TWELVE MEN TO TAKE TAYLORVILLE

by Gardner F. Fox
Every man in his squad hated him. And the closer they rode to combat,
the easier it would be for them to put a bullet in his back.

Prologue
Often called the forgotten man of the Civil War, Major General James H. Wilson General Jamey to his
men was the first officer in history to use the cavalry arm as mobile infantry and artillery. He operated his cavalry
in Alabama much in the same manner as an officer named Patton used tanks in Germany during World War Two,
eighty years later.
His troopers held Winchester for Sheridan, and smashed Hood, Steward, Lee and Cheatham before Nashville.
He set out from Tennessee on a cavalry raid that was the next thing to an invasion, crushing Forrest. He moved on
with the speed of a running horse to Selma and Montgomery, dismounting his men to fight them as infantry,
mounting them to drive into Georgia to capture Columbus, West Point and Macon. He was a whirlwind of
destruction.
Colonel Hubert Cutler fought with Wilson. In 1865, Wilson gave him a nasty job...

Chapter One
The man in the blue uniform angled his horse between the black gum trees, wondering whether they hid the
gray uniforms he had been fighting until each new battle became a sickness in his middle. Near a clump of baneberry,
he reined in and let the bay mare blow and jingle its ring-bits.
It was too quiet.
Johnny Reb was somewhere ahead, waiting for him to bring his command within range of his Enfield
carbines. He relaxed a little in his McClellan saddle, and waited for the others to come up.
Twelve men against one thousand, or maybe even ten thousand, in the event that Forrest was ignoring
Wilson and his main body of troops to cut back and defend Taylorville. A damn good cavalry man, Forrest. Almost
the equal of Jackson and Stuart both dead, before Chancellorsville and Yellow Tavern and better than anybody
who wore the blue except Sheridan and Wilson. Bedford Forrest never did the expected. Hubert Cutler, Colonel, U.S.
Second Cavalry, had learned that often enough in the past.
The men came after a while, with Lieutenant Fred Harmeson and Sergeant Al Raymonds pointing them. Ten
boys they were, beardless and raw, with only guts and good health to recommend them to his use. Fresh from city
streets and farm plows, he thought bitterly, remembering the second Bull Run and Opequon Creek. His life had
become a procession of slaughters like that.
The lieutenant sidled his horse against his leg.
"I've quieted them, sir. There'll be no more talk."
Cutler touched the troopers with flat gray eyes. "Misters, I'm telling you, and it's for your own good. Johnny
Reb's got the ears of a fox. You make a sound, you've had it. From now on I want no talk. You want something, touch
the man ahead."
Their eyes looked at him hard, with the hatred plain for him to see. Tight lips showed their defiance. He had
seen troops look this way at officers before as they readied a charge. It was easy to kill the man ahead of you during a
cavalry run.
A little section of his back began to itch madly. Cutler fought down the desire to scratch. His hand went
inside his service jacket, bringing out a thin sheet of paper. He said to Harmeson, "We hit Staley first. Taylorville is
less than fifteen miles south. I want to be in Taylorville tomorrow, and riding back by tomorrow sundown. The
guncotton?"
"The sergeant and two men are packing it, sir."

"Keep your eyes on it. We lose that, we might as well go home."

He spread the thin map, seeing the twin lines of track and remembering. Seven years before, he'd come down
to Taylorville on that same Wills Valley Railroad he was planning to blow to kingdom come, to meet Melissa Neville
and be introduced to her family. Seven years would make it the summer of '58, right after he'd come out of the Point,
before joining the Second Cavalry against the Comanches in Texas.
Kisses in a rose arbor and the graceful steps of the cotillion, lazy afternoons riding across the meadows of
Honeysuckle House, giving the diamond ring to blonde Melissa and announcing their engagement. He had been
young then, believing in undying love and duty and the loyalty of women. The only thing left to him now was the
duty.
His forefinger traced the tiny, interlocked arcs that were the Piney Woods. "We move out of here along that
cow path, mister. I'm hoping Forrest won't be expecting us to come that way."
There was a road a little west of the cow path, the lieutenant could see; his glance looked from the paper to
his colonel. A worn, tired man, he thought. Cutler had been fighting too long: with old General Cooke during the
Peninsula Campaign against Jeb Stuart, with Stoneham in northern Virginia, at Brandy Station under Pleasonton. No
wonder the colonel moaned in his sleep at times.
"And if he does expect us on the cow path, sir?"
Cutler smiled tightly. "Then he gets some good mounts, mister. Horses General Jamey had the devil's own
time getting for us." The bay mare he rode had been a circus horse. Wilson took anything with four legs and a mane
during those hectic weeks of late autumn.
The lieutenant smiled and said, "Yes, sir."
Cutler pulled his Kossuth hat lower over his eyes against the afternoon sun. "Let's go, mister. And keep them
quiet." His toes moved the mare into a walk.
Cutler saw the six gray uniforms on the platform of Staley freight station. Six of them, lounging on cracker
barrels and nail kegs, in plain sight. They were raw youths, too, like the men at his back, except for the one bearded
man. He should have known better.
His saber flashed, grating a little coming out of the scabbard. His spine was cold, even under the April
sunlight. Would it come now, the bullet in his back? The hate for discipline, the defiance of military law that saw him
only as a martinet giving orders merely to see himself obeyed. Were these enough to make a murderer out of one of
the boys in back of him?
The bay mare leaped to his kick and the run was under way, his saber pointing the path of their gallop. They
came straight down on the platform, and their hoof-beats made thunder. The six men in gray came to their feet,
staring a moment in sheer disbelief, before they scattered for shelter behind the barrels. The twelve Spencer repeating
carbines talked as one, and three of the Johnny Rebs fell.
"Surrender," Cutler heard himself shout hoarsely.
"Go to hell!" a voice yelled from behind a nail keg.
He was out of the saddle and on the platform, hearing the boards drum under his boots, saber slicing into an
arm. The bearded man groaned. He tried to fight, but Cutler knocked the rifle from his hands. The bearded man stood
panting, black eyes bright. He hates me, thought Cutler dully, somehow not caring. Too many men had hated him in
the past four years for one more to matter.
A door slammed open behind him.
Cutler whirled, his saber instinctively thrusting. An inch away from flowered dimity, it came to a halt. A girl
stood rigid in the station doorway, staring.
"Hubert Cutler," she whispered. "Lieutenant Hub Cutler!"
For one crazy instant, he thought it might be Melissa Neville. But this girl was too dark for Melissa, and she
had to look up at him. Melissa didn't. He was aware of a full, soft mouth, dark brown eyes and reddish hair around her
shoulders. A ripe body was pressing its outline into the worn dimity.
He took off his hat even as a man yelled in agony, off by the loading platform. There were shots, and the
sound of a falling body.
"Yankee murderers," the girl said quietly.
Cutler flushed. "I expected to be dead myself a long time before I got this far south. Now I'm here, somebody
else is dead."
"You make it sound simple, like adding two and two."
His blue shoulders, showing the eagle of his rank, moved slightly. "War is only a matter of arithmetic. An
army is a sum trying to divide or subtract from the other sum of its opponents."
Lieutenant Harmeson was at his elbow, waiting. Cutler turned. "Five enemy dead, sir. One man wounded.
Two of our men gone, one wounded. I've broken out the guncotton."

"See to it, mister." He turned to the girl. "You'd better come away, ma'am. They'll be blowing up track for
awhile."
He offered his arm but she looked at the blue color and went past him. Cutler watched the sway of her hips
and wondered where he'd seen her before, and how she came to know him.
He detailed the sergeant to hold her, then went with Harmeson and the men along the track, watching the
guncotton blocks being thrust carefully between rails and ties at regular 50-foot intervals for a quarter of a mile.
He came back to the girl while Harmeson worked the detonator. The muffled roar of the explosions boomed
steadily to his ears. As he approached, he studied her, seeing her seated on a rock beside the Taylorville road,
slippered feet close together, bare legs a little dirty from grime, her dress ripped at the shoulder and the wear showing
through the faded colors.
A haunting note of familiarity made him pause and stare. He tried to recall a girl sitting lonesome and afraid,
with her knees tight against their fright, brown eyes full of desperate hunger for affection. He remembered such a girl,
but from where?
She looked up. The bitterness and contempt were gone out of her brown eyes. All they held now was despair.
"Do you have any folks?" he asked.
She glanced down at the split toes of her slipper, and hid it behind a curving leg. He said, "I'll do everything I
can to see you delivered safely to friends or family. All I ask is information."
More guncotton went off somewhere behind him, making her shudder. Her head lifted and he could see tears
in her eyes. He was struck by the beauty of her face. He thought, If I'd known a girl like this, I would never have
forgotten her. The memory of Melissa Neville made a sudden wrench in his heart.

Chapter Two
He turned away abruptly and went to order a burial detail. For a moment he looked at the moving shovels.

