The Guns of the South

* XVII *

Judge Cornelius Joyner nailed a sheet of paper to the notice board in front of the Nash County courthouse. To Nate Caudell, who watched from the middle of a crowd of silent, grim-faced people, each stroke of the hammer sounded like a bullet slamming home. He squeezed Mollie Bean’s hand. She squeezed back, hard enough to hurt.

The justice of the peace tossed aside the hammer. The thump it made against the damp ground reminded Caudell of a dead body falling. He sternly reined in his runaway imagination. Judge Joyner turned and faced the men and women who packed the square. “I know not all of you have your letters, so I’m going to read this out loud for you. You’d best listen and pay heed, too.”

He turned back to the notice he’d just posted. His deep voice was big enough that Caudell had no trouble hearing him: “The following proclamation is published for the information of all concerned: By virtue of the power vested in men by law to declare the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in regions threatened by rebellion: I, Robert E. Lee, President of the Confederate States of America, do proclaim that martial law is hereby extended over the counties of Nash, Edgecombe, Halifax, Franklin, and Warren (in North Carolina), and I do proclaim the suspension of all civil jurisdiction (with the exception of that enabling the courts to take cognizance of the probate of wills, the administration of the estates of deceased persons, the qualification of guardians, to enter decrees and orders for the partition and sale of property, to make orders concerning roads and bridges, to assess county levies, and to order the payment of county dues), and the suspension: of the writ of habeas corpus in the counties aforesaid. In faith whereof I have hereby signed my name and set my seal this fifteenth day of March, in the year 1868. Robert E. Lee.”

Caudell added his sigh to the dozens that went up around him. Read all at once, as Joyner had read it, the proclamation felt like a boulder rolling over him. He hung his head in shame at having his home county branded throughout the South as a “region threatened by rebellion”—but then, Rivington lay within Nash County. Till word came down of what people were calling the Richmond Massacre, he’d been mildly proud to have Rivington close by, no matter what he thought of some of the men who’d settled there. Now he wished the place were on the far side of the moon.

Judge Joyner said, “Don’t go away yet, folks. There’s more.” He raised his voice again: “Lieutenant General Forrest, commanding Confederate States forces in eastern North Carolina, is charged with due execution of the foregoing proclamation. He will forthwith establish an efficient military police and will enforce—the following orders: All distillation of spirituous liquors is positively prohibited, and the distilleries will forthwith be closed. The sale of spirituous liquors of any kind is also prohibited, and establishments for the sale thereof will be closed.”

Now the noises that rose from the crowd sounded more like mutters than sighs. Most of the grumbles came from farmers who were used to turning part of their corn into whiskey. The Liberty Bell saloon had a shiny new padlock on the front door, though Caudell suspected that would not keep Wren Tisdale from selling a spirituous liquor or two out the back.

“I’m not done,” Cornelius Joyner warned. “You all had better listen to this: “All persons infringing the above prohibition will suffer such punishment as shall be ordered by the sentence of a court-martial, provided that no sentence to hard labor be for more than one month by the sentence of a regimental court-martial, as directed by the Sixty-Seventh Article of War. By command of the Secretary of War. S. Cooper, Adjutant and Inspector General.”

“A month working on the roads for selling a man a drink?” Raeford Liles said. “I don’t believe it.”

“You’d better,” Caudell warned him. “That’s just what you could draw from a regimental court. If they haul you before Forrest, now—” He let the words hang. Liles turned a faint green. Having met the new Confederate commander for eastern North Carolina, he figured he might hang if he violated an order Forrest was charged with enforcing.

Judge Joyner picked up his hammer and stood aside. George Lewis stepped out of the front row of the crowd to take his place. Lewis wore a gray civilian jacket and a shirt to which a three-barred stand collar had been hastily sewn. Must be none of his old uniforms fits anymore, Caudell thought, smiling a little.

Lewis said, “I am ordered by General Forrest, and authorized by Governor Vance, to recall to duty Company D, 47th North Carolina Infantry, for a period not to exceed 180 days, said company to serve as military police for Nash County and perform such other duties as may be duly assigned by proper military authority.”

Mollie squeezed Nate’s hand again. He wondered if that meant she intended to rejoin the Castalia Invincibles herself. He was afraid it did. She’d returned from Richmond wearing a wig that nearly matched the dark curls he’d shorn so she could go there in disguise. She wore it in public all the time. If she took it off, she could easily play the man once more.

Caudell wished she wouldn’t. The two of them had stayed together since she’d got back from Richmond. He feared she would take up her old ways if she found herself among so many men. But he feared even more that she would be hurt or killed if she took up a rifle again. His memories of combat were too recent and too horribly vivid for him to make light of its risks, as he had before he signed up with the Invincibles in 1862.

But if she wanted to put the uniform back on, how the devil was he supposed to stop her?

Lost in his own worries, he’d missed some of what Lewis was saying. He started listening again: “—report here for duty tomorrow at noon. Wear your uniforms if you have them still; we’ll give out armbands to everyone who doesn’t. And we’ll furnish weapons.”

“Repeaters?” someone asked eagerly.

“That’s right. If you’re going to soldier, you’ll carry soldiers’ weapons. I said that loud and clear down in Raleigh.” Lewis puffed out his already massive chest, as if to say it was only through his political pull that the Castalia Invincibles had obtained AK-47s. More power to him if that was so, Caudell thought. Lewis went on, “Get word to anybody you know who lives in the county but isn’t here in town today. We may give a few days’ grace, but we won’t stand for deserters.”

Caudell stuck up a hand. Lewis pointed at him. He said, “What do we do if we run into Rivington men? God only knows what’s going on north of here. That proclamation’s dated the fifteenth, but here it is the twenty-sixth, and it’s only just now got here.”

“I know it.” George Lewis’s face was rounder now than when he’d last led the Castalia Invincibles, but no less determined. “We aren’t called up to go after the Rivington men; we’re supposed to be military police. But if you see one of the bastards, shoot him. They’ve wrecked the railroad track up near Weldon, and they’ve torn down all the telegraph lines they can get to. Far as I can see, Nate, we’ve got ourselves a little war here.”

All through the town square, heads bobbed up and down. Nate nodded with the rest. As far as he could see, it looked like a little war, too. Probably the only thing keeping it from turning into a big war was that there weren’t enough Rivington men to make it one. But even a few would be ungodly hard to get rid of. Uneasily, he remembered the armor Benny Lang had worn under his mottled clothes. It had turned a Minié ball; would it stop a round from an AK-47? He had no way of knowing, but he thought it likely.

Lewis waved to show he was done. Cornelius Joyner went back inside the courthouse. Singly and by small groups, people began drifting out of the square, talking as they went. Caudell started to say something to Mollie. She beat him to it: “I already know what you’re gonna tell me, Nate. I don’t wanna have to hear it.”

He spread his hands in front of him. “But, Mollie, it isn’t right. It—”

“Why ain’t it? I’m as good a soldier as any o’ them others, ain’t I?” Her voice was low but very determined. “You know damn well I am, Mister Nate Caudell. ‘Sides, I reckon all this is part my fault—leastways, Marse Robert made an almighty much about that book I brung him. That was your idea, too, remember? Wouldn’t hardly be right, makin’ a mess and then not helpin’ put it back together.”

“But—” Caudell kicked helplessly at the dirt. Mollie had ruined half the argument he’d had in mind, but only half. Trouble was, he knew no safe way to say the other half.

