acquaintance. Your boys up to hum, are they?'
'I reckon.'
'Mine are rogues, each and every one of them. Not a man of them's worth a wooden nickel, but Lord above, how I do love the wretches. Ain't that so, boys?' Colonel Hudson had spoken loud enough for his nearest men to hear, and those men grinned broadly at his words. 'And this here Major,' Hudson went on to introduce Starbuck to his men, 'is a poor lost Northerner fighting for us miserable rebels, but you all be nice to him, boys, because if his lads give way then we'll all be so many dead ducks waiting for John Pope to pluck us. And I don't have a fancy to be plucked by a cleric this day.'
Starbuck led Hudson past the spoil pit to the Legion and introduced him to Major Medlicott, explaining that Medlicott not only commanded the company immediately adjacent to the North Carolinians but was also responsible for the whole right wing of the Legion. 'Sure pleased to meet you, Major,' Hudson said, putting out a hand. 'My name's Elijah Hudson and I'm from Stanly County, the best county in all the Carolinas even though my dear wife does come from Catawba County, God bless her, and how are you?'
Medlicott seemed disconcerted by the tall man's friendliness but managed to make a civil response.
'We've got ourselves a killing patch,' Hudson said, gesturing across the rail cutting to where the ground ran bare to the closest stretch of woods. It was a killing patch because any Yankees attacking out of the woods would be forced to cross those fifty paces of open land under constant fire. 'I can't say it was ever my burning ambition to kill Yankees,' Hudson said, 'but if the dear good Lord above wants me to do it, then he sure does make it easy in a place like this. Mind you, if the Northern gentlemen do manage to get past the railbed, then we're all going to be in a heap of trouble. If that happens we might as well all pack it in and go back to our jobs. What is your job, Major?' he inquired of Starbuck.
'Soldiering, I guess. I was a student before the war.'
'I'm a miller,' Medlicott answered to a similar inquiry.
'And what better job could a man have,' Hudson asked, 'than to grind the Lord's corn into our daily bread? That sure is a privilege, Major, a genuine privilege, and I'm proud to know you for it.'
'And your profession, sir?' Starbuck asked the tall Hudson.
'Can't rightly say I've got any profession, Starbuck, other than a love of God and Stanly County. I guess you could say I do a little of everything and a fair heap of nothing, but if I was pushed to the scratch I'd have to confess to being a farmer. Just one of America's toil-laden farmers, but proud as heck of it.' Hudson smiled broadly, then offered his hand again to both men. 'I guess I should go and make sure my rogues aren't running away out of sheer boredom. I count it a real privilege to fight beside you gentlemen and I wish you much happiness of the day.' With a wave of his hand the lanky Hudson strode away.
'A nice fellow,' Starbuck said.
'Grasping folk, North Carolinians,' Medlicott said dourly. 'I never did trust a North Carolinian.'
'Well, he's trusting you,' Starbuck said tartly, 'because if we give way here then he'll be outflanked.' He stared at Medlicott's riflemen, who were making themselves comfortable in the shallow stretch of the railbed cutting, then turned to look at the remains of the construction crew's spoil pit, which was now an overgrown hollow stretching for thirty yards behind the makeshift entrenchment. The hollow's stony, overgrown bed could serve as a hidden path into the rear of the rebel defenses. 'I guess we ought to barricade the pit,' Starbuck said.
'I don't need you to teach me my business,' Medlicott answered.
Starbuck's temper whiplashed uncontrollably. 'Listen, you son of a damned bitch,' he said, 'I ain't losing this damned battle because you don't like me. If the Yankees use that pit to get behind my line I'm going to use your damned skull for regimental target practice. You understanding me?' Medlicott, unable to compete with the intensity of Starbuck's anger, backed away two paces. 'I know how to fight,' he said uneasily.
Starbuck resisted the temptation to remind Medlicott of his cowardice at Cedar Mountain. 'Then make sure you do fight,' he said instead, 'and to help you, put an abatis across the pit.' An abatis was a barrier of branches that would entangle an attacker and offer a breastwork to a defender. Starbuck saw the hurt in the miller's face and regretted the fierceness of his tone. 'I know you don't like me, Medlicott,' he said, trying to make amends, 'but our quarrel ain't with each other, it's with the Yankees.'