More dead for the ground to eat, and his face hardened. Automatically his mind crossed the names of Miller and

Farqueson off his list of actives.

Cutler sat on a nail keg and studied his map again. Taylorville lay to the southwest, and Taylorville was his
objective. "Find and destroy the arms factory and powder depot there," General Jamey had ordered. Ten little words,
and eleven men to do the job. His eyes trailed a dotted section of map representing the pine barrens some miles east
of Honeysuckle House. Not the most direct route, but the safest. It was part of the Cumberland Plateau in this sector
of Alabama and would give his detail good shelter.
Sergeant Raymond made a shadow in front of him. saluting, "Burial detail completed, sir. Abbott's arm is
bandaged. The Johnny Reb, sir: we bandaged his arm too, but he's lost a lot of blood."
Cutler sighed. "The humane thing to do is bring him along to a doctor. I can't do that. We'll leave him
behind."
"Yes, sir," said Raymond woodenly.
Cutler squinted up at him. "You're a new man, aren't you, mister? Came in around '64? I thought so. Let me
remind you then: your first duty is to your men. Keep them alive, if you can."
The sergeant saluted and moved away. Cutler watched him go, knowing the futility of trying to explain.
When the sergeant saw as many burying details as he had, maybe he'd think different.
He stood, shaking the despondency from him.
The detail made no sound, mounted and watching, as he brought Miller's horse to the girl. His hand held her
stirrup strap as her slippered foot slid onto the foot-rest. A forgotten part of him noted idly that her ankle was shapely
as she went up to the kak.
A man whispered. "He leaves Johnny Reb, but he brings the girl."
Cutler went stiff for a moment, but this was no time for reprimands.
He would take the girl and leave the soldier because she was able-bodied, and could spread word of his
presence here in Staley faster than a wounded man. Besides, his ears had heard the click of a lock a moment before
the station door opened. That meant the girl had locked herself in the station for safety. Against the six gray coats
lounging outside?
The saddle cradled him, and he moved his arm. With the girl at his off stirrup, he took the men away at a trot.
They made good time through the low-lying daphnes and newly-budding winter sweet at the edge of the
road, with only the faint creak of saddle leather, jingling of bridle-bits, and hoof-beats on the dusty road betraying
their passage. By dusk they would be beyond Honeysuckle House, at the first fringe of the barrens. Night camp, early
rise, hit Taylorville before noon. There was just enough guncotton left to handle the arms factory. Fire would do for

the powder depot.

Where the trees fell away before the open fields. Cutler called halt, riding on alone.
Half a mile, then a mile, with only the low, rolling meadows showing. Thin stone fences in the distance, and a
far house. No gray uniforms, no sunlight glinting off Enfields.
Swing the bay mare around and come back for the detail, scout duty done. Do they think about what you're
doing, sitting slack-rumped back there with their draft horses and circus mounts idly tail-switching? To the devil with
what they think! You don't want them to end up like the rest, in some six-foot cut of ground, he told himself.
And maybe that was wrong, too. Maybe an officer leading troops had to keep his mind free of everything
except his objective. To hell with the men, take what you're after. Hubert Cutler had been like that once. Now he
wondered about a bullet in his back.
After a while you got to make decisions automatically. And then the sight of bodies shattered by Confederate
cannon-balls or lying still with the small round red holes in heads gets to you. You stop to think before you make your
snap commands, and the first worry is there to plague you.
Worry about rousing their hate enough for one of them to lift his carbine and put your blue service jacket in
his sights some day. Worry about getting through to Taylorville, and then worry about getting all of them out again in
one piece.
The girl was off by herself, watching him come back through the sunlight, silent and lonely, twenty feet away
from the men. She straightened a little in the saddle, as if remembering she was a woman. The girl would be another
worry, he told himself wryly, but he could not leave her behind for another band of deserting gray-coats to stumble
on.
He walked the mare past the girl, knowing she was looking at him shyly. Those brown eyes gazed almost
worshipfully on him: where had he seen them before? This was no time to solve old riddles, though.
"We'll keep to the meadow road," he told Harmeson. "No talk. Two columns, five men each. At the gallop."
The girl was a good horsewoman. She came to his elbow and kept pace with him. silent, staring straight
ahead. Twice he turned to her profile, the piquant, up-tilted nose, the full red mouth.
After awhile she looked at him curiously. "Don't you want to stop and see Honeysuckle House? It might bring
back memories."
"Some memories are no good, ma'am," he said. "And what would you know about Honeysuckle House?"
She smiled and looked away. "You wouldn't remember me," she said queerly. "All you ever saw was Melissa.
Kissing her under the red rose arbor, dancing the quadrille, riding to hounds. It was a gay life, wasn't it, Colonel? A
kind of life that is dying along with the men who lived it."
There was no reply to make to that, and so he rode with something stirring inside him, remembering all those
dead and put-away things. The sound of music on the night wind where the band played for the guests in flounced
crinoline and pearl gray frock coats; Melissa laughing gaily, tugging him by the hand into the garden. A little freckled
girl named Barbara Neville, somewhere underfoot all the time.
Cutler gasped, the sound breaking into his reverie.
"Barbara Neville! But it can't be!"
Her voice was defiant. "Barbara, the orphan girl, Colonel! But I was only thirteen, tall and gawky and
freckled, and Melissa was so lovely. I had nobody to play with, nobody to talk to, nobody to share secrets with." She
glanced sideways. "Until a Yankee lieutenant came down to get engaged to Melissa, and went out of his way to be
nice to me."
"I'd forgotten," he said almost to himself, but she heard him.
"There was no reason to remember me. I was thin as a slat, and grimy most of the time from riding all day
long. Once when Melissa was in Selma to shop you took me on a picnic."
His hand cut her off, reaching for her reins, pulling them back. There was tenseness in his voice. "Over there,
by the deserted farmhouse that touch of sunlight, almost red. Now it goes, now it comes. You see it?"
The rifles of marching men made brightness like that, where the sun warmed brass trigger guards and butt
plates. Cutler had seen those dancing yellow motes often enough to know them. Two miles away they were,
marching this way. cutting them off from Taylorville.
His blue arm went up. The detail came after him, reins shaking free, hoof-beats pounding, galloping across
the meadows for the distant woods. The pine barrens would be beyond them, up over a hump of broken rock that
someone a long time ago named the Fallen Angel.
It was easier to remember, now that Barbara had put spurs to his memory. He'd come this way in those
forgotten years, with Melissa, time and again. And with Barbara, on the day of the picnic.
"The pass," he called to her.
She caught his meaning, flashing him a strange glance. "I'm a rebel girl, Yankee. You want I should show you

how to get away?"

He moved to leave her behind, but with some strange magic she got more speed out of the sorrel, refusing
him the lead.
They thundered together out of the meadow-land into the low-hanging branches of the cedars and chestnuts.
Her laughter rang free, challenging. He found himself surprised by it, responding with a gruff laugh of his own. For a
moment the war fell away from him, and he felt youthful.
"I'll pay a debt, Yankee!" she called to him. "Your life for the few hours of happiness you gave me."

Chapter Three
She surged ahead on the sorrel and he came after, riding hard, turning a moment to make sure the others
were behind him. The woods hid them here, but the graycoats would have seen them. By now they'd be pounding dirt
to get to them.
The girl took them through the stands of dogwood and clumps of flowering hepatica, past thickets of trillium
whitely blooming in this early springtime. There was a sultriness on the woods, a faint scent of growing things. It put
a mellowness in Cutler, made him look at the slim waist of the crouching Barbara, noticing the fullness of
womanhood.
Where the woods broke against the first upslope of crumbled hard rock ridges, Barbara toed her horse into a
fast scramble. She found the little trail local legend said if was part of the old Warrior's Trace that ran from
Cherokee country into northern Pennsylvania one hundred years ago - and mounted it steadily. Cutler came at her
heels, his men strung out in his dust.
At the top of the hill, where the high stone walls formed a narrow pass, Cutler reined the mare aside. As the
sergeant took the detail past at the trot, Cutler brought out his Spencer repeater.
"Go on with the girl," he told Harmeson. "She'll show you the pine barrens. Camp tonight. Wait for me. If I'm
not with you by dawn, take over. Try for Taylorville." He drew breath into his lungs, let it out slowly. "Let the girl go,
come morning. That way, there won't be any leak of information when you try for the factory and powder depot."
Harmeson squinted hard at him. "You know her, colonel. You say so, we'll let her go." Cutler broke off to
scan the overhanging ridges, with their accumulated boulders that scowled down on the pass.
"This pass is the only way of getting to the pine barrens without backtracking twenty miles." Cutler told him.
"One man can hold a regiment off, here. It'll give the men a chance to get away."
"You go, sir. You can spare me."
"I wear the eagle, mister. You do as you're told." He wanted to say thanks, but those boys will need all the
time I can shoot out of Johnny Reb to reach those barrens, and it isn't an easy job to die alone. Not that he didn't trust
Fred Harmeson to do it. He trusted himself more.
Tonight he himself would be on the roll-call of the dead, face down on a windswept ridge trail. He wondered
if the graycoats would bury him here, within five miles of where he'd kissed Melissa Neville.
His boots made no sound on the limestone ground as he came out of the kak. "Take the mare, sergeant. A
good horse is almost as valuable as a good man, these days."
Gloom crusted the sergeant's face. Argument was in him, but Cutler turned away, moving into the pass,
looking at this rock and that, seeking a barricade. When he heard the crunch of hooves. Cutler let his eye follow
Harmeson and the bay mare. At least I won't go out with a bullet in my back, he thought. It was bitter consolation.
Cutler moved to a large boulder that crowded the high south bank. Dropping to his knees, he slid forward
until the boulder was at his left elbow, the limestone cliff at his right. He pushed the Spencer into the narrow slot, and
unbuckled his cartridge box.
The Johnny Rebs would have to kill him to get at his men. He would make that death as expensive as he
could.
They came out of the woods in a gray file, their Enfields ready: twenty of them at first, and then another
twenty, and after them even more until the gray uniforms were all across the grassy slope, advancing. Cutler let them
come, squirming his hips into the shale for better comfort.
His carbine came up into the fading sunlight, finding a target.
His finger squeezed the trigger.
Three times he fired, levering .56-56s into the barrel with a snapping motion of his wrist. Three men were
sprawled in the grass, and the others were scattering for shelter in the dwarf shrubs and tree stumps. He threw
another shot at them and saw splinters fly from a fallen log.
The bullets came then, hitting the rocks on either side of him, howling off into the air or showering him with