Mollie did it for him. “You’re worried I’ll go back to whorin’ again, I reckon,” she said. He could only nod. He felt his face grow red. Mollie shrugged. “Can’t say for certain I won’t. But if I do, Nate, then you won’t have to have nothin’ more to do with me, an’ that’ll be that.” She set her hand on his arm. “I don’t want it to end that way, I swear I don’t.”

“I don’t, either. It’s just—oh, hell.” Caudell kicked the dirt again, Foolish to take Chances, he thought—would you use a one—time drunk to guard a whiskey barrel? Well, maybe, if you were sure he’d changed his ways. Was he sure about Mollie? He knew he wasn’t, and knew he couldn’t say so, not unless he wanted to kill the still-fragile bond between them.

He also knew he had only to say a couple of words to Captain Lewis to keep her out of the muster…but that would cost him Mollie; too. He scowled fiercely, first at the street and then at Mollie. She wrinkled her nose in reply. “Hell of a thing,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Here I am not even back in the army yet, and I’ve already lost a fight.”

The tunic with the first sergeant’s stripes still fit. It was ragged, but it had been ragged four years ago, too. Caudell wore one of his regular pairs of pants and his black felt hat. He laughed at himself as he headed for the square. He didn’t look much different from the way he had when he’d got home from the war. No, come to think of it, he’d been missing a hat then.

Some of the men who joined him in front of the courthouse still had their old tunics, some didn’t. Only one or two wore proper forage caps. They were a motley band, but hardly more so, Caudell reflected, than when they’d paraded through Richmond in triumph.

The men stood around in little groups, talking about fights they’d seen. George Lewis walked through the square, exchanging banter with them and checking their names off on a list. Not far from Caudell, he paused in perplexity. “I don’t recall your serving with the 47th, sir.”

Henry Pleasants grinned at him. “No reason you should, Captain. I was with the 48th—48th Pennsylvania, that is.” He tapped the silver oak leaf on the Union shoulder strap he’d sewn to his checked flannel shirt.

Lewis’s eyes widened. He could read Northern badges of rank, though they differed from those the Confederacy used. Quietly, he said, “I mean you no disrespect, Lieutenant Colonel—you’re Pleasants, aren’t you? I’ve heard of you—but only those who served with the Castalia Invincibles have been summoned to duty.”

“I don’t claim the rank, Captain Lewis, nor seek to raise trouble,” Pleasants said. “I would happily join you as a private, so long as I may join. This is my country now, and Lee my President—and if anyone tries to foully murder him, how may I call myself a man unless I help hunt the villains out?”

“Hmm.” Lewis rubbed his chin. “You speak smoothly enough, that’s certain. Did you command that regiment?”

“Till Bealeton, yes, but as I say, I know I have no rank in the Confederate army.” Pleasants waved his hand. “Put it to your. other men. If they say no, I’ll go home and tend my farm. If they say yes, you’ll have one more soldier.”

Like most regiments raised to fight in the Second American Revolution, the 47th North Carolina had always done without much military formality. “By God, I’ll do just that,” Lewis said. He raised his voice: “Invincibles, shalt we admit to our number Henry—it is Henry, isn’t it?—Pleasants, who had the misfortune to spend the war wearing a blue coat rather than our good Confederate gray?”

Nate Caudell spoke up at once: “Hell, yes, let him in. If he’s crazy enough to want to live here, he’ll fit right into this company.”

“Thanks, Nate—I think,” Pleasants said, laughing.

“Sure, let him in,” Dempsey Eure said. “The more we have, the less for each of us to do.” Four years of peace had not diluted his soldier’s pragmatism.

But Kennel Tant shook his head.” Don’t want to let no damn Yankees into this here company.” Several other Invincibles echoed that, some of them profanely.

The men argued back and forth for a few minutes. Then George Lewis said, “All right, we’ll have a show of hands. All those for letting Henry Pleasants join us—? Those against—?” Looking around, Caudell saw that Pleasants had won the vote. Lewis saw the same thing. He turned to Pleasants. “All right, Private, I’ll put your name on the list.” More softly, he added, “I may pick your brains every so often, too.”

Henry Pleasants came to attention, saluted. “As the Captain wishes.”

“You’re under my orders too now, Henry,” Caudell said, touching the stripes on his sleeve.

“Now there’s an appalling notion,” Pleasants said with an exaggerated shiver. “Captain Lewis, may I please reconsider?”

“I’ve already written your name. Do you want me to have to scratch it out and make my list untidy?”

“Oh, I suppose not,” Pleasants allowed. “Just keep me away from this wild man here.”

“I love you too, Henry,” Caudell said. He might have gone on teasing with his friend, but suddenly he had no heart for it. Mollie Bean had just walked into the square. She was wearing gray.

Caudell hoped someone, anyone, would speak up and greet her by her right name. It would take only one voice. Then captain Lewis would have to send her away, and she would stay safe. Several of the men who lived in town stared first at Mollie, then at Caudell. They knew the two of them had taken up with each other. But no one said a word.

Mollie went up to Lewis, gave him a crisp salute. “Melvin Bean reportin’, sir.”

“Bean.” He went down his list, checked off the name. Then he took a longer look at her, snorted laughter. “Good God, Bean, haven’t you managed to raise a beard yet?”

Several Invincibles let out strangled coughs. Mollie turned red.

Hope soared in Nate. Then he saw that George Lewis’s plump cheeks were on the pink side, too. Why, you son of a bitch, he thought—you’ve known all along. The only thing Lewis might not have known, since he’d spent most of the time since the war down in Raleigh, was that Mollie and Caudell were together.

Now, though, something about Mollie besides her smooth cheeks caught the captain’s notice. “It says here you’re from Rivington.”

“Yes, sir, that’s so,” she said, nodding.

“You’re about the only one from the company who is. I’ll make you acting corporal, put you next in charge of skirmishers after Nate here. Most of the fighting right now is north of Rivington, but along with breaking up stills and such, I want us to see how closely we can approach the town from this direction. Maybe Forrest will want to hit the Rivington men two ways at once, and that’s something he’ll need to know. Does that suit you?”

“Yes, sir.” She walked over to stand by Caudell, grinned up at him. “That suits me right fine.” If Lewis hadn’t known they were together, he did now.

Nate wanted to kick her. He wanted to pick her up and shake her, to see if he could get some sense into her that way. He wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Captain Lewis had ordered the two of them to work together, which was wonderful.

But he’d also given them the most dangerous job the company would have to do, a job that wasn’t even properly its responsibility. Caudell wondered if he ought to squawk about that. He ended up just standing there, feeling foolish.

He saw more than one soldier eyeing the way Mollie stayed at his side. He hoped they got the message she wasn’t available—and he hoped she wasn’t. Maybe, he thought hopefully, jealousy would make someone give her away and force Captain Lewis to notice officially that she was a woman. But no one said a word.

Lewis said, “Come on inside the courthouse and get. Your rifles.”

Dempsey Eure whooped. “I’d sooner get my hands on a repeater again than—damn near anything.” He was looking at Mollie, too, but with a twinkle in his eye that made it impossible for Caudell to get angry at him.

The AK-47s leaned against the courthouse wall in a row neater than the Castalia Invincibles were likely to form. Cornelius: Joyner, an Invincible himself, stood guard over them with a pistol. One by one, Lewis handed each of his men a rifle and three banana clips heavy with cartridges.