'And you're a Yankee,' the miller said sullenly.
Starbuck resisted the impulse to tongue-lash the wretched man a second time. 'Get your fellows to build the abatis'—he forced himself to speak calmly—'and I'll be back soon to look at it.'
'Don't trust me, is that it?'
'I hear you write a good letter,' Starbuck said, 'but I just don't know how good an abatis you can build.' With that parting shot he walked away, blowing the frustration from his lungs in a plume of cigar smoke. He wondered if he should have reversed the Legion's usual order of battle by putting Truslow's men on the right and Medlicott's on the left, but such an act would have been construed as a deep insult to the right-flank companies, and Starbuck wanted to demonstrate to the men of those companies, if not to their officers, how he trusted them. He walked on to the northern end of his line, where Truslow's company was entrenched in the deepest section of the railbed's cutting. On their left was one of the Brigade's small Florida battalions. Truslow had paced the open land in front of the cutting to make certain his men knew the exact range of the woods.
'It's seventy-five yards from here to the timberline,' Truslow told Starbuck, 'and even a blind son of a bitch can hit a Yankee at seventy-five yards. The bullet will hardly have started to drop.' He raised his voice so that the nearest Floridans could hear him. 'Aim straight at the bastards' hearts and at worse you'll puncture their bellies. This is infant-school killing, not the hard stuff.' The hard stuff was open-field fighting, where a bullet's long-range trajectory was so pronounced that a shot properly sighted at a man standing three hundred yards away would sail high over the cap of a soldier a hundred paces nearer. Starbuck had seen a full regimental volley fired at a line of skirmishers without a single bullet finding its mark.
There was a constant coming and going of staff officers probing the woods beyond the killing patch to watch for the Yankee advance. Colonel Swynyard made a similar reconnaissance and returned to give Starbuck what news he could. 'They ain't advancing yet,' he said.
'You think they'll come?'
'If they do what they're supposed to do, yes.' He confirmed that the previous evening's action on the turnpike had indeed been designed to draw the Yankees to the attack. 'I guess our job is to hold them here while Lee brings up the rest of the army.'
Swynyard's mention of Lee was the first mention Starbuck had heard of the army's commander since they had arrived in Manassas. 'Where is Lee?' he asked.
'Just the other side of Thoroughfare Gap,' Swynyard said.
'He's that close?' Starbuck was surprised.
'I guess that's where he always intended to be,' Swynyard said with undisguised admiration. 'He sent us on ahead to draw the Yankees away from the river, and now he's following on behind, which means that if we can just hold the Yankees all morning, then Lee should hog-tie the lot of them this afternoon. If the good Lord wills it, that is,' the Colonel added piously. The tic in his right cheek, which had slowly subsided after his abandonment of liquor, had mysteriously returned to full force. For a second Starbuck wondered if Swynyard had been at the bottle, then realized the tic must be a symptom of nervousness; this was the Colonel's first battle as a brigade commander, and he desperately wanted it to be a success. 'How are your boys?' Swynyard asked.
'Good enough,' Starbuck said, wondering what symptoms of nervousness he was displaying. Shortness of temper, maybe?
Swynyard turned and pointed to the hill behind the Legion's line. 'I've got Haxall's Arkansas boys up there. If things get hard I'll send them down to help, but once they've gone we don't have any reserves.'
'Artillery?' Starbuck asked.
'None that I've seen,' Swynyard said. 'None at all, I guess, but if Lee gets here fast then maybe we won't need none.'
The Colonel climbed back to his command post. The sun rose higher, promising to bring another stifling day. Off to the south, muffled by distance, rifle shots sounded, but it was hard to tell whether they were being fired in anger or were merely the sound of men trying to provoke distant pickets. Some of Starbuck's men slept as they waited. A few pinned paper labels to their jackets to identify their bodies in case they died, others wrote letters or read or played cards. In the spoil pit the abatis was now breast high. 'Tall enough for you?' Medlicott asked Starbuck.
'Is it tall enough for you?' Starbuck retorted. 'It's your life it might save, not mine.'
