The Guns of the South

* II *

“What else, Alsie?” First Sergeant Nate Caudell asked patiently.

Private Alsie Hopkins furrowed his brow, as well as a man in his early twenties could. “Tell ‘em I feel good,” he said at last. “Tell ‘em the arm where I got shot at Gettysburg don’t hurt no more, and the diarrhea ain’t troublin’ me, neither.”

Caudell’s pen scratched across the page. Actually, it wasn’t a proper page, but the back of a piece of old wallpaper. He wrote around a chunk of paste that still clung to it. He was sure he wrote more letters than anyone else in Company D—maybe more than anyone else in the whole 47th North Carolina. That went with being a schoolteacher in a unit full of farmers, many of whom—like Alsie Hopkins—could neither read nor write for themselves.

“What else, Alsie?” he asked again.

Hopkins thought some more. “Tell ‘em we had us a rip-roarin’ snowball fight the other day, and one feller, he got two teeth knocked out of his head when he got hit with a snowball with a rock in the middle of it. We all laughed and laughed.”

“Except the man who got hit,” Caudell said drily.

“No, him too.”

Caudell thought that likely to amuse Hopkins’s family, so he started to write it down. Just then, though, a bugle call came through the open shutters of his cabin’s single window. He put down his pen. “Have to finish this another time, Alsie. That’s assembly for officers, sergeants, and corporals.”

“Everybody but us privates,” Hopkins said, happy at the prospect of his superiors working when he didn’t have to. “Can I leave this paper here, First Sergeant, and we get it done maybe some time later on?”

“I suppose so,” Caudell said resignedly. His battered felt slouch hat lay beside him on the bed. He put it on, got to his feet. “I’ve got to go now, though.”

He and Hopkins ducked out through the cabin’s low door. With nothing better to do, the private ambled away. Caudell hurried up the lane that ran through the cabins and lean-tos and tents of the regiment’s winter quarters. His cabin, which he shared with the other four sergeants of Company D, lay farthest from the open space at the center of the encampment. Closest to that open space was Captain Lewis’s tent; being captain, he had it all to himself. The company banner stood beside it, the words CASTALIA INVINCIBLES picked out in red silk on a blue ground, pierced by more than one bullet hole.

Men with chevrons or collar badges converged on the parade ground. They did not begin to fill it up; they were perhaps one part in seven of the six-hundred-odd soldiers who regularly drilled there.

Along with all the officers and noncommissioned officers was one private: Ben Whitley of Company A. As usual, the teamster perched on his wagon. With him sat another man, a stranger, whose cap, coat, and trousers looked to be made of nothing but patches, some the color of dirt, some of grass, some of mud. Slung on the stranger’s back was a carbine of unfamiliar make.

Excitement ran through Caudell. The cavalry had got itself new rifles the past couple of weeks. So had Major General Anderson’s infantry division, whose winter quarters were even closer to Orange Court House than those of Henry Heth’s division, of which the 47th North Carolina was a part. If half—if a tithe—of the stories about those rifles were true.

Colonel George Faribault limped around from the far side of the wagon. He moved slowly and with the aid of a stick; he’d been wounded in the foot and in the shoulder at Gettysburg and was just back to the regiment. By his pallor, even standing was not easy for him. He said, “Gentlemen, it is as you may have guessed: our brigade and our division are next to receive the new repeater, the AK-47 they call it. Here”—he pointed to the stranger in the suit of many muddy colors—”is Mr. Benny Lang, who will show you how to operate the rifle, so you can go on and teach your men. Mr. Lang.”

Lang jumped lightly down from the wagon. He was about five-ten, dark, and on the skinny side. His clothes bore no rank badges of any sort, but he carried himself like a soldier. “I usually get two questions at a time like this,” he said. “The first one is, why don’t you teach everyone yourself? Sorry, but we haven’t the manpower. Today, my friends and I are working with General Kirkland’s brigade: that’s you people, the 11th North Carolina, the 26th North Carolina, the 44th North Carolina, and the 52d North Carolina. Tomorrow we’ll be with General Cooke’s brigade, and so on. You’ll manage. You have to be more than stupid to screw up an AK-47. You have to be an idiot, and even then it’s not easy.”

Listening to him, Caudell found himself frowning. Camp rumor said these fellows in the funny clothes were not merely from North Carolina but from his own home county, Nash. Lang didn’t sound like a Carolina man, though, or like any kind of Southerner. He didn’t sound like a Yankee, either; in the past two years, Caudell had heard plenty of Yankee accents. The first sergeant kept listening:

“The other question I hear is, why bother trying anything new when we’re happy with our regular rifles? I’d sooner show you why than tell you. Who’s your best chap with Springfield or Enfield or whatever you use?”

All eyes swung to the regimental ordnance sergeant. He was a polite, soft-spoken man; he looked around to see if anyone else would volunteer. When no one did, he took a step forward out of line. “Reckon I am, sir. George Hines.”

“Very good,” Lang said. “Would you be so kind as to fetch your weapon and ammunition for it? And while he’s doing that, Private Whitley, why don’t you move the wagon so we don’t frighten the horses?”

“Sure will.” Whitley drove the team perhaps fifty feet, then jumped down and walked back over to watch what was going on.

Ordnance Sergeant Hines returned a minute or so later, rifle musket on his shoulder. He carried the piece like a part of him, as befit any man who wore a star in the angle of his sergeant’s stripes. Benny Lang pointed to a tall bank of earth that faced away from the soldiers’ huts. “Is that what you use for target practice?”

“Yes, sir, it is,” Hines answered.

Lang trotted over, pinned a circular paper target to the bank. He trotted back to the group, then said, “Ordnance Sergeant Hines, why don’t you put a couple of bullets in that circle for us, fast as you can load and fire?”

“I’ll do that,” Hines said, while the men who stood between him and the target moved hastily out of the way.

Watching the ordnance sergeant handle his rifle, Nate Caudell thought, was like being back on the target range at Camp Mangum outside of Raleigh, hearing the command, “Load in nine times: load!” Hines did everything perfectly, smoothly, just as the manual said he should. To load, he held the rifle upright between his feet, with the muzzle in his left hand and with his right already going to the cartridge box he wore at his belt.

Caudell imagined the invisible drillmaster barking, “Handle cartridge!” Hines brought the paper cartridge from the box to his mouth, bit off the end, poured the powder down the muzzle of his piece, and put the Minié ball in the muzzle. The bluntly. pointed bullet was about the size of the last joint of a man’s finger, with three grooves around its hollow base which expanded to fill the grooves on the inside of the rifle barrel.

At the remembered command of “Draw rammer!” the long piece of iron emerged from its place under the rifle barrel. Next in the series was “Ram,” which the ordnance sergeant did with a couple of sharp strokes before returning the ramrod to its tube. At “Prime,” he half-cocked the hammer with his right thumb, then took out a copper percussion cap and put it on the nipple.

The next four steps went in quick sequence. “Shoulder” brought the weapon up. At “Ready” it went down again for a moment, while Hines took the proper stance. Then up it came once more, with his thumb fully cocking the hammer. “Aim” had him peering down the sights, his forefinger set on the trigger. “Fire,” and the rifle roared and bucked against his shoulder.

He set the butt end of the piece on the ground, repeated the process without a single changed motion. He fired again. Another cloud of fireworks-smelling smoke spurted from his rifle. The two shots were less than half a minute apart. He scrubbed at the black powder stain on his chin with his sleeve, then turned with quiet pride to face Lang. “Anything else, sir?”