Caudell hadn’t touched a firearm since he left the army. His hands, he discovered, still knew what to do. The smell of oil and metal and powder that came from the rifle, the sensuously mechanical glide of the charging handle as he pushed it back to expose the open chamber, made him see the army’s old Virginia campground almost as vividly as he did the courthouse where he stood. By the murmurs that rose from his comrades, they also had memories flooding back.

The only memories Henry Pleasants had of AK-47s were unpleasant ones. “I’m glad I’ll be on the right end of one of these things for a change,” he said. “Somebody’ll have to show me what to do with it, though.”

“Easy enough to learn.” Dempsey Eure had mischief in his voice. “Especially getting the bolt back in.”

“I have a feeling, Sergeant, that you’re trying to lead me down the primrose path,” Pleasants said.

“Me?” Eure was the picture of affronted innocence.

“Sir, if you like, I’ll take Henry with me and teach him what he needs to know,” Caudell said to Captain Lewis.

“All right,” Lewis said. “Teach him quickly, though. You, Bean, and the rest of a squad will head up toward Rivington tomorrow morning. Check the farms you come across, certainly, but I want to know where the Rivington men have their pickets out. As I said before, that’s important military information. Send a man back with the word before sunset tomorrow, or at once if you come under fire.”

“Yes, sir.” Caudell knew Lewis was giving him the option of using Henry Pleasants as his messenger if the Pennsylvanian had trouble getting the hang of the AK-47. Maybe he would do that. On the other hand, if bullets started flying, maybe he would send Mollie Bean back to Nashville to tell Lewis what they’d run into. She wouldn’t like that, but she would have to go: she was only acting corporal, while he was a first sergeant.

The conclusion would have made him happier if he’d managed to forget how free and easy Confederate soldiers were apt to be about obeying orders they didn’t care for.

“There’s nothin’ you could call a straight road between here and Rivington,” Mollie said early the next morning. The smell of brewing coffee took Caudell back to the war, though this cup came from the Liberty Bell instead of being hastily cooked above a little campfire.

Henry Pleasants methodically stripped his AK-47, reassembled it, then stripped it again. “This is an astonishing weapon,” he said, the third time he’d said that this morning and at least the dozenth since he’d got the rifle. “Whoever invented it was a genius, to get so many new things right and put them all together.” He’d said that about a dozen times, too.

Caudell sipped his coffee, which was far better than the chicory and burnt barley he’d drunk while he was in the Army of Northern Virginia. Pleasants already handled the repeater with confidence and competence. He was an engineer, Caudell reminded himself, and used to learning to use unfamiliar devices in a hurry. That suited Nate fine. Not only did he admire his friend’s knack, but if Pleasants was no liability with a rifle, he could use Mollie as a messenger without—well, with only a few—qualms of conscience.

She was saying, “Easiest way to get from hereto there, matter of fact, is to go over to Rocky Mount and take the train on up.” She chuckled. “That’d be the easiest way, anyhow, if the line wasn’t busted an’ if the Rivington men wouldn’t shoot you dead for tryin’ to use it.”

“Let’s try another road, then,” Alsie Hopkins said. He sounded so serious that the whole squad hooted at him.

Caudell raised his cup, tilted his head back to drain it. He slung the AK-47 over his shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said.

Ambling east along Washington Street to First hardly seemed like soldiering, though Ruffin Biggs complained, “I forgot how heavy a rifle this was.” Caudell frowned; compared to the rifle musket he had carried, the AK-47 was small and light. But compared to no rifle at all—his burden the past four years—it did feel rather like a slab of stone. He decided Biggs had a point.

First Street remained a respectable road until it leaped over Stony Creek. The soldiers’ feet drummed loudly on the wooden bridge. Bob Southard said, “What’s that fairy tale? The three billy goats guff?”

“Gruff,” Caudell corrected him. He waved down at the little stream. “Might could be a few snappers in there, but I don’t think Stony Creek’s big enough to hold a troll.”

A few hundred yards past the bridge, the road split into three narrow tracks, none of which seemed to lead anywhere in particular. “See what I mean?” Mollie said.

“The right fork is the one that goes north and east,” Henry Pleasants remarked. “That’s the way we’re looking for.”

Mollie looked at him. “You’re right, but how’d you know? You’re new hereabouts.”

“A couple of my miners, Welshmen, came down and settled on that road,” he answered. “I thought they’d work on the railroad with me, but they’re content to farm a few acres and hunt a little.”

“Haven’t seen ‘em in town much,” Caudell said. “They must stick to themselves.”

Pleasants nodded. “They do. Lloyd and Andrew are both like that.”

“We ought to have a look at those farms of theirs, then,” Caudell said. “Could be anything on ‘em—a still, maybe, or who knows what else?”

Lloyd Morgan’s place came first, a couple of miles up the path from Nashville. The cabin on it was small, dark, and tumbledown, rather like Morgan himself. He looked anything but happy at having guests, but did not presume to argue with a squad of soldiers with repeaters at the ready. He also smelled powerfully of whiskey. Try as they would, though, Caudell’s squad found no still. Nate asked him where he’d got the liquor. He just shook his head and muttered in Welsh.

Finally Caudell gave up. “Lee’s proclamation doesn’t make it against the law to get drunk. Let’s go,”

As pine woods screened Morgan’s farm from view, Ruffin Biggs grumbled, “I bet he’s standing back there laughing at us.”

“Could be so,” Caudell agreed.

“Can’t win all the time,” Mollie Bean said. When she was doing what any other soldier might, as now, Caudell found he had no trouble thinking of her as Melvin again. He could not decide whether that was good or bad.

Andrew Gwynn’s farm, an hour’s tramp from Lloyd Morgan’s, made the latter seem a plantation by comparison. Looking at the tiny, weed-infested plot Gwynn cultivated—or rather, did not seem to cultivate—Caudell marveled that he managed to make a living from it. And if he didn’t…how did he make a living? Suspicion rose within Caudell. He said, “We’ll look this place over real careful, boys.”

They looked. Andrew Gwynn came out of the shack by the path to watch them look. Under a shock of dark hair, his face was pale, narrow, closed. Unlike Morgan, he was in complete control of himself. When the searchers again failed to find anything, he gave them a cold nod and went back inside.

Caudell was dissatisfied, frustrated. “I know he’s hiding one somewhere,” he said several times. “I can feel it.”

After the squad had moved another couple of miles closer to Rivington, Henry Pleasants told him, “It’s back in a little clearing, well off the road. There’s no path—far as I know, Andrew never goes there the same way twice.”

“Why didn’t you say that when we were back there, Henry?” Caudell demanded, glaring at his friend.

“If you’d found it by yourselves, that would have been all right,” Pleasants answered. “But Andrew came down here at my urging. I didn’t feel right, giving him away before his eyes.”

“But our orders were—” Caudell stopped, remembering what he’d thought about orders the day before. He set hands on hips. “You know what, Henry?” Pleasants shook his head. Caudell went on, “You’d better watch yourself, because near as I can see, you’re turning into a rebel.”

Alsie Hopkins slapped his knee and doubled over laughing. Pleasants didn’t look so sure. “Is that a compliment?” he asked.

“Damned if I know,” Caudell said.

