

## Rourke

### by

### James Whitesell

Copyright@2016 by James Whitesell

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### Dedication

Peter E. Whitesell. He stepped forward and served his country for four years in the Civil War. Endured privations unfathomable to us today. Somehow survived the major battles and nearly died of disease after being incarcerated in a prisoner of war camp. His home valley destroyed by enemy cavalry while he was in the prison camp. His homeland ruined, he went west after the war to start a new life. We are proud to be his descendants.

Peter E. Whitesell.

Co. I, 33rd Virginia Infantry, the Stonewall Brigade.

Army of Northern Virginia

Confederate States of America

No way will the pap of political correctness dishonor his memory.

### Author's Introduction

From childhood on my interest was captured by three compelling historical threads. Ones that remain to this day in my advanced geezerhood. The American Civil War. World War II. And the Minnesota Dakota war. The reasons? Personal. Family stories about an ancestor who fought on both sides in the Civil War. My father's younger brother killed in action in World War II. And growing up in Minnesota, on ground once the land of the Dakota--the Sioux--Indians. These three subjects, underlying life's usual milestones, education, family, work (and plenty of mis/adventures), have long gestated within me. No more. Years of writing experience were finally put to use. The first of my historical threads to see print was a World War II historical novel, Ausgleich--Scales of Justice. It is a heavily researched book in a quasi-fictional format that challenges our smug good guy/bad guy good vs. evil view of World War II. Unusual for a work of fiction, it has an extensive bibliography.

Now, with Rourke, the other pair of gestating historical interests are put to digital print. The Dakota War of 1862 and its contemporary, the American Civil War--where, in researching family history, I was astonished to discover my ancestors' experiences in that war were like a poor man's Gone With The Wind. Though no characters in Rourke are based on them, they nevertheless were present when many of the events in the book took place, including Gettysburg, Richmond's Chimborazo Hospital, Fort Delaware Union POW camp and the burning of the Shenandoah Valley.

Rourke was heavily researched and is presented in an historical fiction format that is embedded in genuine events and locations. It also has an extensive bibliography. The lens through which this book views the Civil War is that of the ordinary soldier and civilian, particularly in the South, and challenges the conventional mainstream view of the Civil War being fundamentally about slavery. Maybe it was so to the movers and shakers, the big dogs, North and South. Not so much to the ordinary folks.

The Minnesota Sioux uprising sections of Rourke are anchors for future books set in the post-Civil War west. Rourke challenges the view of the Dakota Indians as being pitiless bloodthirsty savages, the Americans' own bloodthirsty retribution following the Sioux uprising a mockery of the vaunted legal, egalitarian and democratic ideals of the nation.

Above all, Rourke, and Ausgleich, play the literary dead march to the world shattering calamities that wars visit upon the ordinary people ensnared in them.

No matter what side they're on.
Table Of Contents

Prologue.

Chapter 1: The First Glimpse

Chapter 2: Missouri

Chapter 3: The Shenandoah Valley

Chapter 4: The 33rd Virginia

Chapter 5: The Rebel Cavalry

Chapter 6: Kentucky

Chapter 7: Little Crow

Chapter 8: The Shenandoah 1864

Chapter 9: Antrim Requiem

Chapter 10: Return to Minnesota

Chapter 11: Bibliography

Chapter 12: Sample The Lords Of Power

### ROURKE

by

James Whitesell

Prologue

The raiders disappeared into the great roiling tumult of the vast American West where no one would ever find them.

Or so they thought.

Late summer. 1865. The guns of war were silent. As silent as the graves of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died in the horrific fratricidal blood letting that came close to fracturing the corpus of the raw boned adolescent United States of America. A nation so new that its oldest citizens were older than the country itself. There were thousands upon thousands of dead. Mountains of them. Many hundreds of graveyards, some hastily dug on the battlefields, others outside the military camps, where more soldiers died from disease during the war than in battle. Mute scars that would remain as bitter reminders on the landscapes of the former border and southern states. It was a country full of widows and orphans, legions of veterans maimed body, mind and soul, and thousands upon more thousands of shattered and ruined lives. A high price to pay for unity. Too high, some thought.

Among those who thought the price too high were the three men riding on an old Sioux trail on the bluffs overlooking the meandering muddy Minnesota. The Missouri wasn't the only muddy river in the west. The Minnesota took it a descriptive step beyond the Muddy Missouri. The name itself. Minnesota was the Dakota word for muddy water. Ten years earlier this trail wound through the land of the Dakota. Which is the name the local Native Americans called themselves, Dakota, though almost everyone else continued to call them the Sioux, an exonym loosely derived from a pejorative name their hereditary enemies, the Ojibwe, called them.

After untold generations of living here, along this river and far beyond to the north and east and south, the Dakota were gone. Dead or scattered to the west winds where their Nakota and Lakota cousins remained defiant and as yet undefeated. But not in this place. Here _was_ defeat. Utter, complete, total defeat. The Dakota were swept away so completely it was almost as though they had never existed. Only the occasional lonely survivor and the bones of their ancestors remained. In the years from the 1850's into the mid 1860's the Minnesota River Valley experienced more change than the accumulations of millennia. The reason?

The Americans had arrived.

Not soldiers, or trappers or explorers or fugitives or intrepid adventurers. Not this time. Settlers. As so many other Native American tribes had already learned to their eventual ruination, the settlers came to stay. They were like wizards to the Sioux, with their tools and knowledge of arcane matters beyond the ken of the Dakota worldview. The newcomers took their metal axes to the forests, damned the creeks and rivers, ripped open prairie sod with their iron-tipped plows to plant crops alien to Dakota experience. They brought fruit trees and domestic animals. They sailed huge steamships on the big rivers. They built forts and towns and the beginnings of great cities. They staked out chunks of unfenced Dakota land and claimed it solely for themselves. They brought with them the cornucopia of their civilization. They also brought alcohol and diseases for which the Dakota had no acquired immunities. The diseases decimated one Native American tribe after another, some to extinction.

To be sure, the Americans were wizards to the Dakota mind. _Devil_ wizards. Devil wizards who put an end to the Dakota way of life. They made the Dakota world a species of hell. But the wizards also made their own hell. They called it the Civil War. A war, in battlefield reality, about as civil as the descending blade of the guillotine in France's own fratricidal conflict. These three men were caught in the maelstrom of war. Not just the Civil War. There was a second war, one born in the tumult of the Civil War. The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862. A war fought over the very ground where the three horsemen were riding that day. Two vicious wars that commingled in the lives of the three horsemen in a hellish alchemy that changed them in ways only survivors of the cauldron of war could understand. They were survivors. Survivors with a mission that rose to the level of a overarching quest. They were pursuers, avengers, bent on the Biblical Eye For An Eye. They would find the raiders. And visit upon them the retribution of the Righteous.

Or so they, with the intense fervency of a Crusader, believed.

" _God oh God_ ," the old man's memory repeated inside his head as it had nearly every day during the long string of gloomy months. "I shoulda' been there. Mebbe...mebbe if I...I'd a...." the thought, as it mostly did, faded into an opaque cloud in his brain that his conscious mind could not, or, more probably, would not, penetrate. Before his mind closed off the tormented memory, a single image lingered in his mind. It was the year previous. 1864. He was out on the Dakota prairie, scouting for General Sully's army, an army hell bent on crushing the resistance of the Sioux tribes once and for all. A handful of soldiers came riding with incautious haste towards him, a major from General Sully's staff in the lead, his face a tightly closed mask. The somber major reined up, a fresh-faced lieutenant at his side. The young officer, Lt. Isiah Trimble, West Point, Class of '62, specifically detailed by Colonel DeWitt at far off Fort Snelling and sent to find the old man, pulled out an envelope from his saddlebag and handed it to Whit. Lt. Trimble said nothing, but the grim-faced major, an acquaintance of the old man, leaned forward and spoke what everyone else who knew the contents of the envelope was thinking.

"We are so, so sorry, Mr. Jackson."

Shaken, Whit took the envelope, opened it and read the contents. He stared, ashen faced, wordlessly, at the major. What was there to say? His life was shattered into so many pieces that it there was no question of it ever being made whole again. A year had passed and he still felt broken and empty and angry. And vengeful. _Above all_ , vengeful. The bile of unconsummated retribution so churned his guts that he had to force his mind to a more pleasant memory. Of more than a generation ago, in the Minnesota River Valley, not far from where they were now riding.

He was a young man in his twenties then, fresh from the Virginia farm to the western wilderness. He met another adventurous easterner, a thick-bodied russet haired Vermont youth named Moses Taylor, almost a decade younger than Jackson and virginal in the ways of the wilderness. The two had ventured out from the stone-walled security of imposing Fort Snelling, built twenty years earlier at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers as an imposing harbinger to the Native Americans of what was to come.

"Look at that!" Moses Taylor said to his new friend, gesturing at a vast prairie stretching out before them, its waist high grasses swaying rhythmically in the wind and making a gentle murmuring sound that struck Whit as Mother Nature's own music. The pair stood in awe, staring at the wondrous sight.

"Just you be careful out there, you two," had cautioned a sergeant at the fort before they left. "The Sioux ain't hostile, but there always be a wild hair or two out to make trouble." He jabbed a finger at them. "Be alert. _Always_. Alert. And be back in the fort before dark."

They took his advice and walked on along the river that the Sioux called the Muddy Water, the Minnesota. Not far from the fort they began to see Indians. Men lounging outside their teepees, women and girls picking berries in the woods alongside the river, young boys frolicking in the summer sun, two men returning from a hunt with a gutted and quartered whitetail deer on their shoulders. They were different people from Whit's, yet seemed not all that different.

"This be the world o' the wild Injuns we be hearin' so much about?" He said with some incredulity to his new friend.

"Not lookin too wild to me, Whit," Moses said, having had much the same impression as Whit. That was when Whit understood it for the first time. Odd as it might seem, he knew it in without a shadow of doubt. This was where he would make a new life. Not in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, the land of his birth. Here. The west.

This would be his home.

But, so many decades later, with that opened letter in hand the year earlier out on the Dakota prairie, it was all gone as quickly as the dry grass in a prairie wildfire. His family. Gone. All gone.

Murdered.

The old man, Whit Jackson, riding on the river bluff that day with two others, was on the far side of a generation older than the other two. A tough looking man on the sunset slope of sixty. Not an easterner or a city dweller. A veteran of the frontier. Grizzled. Bearded. Lean and wiry, dressed in worn buckskins. Underneath a beard the color of tarnished pewter was a hawk's face inherited from a Catawba Indian grandmother. An east coast tribe that, surprisingly, spoke a variant of a Siouan language. The old man's given name was Thaddeus Whitworth Jackson, long since known to all as Whit, and he rode a huge draft mule of over seventeen hands. In a scabbard at his side was a venerable but superbly crafted and deadly accurate Kentucky rifle converted a few years earlier to percussion. In his belt were a pair of Navy Colts and a finely engraved Bowie knife he won in a poker game. The old timer didn't look like a man to be trifled with.

It wasn't just a look.

The younger man riding at his side was taller. Square built. Even more dangerous looking. Whit Jackson's great-nephew William Jackson Rourke had pioneered in Minnesota, fought Indians, then made friends with at least some of them, built a home out of the wilderness and then gone off to four years of war. Just about the only famous place in the east he hadn't been in the Civil War in Virginia--to him it was the War Between the States--was Appomattox. Rourke rode off with many other Confederate cavalrymen just before the surrender. He never did surrender. And he never would. That didn't mean he bemoaned the fall of the Confederacy or embraced the mythology of either the Great Emancipation or the Lost Cause. He didn't. He scorned both sides for getting into that cataclysmic war when they could have--and, he still firmly believed, _should_ have--resolved their differences far more peaceably and laid the evil of slavery forever to rest without the horrific fratricidal slaughter that would scar the nation's soul for generations to come. Not surrendering was personal to Will Rourke, not political. He was determined. Stubborn. As resilient and tough as a chunk of recalcitrant ironwood. Like his great-uncle Whit Jackson.

Rourke was thirty years old, doubly hardened by war and tragedy. He was an intensely somber man, his blue eyes stern in an unsmiling face that had the same wild hawk's look as his grandmother's brother. His hair was flaxen, his skin bronzed and weathered from a rugged outdoor life. Years earlier he had been handsome. Now his look was that of a hard, dangerous man. Four years of war, a losing war, were stamped permanently on him, percolating from his stoic bearing down into the tiniest crevasses in the marrow of his bones. It was impossible for him to return to his life from before the war. For more reasons than one. The war was one of the reasons. But not the only one. Even the carnage of the war did not rise to the causal pinnacle of his seething disquiet. Whit Jackson's family was not alone when they were murdered. Will Rourke's family was also there. And shared the same brutal fate. The murders were horrific enough in themselves. But there was yet more horror. The women in the families were murdered....

After they were repeatedly raped.

Riding at Rourke's side was a younger man, still only twenty-four after four years in the Confederate cavalry. Tom Sykes met Will Rourke when both were riding from their adopted northern homes to their Virginia birthplaces. They joined the Virginia Cavalry together and were mostly together in various units in the Rebel army through the long years of the war. Most, but not all. The gaps that made up 'not all' were themselves sour nightmares only recalled with surly vitriol. Both men carried a pair of Navy Colt revolvers in their belts and shiny Spencer repeating rifles in scabbards alongside their saddles. The same weapons they'd had in the last months of the foolhardy lost war that had forever changed them and an entire nation. Weapons they dryly recalled were 'donated' to them by Union soldiers. Both men rode heavy bodied horses that were quick and agile as well as rugged. Horses of the predominant type most called Quarter Horses. Both animals also 'donated' by Union cavalrymen.

Somehow the middle-sized, stocky Sykes had come through the war with his friendly, cheerful ways intact. Maybe it was youth. Or maybe it was because his family hadn't been butchered in 1864 as Rourke's and Jackson's had been. Cheerful Tom Sykes, with his clean-shaven youthful face and shock of auburn hair, was a stark contrast to the somber hardness of his companions. On the surface. The carefree youthful look was only as deep as the image captured on a tintype. To the practiced observer a second, lingering, look pealed away the floss of surface congeniality. Underneath, like a subsurface layer of volcanic granite, he was a solid rock of a hardened veteran of the Rebel cavalry, forged in the crucible of privation and combat, who was more than capable of handling any trouble that came his way. Out in the west where they were riding there would be plenty of trouble for all of them.

It wouldn't be long in coming.

But this was all still in future. _After_ the war.....