“No, Ordnance Sergeant. You’re as good with a rifle musket as any man I’ve seen. However—” Lang brought up his own rifle, blazed away at the white paper target. The sharp staccato bark, repeated again and again and again, was like nothing Caudell had ever heard. Silence fell again in less time than Hines had needed to fire twice. Lang said, “That was thirty rounds. If I had this weapon and the ordnance sergeant that one, whose chances would you gentlemen like better?”

“Goddam,” somebody behind Caudell said softly, stretching the word out into three syllables. It seemed as good an answer as any, and better than most.

Benny Lang drove the point home anyhow: “If you had this weapon and the Federals that one, whose chances would you gentlemen like?”

For a long moment, no one replied. No one needed to. Privates came dashing onto the parade ground, drawn as if by magnets to learn what sort of rifle had fired like that. Then somebody cut loose with a rebel yell. In an instant, the shrill, hair-raising cry rose from every throat.

Caudell yelled with the rest. Like most of them, he had come back from Pickett’s charge. Far too many of their one-time comrades hadn’t, not in the face of the barrage the Federals poured down on them. He was all in favor of having the firepower on his side for a change.

Colonel Faribault waved the private soldiers off the drill field. “Your turn will come,” he promised. The men withdrew, but reluctantly.

While that was going on, Benny Lang walked over to the wagon, lowered the tailgate, and began taking out repeaters like the one he had reslung. Nate Caudell’s palms itched to get hold of one. Lang said, “I have two dozen rifles here. Why don’t you men form by companies, two groups to a company, and Private Whitley and I will pass them out so I can show you what you need to know.”

“A few minutes of milling about followed, as men joined with others from their units. Caudell and his messmates—Sergeants Powell, High, Daniel, and Eure—naturally gravitated together. That left the Invincibles’ two corporals who were present for duty grouped with Captain Lewis and his pair of lieutenants. “It’s all right,” Lewis said. “We’re all new recruits at this business.”

““Here you go, First Sergeant.” Ben Whitley handed Caudell a repeater. He held it in both hands, marveling at how light it was compared to the Springfield that hung from pegs on the wall back in his cabin. He slung it as Lang had done. It seemed to weigh next to nothing on his shoulder. Toting this kind of rifle, a man might march forever before he got sore.

“Let me have a turn with it, Nate,” Edwin Powell said. With a twinge of regret, Caudell passed him the carbine. He brought it up to firing position, looked down the barrel. “Fancy kind of sight,” he remarked. His grin turned rueful. “Maybe I can nail me a Yankee or two without get tin’ hit my own self.”

“Goin’ up to the firin’ line without your ‘shoot me’ sign’d probably be a good idea, too, Edwin,” Dempsey Eure said. The sergeants all laughed. So far as anybody knew, Powell was the only man in the regiment who’d been wounded at three different fights.

Ben Whitley came by again a few minutes later. This time, he gave Caudell a curved, black-painted metal object. Caudell had no idea what it was until he turned it and saw that it held brass cartridges. “Talk about your fancy now, Edwin,” he said, handing it on to Powell. “This looks to beat Millie balls all hollow.”

“Sure does, if there’s enough of these here bullets so as we don’t run out halfway through a battle,” Powell answered—anybody who’d been shot three times developed a certain concern about such things.

“Does every group have an AK-47 and a banana clip?” Lang asked. He waited to see if anyone would say no. When no one did, he continued: “Turn your weapon upside down. In front of your trigger guard, you’ll see a catch. It holds the clip in place.” He pointed to it on his own carbine. “Everyone finger that catch. Pass your weapon back and forth. Everyone needs to put hands on it, not just watch me.”

When the AK-47 came back to him, Caudell obediently fingered the catch. Lang had the air of a man who’d taught this lesson many times and knew it backwards and forwards. As a teacher himself, Caudell recognized the signs.

The man in the patchwork-looking clothes went on, “Now everyone take turns clicking the clip into place and freeing it. The curved end goes toward the muzzle. Go ahead, try it a few times.” Caudell inserted the clip, released the catch, took it away. Lang said, “This is one place where you want to be careful. Warn your other ranks about it, too. If the lips of the magazine are bent, or if you get dirt in there, it won’t feed rounds properly. In combat, that could prove embarrassing.”

He let out a dry chuckle. The laughs that rose in answer were grim. A rifle that wouldn’t shoot hundreds of rounds a minute was less use than one that would shoot two or three.

In the group next to Caudell, his captain stuck up his hand. “Mr. Lang?”

“Yes, Captain, ah—?”

“I’m George Lewis, sir. What do we do if the lips of this—banana clip, you called it?—somehow do get bent? I’ve been shot once, sir”—he was only recently back to the regiment himself—”and I don’t care a damn to be, ah, embarrassed again.”

“Don’t blame you a bit, Captain. The obvious answer is, switch to a fresh clip. If you haven’t but one good one left, you can load cartridges into it one at a time, in two staggered rows, like this. As I said when I fired, the clip holds thirty rounds.” He pulled a clip and some loose cartridges from his haversack and demonstrated. “We’ll come back to that later. You’ll all have a chance to do it. Now, though, let whoever’s holding the gun put that magazine in place.”

Caudell was holding the AK-47. He carefully worked the banana clip into position, listened for the click that showed it was where it belonged. “Good,” Lang said. “Now you’re ready to chamber your first round. Here, pull this handle all the way back.” Again, he demonstrated. Caudell followed suit. The action worked with a resistant smoothness that was unlike anything he had ever felt before.

“Very good once more,” Lang said. “All of you with rifles come forward and form a firing line. Take aim at your target and fire.” Caudell pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. No one else’s carbine went off, either. The instructor chuckled. “No, they’re not defective. Look at the short black lever under the handle you just pulled. See how it’s parallel to the muzzle. That little lever is called the change lever. When it’s in the top position, it’s on safety, and the weapon can’t fire. That’s how you’ll carry it on march, to avoid accidents. Now move it down two positions—make sure it’s two, mind—then aim and fire again.”

Caudell peered down the sights. They seemed close together; he was used to a longer weapon. He squeezed the trigger. The rifle barked and spat out a cartridge case. Compared to what he was used to, the kick was light. “Lordy,” someone halfway down the line exclaimed, “I could fire this piece right off my nose.” The kick wasn’t that light, but it wasn’t far away, either.

“Fire another round,” Lang said. “You don’t have to do anything but pull the trigger again.” Caudell pulled. The repeater fired. Intellectually, he had expected it would. Intellectually expecting something, though, was different from having it happen. The chorus of whistles and low-voiced exclamations of wonder that went up from the firing line showed he was not alone.

“Thirty rounds to this thing?” somebody said. “Hell, just load it on Sunday and shoot it all week long.”

Lang said, “Each time you fire, the spring in the magazine pushes up another round, so you have one in the chamber again. Take off the magazine, why don’t you, then fire that last round to empty the weapon and pass it to someone in your group so he can have his three practice rounds.”

Caudell moved the lever up, thumbed the catch that held the magazine where it belonged. When it separated from the carbine, he did not know what to do with it, for a moment. Finally he thrust it inside the front of his trousers. He aimed the weapon, felt the light jolt of its kick when he fired.

“My turn now,” Allison High said, tapping him on the shoulder.

High was half a dozen years younger than Caudell, two inches taller, and several inches wider through the chest. Not only that, it was his turn. Even so, Caudell said, “I don’t want to give it to you, Allison. I want to keep it to myself.”

