Galloway saw the anger on the younger man's face and wondered whether Adam was too tender for war; maybe a man needed Billy Blythe's callous carapace to be a good soldier, yet it was undeniable that it had been Adam and not Blythe who had provided Galloway with his one victory. Galloway now wondered where Blythe was, for his second-in-command had never returned from his patrol into the west. Maybe he had followed the strange column to its destination and would be waiting at Galloway's farm, or maybe, more disastrously, Blythe's troop had been ambushed and cut to pieces by the rebels. Beyond the town a train whistle hooted mournfully, while further away, where the Federal army was dug in on the Rappahannock's northern bank, the thunder of cannon fire rumbled incessantly. The Southern gunners had started an artillery duel that had been raging all day, probably, Galloway now realized, as a means of diverting John Pope from what was happening behind his back.
'When this war's over'—Adam broke his silence after a long pause—'we shall have to live in this community. We shall have to make our peace with neighbors and family, but we'll never have peace if we condone murder.' The North's virtue, he wanted to add, lay in its moral rectitude, but the sentiment sounded too pompous for utterance.
Galloway privately doubted whether any Southerner who had fought for the North could ever hope to make a home south of Washington again, but he nodded anyway. 'I'll make inquiries, Adam, I promise you,' he said, and Adam had to be content with that promise, for suddenly the parlor door was thrown open and John Pope himself strode into the hallway.
The Northern commander checked when he saw the waiting cavalry officers. 'You're Galloway, right?'
'Yes, sir.'
'A Manassas man, aren't I right?'
'Yes, sir,' Galloway acknowledged.
Pope snapped his fingers. 'The very man! You're to take your fellows home, Galloway. Jackson's there. One of our fellows saw the wretch in person and escaped to tell the tale. There's no doubt about it, Jackson's in Manassas, and you know what that means? It means we've got him in the bag! You understand me?' The General was suddenly exultant. He might have been reluctant to accept that his battle lay at Manassas and not across the Rappahannock, but a few hours of reflection had convinced him of the advantages of accepting Jackson's foolhardy challenge. 'The damned fool has marched halfway round our army to maroon himself in Manassas, and tomorrow we're going to snap him up! My God, Jeb Stuart might make a fool of George Brinton McClellan by riding clean around his army, but no Stonewall Jackson will march clean round John Pope! No, sir! So, Galloway'—Pope jabbed a finger at the Major– 'take your fellows north and find out just where the wretched man is, and report to me when you know. We're going to Bristoe tonight. If you want to put your horses on our train, then come now, hurry!' The commander strode into the street, followed by flustered aides clutching luggage and maps.
'So where's Lee?' Galloway asked faintly, but no one responded, perhaps because no one heard him or perhaps because no one thought the question important. All that mattered was that Stonewall Jackson had marched himself into a trap and that John Pope was about to destroy him once and for all. 'We've got the fool in the bag!' Pope boasted as he hurried toward the train he believed would carry him northward to victory. 'Right in the bag!'
Lucifer did return. He returned with a leather grip that had been put in store by a Northern officer but that now held Starbuck's new possessions. 'Every damn thing you wanted,' Lucifer said proudly, 'and a silver hairbrush, too. See? Make you look real good. And I got you cigars. Good ones.' Lucifer had also discarded his flamboyant clothes and replaced them with a Northern cavalryman's pants over which he was wearing a gray jacket, a leather belt, and a button-flapped holster, yet somehow his natural elegance imbued even that humdrum uniform with flair.
'Is there anything in that holster?' Starbuck demanded.
'I got myself a cooking implement,' Lucifer said, 'made by Mr. Colt of Hartford in Connecticut.'
'You mean you've got a gun,' Starbuck said flatly.
'It is not a gun,' Lucifer protested. 'It is a utensil for killing the food you want me to cook for you, and if I can't have a utensil I can't get meat, and I can't cook the meat I can't get, and you can't eat the meat I can't cook, and then you'll starve and I'll be so hungry I won't even have the strength left to bury you.'
Starbuck sighed. 'If you're caught with a gun, Lucifer, then someone will take the skin off your back.'
'If I have got myself a Colt cooking utensil, Major, then there ain't no son of a stinking bitch alive who can take the skin off any one little part of me.'
Starbuck gave in. He sent the boy to find some food but warned him to be ready to leave at any minute. The daylight was fading, its twilight obscured by the myriad of fires that burned among the wagons and boxcars, and Starbuck expected imminent orders to move away from the fiery smoke pillars that were surely serving as beacons to draw every Northern soldier within twenty miles. Not that the rebel army was in a fit state to move; some men snored in alcoholic stupors, while others, gorged with rich food, slept, oblivious of the incendiary parties who went from warehouse to warehouse burning what could not be carried away.
In the last of the light Starbuck shaved himself, using a new mirror and razor that Lucifer had found; then he feasted on pickled oysters and fresh bread and butter. Dark came and there were still no orders to move. Starbuck assumed Jackson had decided to run the risk of spending the night in the captured, burning depot, and so he made himself a bed from a pile of brand-new Northern overcoats, but the softness of the makeshift mattress was disconcertingly comfortable, and so he rolled off the pile onto the familiar dirt. And there slept well.
And woke to inferno.
He opened his eyes to see a sky lancing with red fire and to hear a thunderous roll of monstrous noise filling the night. He started up, reaching for his rifle, while all around him the men of the Legion woke to the same terrifying cacophony. A burning fragment fell from the sky to thump into the dirt beside Starbuck. 'What the hell's happening?' Starbuck asked of no one in particular.
Then he realized that the North's great supply of ammunition was being destroyed. Boxcar after boxcar of cartridges, percussion caps, shells, and artillery propellant was being torched. The explosions thumped across the depot, each one flashing a bright illumination that pulsed its brilliance high into the sky. Monstrous flames boiled hundreds of feet into the air, where hissing missiles spat through churning smoke. 'Oh, my God,' a man said after one particularly sharp and bright explosion, 'just lay me down.' The phrase, which was spreading throughout Jackson's army, prompted an immediate burst of laughter.
'Major Starbuck! Major Starbuck!' Captain Pryor, now Swynyard's aide, searched among the startled men.
'I'm here!'
'We're to march now.'
'What time is it?'
'Midnight, sir. A little after.'
Starbuck shouted for Sergeant Major Tolliver. A warehouse crammed with shrapnel disintegrated in flame to make the night momentarily as bright and red as hell's deep at noon. The explosion was followed by a tantalizing smell as barrels of cured bacon caught the flames and fried. A loose horse galloped in terror past a gang of sweating demons who were destroying the last locomotives in the depot by stuffing their fireboxes with gunpowder and mangling the condenser tubes with bullets.
'Ready?' Colonel Swynyard shouted. He was already on horseback, and his gelding's eyes reflected the night's fires like some mythical beast. 'March!'
They went north, blindly following the brigade in front and leaving behind a writhing pit of red horror. Explosion after explosion ripped through the burning depot as flames climbed yet higher into the night. The North had labored mightily to amass the supplies necessary to subdue the South, and now all that labor was evaporating into flame, smoke, and ash.
Starbuck's men trudged wearily, burdened by their plunder and hardly refreshed by the few hours of sleep they had snatched at the day's end. Some of the men's heaviest loot was abandoned early, joining the other trophies thrown aside by tired soldiers. In the flickering, unnatural light Starbuck saw a discarded snare drum beside the road, then two swords with chased gilt handles, a pair of post office scales, and a fine saddle. There were piles of food, candlesticks, greatcoats—whatever treasures a man had fancied, taken, then abandoned as his muscles cramped again.
