The charge from the road to the trees was ragged but effective. The sunlit blue flashes, bright as plumage, became the trouser legs of a half-dozen patrolling enemy horsemen. The Yanks galloped off when Charles's men cantered into the grove, assorted shoulder weapons ready.

Charles went in first, his double-barrel shotgun cocked. The Academy and Texas had taught him that successful officers led; they didn't prod. No one exemplified that more than the rich and physically powerful planter who'd raised the legion. Hampton was one of the rare ones who didn't need West Point to teach them to soldier.

Among the walnut trees, with shotguns booming, muskets snapping replies, smoke thickening, Charles's troop scattered. The men went skylarking off every which way, taunting the retreating enemy, now barely visible.

"Where you Yankee boys goin' so fast?"

"Come on, turn around and fight us!"

"They aren't worth our time, lads," Ambrose Pell cried. "Wish our niggers were here. They could chase 'em."

A single musket shot from a dark part of the grove punctuated the last of his sentence. Charles instinctively ducked down close to Dasher's neck. The bay seemed nervous, uncertain, even though, like all of the legion's horses, she'd been drilled to the sound of shotgun and artillery fire in camp in Columbia.

A ball whizzed past. Sergeant Peterkin Reynolds yelled. Charles fired both barrels into the trees. Immediately, he heard a cry of pain.

He yanked Dasher's head hard, turning back. "Reynolds—?" The sergeant, pale but grinning, held up his cadet gray sleeve to show a tear near the cuff and only a small spot of blood.

Friends of Reynolds treated the wounding less lightly. "God­damn tailors and shoemakers on horseback," one man shouted as he galloped past Charles, who vainly ordered him back.