“Rifles,” Jake said scornfully, and then, a little less so, “Well, hell, all right, machine guns, too. But they ain’t seen real artillery, and they ain’t seen gas, and they ain’t seen barrels. Till they do, God damn me to hell if I think they’ll make anything like proper soldiers.”
“You’re a stubborn cuss, Sarge,” the loader said with a laugh.
“Bet your ass I am,” Featherston said. “If I wasn’t, I’d have given up long since. But I pay all my bills, and I got a hell of a lot of bills to pay.”
“Uh-huh.” Scott took a last drag on the cigarette, threw it down, and crushed the butt under his heel. He headed off, perhaps a little faster than he had to.
Featherston sighed with relief to see him go. He opened the tablet and began to write again: -officers are fools because they won’t see what’s in front of their faces. The country doesn’t need officers like that, but what other kind has it got? They can’t see that the n-
“Featherston.” The voice was sharp and precise, so much so that it almost seemed a Yankee voice. Jake jumped and slammed the tablet shut.
He whirled, jumped to his feet, and saluted. “Major Potter, sir!” he said. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t hear you come up.” He would have had to show respect for any officer. He actually felt some for Clarence Potter.
“At ease, Sergeant,” the bespectacled major from Intelligence said. He pointed north, toward the U.S. lines, the lines that still bubbled and seethed like a pot boiling atop a stove but that, to Featherston’s surprise, had not yet boiled over. “What do you make of the quiet?”
“Funny you should ask, sir,” Jake said. “My loader and I were just talking about that very same thing. Last time they were this quiet this long was before they hit us that first big lick up in Pennsylvania.”
“So it was.” Potter rubbed his chin. “That’s very well reasoned-reasoned like an officer, I would say, if I didn’t think it’d make you pick up that barrel and break it over my head.”
“Sir, I reckon your head is harder than this barrel ever dreamed of being,” Featherston answered, intending it as a compliment. “Reckon your head is as hard as one of the damnyankees’ iron barrels with treads.”
“Heh,” Potter said. “No, those really hard heads are the ones down in the War Department in Richmond. It’d take about an eight-inch gun, maybe a twelve-inch, to blow a hole through one of them and let in some light.”
“Yes, sir,” Jake said. One of the reasons he thought Potter superior to the general run of officer in the Army of Northern Virginia was the boundless contempt they shared for the hidebound aristocrats who held so many important posts in Richmond.
Potter said, “Now that the colored troops have been in the line for a bit, what do you think of them?”
“Don’t like ’em for hell,” Featherston said promptly. “Not for hell. They’re in the line, yeah, but what happens when they really get hit? We haven’t seen it yet. Like I told Scott, I’ll believe they can stand it when I see ’em do it.”
Potter’s jaws worked as if he were chewing tobacco, but he didn’t have a plug in one cheek. “Here’s another question for you, then, Sergeant-which would you rather have in front of you, those full colored units or white units somewhere between a quarter and half strength? Those are your choices. We’ve squeezed out about all the white manpower in the CSA there is to squeeze.”
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Jake said. “I just don’t know. I have a notion of what understrength white units can do. These niggers-who can guess? Might be better. Might be a hell of a lot worse.”
In musing tones, Major Potter said, “Some white units without the proper experience will break and run the first time they come under truly heavy fire, or the first time they have to face barrels. If the black soldiers don’t perform as well as veteran troops, you need to remember it may be because they’re raw, not because they’re black.”
“Yes, sir, I understand what you’re telling me,” Featherston said. “But then again, it may be because they’re niggers, too. Hell of a choice we’ve got, ain’t it, sir? We can lose the war without ’em, or we can put ’em in the line and pray to Jesus they don’t turn their guns on us or go over to the damnyankees in droves.”
Fussily neat, Potter took out a clasp knife and scraped dirt from under a thumbnail. He said, “You know, the United States have a holiday called Remembrance Day coming up next month. They’ve been keeping a list of everything we’ve done to them since we fired on Fort Sumter to start the War of Secession. By now, it’s a long list. If they do lick us, they’re going to pay it all back and make us start a list of our own.”
“You’re saying they’d better not lick us,” Jake said slowly.
“We won’t be happy if they do,” Clarence Potter agreed. Behind his spectacles, his eyes missed very little. He pointed to Featherston’s Gray Eagle notebook. “Are you keeping a list of your own, Sergeant?”
Jake’s ears got hot. He was indeed keeping a list of his own. If anyone besides him saw it, he’d be lucky to escape hard labor. If Major Potter asked-or demanded-to see it, he didn’t know what he’d do. Keeping his voice as light as he could, he answered, “Maybe I’ll do me up a book once the war is over. Over Open Sights, I’ll call it, or somethin’ like that. What do you think, sir?”
“Better be a good book,” Potter said. “They’ll be a drug on the market when the fighting’s done-provided anyone’s left alive to read them.” He had on a tin hat, and tipped it as if it were a real felt derby. “Good morning to you, Sergeant.” On down toward the front he went, a businesslike man who might have been a businessman were it not for his helmet and puttees.
Featherston let out a silent sigh of relief. He’d got away with not having to show what he was writing. Not only that, he’d found a title for what he was setting down in the tablet. OVER OPEN SIGHTS, he printed above the writing on the first page.
He wished he had the War Department over open sights, close enough to blast them all without even having to bother reading the range. He wished he had the Negro troops in front of him over open sights, too. He scowled. If they did run like rabbits, the way he figured they were likely to do, he would have them over open sights. He’d blast them, too.
The only trouble was, that would be too late.
Something buzzed like an early mosquito, but the sound came from farther away than a mosquito’s infernal whine. Jake looked up. Tiny as a mosquito in the sky, an aeroplane sauntered along above the defensive line of the Army of Northern Virginia. Featherston knew what that meant: the damnyankees were taking photographs. When they had all they wanted, when everything was set up the way they wanted, hell would break loose.
No Confederate aeroplanes rose to challenge the Yankee spy. Belatedly, antiaircraft guns over toward Purcellville, east of Round Hill, opened up on the intruder. The hammering of the guns-the only cannon in the Confederate arsenal that were quicker-firing than the three-inchers Jake served-shattered the quiet of the late-winter morning.
Puffs of smoke, round and black as iron soup pots, flecked the sky like smallpox scars on the face of an unvaccinated man. The observation aeroplane flew through them, straight as if it were on rails. From his own observations, Jake knew what that meant: the photographer was taking his pictures.
He knew the exact instant when the photographer was through taking pictures, too. At that instant, the aeroplane stopped behaving like a locomotive on rails and started acting like a staggering drunk, lurching every which way through the air to throw off the aim of the gunners on the ground.
Wearily, Featherston cursed as the U.S. observation aeroplane escaped. He’d seen too many others escape to be more than a little disgusted. His sole consolation was that the Yankees had every bit as much trouble hitting C.S. observation aeroplanes.