The long and bitter war of the nation slaughtering itself.

## Rourke
## Book I

### The UnCivil War

Chapter 1: The First Glimpse

Will Rourke was not yet four years old. He was with his father, Peter, as they drove a wagon to nearby Harrisonburg to get supplemental feed for their horses. As they drove down a narrow dirt road, hemmed in by rail fences on both sides, Peter looked over at a nearby tobacco field. Black men were hunched over, working the ground. A white man stood erect behind them, hollering orders. Young Will looked questioningly up at his father.

"Who are they, father? They are dark. Why do they look different?" Peter Rourke was silent for a moment, wondering how to tell his son that, despite what he so often told his family about how they lived in a land that cherished freedom and liberty, human bondage still existed.

"They are slaves, son," Peter Rourke answered with a sour expression. "Black people who are held in slavery." Young Will's eyes remained riveted on the father he so trusted.

"What is slavery, father?" His father sighed. Deeply. This day had to come.

Thus began the introduction of young Peter Rourke to the schizophrenic world of 19th Century America. Though Peter Rourke was not about to burden his small son with his vision of the future, he already knew that slavery was a human time bomb that would one day explode in their lives.

An explosion that would reverberate through centuries yet to come.

### Roots

William Jackson Rourke was the somber former Rebel captain's name, though he was known to most simply as Will. Will Rourke. A very few intimates sometimes used the familiar Willy. Whatever he was called, even as a boy he stood out among the other boys in his rural chunk of Rockingham County in the lush Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. A valley where earlier generations of the Scots-Irish Rourkes and Jacksons built New World lives in a land formerly populated for untold millennia by Native Americans. Peoples now little more than memories faintly echoed in related place names like Shenandoah, the Allegheny range of the Appalachians and the Massanutten Mountain that bisected Rockingham County.

The Scots-Irish, who before emigrating hailed from the Protestant north of Ireland, shared one quintessential characteristic with the Catholic Irish. They were no friends of the English and their preening pompous overbearing aristocracy. It took no Colonial arm-twisting for them to take up arms during the American Revolution and become the stubborn backbone of George Washington's Continental Army. Hundreds of thousands of the Scots-Irish emigrated to the colonies of America and spread throughout and alongside the long spine of the Appalachians. Many of the early American presidents had Scots-Irish ancestry. Andrew Jackson preeminent among them, who himself became a Scots-Irish folk hero when he whipped the British at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812. It was another of life's perversities that only after the battle did Jackson learn that a peace treaty between the British and the Americans had been signed the previous month in Europe. _Before_ the battle.

Despite that, his war hero corona remained untarnished all the way to the White House. .

Will Rourke grew up in a country of mostly modest sized farms owned by the Scots-Irish and another large immigrant group, the Germans. Few of these small farmers had slaves and the world of the Shenandoah Valley was dissimilar to the plantation economies of the Piedmont and the Tidewater regions of eastern Virginia. The rugged and more inaccessible terrain of the Mountain and Range geography of western Virginia was a different world than that of the aristocratic slave driven plantation economy in the less daunting physical landscapes of east Virginia. The aristocrats, and the slaves, were in the Shenandoah Valley, too. But in smaller proportions. The traditionally anti-British attitudes of the Scots-Irish, and the anti-slavery views of the Germans, made for a generally distant, at times hostile, attitude towards the American aristocrats who the Scots-Irish considered to be far too much like the detested pompous English. Whit Jackson lumped them all together, the British and American aristocrats, and referred to them--often attended by a string of colorful adjectives--as 'pestercrats.' The only blacks that Will Rourke actually knew were the handful of freemen who worked as tradesmen in Rockingham County. He saw slaves, wondered over them, but never had much opportunity to talk to any of them. He did have a chance to engage with the slaves' masters from time to time, an experience that more often than not soured him the rest of his day. One in particular, when he was still a boy of fourteen, long stayed with him.

"Reuben, bring young Will Rourke here a glass of cool water." Will had stopped at the plantation of the prosperous and powerful Davis family looking for some work to make a few scarce dollars. Will was fourteen years old and the young aristocrat, Will Davis, the scion of the wealthy Davis family, wasn't much older. Reuben was a slave of about the same age. There was something about Reuben, and the peculiar interaction between master and slave that puzzled Will. Unlike the obsequious, masked or occasional hostile expressions he was accustomed to seeing on the faces of slaves, Reuben's was different. His humanity was there to plainly see. A hurt humanity. And Davis, preening aristocrat that he was, seemed to have almost a fondness for Reuben. Hidden perhaps, but there. It would be over a decade later that Rourke would understand the dynamics between them. But, for now, he was only a somewhat puzzled fourteen year old boy looking to make a few dollars. Which he did, using the carpentry skills learned on the farm to repair a sagging wall on the plantation's summer kitchen. As the shadows of evening spread over the valley he went home.

But he never quite forgot the peculiar feeling he got that day on the Davis plantation.

The rich valley of predominantly modest sized prosperous farms was only one thick strand in the fabric of Will Rourke's growing up years. The valley was surrounded by mountains where ranged the aboriginal creatures of eastern North America. Black bears, white tailed deer, wild turkeys and even a few vestigial wolves and cougars. Will and his friends spent their spare moments in the mountains. Hunting, fishing, camping, tracking. Exploring, both the natural world and themselves. Young Will Rourke was comfortable in his own skin and equally at home in both field and forest. He could plant a crop, shoe a horse, build a house, dig a well, do any of the myriad skills of a farm boy. And he was equally as adept in the thick forests of the surrounding mountains.

Will, already in his early teens large and powerful for his age, had a quiet confident strength that made him a natural leader. He grew up on a farm where the family treasured horses. Horses on the Rourke farm grown too old to work were not put down. They were put out to pasture. Peter Rourke, Will's father, once saying to a butcher who wanted to buy an old horse to render for meat and other commercial uses.

"Our horses have worked hard for us and deserve to live out their natural lives on our farm. I see no harm in that."

"No _harm_?" Sniffed the butcher. "They be just dumb animals," His sour whispered words never quite made it from his lips to Peter Rourke's ears. Just as well.

The butcher snorted, mumbled something else decidedly negative under his breath that Peter Rourke couldn't quite hear, and stomped off. The man was prudent not to openly insult Peter Rourke. He, like all the Rourkes, including the women, maybe even especially the women, were not people to wrongly antagonize. Except for the occasional rogue, endemic to many a roughhewn pioneering and farming family, the Rourkes were straight forward, honest folk. Salt of the earth.

True, they could be rigid and maddening and at times irascible. Some called them stubborn to a fault. But they were fair and hardworking and most were not enamored of the popular myths of the time. The very idea of slavery was even more repugnant to them than the puffery of the entitled aristocrats. They were not foolishly romantic about either slavery as the 'peculiar institution' of the South or the rabid abolitionism of the North. They believed the blacks should be freed. But free or slave, the blacks did not share their Scots-Irish heritage and would always be distinct from them. Nor did they either demonize or embrace the noble savage image of the Native Americans now vanished from the Shenandoah. They were a different people, with their own unique ways of living, who were inundated by more powerful and numerous peoples. A process as inexorable as an advancing glacier scraping away the lives of humans in its path along with the very land on which they lived.

The Rourkes, and the Scots-Irish, disinclined to linger over philosophical pratings on the pathologies of the human condition, looked on with the eye of practicality. They would ride the wave they were on as long as it lasted. And, with the multiplying inundations of fresh waves of immigration, the Scots-Irish wave was already starting to recede. Though its eddies would continue to swirl among the crags and hollows of Appalachia for many years to come. The Rourkes of the Shenandoah Valley were as tough as the nails they pounded into their homes and barns. The rugged pioneer spirit had not yet been tamed in them. They were not often the sort to start fights.

But, more often than not, they did know how to finish them.

"Look at the lad," Peter Rourke said to his wife, Sarah, one day as their son Will galloped off to cavort with his boyhood friends. "He was born to the saddle, that boy." Sarah answered without turning her head from watching her oldest son ride away.

"Yes, Peter," she replied. "Born to the saddle." Then she turned to look at her husband.

"And, I believe, much more."

The Rourke farm had a pair of thick bodied draft horses, solid creatures with considerable ancestry from the heavy bodied dray animals in the north of Europe, as well as a small stable of faster and more graceful carriage and riding horses that were a mixture of the English Thoroughbred and Spanish horses brought north from Florida in the 18th Century. Will Rourke was still a beardless boy in his early teens when he could work all day long with the team of huge draft horses, or ride all day long on a different day astride one of his family's small stable of riding horses, or, on another day, range the mountains on foot from sunrise to sunset. He was a remarkable young man, but not unique. There were many like him in those hard-raised country days where self reliance was as essential to life as the air itself.

"I throwed White Feather ta the groun and be thinkin' that be the en o' it," Whit Jackson said as they sat before the hearth of the Rourke farmhouse and he regaled the Rourkes with his tales from the wild west. "Then 'e 'as on 'is feet with a big grin on 'is Sioux face and befer I could say a 'ting I was flat on me back. White Feather stood over me, laffin', and then be reachin' down to pull me to me feet. From that day on we be best o' friends up ta this very day."

That was the watershed day when everything changed for young Will Rourke. The day his great-uncle Whit Jackson came in from the western wilderness to visit his Virginia family. The tales of wilderness adventure that Whit spun over the flickering light of the evening fireplace cast a bewitching spell over young Will's spirit that grabbed him and held him more tightly than any manmade net ever could. Even in the bright light of day the enchanted fireplace tales continued to dance before his spellbound eyes. When Whit Jackson retraced his journey back to his home in the western wilderness he was not alone. He had company.

Young Will Rourke.

A decade and a half later, aged in ways more attuned to a geologic time scale than a mere fifteen human scale years, the former Rebel Captain Will Rourke was remembering the past as they rode west over the prairie. How he had come to the Minnesota Territory at the beckoning of his adventurous great uncle back in the late spring of 1850. He was still a boy in years when he left his family's farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia at the age of fifteen and went wide eyed into the wilderness to make a life for himself. A boy in years, but, like most of his generation, Will was farm raised and intimately acquainted with the wide variety of practical skills of a farm boy. He knew his way around tools and hard work, animals and firearms. And he had work toughened ropy muscles to match his skills. He was ready for adventure.

He found it.

After a few years, and a handful of young Will's hair-raising pioneer frontier adventures, the Minnesota country was opened up by what the Americans called treaties and the Sioux called extortion. The settlers poured in from all over the country, but increasingly were Germanic peoples from the German speaking and Scandinavian lands in Europe. Hardly twenty years old then, Rourke married the captivating 17 year old dark-eyed French-Canadian beauty, Marie Bottineau, and started a family. Over the last half of the decade of the fifties he, working alongside his great-uncle Whit, built up a horse ranch and farm and a family. They called the place Antrim, after the Rourke and Jackson clans' Scots-Irish roots in Ulster Ireland's County Antrim.

By 1861 Will Rourke was a prosperous farmer and rancher with four living children. Like many of the farm families, they'd lost one of their children, a daughter, LaBelle, to what the well meaning but ineffectual local country doctor, scrawny New Hampshire born Zebulon Moss, simply called 'fever.' But the other four Rourke children thrived and grew as the Minnesota wilderness became less wild with each passing year. Life was good for the Rourkes and Jacksons as the decade of the 1860's dawned over the fecund Minnesota mixed landscape of forest, lake and prairie. The lakes and rivers were full of fish, the fields ripe with crops, the farms of the settlers well supplied with domestic animals and maturing orchards, the prairie home to the wandering buffalo, white tail deer abounded, there were still elk in places, the forests full of potential timber and firewood. It was, it seemed to them, a blessed land.

And then everything changed.

The bright dawn of hope and progress faded and almost disappeared. War clouds built up ominously overhead and clouded the vision of nearly the entire nation. Will got a fistful of letters from back east telling him almost all of the members of his family in Virginia were against secession, as was evidenced by the Virginia Secession Convention on April 4th of 1861 convincingly voting 2-1 against secession, but the family, with roots deep in Virginia, would remain loyal to the state should she make the fateful choice to secede.

Then came Fort Sumter and President Lincoln asked for a levy of 75,000 troops from the states, _all_ the states, including the Southern ones, to put down what he called the 'rebellion.' That was the final straw that broke the back of anti-secession sentiment in the South. Virginia voted to secede just two days after Lincoln's call for troops. Three more Southern States would soon follow and several others only stopped from seceding by interceding Union military force. Loyalty to one's home state, where lay the sweet earth of the fields that fed and nourished them, the familiar beloved towns they lived in, the cherished friends and relatives they'd known all their lives and the graveyard bones of their ancestors, was a palpable bond far stronger than the abstract notion of the inviolable unity of the United States of America. Almost all of the Rourkes and Jacksons of the Shenandoah Valley went with Virginia and joined up with the Confederacy.

Will Rourke had to make his choice. He wasn't much for the war, and he certainly wasn't for the southern aristocracy or slavery, yet he could not bring himself to turn his back on family and heritage. There was talk the government would eventually start drafting the men in his Minnesota neighborhood. Everyone was incensed by Southern secession and hotly demonized any pro-Southern sentiment.

"Are you with us, or against us?" Homer Austin, a neighbor, formerly from Massachusetts, said to Will when they were talking about the outbreak of war after the bombardment of Fort Sumter in South Carolina. "You have to choose a side, Will," he continued in a tone that had an edge of challenge. "We all do. My sons have already joined the Minnesota Volunteers." A probing look from Austin. "What do you propose to do, Will? You can't avoid this. Will you join the fight to preserve the Union?" Will didn't answer. He didn't have an answer. Not yet.

As war fever intensified and the pressure to join the fight to preserve the Union continued to intensify, Will realized that, be it now or in the future, he would be forced to make a choice. He was not a man to cut and run to avoid the war, as so many others would do. Including a man who was a Missouri Confederate deserter who jackrabbited for the California gold fields and sanctuary from the slaughter, his sense of whimsy therefore remaining intact to lighten the hearts of generations to come. His given name was Sam Clemens, but he would one day become famous under his pen name.

Mark Twain.