The road twisted like a snake with the bellyache. Past Andrew Gwynn’s farm, Pleasants was as lost as Caudell, who marveled at how strange places just a few miles from home could be. Without Mollie to tell him which turns to make, he knew he might have wandered in circles. A blue jay jeered at him from up in a pine tree.

Before long, they found another break in the woods. Caudell glanced first at Mollie, then at Henry Pleasants. So did the rest of the squad. “Nobody knows who lives here?” Caudell said. “Well, we’ll have to go and find out, then.”

They stopped at the edge of the woods, peering through brush at the clearing ahead. By the look of things, nobody lived there, though someone once had. The cabin was a roofless ruin, the fields a riot of weeds and shrubs and, here and there, man-high saplings.

Bob Southard tramped off across the field. Alsie Hopkins started after him. Caudell put out an arm to stop him, called to Southard, “You want to be careful, Bob. We’re getting close to where those Rivington bastards might be.”

Southard shook his head and kept walking. “They got more things to worry about than me. They—” He never said anything else. A burst of fire from the far side of the clearing cut him down where he stood. He spun when he was hit, so Caudell could see the almost comic amazement on his face as he fell.

Caudell’s own battle reflexes had not faded; at the first sound of fire he threw himself flat. The wisdom of that was proved a moment later, when bullets probed the place from which Southard had emerged, searching for anyone who might have been with him. “Oh, sweet Jesus, I pissed myself!” Alsie Hopkins wailed. Caudell didn’t feel like laughing. Had he not stepped behind a tree not long before, he knew he might have done the same thing.

Bullets slapped trees, smacked branches with a rough hand, again and again and again. Whoever was shooting up ahead, he seemed to have all the ammunition in the world, and he wasn’t shy about using it. Caudell turned his head far enough to get his mouth out of the dirt, said to Henry Pleasants beside him, “That’s no AK-47 up there.”

“What is it, then?” Being a transplanted Northerner, Pleasants was not yet intimately familiar with the rifle he carried.

Caudell shook his head without raising it.” Damned if I know. But the report is heavier, and he’s not firing clips, either. Listen—damn bullets just keep on coming.” He remembered how far away the trees on the other side of the clearing were, and how fast poor, overconfident Bob Southard had gone down. “Whatever he’s shooting, it’s got ungodly range.”

The firing stopped. “Stay down!” three people hissed at the same time. Mollie Bean added, “He’s tryin’ to find out just where we’re at.”

“We’ve got to spread out,” Caudell said. His initial terror at unexpectedly coming under fire was gone now, replaced by the more familiar fear that went with any combat. If he could not master that fear, he could live with it; four years of peace dropped away from him as if they had never been. When he spoke again, he might have been teaching a lesson his students already knew well: “Henry, you and I will slide right. Ruffin, you and Alsie head left. M-Melvin, you stay here, give us some covering fire, and if anything goes wrong, you make sure you get back and give Captain Lewis the word.”

Mollie said, “Ought to be me with you instead of Henry, Nate. He ain’t that handy with a repeater.”

“But you know the country hereabouts best. That gives you the best chance of making it back to Nashville,” Caudell said. He made sense enough that she quit arguing. He took a deep breath. “Let’s go.” He slid backwards, into deeper cover. Henry Pleasants had no trouble staying with him, or staying low. He might have been a lieutenant colonel, but he’d learned to move like a red Indian.

Mollie’s AK-47 barked, three or four quick rounds sent in the direction from which the bullets ahead had come. The reply was almost instantaneous, a storm of fire so furious that Caudell realized he hadn’t left Mollie in a safe place after all. Against that monster gun, there didn’t seem to be any safe places.

Off to the left, Hopkins and Biggs started to fire. The gun hesitated for a moment, then began stuttering out death in a new direction. It chewed away at the brush that screened attackers from it. Caudell noticed he was thinking about it as if it were a sentient entity in its own right, and a malevolent one.

When he said something like that to Henry Pleasants, his friend laughed mirthlessly. “Now you know how I felt at Bealeton.”

Now crouching, now crawling, they scurried through the trees, guided by the deep, monotonous patter of the gun—and the gunner, Caudell reminded himself—they were stalking. Mollie kept squeezing off shots every minute or two. So did Alsie Hopkins and Ruffin Biggs. For a while, the hidden gunner continued his pattern of swinging back and forth between them. Then, apparently deciding Mollie wasn’t advancing and wasn’t dangerous where she was, he concentrated his fire on the two moving men.

“Shall we take some of the heat off them?” Pleasants asked, hefting the AK-47 he’d still never fired.

Caudell shook his head. “Not yet. Best way we can do that is get close enough to make sure our shots count.”

Pleasants sketched a salute. “Spoken like an officer.”

Most of an hour of slow movement went by before Caudell spotted muzzle flashes ahead and to his left. He went flat on his belly and wriggled forward like a cottonmouth. Henry Pleasants was right beside him. For some time, those flashes were all they saw. When at last they drew near enough to make out more, Caudell’s lips shaped a silent whistle. “He’s got his own little earthwork there.”

In back of concealing branches, heaped-up dirt warded the gunner against bullets from front, left, right. Either Hopkins or Biggs fired at him. A burst answered them, keeping them pinned well away. Caudell saw a flick of motion behind the long barrel of the gun that projected over the revetment. A plan shaped itself in his mind. He whispered to Pleasants, “Move away from me, over to that stump there. Next time he starts shooting; we’ll both try and take him out.”

“All right.” Ever so cautiously, Pleasants crawled into place. Caudell himself crouched behind a tree trunk. He waited, waited…Mollie fired. The hidden enemy did not reply. Then shots came from the left, from Biggs and Hopkins. A stream of bullets lashed out at them.

Caudell fired. So did Henry Pleasants. They were close enough to hear the enemy gunner’s cry of fear and rage. The long barrel swung toward Caudell with terrifying speed. Seen straight on, the muzzle flashes were bright as the sun. Bullets slammed into the trunk, just above his head.

All at once, the bullets were chewing up the treetops, not closing in on him. After a few seconds, the firing stopped. Wary of a trick, Caudell waited several minutes before peering round his sheltering tree trunk. The big, black gun barrel pointed up at the sky. In his mind’s eye, Caudell saw the Rivington man who had been back of it hit, saw his dying weight slump down onto the gun and raise the muzzle, saw him fall away so the bullets stopped corning.

Shaking with reaction, he called over to Pleasants: “You all right, Henry?” His voice shook, too.

“Yes, I think so.” Pleasants didn’t sound any too steady himself, which reassured Nate. “What the hell kind of gun is that, anyhow?”

“Damned if I know. Shall we go find out?” Caudell started to leave his cover.

But Henry Pleasants said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Nate.”

“What? Why not?”

“Two reasons. For one thing, we’ve done what Captain Lewis told us to do: we’ve found where these bastards have their southern pickets posted. And for two, look how well situated that gun is. Do you think it’s there all by its lonesome, or do you think there are more guns farther back, just waiting for us to show ourselves so they can cut us down?”

As if in response to Pleasants’s words, a new gun opened up, north and east of the one they’d taken out. Bullets cut twigs, spaanged off stones. Caudell, once more flat on his belly, could see no flashes. Hearing the deep, endless roar was quite bad enough. “All right, Henry, I’m convinced. Let’s get out of here.”