“It ain’t your wife, Nate. It’s only a gun,” High said reasonably. “ ‘Sides, from what this Lang feller’s been sayin’, we’ll each get one all our own ‘fore long.”

A little embarrassed, Caudell surrendered the rifle and the banana clip. High clicked the magazine back into place. The sound reminded Caudell of a faithless lover’s laugh as she slipped into the arms of someone new. He laughed, too, at himself.

Benny Lang took the new firing line through the drill of working the change lever, chambering a round, and firing the rifle. The instructor had the knack of repeating his lessons without sounding bored. Caudell listened just as hard without the carbine in his hand as he had when he held it. Soon enough, he’d be teaching privates. He wanted to make sure he could stay ahead of them.

Lang kept at it until everyone had had a turn shooting an AK-47. Then he said, “This weapon can do one other thing I haven’t shown you yet. When you move the change lever all the way down instead of to the middle position, this is what happens.” He stuck a fresh clip in the repeater, turned toward the target circle, and blasted away. He went through the whole magazine almost before Caudell could draw in a startled breath.

“Good God almighty,” Rufus Daniel said, peering in awe at the brass cartridge cases scattered around Lang’s feet “Why didn’t he show us that in the first place?”

He was not the only one to raise the question; quite a few shouted it. Caudell kept quiet. By now, he was willing to assume Lang knew what he was doing.

The weapons instructor stayed perfectly possessed. He said, “I didn’t show you that earlier because it wastes ammunition and because the weapon isn’t accurate past a few meters—yards—on full automatic. You can only carry so many rounds. If you shoot them all off in the first five minutes of a battle; what will you do once they’re gone? Think hard on that, gentlemen, and drill it into your private soldiers. This weapon requires fire discipline—requires it, I say again.”

He paused to let the point sink in. Then he grinned. It made him look like a boy. When he was serious, his thin, sallow features showed all his years, which had to be as many as Caudell’s own thirty-four. He said, “Now we’ve done the exciting things with the weapon. Time to get on to the boring details that will keep it working and you alive—cleaning and such.”

A groan rose from his audience, the sort of groan Caudell was used to hearing when he started talking about subtracting fractions. Benny Lang grinned again. He went on, “I warned you it wasn’t glamorous. We’ll get on with it Just the same. Watch me, please.”

He held up his repeater so everyone could see it.” Look here at the top of the weapon, all the way back toward you from the sight. There at the end of the metal part is a little knob. It’s called the recoil spring guide. Do you see it?” Edwin Powell had the rifle in Caudell’s group. Caudell looked it over with his fellow sergeants. Sure enough, the knob was there.

Lang waited until he saw everyone had found it. “Now,” he said, “every chap with a weapon, push in on that knob.” Powell pushed, a little hesitantly. Caudell didn’t blame him for being cautious. After all the marvels the AK-47 had displayed, he would not have been surprised to find that pushing that knob made it sing a chorus of “The Bonnie Blue Flag.” Nothing so melodramatic happened. Lang was also pushing the knob on his repeater; as he did so, he went on, “Lift up the receiver cover and take it off the receiver.”

More clumsily, his students imitated him. Caudell peered curiously into the works of the weapon thus revealed. “Never saw a rifle with so many guts,” Dempsey Eure observed.

“I never saw a rifle with guts at all,” Caudell said, to which the other sergeants nodded. A rifle was a barrel and a lock and a stock, plus such oddments as sight and ramrod and bayonet. It had no room for guts. But this one did. Caudell wondered what the unschooled farmers who made up the bulk of the Castalia Invincibles would think of that.

“Don’t panic,” Lang said. Caudell remembered that the instructor had seen other soldiers’ reactions to the complicated interior of an AK-47. Lang continued to take the carbine apart, lecturing all the while: “We’ve already taken off the receiver cover, right? Next thing to do is push the recoil spring guide in as far as it will go and then lift it up and take it out along with the spring itself. Then slide the bolt carrier, the bolt, and the piston back and lift them out.”

He held up each piece as he named it so his inexperienced pupils could see what he was talking about. “Now watch how I turn the bolt—the lugs here have to line up with the grooves on the carrier. Then the bolt slides back until it comes off the carrier. You only really have to worry about the spring, the bolt carrier, and the bolt. You need to clean them every day the weapon is fired.”

Lang pulled a rod out from under the barrel of the AK-47. The carbine’s stock had a hinged compartment. He took from it a little bottle of gun oil, brushes, and cloth patches. With meticulous care, he ran a patch down the inside of the barrel, then wiped the black spring and silvery bolt and carrier clean. When he was done, he resumed his discussion.

“Reassembly procedure is the exact reverse of what we’ve just done. The bolt goes on the carrier”—he deftly matched action to words—”and they both go into the receiver. Then the recoil spring and its guide fit in back of the bolt carrier. Push ‘em forward till the rear of the guide clears the back of the receiver, then push down to engage the guide. Then you put the receiver plate in place, push in on the spring guide, and push the plate down to lock it.” He grinned at the North Carolinians. “Now you try it. Don’t bother cleaning your weapon this first time. Just get it apart and back together.”

“That don’t look too hard,” Edwin Powell said. Caudell wasn’t so sure. He didn’t trust the look on Benny Lang’s face. The last time he’d seen a look like that, Billy Beddingfield of Company F had been wearing it in a poker game. Billy had also had an extra ace stuck up his sleeve.

The spring, gleaming with gun oil, went back where it belonged with no particular argument. The bolt was something else again. Powell tried to fit it into place as Lang had. It did not want to fit. “Shitfire,” Powell said softly after several futile tries. “Far as I’m concerned, the damn thing can stay dirty.”

He was far from the only man having trouble. Lang went from group to group, explaining the trick. There obviously was a trick, for people looked happier once he’d worked with them. After a while, he came to Caudell’s group, where Powell was still wrestling with the bolt. “It goes on the carrier like—this,” he said. His hands underscored his words. “Do you see?”

“Yes, sir, I think so,” Powell answered, as humbly as if speaking to one of the Camp Mangum drill sergeants who had turned the 47th North Carolina from a collection of raw companies into a regiment that marched and maneuvered like a single living creature. Lang carried the same air of omniscience, even if he didn’t display it so loudly or profanely.

He said, “Show me.” Powell still fumbled, but at last he got the bolt into place. Lang slapped him on the back. “Good. Do it again.” Powell did, a little faster this time. Lang said, “When you get your own weapon tomorrow, you’ll practice till you can do it with your eyes closed, first try, every try.”

Powell grunted. “Been usin’ guns my whole life. Never reckoned I’d have to put puzzle pieces together to make one work.”

Oddly, that complaint cheered Nate Caudell. When he was a boy, his father had carved puzzles for him to play with. Thinking of the AK-47’s works as a toy rather than something strange, mysterious, and threatening let him attack them without feeling intimidated. When his turn came, he got the bolt back into place after only a couple of false starts.

“Do it again that fast, Nate, and I’ll believe you really can,” Allison High said. Caudell did it again, and then, just to show it was no fluke, one more time. High whistled, a long, low note of respect. “Might could even be a reason you’re wearin’ that first sergeant’s diamond to go with them stripes of yours.”

“First time we’ve seen one, if there is,” Dempsey Eure said. A grin eased the sting from the words; Eure had trouble taking anything or anyone seriously.

“To hell with both of you,” Caudell said. He and his messmates all laughed. “Wonder what Sid Bartholomew would say if he was here to get a look at this repeater,” Edwin Powell remarked. Everyone nodded. Nominally a member of Company D, Bartholomew was a gunsmith by trade, and had spent the whole war on detail in Raleigh, doing what he did best.