Rourke, finally, made his choice. The only one he could. Family and heritage. The place of his roots, where his ancestors pioneered, where his large Scots-Irish extended family still lived. Virginia. It was already invaded by the North. One day, as auspicious as any day in his entire life, Rourke mounted his horse and rode towards the birthplace of the American nation to join the Confederate cavalry with a young transplanted Virginian living in Indiana he later met along the way. Tom Sykes. Who had made the same choice as Rourke. Family and heritage were trump. They went south together, though south was more a political destination than a geographical one. Together they would ride east into Virginia and what would be nearly four long and hard years, most of it attached to Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

Whit Jackson stayed in Minnesota with his and Rourke's family to watch over and protect them. The year after Rourke left the Minnesota Sioux, the Santee, rose up and commenced a massacre that depopulated the frontier. The Santee Sioux were soon whipped and either surrendered or retreated deeper into the vastnesses of the tallgrass and, farther west, the seemingly infinite shortgrass prairies, where the immense herds of buffalo still lumbered over the grasslands in their uncounted millions. The Dakota diehards who escaped to the west kept on raiding and the following year the duplicitous politician turned tortoise-slow inept Colonel, later General, Henry Sibley, led a ponderous army into the Dakota Territory to drive the Sioux permanently away from the frontier's borders. Long time frontiersman Whit Jackson, who was married into the Dakota nation and spoke their language, was tapped by friends among Sibley's experienced officers to help scout for that army.

Whit went west with the army not so much to find the Dakota as to try to temper the genocidal mood of Sibley's soldiers, knowing from long contact with the Dakota that most of them were not the murderous demons the whites thought them to be. The following year Whit was tapped again to scout, this time with a professional Union general named Sully who intended to crush the Native American will to resist once and for all. It was while Whit was gone that it happened. When his, and Will Rourke's, world crashed into bloody fragments. The stygian day in 1864 that changed everything. .

When the raiders rode into Antrim like the horsemen of the Apocalypse.

### Antrim

### 1861

The Decision

"Will. _Please_ ," Marie implored him back in the early summer of '61 in her lilting Quebecois-tinged English that, even after their years together, still caught him in a web of enchantment. "Zat war no is your business. You leave zat world behin' when you come à l'ouest\--to the west. Let those crazee people fight it out. Te— _you_ —belong ici...here." She grabbed his arm and squeezed it. Hard. "Avec nous. _With us_." Whit Jackson was there, too, as were others in their extended families, including those with Dakota blood.

"Marie be rite, Willy," said the tough old man, even though he wasn't one to back down from a fight any more than Will was. When he made his pioneering way to the Minnesota country over thirty years earlier it was a dangerous and unforgiving place. It was home to the native people, but an unforgiving wilderness to newcomers. He had survived. Part by luck. But most by pluck and wit and toughness.

"Wat do ye care 'bout them Southron pestercrats, Willy? They don' treat with the poor whites much better'n they treat the blacks. They calls us white trash. You knows that fer a durn fact!" Will nodded his head. He knew it. The condescending looks, the arrogant behavior, the strutting pomposity of many among the southern aristocracy in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and especially in Richmond and the Tidewater. Not all of them. But enough. Enough to play pied piper to the ordinary folk and lead them to the path of destruction. He knew all that.

Yet he still was going to head off to the war. It was a matter of family. Heritage. Honor. Northern troops were invading Virginia. Everyone in his family joined the Rebel army. Two of his brothers, his sister's husband, six cousins, two uncles on his mother's side and three on his father's side. And, with few exceptions--mostly among the deeply pacifistic Dunkers and Mennonites--the Shenandoah Valley young men he'd grown up with had volunteered for the army. How could he in all conscience stand back and not join them? He loved Virginia. Always had, even though the lure of adventure, in the direct physical persona of his tale spinning great-uncle Whit Jackson on his trips to the east to visit family, drew him west as inexorably as the transiting sun. But he still carried Virginia fondly in his memories and engrained in his inner core. The gentler winters. The corn ripening in the hot summer sun, fields of wheat rippling in the wind, the winding Shenandoah River, hunting in the nearby mountains, the homes and businesses of his relatives and friends. And the cemetery where lay the pioneer Rourke and Jackson generations. It all came back when he learned Virginia was being invaded. How could he not rise to the challenge of defending the land of his birth? Of his family? Of his roots?

Like just about everyone in the early days of the war, Will Rourke thought the fighting would be over soon. He could not envisage the wrenching four year long cataclysm that loomed bloodily in the future. Few indeed could apprehend the American people butchering each other unto the hundreds of thousands. A few weeks or months at most, a tangle of maneuver, political and military, perhaps an armed perfunctory clash or two, and the war would be over. Besides, and this was the critical factor in his decision to go east to the war, there was Whit. His great uncle Whit Jackson would stay behind to protect the family. And Will Rourke couldn't imagine a set of hands more capable of doing that than those of the rugged frontiersman Whit Jackson. Nothing would happen while Whit Jackson was there. Will Rourke hugged and kissed his family goodbye, lingered in a gravid handshake with Whit Jackson, then swung up onto the saddle of his favorite horse, La Foudre. He rode slowly away. Not east, toward Virginia. The morning sun was to not to his front. It was to his left.

Will Rourke was riding south. Literally and figuratively.

South.

### The Journey

Wahpekutes

What to expect riding through Northern states on the way to join a war against the North? He weighed it prudent to head south through lightly peopled southern Minnesota and western Iowa until he reached the slave-holding border state of Missouri. A state where sentiments were, unlike in the polarized North and deep South, strongly divided and mixed towards war and secession and where resided a plentitude of Southern sympathizers.

Rourke was well south of the meanderings of the muddy Minnesota river. La Foudre abruptly snorted, jumped straight up in the air and very nearly sent him sailing out of the saddle.

"Whoa! Foudre! Whoa up, girl!"

The horse, wild eyed and puffing, backed up despite Rourke's attempts to hold her fast. Then Rourke saw what had spooked the horse. There, noisily rattling its anger at being roused from its sunbath alongside the dusty wagon track, was a timber rattlesnake. Rourke had forgotten. His home at Antrim in central Minnesota was beyond the range of the rattlesnakes. Beyond, but not far beyond. Close enough that he had ridden south into their range. though this snake was farther west than the usual haunts of the timber rattlers, possibly a young snake wandering west to find a territory of its own.

Rourke had not noticed the snake. La Foudre had noticed. How she knew what a ratttlesnake was, Will had no idea, but he did manage to nudge her around the angry snake and continue their journey. There were rattlesnakes in Virgina, including some very big timber rattlers in the mountains as thick as a man's arm, and rattlesnakes were deeply etched into Will's recollections from a handful of unpleasant encounters on Massanutten Moutain and the Blue Ridge. Though he had never heard of it in Viriginia, it was common knowledge on the plains where there were rattlesnakes that horses would sometimes hear the snakes' warning rattles, lean down curiously to investigate the source of the noise and be promptly bitten on the nose. Rarely fatal, though certainly not a pleasant experience for the horse who would soon sport a swollen face and the equinine variety of a godawful migraine. Only rarely did the poison go directly into a blood vessel in sufficient toxicity to kill a horse. The greater danger was of the horse's neck swelling, closing off the throat and suffocating the poor animal. Rourke shook his head, surprised at the snake enounter, but not thinking much more of it. Considering where he was going, an angry rattlesnake was the least of his worries.

He was right.

And sooner than he would have expected.

The rattlesnake was a mere trifle of a curtain raiser. Rourke's journey came precariously close to an early lethal end just two hours later when he rounded a bend in the dusty rutted wagon road near the Minnesota/Iowa border. A half dozen Dakota exploded out of a thicket by young quaking aspen by the side of the track and reined up menacingly astride the road. They were Wahpekutes, the southernmost of the four tribes of the eastern Dakota, the Santee. The band's leader was the notorious Indpaduta and, had he been with this small group of marauding Wahpekutes, Will Rourke would not have survived. But there were among the six Wahpekutes two who knew Will Rourke from his pioneering days and knew of his reputation for treating the Dakota fairly and with a respect rare among the whites. Will, like his uncle Whit, spoke fluent Dakota and he could talk to the treatening band of Wahpekutes in their own language. Most were inclined to kill Will on the spot and take his horse and supplies, and animatedly arguing for just that, but the two who knew Will countered the hostile Wahpekute's murderous arguments with an equal intensity.

"Kill the white man," said one of the Wahpekutes, "and be done with it!" Two of the other Dakota murmured agreement. But not all. One was undecided. Two others were agitatedly on Rourke's side and argued for letting him go.

One in particular, Spotted Owl, with heated gestures and words, threatened violence against the others. He had the best of reasons for a Dakota warrior. Personal honor. Seven years earlier, in Rourke's adventurous early pioneer days, Will had accompanied his Dakota friend and frequent companion, Wicasa, and joined a Dakota war party that raided a camp of their arch enemies, the Ojibwe. It was a trap. The Dakota ambush was itself ambushed. A strong party of Ojibwe jumped the Dakota and the Dakota had to retreat in a hurry. Spotted Owl was wounded, and would have been captured and inevitably suffer a lingering grisy death by torture, had not Will Rourke stopped, returned to where Spotted Owl lay wounded and helped him to his feet while Wicasa and two other Dakota covered their escape. From that moment Will Rourke became a friend to the Dakota. And especially to Spotted Owl. Who now forcefully recounted to the others how Will Rourke had saved his life and his personal honor demanded that he, in turn, save Will's.

"We must kill the white man!" Yelled one of the warriors, a young hothead of the type who caused the Dakota and other Native Americans untold grief by their rash actions. He began to raise his rifle.

"No!" Spotted Owl dug his heals into his pony's flanks and lunged foward, reaching out and knocking the rifle from the hotheaded youth's hands. "This man saved my life. My honor demands I protect him. Try to take his life and I will take yours!" Spotted Owl was a veteran warrior, the feckless youth was not. Abashed, with teeth clenched, he backed off. That was the turning point. Though haltingly, and grumbling, the hostile band of Wahpekutes relented. They let Will Rourke go. Will nudged La Foudre to leave, knowing better than to give them time to second guess themselves, but lingered long enough to exchange intense veiled looks with Spotted Owl. The Wahpekute inclined his head slightly to the side, along with his eyes, signalling to Rourke that he had best leave while he still could. The little band of raiders was led by a man whose Dakota name roughly translated as 'Bad.' The translation might be imperfect, but it fit the man perfectly. It galled him to let a white man ride away unhindered. But Spotted Owl was a trusted and valuable warrior. Bad, albeit with great reluctance, acceded to Spotted Owl's animated defense of Rourke. Still, he came very close, his hands shaking with frustration, to bringing up his rifle and aiming at Will's back as he rode away.

Will wasted no time in urging La Foudre into a judicious trot. Not too fast. Not too slow. Bad watched him ride away, his face angry, his rifle clutched in his hand with an iron grip. He hated all whites for what they were doing to his people. Destroying them, and not very slowly. Spotted Owl's debt to the white man had been paid. The next time Bad encountered Will Rourke he would kill him.

Rourke would not be the first white man Bad killed.

### The German Girl

The ride into Iowa was uneventful after that, though Will was twice surprised by seeing small knots of buffalo. He thought the animals had all been hunted out of that part of the country. There were still wolves in the thinly populated parts of the state and he even saw the smaller animals the locals called brush wolves. He'd seen them in Minnesota, too, and knew that their calls sounded like hysterical wild cauterwauling, unlike the howling of the bigger gray wolves.

Rourke was in his second night camping in Iowa. He was sitting by his campfire in a patch of hardwoods, listening to the eerie yowls of raccoons somewhere near, when he heard the sounds of someone trying to creep up on his camp. A clumsy someone who was not nearly as adept at outdoors life as Will. He drew his revolver, slipped into the shadows and silently waited for the intruder to show himself. The intruder soon did. And not a himself. A herself. A half grown slip of a broomstick thin girl wielding a thick chunk off an oak branch. She stepped into the circle of firelight, looked around in confusion, seeing no one, and stopped still, listening, by the campfire. Even in the wan light of the campfie Rourke grasped that the expression on her face was one of desperation. And, even more, of fear. He holstered his pistol and stepped into the flickering light of the fire.

"Don't be afraid, little one," Will said in same gentle fatherly tone he used with his own children when they were frightened by something, usually one of the scary tales Whit Jackson was fond of telling. "I won't hurt you." He held his arms out, slowly, palms up, physically punctuating his words. The girl recoiled, swaying her oak club threateningly, but still looking like a very frightened little girl.

"Kann .....kann kein Englisch," the little girl said in a cracking voice every bit as scared as her expression. She was German. No English. Will took a closer look at her and saw her arms and face were scratched, her clothes stained and ripped. The ugly thought came sliding into Rourke's mind that the band of raiding Wahpekutes might have encountered a group of immigrant Germans and this young girl had managed to escape. Will had seen the aftermath of massacres before. He didn't need to imagine what might have happened. It was not a memory willingly revisited.

"Kann ein bissle Deutsch," Will said, grabbing at the memory of the German spoken by the many German families who settled alongside the Scots-Irish in the Shenandoah in Virginia. One neighboring family had a pair of sons close to his age who, although somewhat assimilated and English speakers, still spoke German at home. They had taught young Will as much German as he could absorb during their bouts of youthful adventuring and the occasional meal with the German-speaking family. His imperfect German did not lay dormant for long on the frontier. Will had frequent cause to use his rudimentary German in recent years as a steady stream of non-English speaking Germans immigrated into the Minnesota hinterlands, some very near his new home in Minnesota, the farm and ranch they called Antrim.

There was more than one frustrating situation, which he had to admit were also often amusing, where Dakota, English and German speakers tried to communicate with each other. Will, having out of necessity picked up a comfortable working knowledge of Dakota, was the only person for miles around who could speak all three languages and was often called in to translate. His Dakota was good, although certainly not yet fluent, and his German was rudimentary, but it had to do. He was all there was. That is when he learned that these new German immigrants were completely ignorant, not only of frontier homesteading, but also of the nature and ways of the local native inhabitants, the Dakota. The Dakota, in turn, were equally oblivious to the ways of newly arrived German Europeans. Rourke came to the uneasy conclusion that this mutual ignorance was a recipe for disaster. He had seen it himself. Too often. Ignorance had the ominous bad habit of degenerating into disdain and contempt. Will had also tried to communicate with the parallel stream of Scandinavian immigrants in his broken German, but the Scandinavian offshoots from the Germanic language tree had evolved beyond mutual intelligibility with German. That only added to Will's uneasiness about the inability for the native and immigrant groups to communicate. It boded ill for the future. A future that would prove him far more prescient than he would ever have cared to be.

What to do with the little girl? He explained to her in his broken German that he could speak some of her language, but that she had to speak very slowly and pronounce her words carefully. "Sprechst du bitte langsam und klar, meine Kleine," he said is his broken German. Then he sat her down by the fire, wrapped a blanket around her and gave her a cup of water and some hard cheese and bread he'd bought earlier that day in a small settler's store.

