Gettysburg

The entire army was on the move. By tomorrow they'd be concentrated. He looked back to the north, the rumble of fire growing for a moment

Fight them there or here?

It was a meeting engagement up there, us and them, racing to bring up reinforcements. We win the race, hold the good ground, we roll them up. It was a chance, a roll of the dice, but against Lee that was how things had to be played.

'Hunt'

He stirred. Meade was looking back at him, and Henry stiffened.

'Your report Hunt'

'I surveyed the ground along Pipe Creek as you ordered, sir.'

'Warren has already given me the map.'

Henry nodded. Warren had ridden on ahead while he had turned aside for a few minutes to check his batteries parked just outside the town.

'It's a damn good position, sir. Everything you thought it might be. Solid protection on the flanks, clear fields of fire along the entire front good roads behind the lines to move men, and a rail line just seven or eight miles back at Westminster, linking us back to Baltimore.'

'If we can lure Lee down into it,' Meade replied. 'I'm sending out a circular to the corps commanders that it still might be our position, but it looks like things are being decided differently up there.'

Meade pointed toward the norm and the distant clouds of smote.

'You hear about John Reynolds?' Meade asked.

Henry nodded, not saying anything.

'He was in command up there. Now it's General Howard who's senior on the field,' and as he spoke Meade gestured toward the dark smudge of smoke rising up into the heavy air.

Henry didn't let his feelings about General Howard show. It wasn't wise to do so when generals were discussing other generals. Some now considered Oliver to be a jinx. He had done well early in the war, losing an arm in a gallant charge at Fair Oaks; but the disastrous rout at Chancellorsville only eight weeks back, when he allowed his entire corps to be flanked and his men panicked, sat squarely on his shoulders. He could be sanctimonious, too, not inspiring confidence when things got tense.

'I've decided to stay here for now,' Meade continued. 'I've got people spread out from here halfway back to the outskirts, of Frederick. John Sedgwick's Sixth Corps is still thirty miles off. The dispatches are coming here, and I'm stuck in this town for now.'

Meade leaned back over the railing, gaze fixed on the northern horizon. 'I just sent Winfield Hancock forward to take command until the rest of the army comes up.'

Henry could not help but let something slip, a nearly audible sigh of relief, and Meade nodded. 'Hancock will put backbone into the fight up there. You head up there as well. You might catch Winfield on the road if you move quickly; he left just a short while ago.'

'My orders, sir?'

'Organize the artillery. You know your job, Hunt Put yourself at Hancock's disposal. If it's Gettysburg, and Hancock decides that's the ground to fight it out on, I'll come up later in the day. If not, you help cover the retreat back to here and the line along Pipe Creek. Until we're certain, keep the rest of your Artillery Reserve here in Taneytown, but you are to go forward.'

Henry nodded and felt a cool shiver. The long months of exile, of pushing paper, were over. He was being cut loose to fight

Meade turned away without waiting for a reply, and Henry bounded down the stairs, racing through the broad open corridor of the house and out onto the porch. A young orderly from his staff stood jawing with Henry's headquarters sergeant-major, the two of them relaxed in the shade of the porch. At the sight of Henry's approach, the two stiffened.

Henry pointed at his sergeant 'Williams, get back to my headquarters. Tell them to come up to Gettysburg. You'll find me up there, most likely near where General Hancock is. The Artillery Reserve is to concentrate here, at Taneytown, and await my orders; but get the batteries ready to move at a moment's notice. You got that?'

The sergeant grinned as he swung into the saddle. 'Good fight coming, sir?'

'Sure as hell looks that way.'

'Don't get yourself killed, sir,' and the sergeant was off.

Henry mounted, spurring his horse, orderly falling in behind with guidon. Leaving the grass-covered yard, Henry weaved his way through the town, which was clogged with troops, supply wagons, and, annoyingly, dozens of civilian buggies and wagons filled with curiosity seekers, the vermin who seemed to mink that a battle was an event for their amusement. Several called out asking what was happening, but he ignored them. One local had had the audacity to set up a stand selling lemonade and cider. Henry made no comment as several men, having drunk their fill, walked off without payment the proprietor shouting for Henry to arrest them. The man looked healthy enough and should be toting a rifle rather than making a few pennies off men who, might be dead by nightfall.

The day was getting hotter, and he reached for his canteen even as he rode, cursing himself for not having filled it at the well back at the house. The lieutenant trailing behind him was new, the boy he replaced having broken a leg in a fall from a horse the day before.

'What's your name, son?' Henry asked.

'Joshua Peeler, sir'

'Where you from?'

'Indiana, sir.'

Henry nodded and then let the conversation drop. Never get too close to them. Boys carrying guidons drew bullets, lots of bullets.

Henry gained the road heading out of Taney town to Gettysburg. Coming up to a low crest just north of town, he could again see the smoke billowing up on the horizon. The field sloping down before him was already beginning to fill with the signs that he was approaching a battle. Skulkers lingered at the edge of the pasture. At the sight of his approach, they ducked back into the woods. The hay in the field was trampled down, fences torn apart, dozens of small, coiling circles of smoke indicating where a couple of regiments had taken a break and built fires to brew up a quick cup of coffee and fry some salt pork before marching on. Half a dozen men were resting under the shade of an elm, and at his approach one of them held up a provost pass, indicating they had been given permission to fall out of the march. They were obviously played out, done in by the heat and the pace of the advance. Several exhausted horses, cut loose from caisson or wagon traces, wandered freely along the road, one of them collapsed in a ditch, gasping for breath.

It was something about the damn war that always affected him. As a boy the sight of an animal in pain had always bothered him. He had once shot a rabbit and not killed it clean. The poor thing started to scream, sounding just like a baby in agony. He couldn't bring himself to kill it, his father having to do it instead. The memory had haunted his childhood nightmares for months. In a world where animals were slaughtered without thought, Henry had been a curiosity, avoiding open mockery only by the strength of his fists.

And yet he had chosen the bloodiest of professions and the bloodiest of arms within that profession. He had seen entire caisson teams, six horses, cut down by a single burst, animals with legs blown off still running, trying to keep up with their harness mates. After Chapultepec, they had burned the carcasses of fifty horses from his battery after carving off the choicer cuts of meat for dinner.

He rode past the collapsed horse, which looked up at him wide-eyed, as if asking forgiveness for being old and weak. He pressed on.

The road dipped down into a hollow, the air pleasant, cool. Fording the calf-deep stream, Henry tossed his canteen to his orderly, who dismounted, went upriver a dozen paces, and filled it

The shaded glade was peaceful, water swirling around the legs of his horse, who lowered his head to drink. For a moment he could almost forget the war. There was a flash memory of childhood, of playing in the creek on a hot summer day, building dams and little watermills out of sticks and pieces of wood. The lieutenant filling the canteen knelt in the water, splashing some on his face, childlike and innocent looking as if he were about to challenge Henry to a water fight

He wanted to forget everything for a minute, to linger here, soaking up the peace, the cool in the midday heat the quiet without fear of what was to come.