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By Root 411 0

his head to clear the sound, closed his eyes, saw Barksdale go streaming to his death against a flaming fence in the brilliant afternoon, hair blazing out behind him like white fire. Longstreet rode up the ridge toward the darker ground under the trees. Barksdale lies under a sheet. They have not covered his face; there is a flag over him. Semmes is dead. How many others? Longstreet cleared the brain, blew away bloody images, the brilliant fence in the bright gleaming air of the afternoon, tried to catalogue the dead. Must have figures. But he was not thinking clearly. There was a rage in his brain, a bloody cloudy area like mud stirred in a pool. He was like a fighter who has been down once and is up again, hurt and in rage, looking to return the blow, looking for the opening. But it was a silent rage, a crafty rage; he was learning war. He rode purposefully, slowly off into the dark, feeling the swelling inside his chest like an unexploded bomb and in the back of his mind a vision of that gray rocky hill* all spiked with guns, massed with blue troops at the top, and he knew as certainly as he had ever known anything as a soldier that the hill could not be taken, not anymore, and a cold, metal, emotionless voice told him that coldly, calmly, speaking into his ear as if he had a companion with him utterly untouched by the rage, the war, a machine inside wholly unhurt, a metal mind that did not feel at all.

“Sir?”

Longstreet swiveled in the saddle: Sorrel. The man said warily, “Captain Goree is here, sir. Ah, you sent for him.”

Longstreet looked, saw the skinny Texan, gestured. Sorrel backed off. Longstreet said, “T. J. Want you to get out to the right and scout the position. No more damn fool countermarches in the morning. Take most of the night but get it clear, get it clear. I’ve got Hood’s division posted on our right flank. Or what’s left of it. I’ve put Law in command. You need any help, you get it from Law, all right?”

The Texan, a silent man, nodded but did not move. Longstreet said, “What’s the matter?”

“They’re blaming us,” Goree said. His voice was squeaky, like a dry wagon wheel. He radiated anger. Longstreet stared.

“What?”

“I been talking to Hood’s officers. Do you know they blame us? They blame you. For today.”

Longstreet could not see the bony face clearly, in the dark, but the voice was tight and very high, and Longstreet thought: he could be a dangerous man, out of control.

Goree said, “You may hear of it, General. I had to hit this fella. They all said the attack was your fault and if General Lee knowed he wouldn’t have ordered it and I just couldn’t just stand there and I couldn’t say right out what I felt, so I had to hit this one fella. Pretty hard. Had to do it. Aint goin’ to apologize neither. No time. But. Thought you ought to know.”

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, that’s good.” Longstreet meditated. “Well, don’t worry on it. Probably won’t hear another thing if you didn’t kill him. Probably forgotten in the morning. One thing: I want no duels. No silly damn duels.”

“Yes, sir. Thing is, if anything bad happens now, they all blame it on you. I seen it comin’. They can’t blame General Lee. Not no more. So they all take it out on you. You got to watch yourself, General.”

“Well,” Longstreet said. “Let it go.”

“Yes, sir. But it aint easy. After I saw you take all morning trying to get General Lee to move to the right.”

“Let it go, T. J. We’ll talk on it after the fight.”

Goree moved out. There goes a damn good man. Longstreet felt the warmth of unexpected gratitude. He swung the black horse toward Lee’s headquarters back on the road to Cashtown. Time now to talk. Good long talk. Watch the anger. Careful. But it is true. The men shied from blaming Lee. The Old Man is becoming untouchable. Now more than anything else he needs the truth. But … well, it’s not his fault, not the Old Man. Longstreet jerked the horse, almost ran into Sorrel. They came out into a patch of bright moonlight. Longstreet saw: The man was hurt.

“Major,” Longstreet said harshly. “How are you?”

“Sir? Oh, I