nights, even if he had been concussed for much of the first, but no one believed he could last another two nights without the succor of raw spirits. Ever since his alleged conversion the Colonel had been shaking visibly, such was the strain he endured, and on the Friday night he was heard moaning inside his tent, yet he endured that night, and the next, so that on Sunday he appeared at the Brigade's church parade with his once-ragged beard trimmed and clean, his boots polished, and a determined smile on his haggard face. His was the most earnest voice in prayer, the most enthusiastic to shout amen, and the loudest in singing hymns. Indeed, when the Reverend Moss led the Legion in singing 'Depth of mercy, can there be mercy still reserved for me? Can my God His wrath forbear? Me the chief of sinners spare?' Swynyard looked directly at Starbuck and smiled confidingly as he sang.
General Washington Faulconer took his second-in-command to one side after the open-air service. 'You're making a damned fool of yourself, Swynyard. Stop it.'
'The Lord is making a fool of me, sir, and I praise Him for it.'
'I'll cashier you,' Faulconer threatened.
'I'm sure General Jackson would like to hear of an officer being cashiered for loving the Lord, sir,' Swynyard said with a touch of his old cunning.
'Just stop making a fool of yourself,' Faulconer growled, then walked away.
Swynyard himself sought out Captain Murphy. 'I hear you have a book on me, Murphy?'
The Irishman reddened but confessed it was so. 'But I'm not sure I can let you have a wager yourself, Colonel, if that's what you'll be wanting,' Murphy said, 'seeing as how you might be considered partial in the matter, sir, if you follow my meaning?'
'I wouldn't have a wager,' Swynyard said. 'Wagering is a sin, Murphy.'
'Is it now, sir?' Murphy asked innocently. 'Then it must be a Protestant sin, sir, and more's the pity for you.'
'But you should be warned that God is on my side, so not a drop of ardent spirits will pass my lips ever again.'
'I'm overjoyed to hear that, sir. A living saint, you are.' The Irishman smiled and backed away.
That night, after the Colonel had testified at the Legion's voluntary prayer meeting, he was heard praying aloud in his tent. The man was in plain agony. He was lusting after drink, fighting it, and calling on God to help him in the fight. Starbuck and Truslow listened to the pathetic struggle, then went to Murphy's shelter. 'One more day, Murph'.' Starbuck proffered the last two dollars of his recent salary. 'Two bucks says he'll be sodden tight by this time tomorrow night,' Starbuck offered.
'I'll take two bucks for tomorrow night as well,' Truslow added, offering his money.
'You and a score of others are saying the exact same thing,' Murphy said dubiously, then showed the two men a valise stuffed with Confederate banknotes. 'Half of that money is saying he won't last this night, and the other half is only giving him till tomorrow sundown. I can't give you decent odds, Nate. I'll be hurting myself if I offered you anything better than two to one against. It's hardly worth risking your money at those odds.'
'Listen,' Starbuck said. In the silence the three men could hear the Colonel sobbing. There was a light in Swynyard's tent, and the Colonel's monstrous shadow was rocking back and forth as he prayed for help. His two slaves, who had been utterly taken aback by the change in their master's demeanor, crouched helplessly outside.
'The poor bastard,' Murphy said. 'It's almost enough to stop you from drinking in the first place.'
'Two to one on?' Starbuck asked. 'For tomorrow night?'
'Are you sure you don't want to put your money on tonight?' Murphy asked.
'He's survived this far,' Truslow said. 'He'll be asleep
soon.' -
'For tomorrow night, then,' Murphy said and took Starbuck's two dollars and then the two dollars that Sergeant Truslow had offered. When the wagers were recorded in Murphy's book, Starbuck walked back past the Colonel's tent and saw Lieutenant Davies on his knees beside the entrance.
'What the ...' Starbuck began, but Davies turned with his finger to his lips. Starbuck peered closer and saw that the Lieutenant was pushing a half-full bottle of whiskey under
the flap.
