Liking for these high-spirited youngsters tempered Charles's professional reservations. He shouldn't let them continue singing, but he did, relishing in silence his own separateness. He was only a year or two older than most of them, but he felt like a parent.

"So faithful in love and so dauntless in war — there never was a knight like young Lochinvar!"

How they loved their Scott, these Southern boys. The women were no different. All of them worshiped Scott's chivalric vision and endlessly read every novel and poem he'd written to give it life. Maybe that odd devotion to old Sir Walter was one of the clues to this decidedly odd war which as yet had not quite begun. Cousin Cooper, considered the heretic of the Main family, often said the South looked back too much, instead of concentrating on today — or the North, where manufactories like the great iron­works of the Hazard family dominated the physical and political landscapes. Looking backward worshipfully to the era of Scott's plumed knights was a custom Cooper excoriated passionately and often.

Suddenly, ahead, two shots. A shout from the rear. Twisting to look back, Charles saw that the trooper who'd cried out was still upright — surprised, not hit. Swinging front again and silently cursing his inattention, he focused on a thick walnut grove down the road to the right. Flashes of blue amid the trees confirmed the source of the musket fire.

Ambrose and several others reacted to the sniping with grins. "Let's go catch that bunch," a private whooped.

You idiot, Charles thought as his midsection tightened. He glimpsed horses in the grove and heard the pop of other muskets, overlaid by the roar of his own voice bellowing the order to charge.