gravel. Cutler ducked, waiting. Pebbles and rock slivers peppered the boulder.
His Spencer nosed forward again.
There, over by that stump just a touch of color showing to the off side of an oak. The buttplate jerked and
a man came rolling out from behind the tree, convulsing. As if that might be a signal, the others came to their feet as
one man running, moving fast. Whoever was down there officering them must have guessed that only one man was
in the back of the Union carbine.
Strange how calm he was. knowing he would die in a little while. Maybe something inside him wanted to die,
something that was tired of all this killing. It would be a way out. And yet he shot as he remembered shooting only
once before in his life, when there were redskins instead of graycoats in his sight and their howling was like that of
banshees wailing in Ireland.
They were closer, moving up the slope. Fine gray targets for his shells. He reloaded in frantic haste, thrusting
the gun into the slot again. No time to think of anything but killing. Look at them go down. One. A second, clutching
at his chest. A third to the right, bright red under his chin. Dirty work. Numbing work. Some of them were shooting
back. Soon enough now a bullet would...
Something thumped at his left, on the shale.
Cutler turned to stare. Why, this was Barbara Neville at his elbow, a Union carbine at her jaw, firing calmly,
quickly.
"Your sergeant is up above you in the rimrock, Colonel. Planting guncotton. He's almost ready to let go."
Cutler snapped another shot. "Get back. I'll cover you."
"In a minute."
She triggered the Spencer and Cutler saw one man go down, then another. "I learned to shoot for lack of
something better to do in the old days," the girl said bitterly.
Barbara was turning, bent over, running back the way she had come. Cutler threw two more shots down the
slope then whirled to follow her.
The explosive bamm of the guncotton was deafening. Rocks and boulders lifted in a torrent of sound. They
came thudding and clattering down the steep cliffs, pounding into the gap one after the other, clogging it, making dost
rise like steam.
Cutler got to his feet, running. His troopers were below him, mounted ready to move out. Harmeson was
standing, helping Barbara up onto her sleek bay.
Oh, God!

Chapter Four
He was down, with fire in his left thigh. It wasn't any use. The Johnny Rebs had come pouring through the
pass with the ease of devils jumping in hellfire. They would take him and his command prisoner, or worse, shoot
them down. His hand went to his holstered Army Colt as he slewed around.
There were no rebels. Only mini rocks and powdery dust lifting upward into the sky where the pass was
blocked with rubble.
A rock splinter lay at his thigh, with blood on it. Cutler felt weakness wash his body in relief. One of the rocks
had come apart with his name written all over it. That was all. A mean gash, bleeding freely, but not a bullet wound.
He tried to make it to his feet, but his leg buckled and fire came lancing up into his hip. Harmeson was
running for him. Cutler made it to his feet and went hobbling to meet him.
"Good work, good thinking, mister!" he said hoarsely.
"Let me give you a hand, sir."
"A tourniquet," Cutler said. "Just get me a belt."
He buckled it himself around his upper thigh above the left femoral artery, using his shot pouch for a pad. His
left arm was thrown around Harmeson. Somehow the girl was at his right elbow, her face strangely white and tense.
"Let me put a bandage on it," she cried. "It's a bad cut."
"Later." he said between his teeth. "Give my troop an hour beyond the pass, and I'll stop for a bandage. The
tourniquet will hold that long."
"Not riding!"
He shrugged. It was his leg, his risk. And yet there was a kind of tenderness in him for the girl, even for
Harmeson. They had to brace him so that he could mount, and the tourniquet slipped a little. He fastened it again,
then waved an arm.
"Now let's get out of here'" Cutler made himself set the pace.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the girl riding easily, looking his way every once in a while.
"Honeysuckle House is only two hours from here," she said.
"The first place they'll look for us!"
"They couldn't find one man. Send the others on to the barrens. You need clean bandages and rest."
"I have no time for rest!" He said. "Can you understand that?"
Taylorville was a big arms depot in Alabama. The Wills Valley road, like the Blue Mountain Railroad out of
Selma, took needed gunpowder and the southern versions of the English Enfield rifle to Lee in Virginia. Well, part of
the railroad was knocked out now. If he could get to Taylorville, might be this damn war would be ended that much
sooner. A lot of men alive today would stay alive for another twenty, thirty years, too.
Grant was smoking his cigars and chasing around after Robert E. Lee in Virginia. Sherman was taking sixty
thousand men through Georgia. Wilson was in Alabama further west of his own position, moving on Selma and
Montgomery. They were drawing the noose tighter and tighter around the throat of the Confederacy. Taylorville was
a small, but important part of that overall strategy.
After a moment he said. "I'm sorry for the way I spoke. I'm tense. It just came out."
"The strange part of it is," she said, "I think I understand the reason for tenseness better than you do yourself.
You're lonely. I've been lonely too, in the old days."
Cutler felt surprise at this insight. He tried to study her without being too bold about it, but her brown eyes
always caught him. After a while, she laughed a little.
"If you come to Honeysuckle House I'll put on a taffeta gown and crinolines and let you see me as I would
have been if thethis war hadn't come along to smash everything."
"The graycoats find us there, it will be all over."
"Assuming there's another band of them this side of Gunter's Landing, yes," she said gently. "Those others
back at the pass, they won't be at Honeysuckle House until tomorrow, mid-morning, even if they march directly there
around the Fallen Angel ridges."
It would be a calculated risk. The girl was right, of course. He needed a bandage and a bottle of whiskey
down his throat. Otherwise he'd be no good to anyone. He let himself weigh imponderables a moment.
"It will bring back memories," he said to himself, but the girl heard him.
"Are you afraid of them?" she asked.
His cheeks went red. "No, of course not." Then, stiffly, "We will deploy on your home, with your permission."
They rode on in silence.
The mansion was shabbier than he remembered. The eight tall white pillars reaching to the triangular
pediment, the projecting windows peering from the gray slate roof, were no different than before, but there was an
unkempt look about the place. It needed fresh paint; the hollyhocks and hedges required tending. Weeds were
overgrown where the gardens once blazed with color.
They went up the graveled drive at a trot, with leather creaking. A little old man in shirtsleeves came out of
the house and stood staring at them, the ruffled shirt-front and shoestring tie like mementos of a remembered past.
The breeze stirred his white hair. He held a flintlock pistol in his hand.
"Uncle Josh," said Barbara. "You'll remember him?"
There was defiance in the old man, even if he was staggering drunk. At sight of the girl among the blue coats,
sick puzzlement lifted into his eyes.
Barbara slipped from the saddle and ran to him catching him by the wrists.
"It's Hubert Cutler, Uncle. You know him, don't you?"
"Hubert Cutler?"
Barbara sighed. "The soldier Melissa was going to marry. He was here seven years ago, for a visit."
As if remembering his manners, the old man slid the flintlock into his belt. He advanced with outstretched
hand. Harmeson was at his stirrup to help him down and Cutler went limping to meet him. Cutler noted the
shrewdness in the pale blue eyes. Is he as drunk as he seems, with the whiskey smell all over him? It could be a post.
He made a mental note to tell his two officers not to let the old man leave the plantation.
"A long time, sir," he was agreeing with Joshua Calhoun, with the broad shoulders of Fred Harmeson under
his left arm.
"You feel that way too, Colonel? I'm glad. It makes me understand that everything is not yet lost." The
withered old hand pointed to the cracked stucco, the peeling paint. "Perhaps there will come a day when all this will
be repaired, a day when men in frock coats and women in crinolines will dance once more in the ballroom."
A big Irish setter came running, barking, leaping friskily about the old man.
"My companion, Colonel. A good and faithful friend. Say good afternoon to the Colonel, Mickey. Good dog!
Now if you will excuse me, sir, I'll go and tie him up."

