She flew. She was no ordinary horse, but one of the prize beasts from Washington Faulconer’s stud at Faulconer Court House in Faulconer Country, Virginia. This was a mare with Arab blood, but crossed with a hardy American strain and Adam trusted his father’s horse-breeding far more than he trusted his political judgment. He whooped himself, echoing the wild cries his pursuers made. This, at last, was war! A challenge, a race, a contest, something to stir the blood and add piquancy to days of boredom. The mare leapt a stream, gathered herself, took three or four paces, jumped a fence, then settled into a thumping gallop across a stretch of land newly plowed for winter wheat. The furrows made the going hard, but the mare seemed not to notice.

Thorne, watching the race as he rode eastward in parallel to the young men, saw at last some quality in Adam above the stolid, worried demeanor that the young Virginian usually displayed. But what Thorne saw he was not sure he liked. Adam, he thought, would seek sensation to test himself, not to amuse himself, not to taste wickedness, but simply to put himself through the crucible of his own expectations. Adam, he thought, might very well kill himself to prove that he was a good man.

But not now. Now he was humiliating a trio of Jeb Stuart’s vaunted horsemen. The chase across the plowed field had widened the gap between Adam and his pursuers, so once again he slowed down and the three rebels, seeing the deliberate curbing, became even more determined to catch their mocking enemy. They could see his horse was tired and whitened by sweat and they believed that another half mile would surely bring it to a panting stop and so they raked back with sharp spurs and whooped their hunting call.

Adam slowed even more. Then, picking his path, he suddenly kicked his heels and put the mare toward a wider stream that meandered through steeply cut banks. Rushes fringed the stream, disguising where the banks ended and the stream began, but Adam, who had ridden since the day he could first straddle a pony, showed no hesitation. He did not ride hard at the wide stream, but instead let the mare look at it, pick her own pace, and then he touched her flanks to let her know what was expected of her. To Thorne, watching from afar, it seemed as if the mare was going far too slowly to clear the water, but suddenly she gathered herself and soared effortlessly across the wide run. Adam let her run out her jump on the far bank, then he turned her round and stopped to watch his pursuers.

Two of the rebels swerved aside rather than attempt the water jump. The third man, braver than his companions, kicked back his heels and attempted the jump at a gallop. His horse took off from the same spot where Adam’s mare had started her jump, but the rebel’s beast crashed down short to plunge into a stiff stand of reeds. The horse’s front legs folded and its shoulder thumped with bone-cracking force into the hidden bank. The rider was thrown clear, sprawling in the stream and cursing as his injured horse struggled to its feet. The beast stumbled again, then screamed from the pain of its broken shoulder.