Winter came out of a burning house, his trim, light-colored suit stained with stripes of blood and ash. A rider spotted him and tried to wheel his horse around but Winter raised the revolver in his left hand, thumbed the hammer back, and fired. The rider dropped. Then Winter raised the gun in his right hand and killed another young man, green and inexperienced, who had rushed to this place when he heard that his neighbors needed him. The bullet caught him full in the chest and knocked him down to the earth where he bled out his last.
Winter fired his weapons twice more and drove the riders back. As he turned to flee into the woods he looked over his shoulder and his eyes, wide and yellow, locked with Bill’s. Until the day he died Bill would remember their lack of expression. No betrayal, anger, fear, surprise. Nothing. Just bright, alert, and empty. Like the eyes of a mountain lion that glances with magnificent disinterest at the hunter before it plunges away into the underbrush, back into the profound wilderness, unaffected by a brief intercession with the world of men.
9
What was left of the Family waited for Winter in the stand of blackjack oaks on the small hill where they had spent the night before. Now the sun blazed down on them from the east and the smoke rose from the burning town from the west and they could hear, faintly, the cries of their pursuers: the horses, the hounds, the men.
They waited as long as they dared, then fell to quarreling. Some men wanted to flee, others wanted stay out of loyalty to Winter, or fear of what he would do if they broke faith with him. But eventually it dawned on them, all of them, that Winter had broken faith with them. That he was gone. That he was not coming. That he had left them to their fate. And so they scattered and fled.
Winter was not far, but far enough. He had dug a hole at the foot of a tall tree and into this hole he dropped his meager possessions: his suit, his belt, his guns, his razor, his watch. Then he covered them with earth and left them behind, walking with purpose, as if he knew exactly where he was going and why. Like he always did.
Quentin Ross came from a good family in Chicago and he had a mind like quicksilver, light and lively. But he enjoyed pulling the wings off flies, he lit fires and wet the bed, and he lied, lied all of the time: constant, endless, profitless, senseless lies.
After the Battle of Fort Sumter, at the outset of the War of the Rebellion, Quentin’s family sought to rid themselves of him by using their money and influence to obtain him a commission in the Twenty-Sixth Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment. A thousand men served in the Twenty-Sixth Illinois, a hundred in Company A, and fifty in Lieutenant Quentin Ross’s platoon. After only a few days Quentin knew each by name and enough about them to carry on a few minutes of conversation with any of them. It seemed to him that the men would like him for it, and they did. Every night, before he slept, he ran through their names in his mind, feeling a secret covetous joy.
In the fall of 1861 Quentin’s platoon marched to war with the Army of the Tennessee, creeping down the Tennessee River and capturing Fort Henry. Quentin distinguished himself during the Battle of Shiloh. His courage and ferocity, his almost unnatural coolness in the terrible slaughterhouse of modern war, were subsequently confirmed during the Siege of Vicksburg, where the Union gained access to the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy in two, and the Chattanooga Campaign, which drove the Confederacy from Tennessee.
And yet despite the high attrition among the officers, the deaths from battle, suicide, and disease, and all the sudden and irreversible descents into madness, Quentin Ross never rose above the rank of lieutenant. For all of his courage his superiors lacked faith in him. He had not forsaken his old habit of mendacity, and certain stories were whispered about his habits, proclivities, appetites. None of these things, on their own, should have prevented the rise of such a brave and competent officer, considering the times. The greatest hindrance, perhaps, was that he was too well adapted to war, too free and easy with it, like a fish darting through clear water. There was something vaguely disquieting about his sense of humor and the way he looked when he smiled.
In 1864 the Army of the Tennessee marched southeast from Chattanooga under General William Tecumseh Sherman, toward Atlanta. Quentin Ross and his men were with them. The Union forces pushed the Confederates to the gates of the city and then smashed them in the Battle of Atlanta. The city fell during the first week of September.
The Confederate general entrusted with the defense of Atlanta regrouped and circled north, threatening the Union supply lines. General Sherman faced a difficult decision. He could chase after the Confederates, back the way he’d come, or he could stay in Atlanta and risk running out of supplies. He decided upon a third option: to put Atlanta to the torch, feint south toward the city of Macon to misdirect the Confederates, and then march east across the state of Georgia, living off the country until his army reached the sea. To do so, however, he would need many scouts and foragers. Word circulated, and Quentin Ross volunteered.
After minimal discussion, he was selected. It somehow seemed a natural fit.
Quentin immediately set to work assembling a group of fifteen men. He began by replacing an obstreperous sergeant with a trusting and pliant German named Jan Müller. Quentin would have replaced his other sergeant, Gordon Service, if he thought he could have gotten away with it. But trading two sergeants would surely have raised suspicions, and raising suspicions was something Quentin was careful to avoid.
Next Quentin reached outside of the military. A marching army picks up many followers, including the wives and children of the men, prostitutes, traders, peddlers, preachers, and adventurers of all sorts. The Empire brothers — Duncan, Charlie, and Johnny — had been trailing after the Twenty-Sixth Illinois since Missouri. Quentin had found uses for them before, and he thought they would fit in nicely.
That left the enlisted men. Quentin selected them almost at random, since they did not need to be particularly vicious; Quentin had learned early on that gentle pressure from figures in authority could compel ordinary men to evil as easily as those of depraved character. He simply needed to ensure that he did not bring any remarkable individuals with him. It did not occur to him, even for the briefest instant, that young Augustus Winter (awkward, withdrawn, and silent) was remarkable for anything other than the unusual color of his eyes.
Georgia 1864
10
They rode east through the autumn woods with the sky rumbling above their heads and the air thick with the threat of rain. No one spoke. They were perhaps two or three days ahead of the main army, taking the winding back roads to avoid being seen and wearing ragged overalls instead of uniforms. Still, anyone would have known they were Union soldiers by their Spencer rifles and horses. Young men were a rarity in this part of the world; their movements could not avoid scrutiny.
Around noon they reached a fork in the road and Quentin called a halt. He gave the enlisted men permission to light a fire, despite the frowning disapproval of Sergeant Gordon Service, and jauntily announced that it would be the last time they ate hardtack for a fortnight.