Mill and helped himself to one of the new revolvers. He was just loading the last of the Adams's five chambers when a chorus of shouts erupted from further down the warehouse. Starbuck turned to see an excited mob of his men chasing an agile black figure, who swerved around an astonished Coffman, leaped over an opened crate of canteens, and would have got clean away had not the drunk beside Starbuck reached out an oblivious hand that inadvertently tripped the fugitive. The boy—he was hardly more than a boy—sprawled in the mud, where he was pounced on by his cheering pursuers.
'Bring the bastard here!' Major Medlicott strode down the warehouse carrying a teamster's whip.
The prisoner yelped as Abram Trent cuffed him around the head. 'Goddamned nigger thief!' Trent had the boy by one ear and was hitting him with his free hand. 'Thieving black bastard.'
'Enough!' Starbuck pushed a man aside. 'Let go of him.'
'He's a thieving—'
'I said let go of him!'
Trent reluctantly let go of the boy's ear, but not without giving the captured fugitive a last savage blow. The boy staggered but managed to stay on his feet. He looked around for an escape, realized he was trapped, and so adopted a defiant air. He had a thin face, long black hair, a straight nose, and high cheekbones. He was dressed in a sailor's bell-bottom pants and a billowing striped shirt that gave him an exotic look. Starbuck had once spent a few weeks with a traveling troupe of actors, and there was something in the boy's flamboyance that reminded him of those distant times. 'What's your name?' Starbuck asked him.
The boy looked up at his savior, but instead of showing gratitude, he spat. 'Ain't got a name.'
'What's your name?' Starbuck insisted again, but only received a truculent glare for answer.
Medlicott pushed through the ring of men. 'Stay out of this, Starbuck!' he said, raising the whip against the black lad.
Starbuck stepped in front of Major Medlicott. He kept a smile on his face as he put his mouth close to Medlicott's right ear, and he kept smiling as he spoke softly, so softly that only Medlicott could hear him. 'Listen, you lily-livered son of a bitch, you give me orders one more time and I'll pistol-whip you down to corporal.' Starbuck was still smiling as he stepped a pace backward. 'Don't you agree that's the best way to proceed, Major?'
Medlicott was not certain at first that he had heard right and just blinked at Starbuck. Then he took a backward pace and flicked the whip toward the captured boy. 'He stole my watch,' Medlicott said. 'The little black bastard lifted it out of my pocket when I laid my coat down. It was a present from my wife, too,' he added indignantly, 'from Edna!' Starbuck looked at the boy. 'Give the Major his watch.' 'Don't have it.'
Starbuck sighed and stepped forward. The boy tried to twist aside, but Starbuck was too quick for him. He grabbed a handful of long dirty hair and held the squirming boy still. 'Search him, Coffman,' he said.
Lieutenant Coffman nervously began searching the boy's pockets. At first he found nothing; then it became apparent that the pants pockets had been elongated into long, capacious, sausage-shaped sacks specially strengthened to hold and conceal plunder, and the men watched in amazement as the evidence of the boy's thefts was dragged into the light. Coffman produced two hunter watches, a gilt picture frame, a collapsible silver cup, a folding mirror, two razors, a brass match case, a carved pipe, a signet ring, an ivory-handled shaving brush, a comb, a pack of cards, and a handful of coins. The men stared in awe at the hoard. 'Oh, my God,' one of them said, 'just lay me down,' and a bellow of laughter swept through the crowd.
Coffman stepped away from the boy. 'That's all, sir,' he said.
'They're all my property!' the boy insisted, trying to retrieve one of the watches, and the ring of men laughed and cheered at his insolence. They had been baying for his blood just a minute before, but there was something irresistible about the young man's unrepentant face and impressive haul of thefts.
Medlicott retrieved his watch. 'He's a goddamn thief. He should be whipped.'
'But I thought we were all thieves today,' Starbuck said, and he was about to kick the boy on his way when a stentorian voice shouted from outside the ring of Legionnaires.