Getting out was almost as sticky as getting in had been. The sun was low in the west by the time they rejoined Mollie Bean. Ruffin Biggs and Alsie Hopkins were already there; Biggs wore a filthy bandage stuffed into the front of his right shoe. “I got a couple of toes gone, I reckon,” he said matter-of-factly. “Here on out, you can call me Gimpy.”

“What the hell kind of gun was that you went up against, Nate?” Mollie asked, unconsciously echoing Henry Pleasants.

Caudell could hear the concern she did her best to conceal. It wanted him. He wanted to squeeze the breath out of her, to prove to himself, flesh on flesh, that he was still alive. He couldn’t, not now. He said, “Henry here talked me out of going up to see.” When he explained why, his companions nodded.

Alise Hopkins said, “That there gun looks to shoot ‘bout as far as a Napoleon.” He shook his head. “Didn’t much fancy gettin’ shot at when I couldn’t hardly shoot back.”

Ruffin Biggs nodded again, this time to Pleasants. “Reckon you was right, Yankee—Cap’n Lewis’ll need to know about a gun like that, and so will Hit-’em-Again.”

“Forrest, you mean?” Henry Pleasants let out a dry chuckle. “Ruffin, I suspect he already knows.”

Guards round the Capitol, guards posted on the grounds of the presidential residence, a guard with an AK-47 in his carriage… Lee felt a prisoner of guards. And guards most of all at the corner of Ninth and Franklin, infantry and artillery both, protecting the most important secrets of the Confederacy.

The battered building that had housed America Will Break had changed since Lee visited it just after his men finally succeeded in breaking into the AWB sanctum. The hole in the outer wall of that hidden chamber was bigger now. It needed to be, to let light into the room: the glowing tubes on the ceiling had failed when the thing that chugged in the wall fell silent. A new canvas awning shielded the opening from the elements.

The officer in charge of the guard detachment saluted as Lee’s carriage rolled up. “The congressional delegation arrived a few minutes ago, sir. Per your instructions, they are waiting in the outer office of that suite.”

“Thank you, Major.” Lee got down from the carriage. So did his bodyguard. He tossed his head. The only time he had to himself these days was in the privy or the bathtub—and had the tub been bigger, a guard likely would have joined him there. Assassins murdered freedom merely by existing.

The senators and congressmen turned as Lee came in through the entry to the AWB suite. So did Judah P. Benjamin, leaning heavily on two sticks. Luckily, the bullet that had gone through his calf missed the bone; the wound was healing. But the former Secretary of State still moved like an old man instead of with the imposing presence he had once enjoyed.

“Gentlemen, you have my sincerest gratitude for joining me today,” Lee said. “If you will be so kind as to come with me, I will show you why you were invited here.”

“It had better be good,” growled Senator Wigfall of Texas. “When I tried going into that room yonder, the one with the heavy door, the damned guards said they’d shoot me to stop me. I’m not accustomed to our own good Confederate soldiers turning into Hessians, and I don’t care for it, not one bit I don’t.”

“They were but obeying my explicit orders, sir. You will see the reason behind them, I assure you. The guards will admit you now, as you are in my company.”

And indeed, with Lee heading the group, the soldiers presented arms to Wigfall and the other senators and congressmen. The officials turned this way and that, staring at the unfamiliar office furnishings within the secret room. Wigfall pointed to the qwerty on one desk. “What the devil is that thing?”

“If you can tell me, Senator, I shall be in your debt,” Lee said.

Congressman Lucius Gartrell of Georgia, a Confederate rather than a Patriot in politics, looked toward a hole in the wall not far from the door. “What happened there, Mr. President?”

“The device which made those tubes overhead”—Lee pointed—”give light was housed there. After it ceased operation, we removed it in an effort to discover the principles by which it worked. Our best guess is that it ran out of fuel.”

“Can’t you just give it more wood or coal, then?” Gartrell said.

“It does not appear to burn either, but rather a combustible fluid of some sort,” Lee answered. That was what his military engineers had told him, based on the few drops of strong-smelling liquid left in the tank marked FUEL. Whatever the liquid ‘Was, it wasn’t whale oil: of so much the engineers seemed certain. Past that point, no certainty existed. Most of the savants working with the RONDA GENERATOR—for so it proclaimed itself to be—believed that what it generated was electricity, but what the stuff was good for once generated they hadn’t a clue. The Rivington men had known, though.

Duncan Kenner of Louisiana, another congressman of the Confederate persuasion, said, “This is all very interesting, I’m sure, Mr. President, but why are we here?”

Lee nodded to Judah Benjamin, whose usual small smile never wavered; Benjamin had primed Kenner to ask just that question. Lee said, “The answer, Congressman, reaches back more than four years and has until recently been a tightly held secret. Even now, before I continue, I must require your word of honor, and that of your colleagues, not to divulge what you learn here today without my prior permission.”

Most of the legislators agreed at once. Mulish Wigfall said, “Be damned if I’ll buy a pig in a poke.”

“Very well, Senator, you may go; I am sorry to have wasted your time,” Lee said politely. Wigfall glared but, seeing Lee prepared to be inflexible, added his promise to the rest. Lee nodded his thanks, then went on, “In early 1864, as you must all be aware, our Confederacy’s prospects in the war for independence were poor. We were outnumbered and outfactoried from the start, portions of our land had been overrun, and the North was beginning to find in Grant and Sherman and Sheridan officers who could bring its full strength to bear upon us.”

Even Wigfall had to nod; the staunchest Southern fire-eater remembered how bleak things had looked then. Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar of Mississippi, newly returned to Congress as a Patriot and as staunch a fire-eater as any ever born, said, “The coming at that moment of the Rivington men and their repeaters always seemed to me to be visible, even miraculous, proof of the favor which divine Providence showed the Confederate States of America,” Several other senators and congressmen solemnly nodded.

“I confess that I inclined toward a similar view for some time,” Lee said. “I have since been disabused of this notion. We were indeed shown favor, but of a sort neither divine’ nor miraculous. Hear me out, my friends; the story I am about to tell you may seem implausible, but I assure you it is the truth.”

He told the legislators what he knew of the Rivington men and their travel through time to come to the South’s aid. Part of what he said was gleaned from Andries Rhoodie, part from the volumes in the chamber where he now stood. As he spoke, he watched Louis Wigfall go paler and paler. That did not surprise him; the men of the AWB must have given Wigfall their own version of this tale. Lee finished,” And so you see, gentlemen, they helped us gain our freedom, not out of consideration for our virtues, but so we might serve as pawns in their game.”

Silence stretched when he was through. Finally Congressman Lamar said, “This is an—extraordinary web you spin, Mr. President, so extraordinary that I hope you will not be offended if I say it would be all the better for proof.”

“I can offer that, or at least corroboration,” Judah Benjamin said. “I heard much of this same tale from Andries Rhoodie’s lips, as did Jefferson Davis and, if I be not mistaken, Joe Johnston and Alexander Stephens as well.” Benjamin looked around the room. “And unless I am much mistaken, my friends, some few of you will have heard it as well. We are not so good at keeping secrets, even important secrets, as we might be.”

Since Lee kept secrets without difficulty, he had not thought of that, but by the expressions on several legislators’ faces, Benjamin had a point. Lee glanced toward Wigfall. Almost defiantly, the Texan said, “I’ve heard it, yes, but not through gossip and chit-chat. The Rivington men told it to me and General Forrest, though their interpretation of the events differed substantially from that ascribed to them by Mr. Lee.”

