“As’ me no questions, I tells you no lies,” the black man said smugly. He strutted on back toward his own company, visibly proud of his talent as a forager.
A horse came trotting off the road south from Orange Court House into the regimental encampment. Aboard it was Benny Lang. He pulled the animal up short in front of Caudell. His lean face was twisted with fury. He stabbed a forefinger in the direction of George Ballentine’s back. “You, First Sergeant! What the bleeding hell is that fucking kaffir doing with an AK-47? Answer me, damn you!”
“He’s not in my company, so I can’t answer you exactly, Mr. Lang,” Caudell said, speaking as carefully as if the Rivington man were an officer.
“Whose bloody company is he in, then?” Lang demanded.
“Company H, sir,” Caudell said. He explained how Ballentine had come to be there, and how he had stayed with the company after Addison Holland abandoned it. “I’m sure it’s all right.”
“In a pig’s arse it is. Teach a kaf—a nigger—to use a weapon, and next thing you know, he’ll be aiming at you. Company H, you say? Who’s captain there?”
“That would be Captain Mitchell, sir. Captain Sidney Mitchell.”
“I am going to have a small chat with Captain Sidney fucking Mitchell, then, First Sergeant. We’ll see if he lets a nigger touch a weapon after that, by God!” He jerked savagely on the reins to turn the horse, dug his heels into its sides. The animal let out an angry neigh and bounded off. Space showed between the saddle and Lang’s backside at every stride; he was anything but a polished rider. But he clung to his seat with grim determination.
Rufus Daniel came out of the cabin. Along with Caudell, he watched Benny Lang’s furious ride. “I take back what I told you a while ago, Nate,” Daniel said. “Wouldn’t want him for overseer after all—he purely hates niggers. That’d bring a farm nothin’ but grief. Georgie Ballentine; I druther have him alongside me ‘n half the white men in this company.”
“Me, too.” Caudell took off his hat so he could scratch his head. “Lang hates niggers as if they’d done something to him personally, not just—you know what I mean.”
“Reckon I do,” Daniel said. Hardly a white man in the South failed to look down on blacks. But the two races lived and worked side by side. They saw each other, dealt with each other, every day. Caudell could think of nothing likelier to spark a slave revolt than all whites displaying the ferocity Benny Lang showed.
“You know, I hope Captain Mitchell tells him where to get off,” Caudell said. He had no great love for Negroes himself, but George Ballentine was part of the fabric of the regiment in a way Benny Lang could never be.
“Don’t think he’ll do it,” Daniel said morosely. “Them Rivington fullers, they’re where the repeaters ‘n’ cartridges come from. Ain’t smart to rile ‘em. Stacked against that, poor Georgie’s a small fish.”
Caudell sighed. “I’m afraid you’re right, Rufus.”
Laughter and shouts of fury, mixed with harsh coughs, came from behind him. He whirled around. When he saw a cabin with smoke billowing out its door and windows, his first thought was that it had caught on fire. Then he noticed the flat board placed over the top of the chimney. It wasn’t a fire, it was a prank. To confirm that, the evident prankster stood a few feet away from his handiwork, laughing so hard he could barely stand up. That was unwise. Three men had been in the cabin, and they set on him with intent to maim. His laughter abruptly turned to cries of pain.
“Goddam fool,” Rufus Daniel said.
“Yup. Well, we’d better get ‘em apart.” Caudell raised his voice to a shout: “You there, that’s enough! Break it up!” He and Daniel ran toward the combatants. “Break it up, I tell you!”
The three turned loose the one. Now he could hardly stand because he’d been badly knocked around. Rufus Daniel put hands on hips, stared scornfully at the battered private. “Well, Gideon, looks to me like you got ‘bout what you deserve.”
Gideon Bass felt cautiously under his right eye. It was already purpling; he’d have a fine shiner tomorrow. But a grin quickly crept back onto his face. He was only nineteen, an age when a man is often willing to suffer for his art. “Oh, but weren’t it a hell of a fine smudge, Sarge?” he said.
Caudell turned on the three men who had been smoked out. One had just taken the offending board off the chimney, and was sidling around toward the back of the cabin. Caudell’s cough froze the would-be escapee in his tracks. “Nice try, John,” he said. “Now come on back.” As nonchalantly as he could, John Floyd rejoined David Leonard and Emelius Pullen. Caudell glared at all. three of them. “You don’t go beating on your mates.”
“You seen what he done, First Sergeant,” Floyd protested. His voice had an upcountry twang to it; he and Leonard were from Davidson County, a long way west of Caudell’s home.
“I saw it,” Caudell said. “You all should have just grabbed him and let Sergeant Daniel and me deal with him. We would have, I promise you that.” He turned to Daniel. “What shall we do with ‘em now?”
“Up to you, Nate” but I don’t reckon tomfoolery’s worth takin’ to the captain,” Daniel said. “These three done breathed smoke awhile, and this ‘un’s got a set o’ lumps. You ask me, it’s even.”
“Fair enough,” Caudell said after a pause intended to convey that he was going along with the suggestion only out of the goodness of his heart. When that pause had sunk in, he added, “This had better be the end of it. If there’s a next time, you’ll all be sorry. Understand?”
“Yes, First Sergeant,” the miscreants intoned with unctuous sincerity.
“Why don’t y’all go someplace else for a while, Gideon?” Rufus Daniel put in. “Someplace a good ways away, I mean, and stay there till suppertime.”
Bass strode away. As he rounded a corner, Caudell heard him guffaw. He rolled his eyes. “What are we going to do with him?”
“Hope nobody wrings his fool neck till the fightin’ starts. That oughta settle him down some, maybe,” Daniel said. “Hope Dempsey don’t hear about this, too, otherwise we ‘uns is gonna get smudged one fine day.”
“One fine day soon,” Caudell said; Dempsey Eure loved mischief. “Other thing is, Dempsey’s too smart to stand around waiting for us to come out and beat on him. He’d turn up an hour later looking all innocent, and we’d never be able to prove a thing.”
Rufus Daniel grinned. “We’d git him anyways.” He sounded as if he were looking forward to it.
When Sunday morning rolled around, Caudell joined most of the regiment at divine services. Chaplain William Lacy was a Presbyterian, while the majority of the men he served—Caudell among them—were Baptists, but he had proved himself a good and pious man, which counted for more than differences in creed.
“Let us bend our heads in prayer,” he said. “May God remember our beloved Confederacy and keep it safe. May He lift up his hand and smite that of the oppressor, and may our true patriots in gray withstand their test with bravery.”
“Amen,” Caudell said. He added a silent prayer of his own for General Lee.
Lacy said, “I will take as my text today Romans 8:28: ‘We know that all things work together for good to them that love God.’ We see it illustrated in the events of the past few weeks. When our army came short of success at Gettysburg, many may have suffered a loss of faith that our cause would triumph. But now God has delivered into our hands these fine new repeaters with which to renew the fight, and through them He will deliver into our hands the Yankees who seek to subjugate us.”
“You tell ‘em, preacher!” a soldier called.
Lacy paced back and forth as he warmed to his sermon. He was a tall, lean man with a neat beard and clean-shaven upper lip. He wore a black coat of almost knee length, with green olive branches embroidered on each sleeve to show his calling.