"He is no bother to me," Cutler said quickly. "I like dogs. Back home, I have a beagle hound. Let him run
free."
"No," said Joshua Calhoun. "I think not. It will be better for him to be tied."
He went off down the hall past the gilded scrolltop mirror with its curving candle-sconces, the mahogany
tambour desk below it, the dog beside him. As the lieutenant, with Barbara to show the way, began to aid him toward
the first floor bedroom between the sitting room and left wing parlor. Cutler wondered if the old man ever felt he had
outlived his times.
Then he was entering the room that had once belonged to Melissa's father, with its big poster bed and
flowered valances, the tall high windows on either side of the Empire secretary and matching chair. The white
mantlepiece was as it had always been, the twin bowls of bellflower-pattern glassware resting across its top. It was a
whisper from those other years.
As Barbara went to fetch hot water and a bottle of rye, Cutler stripped down, thinking that the whisper was a
dying one. Soon a flood of fresh young voices would be heard in the land when the war was over. Voices like those of
the ten men outside, of the lieutenant walking his boots to the robe closet, even of Barbara Neville waiting outside in
the hall. My own voice, too, he added mentally, if I live. Despite the tiredness in him and the pain, he was dimly
aware that he was as young as his two officers.
As he lay there, face down and helpless, he remembered enough of his' duty to turn to his lieutenant. "While
I'm asleep, mister, you'll find guncotton in the empty stable beyond the icehouse. They use it here to clear rocks from
tillable land."
"Yes, sir. I'll requisition it, sir."
"And, mister put it on the record. This is one detail they won't be able to accuse us of stealing."
The bandage built a fire on the back of his leg as the lieutenant pressed the pad down over the flesh. Cool
linen came next, drawn tight. Lying there, he let the tiredness move through him, feeling his eyes close and the
darkness swirl up into his mind.
He woke to the faint guttering of candles in the room. The mansion was silent all around him. Tentatively he
moved his leg, and was pleased by the lack of pain: "That whiskey must burn it right out of a man," he chuckled.

Chapter Five
There was pain as he walked, and stiffness. It faded a little as he determined to dress and go out to his men.
The ornate bronze and mahogany Versailles clock told him it was past ten. They would be bedded down. He would
just look and come back.
It hurt to pull on his pale blue, yellow-slashed cavalry breeches and the black boots. He stood to slide the
suspenders over his shoulders, to don blue jacket and Kossuth hat. He buckled his service belt and holster on, but
ignored the saber. The bedroom door opened onto a hall. He walked with a faint limp, but secure in the knowledge
that his leg would hold tomorrow when they went into Taylorville.
He heard their singing long before he saw his men. Drunken singing it was, with the notes held overlong,
followed by ridiculous laughter. They've rifled the wine cellar, he thought bitterly, and his gashed thigh began to burn
again. He limped in among them where they made their camp on the edge of the meadow. There was a fire blazing,
and half a dozen bottles of glittering red reflections from its flames.
"Lieutenant! Douse that fire! Sergeant, smash those bottles!" He snapped his words hard and crisp against the
fury roiling inside him. "You, misters! Hit those blankets!"
He counted heads. "Mister Harmeson!"
The lieutenant stood before him, pallid under his blue forage cap. "Who stands sentry duty?"
Harmeson blinked. Cutler read dismay in the bright eyes that looked straight into his own. One of the men
Boyle, from some little town on Long Island stepped forward and saluted smartly.
"I stand sentry', sir. I came back when I heard the singing."
"Get back to it. Boyle. On the double!"
There was surprise in the young Irishman's eyes. Cutler thought savagely, he thinks I don't know them at all!
I do, and it's giving him something to mull over in that lump he calls a head! He turned from Harmeson to the moving
forms in the vague darkness.
"We're away at dawn. Any man too tired or too hung over to do his duty, I pistol down myself!" He fought to
keep the anger off his tongue. "We have a job to do. misters! I intend to see it done. With you, I trust. Without you, if
it's to be that way."
His boot heel whirled him, sent him limping across the little path away from the wellhouse toward the manse.

There was a fever racking him, making him tremble. The young fools would not look beyond the ends of their noses.
They would not see the fact that they, and countless others like them on details similar to this, held it in their hands to
make the days shorter for themselves.
"Ah, it sickens a man," he whispered into the night, and came to a stop by an iron grille fence.
For a moment he did not recognize the fact that what he looked at was a small graveyard with white stones.
His hands clasped hard on the iron railing. He remembered hastily dug graves in Texas, and prayers said hurriedly
before a scouting party of Cheyenne would find them. And pelting rainstorms on half a dozen battlefields, with men
being buried in their blankets and taps stirring eardrums from the bugle.
A walking horse was moving along the gravel path. He looked around and saw the silhouette.
Cutler put his gun on the towering shape as it neared him. "Stand where you are, or I shoot!" he called.
"You're out of bed!"
Then he recognized Barbara swinging down out of the saddle of a big gray stallion, leading it forward by the
rein. She came to look up into his face with troubled eyes. "Are you angry with me, Hubert? I suppose I shouldn't
have gone off like this on a night ride, but I wanted so much to be alone, to think."
Cutler put his hand on the big horse, feeling the wetness of its powerful neck. "He's been run hard," he said
conversationally. Hard enough to get her to Taylorville and back? he wondered silently.
"I like to run fast at night. Stormcloud knows every inch of the way up to that old ridge picnic spot of ours,
don't you, darling?" The big gray nuzzled her. She smiled at Cutler. "I wanted to get away by myself. I killed men
today, for the first time in my life. I needed to justify my action in my own mind."
"And did you succeed?"
For answer, Barbara touched his wrist gently. "Come with me, please. Into the graveyard." She brought him
through the iron gate and they stood together before a simple white stone with the name Melissa Neville Herndon.

Born July 3, 1839 Died September 15, 1863.

"Melissa," he said softly.

"Her husbandshe married Travers Herndon a year after the trouble at Fort Sumter. He was killed at
Gettysburg. Melissa lived for two months afterward. I often wondered whether it was the cold she caught or the fact
that her heart was broken that killed her. Maybe it's the same thing. Maybe she wanted to catch cold."
"You were thinking about Melissa tonight on the ridge?"
"Yes, I was thinking how the war cost her two lovers. You, because you put your duty to your country first,
and Trav Herndon because of a Union bullet at Gettysburg." She glanced at him shyly. "The sooner the war is over,
the more girls will keep their men alive. By blowing up the factory at Taylorville, you'll hurry that end."
She was a lovely thing. Cutler thought. The ride had tossed her hair until it lay in a rich reddish drape over
her shoulders. She was fragrant and young and all woman in the tight bodice and riding skirt.
"Even my troopers don't understand that," he mused.
"Pooh! They're only boys, all of them!"
He smiled a little. "They wouldn't like that, and yet it's true enough." He hesitated, then said. "You think your
way into the heart of a problem, Barbara."
"I've been all thoughts and no talk for such a long time, it's given me practice."
She was wistful in the spring night, and it seemed to Cutler that her mouth was faintly swollen. Abruptly he
turned to the grave, fumbling in his belt pouch. He brought out a diamond solitaire. He looked at it a moment, and he
thought, the girl the ring was meant for lies here, and a dead part of your own life is buried with her.
He knelt and pushed the ring under the sod, as deep as he could with a finger. His palm patted the grass back
in place.
Barbara was watching. There were tears clinging gently to her lashes. He said to her as he rose, "May I see
you back inside?"
She half-ran to the gate, reaching down for the reins of the big stallion. Cutler limped after her as she moved
toward the big white stables. His mind was a mixture of emotions, his heart slamming under his jacket.
This is the result of the spring air, he told himself, this irrational hunger to put my arms around this girl. Yes,
and to kiss that pouting mouth until it begs me to stop so she can breathe! He went into the stable after her, watching
as she touched a match to the oil lantern hanging on a chain from an overhead beam. He came to help her loosen the
cinch and took off the saddle himself.
Cutler took a currying brush and joined her as she rubbed the gray down with long, sliding strokes. He could
feel the tenseness between them slowly building. She knows I want to kiss her, and she's afraid of me. Maybe I can't
blame her for that, either. He worked on, doggedly, until she herself straightened up, reaching for the currying brush
that he held in his hand.
He caught her arm.