“‘By their fruits ye shall know them,’ or so the Bible says,” Lee answered. He waved to the book that lay open on every desk in the secret room. “To few folks is it given to learn how history would judge them. Thanks to the men of the AWB; we possess that opportunity. I have taken the liberty of marking certain passages in these books, passages I believe to be representative of the whole. By no means do I require you to take these as all-inclusive, however; feel free to browse as you would, to learn how the future thought of some of the issues our confederacy was in part founded to uphold.”

“You mean niggers, don’t you?” Wigfall said. “In the end, it always comes down to niggers.”

“There, Senator, I find I cannot disagree with you,” Lee said, thinking this was one of the few occasions on which he could truthfully say that.

He took a step back, indicating that the congressmen and senators might begin their examination. Instantly, he was reminded of a game of musical chairs, for legislators outnumbered chairs to hold them. His momentary amusement vanished as fast as it formed; just such a contretemps at his inauguration had led him to bring Mary up onto the platform with him and, shortly thereafter, to his becoming a widower.

Unlike the scene in Capitol Square, no unseemly brawl followed here. Some men claimed seats; others stood and peered over their shoulders. All the books had markers inserted at the pages that gave their publication dates. A few derisive snorts arose from skeptical lawmakers, but those soon faded. Many of the volumes were illustrated, and illustrated with photographs and lavish color impossible to match in the mundane world of 1868. And every work had the dizzying effect of being written with the hindsight of a hundred years and more. Within moments, the only sounds in the room were soft grunts of wonder.

Louis T. Wigfall heaved his bulk out of a chair, advanced on Lee. “I owe you an apology. Mr. President, and I am man enough to give it. I thought you’d put together some humbug here to befool us, but I see it is not so. You could not have manufactured so much, and in such detail.” Shaking his head like a bedeviled bear, he shambled back to the desk from which he had come and, without complaint, took a place behind Congressman Gartrell, who had occupied his chair.

Lee leaned against the hard, cold side of a closed file cabinet, let the lawmakers look as long as they would. This was the second such delegation he had led into the AWB sanctum; eventually, he planned to allow the entire Confederate Congress to see the books and papers assembled here.

As had happened with the first group of legislators, wonder began to give way to indignation as senators and congressmen moved from one volume to the next, compared one account of the, lost Civil War and its aftermath with another. “Every one of these things sounds as if a damnyankee wrote it,” Congressman Lamar exclaimed. Someone else—Lee did not notice who—added, “Not just a damnyankee, but a damned abolitionist Yankee.”

Where Lee had quoted Matthew, Judah P. Benjamin chose Bobbie Burns: “ ‘Oh wad some power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An’ foolish notion.’” He did his best to turn his soft accent to broad, harsh Scots. A thoughtful silence descended when he was through.

Into it, Lee said, “Unique among men, my friends, we have been granted that, ah, giftie. We always remained faithful to our peculiar institution despite the censure of those outside our bounds, confident posterity would thank us for that fidelity. But here before us we have the verdict of posterity, which condemns us for maintaining the ownership of one man by another and is convinced that that system, if ever it were justifiable, had in our time long since outlived such justification.” This time he picked words from the Book of Daniel: “ ‘Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.’ Only God knows His judgments, but we may see for ourselves the verdict which history has brought in against us.”

“Did you know of this when during your Presidential campaign you spoke of ending slavery?” Congressman Kenner asked.

“No, sir, I did not,” Lee said. “Indeed, the Rivington men painted for me quite a different picture of the future, a picture in which white and black remained forever at each other’s throats. The pages in this room serve to give the lie to that picture, as I, think you will agree, yet it was the one they ‘offered, as Mr. Benjamin and, I think, Senator Wigfall will attest.”

Judah Benjamin’s massive head moved up and down. Wigfall also nodded, though his expression was anything but sanguine; Lee wondered whether the fierce frown was aimed at himself for having forced the Texan to make that admission or at the AWB men for having misled him.

L. Q. C. Lamar said, “What of the Rivington men, then? If this love feast between Negroes and whites be the way of the future (and so it would seem, startling and, I must say, repugnant though I find it), how do the Rivington men fit into it?”

“Poorly, I suspect.” Lee held up a hand. “No, I do not intend to be flippant. By their own words, as rendered into English by Mr. Benjamin’s coreligionist Mr. Goldfarb, they show themselves to be zealots at strife with virtually the entire world of their time. Let me offer you an analogy which quite offended Andries Rhoodie: the Rivington men are as mad in their support of whites in their times as John Brown was in support of blacks in ours.”

The Confederate legislators looked at each other. One by one, they began to nod. The same thing had happened with the first delegation to see the evidence from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Few men were brazen enough to withstand their great-grandsons’ scorn.

Louis T. Wigfall came close. “Damn me to hell, sir, if I can stomach that stinking black Republican of an Abe Lincoln being made into some plaster saint. And damn me to hell if I want to live in a country where the man who blacks my boots and curries my horse is my equal.”

“A measure of equality before the law by no means creates of itself equality in society,” Lee said. “The United States make that abundantly clear. And let me ask you a different question, Senator, if I may: Having seen the means the AWB employs to reach its ends, do you yet find those ends deserving of your support?”

Wigfall’s glower grew black as his boots. But he had been in the middle of the Capitol Square massacre. At last he shook his heavy head.

“Nor do I.” Lee raised his voice, spoke to the entire congressional delegation: “Am I to construe from this, then, that you shall vote in the affirmative when a bill arranging for the gradual, compensated emancipation of Negro slaves, the terms to be along the lines of those I outlined before becoming President, is introduced into the Senate and House of Representatives?”

Again, the lawmakers looked at one another, some of them as if they hoped one of their number would have the nerve to say no. Lee watched them all, especially Wigfall and Lamar, whom he judged likeliest to oppose him, the one from stubbornness, the other out of principle.

Lamar cleared his throat. Several congressmen beamed. The representative from Mississippi said, “Retreating from a long-held position is apt to be as dangerous in politics as in war; in so doing, I fear I look down into the open grave of any future aspirations. Yet given the evidence you have presented to us today, I have no choice but to support such legislation as you suggest, and justify my vote to my constituents as well as I may thereafter.”

Lee’s nod was the next thing to a bow. “If not the immediate gratitude of the voters in your district, you will gain your country’s lasting thanks.”

After the Mississippian declared himself in favor of Lee’s program, the rest of the lawmakers fell in line. Even Wigfall nodded gruffly, though Lee, knowing his volatility, did not take that as a firm promise. Judah Benjamin said, “You know, Mr. Lamar, what with the atrocities of March 4 and the insurrection currently being mounted in North Carolina, your vote in favor of emancipation may yet redound to your advantage, provided you make your district aware that in so voting, you reject everything the Rivington men support.”

Lamar’s features, usually on the brooding side, lit up. “It could be so, sir; with your well-known acuity of judgment in matters political, it likely is so.”

“You flatter me, sir,” Benjamin said, and he contrived to appear flattered, but flattery, Lee thought, was best defined as overfulsome praise, and, having seen Benjamin in action, he was more than willing to concede the former Secretary of State’s reputation was deserved.

Congressman Gartrell said, “How fare we against the rebels, sir?”

