“No, sir.” Normally a fluent speaker, Venable seemed to be struggling to put what he thought into words: “I do believe he is the most peculiar man I’ve ever met. His carbine, his gear, even the food he eats and the coffee he drinks…I’ve not seen nor heard of their like anywhere.”

“Nor have I, and with their uniform excellence and convenience, I should hope I would have, the better to wage this war,” Lee said. “There is also more to it than that. The man knows more than he lets on. How could he have learned of my orders sending General Hoke south? That still perplexes me, and worries me no small amount as well. Had he been exposed ‘as a fraud, I would have had some hard questions to ask him about it, and asked them in as hard way as need. As is—” Lee shrugged. “He is manifestly a good Southern man. How long do you suppose we could have lasted, Major, had he chosen to go north and sell his rifles to the enemy?”

Venable made a sour face, as if disliking the taste of that idea. “Not long, sir.”

“I quite agree. They outweigh us enough as is. But he chose our cause instead, so for the time being the hard questions can wait. And he is a pious man. No one who was not would read his Testament late at night where nobody could be expected to see him.”

“Every word you say is true, sir,” Venable said. “And yet—I don’t know—everything Rhoodie has seems too good to be true somehow.”

“The Union has had the advantage in material goods all through the war, Major. Are you saying we are not entitled to our share, or that, if fortune should for once choose to favor us, we ought not to take advantage of it?”

“Put that way, no, of course not, General Lee.”

“Good,” Lee said. “For I intend to wring every drop of advantage from it that I may.”

A plume of woodsmoke announced a train heading up the Orange and Alexandria Railroad to the little town of Orange Court House. Lee pointed to it with the eagerness of a boy who spies his Christmas present being fetched in. “If I have calculated rightly, gentlemen, that will be the train from Rivington. Shall we ride to meet it, and see this first consignment of Mr. Rhoodie’s rifles?”