"Helga," the little girl said. "Heise....Name. Helga. Helga Landes."

"Woher?"

"Rheinland," she answered to Rourke's question of where she came from. "Ausgewandert.... mit meinen Familie. Zu hier....," she shuddered, tears rolling down her smudged face. "zu....zu.... _Hölle!_ " She collapsed into sobs, her little body wracked and shaking with fear and grief. She had come from the Rheinland with her family. Emigrated. To here. To Hölle.....to... _hell!_

Rourke wrapped his arms around the little girl and held her close until her sobbing ebbed into a miserable whimper. She would eventually tell him about what happened, but experience told him he had to find out right away. If it was in fact a massacre there might be other survivors, or he might have to warn the local settlers. At his gentle urging, she began to talk. A gang of horrible bloodthirsty savages, _Teufel,_ she called them, who descended on the Landes family's modest homestead and began to massacre and rape. Helga was at the nearby woods picking the wild blackcap raspberries that grew in profusion around a stream that ran along the edge of woods.

As soon as she saw the Wahpekutes rush the Landes farmstead she did exactly what her parents had cautioned her to do in a situation like this one. She slipped back inside the woods to hide and was condemned to watch, and listen, as her family was murdered. And worse. Much, much worse. Worse even than the Grimm Brothers fairy tales of her home in the Rheinland. Her mother and older sister were both thrown on the ground and repeatedly raped, shrieking and moaning and crying out to God to let them die. Helga could hardly keep from screaming and shrieking out loud at the sights and sounds, a horror that would never leave her for the rest of her life. After what seemed an eternity to the little girl the screaming and begging stopped. A single gunshot. Then silence.

After a few more minutes Helga's horror morphed into one intensely personal. One of the Wahpekutes was striding directly towards her hiding place. She crept away on her hands and knees as silently as she could, scratching her arms and legs and face and ripping her simple country dress. When she was well out of earshot, she leaped to her feet and fled in terror. She was not pursued. The Wahpekute, in another perverse coincidence, was the same man who had saved Rourke's life. Spotted Owl. The Wahpekute had noticed the coveted blackcap raspberries, glowing with enticing ripeness in the slanting late afternoon sunlight, and was coming for them. Still, though he remained unaware of her presence, Helga had been fleeing from him every since. Until she stumbled onto light of Will Rourke's campfire and what would be her salvation. A dubious salvation that would ever fail at erasing the soul-crushing memory of what had happened to her family--and in later years would lure her down the siren path of laudanum addiction.

Little Helga was disoriented as well as terrified. She was fleeing in circles. The Landes homestead was less than two miles from Rourke's campfire and early the next morning he found the gruesome remnant of their once promising new life in the New World. The Wahpekutes, sage and veteran raiders, were aware that fire would bring unwanted attention and had not burned the Landes cabin or barn. Rourke insisted Helga wait on the rough wagon road that ran by the homestead while he went to the cabin to see if a miracle had happened and others in Helga's family had survived. He got no argument from the little girl. She recoiled at the thought of seeing what had happened and turned her head away from the cabin, tears streaming down her face.

Rourke found the mother and older sister on the bare ground outside the cabin's door, spread-eagled, their bared bruised pudenda already reeking with the foul smell of rotting blood and semen in the summer heat. Rourke quickly pulled their dresses down to cover their violated nakedness, hopelessly futile as it seemed, and went cautiously into the cabin.

Inside he found Helga's father. His head was smashed in so violently that he was unrecognizable, the bloody gray matter from his brain splayed out on the puncheon wood floor around his head. The interior of the cabin was trashed, the Wahpekutes having ripped everything apart looking for valuables. If there had been weapons in the cabin they were gone, as was anything even remotely edible, wearable or otherwise useable to the raiders. Rourke searched through the small cabin and found no one else. He walked back to where he had left Helga sitting on La Foudre, having sternly instructed her to flee on the horse if the Wahpekutes should return. They didn't. The little girl had collapsed into mournful sobbing, the return to the scene of her family's massacre unhinging her fragile equilibrium. After he had soothed and calmed the girl as best he could, Rourke told her he had found her mother, father and big sister. He didn't offer any details. Helga suddenly stopped crying and stared dumbly at Rourke.

"Nur die drei?" She stuttered. Only three? Rourke leaned towards her, his senses instantly jangling.

"Gibt's mehr?" There are more?" He said to her with growing excitement. Maybe there were more survivors somewhere nearby.

"Ja," Helga answered. "Drei." Three more. The little twins and her big brother. The words had hardly left Helga's mouth when a dozen horsemen, settlers and farmers, came galloping out of the woods on the rough wagon road and headed straight for them. As they drew closer one of the horsemen began to yell Helga's name. It was her older brother, Markus, who Helga would soon learn had gone to the nearest small settlement to pick up a few essential supplies a half hour before the attack. When he returned at dusk that evening he found the family massacred, panicked and raced back to the small settlement for help. It took most of the night in the sparsely populated countryside to round up a group big enough to challenge an Indian raiding party. As a precaution against more depredations, they also hurried to consolidate the scattered families in a strongly constructed log cabin and barn fortunately remaining from the dangerous early pioneering days.

That prudent action saved lives. The Wahpekutes were still nearby, hiding in the woods. And immediately benefited from the abandonment of the isolated homesteads as they raced to loot as many as they could, five in all, counting the Landes homestead, by the end of the next day. The raiders then rapidly fled to the unsettled west, flush with looted valuables, weapons, food and a dozen more horses than they had come in with.

And something else even more valuable.

All of which, Rourke realized after the looting was discovered, was probably the Wahpekutes' plan all along. They might have been merciless raiders, outlaws even to many of their own people, but they were by no means without considerable guile complimenting their stealth. Had they only stolen and robbed he might have almost admired their pluck, considering that raiding and hit and run small scale warfare was central to their traditional culture and that their homeland was being expropriated by outsiders. He was convinced they had kidnapped the missing twins and would soon demand a ransom for their safe return. Similar kidnappings and ransoms occasionally happened in the western borderlands. The kidnappers had little interest in killing their captives and thereby stirring up U.S. government military retaliation. These kidnappings usually ended with a ransom and the captives returned. Again, not unheard of in the interactions with the cultures of the native peoples of the west. There was a second possibility. Native raiders often took captives that they either enslaved or, usually in the case of small children, took them into their families to replace their own lost little ones. Cynthia Parker, the mother of the famous Comanche chief, Quanah Parker, was one such captive.

But this band of Wahpekutes had done more than steal, rob and abduct. They had gone over the line. Much too far. They had mutilated and murdered and raped. Tanner swore to himself that one day he would make the vicious leader of the Wahpekute raiding party, the man they called Bad, pay for what he had done. And that could only mean one thing in the rough justice world of the frontier.

Death.

The Landes family was not alone in their move to the New World. They were among a group of more than a score of families from their little farming community in the Rheinland that collectively decided to emigrate. Among them were a sister and a brother of the murdered parents who immediately embraced the two survivors into their own families. Rourke was long gone when a month later the pair of missing three year old twins turned up in a Yankton camp inside the vast Dakota Territory. A U.S. cavalry troop, recruited in Iowa and not yet sent east to the war, was sent in pursuit of Bad and his outlaw band of Wahpekutes. But when they reached the vast Dakota Territory and its large turbulent population of suspicious and uncooperative tribes of Dakota and their close cousins, the Nakota, the troopers halted and, albeit reluctantly, retraced their steps back into Iowa and what would be a grisly future in the Civil War fighting in Kentucky and Tennessee. Many would never return, some to battle but most to a Yellow Fever epidemic in the swamplands of western Tennessee, the disease and the mosquitoes that carried it exotics brought in on ships up the Mississippi from the subtropics. And of those Iowa horse soldiers who did make it home none would return with even a tiny bit of their naive pre-war humanity intact. The saloons would do a brisk business with them. But that was all in an unseen future as the troop of cavalry turned their horses back towards Iowa and a war torn civilization that was daily become less civilized.

Bad traded the pair of kidnapped twins to a childless couple of Yankton Dakota for a sleek eastern Quarter Horse stolen in a raid by the Yankton on a passing Oregon bound wagon train. Bad's intention was that would stop any pursuit. It did. A threatening show of force by the warriors from three assembled bands of Yanktons intimidated the pursing Union cavalry into retreating. The troopers' reason for retreating wasn't altogether what the jeering Yanktons thought. The soldiers had joined the army to fight what they called the Secesh, not the Sioux. The twins remained with the Yankton band, who promptly renamed them, adopting them into their small family group to fill the aching void in their lives when their own children died in a typhoid outbreak. The invading Americans brought with them weapons far more lethal than mere firearms.

Their diseases.

Bad and his tiny band joined the main body of the Wahpekutes and fled far to the west where the free ranging and hostile Teton Sioux, the Lakota, were too dangerous for any U.S. pursuit that wasn't of a size far greater than a troop of cavalry. There was no further pursuit. The west had been stripped of soldiers to fight the South and there were barely enough troops to provide at least a semblance of security on the frontier. The band of Wakpekutes rode off to shelter among the powerful etons.

But they would be back.

Helga Landes safely in the hands of her relatives, Rourke took Markus Landes aside and had an intense private discussion with him, using both English and German as best he could to the young man whose English facility was still as uncertain as his grasp of the realities of life on the edge of the frontier in this strange new violent world. But, eventually, both Rourke and Markus persisting in their awkward and frustrating attempts to communicate, Markus understood what Rourke was telling him. He nodded a solemn acknowledgement, his expression evocative of what lay ahead. And, conversely what lay behind.

The hopeful naiveté of youth.

### Rebel Guerillas

After his intense conversation with Markus, Rourke climbed back onto La Foudre and continued south through the rolling prairies and hardwood forests and increasingly frequent clusters of farms and tiny towns of Iowa and was about to cross over the unmarked border into the state of Missouri. A state where slavery was legal and the population bitterly divided about the war. Rourke intentionally kept to the western part of the state where he knew Southern sentiment was strong. So strong, and so bitterly contested with the pro-Union factions across the state line in Kansas, that a vicious guerilla war, in fact a bloody prelude to the Civil War, had been going on for years on both sides of the Kansas/Missouri border.

"They don't be callin' it Bloody Kansas fer no good reason," Rourke was warned by a friendly farmer he encountered on a rutted wagon road just inside the Iowa border. A man himself of mixed sentiments, being originally from the border slave state of Kentucky but now with his new home in the Northern state of Iowa.

"You be real careful 'bout anyones you meet when you gets to Missouri," warned the native Kentuckian, who was himself trying to figure out where his sentiments, and his actions, would be in the brewing national cataclysm. "Both sides got the itchy fingers and be way too partial to shoot first and ask they questions later." Rourke, by nature and experience already a cautious man, added on an extra layer of caution before riding over the invisible state line into the fratricidal cauldron that had already engulfed western Missouri and eastern Kansas.

Chapter 2: Missouri

He didn't realize it in the first moments of what soon happened, but he was in luck. For the second time in his short journey a small group of horsemen erupted out of the thick forest hugging the dusty wagon track and blocked his path. None of them wore any kind of uniform, though three of them sported Van Dyke beards and two of them had plumes attached to their slouch hats. Which plainly signaled to Rourke that these men were flamboyant Southerners who fancied themselves cavaliers. He had seen many such young men in Virginia in his early years. There could be no doubt about their loyalties. Their flamboyance, even if it fell far short of the hubris of the wealthy and powerful entitled young men of Virginia, meant that they were the kind of Southerners that Rourke did not much care for. Self styled aristocrats. Yet, here they were, and he already grasped the irony. This once personally disliked strain of Southerner, who Whit Jackson acidly called pestercrats, were now his allies.

And, in this case, it would soon turn out, also his salvation, as he had so recently been to little Helga Landes.

"Who are you and where are you going?" Said one of them, a lean middle sized bearded and plume-hatted man, his hand resting on his holstered pistol. Rourke had learned to follow his instincts. What many, including Will, would call a gut feeling. He had not failed to notice the glint of danger in the eyes of the riders. They were alert. Excited. Even their horses stomped and nickered, seemingly picking up on the excitement of their riders. Will chose his words wisely.

"My name is Will Rourke. I am originally from Virginia," he answered, emphasizing his somewhat rusty Virginia accent, "and I am on my way east to join my kin in opposing the Union invasion of our home state." He paused to look at each of the horsemen, in turn, conveying what was in fact an absolute sincerity. "I intend, he continued, "to ride south into Missouri, then east to Kentucky and from there to Virginia."

Rourke's gut feeling scored another instinctual bull's-eye. The thinly veiled menace of the horsemen was gone as quickly as the morning fog on the horse pasture at Antrim when the sun peeked over the horizon and sent the fog scattering.

"Oh, that was daring, Mr. Rourke," said one of the other horsemen. "If we had been Kansas Jayhawkers or Redlegs you would already be dead."

"He recognized us as Southern men," the first man said.

"Not hard to do," Rourke answered, now smiling. "Your dress and manner advertise your allegiances as clearly as a Rebel uniform." That brought chuckles from the horsemen. Will Rourke was having his first encounter with Southern guerillas. There would be many more in the future. Virginia had hundreds, even thousands, of them, under men such as John and Jesse McNeill, Isiah White, Harry Gilmor, John Singleton Mosby and a man who would loom large in Rourke's future, Major Hugh McCracken.

"This is your lucky day, Mr. Rourke," a plume-hatted guerilla said. "One of those Kansas bushwhackers has been pretending to be an innocent civilian and has been passing on information the bushwhackers use in their raids and ambushes. We thought you might be him, and there are some hotheads among us hereabouts who likely would have shot first and asked questions afterwards." Rourke immediately recalled the deadly serious expression of the Iowa farmer who had warned him about the same thing in almost identical words. Had the farmer not warned him, Rourke might have reacted differently and been shot before he could explain who he was and what he was doing.

He did not have long to mull over that fact. The Southern partisan guerillas, who actually were irregulars and sworn members of the Confederate Army, their leader a man named Channing Forbes, took Will Rourke under their collective wing and led him to the nearby home of one of their number. They then proceeded, over a welcome hot breakfast of sausage and gravy and hot coffee, to heatedly educate Will Rourke on the very uncivil Civil War that for several years had raged in a localized but very brutal warfare in the star crossed Kansas and Missouri borderlands.

