“Pour Prendre Congé!” Colonel Lyman Thorne snarled at Adam. “Who the devil does he think he’s impressing?”

Adam had no answer. It worried him that he was always so tongue-tied in Thorne’s presence. He would have liked to have impressed the colonel, but instead he found himself trapped into either monosyllabic answers or else saying nothing at all. This time he said nothing, but just kicked his heels gently back to coax an ounce more speed from his horse, then he leaned into the mare’s neck as she rose to a snake fence.

Thorne’s horse thumped down a second after Adam’s. The two men were riding westward through a countryside apparently bereft of inhabitants; a countryside of neat farms and tidy orchards and well-drained fields. “Where is everybody?” Adam asked after they had cantered past another immaculate white-painted farm with a swept yard, a woodlot where the cut logs were aligned between the elm trees as neatly as soldiers in one of the Young Napoleon’s beloved reviews, and a newly painted springhouse, but without any sign of a human presence.

“Indoors,” Thorne answered. “Didn’t you see the upstairs drapes twitch? These people aren’t fools. Where would you be if two armies were close by? You put your valuables in the cellar, bury the cash in the kitchen garden, load the shotgun, dirty your daughters’ faces so they don’t look attractive, harness the wagon, then wait to see who comes.”

“No rebels coming this way,” Adam said, trying hard to make conversation with the forbidding Thorne, but even that cheerful observation met with a scornful reply.

“Damn the rebels, where are our cavalry patrols? Damn it, Faulconer, but Lee’s been two days in the North and we don’t know the first damn thing about what he’s doing. And where are our scouts? This countryside should be thick with damn scouts. They should be tripping over each other, but McClellan won’t release them. He doesn’t want their precious horses to get hurt.” Thorne’s derision was sour and angry. “Little George will inch his way forward like a virgin edging into a barrack room,” he said, “and Lee will be running wild. Did I show you Pinkerton’s latest work of fiction?”

“No, sir.”

The two horsemen had stopped their mounts on the crest of a long green watershed that offered a distant view westward. Thorne took out a massive pair of binoculars, wiped the lenses with the skirt of his coat, then peered at the distant view for a long time. He saw nothing to alarm him and so lowered the glasses. “Pinkerton claims that Lee has one hundred and fifty thousand men in Maryland and he reckons another sixty thousand are poised just south of the Potomac ready to mount an attack on Washington when McClellan goes to deal with Lee.” Thorne spat. “Lee’s no fool. He won’t throw away his army in an attack on Washington’s forts! He doesn’t have enough men. If Lee even has sixty thousand men fit to fight I’d be surprised, but it’s no good pointing out facts to frightened George, it just makes him more stubborn. Little George will believe what he wants to believe, and he wants to believe he’s outnumbered because that way there’s no disgrace when he doesn’t fight. Hell, they should give me the army for a week. There’d be no rebellion at the end of that week, I can promise you.”