“Not so well as I would wish,” Lee answered. “The Rivington men are few in numbers, but possessed of the advantage of a century and a half of progress in the mechanic arts, progress we of course lack. The repeaters they furnished us for use against the United States are one example of such progress; unhappily, we have discovered that they are only one example. The Rivington men have on the whole succeeded in maintaining the positions they seized when fighting broke out after March 4. Were it not for the AK-47s in our arsenal, I fear they might have managed to do much more than merely hold those positions.”

He stopped, scowling almost as ferociously as had Senator Wigfall. The long-barreled, large-caliber endless repeaters the Rivington men used to defend strong points made AK-47s seem like Springfields by. comparison. Nor were the torpedoes they buried in the fields between those strong points any bargain, either; after watching the legs blown off two or three men, their comrades grew noticeably less eager to advance.

“We shall in the end defeat them, though?” Gartrell pressed anxiously.

“If we defeated the United States, sir, we shall surely overcome a small band of insurrectionists.” Lee wished he were as certain as he sounded.

Bullets snapped past a few feet over Caudell’s head, the stream sweeping first left to right, then back from right to left. The wash in which he lay was only about a hundred yards from the gunner. Getting this close had taken him all day. Now that he was here, he didn’t know what to do next. Firing a few shots at random was likelier to alert the gunner than to kill him. And the Rivington men still had the rifle grenades they’d used in the trenches outside Washington City. Caudell didn’t want them raining down on him.

He turned to Henry Pleasants, who sprawled beside him in the gully. “We can’t go forward, not anymore,” he said, waving. Pleasants nodded; if they showed themselves, they were dead men. Caudell waved in the other direction. “We can’t go back either, not hardly.” Eight or nine soldiers lay in the gully with them, the survivors of twice that many or more. Pleasants nodded again. Caudell said, “Well, what does that leave us? I’m looking for ideas, damn it.”

“I wish I had one,” Pleasants said. “Maybe when night comes—” He broke off with a grimace. By the way they shot at night, the Rivington men could see in the dark like cats. And even if that weren’t so, with the brute of a repeater up ahead, if one bullet didn’t get you, the next one would, or the next.

Flopped down a couple of feet away, Mollie Bean said, “Can’t go forward, can’t go back.” She wiped her forehead with her sleeve. Since the one was as dirty as the other, that helped her not at all. She still looked good to Caudell. The only way she could have looked better was far away from the fighting. If something happened to her—But she hadn’t let Caudell send her away.

He said, “We can’t go over ‘em: not enough trees, and they’d shoot us out of ‘em like boys with squirrel guns. And we can’t go under ‘em, because we aren’t a pack of moles.”

He’d been talking as much to hear the sound of his own voice as for any other reason. He almost jumped when Henry Pleasants rolled over and whacked him in the shoulder. Jumping, here, was dangerous. Pleasants’s eyes blazed in his filthy face. “The hell we can’t go under ‘em,” he said. His voice shook with excitement.

“Huh? What are you talking about?” Caudell said.

“Going under ‘em,” Pleasants repeated impatiently, as if to a stupid child. When Caudell still looked blank, he realized he had to explain further: “Nate, I used to be a mining engineer, remember? If we could run a tunnel from here to under that big repeater, set a charge of powder, and light it off—We can do it, I swear we can, and blow ‘em high as the sky. The ground around here is soft, the side of the wash will keep the Rivington men from spying what we’re up to…I’m not crazy, Nate; I swear by almighty God I’m not.”

“You mean it,” Caudell said slowly, wonderingly. The stream of bullets was right overhead now. Advancing farther against the gun that spat them was only a fancy way to commit suicide, unless…Caudell had a sudden vision of gun and gunner both flying through the air. He liked it better than anything else he’d imagined since being so rudely returned to combat.

Pleasants sensed he’d hooked his fish. “I sure do mean it, Nate. If we can bring Lloyd and Andrew up here, and some other men who’ve dug—you must have some in this state—and their tools, and the timber we’d need to shore up the tunnel as we dig—” He started ticking off on his fingers exactly what he’d need, as if he were sitting comfortably in a mining office instead of hunkered down in a dry wash.

Finally, to dam the flow of ideas, Caudell held up a hand. “All right, I surrender—you’ve convinced me. But I’m just a sergeant, remember?” He pointed at the stripes on his sleeve. “I can’t get you everything you’re talking about. We’ll head back to Captain Lewis. If you sell him your scheme, too, you’ll likely get a chance to try it.”

“Let’s go.” Pleasants turned and started to crawl down the gully.

Caudell grabbed him by the ankle. “Henry, you just swore to me you weren’t crazy, and here you go making yourself out a liar. If you want to live to see Captain Lewis, you won’t just march off and do it, not from here you won’t. Think about where you are. When night comes, we’ll try getting out. Till then, we sit tight.” Pleasants looked mutinous. Caudell went on, “How much digging did you plan on doing today, anyhow?”

His friend managed a shamefaced laugh. “Sorry. You’re thinking straighter than I am, that’s plain. But when I see something like this in my mind, I go all on fire to get started on it, no matter what’s in my way.”

“I know you do.” Caudell remembered that that driving eagerness to get the job done, and the matching blindness to anything not directly related to getting it done, had cost his friend his railroad job. After a couple of years as a first sergeant, practicality was his own middle name. He plucked at his beard as he thought. After a couple of minutes, he asked, “If you’re not here, can one of your Welshmen oversee this job?”

“Andrew could,” Pleasants answered at once. “Lloyd works well enough, but he likes his whiskey too well to make a proper chief.”

“Fair enough. Here’s what we’ll do, then. After it gets dark, you and I and Melvin here will all head back to Nashville. We’ll go separately, and—”

“Wait a minute,” Mollie Bean interrupted. “What’re y’all sendin’ me back for?”

“You’ve spent the last however long listening to Henry and me,” Caudell answered. “You know as much about this notion of his as I do, anyway. Captain Lewis needs to hear it. Even at night, it’s no sure bet one of us, or even one out of two, will make it back safe out of the range of that damned gun up there. But if I send three, somebody ought to get back.”

She nodded, warily.” All right, Nate. Reckon that makes sense.” In front of other people, a good deal had to stay unsaid between them. If she’d thought he was sending her back just to get her out of danger—which he very much wanted to do—she’d surely have refused to go. But her pride could accept an order with military reason behind it.

Shadows shifted, lengthened, began to blend into the one great purple shadow of twilight. When full dark came, Caudell turned to Mollie and Pleasants. “I’ll go first,” he said. “First one through is likeliest to draw fire. Henry, you’re next—give me fifteen minutes or so before you start. M-Melvin, you go last, fifteen minutes behind Henry. We’ll all meet”—I hope, he thought—”at Captain Lewis’s.”

“Luck, Nate,” Pleasants said.

“Luck,” Mollie echoed, so softly he hardly heard her.

He wanted to hug her, to kiss her, to be with her anywhere but this miserable spot. All he could do was nod a nod she might well not have seen in the darkness, then scuttle off down the dry wash. His mouth was dry, too; he remembered too well the terrifying confusion of the night fight outside Washington City. Then the Rivington men and their fancy weapons had been allies. Now they were trying to kill him.

The wash got shallower and shallower as it curved away from the endless repeater. He rolled out of it and behind a hollow stump. Doing his best to keep the stump between himself and the gunner, he crawled, scrambled, crawled again. He’d gone several hundred yards before bullets came snarling after him. He threw himself flat—better than flat, actually, for he landed in a hole in the ground. He waited a few minutes, then crawled on. When he decided the pine woods screened him away from the Rivington man at the gun, he got up and walked, steering by the stars till he came to a road he knew.