Davies backed away. 'I've got thirty bucks riding on tonight, Nate,' he whispered as he climbed to his feet, 'so I thought I'd help the money.'
'Thirty bucks?'
'Even odds,' Davies said, then dusted the dirt off his pants. 'Reckon I'm onto a sure thing. Listen to the bastard!'
'It's not fair to do that to a man,' Starbuck said sternly. 'You should be ashamed of yourself!' He strode to the tent, reached under the flap, and took out the whiskey.
'Put it back!' Davies insisted.
'Lieutenant Davies,' Starbuck said, 'I will personally pull your belly out of your goddamned throat and shove it up your stinking backside if I ever find you or anyone else trying to sabotage that man's repentance. Do you understand me?' He took a step closer to the tall, pale, and bespectacled Lieutenant. 'I'm not goddamn joking, Davies. That man's trying to redeem himself, and all you can do is mock him! Christ Almighty, but that makes me angry!'
'All right! All right!' Davies said, frightened by Starbuck's vehemence.
'I'm serious, Davies,' Starbuck said, although the Lieutenant had never actually doubted Starbuck's sincerity. 'I'll goddamn kill you if you try this again,' Starbuck said. 'Now go away.' Starbuck watched the Lieutenant vanish into the night, then let out a long sigh of relief. 'We'll keep this for tomorrow night, Sergeant,' he told Truslow, flourishing the whiskey that Davies had abandoned.
'Then put it into Swynyard's tent?'
'Exactly. God damn Davies's thirty bucks. I need money far more than he does.'
Truslow walked on beside his Captain. 'What that suffering bastard Swynyard really likes is good brandy.'
'Then maybe we can find some on the battlefield tomorrow,' Starbuck said, and that discovery seemed a distinct possibility, for although three days had passed since the battle, there were still wounded men lying in the woods or hidden in the broken stands of corn. Indeed, there were so many dead and wounded that the rebels alone could not retrieve all the casualties, and so a truce had been arranged and troops from General Banks's army had been invited to rescue their own men.
The day of the truce dawned hot and sultry. Most of the Legion had been ordered to help search the undergrowth in the belt of trees where the Yankee attack had stalled, but Starbuck's company was set to tree- felling and the construction of a massive pyre on which the dead horses of the Pennsylvanian cavalry were to be burned. On the turnpike behind the pyre a succession of light-sprung Northern ambulances carried away the Yankee wounded. The Northern vehicles, specially constructed for their purpose, were in stark contrast to the farm carts and captured army wagons that the rebels used as ambulances, just as the uniformed and well-equipped Northern soldiers looked so much smarter than the rebel troops. A Pennsylvanian captain in charge of the detail loading the ambulances sauntered down to Starbuck's men and had to ask which of the ragamuffins was their officer. 'Dick Levergood,' he introduced himself to Starbuck.
'Nate Starbuck.'
Levergood companionably offered Starbuck a cigar and a drink of lemonade. 'It's crystallized essence,' he said, apologizing for the lemonade that was reconstituted from a powder mix, 'but it doesn't taste bad. My mother sends it.'
'You'd rather have whiskey?' Starbuck offered Levergood a bottle. 'It's good Northern liquor,' Starbuck added mischievously.
Other Pennsylvanians joined the Legionnaires. Newspapers were exchanged and twists of tobacco swapped for coffee, though the briskest trade was in Confederate dollars. Every Northerner wanted to buy Southern scrip to send home as a souvenir, and the price of the ill-printed Southern money was rising by the minute. The men made their trades beside the great pyre that was a sixty-foot-long mound of newly cut pine logs on which a company of Confederate gunners was now piling the horses. The artillerymen were using a sling-cart that had a lifting frame bolted to its bed. The wagon's real purpose was rescuing dismounted cannon barrels, but now its crane jib hoisted the rotting horse carcasses six feet in the air, then swung them onto the logs, where a team of men with their mouths and nostrils scarfed against the stink levered the swollen corpses into place with handspikes. Another two