"Did you read any of the newspapers that treated that evil devil of a man, John Brown, as though he were a hero and a martyr?" The question came from Channing Forbes, who was a lieutenant in the irregulars. Rourke nodded a positive yes.

"I did. In a newspaper out of St. Paul in Minnesota, the state where I now make my home. "Do you have a different view of the man besides his abolitionist views and his attempt to rouse the blacks to violence?" That brought a round of dark muttering from the small group of Southern Rebels.

"A _different_ view," snorted one of them. "He was a cold blooded murderer. He and his sons butchered unarmed innocent civilians in Kansas for no other reason than that they were Southerners. They went along the Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas and killed everyone who was even suspected of Southern sympathies. Sometimes even in front of their families."

"My belief is that the man was beyond merely mentally instable," Forbes interjected. "I am convinced he was insane and his insanity became a fanaticism that found it's outlet in abolitionism. In less turbulent times he might have been put into an asylum or with no little justification gunned down in the street as the murderous lunatic he was. Sadly these are troubled times and the fanatic Brown found willing listeners."

"My wife's brother was among those he murdered along Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas," a hot-eyed black haired man of about thirty suddenly blurted out, his voice as bitter as his face. "He had no slaves and was only a simple farmer. But because he was a Southerner he was stabbed to death by that maniac and his sons." His seething glower reflected the intransigent hatred that seared the souls of both sides in the Missouri/Kansas war. "May they burn in the fires of damnation for all eternity!"

The black-haired man, who looked to be a mixed blood with some group of Native Americans, was not the only one in the small group to have their personal horror stories. Every single one of them did, all of them having their origin in the Northern abolitionists flooding Kansas with violent anti-slavery settlers, even providing them with weapons. And it didn't stop there. The anti-slavery Kansans began raiding into the border counties of Missouri, stealing animals, burning homes and barns and executing those they believed to have Southern sympathies. Any slave owners they caught were often shot or hanged forthwith without even a pretense of a trial.

"It was inevitable," Forbes went on, "that the hotheads among us would retaliate in kind in Kansas. Which in turn brought more retaliation and more brutality and more hatred." There were those who claimed that it was the other way around, that the Missouri slave owners started the trouble by raiding into Kansas. In the end in didn't matter who started it. What mattered was that it raged on with increasing severity and brutality.

"There is no middle ground in Missouri," another of the guerrillas, a long-haired youth of no more than 18 or 19 who had watched his slave-owning father, a man who did not believe in either war or secession and was already considering manumission as the only sane alternative, viciously hanged by a horrific slow strangulation at the hands of Kansas bushwhackers. "This war consumes everyone, no matter who you are or what you believe."

"Outside of a few wild-haired firebrands and the rich planters," one of the Rebel guerrillas said. "I know of no one willing to give their lives for slavery. Take the blacks, I say, take them. Send them North. And leave us in peace!"

"Too late for that," another said. "It's gone too far. For too long. The blacks will not be enough. The abolitionists will take everything. I curse the day that the first slaves set foot upon the soil of America. It will be the end of us."

"There are yet many who will defend the idea of slavery," said another. "My own family among them. They say they would rather die than give up their way of life."

"A life of comfort and ease rooted in slavery," snapped the rough black haired man who had never had slaves. The young stalwart from the wealthy slave owning family was about to trade hard words with the black haired man. Forbes was quick to interrupt.

"God knows where it will end," Forbes said evenly, not disputing what was said by either man. "I don't even want to think about that. But we are all in this together, for our various reasons, and must seek unity among us." Just then the matriarch of the house, a thin, gray-haired woman of sixty, walked stiffly into the room, picked up a coffee pot from the woodstove and made the rounds of the men clustered around her kitchen table. Her look was one of a deeply seated, and deeply felt, disgust. It was, in fact, a glower.

"You foolish men on both sides have opened the gates of hell," she said in a tone as heated as the coffee she was pouring. "And we, all of us, men, women, the children, the aged, including, maybe even _especially_ , the blacks, will have hell to pay for your swaggering folly."

Her stinging words had the ring of prophecy to the ears of Will Rourke. And not just Rourke. Her words seemed to fall into a unfathomably deep chasm. Not a voice, nor even an eyebrow, was raised in objection in the deathly silence that followed. They had already been at war for years. They all knew. The future?

There wasn't one.

Then the grim silence was broken as completely as the nation itself was by the cannons firing on Fort Sumter. A horse galloped up to the house, a young girl on the horse shrieking at the top of her voice.

"There'll killing daddy! The Kansas Jayhawkers. They're at our place right now!" Rourke was an outsider. He didn't know the girl, or who her father was, but he did know that the entire kitchen table of Confederate irregulars jumped to their feet, scattering plates and glasses and knocking chairs over as they rushed for the door to their horses. Rourke shot an inquisitive look at Channing Forbes and Forbes lingered a brief sliver of a moment, long enough to motion at Rourke to join them. He did.

Because they were guerrillas and due caution demanded they be ready to make quick escapes, their horses were still saddled. Hardly another minute passed before they were in their saddles and galloping down the dusty country road the girl, who was riding with them, had ridden in on. It was close to twenty minutes before they galloped into the farmyard where the girl lived. Too late. The house and barn were on fire. Bad enough. But that was not all. It got worse. For the young girl, utterly, hopelessly, worse. Hanging from a thick chestnut limb in the front yard was the girl's father, his face bloated and his eyes bugged out from being strangled to death by the rope. Forbes did not waste a moment in demonstrating why he was the band's leader.

"You three," he said to the three men nearest him and pointing at the dead man. "Cut him down and see if you can save anything from the house and barn. You others," by his sharp look at Rourke including Will among the others, "come with me. The tracks show they've stolen stock from here and that is bound to slow them down."

"I know where they'll cross into Kansas." It was the urgent, agitated voice of long-haired 19 year old Josh Kennedy, "I've hunted these parts all my life." Then the words that caught everyone's attention as surely as a lightning bolt out of an unclouded sky.

"I know a shortcut to where they'll be crossing!"

"Lead the way, Josh," Forbes shot back. "Go to it!" In an explosive instant Josh was urging his horse towards a gallop, his long hair caught by the wind and waving out behind his broad brimmed hat in peculiar consonance with his mount's luxuriant billowing tail. The others, including Rourke, were after him in an instant.

Behind them the girl's voice crescendoed in a mournful wail over the body of her murdered father.

It was a hard ride, galloping single file on what was probably an old Indian trail, the branches of the trees and shrubs grabbing at the passing riders and ripping at their clothes and scratching their faces. Hard set, intense faces. Rourke was at first surprised at their determined intensity and headlong galloping through thickets and brush. It didn't take long for him to understand. These men were enmeshed in a violent world he had yet to enter. That would change. Soon.

Once again, far sooner that he would have expected. Or wanted.

It took an hour of hard riding, the horses blowing hard and frothing at the mouth and as scratched and bruised as the men. Then Rourke had his first experience of Confederate horsemen, be they guerrillas or regulars, in action. Every single one of them pulled a pair of Navy Colts from their belts and holsters and charged wildly into the mix of Kansas raiders and the horses and cattle they had stolen. With them, and what proved to be their undoing, was a slow moving wagonload of slaves the raiders had grabbed, some willingly, some not so willingly, from the dead man's farm. The Rebel guerrillas rode right past the wagonload of slaves and hurtled into the mob of raiders and livestock, their Navy Colts cracking the humid still air. Most of the Kansas raiders took off in a panic, but five of them were shot off their horses. Two were dead. Two were wounded, the other only bruised from falling off his horse.

A watershed in Will Rourke's life, a permanent fracture with the world he once knew, then sprang up as violently before his eyes as a chasm splitting the ground from an earth-shattering earthquake. The Rebel guerrillas took two of the surviving Jayhawkers, threw ropes over the low hanging limbs of a thick red oak tree, and tied the other end of the ropes to the men's necks. They hoisted the pair up onto horses, and adjusted the ropes. Rourke watched with a mixture of horror and doubt. Were they really going to hang these men? Or was it a ruse to scare them into giving information? The answer was not what he hoped, and expected, it would be.

Channing Forbes stepped forward and slapped the behinds of the horses so hard that both leaped forward. The pair of Jayhawkers were jerked out of their saddles and were choking and trying to scream as they slowly choked to death. Rourke stood still, immobile, shocked, mutely watching the men in their death throes. Channing Forbes then turned his attention to the single surviving Jayhawker.

"Now, Mr. Kansas bushwhacker," he said to the cowering man, who was so terrified by the spectacle of the double hanging that he had wet himself, "we have some questions for you."

The man, his eyes never leaving the swaying bodies hanging from the thick lower limb of the oak, talked, his words sputtering with fear. When he told them all he knew Rourke was surprised when they let him go.

"So his friends will know what will happen to them if they continue to raid and kill our people," Forbes said to Rourke. Another of the guerrillas came up to Forbes. He was a thick bodied man who, unlike many of the others, came from a hard life as a subsistence farmer. Too poor to have slaves, even if he wanted them, he was no more immune from the Kansas raiders than the slave owners. Raiders burned his humble farm home, took what little stock he had, and told him to leave the country. The man sent his wife and family south to her family in Arkansas. He stayed. And joined the guerrillas.

"What do ye want to do with the Darkies," he said to Forbes.

"Leave them be. Their owner is dead, his farm destroyed. There is nothing for them in Missouri. They'll just be more mouths to feed when we're having trouble feeding people the way it is."

"But, Channing," interjected one of the plume-hatted cavaliers among the band, the son of a wealthy slave owning planter and state legislator who was one of the sponsors of the movement for the slave owning border state of Missouri to secede from the Union.  
"You cannot allow the Nigras to go free. It is against the law. They are property. Stolen property. It is because of them that we fight."

"Not me," Forbes shot back, "and not here. "This is Kansas. Yours is the kind of self-serving attitude that brought on this insanity in the first place. Either let them go or you take personal responsibility for feeding, clothing and housing them." That did it. The cavalier thought better of his idea and abruptly turned away.

"I will tell you something, Will Rourke," Forbes, his face florid, his voice and manner agitated, said in a low, angry voice. "If North and South had just hammered out a workable compromise slavery would eventually have died of its own weight. And the Yankees are as much to blame as the Southern firebrands. The New York money grubbers buying the cotton from the South, and the Yankees spinning that cotton in their mills, kept slavery alive every bit as much as the puffed up slave owners." Will Rouke's eyes locked with those of Channing Forbes. He nodded in a slow affirmation. That largely was also Rourke's opinion. Yet here they were, two men opposed to secession, to war, even to slavery. Yet, here they were. Two men going to a war they opposed. And that wasn't the worst of it.

There were two grotesquely splayed dead men swaying in the breeze over their heads.

Men some would say they had just murdered.

At that moment, even before he joined up with the Confederate army and the ensuing long years of bloody warfare in Virginia, Will Rourke already understood. Not subconsciously. Clearly. Consciously. He had not tried to stop the hanging. Had not even spoken against it. The moral compass in his being was spinning erratically. He understood it on a deep visceral level that jangled both his soul and his brain.

He, Will Rourke, would never, could never, be the same again.

Will stood staring at the dead men, his brain stuck on the sight. And on a single thought. These dead men were only the first ones he'd see in the war. The first of many. Way, way too many. He came the closest he ever would to turning La Foudre around and riding back home. But he didn't. The moral compass stopped spinning. It was pointing east. Towards Virginia. Towards the war.

Which he would one day regret with every single fiber of his mortal and moral being.

### Confederate Regulars

Forbes and his partisan band fought their hopeless guerilla war for two more years in western Missouri until the few survivors rode south to join the regular Confederate cavalry. Western Missouri was gone. Literally. Gone. Destroyed by Union troops and Kansas Jayhawkers in an avalanche of massacres, brutalities and illegal and unconstitutional actions that rose to the level of war crimes. It became an empty wasteland, a foretaste of what lay ahead for the South. But that was still two years in the future when Forbes sent Will Rourke on his way south through a series of small guerilla bands. By the third day and the fourth band of partisans the Rebels were in uniform and regular cavalry.

Rourke rode into southeastern Missouri with a squad of uniformed Confederate horsemen, where he would cross the Mississippi at Cape Girardeau, some fifty miles above the locally famous earthquake town of New Madrid. A place, according to a chatty Rebel cavalryman who was from New Madrid, where the locals still talked about the monster earthquake in the early years of the 19th Century. An earthquake that some adamantly claimed actually caused the Mississippi to temporarily reverse course and flow north. A dubious notion to the skeptical mind of Will Rourke, but without question the earthquake did cause the Mississippi to alter its course, cutting off some of the former river course and leaving behind numerous wetlands and lakes and spectral flooded forests that were spooky even in bright sunlight.

"They say the day turned dark as night, the air smelled like the hellish sulfur of the Devil hisself and balls of lightning done danced over the shaking ground," said the young Rebel horseman, earnestly recounting the fireside tales of his grandfather. Rourke nodded his head. Politely. Without comment.

At Cape Girardeau Rourke would cross the river into a largely pro-Southern chunk of southwestern Illinois called Little Egypt. From there it was only a short ride to the border state of Kentucky. He expected no trouble. Though resident in the Union state of Illinois, in the roiling and confusing welter of Civil War sentiments a young man in Southern-leaning Little Egypt was as likely to ride South as to the North to join the war.

As Rourke and the small band of Rebel cavalry reined up on a bluff overlooking the brown waters of the wide Mississippi River, a Union gunboat, a small river steamer retrofitted as a gunboat and launched upstream in Illinois that same week, suddenly darted around a bend in the river. The Rebels saw the puffs of smoke from the gunboat's inexpertly manned cannon and heard the _zzzzzz_ of the shells passing harmlessly overhead. This was the maiden appearance of the gunboat and the horsemen were as surprised as they were chastened.

"Les' not give 'em a second chance, boys," hollered a lanky Rebel sergeant who'd come all the way from the Missouri Breaks in the far off Montana country to join the Rebel army in his home state of Texas. The Rebels didn't. Linger. While the gunboat crew reloaded their cannon, and refined their aim, the Rebels beat a hasty retreat out of sight of the gunboat. Out of sight, but not out of range. A second salvo from the gunboat sailed towards the direction where the Rebels had disappeared and came so close that one of the cavalrymen was unhorsed by his panicking mount. Shortly followed by a lively round of ribald jests about the questionable horsemanship of the unhorsed trooper. Humor yet prevailed. The men were new to war and not yet bloodied. In the future, the very near future as it would soon develop, they would not be so easily inclined to boyish larkishness as they were in the heady and naive early months of the civil war. A war that would morph before their disbelieving eyes into the greatest cataclysm America would ever endure. Not many of the young Rebel horsemen that day would be alive with all their appendages intact four years hence to see the final ending of that cataclysm.