"There's more to being a young girl than thought and talk."

"Please," she whispered.
"How many young men have come calling for you, Barbara?"
"None. They all went away to fight."
His lips were in her scented hair now. "I'm glad. Glad they went away. Is that strange? Selfish? I don't care. I
want to be selfish where you're concerned."
He swung her around with his hands on her shoulders. A finger tilted up her chin. He found her eyes dark and
fathomless, without emotion of any kind. Like that he kissed her.
When he drew away, she whispered through pallid lips, "Are you through, colonel?" She would not let herself
look at him, but stood with her eyes staring straight ahead, arms rigid at her side, the brushes in her hands falling
slowly into the straw on the stable floor.
"We ride at dawn." he said. "You'll ride with us. And your uncle. I insist on his coming, Barbara."
"I shall tell him. Is that all, colonel?"
"One more thing. I've buried my past tonight. I'd like very much for you to give some thought to my future."
Her glance stabbed at him briefly. Then she was whirling, running, leaving him alone under the lantern,
feeling silly and pleased and then exultant. Only once before had he seen that look in anyone's eyes, and that had
been when a starving man had staggered into Fort Belknap and was led to a thick steak.
Cutler almost whistled as he blew out the lamp. He checked himself in time. It would not do for his men to
hear their commanding officer shrilling his way through The Girl I Left Behind Me.
The dawn was cold and damp as Hubert Cutler limped to his mare. The leg was worse. It had hurt to get his
yellow-slashed pale blue breeches on. and after them the boots. His forehead had been beaded with sweat by the time
he was lifting the big Chicopee saber. The hard stares of his men, remembering his cold fury of last evening, did little
to wipe it away. The lieutenant was standing by his horse.
Barbara Neville sat the gray stallion, looking tiny and lovely in a beige riding habit. She looks like she's riding
to another picnic, he thought wryly, but felt his heart moving more rapidly at the sight of her. At her elbow was Uncle
Joshua, huddled in a striped hunting coat and trousers, with a melon hat on his head. He held the dog, Mickey, in his
arms.
"Get rid of that dog. mister," Cutler said to him.
The old man shook his head. "If he stays, I stay, colonel. If you have to shoot me. you may do that, too."
Cutler looked at him, then shrugged. "Just keep him quiet, is all. First yap out of him, he dies."
Joshua Calhoun smiled faintly, with a touch of derision. "He will remain quiet.
Harmeson gave him his shoulder and an arm under his rump to help the stiff left leg, and he got up into the
saddle. Ah, that felt better. The weight was off that thigh, at last. He lifted his arm and moved it forward in a half
circle.

Chapter Six
The little command moved south by east. Ahead lay the pine barrens a wasteland of dwarf evergreens
where jack-rabbits and wild turkeys lived stretching all the way to the bluffs above Taylorville. Once inside the
latticework of twisting branches, it would be a lucky rebel who would stumble on them.
Cutler rode hard for the first two hours.
Not until there was rotted needle mold under the mare's hooves did he rein in. Barbara was at his elbow, eves
wide and curious.
"You can be in Taylorville before dusk, colonel. Why stop now?"
"To rest the animals. They're almost as important as the men in this venture." He looked at her curiously. "Is
there any special need for speed?"
She flushed. "No, I-of course not!" Her hand reined the stallion away from him and she paced toward her
uncle who was talking softly to the dog. Her back was very straight, almost angry, but it was slim and curved and
made Cutler sigh. He waved to Harmeson.
"The guncotton. mister?"
"Safely stored aboard the packhorse, colonel. There wasn't much of it left in that stable. Barely enough to do
the job."
"The manse is run down, lieutenant. In the old days, there was spit and polish all over everything, and the
storage bins were full. The Nevilles will have been dead four years next May. They died two months before the first
battle of Bull Run."

Melissa had written to him of the pneumonia that had overtaken both of them, almost simultaneously. Within
the next six months, she had broken off their engagement and returned his ring. A stab of pity ran in his blood. Her
world had crumpled in that one year. Melissa was not strong enough to stand such shocks. Not strong as Barbara,
who'd had to flee inside herself since she was ten.
She rode at his elbow when they moved out, as if some inner mark of rank entitled her to the post. Or as if
she wanted to be near him. Cutler thought, in case there was a change of plans. So that she could veer with the wind,
and alter her own thinking to conform.
He remembered the wild ride she'd taken last night. Taylorville was not so far from Honeysuckle House that
a fast rider could not make it there and back in five or six hours. And that was how long he'd slept.
Cutler glowered at his thoughts. Out with it, he told himself. Admit she's a spy, and that she's ridden into
Taylorville to betray you. They'll be waiting there, sharpshooters all, damn their Enfields, able to pick off a blue jacket
anywhere up to five hundred yards. This girl beside him would have brought them.
Can you order her shot? Not without proof. The proof would be in Taylorville.
A little after three, when the first faint shadows from the sinking sun began to lengthen. Cutler called a halt.
"No fire," he told Harmeson. "No loud talking, no singing. Cold rations. And no horseplay. Everybody rests."
He went to Barbara where she was helping Uncle Joshua down from his saddle. "I must ask your
cooperation, sir," he said to the old man. "There must be no sound or movement. You will stay within our camp
limits."
The old man fumbled in a capacious pocket of his striped hunting jacket, bringing out a big quart flask.
"Kentucky bourbon, colonel. An even better companion than Mickey, here. I'll be quiet, except for the sound my
Adam's apple makes as it goes up and down."
Cutler hid a smile and turned to the girl. "I've cold meat and hardtack in my saddlebags. Would you and your
uncle join me?"
"I prepared a lunch. Suppose you join us?" When he hesitated. Barbara added, "Beefsteak sandwiches,
colonel. A butcher from Taylorville keeps us supplied with fresh meat."
Beefsteak sandwiches. They'd eaten them on the picnic those years ago. He smiled faintly, "How can I
refuse?"
The old man ate by himself, a dozen yards away, one arm around the dog. feeding it bits of meat that he
removed from between the slices of home-baked bread. The whiskey flask was wedged in the ground at his foot. It
was as if he was deliberately turning his back to them, leaving them alone in warm intimacy.
His men were unsaddling, rubbing down their mounts. They went about their duties quietly, with only the
crunch of dry pine branches underfoot and an occasional chink of bridle-gear.
Barbara was silent, until the food was gone. Then she said, "Last night you spoke of the future, colonel. Was
it the spring air in your lungs, or had you something special in your mind?"
Cutler propped his back to a fallen tree. "I own a big farmhouse in the Mohawk Valley, and one thousand
acres or more of fine orchard trees. The war won't last forever. I'll go back to the farmhouse. It will be lonely."
His eyes were on her as she sat with her riding skirt spread out, staring at her locked fingers. He said softly,
"I'll want to get married, and I'll realize suddenly that I don't know a single one of my neighbors or any of their
daughters." Laughter was in his voice. "All I'll be able to think about is a girl I first knew as a freckle-faced little thing,
thin as a fence slat."
She raised her eyes at that, and there was momentary anger in her face. When she saw his smiling lips she
loosened a little, and smiled herself. "The freckles are gone now."
"And the thinness with it. The little girl is grown up, and she is all woman. I'll be alone, and all I'll be able to
do is brood about the little girl grown up." He leaned forward and put his hand on her fingers. "Say that I don't have to
go back to that farmhouse alone."
"How long have you been in the field, Hubert?"
A little surprised, he said, "Eight years."
"And there have been few women during that time," she murmured thoughtfully. "Almost any woman would
have pleased your eyes after eight years of loneliness."
"My eyes yes," he admitted. "But when I put that Mohawk Valley farmhouse as a frame around her, then I
have high standards."
She shook her head. "I thank you for that kindness. As for your loneliness, II don't know. I must think."
Cutler sighed. "Thinking has nothing to do with it. Either it comes from the heart or it is no good." He stood
above her. "I'm grateful that you've heard me out, at least."

