The Northern guns pulled back across the ridge, leaving its defense to infantry alone. The Southern cannon changed their aim, scattering shells among the trees, bushes, and rocks of the ridge. Some cannon were firing percussion-fused shells that plunged into the ground to gout wagonloads of dirt and leaves, others used case shot that banged apart in the air to spit musket bullets down on the Yankee defenders.

“Skirmishers?” Lieutenant Colonel Griffin Swynyard galloped his horse toward Starbuck. “Skirmishers?” he called again.

“They’re out there, Colonel,” Starbuck said. The Yellowlegs were on the far right-hand flank of Swynyard’s Brigade, and immediately to the left of the Legion, and Starbuck had taken good care that his skirmishing company had gone forward before Maitland threw the Legion’s skirmishers down onto the valley floor. Starbuck had picked his skirmishers carefully, drawing them from the men who had held up best on the marches north from the railhead. Most of his men had taken those marches hard, limping slower and slower on bloody, blistered feet as the battalion crawled painfully to reach this valley north of Charlestown just as the first of Jackson’s infantry swung in from their long march that had taken them west from Frederick City to loop clean about Harper’s Ferry to this ground that lay south of the besieged Federal garrison.

That garrison was attempting to defend the high ground about the river town, but so far their defense was halfhearted. The Yankee cannon had given up the fight quickly; now it was the infantry’s turn to be tested. Starbuck’s detached company of skirmishers was already in action, the smoke of their rifles blowing in small gray puffs across the valley floor. The answering puffs were well up the farther slope, and Starbuck was mentally urging Potter to press harder, though in fairness his skirmishers were doing well. They were far ahead of the Legion’s skirmishers. The sound of that skirmishers’ battle came as a series of intermittent cracks that were only audible in the intervals between the cannon fire. Swynyard was using field glasses to watch the rebel shells fall on the far ridge. All Starbuck could see there was an erratic and broken cordon of blue-coated infantry beneath their bright flags. The line was not continuous. It was interrupted by the gaps between regiments or where bushes or rocky outcrops interfered with the line’s alignment, and sometimes the defending line vanished altogether where the Yankees sheltered in dips of the ground or behind boulders. “I don’t see any rifle pits, Nate,” Swynyard said.

“For small mercies, God, thank you,” Starbuck answered.

Swynyard grimaced, but did not protest Starbuck’s blasphemy. Instead he pointed to the left-hand end of the Yankee line. “Reckon you could take that ground?” he asked. “Say everything from the end of the crest to where the guns were?”

“I guess,” Starbuck answered. In truth he had no idea how the Yellowlegs would behave in battle. Nor did he know how he would behave in this first battle since the terror had overwhelmed him in the rain-swept fight near the mansion of Chantilly. He could feel that terror hovering near again. It gave him a curiously disembodied sensation, as though his spirit were merely watching his body and marveling that it could react so calmly to Swynyard’s orders.