“Reckon he’d say good godalmighty like the rest of us,” Rufus Daniel said, and everyone nodded again. The AK-47 brought on remarks like that.

By the time everyone was able to clean and reassemble the repeater, morning had given way to afternoon. As he’d promised, Lang showed how to load cartridges into the rifle’s magazine. After the mysteries of the bolt, that was child’s play. He also showed how to open the catch at the bottom of the clip and clean the spring inside.

“That’s a once-a-month job, though, not once a day,” he said.” But do remember to see to it every so often.” He paused, looked around at his audience. “You‘ve been very patient chaps, the lot of you. Thank you for your attention; I’ve said everything I need say. Have you any questions of me?”

“Yeah, I got one,” somebody said immediately. Heads turned toward him as he took a swaggering step out of his group. “You got your fancy-pants rifle there, Mr. Benny Lang, kill anything that twitches twenty miles away; What I want to know is, how good a man are you without it?” He gazed toward Lang with insolent challenge in his eyes.

“Beddingfield!” Captain Lankford of Company F and Colonel Faribault barked the name in the same breath. Caudell said it, too, softly.

“How’d Billy Beddingfield ever make corporal?” Rufus Daniel whispered. “He could teach mean to a snapping turtle.”

“You don’t want to get on his wrong side, though,” Caudell whispered back. “If I were a private in his squad, I’d be more afraid of him than of any Yankee ever born.”

“You got that right, Nate,” Daniel said, chuckling.

“Back in ranks, Beddingfield,” Captain Lankford snapped.

“I don’t mind, Captain,” Benny Lang said. “Let him come ahead, if he cares to. This might be—instructive, too. Come on, Corporal, if you‘ve the stomach for it.” He set down his repeater and stood waiting.

“Is he out of his mind?” Edwin Powell said. “Billy’ll tear him in half.”

Looking at the two men, Caudell found it hard to disagree. Lang was taller, but on the skinny side. Built like a bull, Beddingfield had to outweigh him by twenty pounds. And, as Rufus Daniel had said, Beddingfield had a mean streak as wide as he was. He was a terror in battle, but a different sort of terror in camp.

He grinned a school bully’s nasty grin as he stepped forward to square off with Lang. “That man’s face is made for a slap,” Caudell said to Allison High.

“Reckon you’re right, Nate, but I got ten dollars Confed says Lang ain’t the one to slap it for him,” High answered.

Ten dollars Confederate was most of a month’s pay for a private. Caudell liked to gamble now and then, but he didn’t believe in throwing away money. “No thanks, Allison. I won’t touch that one.”

High laughed. Edwin Powell said, “I’ll match you, Allison. That there Lang, he looks to have a way of knowin’ what he’s doin’. He wouldn’t’ve called Billy out if he didn’t expect he could lick him.”

One of Caudell’s sandy eyebrows quirked up toward his hairline. He hadn’t thought of it in those terms. “Can I change my mind?” he asked High.

“Sure thing, Nate. I got another ten that ain’t doin’ nothin’. I—”

He shut up. Big knobby fists churning, Beddingfield rushed at Benny Lang. Lang brought up his own hands, but not to hit back. He grabbed Billy Beddingfield’s right wrist, turned, ducked, threw. Beddingfield flew over his shoulder, landed hard on the frozen ground.

He bounced to his feet. He wasn’t grinning anymore. “Bastard,” he snarled, and waded back in. A moment later, he went flying again. This time he landed on his face. His nose dripped blood onto his tunic as he got up. Lang wasn’t breathing hard.

“You fight dirty,” Beddingfield said, wiping his face with his sleeve.

Now Lang smiled, coldly. “I fight to win, Corporal. If you can’t stand it, go home to your momma.”

With a bellow of rage, Beddingfield charged. Caudell watched closely, but still didn’t see just what happened. All he knew was that, instead of flying, Beddingfield went down, hard. He moaned and tried to rise. Benny Lang stood over him; kicked him in the ribs with judiciously calculated force. He stayed down.

Still unruffled, Lang said, “Has anyone else any questions?” No one did. He smiled that cold smile again. “Colonel Faribault, Captain, I think you’ll find I didn’t damage this fellow permanently.”

“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had, sir. He picked the fight,” Captain Lankford said. He plucked at his chin beard. “Maybe some hours bucked and gagged will teach him to save his spirit for the Yankees.”

“Maybe.” Lang shrugged. It wasn’t his problem. “Good day to you, gentlemen. Private Whitley, do you mind giving me a lift back to Orange Court House?”

“No, sir, not a bit, sir, Mr. Lang.” Whitley hadn’t sounded nearly so respectful before Lang knocked the stuffing out of Billy Beddingfield.

“Good.” Lang ambled toward the wagon. “I could walk it easily enough, I suppose—it’s only a mile and a half—but why walk when you can ride?”

“I don’t know who that Lang feller is or where he comes from,” Edwin Powell declared, “but he thinks like the infantry.”

The other sergeants from Company D solemnly nodded: Caudell said, “Talk has it, he and his people are from Rivington, right in our home county.”

“You cut out that ‘our’ and speak for your own self, Nate,” Allison High said; unlike his messmates, he was from Wilson County, just south of Nash.

Rufus Daniel said, “I don’t give a damn how talk has it; and that’s a fact. Here’s two more facts—Lang don’t talk like he’s from Nash County”—he exaggerated his drawl till everyone around him smiled—”and he don’t fight like he’s from Nash County, neither. I wish he’d learn me that fancy rasslin’ of his along with this here repeater. Old Billy Beddingfield, he never knew what hit him. Look, he’s still lyin’ there cold as a torch throwed in a snowbank.”

The wagon started out of camp, harness jingling, wheels squeaking, and horses’ hooves ringing against the ground. It swung off the camp lane onto the road north. Billy Beddingfield still did not move. Caudell wondered if Lang had hurt him worse than he thought.

So, evidently, did Colonel Faribault. He limped over to the fallen corporal, stirred him with his stick. Bedtlingfield wiggled and moaned. Nodding as if satisfied, Faribault stepped back. “Flip water in his face, somebody, till he revives. Then, Captain Lankford, along with whatever punishment details you give him, have the stripes off his sleeves. A raw brawler like that doesn’t deserve to wear them.”

“Yes, sir,” Lankford said.

“That’s fair,” Caudell said after a couple of seconds’ thought. No one in his group disagreed with him. A corporal from Company F ran off the parade ground, returned a minute later with his canteen, whose contents he poured over Beddingfield’s head. The fallen bully spluttered and swore and slowly sat up.

Colonel Faribault said, “Each of today’s groups will hold its rifle and practice as much as possible until the full regiment’s rifles arrive, which, I am told, will be tomorrow.” His phrasing drew ironic chuckles—the time of promised shipments had a way of stretching like India rubber. He went on, “Try not to actually shoot, except at our target here, for safety’s sake—especially not when the rifle is on—what did Lang call it?”

“Full automatic, sir,” someone supplied.

“That’s it.” Faribault’s mouth set in a grim line that his little mustache only accented.” A fool with an Enfield can hurt one man with an accidental shot. A fool with one of these new guns can mow down half a company if he starts with a full banana clip. Bear it in mind, gentlemen. You are dismissed.”

Dempsey Eure carried the AK-47 as the sergeants started back to their cabin. He slung it over his shoulder, then said, “I’d sooner tote this than my old rifle, any day.”