Chapter Seven
He went limping away to find his lieutenant and lay bis plans for Taylorville, aware that he was suddenly
weary. Perhaps the girl was right. Events were pressing down on him like a smothering blanket. He might have
spoken out of a hidden need for reassurance to see him through these hours that lay ahead. It would not be easy at
Taylorville. Men would die. He himself might die. It was not a nice thought, this last, even though he lived with death
these last few years.
Harmeson came at his beckon, and sat cross-legged with him as he spread his map.
"Taylorville is not a large town," Cutler told him. "Maybe twelve thousand people, most of them workers in
the factory. Over here is the road going into Taylorville from Staley. Half a mile into town along that road is the
powder magazine."
His fingernail tapped the wrinkled paper. "You'll see the railroad tracks beside the magazine. Only a little
further on less than a mile are the factory buildings. At dawn we'll be in front of the powder magazine. The
people will be asleep, but the fire and explosion when the gunpowder blows will wake them fast enough."
"By that time, we'll be at the factory."
It sounded easy. Almost too easy. Get in, set the fire, race on to the factory, touch off the guncotton, get out.
And yet he'd given a lot of thought to Taylorville. When a man knows his subject inside and out, he can make it
sound simple.
He went on, "It won't take long to detonate the guncotton. When it goes off, we move out along Pickens
Avenue. It's the street furthest from the residences. If it becomes a race, we have less than two miles to run before
hitting the first ridge. There, the barrens will shelter us."
Harmeson nodded. "It should go like clockwork, sir. Within one hour we can be done."
"One hour. That isn't a long time, is it, mister? One hour that will seem like ten minutes. If anything goes
wrong just one slip that hour may be two or three, or forever."
Depending on whether Barbara Neville rode to Taylorville last night on the gray stallion, he wanted to add.
He tried to shake the despondency by telling himself no one could have made the ride in that space of time. Yet a
cold inner voice said she could do it. She knew the shortcuts, the easy ways of this corner of Alabama.
He folded the map carefully. No sense getting jittery this late in the game. He had to make his try.
"I'll hold inspection within the hour," he told Harmeson.
The lieutenant goggled at him. "Inspection? Out here in the field?"
"That's what I said, mister."
He wanted no worn gear that might make a man slip and fall at a bad moment, nor powder-fouled barrels
that might let a Johnny Reb live to shoot another trooper because of a misplaced ball. Didn't Harmeson know that for
himself? Pooh! They're only boys, she had told him, and she was right. And Lieutenant Fred Harmeson was no older.
Veteran cavalrymen would have their gear spit-clean. These boys had to be nursemaided into it.
He went up and down the little line at a slow walk. He checked every rifle. Ignoring hard eyes and cold faces,
he threw back three and ordered their cleaning. Two of the men he made stitch up loose stirrups. One lacked a heel
to his boot. Cutler told him to replace it with leather from his neck-stock.
He lashed them with his tongue, quietly, in deadly scorn. "By the Lord Harry, I'll bring you out of Taylorville,
misters! Alive and kicking for somebody else to kill in God's own time! But you don't die with Hubert Cutler. Not
because of faulty equipment, at least! Call yourselves cavalrymen, do you?"
His finger pointed out the horses as they stood tail-switching among the pines.
"Those four-footed beasts make better troopers than you. You teach them once, they do it. Now down on
your rumps and get to work. There'll be another inspection in an hour."
There was another inspection and another work period after that. Dusk lay in a thick blue haze over the
warped branches of the little trees before Cutler let himself be satisfied. Then he stood before them and looked into
their eyes instead of at their gear.
"We slap rumps to leather an hour before sunup, misters. When the hour is gone, I want to be standing in
front of the powder magazine. You'll ride nose to tail, and silent, in columns of twos. No man touches a weapon until I
signal."
For a moment, he enjoyed the cold faces in front of him. They hate me so much they're almost sick with
keeping it hidden, he thought. The vein of stubborn certainty in him kept him hammering away at that hate. He
wanted to say to them. Any of you want to shoot me, do it after the factory blows, not before! Yet all he showed them
was his alert, hard face under the brim of the dark blue Kossuth, and his yellow hair grown long now, with only crude
camp barbery to keep it within limits.
"Hit your blankets," he snapped.

Sleep was something you could command for your men, but never for yourself. As he lay stretched on his
back, Cutler realized that he had never been more wide awake. There was restlessness in him. To add to his
discomfort, his leg was kicking pain into his bloodstream again.
After a while he got up and limped around the little camp, glancing at the blanketed forms lying so still,
seeing Kramer standing sentry with his rifle under an arm. Then he moved on to where Barbara slept, breathing
easily.
He stood above her, feeling his heart contract. Bending, he pulled her blanket up over a shoulder, and tucked
it in. She stirred.
"Hubert," she whispered drowsily.
His hand went over the reddish silk of her hair. "Sleep. Go back to sleep."
A sound somewhere out in the barrens brought him to his feet, a hand on his .44 Colt. The sentry was rigid,
rifle in his hands. Cutler scanned the group, then he saw the empty blanket.
"That fool old man," he snarled, and walked past the sentry, waving a hand at him, and out into the pines.
He found Uncle Joshua in tears.
The old man looked forlorn, standing there in the little clearing. His shoulders were hunched and his fists
were clenched.
"He's gone," he said, his voice hollow and empty. "Mickey ran away from me. Maybe he hates dark blue the
way I do."
"He's gone back to Honeysuckle House, is all," Cutler soothed him.
"That's all it is, is it? To go back to an empty house and find no one there. Who's to feed him? Who's to bind
his wounds if he meets up with a wildcat? Ah, what else but heartlessness can a man expect from a Yankee?"
"You're upset, but that's understandable. You've a long day ahead. Being tired to start out with won't help."
He broke off and looked at Uncle Josh. "You didn't call the dog. May I ask you why not?"
"And have your men bayonet him if he came back? And me in the bargain?"
Hate was livid on the pale old face. For an instant, Cutler had the feeling that the old man was being
melodramatic about all this, like an actor in Uncle Tom's Cabin that had been so popular ten years ago.
"Come along with me," he said softly. The old man obeyed meekly, surprisingly enough. He thinks that if he
disobeys, we'll bayonet him. Cutler thought, and was undecided between anger and amusement. He waited until
Joshua Calhoun was bedded down before he made his way back to his own blanket.

Chapter Eight
It seemed like only minutes before he was up on his feet, limping with Harmeson to wake the others. Now
that the moment was on him, he was filled with anxious haste. Up saddles, buckle cinch-straps, boots in the stirrups
and upswing to the kaks. Then they were moving in singe file through the scrub pines.
They came down quietly onto the empty dirt road that ran into Taylorville two miles away. It was columns of
twos and trot after that, through the faint gray mists, with the sun a pale orange glow off to the east.
The sun was lifting into a reddish arc when they sighted the first shanties of Taylorville: wooden shacks,
rundown and weathered, where the Negroes and poorer whites lived. There were no lights, no sound, no movement
except their own, as they hoof-clopped along the street.
Now they were coming into better sections, past small white clapboard residences and an occasional brick
house. There were two church spires up ahead, lifting like skeletal fingers, the squat cupola of the courthouse
between them.
"The powder magazine is by the courthouse," Cutler said over his shoulder to his lieutenant, and wheeled the
column into an adjoining street.
They burst onto the open square with daylight growing brighter by the second. Ahead was the squat, round
magazine, with its single door inset into the wall at street level, and the three narrow windows higher up, near the
roof.
Cutler reined in, alert and suspicious.
"Those windows are open, mister," he said to Harmeson. "There could be rebs inside, waiting. Detail six men
to keep them empty with their Spencers. Your best shots, too."
Harmeson snapped his orders. Six men lifted out their carbines and swung from their saddles. As their boots
touched the hardpacked dirt street, flashes of gray showed in the windows. An Enfield poked out and spat red flame
at them.
Cutler took the others at the gallop for the door.

The Spencers began to talk at the windows. A man cried out sharply. Bullets hit the dirt beside the pounding
hooves of their horses, geysering earth and pebbles upward. Beyond the lieutenant a trooper coughed harshly and
fell.
His Army Colt roared, and roared again as Cutler sighted for the lock of the door. Beside him. Harmeson was
lifting a length of pitch-smeared pine, firing it with a flaring sulfur match. The torchhead came alive with flame.
Cutler reined in beside the door, preparatory to dismounting. Harmeson was ahead of him. hurling his
shoulder to the paneling, falling inward.
"Cover him, cover him!" Cutler shouted.
He put his .44 to the darkness, firing. A man in a gray coat went to his knees. Another sighted for Harmeson
who was throwing the torch. Cutler fired twice and the man sat back slowly on the stair that curved upward.
Sergeant Raymond was beside the lieutenant now, and troopers Boyle and Hammond. The interior of the
powderhouse was hazy with gunsmoke. Cutler came out of the saddle, went limping inside, squinting against the
darkness.
There were three dead rebels sprawled on the floor, and one on the stair. Two others were moving away
from the flames that licked at the dry wood of the stairwell. Boyle and Hammond were shooting, and the two men in
the gray uniforms crumpled. At the same moment, Raymond went backward with the front of his face blown away.
There was sickness inside Cutler and a voice whispering, She betrayed you into this? She came here with
word that Colonel Hubert Cutler, Second Cavalry, was heading for Taylorville with twelve men to blow the powder
magazine and factory buildings.
He looked at the Confederates, startled suddenly to note the bandages around heads and arms and legs. The
walking wounded, called up on the need of the moment from some nearby regimental hospital. All the able-bodied
men were out with Bedford Forrest and with Hood.
That handful had been enough to cost him his sergeant and trooper lying dead in the growing sunlight
outside, however.
And the arms factory? That would be better defended than the powder magazine.
"Get out fast," he said to Boyle and Hammond. "This place is going to go."
Harmeson took a look at Reynolds, and went out the door at the run. There was no time now to help his
colonel into the kak, time only for getting away from the low, round building and praying that one of the
sharpshooters up above would not have his name on a bullet.
His leg was a sheet of fire when Cutler bent it to slide his boot into the stirrup. It would not support his
weight. Twice he went up, twice he fell back. Then his hands clawed for a hold in the thick mane of the mare, and he
pulled himself up.
The others were gone, riding fast across the square.
Bullets peppered the dirt. Cutler went at the gallop through the hail, back bent low as if to shield himself. He
was a single target in a dark blue jacket, and they could concentrate their fire on him. Where were the Union
carbines? Six of them should turn those windows into a chamelhouse. This is an easier way to rid themselves of you
than by a bullet in the back, he thought.
His Kossuth hat was gone, ripped from his head by flying lead. There was a tug at his coatsleeve, and blood
running out. and then pain.
The mare went flashing by kneeling men in blue cavalry jackets who were calmly firing upward, half hidden
in a haze of gunsmoke.
Cutler whirled his horse, holstering his Colt, lifting out the Spencer. "Mount up! Mount up!" he roared.
The mare stood as he pumped shells into the windows. He saw three men lying across the sills. After a
moment he grew aware that there was no return fire. He looked around him. His detail was gone up the street, racing
for safety from the coming blast.
No time now to think of Barbara and his own dead. A man lay sprawled on his back, close beside a little
street pump. From the tall angularity of his body, this would be Boyle. A Michigander, he remembered, who had been
in the Iron Brigade at Gettysburg. As he was about to dig toes into the mare, he saw Boyle move.
The magazine would blow any second, but he could not abandon a living man to that blast.
"Boyle! Private Boyle!"