"Best wait a spell before crossin' the river," one of the Southern horsemen said after they were safely away from the river. Rourke, surprised and a touch shaken by the Yankee cannon, did not disagree. They rode to where the troop of cavalry had its bivouac. A Texas unit, the troop's commander was Captain Graves Morgan and with him Will Rourke struck up instant nexus. Morgan also hailed originally from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Augusta County, the neighboring county to Rourke's boyhood home in Rockingham County. Captain Graves Morgan, like Will Rourke, was called by youthful adventure to a new life in the west. His to the southwest of the country, to east Texas, while Rourke went to build a new life in the then wild Minnesota country.

"If you wish to fight, Will," Captain Morgan said to his newfound fellow Shenandoah Valley native, after a long and meandering visiting of memories of their youth in the beautiful Valley of Virginia. "Why not join us here? There will all the action you could wish for." A pause and a long look. "And I can promise you a lieutenancy in the regular Confederate cavalry. What do you say?" The answer was what Captain Morgan fully expected, and probably would have been his, too, had not he married into a large Texas family.

"Virginia. I'm going to the land of my birth," Rourke answered. "Where my kin are opposing an invading army. I have no choice."

"I fear it will not end well," Morgan continued, somewhat deflecting the course of conversation, his voice shading from casual to pensive, "if the Yankees have the gumption to stick to it. They are much more numerous and have far more resources. The South is rural, even backward, with few railroads and factories. We are a nation of farmers. Brave men, to be sure. But the Yankees are a nation of mechanics who will soon be producing the means of war while we continue to produce tobacco, rice, corn and cotton." He leaned towards Rourke. "Are we to fight cannon with pitchforks?"

"Almost everyone thinks it will be a short war ending in a truce and some kind of compromise," Rourke replied, and hoping, if not quite convinced, it would be so.

"Will," Captain Morgan answered, still leaning towards Rourke. "Look right here. At Missouri and Kansas. They have already been fighting for a clutch of years and there is no end in sight."

"It is my hope, then," Rourke countered, "that the rest of the nation does not follow the lead of Kansas and Missouri."

"Perhaps, you are right, Will," Morgan said, thoughtfully. "I hope, no, I _pray_ , you are right!"

His solemn expression betrayed the hopefulness of his words.

Captain Morgan arranged to have Will ferried over the river the next day if the Yankee gunboat was gone. As the daylight faded they sat next to a bonfire, one Rourke noticed was, unlike the hardwood campfires of the Minnesota Big Woods, redolent with the sweet smell of pine resin. Captain Morgan, bending over to stir the fire, was speaking.

"Most of the boys in my troop are rugged characters from the border country. Tough as nails. They're about as far away from Southern gentlemen as you can get and most don't give two hoots for either the planters or the slaves," Morgan said as he poked at the campfire. "But my Texas in-laws are Southern planters, originally from Louisiana," Morgan's voice had an edge to it. "They are of a stripe with the hotheads who brought us this war. They really do whole heartedly believe their Negroes are property. You and I, Will, we come from the Valley where such sentiments were not so strong. I cannot abide the thought that human beings are property. How does that fit with the principles of freedom and justice that we trumpet so naively throughout the land? Slavery has to end if America is to survive. If the _spirit_ of America is to survive." He leaned over, took another chunk of pine and shoved it into the fire. The pine resin caught fire and flared three feet into the air. "I am not partial to the black folk one way or the other, but I cannot condone slavery. I know deep in my bones that with this war slavery will, I know not how, but it will, end." He stopped and peered bemusedly at Rourke.

"Strange as the devil to say, Will, but fighting to preserve what they call their peculiar institution of slavery will end with it being destroyed." As usual with such disputatious conversations, Will chose to simply nod his head without speaking.

Speechless though Will might remain, he heard, and digested, every single word that Captain Morgan said. As he mulled Morgan's opinions the fire reached an unburned pine knot and exploded in a crackling flare almost man high. In the light of the fire Rourke saw Captain Morgan's face in a peculiar, startling, light and had a sudden unwelcome intuition that rose to the level of an epiphany. Captain Graves Morgan?

He would not survive the war to see his prophecy realized.

### Antrim

The Challenge

It was a warm July morning. Muggy. Rain clouds building in the west. Whit Jackson stared at the western horizon and turned to his Dakota son-in-law, Lance, a man well known among his people for his knowledge of horses, who was there to help Whit with gentling a pair of year old colts. As a plucky curious stripling in his mid-teens Lance had gone to live with the Hunkpapa band of Lakota far out on the western plains. He learned his horse handling skills from that far ranging band of superb horsemen and nomadic buffalo hunters. The four tribes of eastern Sioux, the Santee, especially the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute, were not nomadic horse Indians like their western brethren, though some among the more westerly Sisseton and Wahpeton Santee bands were already moving strongly in that cultural direction. Lance's skill with horses soon made him a young man of some influence when he returned to the Dakota lands in Minnesota and began to impart his knowledge of horses to a knot of adventurous, mostly young, Santee Dakota. Both he and Whit had an abiding affection for horses and watched with amused delight as the spirited pair of twin colts cavorted in Antrim's pasture. Whit looked away from the lively yearlings to stare at the dark-bellied billowing thunderheads building up thousands of feet into the sky to the southwest.

"There be a brace o' big uns comin', Lance," he said in English. Lance looked quizzically at Whit. His English wasn't equal to Whit's easy facility in Dakota. Whit repeated his comment, in Dakota, explaining that a rider passing through from St. Paul told Whit that President Lincoln had gone before the United States Congress in far off Washington and called for authorization to raise a huge army. The man said Lincoln asked for 500,000 men, though Whit had his doubts about such a large number. Whatever the number attached to huge might be, what it meant was as clear as the pellucid cold water streams to the north in the Ojibwe country of jack pine and paper birch forests. It was the next wave of the human-wrought Leviathan storm that would bring death and devastation far beyond anyone's imagination.

"Two storms coming, Whit said in English to Lance. "God's own thunder boomer, that un a-boilin' up to the so'west," and, turning towards the southeast, "a devil people-caused monster storm down yonder where our Will is headin'."

Before Lance could reply they heard the sound of hoofbeats behind them and whirled around towards the direction of the approaching horses. There had been considerable agitation and some violence in recent months in central Minnesota, most of it near the Dakota reservations adjacent to Antrim, and Whit and Lance reacted quickly, ready for whatever was to come. Both were armed. In dangerous times it was beyond foolish not to be. Whit stared at the approaching horsemen and, when he recognized them, untensed.

"They be Union soljerboys, Lance," Whit said. "And I ken two of 'em." The trio of riders pulled up at the corral fence where Whit and Lance were standing and rolled out of their saddles onto the ground, the two older ones grunting as their aging bodies reacted to the jarring change from sitting to standing. One of the two, a large man with a florid complexion and a huge ginger mustache that hid a mouthful of bad teeth, walked over to Whit, his hand extended and a wide smile creasing his mustached face.

"Whit, you old coon dog, you," the big man said as he grabbed Whit's hand, "how the bloody hell are you?" Whit held the big man's big hand in his and pretended he was shocked.

"You be a soljerboy now, Moses? Did ye get drunk agin an' enlist?"

"There's a war to be fought," Moses Taylor answered, still holding Whit's hand. "I figured to do my part." Both men relaxed their grips and slowly withdrew their hands.

"The true fact be, Moses Taylor, that ye be bored and be lookin' fer to stir up some excitement." The big man roared in laughter.

"You know me too well, coon dog!" He snorted. "Settled life just ain't for me."

Which was true enough for a man like Moses Taylor. In years he was a decade younger than Whit, but old enough to have come west in time to experience life on the frontier. He had been another of those restless farm raised easterners who had ventured out to the wild country. He clawed his way to seasoned maturity in the days before Minnesota, under the rubric of Manifest Destiny, was swallowed up by the cultural behemoth euphemized as civilized progress but was in reality a holocaust for the residents, human and non-human. A process that he understood as no outsider ever could because of his own deeply felt experiences on the frontier. He had seen the buffalo and elk begin to disappear, the timber wolves and brush wolves along with them, the Dakota way of life tatter, the broad untouched vistas start to be increasingly peppered with settlers' farms and small towns. It reminded him of a fading painting he saw once at a museum back east that for some reason struck him as profoundly melancholy.

Moses understood his part in the transformation from wilderness to what the easterners called civilization. His view was intensely personal. The wilderness was disappearing and he wanted to see it before it was gone, even though his very presence was a portent of what was inevitably to come--the end of the wilderness. The irony, which did not escape him or Jackson or those few hardy souls who shared their experiences, was that the wilderness was no wilderness at all. It was, in contrast to the east, a thinly populated land. But it already was home to a surprising number of people and had been for millennia. Until now a land only lightly touched by the industrializing hand of the Europeans which had, to Moses' eyes, a comfortable natural balance to it. But that was changing. And the pace was accelerating. Unsettlingly accelerating.

Far too fast, to Moses Taylor's way of thinking.

Like Jackson, he spoke Dakota fluently and was first-handedly conversant in the ways of the mixed prairie, lake and forest country they now called Minnesota. Unlike Jackson, or Will Rourke, he hailed originally from a northern state, Vermont, but, like Whit Jackson said, he joined the Union Army more out of a lifelong urge to adventure than anything else. The notion of emancipation, that the horrific slaughter that was just entering the national threshold, and would never again really leave it, was a crusade to end slavery had not yet gained popular currency. To most it was about preserving, or dissolving, the union, and remained so in most American's minds up until war's end and, especially in the South, far beyond. Even in the South state's rights, the right to secede and especially the patriotic rally to repel northern invaders were more on the average person's mind than preserving slavery. Neither were on Moses Taylor's mind. The years were passing, gray hairs had begun to weave their way in his ginger mustache, and he was ripe for another adventure before his body went into the inevitable decline that was the curse of the bipeds who thought they ruled the Earth.

The government of the new state of Minnesota knew the state's borders were vulnerable, with unnerving large numbers of occasionally hostile Native Americans both outside and inside the state. Ojibwe in the north. Dakota and Winnebago in the south and west. The state needed men like Moses Taylor to keep an eye on conditions in the state while nearly everyone else had their attention riveted to the east on the building maelstrom of the Civil War. An emissary of Governor Ramsey swore in Moses as the captain of Company A of the First Minnesota Independent Volunteers, which would become known as the Border Watch unit, warranting him limited authority to recruit a small number of men to assist him in feeling the increasingly excitable pulse of the frontier--and to try to glimpse into the vast opaque world beyond those frontiers where thousands of unbowed Native Americans still rode free and fully intended to remain so.

Whit swung his attention to the other two men with Taylor. One was Benjamin Woolsey, another old Minnesota hand like Jackson and Taylor. Whit took his hand, too, in a warm old friends greeting.

"Benjie, you be gettin' a bit long in the tooth for such doin's, ain't ye? "

"The teeth ain't that long yet, Whit," Woolsey shot back with a grin. Woolsey, who sported a wiry set of coal black sideburns, suspiciously black, considering he was well over fifty, had sergeant's stripes on his uniform. Moses Taylor's shoulder straps were those of a captain. Both frontier veterans, adventurous to a fault, had joined up and been in the Mexican war nearly a generation earlier and managed to survive the fighting and the diseases that laid far more soldiers low than Mexican bullets did. They already had plenty of military experience. The third rider was the one who caught Whit's attention. He wore the shiny virginal uniform of a brand new buck private. He was very young. Probably not yet eighteen, light skinned and fair haired. Whit wondered, did the boy even shave yet? And what was he doing with a pair of grizzled frontier veterans like Taylor and Woolsey? The boy was unpracticed on a horse, hesitant in his movements. Though he wore the uniform of a Union private, he was obviously someone new to the Union Army as well as a novice in the western country. Whit's old friend Moses Taylor, alertness an unforgotten critical necessity inbred from their dangerous frontier days, noticed the curiosity on Jackson's face.

"This here lad is Markus Landes. You nephew Will sent him to us. Landes' family was massacred by a gang of Wahpekute renegades. Markus here says Whit happened by and rescued his little sister, Helga, then found the massacred family. Mother, father, older sister. Markus was in town getting supplies when it happened and that saved his life. Don't know as you could call it lucky, Whit," Moses added, "seeing as how his family was murdered." He stopped to throw a look of recognition both understood all too well. "And the poor lad found the bodies."

"I be true sorry for ye, lad," Whit said, reaching over to grasp the young man's hand and hold it. The strength of Markus' grip caught Whit by surprise before he realized Markus had to be another farm-raised large and strong built lad, with a grip to match.

"There's more," Taylor interjected. "There were two more children in the family. Twin girls. Three years old. No sign of them at the massacre site."

"Grabbed fer sure," Whit said, remembering a handful of other such instances. "Fer ransom or mebbe to raise up Dakota. Would nay be the first time fer such."

"Das ist vhat den Wilhelm Rourke denk." the big blond German boy said, speaking for the first time, in a very thick and marginally intelligible German accent. "He says to komm zu...ah, _to..._ you." Moses Taylor stepped closer, putting his big hand on Whit's shoulder..

"A mutual friend of ours in the Iowa volunteers, Charlie Red Sky, sent him to me," knowing I would know where to find the old coon dog, Whit Jackson. I swore Markus in as one of my men in order to make this official." Taylor raised his eyebrows that, in a puzzling striking contrast to his graying ginger mustache, were nearly as black as Woolsey's sideburns and a fertile seedbed for many a tale Moses would spin over the mysterious origin of his dusky eyebrows. None of which came within a long rifle shot of the truth.

"So....here we are," he said, motioning at his companions and leaving Whit to pick up on the rest.

"And ye want this ol' coon dog to find the lost babes and bring' em back?"

"Ain't none better," Benjamin Woolsey said, joining the conversation for the first time. "You knows that as well as we do."

Whit didn't at first respond. He turned to his son-in-law Lance and translated what had been said into Dakota. Lance, whose English was limited, had picked up some of what was said. But he bristled when he heard them mention the Wahpekutes. Renegades from the Wahpekutes were as much a thorn in the side of the Dakota as they were to the whites. Typical of the bigoted entrenched attitudes of the time, the whites too often blamed the depredations of the Wahpekutes on all Dakota, guilty or not. The Dakota responded in kind with a blanket condemnation of the white interlopers. Thus creating an ever growing combustible spiral of mutual distrust and resentment. After a short, but intense, conversation with Whit, Lance and his father-in-law made their decision. Whit returned his attention to Captain Moses Taylor.