“Don’t hardly weigh nothin’, do it?” Rufus Daniel echoed.

“Stubby little thing, though,” Allison High said critically. “Wouldn’t want to get into a bayonet fight or have to swing it like it was a club.”

Daniel spat. “I leave the bayonet off my own rifle now when I’m goin’ into a fight, Allison. So do most of the boys, an’ you know it, too. You don’t hardly ever get close enough to a Yankee to use the blamed thing. With these here new guns, they ain’t goin’ to get that close to us, neither.”

As was his habit, High kept looking at the darker side of things: “If they don’t break down from use, and if Benny Lang and however many friends he’s got can keep us in cartridges. I ain’t never seen the likes of these before, not even from the Yankees.”

“That’s so,” Daniel allowed. “Well, we’ll use ‘em hard these next couple of months till we break camp. That’ll tell us what we need to know. And if they ain’t to be trusted, well, George Hines can put Minié balls in the ammunition wagons, too. We still got our old rifles. Be just like the first days of the war again, when the springfields and Enfields was the new guns, and a lot o’ the boys just had smoothbore muskets, an’ we needed t’carry bullets for both. I don’t miss my old smoothbore, and that’s a fact, though I did a heap o’ missin’ with it when I carried it.”

“You got that right,” Dempsey Eure said. “Dan’l Boone couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a goddam smoothbore, an’ anybody who says different is a goddam liar.”

“Goddam right,” Rufus Daniel said.

Before the war, Caudell would have boxed the ears of any boy who dared swear in his hearing. Now, half the time, he didn’t even notice the profanity that filled the air around him. These days he swore, too, when he felt like it, not so much to fit in as because sometimes nothing felt better than a ripe, round oath.

He said, “Can’t be sure, of course, but I have a notion we’ll get all the cartridges we need. That Benny Lang, he knows what he’s doing. Look at the way he handled Billy. Like Edwin said, he knew he could take him, and he did. If he says we’ll have repeaters here tomorrow, I’m inclined to believe him. I expect he and his people can manage cartridges, too.”

“Double or nothin’ on our bet that them guns don’t come tomorrow,” High said.

“You’re on,” Caudell replied at once.

“I want my ten now,” Edwin Powell said.

High turned around as if to punch him, then looked back to the parade ground. He pointed. “See, Nate, there’s one man who doesn’t know if you’re right about them cartridges.” Caudell turned too. George Hines was on his hands and knees, picking up spent cartridge cases.

“He’s a good ordnance sergeant,” Caudell said. “He doesn’t want to lose anything he doesn’t have to. Remember after the first day at Gettysburg, when they told off a couple of regiments to glean the battlefield for rifles and ammunition, both?”

“I remember that,” Powell said. His long face grew longer. “I wish they could have gleaned for men, too.” He’d taken his second wound at Gettysburg.

The sergeants ducked back into their cabin one by one. Rufus Daniel started building up the fire, which had died to almost cold embers while the five men took their long turn on the parade ground. Caudell sat down in a chair that had begun life as a molasses barrel. “Pass me that repeater, Dempsey,” he said. “I need to work with it more to get the proper hang of it. “

“We all do,” Eure said as he handed over the carbine.

Caudell practiced attaching and removing the magazine several times, then pushed in on the recoil spring guide and field-stripped the rifle. To his relief, he got the pieces back in the right way without too much trouble. He did it again, and again. He’d told his students that reciting over and over made each subsequent recitation easier and better. He was glad to find the same true here. His hands began to know what to do of themselves, without having to wait for the thinking part of his mind to tell them.

“Give me a go with it now, Nate,” Powell said. “You’re slick as butter, and I was all fumble-fingered out there on the field.”

Not too far away, a man started banging on a pot with a spoon. “Mess call,” Allison High said. “Edwin, it’s your turn to fetch the grub. You’ll have to fiddle with that repeater later on. Who gets the water tonight?”

“I do,” Rufus Daniel said. He picked up his canteen, a wooden one shaped like a little barrel. “Give me yours too, Nate.” Caudell reached onto his bunk, tossed his canteen to Daniel. It was metal covered with cloth, taken from a Federal soldier who would never need water again. /

The two sergeants went back out into the cold. Dempsey Eure said, “Don’t hog the rifle just on account of Edwin’s gone, Nate. If wagonloads of ‘em really do show up tomorrow, we’d all best know what we’re doin’ or we’ll look like godalmighty fools in front of the “men. Wouldn’t be the first time,” he added.

Fear of embarrassment, Caudell thought as Eure ran his hand. over the chambering handle, was a big part of the glue that held the army together. Send a man alone against a firing line, with no one to watch him, and he might well run away. Why not, when going forward made getting shot all too likely? But send a regiment against that same line, and almost everyone would advance on it. How could a man who fled face his mates afterwards?

Rufus Daniel came back a few minutes later. He set the canteens down not far from the fireplace. “Reckon Edwin’ll be a bit—you don’t have to stand in line by the creek the way you do for rations,” he said. “While we’re waitin’, how about I try that there repeater?” Everyone was eager to work with the new rifle as much as he could.

“What do you have, Edwin?” Dempsey Eure demanded when Powell returned. Caudell’s stomach growled like a starving bear. He’d known some lean times before the war—what man hadn’t, save maybe a planter like Faribault? —but he’d never known what real hunger was till he joined the army.

Powell said; “Got me some cornmeal and a bit o’ beef. Likely be tough as mule leather, but I won’t complain till after I get me outside of it. We still have any o’ that bacon your sister sent you, Dempsey?”

“Little bit,” Eure answered. “You thinkin’ o’ makin’ up some good ol’ Confederate cush?”

“I will unless you got a better notion,” Powell said.” Ain’t none of us what you’d call fancy cooks. Why don’t you get out that bacon and toss me our fryin’ pan? Here, Nate, you cut the beef small.” He handed Caudell the meat, the hairy skin still on it.

The pan had once been half a Federal canteen; its handle was a nailed-on stick. Powell tossed in the small chunk of bacon and held the pan over the tire. When he had cooked the grease out so it bubbled and spattered in the bottom of the pan, Caudell added the cubed beef. After a minute or two, he poured in some water. Meanwhile, Allison High used more water to make the cornmeal into a tin of mush. He passed the mush to Caudell, who upended the tin over the frying pan. Powell stirred the mixture together, then kept the pan on the tire until the mush soaked up all the water and a brown crust began to form along the sides.

He took the pan off the fire, set it down. with his knife, he sliced the cush into five more-or-less-equal pieces. “There you go, boys. Dig in.”

“I hate this goddam slosh,” Rufus Daniel said. “When I get home from this damn war, I ain’t goin’ to eat nothin’ but fried chicken and sweet-potato pie and ham and biscuits and gravy just as thick as you please. Aii, that goddam pan’s still hot.” He stuck a burned knuckle into his mouth. While he’d been complaining, he’d also been using belt knife and fingers to get his portion of supper out of the frying pan.

Caudell tossed his slab of cush from hand to hand till it was cool enough to bite. He wolfed it down and licked his fingers when he was through. It wasn’t what he would have eaten by choice—it was as far as the moon from the feast Rufus Daniel had been imagining—but cornmeal had a way of sticking to the ribs that made a man forget he was hungry for a while.

Dempsey Eure lit a twig at the fire, got his pipe going. Daniel did the same. Caudell lit up a cigar, tilted his head back, and blew a smoke ring at the ceiling. The cabin filled with fragrant smoke. “Glad we’re not short of tobacco, anyhow,” he said.

