hly stocked, forlorn as
Harlequin in the day's stress. In and around and over all these stranded
hulls roared the opposing forces. Steve saw Ashby, on the black
stallion, directing with a gauntleted hand. Four great draught horses,
drawing a loaded van, without a driver, maddened with fright, turned
into this street up and down which there was much fighting. A shout
arose. Carbines cracked. One of the leaders came down upon his knees.
The other slipped in blood and fell. The van overturned, pinning beneath
it one of the wheel horses. Its fall, immediately beside the Conestoga,
blocked Steve's window. He turned to crawl to the other side. As he did
so the wounded soldier in the straw had a remark to make. He made it in
the dreamy voice he had used before. "Don't you smell cloth burning?"

Steve did; in an instant saw it burning as well, first the corner of the
canvas cover, then the straw beneath. He gave a screech. "We're on fire!
Gawd! I've got to get out of this!"

The man in the straw talked dreamily on. "I got a bullet through the end
of my backbone. I can't sit up. I been lying here studying the scoop of
this here old wagon. It looks to me like the firmament at night, with
all the stars a-shining. There's no end of texts about stars. 'Like as
one star differeth from another--'" He began to cough. "There seems to
be smoke. I guess you'll have to drag me out, brother."

At the end of the village a stone fence ran between two houses, on the
other side of a little garden slope planted with potatoes. In the shadow
of the wall a line of men, kneeling, rested rifle barrel upon the coping
and fired on Hatch's cavalry, now much broken, wavering toward
dispersion. At first the line was hidden by a swirl of smoke; this
lifted, and Steve recognized a guidon they had planted, then the men
themselves. They were the Louisiana Tigers, Wheat's Battalion,
upgathered from levee and wharf and New Orleans purlieu, among many of a
better cast, not lacking rufflers and bravos, soldiers of fortune whom
Pappenheim might not have scorned. Their stone wall leaped fire again.

Steve looked to heaven and earth and as far around as the dun cloud
permitted, then moved with swiftness across the potato patch. All about
in the mingled dust and smoke showed a shifting pageantry of fighting
men; upon the black earth below the rank green leaves and purple blooms
lay in postures hardly conceivable the dead and wounded. In the line by
the stone fence