Love and War

glance. Charles hated his friend because he had stated the truth.

On sunny Fleetwood Hill that afternoon, Jeb Stuart's cavalry waged a new kind of war. They fought Union troopers who swung sabers and handled their mounts as expertly as any Southern boy raised to hunt and spear the hanging rings on lance point. The Yanks drove Stuart off the hill, and by the time Charles and Ab returned from Stevensburg, every available trooper was being pressed into the fight to regain it. Hampton was back from Beverly Ford, where he had been rushed for the unsuccessful attempt to stop Buford. Two more divisions of Union horse had forced Kelly's. No wonder; the untalented Robertson commanded that sector.

Stevensburg, too, had been a disaster. Near there, Frank Hampton had been sabered, then shot to death. Calbraith Butler held his position against the charging Yankees, but at the cost of having a flying shell fragment strike his right foot, nearly blowing it off. The fine troopers of the Fourth Virginia had been routed — a disastrous, confused, angry gallop to the rear — and Charles and Ab had been caught in that for a time.

At Fleetwood, the squadrons rallied, and Stuart shouted, 'Give them the saber, boys!' and the buglers blew Trot and Gallop and finally Charge. Up the slopes they went, in sunshine that quickly dimmed behind smoke and dust.

Though Charles couldn't see him, he knew Ab was riding somewhere close by. They had exchanged no words except essential ones since the incident in the pine grove. Charles knew his friend had blurted the accusation because he was tired and tense. But that made it no less telling.

Sport galloped as he always did when riding to the sound of guns — head up, alert and eager. Charles could feel the gray's nervousness — it was his own. Horse and rider fused, centaurlike, in a way old cavalry hands took for granted after they had ridden one animal a long time. Old legion sword raised, Charles screamed the rebel yell, along with thousands around him.

Then they were onto the heights of Fleetwood. Artillery wheeling. Sabers ringing. Pistols flashing. Horses and men tangling. Formations dissolving. Charles fought with a fury he'd never had before. It was necessary to redeem himself in Ab's eyes. It was necessary because the enemy was a new kind of enemy.

Blood drops accumulated in his beard. He gave up the sword for the shotgun, the shotgun for the revolver, then went back to the weapon of last resort when he had no time to reload.

He came upon a dismounted man in gray, reached down to help him. The man struck at him with a rammer staff, nearly took his head off before Charles backed away and thrust his sword into the Yank's chest. Thick dust was graying many a blue uniform that afternoon. A man could die being a moment late to discern the color.

As most battles did, the one for the contested hilltop lost shape and organization and soon swirled into many small, ugly skirmishes. The rebels regained the heights, lost them, rallied to take them again. Riding up a second time, Charles nearly slammed into a knot of Union troopers. He raised his sword in time to parry that of a hot-eyed officer with flowing hair and a red scarf knotted at his throat.

Pushing, pushing down, his sword against Charles's, their horses neighing and shoving, the lieutenant sneered, 'Your servant, Reb —'

'I'm not yours.' Charles spat in the Yank's face to gain advantage, and would have stabbed him through had not the officer's horse stumbled. Circus rider gone mad, said a voice in his memory as the Yank's eyes locked with his for an instant.

The horse fell; the Yank disappeared. Neither man would forget the other.

'Look sharp, Charlie,' Ab shouted above the cannonading, the sabers clashing and sparking, the wounded crying out. Through dust clouds, Charles had a blurry view of Ab pointing behind him. He twisted, saw a Yank sergeant raise a huge pistol.

Ab closed in on the Yank. Using his empty revolver as a club, he chopped at the sergeant's arm. The sergeant changed his aim and shot Ab in the chest at a range of two feet.

'Ab!' A scream did no good. Ab was already gone, sliding sideways, his eyes open but no longer comprehending who or where he was — had been — as he sank from sight. The sergeant vanished in the melee.

Teeth clenched, Charles parried a cut from a Union trooper ramming his horse into Sport. Clang — the trooper hit a second time. Sparks hissed and leaped where metal edges met.

The trooper fought his bucking horse. He was a redhead, scarcely twenty, with a foolish grin showing under his big red mustaches.

'Lost your nerve?' Ab died thinking that. Saved me in spite of it —

'Got you this time,' the redhead shouted. With a curse and a skillful dodge, Charles escaped the sword and put his own half­way through the boy's throat. He pulled it out with no remorse. Ab was right: Gus had softened and weakened him. It had taken this bloody June day to reveal the truth.

Driving on up to the heights of Fleetwood again, Charles suddenly realized a riderless horse was running beside Sport. It was Ab's mount, Cyclone. The animal kept on toward the sound of the guns. A bursting grape canister put out one of its eyes and opened a wound in its head. Like any brave, battle-trained war horse, Cyclone didn't neigh or bellow. Cyclone plowed on, slower but still moving forward in blood and silent pain until the wounds and the angle of the slope became too much, and it knelt down on its forelegs, wanting to continue but unable.

Charles sabered like a madman, weaving and feinting so fast, no one could touch him. Then another Yank charged; an ungainly man with the coaly hair and heavy-cream skin and blue eyes of the black Irish. The Yank wore corporal's chevrons and swore at Charles in a tongue he took to be Gaelic. Charles fought him nearly four minutes, blocking cuts, striking the Yank's left shoulder, parrying again, finally running him through the belly. He struck the man's ribs, yanked out the sword, and stabbed again.

The horses bucked and bumped each other. The Irishman swayed. Charles stabbed him a third time. What keeps him up? Why won't he fall? Why couldn't the hapless fools be dragged out of the saddle any more? Who had taught them to ride and fight so fiercely?

'Damned pernicious traitor,' cried the trebly wounded Irishman, sounding exactly like a Maine cadet Charles had known at West Point. Were the Yanks also making troopers of lobstermen? God help the South if they could accomplish miracles like that.

A fourth stroke sent the corporal down, sliding sideways, unable to free himself from his right stirrup. An artillery limber rolled over his head and pushed it deep in soft brown loam. The man had been a devil; Charles shook with terror for more than a minute.

In the end the Southerners won and held the hill. But the Union reconnaissance in force had achieved its objective. Lee's army was found.

The Yanks achieved a second, unplanned, objective as well. They put a sword deep into the confidence of the Confederate cavalry. Charles knew it when he fought the Irishman with the Down East voice.

Pleasanton ordered a general retreat before dark. As the sun sank and the wind cleared Fleetwood of smoke and dust, legions of glistening bluebottle flies descended on the trampled red grass. The turkey buzzards sailed out of the twilight sky. Charles rode through the detritus of the charges and countercharges he could no longer count or remember separately. He searched until he found Ab's body, a hundred yards beyond the place where he had died. The carrion birds had already reached his face. Charles waved off the birds, but one rose with a piece of pink flesh in its beak. Charles pulled his Colt and killed the bird.

He buried Ab in some woods south of the railroad line, using a borrowed trenching tool. As he dug, he tried to find comfort in the memory of good times he and Ab had shared. There wasn't any.

He put Ab into the hole in the ground, then squatted at the edge, deliberating. A minute passed. He unbuttoned his shirt and lifted the thong over his head. He studied the handmade sack containing the book with the ball embedded in it. The book hadn't protected him, it had emasculated him. He threw the bag in the grave and began to shovel dirt to fill the hole.

He had seen General Hampton a number of times during the fighting, whirling that great Crusader's sword and galloping ahead of his men, as good cavalry generals always did. That night Charles saw him again. The loss of his brother made Hampton look like an old man.

Charles heard that the surgeons didn't think they could save Calbraith Butler's foot. So much had happened