Chapter Nine
He sent the mare forward to the man, tried to bend from the saddle, knowing his left leg would never support his own
weight and that of the trooper. "Lift your head, man, and get to your knees," he shouted.

The man was on a knee and a hand. There was a deep, bloody furrow across his temple. His forage cap was
ten feet away in the dust. When his dazed eyes took in his colonel, waistbent in the McClellan. he made it to his feet.
Cutler reached for his wrist. "Up behind me, on the double!"
His left boot kicked free of the stirrup, giving the man room to mount. Then the mare was moving into a run,
and now he could hear the sound of flames in back of him.
The explosion caught Cutler and the trooper at the end of the block. It almost took the mare off the ground.
She staggered, slid, then found the ground with her hooves again. The air was a furnace blast on their backs, and their
ears rang.
Ahead of them, the troopers were waiting, leaning tensely in their saddles, watching the race. A little in
advance of them Harmeson was attempting to quiet his rearing mount, while Barbara and her uncle were beneath the
overhang of a furniture store.
Her eyes looked frightened. Above her lace collar, her face was pallid. He could see her locked hands held
the reins until they seemed bloodless. Then he heard a voice.
"Are you all right, colonel? What about your leg, sir?"
That was Harmeson. The troopers were moving around them, lowering Boyle. Someone brought a riderless
horse and helped him into the saddle. Cutler looked around. Eight men left, not counting himself, with trooper Boyle's
head being swathed in a white bandage. Nine men to blast a Confederate factory filled with men who knew they were
coming. He beckoned to his lieutenant.
"They know about us now, for sure," he said. "Our only chance is a straight, fast ride, in and out, to plant the
guncotton and explode it, then go back the slopes north of town along our planned escape route."
They passed the word down the line, wheeled and came at a good trot up Courthouse Street and into the
long avenue flanked by a small bank, a billiard parlor and saloon, hardware store, livery stable, grocery stores and
confectionery shop. There were wagons in the street now. early morning carts carrying goods to market. At sight of
the twin line of bluecoats, the drivers reined aside and sat their high seats, watching. Cutler saw that most of the
drivers were young boys or old men, with an occasional woman.
A boy yelled. "You'll get yours, Yankees!"
"You'll never leave this place alive!"
The road angled left where the striped awning of a millinery shop jutted across the sidewalk. At the end of
the street was a broad, wide brick building with many windows. The sign, done in fading red and peeling gilt paint,
read: TAYLORVILLE ARMS AND MUNITIONS FACTORY.
Cutler drew a deep breath. His target was less than five hundred yards away. The windows seemed to
beckon. If there had been rebs at the powder magazine, they would be swarming in this building, too.
His upraised hand halted his men. "Dismount and move forward. Take what cover there is. Mister Harmeson,
the gun-cotton!"
Walls and doorways gave his men shelter. They waited, heads turned to him, expectant. Two years, even one
year ago, a file of graycoats would have poured from the factory to fill this detail with hot lead. Today the Southland
was collapsing in upon itself. There were too many rebel graves from Shiloh to Nashville. Now Johnny Reb was a
wounded, tired man, with nothing but his guts left to him.
Wounded or not, there would be crack shots behind those brick walls. Cutler went to help Harmeson, limping
badly. His fingers worked at the straps on the packsaddle, lifting down the guncotton blocks. It was in tight wooden
containers placed within zinc boxes, unstable cellulose hexanitrate that was nothing more than cotton washed in
nitric acid. Cutler placed the boxes at his feet.
There were six boxes. Placed strategically along that grim red wall, they would damage machines and ignite
fires that would destroy the building.
Cutler lifted two of the boxes.
Harmeson looked worried. Twice he hesitated, then spoke. "Colonel, your leg. That is, sir..."
"Well, mister? What's on your mind?"
"I was thinking, sir, now that we've come this far, it might be better if one of the others did the job."
Cutler stared at him. "Do you mean to imply I'm incapable of carrying out this assignment?" There might be a
hundred men with Enfields waiting behind those windows for him, and a hundred wounded or not, they would still be
able to fire a rifle. A slowly moving, limping man would make them a fine target.
The lieutenant flushed and bit his lip.
"I think the man is perfectly right," said a cool, crisp voice at his elbow. Cutler wheeled to find Barbara
Neville beside him. Her eyes were strangely steady. "You've come this far to do a job. Why jeopardize it at this point,
out of silly pride?"
"Pride? Is that what you believe? Frustration and anger in him were being overridden by an unusual

tenderness. Now it was he who was being shepherded, cared for, as he had cared for the boys under his command.
He laughed a little. "Do you realize there are Confederate riflemen in that factory? Perhaps not very many if there
were more than a handful of them, we'd be dead or prisoners but enough to kill whoever makes the run with this
guncotton."
"Exactly, sir," snapped Harmeson. A fast man might make it to the wall, where he'd be protected. A slow
runner might not. Your leg makes you a slow runner, sir."
Cutler grunted. "I send no man where I'm afraid to go myself," he grated harshly, and limped forward.
He paused under the overhang of a wagon shop. The shop had been deserted a long time, judging from the
thick dust that lay over leaning wheels and inert leather harnesses on the wall pegs. But its walls were made of thick
brick, and gave him shelter.
Cutler began to stack his boxes slowly, for this guncotton was tricky stuff. He paused and peered a moment
at the factory. He wished a few of those windows were open. Then he could know which ones to watch when he was
carrying the guncotton.
Sweat came out under his gold-braided collar. If he didn't get it now, he never would. With that treacherous
guncotton under his arms, the rebels in front, and his own men behind, he wouldn't give a cracked button-board for
his chances in this one!
He bent again to the guncotton, fitting fuses.
In a little while he was ready. By this time Barbara and Harmeson were with him, quiet and intent. The men
were strung out here, too. from the overturned wagon to the toolshed, fifty yards down. One of the men was kicking
at the rusted lock of the waggoner's shop, pushing his way through piled wheel-mounts, moving to the small, barred
windows. Cutler heard the tinkle of glass where his rifle butt smashed a window to make a firing point.
Cutler lifted four of the boxes.
"Cover me," he said softly and went out into the sunlight.

Chapter Ten
The face of the factory building seemed to erupt with smoke. Bullets came singing, whistling overhead, biting
into dry dust and sending it spouting upward. To Cutler it seemed a thousand rifles were pointing at him, seeking to
track him down as he started to limp across the square.
There was a little silence, for a moment. In that silence a revolver barked. Behind him!
Cutler felt the shock in his right thigh. He crumpled in an agony of split muscle and shredded flesh. He was
down and the guncotton boxes were spilling from his arms in front of him. He could not get up. He lay with his face
in the dust and agony in his leg.