"Lance 'n me'll do 'er." he said. 'But thar be one condition." Moses already knew what it was. Or thought he did.

"I'll put a strong guard on your place while you're gone."

"Nay be need fer that, Moses. My boy Light Eyes and his friends can han'le it jest fine."

"So?" Said Moses Taylor, mildly taken aback. "What the devil is your condition?" Whit reached over to slap Markus Landes on his broad shoulder.

"The lad be comin' with us. Nothin' like fam'ly ta lighten the young un's hearts if we find the tykes 'n ter also loosen up the Dakotas who got 'em."

The next morning Whit Jackson, Lance and Markus Landes, now clad in civilian clothes at Whit's insistence, rode out from Antrim. West. To the vast nebulous land of endless grass, buffalo and undefeated Sioux who were the western brethren of the Santee, the Minnesota Sioux. In Minnesota they were called the Dakota. In the Dakota territory they were called the Nakota. And farther west were the most numerous and most defiant of all the Sioux peoples.

The Lakota.

### The River

Kentucky and Tom Sykes

Will bade farewell to the Texas horse soldiers and rode down to the ferry landing on the Mississippi. It was still in plain sight, moored on the Missouri side of the river, though the Union gunboats would soon force the ferry to be moored in an oxbow cove out of sight of the main river. Rourke joined a half dozen other horsemen, four of them in Confederate uniform, and two wagons filled with grain for sale on the far shore, in boarding the ferry. They waited with varying degrees of patience while the ferrymen built the steam up for the crossing. The chief ferryman, a gnarly aged man with few teeth left in his mouth, surlily demanded five dollars from each horseman for the passage toll and ten dollars for each wagon, more than double the usual fare.

"Five dollars?" Sputtered one of the gray clad horsemen with no little indignation. "You be seeking to scalp us because of the war, old man?" One of the Confederate riders snarled at the old man. "We will not abide your greed. You will accept the usual two dollars for the crossing and be glad for it." The old man glowered and was about to snap an acerbic denial when the Rebel put his hand on his holster and patted it menacingly. The old man, saturnine and grumbling, stood his ground.

"You'd never shoot me," he snapped. The young Rebel approached the old man, pushing himself well inside the old man's comfort zone and almost touching him.

"No. I wouldn't shoot you." He motioned at his companions to join him. "But we sure could send you for a swim in the river and see if you can win your own war with the current." As the Rebels surrounded him, the old man suddenly saw the wisdom in the spirit of compromise.

"All right, damn it! Ease off. We'll settle on the middle. $3.50 for horse and rider, $7.50 for the wagons." The Rebel was not of a mind to accommodate the old man's greed.

"The Confederate government can confiscate your ferry," he said in a hard and hostile tone. "If you don't cooperate, you might find yourself with no ferry on which you can extort the passengers." The old man, reluctantly, sullenly, relented.

"The usual fare, then," he said. "But don't count on it staying that way."

"Ain't much you can count on in these times, grandpa," the Rebel said. The old man collected his fares and had the ferry headed out into the broad muddy river in less than ten minutes.

Will Rourke remained silent through all of this, but that didn't mean he wasn't listening. Or drawing unpleasant conclusions. It was a foretaste of another of Will Rourke's long list of melancholy, and worse, experiences of the war. This old man was but one, and a mere trifling one at that, of the legion of greedy speculators and businessmen who would view the war as a golden opportunity to personal enrichment. It would later bring embitterment to the great masses of soldiery, North and South, as they bled while others grew fat from their bloody sacrifice.

Rourke rode east through Kentucky, camping along the way, occasionally stopping to buy supplies and even to hunt in the places where there were still few people in a land not yet overcrowded with the endless flow of land hungry immigrants, both internal and foreign. When the weather permitted, he camped outdoors. When it didn't, he would find a wayside inn to spend the night. Most nights he slept under the stars.

He still was astride his favorite saddle horse, La Foudre, French for Lightning, the horse's name coined by his French-Canadian wife, Marie, when she marveled at how fast the animal was even while still half grown.

"La Foudre! She exclaimed in astonished delight. "This cheval. She is quick as la lightning." And thus La Foudre earned her name.

La Foudre was a western horse, a mixture of the English horses of the east and the wiry Arab ponies the Native Americans appropriated from the Spaniards of the Southwest. It was a middle sized animal, but agile and quick and so intelligent Will was convinced she was smarter than some humans he knew. She had an Arab dished face and deep brown eyes, a golden mane that seemed to take on a life of its own when they went into gallop, her color that of burnished bronze. A color Will's own face would mirror after months and years in the field. He sometimes affectionately called her Ma Petite and loved her every bit as much as his father Peter loved his horses. And that was a lot.

The war was only in its infancy. The Union rout at First Manassas had not yet happened and the panicky widespread recruitment of young men that followed that Union debacle had not yet begun. Young men on horseback were as common throughout the country as the fleet footed white tailed deer and the night creeping possum and no one thought to comment on this young man riding east from the far western settlements. In mid-Kentucky Will met Tom Sykes and somehow they intuited they were on the same mission. A few cautious probing questions verified their mutuality of intent. From that day on they were constant companions whenever the war, in its various unpredictable murky meanderings, allowed it.

"One big battle and it will be all over," twenty-year old Tom Sykes said to Rourke over a evening campfire under a huge chestnut tree and a supper, courtesy of Tom Sykes' shotgun, of plump fox squirrels who had lately inhabited the big tree. "May be there won't even be a battle. They'll just make peace and each part of the country go its own way. Lord knows there's a whole continent here big enough for a bunch of countries. Like over there in Europe." He reached over to stir the fire, sending up sparks that mostly died out and trickled back to earth. Will, having seen prairie wildfires and how quickly they flared out of control, watched the sparks warily, their campfire built on a dry forest meadow that could as easily catch fire as the western prairie. "Anyways, Will," Sykes went on, "that's the way most folks see it. Short war. And over." One of the sparks from the fire didn't go out. It fell onto a pile of desiccated chestnut leaves that flared up almost instantly and threatened to spread out of control in the parched forest floor that hadn't seen much recent rain. Will was still warily watching the sparks and jumped to his feet, followed in an instant by young Tom Sykes, as both men stomped out the fire. Even so, it almost got out of control. Will did not fail to note that the caution he'd learned in the wild western country would serve him well into the future.

"Bejessus, Will, did you see how fast that fire took off?" A winded and amazed Tom Sykes said.

"I did, Tom," Will replied, his face oddly unreadable. "And I reckon it could well be a foretaste of what's to come."

"You do have a way with words, Will Rourke," Tom Sykes replied, catching his breath. "And a strange way of looking a things."

"My mother was big on letters," Will answered. "She made sure we all knew our way around them. Speaking, and writing." Into Will's mind slid the fond memory of his strong willed mother, handsome and willowy even after five children, immersed in a book. "And she was a reader. Many an evening, after the chores were done, she's sit by the light of a kerosene lamp and read far into the night. And what you call my strange way of looking at things comes from being raised on an eastern farm and then going to make a new life in the much different world of the western wilderness. A man can't survive out there without opening up his mind to new and different ideas."

"Well, we have one thing in common," Tom replied. "My grandmother, who raised me, was also big on reading and on learning your letters. As to the strange way of looking at things? Well, I didn't go to the western wilderness. Only out to the western edge of Indiana. Vigo County. Good-sized town there called Terre Haute. French for High Ground. The Frenchies was there long before us, local folks said. My uncle bought a farm near a town called New Goshen. Beautiful country. Part prairie. Part hardwood forest. Plenty of water. I was working on my uncle's farm, growing corn and raising beef for the eastern markets, when the war came. It was hard and boring work. I didn't waste no time in getting the devil out of there and heading east for something sure to be a hell of a lot more interesting."

"Interesting?" Rourke said, softly. "It'll be that, all right. " He looked levelly at Sykes.

"And more. I'm thinking," his face unreadable in the dim firelight, "and more.....

likely _lots_ more."

### The Seekers

Heading West

Whit Jackson, astride his huge mule, rode out from Antrim. With him were Lance, on the spirited pinto he gentled himself in Lakota country, and 18 year old Markus Landes, still uncertain and awkward in the saddle of his horse. A gentle easy riding animal Whit selected with Markus' novice horsemanship in mind. The German Landes family farmed with horses in Germany, but they were huge draft animals, not saddle horses, and refused to let anyone try to ride them. Markus had catapulted over more than one fence when he had tried to climb onto the back of one or other of the big animals.

Behind Whit and the others trailed a pair of pack horses, animals with more than one purpose. To carry extra supplies as they rode out into the wild country to the west. And as extra mounts should they be able to rescue the pair of Landes twins or if they lost one of their riding horses. Whit was as wary as a native born Sioux in traveling in unsettled country. Though he knew as well as anyone that you could never be completely prepared for the unexpected, there were plenty of precautions he could make. Extra horses was only one of them.

It was a quest few could hope to make with any hope of success. Even Whit's old friend, Captain Moses Taylor, veteran frontiersman that he was, didn't think he could do it. But Whit had some secret weapons. The first was Whit himself, who was widely respected by the Sioux for his fair dealings with them, his knowledge of their language and, most importantly, his being married into the tribe. Blood and kinship went a long way with the Sioux. The second secret weapon was his son-in-law, Lance, a man also widely respected among the Dakota and their western brethren and in no way a toady to the white interlopers. Finally, Whit brought along the brother of the kidnapped girls as an extra incentive to loosening the reluctant Dakotas' tongues. The Dakota were as sentimental about matters of family as the whites. Maybe more so. A brother, untutored in the ways of the wilderness but still risking danger in his search for his kidnapped little sisters, was sure to be noticed with at least some admiration, grudging though it may be.

The five horses, three of them ridden, two of them laden, arrived at the camp of a famous warrior and Wahpeton Dakota chief, whose name translated as Many Kills. The kills, the aging chief was quick to sagely note, referred to the hated Ojibwe, not the whites. A fact that Whit knew was mostly, but not totally, true, and reflected the constantly changing conditions and political alliances of the frontier. Enemy of the interloping whites one year. Prudent allies the next. The Sioux even sometimes clashed with one of their own tribal offshoots, the Assiniboine.

The camp was close to the western Minnesota border. Both Whit and Lance had relatives among this band. They were welcomed with open arms. And there they received their first hard information about the missing little girls.

"We have heard that a band of the Wahpekutes came through near here with a pair of little white children. Girls. Two of a kind. As alike as two drops of water," said one of Lance's cousins, a nimble and handsome young man who had a strong family resemblance to Lance. "They went west. Into the country of the Yanktons." Whit and Lance exchanged glances. The Yanktons were another of the many Sioux tribes, a people not yet partially subdued and confined to reservations as were the Santee. Dealing with them would be problematical, depending on the attitudes of the individual bands they encountered and their previous experiences with the whites. Some were friendly. Some hostile. Most were ambivalent. An attitude which could change as quickly as he notoriously fickle weather of the vast plains where they roamed.

"The people already know of the war between the whites," Lance's cousin continued, not knowing much English and speaking only in Dakota. "It is causing some of the young men to question the authority of the chiefs who try to restrain the young men from unwise actions. Some of the chiefs are losing control. A few other chiefs are siding with the young warriors. Among the Santee, the unruly Shakopee and Red Middle Voice first among them. There could be trouble." Lance's cousin bent towards them, his face somber. "I believe there _will_ be trouble." Later, as Whit and his companions mounted up, ready to ride into Yankton country, Lance's cousin approached and laid a hand on the flank of Lance's pony. "Take care, kinsman," he warned. "There is danger on the prairie. There are many wild young men out there among the many tribes. And the Wahpekutes. The man called Bad. Inkpaduta. His son, Hockpaduta. Their band of renegades. They are out there, too........" A dramatic wide sweep of his arm.

"Somewhere."

Whit's little band of searchers urged their mounts on. Towards the west.

Towards the unknown.

### The Kentucky Mountains

A storm front came in from the west as they got close to the Kentucky border with Virginia, Tennessee and what would soon be the splinter state of West Virginia. In hardly more than an hour the fickle weather changed from mostly sunny and mild to black clouds so low they seemed to touch the ground. The rain changed from sprinkles to a pelting downpour, the winds gusting at times so hard that the smaller saplings in the woods alongside the trail shuddered and yielded, bending towards the soaked ground. After a half hour of riding through the storm Rourke and Sykes saw a building ahead just off the well traveled wagon road they were on. It was too dark and stormy to make out the sign, Wilson's Inn, but the pair of travelers, having seen similar roadside structures in their journeys, recognized it as a wayside inn. They reined in, saw to their horses in the inn's stable, then went inside to the small room that served to feed the travelers and sat down to a welcome, if not especially palatable, hot meal of venison stew and cornbread, washed down with strong coffee. Sitting at the single long table in the room were some other travelers. Three of them. Rough looking men. Two of them young, one older. The close resemblance of the three led Rourke to conclude they were father and sons. They were. 'Tinker' Dave Beaty and two of his sons. Though not yet committed to the war, the three men would one day be the nucleus of a dreaded pro-Union guerrilla band that plagued the mountain country fully as much as their Rebel counterparts led by another discontent, Champ Ferguson. The mountain country would soon suffer a violent guerilla war that, though not as well known as the one in Missouri and Kansas, was fully as vicious and destructive. So much so that Ferguson would be hanged after the war for his war crimes. Beaty, being on the winning side, survived to testify at Ferguson's trial. Many thought he should have been hanged right alongside Ferguson for his war crimes. He wasn't. The victors don't just write history. They also make up the lists of war criminals. And of another, smaller list. Those on the one way road to the hangman's noose.

"What be yer sentiments," the elder Beaty said, his eyes hooded, though Rourke sensed the underlying hostility easily enough.

"Sentiments?" Rourke countered, his tone tactfully posing as a question.

"Sentiments," one of the younger Beatys snapped. "About the war. Where do you stand." Sykes was about to shoot out a heated response, but Rourke got there first.

"We are not committed," he said, thinking himself not a complete prevaricator since they had not yet enlisted in the Confederate cause. Sykes looked askance at Rourke and sent the encounter downhill in a hurry.

"What?" Sykes blurted out. Rourke drove an unseen elbow into Sykes' side.

"Uncommitted," Rourke repeated. "As of yet?"

