuck did not even look to see what the canister had done. He walked back to Lucifer and cradled the dead boy in his arms. He hugged him, rocking the small body, and dripping blood onto the boy’s bloody face. Swynyard knelt beside him. “You need a doctor, Nate.”

“It’ll wait,” Starbuck managed to say. “I never knew his real Christian name,” he added, speaking slowly to articulate the words through the torn-up mess inside his mouth, “so what the hell can I put on his grave?”

“That he was a brave soldier,” Swynyard said.

“He was,” Starbuck said, “he truly was.”

The guns to the south fell silent. The silence seemed unnatural, for all day long the sky had been bruised by fire, but now there was silence. Silence and a small wind that at long last stirred the smoke and carried the stench of battle east across the creek. The killing was over.