He’d started only six or eight miles outside Nashville, but the town clocks were chiming midnight when he came into town. Lewis made his headquarters at the courthouse. A sentry gave Caudell, now even filthier than he had been before, a dubious look. “You sure this won’t wait, soldier?”

“I’m sure.” Caudell put bite in his voice. He discovered he still had his wartime prejudice against anyone in a clean uniform. His growl sufficed to get the sentry to step aside. He went into the courthouse, found Lewis snoring on a pallet, “Captain Lewis, sir? Captain?”

Lewis grunted, then rolled over and sat up. “Who—?” He rubbed his eyes. The torches outside the doorway let him see who. “What the devil is it, Nate?”

As Caudell started to explain what it was, several horsemen rode into the town square, their harness jingling. A man with cavalry spurs on his boots strode into the courthouse. Caudell kept on talking to Lewis: let the damned courier wait his turn, he thought. Most of that breed were arrogant, eager to get their ever-so-precious words in first, but this one stood quietly until Caudell was through.

Captain Lewis yawned till his jaw gave an audible pop. Then he said, “If this Pleasants knows what he’s doing—and he sounds like he does—tell him to go ahead. Sounds like a good chance to get rid of that damned repeater, and we haven’t had much luck with it any other way.”

As Caudell saluted, the man behind him spoke for the first time: “Captain, Sergeant, the hell with one repeater. When you’re holdin’ four kings, you better not just raise a dime.”

Caudell whirled. He knew that voice, though he’d not expected to hear it in the Nashville courthouse. George Lewis sprang out of bed and to his feet. He was wearing his makeshift captain’s tunic, but only drawers beneath it. He came to attention and saluted anyhow. “General Forrest, sir!”

“At ease, Captain—and put on your pants,” Nathan Bedford Forrest added with a chuckle. “I rode in to see how things were on this part of the line around that goddam Rivington place, on account of they’d been pretty quiet till now. Reckon they’re gonna liven up some.” He rounded on Caudell. “Where is this mining engineer of yours, First Sergeant?”

“He ought to be along any time now, sir,” Caudell said uncomfortably. He told again how he, Pleasants, and Mollie Bean—though he remembered to call her Melvin—had set out at fifteen-minute intervals.

Forrest nodded. “Best you could have done, I expect. But if that engineer stops a bullet—Wait. He said one of those other miners could do the job, too, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but—” Caudell hopelessly spread his hands. Henry Pleasants was his friend. Mollie was a great deal more than that. Forrest might understand his feelings, but the man was—had to be, by the wreathed stars on his collar—a soldier first. Now that he had an idea, he would carry it forward with or without the person who first proposed it. To Caudell, the people mattered more than the idea. He waited and worried, waited more, worried more.

About three in the morning, when worry was turning to despair, Mollie and Pleasants came into the courthouse together. Caudell let out a rebel yell that likely bounced half of Nashville out of bed. He hugged Henry Pleasants first, which gave him all the excuse he needed to hug Mollie too, longer and more closely. “What the devil happened to you two?” he demanded.

“We got lost,” Mollie said in a small, sheepish voice. “My fault. I—”

“I don’t care a damn about all that,” Nathan Bedford Forrest broke in. He paused a moment to let himself, or at least his rank, be recognized, then said, “Which one of you is Pleasants?”

“I am, sir.” Pleasants drew himself stiff and straight. “Private Henry Pleasants, 47th North Carolina, formerly Lieutenant Colonel Henry Pleasants, 48th Pennsylvania.”

“Is that a fact?” Forrest took a longer, closer look at the mining engineer. “Decided you liked it better down here, did you?”

“Some ways,” Pleasants said, and let it go at that.

Forrest did not press him; he had things other than politics on his mind. “Caudell here tells me you think you can run a mine under that big repeater up in front of you.”

“I can blow that goddamned gun just as high as you want it, sir,” Pleasants said positively.

“The hell with one repeater,” Forrest said, as he had to Caudell and Lewis before. “I want that mine. I want it bad enough to taste it, Colonel.” Pleasants beamed to hear his old rank used; Captain Lewis glared a little. Forrest plowed ahead: “About how long would you need to dig it?”

Pleasants’s eyes went far away; his lips moved silently as he calculated. He stayed in that brown study for several minutes. When his face cleared, he answered, “Give me the men, tools, and shoring timbers I’ll need—and a pump, in case the shaft is wet—and I’ll have it done in three weeks to a month.”

Forrest clapped him on the back. “You’ll get ‘em, by God,” he promised.” And you’ll have your old U. S.rank back as part of my staff, if that suits you.”

Now George Lewis glared more than a little. Pleasants grinned from ear to ear. “Thank you, sir! Maybe I should have voted for you after all.”

Caudell gulped, wondering how the notoriously hotheaded Forrest would take that. But the general’s answer, when it came, was low-voiced and serious: “Sir, if I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have voted for myself. I was fooled into thinking America Will Break had the South’s best interests at heart, not its own.” He shook his head, plainly angry at being deceived. Then he grinned, too, an expression half mischievous, half savage. “Now I aim to fool those Rivington bastards right back.”

“How are you going to do that, sir?” Caudell, Mollie, and George Lewis asked at the same time.

“We’ve just been tapping at America Will Break down here south of Rivington,” Forrest answered, still with that predatory grin. “I aim to swing a good deal around to here, start pounding ‘em right about where that repeater is. The more men and guns we throw at ‘em, the more they’ll have to bring in to keep us from crackin’ ‘em. I’ll throw in more, and they’ll bring more, and by the time three weeks or a month have gone by, gentlemen, they’ll need a sight more than one repeater to hold us back. I’ll make them make that spot the linchpin of their whole position.”

It was as if someone had struck a match right in front of Caudell’s eyes. Dazzled, he exclaimed, “They can bring up all the fancy guns they want, because while they’re doing that, we’ll be digging. And when we’re done—”

“—we’ll blow every one of those fancy guns straight to hell,” Nathan Bedford Forrest finished for him. “That’s right, First Sergeant. Then we’ll smash through the gap and go straight for Rivington.” Forrest’s grin suddenly slid off his face, leaving him looking very grim indeed.” And if the Rivington men get word of what we’re up to because somebody blabs, I’ll kill the bigmouthed son of a bitch with my own hands. Does everyone understand me?”

The courthouse got quiet for a moment. Even without knowing Forrest’s reputation, no one who heard him could have doubted he meant exactly what he said.

Perhaps seeking to ease the tension that blunt threat had left in the air, Henry Pleasants said, “You know, Melvin, you’re the spit and image of Nate’s lady friend Mollie Bean. Just how close a relative of hers are you?”

Caudell choked and wished he could sink through the floor. Mollie, though, must have anticipated getting asked that sooner or later, for she answered lightly, “We’re right close, Henry—excuse me, I mean Colonel Henry, sir. Lots o’ people say we look alike.”

“You certainly do,” Pleasants said.

General Forrest told Nate and Mollie, “You two go get some sleep; you’ve earned it. My thanks for coming back with word of this here plan.” He turned to Pleasants. “You stay here with me, sir. Sounds like we got ourselves a whole mess o’ talking to get through.”

“Yes, sir,” Henry Pleasants said. “I think we do…”