"I heard a noise, lieutenant," one of the men whined. "I seen what happened out on the streets. I didn't want to take no chances."
Hedges looked over their shoulders. The woman was in her mid-twenties and had never been pretty. The bullet had smashed up into her skull after entering through her nose to make her very ugly. The boy—probably her son—was no more than six years old. He had taken it in the head, too, through his small right ear. Both wounds were still pumping out blood to spread stains on the sheets.
"Christ, he looks like my son," the second trooper exclaimed, his face twisted into a bitter grimace.
"Lieutenant?" a voice whispered from below. "You okay up there?"
Hedges was glad to be able to turn away from the horrible tableau of senseless death. "Yeah," he called and started down the stairs, beckoning for the two troopers to follow him. The stairway gave directly on to the barber's shop which was fitted out with two chairs before washbasins with wall mirrors above, and a bench for customers who had to wait their turn. Now the bench was overturned and two uniformed figures were sprawled across it, one in blue and one in grey. Another Confederate soldier was folded across one of the chairs. Through a doorway which gave on to a back room Hedges could see one of his troopers doubled over a window sill.
"Weren't easy, sir," the survivor reported, his lower lip trembling. "Christ, war is a stinking business."
Hedges thought about the dead mother and son upstairs and nodded. Then his expression hardened. "But we're in it. Let's go."
He led the way through into the back room and gently removed the body of the dead Union soldier from the window before climbing out. A bullet smashed into the frame and he went headlong to the ground.
"Hell, I thought you was a reb," somebody called.
He looked up and saw four men running towards him, all in blue uniforms. The one with a smoking Colt helped Hedges get to his feet. The lieutenant shook free of his grasp angrily.
"I told you to keep calm!" he bellowed.
The expression of another man changed suddenly from fear to rage and he sprayed spittle as he yelled at Hedges. "There was eight of us went in there. My best friend had gone to meet his maker without a face and the other three are just as dead. This ain't no hunting party. I'm gonna shoot at anything that moves before it has a chance to shoot at me."
Hedges held the other man's blazing glare. "What's your name, trooper?" he demanded when the man paused to draw breath.
"Morgan. Why!"
"Ninety day volunteer?"
The cold tone and impassive expression of Hedges were beginning to get through to the thin-faced, sandy-haired youngster, driving back his rage and replacing it with anxiety. The man nodded.
Hedges spat against the wall of the building he had just left. "I got a feeling this war's going to last a lot longer than ninety days, Morgan. But you won't if you don't get a hold of yourself. So cut out the yakking and let's get on with doing what we came here for."
With this he spun on his heels and headed across the alley separating the barber's shop from the stage depot. He had not taken four paces before a man loomed up on the roof of the building and loosed off a shot. Hedges felt a searing pain in his right hip and started to fall as his head snapped up. He saw the man who had, shot him, then heard a volley of gunshots from behind him. He hit the ground and rolled on to his back. He had a crazy, upside-down view of the Confederate soldier throwing his rifle into the air before pitching forward off the edge of the roof.
"That calm enough for you?" somebody said as Hedges was lifted and carried hastily into shelter at the rear of the stage depot.
Hedges put a hand under his tunic and grimaced as he withdrew it, coated with blood.
"Can you stand, sir?"
He tried, using the wall and helping hands from two of the men. His side felt as if it were on fire, but his legs could support his weight.
"Morgan?" He didn't know the names of any of the other men.
"Sir."
"If 1 can't make it, you take over."
"Me, sir?"
"You."
"Jesus."
Hedges shook free of the hands and snaked around the corner and along the side of the building. Down at the end of the alley and across the street he could see a house with its windows smashed and through them the flashes of exploding powder as rifles and revolvers were fired at close range. He gritted his teeth against the pain and stopped short at a window. He peered through and saw the office of the depot with six Confederate soldiers inside—three at each of two open windows—firing in turn.
"Morgan, take three men and get in from the back," he ordered.
The young trooper, still uncertain of himself in his new position of authority, waved his Colt at the nearest trio of soldiers and started back down the alley. Hedges looked at the other, three and drew back from, the window, indicating that they should take up position there.
"As soon as the rebs look like they know Morgan and the others are breaking in, blast them."
"Lieutenant?" The speaker was the soldier who had mistakenly shot the young boy and his mother. Hedges looked at the back of the man's head. He was concentrating his attention through the window.
"Something you want?" He winced at a new stab of pain from his side.
"Answer to a question, sir."
There was a sudden, violent increase in the rate of rifle fire out on the street and from the soldiers at the front windows of the stage depot offices, and then a lull.
Hedges spoke in a whisper. "What?"
"I'd much prefer a repeater to this old Springfield rifle I got, sir," the man said, his own voice low. "And since you don't appear to want, to use that there Spencer, I'd be obliged to exchange mine for it."
Hedges was grateful that all three troopers were concentrating their attention on the side of the office, for he knew that the flush of shame and anger was sending a deep redness across his face, generating almost as much heat as the bullet wound in his hip.
"Attend to your duty, soldier," he hissed.
"Yes, sir!" the man said derisively.
"Ought to know better," one of his companions muttered. "You're an enlisted man and he's an officer. Officers give the orders and enlisted men fight."
Hedges struggled to form an answer, but at that moment one of the Confederate soldiers fell, the life blood draining from a wound in the back of his neck. The other five turned with terror-stricken faces and the side window shattered as the three men kneeling outside squeezed their rifle triggers. Inside, Morgan and his men opened up. The stench of burnt powder wafted out through the broken window to the accompaniment of the screams of the dying. The men at the window drew revolvers and showered the office with rapid fire.
"Hold it," a man called from inside. "They're all dead."
The three troopers scrambled in, not offering to help Hedges, who felt fresh blood pumping out of his wound with each movement as he hauled himself through the window.
"Any casualties?" he demanded, peering through the layers of grey gunsmoke, seeing the sprawled bodies of the gray uniformed men.
"Not a one, sir," Morgan said with a note of pride. "We blasted them Rebs good."
"So let's not push our luck," somebody said. "McClellan must get here soon. Let's hole up and wait. What d'you say, lieutenant?"
"Hedges! Can you hear me Lieutenant Hedges?"
The voice was faint, almost every word separated from the next by a gunshot. Hedges went to one of the front windows and pressed his back against the wall to peer out. There were more bodies on the street now, obscene in the stillness of death. But nothing else had changed out there since he had first seen it—except perhaps that the shadows had shortened as the sun inched up the eastward wall of the cloudless sky.