“Not in this regiment,” Eure said. The 47th drew its men from the heart of North Carolina’s tobacco country; half a dozen soldiers had been tobacconists before the war.

“Almost makes me wish I was on picket duty up by the Rapidan,” Powell said, shifting a chaw from one cheek to the other. “Might could be I’d find mea friendly Yank on the other side, trade him some tobacco for coffee and sugar and maybe some o’ them little hard candies they have sometimes.”

His messmates sighed. That kind of trading went on all the time. Confederates and Federals winked at it. Why not? Caudell thought—it isn’t going to change who wins the war, only make both sides more comfortable. At the moment, with some food in his belly, a cigar in his hand, and a warm cabin around him, he was comfortable enough. He took another drag. “Picket duty’s cold,” he said reflectively.

“That’s true,” a couple of the other sergeants said. Dempsey. Eure added, “To hell with your coffee and sugar, Edwin. I ain’t gonna freeze to get it.”

They talked awhile longer, and smoked, and passed around the new repeater. One by one, they went to bed. The last thing Caudell saw before he fell asleep was Edwin Powell sitting close by the fire, assembling the AK-47 and taking it apart again.

Reveille the next morning hit Caudell like an artillery barrage. He threw off his threadbare blanket, scrambled out of bed, and put on his shoes, tunic, and slouch hat. Everyone else was getting dressed at the same time. The hut wasn’t really big enough for five men to dress in all at once, but they managed; by now they’d been doing it for three months.

Dempsey Eure’s black felt hat was even more disreputable than Caudell’s, but he kept a gaudy turkey feather in the band. “You walk out wearin’ that bird, somebody’ll shoot it off you,” Rufus Daniel said. He cracked the same joke about once a week.

Caudell went outside. As always, he had mixed feelings about that first breath of early morning air. It was sweet and fresh and free of most of the smoke that built up inside the cabin, but it was bitterly cold. When he exhaled, he breathed out as big a cloud as if he’d started another cigar.

Soldiers came scrambling out of their shelters to line up for morning roll call. In the Federal army, their appearance would have given apoplexy to any noncommissioned officer worth his stripes. Not all of them had shoes. Their torn trousers were variously blue—Union booty—gray, or butternut. No one wore a blue blouse, for fear of being mistaken for a Yankee troop, but that was as far as uniformity went there. Some wore forage caps, others slouch hats like Caudell’s. The only thing of which that imaginary Federal sergeant would have approved was their bearing. The Castalia Invincibles might have been in rags, but they could fight.

“Dress ranks!” Allison High shouted. The men shifted a little. Company D, as a whole, numbered between five and six dozen men, which total included two corporals, four sergeants, First Sergeant Nate Caudell, a couple of lieutenants, and a captain. Right after Gettysburg, sergeants had commanded some companies of the 47th North Carolina; at the moment, the Invincibles were oversupervised.

Captain Lewis limped up. “Call the roll, First Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir.” Caudell took from his pocket a much-folded piece of paper. After so many repetitions, he hardly needed to look at it as he called the men’s names: “Bailey, Ransom…Barnes, Lewis D. W… Bass, Gideon…” He finished a few minutes later: “Winstead, John A…Winstead, William T.” He turned back to Lewis with a salute.” All present, sir.”

“Very good. Sick call?”

“Sick call!” Caudell said loudly. A couple of men took a step forward. “What’s your trouble, Granbury?” he asked one of them.

“I got the shits—beggin’ your pardon, First Sergeant, the runs—again,” Granbury Proctor said.

Caudell sighed. With the bad food and bad water the regiment got, diarrhea was a common complaint. This was Proctor’s third bout this winter. Caudell said, “Go see the assistant surgeon, Granbury. Maybe he can do something for you.” Proctor nodded and walked off. Caudell turned to the other sufferer. “What about you, Southard?”

“Don’t rightly know, First Sergeant,” Bob Southard answered. His voice cracked as he answered; he was only eighteen or so. He bent his head and coughed. “I’m feelin’ right poorly, though.”

Caudell put a skeptical hand on the youngster’s forehead. Southard had already deserted the regiment once; he was a shirker. “No fever. Get back in line.” Dejectedly, the private went back into his slot. The cook banged on his pan. Caudell said, “Dismissed for breakfast.”

Breakfast was corn bread. The meal from which it had been made was ground so coarse that some kernels lay in wait, intact and rock-hard, to ambush the teeth. Caudell plucked at his beard to knock crumbs loose. He heard a wagon—no, more than one—rolling down from Orange Court House. “You don’t suppose—?” he said to Rufus Daniel.

“This early? Naah,” Daniel said.

But it was. The wagon train turned off the road and rumbled toward the regimental parade ground. Benny Lang rode beside the lead wagon’s driver. Slaves accompanied the others. Caudell held out his hand, palm up, to Allison High. “Pay up.”

“Hell.” High reached into his hip pocket, drew out a wad of bills, and gave two of them to Caudell. “Here’s your twenty. Who’d’ve thought anybody’d move so quick? Hell.” He walked off scowling, his head down.

“Easy there, Allison,” Caudell called after him. “It’s only. twenty dollars Confederate, not like before the war when that was a lot of money.

“Benny Lang leaped down from his wagon and started shouting like a man possessed: “Come on, get those crates off! This isn’t a bloody picnic, so move it, you lazy kaffirs!” The slaves started unloading the wagons at the same steady but leisurely pace they usually used. It was not fast enough to suit Lang. “Move, damn you!” he shouted again.

The blacks were used to letting such shouts roll off their backs, secure in the knowledge that the work would eventually get done and the yelling white man would shut up and leave them alone. Lang met that quiet resistance head on. He stamped over to one of the slaves, threw him to the ground with a flip like the one he’d used against Billy Beddingfield. “Ow!” the man cried. “What’d I do, boss?”

“Not bloody much,” Lang snarled, punctuating his words with a kick. The slave cried out again. Lang said scornfully, “You aren’t hurt. Now get up and work. And I mean work, damn you. That goes for the rest of you lazy buggers, too, or you’ll get worse than I just gave him. Move!”

The black men moved. Boxes came down from wagons at an astonishing rate. “Will you look at that?” Rufus Daniel said…If I had me enough niggers to hire an overseer, that there Lang’d be first man I’d pick for the job.”

“Maybe so,” Caudell said. But he watched the sidelong glances that were the only safe way the slaves could use to show their resentment. “If he treats ‘em like that all the time, though, he’d better grow eyes in the back of his head, or else he’ll have an accident one fine day—or lots of runaways, anyhow.”

“Might could be you’re right,” Daniel allowed.

Once the wagons were unloaded, Lang ordered the work crew to carry a share of the crates to each company standard. When the slaves again didn’t work fast enough to suit him, he booted one of them in the backside. They moved quicker after that.

Lang followed them from company to company. When he came to the Castalia Invincibles, he picked Caudell out by his chevrons, handed him a length of iron with a curved and flattened end. “Here you are, First Sergeant—a ripping bar to get the crates open. We found some of your units had a spot of trouble with that.”

“You think of everything,” Caudell said admiringly.

“We do try. You’ll have two magazines per weapon there, more or less—enough ammunition to get a start at practicing. Your ordnance sergeant needn’t fret. We’ll get you plenty more as you need it.” With a nod, Lang was off to Company E.

Caudell watched him go. After yesterday and this morning, he believed Lang’s promise. This was a man who delivered, But then, the Army of Northern Virginia always got the ammunition it needed, one way or another. Caudell wished Benny Lang or someone like him would take over the Confederate commissary department.

