Footsteps came nearer and Billy decided it was time to play his role. “Are you Southern boys?” he called aloud. The footsteps stopped. “The name’s Billy Tumlin!” he called out, “Billy Tumlin from New Orleans.” There was no future in using his real name, not when so many men in the Confederacy were eager to test a rope on Billy Blythe’s gullet. “Are you boys Rebs?” he asked.

“Can’t see you,” a voice said flatly, neither friendly nor hostile, but then came the unmistakably hostile sound of a rifle being cocked.

“I’m standing up, boys,” Billy said, “standing up real slow. Standing up right plumb in front of you.” Billy stood and held his hands high to show he was not armed. Facing him were a pair of scruffy rebels with bayonet-tipped rifles. “Thank the good Lord above, boys,” Billy said, “praise His holy name, amen.”

The two faces showed only caution. “Who did you say you was?” one of the men asked.

“Captain Billy Tumlin, boys. From New Orleans, Louisiana. I’ve been on the run for weeks now and sure am pleased to see you. Mind if I lower my hands?” He began to lower his arms, but a twitch of a blackened rifle muzzle put them back up fast.

“On the run?” the second man asked.

“I was taken at New Orleans,” Blythe explained in his broadest Southern accent, “and I’ve been a prisoner up north ever since. But I slipped away, see? And I’m kind of hungry, boys. Even a piece of hardtack would be welcome. Or some tobacco? Ain’t seen good tobacco since the day I got captured.”

An hour later Captain Billy Tumlin was introduced to Lieutenant Colonel Ned Maitland, whose men had discovered the fugitive. Maitland’s regiment was bivouacking and the smoke from hundreds of small fires sifted into the early evening air. Maitland, a courtly and generous host, hospitably shared a leg of stringy chicken, some hard-boiled eggs, and a flask of cognac with the newly escaped prisoner. He seemed blessedly uninterested in Blythe’s supposed experiences as a captive of the Northerners, preferring to discuss which prominent New Orleans families might be common acquaintances. Billy Blythe had spent just long enough in New Orleans to pass that test, especially when he figured that Maitland knew less about the city’s society than he did himself.

“I guess,” Maitland said after a while, “that you’d better report to brigade.”

“I can’t stay here?” Blythe suggested. Maitland would be a considerate commander, he reckoned, and the Legion would be serving close enough to the Yankees to give Blythe and easy chance to slip across the lines.

Maitland shook his head. He would have liked to keep Billy Tumlin in the Legion, for the considered most of his present officers to be well below the proper standard, but he had no authority to appoint a new captain. “I could use you,” Maitland admitted, “I surely could. It looks like we’ll all be moving north soon so there’ll be plenty of fighting and I’m not exactly fixed right with good officers.”