Chapter Eleven
The agony in his spirit was even more biting. One of my own men did this to me! Even in that moment of
deep abasement, his mind was crisp with trained contempt. They can't even shoot straight! The bullet should have
been higher, just below the shoulder blades. The poor, damn fools!
It cost him to move to the shed, but he made it, with his teeth fastened deep in his lower lip to kill the pain of
his leg. He turned and laid his gaze along the shed, the overturned wagon, the barred windows of the waggoner's
shop. They were firing coolly, carefully at the factory. McAllister, Kramer, Boyle, Hammond. With Dunlap in the
dusty shop.
That left Harmeson, French and Curtis. But the lieutenant and the two troopers were running for him, bent
over.
He saw Barbara Neville looking at him, her eyes enormous in her pale face. A smoking revolver was in her
hand.
"Barbara!" he rasped between dry lips.
The shame of being shot down in front of his own men by the girl he loved was gone before the need to
protect the troopers running for the factory wall.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another sprinting form, a hundred yards away, and then another. That
would be Kramer and McAllister. He felt a stab of pride in these boys. Look at them go! Like racehorses he'd seen at
the state fairs in Syracuse.

"Run, you sons," he whispered between clenched teeth.

His revolver hunted the windows, bucking in his hand, again and again, chasing the Johnny Rebs from the
openings. He took savage pleasure in seeing them fall away, as if they were all his troubles wrapped up in gray.
McAllister was down, stretched flat!
Beyond him, Kramer was placing his guncotton. The fool! He was turning, coming back without touching it
off! No-wait! He was stooping over McAllister, lifting the guncotton he'd been carrying, running back to the wall.
Kneeling, he set that explosive too, lighting the long fuse.
Harmeson was done with his task, then French and Curtis.
They were returning, running fast, straight for him.
Just before their hands went down to him to lift him, he saw the factory-doors opening and men in gray
trousers, wearing bandages at chests and arms, come running. They aimed to pull out the fuses and render the
explosives useless. Three rifles cracked from behind the overturned wagon and from the waggoner's shop. Two of the
running men were down. The third was still going, bending above the guncotton. A bullet found him just as his fingers
were reaching for the hissing fuse.
Hands caught at Cutler, lifting him into the air, carrying him. There was no more rebel fire. It was more
important for the rebels to render the guncotton useless than it was to shoot down the men who put it there.
More men came out of the factory doorway, but the blueclad troopers were lying prone, firing. And now it
was too late. The hissing fuses were gone, and the flame was at the tightly packed gun-cotton.
The side of the brick factory lifted upward and outward. The noise was deafening. Dust and bricks went
skyward. Red flame began to lick around in the yellowish cloud, at wooden beams and flooring. When the flame
caught some gunpowder stored in wooden barrels, there was a muffled explosion.
"There she goes!" exulted Harmeson.
Cutler stood framed between French and Curtis, watching, pride running through him. He'd done it! Brought
less than half a platoon through enemy country to smash a supply depot and a munitions factory! You won't get these
rifles, General Lee! Or the revolvers and bullets that were being made inside those collapsing brick walls, either!
His legs would not hold him and so they had to put him flat on his back behind a little wall. Barbara was
there, looking down at him, and there were tears in her eyes and on her cheeks. She had put her Colt away.
"You shot me," he lashed out at her. "But you couldn't shoot down all my men! Why did you do it?"
He turned his face away from her in the pain of his legs and the anguish of his heart.
Harmeson was slashing his pale blue breeches with a knife to get at the wound.
"The bullet went right through. We won't have to probe. I'll just tie a bandage around it."
"Go ahead," Cutler muttered, indifferent to pain. What could hurt worse than this misery inside him?
He writhed at the instant the bandage was placed, fire shooting across his leg. To his surprise, Barbara was
on her knees, holding one of his hands tightly between her palms.
"Hub, Hub," she whispered. "It was the only way! They'd have riddled you with bullets if I hadn't brought you
down! You couldn't have moved fast enough."
"She's right, sir," exclaimed Harmeson, hands knotting the bandage. "Their first volley missed God alone
knows why but their second would have caught you!"
"They knew we were coming," Cutler lashed out at the girl, rising to an elbow. "They yanked their walking
wounded out of a hospital and got them here on the double! If it hadn't been for you, I'd never have lost Sergeant
Raymond and Atkins at the powder magazine, and now McAllister! We could have done the job and none been
killed."
She pulled away, and Cutler wondered what hurt worse, his leg, or the pain of her palms moving away from
his hand. He wanted to cry out, I didn't mean that! It just slipped off the tongue! But he couldn't speak.
They got him to his horse. Riley was in from the waggoner's shop, looking grim he and McAllister had
been companions ever since Chickamauga and Boyle was rising from the overturned wagon. They mounted in
silence and turned to look as Harmeson hoisted him to the kak.
Then they wheeled and rode and to hell with the pain lancing up both thighs and into his guts. They had
to get away.
They went pounding up a little street that ran into the woods of the high bank, beyond which lay the pine
barrens.
They made their run past the few small wooden shacks that lay beneath the bluff.
Cutler kept them running for an hour. Then he reined in and waved Harmeson on. "Keep them going, mister.
I'll be with you in a few minutes."
Barbara swayed a little as the gray stallion moved restlessly, wanting to run again. Her eyes were fixed
steadily on his pale face. Cutler took off his hat, looking at. her, waiting quietly until his command was out of earshot.

Old Joshua Calhoun was in their shadow, but was paying them no heed, as if all his attention were focused back on
the town.
When he could not hear his men any longer, Cutler said. "I spoke rashly, beside the waggoner's shop. It
seems I'm always speaking rashly to you."
"I only shot you to save your life. You're a pigheaded man. Hubert Cutler. The other night you said I had an
interest in your future. Let's say I was only protecting that interest. Now," her shoulders moved in a shrug, "I suppose
this is goodbye."
"I still mean what I said in the stable," he told her. "I'm not quite the pighead you think me. I know you saved
my life. I know, too, that if I had it to do over again, I'd still try to make that run."
"Because of your men," she said flatly.
He pondered that. "Yes. I suppose it is because of the men under me. You named them boys. It was my duty
to bring them here, but it wasn't my duty to get them killed."
Barbara smiled faintly, but said nothing.
Cutler frowned. "What I'm trying to say to you is, even if you did play the spy, I love you and want you to be
my wife. Will you marry me?"
She sat a little straighter in the saddle, cheeks flushing. "I did not play sly! I had nothing to do with those men
being in the magazine or the factory."
He let the incredulity show on his startled face. "The other night you said you rode to the ridge. You came to
Taylorville instead."
The old man laughed softly. "It was me sent word of your comin', Hubert Cutler."
"You? Impossible. I've kept my eye on you ever since we hit Honeysuckle House."
"You forget Mickey, the Irish setter," said the old man gently. "You see, he isn't my dog. He belongs to
Lemuel Hurley, our butcher. Lem brings him out when he brings us our fresh meat. I keep him until we need more.
Then we send him back to Hurley with our order tied around his collar. Lem has nearly a dozen dogs that operate
that way."
Uncle Josh laughed. "Fooled you good last night, didn't I, when I put on that act? Made you think I was really
afraid you'd bayonet me and the setter. Pah! You're no brute murderer! The stage lost a good man in Joshua Calhoun.
I could have been another Booth if I'd put my mind to it!"

Chapter Twelve
The old rascal, Cutler thought, staring at him, aware that delight was flooding him. He toed his horse in a
sidling movement close to the gray stallion. Before Barbara could move, he hooked her waist with an arm and drew
her halfway out of her saddle, to lie warm and soft on his chest. Like that, he kissed her.
Her lips were as he dreamed they would be. He whispered, "The war won't last forever. Any day now, Grant
will corner Lee, and it will be over. Soon as that happens. I'm riding back to claim my bride!"
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, yes! I'll be waiting!"
The old man blew his nose. He said, "I'll be proud to give her to you, young man. Might be I've learned a few
things myself, this last day or two. Might be this war is like a squabble between married folks. Sooner it's over, it's
better for both sides. I'll think of it like that, from now on. It'll make me a lot less bitter."
They were too busy kissing to hear. The old man sat and watched them, and his eyes were proud and
dreamy.
Cutler caught his command in less than thirty minutes. They were drawn up, waiting for him, big grins on
their faces. There was no hatred in them any more, only a kind of pride, and a look that told him he'd done a good
job.
Harmeson saluted crisply. "The men would like to offer their congratulations, sir." He hesitated, then plunged
on awkwardly. "They'd like you to know they're proud to serve under you, too. It's been a little hard, but now they
feel they've made it."
They told him how they felt with their shining eyes: You aren't all spit and polish, sir. You fought for us at
Fallen Angel ridge, to let us get away. You took Boyle up behind your saddle, and saved his life. You wanted to carry
the guncotton to keep us from being hurt. But you forgot that this is our war, too.
It was all there for him to read: The knowledge that they themselves had been a part of this foray. They
carried it off successfully. Now they knew what fighting a war was like. The things he'd roared at them so often in the
past, that made them hate him, made sense to them now. They were soldiers.
Cutler grinned and wheeled the mare to take them back to Wilson. He settled himself in the saddle more

comfortably. It would be a quiet ride.