The soldiers gathered round the stacked crates. “Those the repeaters the bad-tempered feller was showin’ off to y’all yesterday?” asked Melvin Bean, a smooth-faced private with a light, clear voice.

“Yup.” Caudell attacked a crate with the bar. The lid came up with a groan of nails leaving wood. Sure enough, an AK-47 lay inside. Caudell said,” Anybody with the tools to give me a hand, run and fetch ‘em. We’ll get the job done that much quicker.” Tom Short, who worked as a saddler, left and returned shortly with a claw hammer. He fell to work beside Caudell. Before too long, all the Castalia Invincibles held new repeaters.

A heavyset private named Ruffin Biggs gave his weapon a dubious look. “We’re supposed to whup the Yankees with these little things?”

“It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, Ruffin,” Dempsey Eure drawled, “it’s the size of the fight in the dog. These here puppies got plenty of fight in ‘em, believe you me.”

Captain Lewis said, “Break into groups of six or seven men each. That way, everyone who learned about these repeaters yesterday will have one group to teach.”

The division, into groups smaller than squads, went rather awkwardly. Eyeing the soldiers in his group, Caudell suspected that the sergeants and corporals—the company’s regular squad leaders—had stuck him and the officers with the men they wanted least.

He shrugged. Everyone would have to learn. He held up his rifle, pointed to the lever below the charging handle. “This is the change lever. See, it has three positions. For now, I want you to make sure you have it in the topmost one.”

“Why’s that, First Sergeant?” Melvin Bean asked.

“Because if you don’t, you’re liable to end up shooting yourself before you find out how not to,” Caudell answered drily. That made everyone sit up and take notice.

He went through the lesson Lang had given him. The soldiers practiced attaching and removing a magazine. He showed them how rounds were arranged inside the clip and had them practice putting rounds into it.

A rifle cracked, over in another company. Shouts of alarm rose after the gunshot. “That’s why I want that change lever up top,” Caudell said. “As long as it’s there, the repeater can’t go off by accident. It’s called the safety.”

Paschall Page, the regimental sergeant major, came up to Captain Lewis and saluted. “The colonel’s compliments, sir, and the companies will practice shooting at our targets one by one, in order.”

“Very good, Sergeant Major. Thank you,” Lewis said. Page saluted again and marched off, every inch a gentleman. His blue sergeant’s stripes were joined above by an arc that showed he was the most exalted of all the regiment’s noncommissioned officers.

The lessons went more smoothly than Caudell dared hope. For one thing, Benny Lang had done a good job with his instructions the day before, and Caudell had paid careful attention. For another, despite being different from a rifle-musket, the AK-47 was an easy gun to use. Even Ruffin Biggs and Alsie Hopkins, who had not a letter between them, soon got the hang of the repeater. Caudell wondered how they would do when time to clean the weapon came around. He intended to hold off on that till his pupils had fired.

The soldiers were learning how to chamber the first round in the banana clip when a volley of shots came from the parade ground. Company A was shooting for the first time. Almost at once, the gunfire rang so thick and fast as to remind Caudell of a whole regiment on the line, not just one understrength company.

“The Chicora Guards got new guns! Run for your lives!” Henry Joyner yelled out toward the practicing graycoats. Like the Castalia Invincibles, the Chicora Guards were mostly recruited from Nash County; which made the rivalry between them all the fiercer. For that matter, each company currently boasted three Joyners. The relationships between them were too complicated for Caudell to keep straight.

One of the soldiers of Company A—maybe one of the Joyners—yelled back, “Shame we ain’t got the bullets to waste to turn these here fine new repeaters on you all!”

“Couldn’t hit us if’n you did,” Henry jeered. He thumbed his nose.

“Enough,” Caudell said. Horseplay was fun, but horseplay between men who carried rifles had to be controlled before it got out of hand.

Companies B and C—neither of which had a name—took their first turns practicing with the AK-47. The men came away from the firing line exclaiming and shaking their heads in wonder. Some of them slung the new repeaters on their backs. Others carried the carbines in both hands, as if they could not bear to let them go. Three or four men from Company C started a chant: “Enfield, Springfield, throw ‘em in the cornfield!” Before long the whole company, officers and all, was singing it.

Captain Lewis said, “Form column of fours…to the parade ground, march.” A couple of new men just up from North Carolina started off on the wrong foot, but growls from the sergeants soon had them in step with everyone else. “Shift to the left from column to line…move,” Lewis said.

The company performed the evolution with mindless precision born of unending practice. Caudell remembered the first day of marching down at Camp Mangum, when an irate drill sergeant had compared their ragged line to a drunken centipede in an ass-kicking contest. Even that drill sergeant, assuming he was still alive, would have been satisfied to see them now.

“Load your rifles,” Captain Lewis said. In one motion the men drew back their charging handles, and each chambered a round. “Fire!”

Not every repeater spat flame. “Check your change lever!” Caudell shouted, along with everyone else who had had instruction the day before. Soldiers checked. Some of them swore at themselves. The next volley was fuller; in a moment, a fusillade of shots made separate volleys impossible to distinguish.

The company’s privates shouted in wonder and delight at how rapidly their repeaters fired and how easy they were to shoot, Caudell knew how they felt. The AK-47 was so different from any other rifle that hearing about it wasn’t enough. Even after you shot with it, it was hard to believe.

“What happens if you put this here change lever thing on the middle notch?” Henry Joyner asked. “If it’s as much different from the bottom one as that there one is from the top, reckon this gun’ll march out and shoot Yankees an by its lonesome. I’m for it, I tell you that.”

“Sorry, Henry.” Caudell explained about full automatic fire. He also explained about how much ammunition it chewed up, finishing, “Shooting fast can be bad if you run out of cartridges before the battle’s over. That’s not easy to do with a rifle musket. With one of these repeaters, especially on full automatic, it’s easy as pie. You’ll want to be careful about that.”

Melvin Bean said, “I got shot in the arm the first day at Gettysburg after I’d used up all my cartridges. Even if I’d seen the damn yankee who nailed me, I couldn’t’ve done nothin’ about him.” The new men listened and nodded solemnly. Caudell reflected that a wound on the first day had kept Bean out of the third day’s charge and very possibly kept the private from being captured or killed.

Ruffin Biggs fired one more round at the paper target circle, which by now looked as if it were suffering from measles or smallpox. He yelped out a rebel yell, then said, “Next time the drummers play the long roll, them Yankees is gonna wish they was never born. This here rifle shoots like hell-beatin’-tanbark.”

“Is that good?” Joyner asked.

“Cain’t be beat,” Biggs answered positively.

“Clear the parade ground,” Captain Lewis said. “Time for Company E to have their turn. Form column of fours.”

Grumbling, disappointed they couldn’t shoot more, his men obeyed. Somebody sang out, “Enfield, Springfield, throw ‘em in the cornfield!” The chant ran down the column like wildfire. The men from the other companies that had already fired took it up again, too.

“Whole army’s going to be singing that before long,” Caudell predicted.

“Hope you’re right,” Dempsey Eure answered, “on account of that’ll mean the whole army’s got themselves repeaters.”

Once they were back by their own shelters, the Castalia Invincibles regrouped around the men Benny Lang had instructed. “Now for the dull part: cleaning,” Caudell said. The men groaned. They groaned again when he showed them the cleaning rod and the kit in the stock compartment, and then how to open the receiver plate and extract spring, bolt carrier, and bolt. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he told them. “They go together like—this.” He reassembled the mechanism, closed the cover plate. “Now you do it.”

