the wall and went through into the tavern's main room, which, in turn, opened onto a rickety porch. The other officers followed him, joining McComb and three of his customers under the porch's wooden roof from which hung two lanterns. A second explosion spread its sheet of light across the northern sky, and this time the great flame outlined a group of cloaked horsemen on the road. 'Who's there?' Hinton called.
'Fourth Louisiana Horse!' a Southern voice called back. The skyline was red with flame, and more rifle shots cracked in the camp.
'It's a raid!' Hinton called as he ran down the porch steps, revolver in hand.
'Fire!' the Southern voice shouted, and a volley of rifles slammed at the tavern from the reddened dark. Hinton was thrown to the ground by a monstrous blow to his shoulder. He rolled in the mud toward the shadows under the porch as a bullet shattered one of the lanterns and rained glass fragments down onto the startled officers. Captain Murphy fired his revolver twice, but the sheer volume of return fire made him duck into the tavern for cover. Lieutenant Davies had followed Hinton down the steps and somehow made it safe across the road to the protection of the small church, but none of the other officers succeeded in leaving the tavern's veranda. Pirie was draped over the railings, blood dripping from his dangling hands. More blood was seeping between the planks onto Major Hinton, who was gasping with pain. Liam McComb had a shotgun that he fired up the road; then a bullet smacked into the tavern keeper's great belly, and he folded onto the porch with an astonished look on his face. His breath came in huge shuddering gasps as blood spread across his shirt and pants.
Murphy ran to a side window, but a second before he reached his objective a bullet slapped the gauze curtain aside, then a second bullet ripped clean through the wall to strike a splinter out of the tavern's counter. The slaves were wailing in the kitchen, while McComb's bedridden wife was calling pathetically for her husband. The other women upstairs were screaming in terror. Murphy cupped his hands. 'There are women in here! Stop your firing! Stop firing!'
Another voice took up the cry from the porch. 'Cease fire! Cease fire! There are women here!'
'Keep firing!' a man shouted from the fire-rent dark. 'Bastards are lying! Keep firing!'
Murphy ducked as more bullets riddled the wall. The heaviness of the rifle fire suggested there had to be scores of enemy outside. John Torrance, C Company's Captain, was lying in the porch doorway, apparently dead. One of the Legion's lieutenants was crawling across the floor, his beard dripping with blood; then he collapsed onto a full spittoon and spilt its rancid contents across the floor. A fire had started in the kitchen, and its flames roared hungrily as they fed on the old building's dry wood. Two of McComb's customers ran upstairs to try and take the women to safety as Murphy hurried into the back room, where the remains of the celebratory supper lay on the table. He snatched his coat from the nail, grabbed his cartridge pouch, and leaped straight through a gauze curtain into the night. The curtain wrapped itself round him, tripping him so that he rolled helplessly in the mud for a few seconds. He had an idea he might be able to drive the horsemen away from the front of the tavern if he could just fire at them from the darkness at the building's rear, but as he struggled to extricate himself from the muslin curtain, he heard the click of a gun being cocked and looked up to see the dark shape of a horseman. Murphy tried to raise his revolver, but the horseman fired first, then fired again. Murphy felt something hit him with a blow like the kick of a horse; then a terrible pain whipped up from his thigh. He heard himself scream, then lost consciousness as the rider fired again.
The fire spread from the kitchen. Mrs. McComb screamed as the flames licked up the stairs and the bedrooms filled with a thick smoke. The two men who had tried to rescue the women abandoned their attempt, instead stepping out of a bedroom window onto the porch roof in an effort to save themselves from the flames. 'Shoot them down!' Billy Blythe ordered excitedly. 'Shoot the bastards down!' A half-dozen bullets struck the two men, who collapsed, rolled twitching down the shingled roof, then dropped to the ground. Blythe whooped with victory while his men kept pouring their withering fire into the burning building.
A bugle called to the north, summoning the raiders to their retreat, but Blythe had his enemy trapped like rats in a burning barrel, and like rats, he decided, they would die. He fired again and again while the flames spread through the tavern, leaping up the gauze curtains, devouring the ancient wooden floors, exploding barrels of liquor, and hissing where it met the blood that was spilt so thick across the planks.
