Lee said, “Colonel Gorgas gives you an excellent character, sir, you and your rifle both. Will you show it to me?”
“In a moment, if I may,” Rhoodie answered, which surprised Lee. In his experience, most inventors were wildly eager to show off their brainchildren. Rhoodie went on, “First, sir, I would like to ask you a question, which I hope you will be kind enough to answer frankly.”
“Sir, you are presumptuous,” Charles Marshall said. The wan winter sun glinted from the lenses of his spectacles and turned his normally animated face into something stern and a little inhuman.
Lee held up a hand. “Let him ask what he would, Major. You need not forejudge his intentions.” He glanced toward Rhoodie, nodded for him to continue. He had to look up to meet the stranger’s eye, which was unusual, for he was nearly six feet tall himself. But Rhoodie overtopped him by three or four inches.
“I thank you for your patience with me,” he said now in that not-quite-British accent. “Tell me this, then: what do you make of the Confederacy’s chances for the coming year’s campaign and for the war as a whole?”
“To be or not to be, that is the question,” Marshall murmured.
“I hope our prospects are somewhat better than poor Hamlet’s, Major,” Lee said. His staff officers smiled. Rhoodie, though, simply waited. Lee paused to marshal his thoughts. “Sir, since I have but so briefly had the honor of your acquaintance, I hope you will forgive me for clinging to what may be plainly seen by any man with some knowledge and some wit: that is, our enemies are superior to us in numbers, resources, and the means and appliances for carrying on the war. If those people”—his common euphemism for the Federals—”use their advantages vigorously, we can but counterpoise to them the courage of our soldiers and our confidence in Heaven’s judgment of the justice of our cause. Those have sufficed thus far. God willing, they shall continue to do so.”
“Who said God is for the big battalions?” Rhoodie asked.
“Voltaire, wasn’t it?” Charles Venable said. He had been a professor of mathematics before the war, and was widely read.
“A freethinker if ever there was one,” Marshall added disapprovingly.
“Oh, indeed,” Rhoodie said, “but far from a fool. When you are weaker than your foes, should you not take the best advantage of what you do have?”
“That is but plain sense,” Lee said. “No one could disagree.”
Now Rhoodie smiled, or his mouth did; the expression stopped just short of his eyes. “Thank you, General Lee. You have just given much of my sales talk for me.”
“Have I?”
“Yes, sir, you have. You see, my rifle will let you conserve your most precious resource of all-your men.”
Walter Taylor, who had seen the gun in action, sucked in a long, deep breath. “It could be so,” he said quietly.
“I await the demonstration, Mr. Rhoodie,” Lee said. “You will have it.” Rhoodie unslung the weapon. Lee had already noted it was of carbine length, stubby next to an infantry musket. Because it was so short, its socket bayonet seemed the longer. Rhoodie reached over his shoulder into his haversack. That was made of mottled cloth like his trousers and coat, and looked to be of finer manufacture than even a Union man carried. Most of Lee’s soldiers made do with a rolled-up blanket.
The tall stranger produced a curved metal object, perhaps eight inches long and an inch and a half or two inches wide. He clicked it into place in front of the carbine’s trigger. “This is the magazine,” he said. “When it’s full, it holds thirty rounds.”
“In fine, the rifle now has bullets in it,” Taylor said.” As all of you will no doubt have noticed, it is a breechloader.” The other aides nodded. Lee kept his own counsel.
With a rasping sound followed by a sharp, metallic click, Rhoodie drew back a shiny steel lever on the right side of the rifle. “The first round from each magazine must be chambered manually,” he said.
“What about the others?” Venable whispered to Taylor.
“You’ll see,” Taylor whispered back.
Rhoodie reached into the haversack again. This time he drew out some folded papers. He unfolded one of them. It proved to be a target, a cutout roughly approximating the shape of a man’s head and body. He turned to Lee’s aides. “Will you gentlemen please put these up at different ranges out to, say, four or five hundred yards?”
“With pleasure,” Taylor said promptly. “I’ve seen how fast your rifle can shoot; I’d like to learn how accurate it is.” He took some of the targets; Rhoodie handed the rest to the other aides. They stuck low-hanging branches through some, leaned others against bushes, both in the upright position and sideways.
“Shall I have them straighten those, sir?” Lee asked, pointing. “They will make your shooting more difficult.”
“Never mind,” Rhoodie answered. “Soldiers don’t always stand up, either.” Lee nodded. The stranger did not lack for confidence.
When the aides were through, a ragged column of thirty targets straggled southeast toward Orange Court House a couple of miles off. The knot of tents that was Lee’s headquarters lay on a steep hillside, well away from encamped troops or any other human habitations. The young men laughed and joked as they came back to Rhoodie and Lee. “There’s General McClellan!” Charles Marshall said, stabbing a thumb in the direction of the nearest target. “Give him what he deserves!”
The others took up the cry: “There’s General Burnside!” “General Hooker!” “General Meade!” “Hancock!” “Warren!” “Stoneman!” “Howard!” “There’s Honest Abe! Give him his deserts, by God!”
Lee turned to Rhoodie. “At your convenience, sir.” The aides fell silent at once.
“One of your men might want to look at a watch,” Rhoodie said.
“I will, sir.” Charles Venable drew one from his waistcoat pocket. “Shall I give you a mark at which to begin?” Rhoodie nodded. Venable held the watch close to his face so he could see the second hand crawling around its tiny separate dial. “Now!”
The rifle leaped to the big stranger’s shoulder. He squeezed the trigger. Craack! A brass cartridge case flipped up into the air. It glittered in the sun as it fell. Craack! Another cartridge case. Craack! Another. This was the same sort of quick firing as that which had interrupted Lee’s letter to President Davis.
Rhoodie paused once for a moment.” Adjusting the sights,” he explained. He was shooting again as soon as the last word left his mouth. Finally the rifle clicked harmlessly instead of blasting out another round.
Charles Venable looked up. “Thirty aimed shots. Thirty-two seconds. Most impressive.” He looked from the rifle to Rhoodie, back again. “Thirty shots,” he repeated, half to himself. “Where is the smoke from thirty shots?”
“By God!” Walter Taylor sounded astonished, both at the lack of smoke and at himself. “Why didn’t I notice that before?”
Lee had also failed to notice it. Thirty closely spaced shots should have left this Andries Rhoodie in the middle of a young fogbank. Instead, only a few hazy wisps of smoke floated from the breech and muzzle of his rifle. “How do you achieve this, sir?” he asked.
“The charge in my cartridges is not your ordinary black powder,” Rhoodie said, which told Lee nothing not already obvious. The big man went on, “If your officers will bring in the targets, we can see how I did.”
Taylor, Venable, and Marshall went out to retrieve the paper men. They laid them on the ground, walked along the row looking for bullet holes. Lee walked with them, quiet and thoughtful. When he had examined all the targets, he turned back to Rhoodie. “Twenty-eight out of thirty, I make it to be,” he said. “This appears to be a fine weapon, sir, and without a doubt very fine shooting.”