“I heard you,” Starbuck said, yet still he did not move. He was thinking that the Yankees had been fighting in these woods nearly all day, and presumably they had just about used up all the cartridges in their pouches, which meant they were now relying on whatever small amounts of ammunition could be brought across the river. He was also thinking that troops worried about having sufficient cartridges were troops that could be panicked very quickly. He had seen panic at Manassas and reckoned it could bring a victory just as swift and complete here.
“Starbuck!” Moxey insisted on being heard. “The Major says you’re to reinforce Captain Murphy.”
“I heard you, Mox,” Starbuck said again, and still did nothing.
Moxey made a great play of pretending that Starbuck had to be particularly stupid. He tapped Starbuck’s arm and pointed through the trees to the right. “That way, Starbuck.”
“Go away, Mox,” Starbuck said, and he looked back across the clearing. “And on your way tell the Major we’re crossing over here and we’ll be rolling the bastards up from the left. Our left, got that?”
“You’re doing what?” Moxey gaped at Starbuck, then looked up at Adam who was on horseback a few paces behind Starbuck. “You tell him, Adam,” Moxey appealed to higher authority. “Tell him to obey orders!”
“We’re crossing the field, Moxey,” Starbuck said in a kind, slow voice, as though he addressed a particularly dull child, “and we’re going to attack the nasty Yankees from inside the trees over there. Now go away and tell that to Pecker!”
The maneuver seemed the obvious thing to do. The two sides were presently blazing away from either side of the clearing, and though the rebels had a clear advantage, neither side seemed capable of advancing straight into the concentrated rifle fire of the other. By crossing the clearing at this open flank Starbuck could take his men safe into the northerners’ trees and then advance on their undefended wing. “Make sure you’re loaded!” Starbuck shouted at his men.
“You can’t do this, Starbuck,” Moxey said. Starbuck took no notice of him. “Do you want me to tell the Major you’re disobeying his orders?” Moxey asked Starbuck cattily.
“Yes,” Starbuck said, “that’s exactly what I want you to tell him. And that we’re attacking their flank. Now go away and do it!”
Adam, still on horseback, frowned down at his friend. “Do you know what you’re doing, Nate?”
“I know, Adam, I really do know,” Starbuck said. In truth the opportunity to turn the Yankee flank was so straightforward that the dullest fool might have seized it, though a wise man might have sought permission for the maneuver first. But Starbuck was so certain he was right and so confident that his flank attack would finish the Yankee defense that he reckoned seeking permission would simply be a waste of time. “Sergeant!” he called for Truslow.
Truslow once again anticipated Starbuck’s order. “Bayonets on!” he called to the company. “Make sure they’re fixed firm! Remember to twist the blade when you drive home!” Truslow’s voice was as calm as though this were just another day’s training. “Take your time, lad! Don’t fumble!” He spoke to a man who had dropped a bayonet in his excitement, then he checked that another man’s bayonet was firmly slotted onto the rifle’s muzzle. Hutton and Mallory, the company’s two other sergeants, were similarly checking their squads.
“Captain!” one of Hutton’s men called. It was Corporal Peter Waggoner, whose twin brother was also a corporal in the company. “You staying or going, Captain?” Peter Waggoner was a big, slow man of deep piety and fierce beliefs.
“I’m going over there,” Starbuck said, pointing across the clearing and deliberately misunderstanding the question.
“You know what I mean,” Waggoner said, and most of the other men in the company knew too for they stared apprehensively at their Captain. They knew Nathan Evans had offered him a job, and many of them feared that such a staff appointment might be attractive to a bright young Yankee like Starbuck.
“Do you still believe that people who drink whiskey will go to hell, Peter?” Starbuck asked the Corporal.
“That’s the truth, isn’t it?” Waggoner demanded sternly. “God’s truth, Mr. Starbuck. Be sure your sins will find you out.”
“I’ve decided to stay here until you and your brother get drunk with me, Peter,” Starbuck retorted. There was a second’s silence as the men understood just what he had meant and then there was a cheer.
“Quiet!” Truslow snapped.
Starbuck looked back at the enemy side of the clearing. He did not know why his men liked him, but he was hugely moved by their affection, so moved that he had turned away rather than betray his emotion. When he had first been made their Captain he knew the men had accepted him because he had come with Truslow’s approval, but they had since discovered that their Yankee officer was a clever, fierce, and combative man. He was not always friendly, not like some of the officers who behaved just like the men they commanded, but K Company accepted Starbuck’s secretive and cool manner as the trait of a northerner. Everyone knew that Yankees were queer cold fish and none were stranger or colder than Bostonians, but they had also learned that Starbuck was fiercely protective of his men and was prepared to defy all the Confederacy’s authorities to save one of his company from trouble. They also sensed he was a rogue, and that made them think he was lucky, and like all soldiers, they would rather have a lucky leader than any other kind. “You’re really staying, sir?” Robert Decker asked.
“I’m really staying, Robert. Now get yourself ready.”
“I’m ready,” Decker said, grinning with pleasure. He was the youngest of the fifty-seven men in the company, almost all of whom came from Faulconer County, where they had been schooled by Thaddeus Bird and doctored by Major Danson and preached at by the Reverend Moss and employed, like as not, by Washington Faulconer. A handful were in their forties, a few were in their twenties and thirties, but most were just seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen years old. They were brothers, cousins, in-laws, friends, and enemies, not a stranger to each other among the lot of them, and all were familiar with each other’s houses and sisters and mothers and dogs and hopes and weaknesses. To a stranger’s eye they looked as fierce and unkempt as a pack of winter hounds after a wet day’s run, but Starbuck knew them better. Some, like the Waggoner twins, were deeply pious boys who witnessed nightly with the other soldiers and who prayed for their captain’s soul, while others, like Edward Hunt and Abram Statham, were rogues who could not be trusted a short inch. Robert Decker, who had come from the same high Blue Ridge valley as Sergeant Truslow, was a kind, hardworking, and trusting soul, while others, like the Cobb twins, were lazier than cats.
“You’re supposed to reinforce Murphy’s company!” Lieutenant Moxey still lingered close to Starbuck.
Starbuck turned on him. “Go and give Pecker my message! For God’s sake, Mox, if you’re going to be a message boy, then be a good one. Now run!” Moxey backed away and Starbuck looked up at Adam. “Will you please go and tell Pecker what we’re doing? I don’t trust Moxey.”
Adam spurred away and Starbuck turned back to his men. He raised his voice over the noise of the musketry and told the company what he expected of them. They were to cross the clearing at the double, and once on the far side they would wheel to their right and make a line that would sweep up through the far woods like a broom coming at the open edge of the Yankee’s line. “Don’t fire unless you have to,” Starbuck said, “just scream as loud as you can and let them see your bayonets. They’ll run, I promise you!” He knew instinctively that the sudden appearance of a pack of screaming rebels would be sufficient to send the Yankees packing. The men grinned nervously. One man, Joseph May, who had been praying as he climbed the hill, peered at his bayonet’s