A man with burning clothes crawled across the porch, then fell shuddering as bullets ripped at him. A roof beam collapsed, showering sparks into the night, and Billy Blythe, his mouth open and eyes bright, watched enthralled.
Major Galloway arrived at the head of his raiders. 'Come on, Billy! Didn't you hear the bugle?'
'Too busy,' Blythe said, his eyes wide and fixed on the glorious destruction. Flames writhed out of collapsing liquor barrels and flared fierce and brief when they caught a dead man's hair. Ammunition crackled in the flames, each cartridge flashing white like a miniature firecracker.
'What happened?' Galloway stared in awe at the burning house.
'Sons of bitches fired on us,' Blythe said, still gazing enraptured at the horror he had engendered, 'so we taught the sons of bitches a lesson.'
'Let's go, Billy,' Galloway said, then seized Blythe's bridle and dragged his second-in-command away from the fire. 'Come on, Billy!'
A figure stirred under the porch, and two horsemen emptied their rifles' revolving cylinders into the man. A woman screamed at the tavern's rear; then the kitchen roof collapsed and the scream was cut sharply off. 'It was a horse,' Blythe assured Galloway, who had frowned when he heard the woman's distress, 'just a dying horse, Joe, and dying horses can sound uncommon like women.'
'Let's go,' Galloway said. There was a smell of roasting meat from the tavern, and horrid things twitching in the furnace heat, and Galloway turned away, not wanting to know what horrors he abandoned.
The horsemen rode west, leaving the sparks whirling cloudward and a whole brigade whipped.
Starbuck had wanted to challenge the raiders, but Swynyard stopped him from leaving the tent. 'They'll slash you down like a dog. Ever been chased by a cavalryman?'
'No.'
'You'll end up saber-cut to ribbons. Keep quiet.'
'We must do something!'
'Sometimes it's best to do nothing. They won't stay long.'
Yet the wait seemed forever to Starbuck as he crouched in the tent; then at last he heard a bugle call and voices shouting orders to retreat. Hooves thumped close by the tent, which suddenly twitched and half collapsed as its guy ropes were cut. Starbuck squirmed out of the sagging wet canvas and saw Adam on horseback not five paces away.
'Adam!' Starbuck shouted, not really believing his own eyes.
But Adam was already spurring south, his horse's hooves throwing up great gobs of mud and water as he went. Starbuck saw the headquarters house burning and more fires flaring skyward among the supply wagons. The sentry guarding Swynyard's tent had vanished.
'So how did they cross the river?' Colonel Swynyard asked as he crawled out from the tent's wreckage.
'The same way they'll go back,' Starbuck said. The horsemen might have withdrawn southward, but he had no doubt they would be riding a half-circle to get back to the unguarded ford, which meant a man on foot might just be able to cut them off. General Faulconer was shouting for water, but Starbuck ignored the orders. He leaped over the ditch that separated the headquarters from the bivouac lines and shouted for Sergeant Truslow. 'Turn out! Fast now!'
H Company fell into ranks. 'Load!' Starbuck ordered.
Truslow had rescued Starbuck's rifle and now threw it to him with an ammunition pouch. 'The General says we're not to take orders from you,' the Sergeant said.
'The General can go to hell.' Starbuck bit a cartridge and poured powder down the barrel.
'That's what I reckoned too,' Truslow said.
Swynyard arrived, panting. 'Where are you going?'
Starbuck spat the bullet into the muzzle. 'We're going to Dead Mary's Ford,' he said, then rammed the bullet hard down, slotted the ramrod back into place, and slung the rifle from his shoulder.
'Why Dead Mary's Ford?' Swynyard asked, puzzled.
'Because, damn it, we saw one of the bastards there last night. Ain't that right, Mallory?'
'Saw him plain as daylight,' Sergeant Mallory confirmed.
'Besides,' Starbuck went on, 'where else would they cross the river? Every other ford's guarded. Follow me!'
