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’Tis now a torn and tattered rag
But we will bear it aloft again.”
    Another rumble sounded again. Louder this time.
    Not thunder, Louis thought.

CHAPTER SIX
    SMOKE

Thursday, May 5, 1864
    The crackling sound was coming from somewhere on the other side of the confusing tangle of hills and forests in which they’d found themselves lost. Rutted roads so narrow that they seemed no more than trails led off in every direction. Not a marker to be seen anywhere. Whatever signs there might have been had been taken down by the Southern soldiers whose land they were invading.
    Sounds like corn popping , Louis thought, wiping the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. But it’s not . It’s rifles.
    They’d advanced a mile or so since the battle began. It was nothing like what he had expected. Rather than ranks of Gray soldiers, all Louis had seen so far was tangles of cedars and vines, pines and heavy brush cut here and there by dirt trails and meandering streams. Midday sun hot on his shoulders. From the woods to his left came the familiar sound of a cardinal’s song, fweet-fweet-fweet, cheer, cheer, cheer.
    Louis sniffed the warm air. Smoke in it now for sure.
    Somewhere ahead of them General Hancock, the Second Corps commander, had given the order to keep advancing. They’d find good ground ahead. At least that was what the colonel who brought back the order told them before he rode off.
    Sergeant Flynn growled from the tree stump he was standing on to Louis’s left, trying without success to see more than fifty feet up the twisted trail.
    â€œGood ground for the Rebs, but not us. No way for the artillery to find them in these godforsaken woods. They’ll be shooting at us from behind every tree. Babes in the wilderness ’tis what we are!”
    Flynn was talking to himself in a low voice that he thought no one else could hear. He’d not yet learned just how sharp were the ears of the brown-skinned young man who made it a point to seem as if he were not listening.
    The wilderness . A good name for where we are.
    The sergeant hopped down from his perch. “Follow me, lads,” he boomed. “Stick like a burr to the men to the left and the right of ye. If ye get confused, just march toward the sounds of the guns.”
    Louis cocked his head. Something was coming fast from up ahead. Hoofbeats were thudding in their direction from one of those roads that disappeared into the woods.
    â€œCavalry,” Louis yelled.
    â€œOff the road!” Flynn bellowed.
    The men of Company E scattered to every side. Hats and bedrolls went flying in their haste to avoid the hooves galloping down on them. Louis barely held on to his rifle as he dove and rolled, coming up against the sharp roots of a cedar that tore a hole in the right knee of his trousers.
    As quickly as they had appeared, the company of Union cavalrymen was gone. They left behind a cloud of dust, the echo of hooves and jingling spurs, the memory of gaily decorated horses, shining boots, spotless blue uniforms, and plumed hats . . . and more than a few curses.
    Louis rubbed his leg. It was bleeding just below his knee.
    My first war wound. But there are no medals given for damage done by members of our own army—if the cavalry can be called that.
    â€œAnd there go our thoughtful lads on their lovely great steeds,” Sergeant Flynn called down from the top of the pine stump where he had taken refuge. “Bless their mounted souls—if they have any.”
    Louis understood the irony in Flynn’s words. After only two weeks in uniform he shared the foot soldier’s lack of affection for the danged horsey boys. Cavalrymen could dash in and out of battle as they pleased without even losing the crease in their pants. Their feet didn’t burn from marching for hours without stopping or their backs ache from lugging a forty-pound pack. And every cavalryman seemed to take it for granted that the roads belonged