They tried. The bolt proved reluctant to go back where it was supposed to. “Maybe for you it goes like this,” Melvin Bean said. “For me it just goes straight to the devil.”

“Practice,” Caudell said smugly. Willingness to practice was a virtue teachers needed. His voice got deeper, more serious. “You all’ll keep practicing till I see you can do it. Watch me again.” He went through the process, very slowly. “You take another lick at it.”

A couple of them succeeded in getting it right. Melvin Bean kept failing and swearing. Caudell walked over, took the private’s hands in his, guided them through what had to be done. “There. Do you see now?”

Bean smiled. “Reckon so.”

This time, everything went smoothly. “That’s a good job,” Caudell said, smiling himself. “Anyone else still having trouble?” Nobody said anything. “Good. Just don’t think that because you did it once, you have it by the tail. Keep working at it tonight. We’ll go over it again tomorrow, and the day after that. By then, I want you to be able to take that repeater apart, clean it, and put it back together in your sleep. If you can’t, maybe you should be toting a billet of wood instead.” The soldiers’ expressions sobered. Carrying a billet wasn’t onerous punishment, but there were better ways to pass a morning.

Caudell hesitated before he taught the privates how to clean the magazine spring—why burden them with something they might not need to know? Benny Lang had said it was only occasionally necessary, and there looked to be plenty of banana clips about. But on second thought, Caudell did demonstrate the technique. What passed for the Confederate supply system could turn plenty into famine without warning.

“More questions?” he said at last. “All right, then—dismissed.” Most of the men drifted away, still talking excitedly about the new repeaters they were carrying. The other groups had already broken up, some a good while before. Caudell cared nothing about that. Thoroughness counted here, and he was used to repeating himself any number of times until students caught on to what he was saying. Melvin Bean did not wander off. The private removed the receiver plate, took out the rifle’s works, tried to put them back together. Caudell watched. They proved balky. Bean swore softly, then said, “I just can’t make the pesky thing fit. Do you want to come back to my hut with me and show me what I’m doin’ wrong?”

“I’d be glad to do that,” Caudell said.

They walked down the straight muddy lane between rows of shelters. Bean’s cabin was small but neat; its one window even boasted shutters. No one else lived here, which was unusual, if not quite unique, in the regiment.

Bean opened the door. “Go right on in, First Sergeant.” Caudell did. The private followed, closing and barring the door behind the two of them. “Now show me that trick of puttin’ this fool rifle back together again.”

“You really were having trouble, then?”

“I said as much, didn’t I? Thought I had it when you showed me before, but I lost the knack again.” They sat together on the blanket-covered pine boughs that did duty for a bed. Bean watched intently as Caudell went through everything. “So that’s what y’all were doin’! Here, let me have a go, Nate—I reckon I really have got it now.” Sure enough, the pieces went back together smoothly.

“Do it some more. Show me it wasn’t a fluke,” Caudell said.

Bean did, twice running. Caudell nodded. Bean checked to make sure the repeater’s change lever was in the safe position, ‘then set the weapons aside. “Good. I need to be able to do that.” Mischief sparked in the private’s eyes. “And now, Nate Caudell, I expect you’ll be lookin’ to find out how your own bolt fits.”

“I’d like that a lot.” Bean had not waited for him to reply, but was already opening the seven-button private’s tunic. Caudell reached out and gently touched one of the small but perfectly feminine breasts that unbuttoning revealed. He smiled. “You know, Mollie, if you were one of those bosomy girls, you’d never get by with this.”

“If I was, I could bind ‘em up, I suppose,” she said seriously. “It’d be as uncomfortable as all get out, though, an’ I do enough pretendin’ as it is. Melvin! Took me a goodish while even to get used to answerin’ to it.”

Caudell’s lips followed his fingers. Mollie Bean sighed and pulled the tunic off altogether. A long, puckered scar marred the smooth skin of her left upper arm, outer mark of where a Minié ball had gashed the muscle. An inch or two lower and it would have smashed the bone and cost her the limb.

“Here now.” She reached for him.” Ain’t hardly fair for me to be the only one gettin’ out of my clothes. ‘Sides, it’s chilly in here.”

He held her close and did his best to warm her. He certainly forgot about the cold himself, at least until afterwards. When he sat up again, though, he found he was shivering. He dressed quickly. So did Mollie. Back in Confederate uniform, with her forage cap pushed down so the brim covered her eyebrows, she seemed just another private, too young to shave. The 47th North Carolina claimed more than a few of those. But she had been all woman in his arms.

He studied her as if she were a difficult problem in trigonometry. She was very different from the hard-eyed Richmond whores to whom he’d occasionally resorted when he got leave. He supposed that was because he saw her every day and knew her as a person, not just a convenient receptacle for his lust, to be forgotten as soon as he was out the door. “Ask you something?” he said.

She shrugged. “Go ahead.”

“How come you did—this?”

“You mean, how come I came up to the fightin’?” she said. He nodded. She shrugged again. “I was bored down home. Wasn’t hardly nobody comin’ by the bawdyhouse where I was at, either, what with so many men bein’ away to the war. Guess I figured I’d come up and see it for myself, see what it was like.”

“And?”

Her face twisted into a wry grin. She still wasn’t pretty in any conventional sense of the word, especially with her black hair clipped off short like a man’s, but her wide, full-lipped smile made her seem much more feminine when she smiled. She said, “Didn’t like get tin’ shot worth a damn, I tell you that, Nate.”

“I believe you.” He thanked his lucky stars he was still unwounded. Few bullets were as merciful as the one that had found her. The ghastly piles of arms and legs outside the surgeon’s tent after every fight, the screams of men shot in the belly, the dying gurgles of men shot through the chest.

He was glad to forget those images when she went on, “But for that, though, y’all in the company are more like family ‘n anything I ever knew ‘fore I got here. Y’all care about me like you was my brothers, and y’all keep th’ officers from findin’ out what I am”—her wry grin flashed again—” ‘cause you know blamed well I ain’t your sister.”

He laughed at that. He’d never asked before, though she’d been with the regiment a year. He didn’t know what he’d expected to hear—perhaps something more melodramatic than her plain story. He took out the twenty dollars Confederate he’d won from Allison High, gave the bills to her.

“Wish it was Federal greenbacks,” she said, “but it’ll do, Nate, it’ll do. Want to go another round?”

He thought about it, but shook his head. “I’d better not. I can’t afford the time; I’ve been away too long as is.”

“You care about what you’re doin’, That’s a good thing.”. Mollie made a face at him. “Or is it just I’m gettin‘ old? Cain ‘t think o’ many who would’ve turned me down if I’d asked ‘em when I was down in Rivington.”

“You’re a damn sight younger than I am. You—” Caudell stopped. “You were in Rivington before you joined up? They say these new repeaters come from there, and the people who make them or sell them or whatever it is they do.”

“I’ve heard that, too,” Mollie said. Caudell reflected that she’d probably heard it well before he did; she usually got news even before Colonel Faribault heard it. She went on, “Don’t know nothin’ about it, though. Them fellers weren’t there when I left the place a year ago. Not much else was, neither, ‘specially not men, so I got out. Sure you don’t want to go again?”

“What I want to do and what I have to do are two different things,” Caudell said. “This is the army, remember?”

Her laugh followed him as he returned to the cold and military world outside her cabin door. He looked down the lane toward the parade ground. George Hines was out there on his hands and knees, gathering up brass cartridge cases.