'Hold on to that nigger!' the voice shouted, and the men slowly parted to make way for the big, bearded Captain who had been supervising the manacling of the recaptured slaves. 'Another damn runaway,' the man said, reaching for the boy.
'I'm a free man!' the boy insisted.
'And I'm Abraham Lincoln,' the Captain said as he grabbed the boy's striped shirt. He cuffed the long black hair aside and displayed one of the boy's earlobes to Starbuck. 'Took his earring out, didn't he? First thing a runaway does, take off the earring.' Earrings denoted slave status. 'So if you're free, lad,' the Captain went on, 'why don't you show us your papers?'
The boy plainly had no papers. For a second or two he looked defiant; then he was overwhelmed by despair and tried to twist out of the Captain's grip. The Captain slapped him hard around the head. 'You'll be picking cotton now, lad.'
'He belongs to me,' Starbuck said suddenly. He had not intended to speak, and certainly he had never intended to claim ownership of the boy, but there was something appealing about the young man's spirit that reminded Starbuck of his own desperate attempts to remake himself in an image of his own devising, and he knew that if he did not speak up, then the boy would be hammered and burned into the chains and then sold down the river to the living hell of the cotton plantations.
The Captain gave Starbuck a long, hard look, then spat a viscous brown stream of tobacco juice. 'Out my way, boy.'
'You call me 'sir,'' Starbuck said, 'or I'll have you arrested and charged for rank insubordination. Now, boy, get the hell out of my regiment.'
The Captain laughed at Starbuck's presumption, then twitched the fugitive slave toward the forge. Starbuck kicked the man hard between the legs, then rammed a flat palm into the bearded face. The Captain let go of the escaped slave and staggered backward. He was in terrible pain, but he succeeded in keeping his footing and was just starting forward with his fists clenched when there was the unmistakable click of a gun being cocked. 'You heard the Major,' Truslow's voice said, 'so git.'
The Captain put a hand to his face to wipe blood away from his mustache. He looked askance at Starbuck, wondering if the youngster really was a major, then decided that anything might be true in wartime. He pointed a blood-smeared finger at the cowering boy. 'He's a contraband. The law says he's got to be returned—'
'You heard the Captain,' Starbuck said, 'so git.'
Starbuck waited till the man had gone, then turned and took hold of the boy's ear. 'Come here, you son of a bitch,' he said, dragging the boy away from the crowd and into the warehouse, where he threw the lad hard onto a pile of grain sacks. 'Listen, you little bastard, I've just saved you from a whipping, and better still, I've just saved you from being sold down the river. So what's your name?'
The boy rubbed his ear. 'You really a major?'
'No, I'm the goddamn archangel Gabriel. Who are you?'
'Whoever I want to be,' the boy said defiantly. Starbuck guessed he was fourteen or fifteen, an urchin who had learned to live by his wits.
'So who do you want to be?' Starbuck asked.
The boy was surprised by the question, but he thought about it, then grinned and shrugged. 'Lucifer,' he said at last.
'You can't be Lucifer,' Starbuck said, shocked, 'that's the devil's name!'
'Only name I'm giving you, master,' the boy insisted.
Starbuck guessed that was true, so he settled for the satanic name. 'So listen to me, Lucifer, my name's Major Starbuck, and I need a servant real bad and you just got the job. Are you hearing me?'
'Yes, sir.' There was something cheeky and mocking in the response.
'And I need a comb, a toothbrush, field glasses, a razor that'll hold an edge, and something to eat other than hardtack and shoe leather. Are you hearing me?'
'I got ears, master! See?' Lucifer insolently plucked back his long ringlets. 'One on each side, see?'
'So you go and get those things, Lucifer,' Starbuck said. 'I don't care how, and you be back here within the hour. Can you cook?'
The boy pretended to think about the question, drawing out his silence just beyond the edge of rudeness. 'Sure, I can cook.'
'Good. So get whatever you need for cooking utensils.' Starbuck stood aside. 'And bring me as many cigars as