"And then? What?" Said the elder Beaty in a borderline threatening tone. "Are you Rebs?" Sykes jumped to his feet.

"What the goddamn hell business is it of yours!" He thundered. "You do as you must. And so will we!"

"You _are_ Rebs," snarled the youngest of the Beatys, who had not yet said a word. "Goddamn Rebel vermin." Before he could say another word Will Rourke, who as a veteran frontiersman was no stranger to explosive situations and violence, pulled out his Navy Colt and held it over his head without pointing at anyone.

"Best mind your tongue, boy," he said, his voice as dead serious as his expression. Dave Beaty made as though he was going to pull his own pistol. Before he could, Rourke lowered his Colt and aimed it directly at Beaty. "Put your pistol on the table," he said in the same ominous tone. "And you others, too. On the table. Now." Sykes had followed Rourke's movements and drawn his own pistol. The three Beatys, snarling and angry, had no choice but to comply. Three pistols thudded on the table.

"All of them," Rourke said, slapping the table. Reluctantly, two more pistols appeared. "And now your knives," Rourke said. Three knives appeared on the table. "Now it's time for the three of you to leave," Rourke said in a voice that left no doubt as to he seriousness of the speaker. "Now!" The two younger Beatys stared at their father, looking to follow his lead. Dave Beaty stood. His sons immediately also rising from the table. "You can come back for your weapons after we're gone," Rourke said. "Now get on your horses and do not return until tomorrow after we're gone." Ned Beaty stomped towards the door, trailing his pair of seething sons.

"This ain't over, you Rebel son of a bitch," Beaty said just before going out the door. "You'll be seeing me again." He growled his last words.

"And things're gonna be lots different then."

Thaddeus Wilson, the innkeeper, had uneasily watched the confrontation from the hallway. After the Beatys left he walked over to Rourke and Sykes.

"This kind of thing is gettin' to be way too common nowadays, sir. There be plenty of trouble ahead." And there was. Less than a year latter his body was found hanging from a thick hickory tree outside his inn. Nobody ever did determine whether it was the Union or Rebel guerillas who did it. Did it matter? He and far too many others were just as dead no matter who dangled the rope, drove the knife or pulled the trigger. A residue of bitterness between the opposing sides would build up that would not go away for generations to come.

Will Rourke and Tom Sykes finished their meal, paid Thaddeus Wilson, and then prudently saddled their horses and rode off into the rain swept night. Two hours later Dave Beaty and a half dozen others returned to the inn intent on avenging themselves on the uppity Rebels. Beaty could not convince the others to go back out into the gloomy storm tossed night in pursuit. That might have saved his life. Rourke had seen his share of ambushes and would very likely have ambushed Beaty's pursuit. Beaty cursed on for hours, completely oblivious that fate had probably spared him his life.

In the four bloody years ahead he would not be inclined to any such leniency.

### The Prairie

As Whit Jackson, Lance and young Markus Landes rode out onto the prairie the fortified outliers of the European-Americans steadily dwindled and then were gone. There was no fence, so sign saying do not enter, but the feeling was so strong it was palpable. Ahead lay the unknown. They had passed beyond the frontier. The vistas were as they were not long ago in Minnesota. The tall prairie grass, clumps of woodlands and tree lined streams stretching as far as the eye could see, seemingly untouched by the heavy hand of man. As the traces of the Europeans vanished the traces of the native peoples multiplied. Abandoned campsites by wooded streams and the frequent prairie ponds called potholes, piles of horse dung, trails both thin and broad. One in particular was so wide and well traveled and firmly packed down that it reminded Jackson of the macadam roads back east.

Prudence demanded that the three avoid such heavily traveled tracks. There was too much room for misunderstanding should they encounter a large group of Sioux on the move, a time when the Indians were vulnerable, the women and children out in the open and exposed. The band was sure to have at least a few raucous young hotheads only too ready to count coup--and worse--on a white man. Lance's presence might not be enough to defuse a dangerous confrontation. The horror stories about the whites, too many of them true, were well known among the Sioux on the prairie. It was fortunate for the whites that the Sioux who truly understood the real world-shattering menace of the whites were their leaders, old men and elders who understood the futility of going to war against the white menace. Hardly a year in the future the elders would not be able to contain the embittered young men and the Santee Sioux would rise in a rebellion that ended with the utter disaster that most of the elders foretold. Wisdom comes, too often, too late.

Markus Landes had seen patches of prairie in Iowa, most of it already under the plow, the rest grazed close to the ground by the white men's cattle and the few remaining buffalo. The vast open prairies of Dakota stunned him. Whit Jackson tried to educate Markus, pointing out the big and little bluestem grasses, the switchgrass and goldenrod. He even had Markus dismount so he could show him a good-sized prairie dog town. The language barrier flummoxed both Whit and Markus. But Markus had no trouble understanding when, as they reined up their horses near a small pothole ringed by purple cornflower and prairie clover, a clutch of prairie chickens exploded out of the thick grass next to Markus' horse and so spooked the animal that, though ordinarily very gentle, it bucked Markus straight out of the saddle. He landed on his butt and sat there, stunned. Then, slowly, a grin spread across his face. And he began to laugh. Whit and Lance laughed along with him.

## "Ye jes' been in'ishated, lad," Whit said. "I reckon you gone do jes fine out here."

## Before Markus could answer Lance broke the humor of the moment with a sudden warning in Dakota, pointing to the west. A band of horsemen had just appeared out of a dip in the prairie a quarter mile off. Lance was agitated.

## "Wat be wrong, Lance?" Whit said. Lance didn't take his eyes off the approaching horsemen.

## "Not Dakota. Plains Ojibwe." By the way Whit reacted, Lance might as well have said the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were coming at them. And that wouldn't have been far from the truth. The Plains Ojibwe were bitter enemies of the Sioux and there would be no chance of a peaceful encounter. The Ojibwe were far from home, which meant they had to be a raiding party. And raiding parties didn't stop to parley. Whit, and Lance, agitatedly motioning for Markus to follow them, dug their heels into their horses' flanks, urging the animals to gallop into a fringe of half grown cottonwoods that had sprouted up along a thin ribbon of murky water. A decaying beaver dam stood testimony to the reason for the absence of mature cottonwoods. The beaver, either trapped out or having exhausted the food supply, were gone. The dam remained. And it would give the three men at least some cover.

## The Ojibwe, at least a dozen of them, had been heading to the stream to water their horses when they saw the three men and their mounts. Just as Lance had recognized them as Ojibwe, they recognized Lance as Dakota. The two others with the Dakota were obviously white men. The Ojibwe were usually careful not to antagonize the whites, but, out here on the open prairie, in Sioux country, who would ever know they killed a couple of white men? The Ojibwe quirted their ponies and galloped towards the fringe of half grown cottonwoods and a decaying beaver dam, as yet unseen, that would provide cover and a stable firing platform for Whit and Lance. And Markus? Using gestures in tandem with his words, Whit hurriedly told him to take the horses, tie them stoutly to the cottonwoods and stay with them in case they tried to break free in panic. He wasn't sure if Markus understood the last part, but he was sure he understood some of it when the lad, his movements jerky and nervous, began to tie the horses' reins to the thin trunks of the young trees. Whit jerked his Kentucky rifle out of its scabbard, along with his bag of powder and shot, rushing for the cover of the beaver dam. In his belt were a pair of Colt Navy revolvers.

## Lance dropped down next to Whit with his own rifle--another finely crafted Kentucky rifle his father-in-law had presented him with when he married Whit's daughter, Fleet Foot. Like his father-in-law, who he considered to be as much his father as his own Dakota father, Sees Far, Lance had a pair of Colt Navy revolvers in his belt. The Plains Ojibwe were about to learn a hard lesson. They'd picked the wrong victims. By a literal long shot. Whit's rifle cracked. The lead Ojibwe toppled from his horse. A second later Lance's rifle belched fire and black smoke and a second Ojibwe grabbed his side and slid from his horse. That didn't stop the Ojibwe. Thinking that they could be on the pair of shooters at the beaver dam before they could reload their muzzle loading rifles, the remaining Ojibwe charged headlong at them, sure they would overrun and kill them and take their horses, guns and provisions. The Ojibwe had never come up against men each carrying a pair of revolvers. Whit and Lance waited until the riders came within easy pistol range and then, lying flat on the beaver dam and steadying their arms on it, carefully squeezed off shots from their revolvers. That tumbled three more of the Ojibwe from their horses, one of them lying still, another running for cover and a third charging on foot towards Whit and Lance. Whit's son-in-law brought the wildly shrieking warrior down with a shot to his chest hardly a half dozen feet away. The rest of the Ojibwe retreated. It was not their way to engage in open warfare in the manner of the whites. Their goal was to strike and escape unscathed. The Obijwe retreated. One was dead. Another dying. Two more wounded. Three horses were wounded. Nine of the Ojibwe remained unhurt. That number would soon increase by five more when the raiding party's scouts, hearing the gunfire, came galloping in to join the others.

## The Ojibwe retreated out of range of the pistols, but did not leave. The unexpected resistance had both surprised and challenged them. Such firepower from just two men? It was both a challenge and an incentive. They wanted to get their hands on Whit and Lance's weapons. Where a frontal assault had failed, stealth would succeed. They would surround the men at the beaver dam and silently creep in to pick them off from hiding places in the tall grass. It was a good plan.

## And it would have worked. Had not a nearby band of buffalo hunting Yankton Sioux heard the faint echo of the distant shooting and galloped off towards the direction of the firing.

## The Ojibwe spread out and began creeping in on the men at the beaver dam. They were armed with poor quality trade muskets and bows and arrows, which meant they had to get close. One of them had a more reliable Springfield musket and began to inch in to where he could further trap the Dakota and whites by shooting their horses. He got to within fifty yards, lay flat in the grass and aimed at one of the pack horses tied to a slim cottonwood. He fired. And missed. The musket ball sailed over the back of the horse and thudded into another of the slim young cottonwoods. Markus Landes was next to the horse, heard the shot and the ball impact a cottonwood hardly twenty feet from him. He turned towards Whit and Lance.

## "Ach," he said in a voice intended to be a whisper but rendered closer to a shout by his nervousness, "dey ish shoot at the Pferden...die...horses." At that moment a second shot rang out and the pack horse next to Markus screamed in pain as a musket ball smashed into its neck. Whit was about to run to Markus when an arrow whistled in from the opposite side and barely missed him. Then another arrow sailed in from a different direction and glanced off Lance's rifle stock. Will and Lance both knew it instantly. They had no other choice. They had to run for it.

## They leaped up, ran to the horses, untied them as fast as was humanly possible and galloped away from the little stream with its protective beaver dam, the pair of pack horses, including the wounded one, chasing after them. The Ojibwe were not expecting this and had not been mounted. It took almost ten minutes before enough of them got to their horses to give chase.

## A half hour later the Obijwe were only slowly gaining ground, though they were almost up to where the wounded pack horse, slowed from its injury, was trying to keep up with Whit and the others. Then, as the Ojibwe topped one of the swells in the rolling tallgrass prairie, before them were arrayed at least fifty Yankton Sioux buffalo hunters a half mile away. Almost as though they were regular cavalry on a parade ground, the Ojibwe wheeled in near perfect unison and galloped in the opposite direction. Some of the Yankton Sioux gave chase, but most of the Plains Ojibwe, who were master horsemen as were the Sioux, were able to escape. One of the wounded and another with a horse that went lame were not so fortunate. The Yankton Sioux were lead by a stalwart and handsome man. Wicasa. He was a close friend of Will Rourke and well known to both Whit and Lance. It had been close. Razor thin close. But they'd made it. The three travelers were safe.

## At least for now.

## Chapter 3: The Shenandoah Valley

It was early in July of 1861 when Will Rourke's journey home ended. Will came riding into Rockingham County, his destination a farmhouse a few miles south and west of the town of Harrisonburg in the lush Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Here, where the fabled Great Wagon Road of pioneer days had once brought his Scots-Irish ancestors and their German neighbors from Pennsylvania to the Shenandoah, lay the well kept farms of the Rourke and Jackson families, nearly a dozen of them, plus at least twenty more farms of other relatives. Tom Sykes was no longer riding at Will's side. He left the day before to head to his own family's farm near Lynchburg. He would later rejoin Will and the two of them then enlist in the Rebel Cavalry together.

As Will rode up to his family's home, his father, Peter Rourke, was where Will expected him to be. In his small stable caring for his beloved horses. Will reined up outside the stable, bending over to peer through the open door. His father, still an imposing figure in his forty-sixth year and with only a hint of gray peaking out of his sweat soaked tangle of cornstalk hair, heard Will's horse snort. Since all of his horses were in the stable, he straightened and turned sharply to look. There, with a grin that seemed to touch both earlobes, was his oldest son, appeared like an apparition from the western wilderness. And sitting on a spirited animal the likes of which Peter had never seen. Then it hit him. The dawning smile fled from Peter Rourke's face so quickly the eye could hardly register the change. He realized why his son was there. He strode towards Will as his son lithely unpeeled himself from his saddle and dropped to the ground. They embraced for a long minute.

"Much as it gladdens my heart to see you, Will, it troubles me that you have come." He pushed himself away from the embrace and looked, almost sadly, at his strapping oldest son. "I know why you came. For the war." Will responded.

"How could I not? The North has already invaded Virginia with their soldiers. I hear they have taken most of western Virginia and might never give it back. Are not my brothers in the war already?"

"Yes," Peter answered. "At least two of them. One of the twins, Michael, came down with the recruit fever in a training camp and is in a hospital in Richmond. Your mother is with him there now. We know not about the other twin, Samuel, who's been living in New York and studying law the past year, but I doubt he would come south to fight. Your youngest brother James is with the army somewhere east of here. Dick Riley, your sister's husband, is also with that regiment. Dick was home for a few hours yesterday and told your sister Susan that their regiment had been designated as the 33rd Virginia. Also in that regiment are nearly a dozen more of our relatives, including my brother Simon's son and son-in-law. And so will your brother Michael be when he leaves the hospital. With the 33rd Virginia. They say a big fight is coming in the country between Richmond and Washington. And I fear the 33rd and our boys will be there." He suddenly lurched forward and grabbed Will forcibly by the shoulders.

"I didn't raise my sons to have them killed in some foolish war!" He snapped angrily at Will. "It is insane. Worse than insane. Criminal. The deceitful charlatans who hoodwinked public opinion on both sides inflaming the people to war. I cannot abide it! You should not have come!" One of the old horses in the barn suddenly nickered. She had just recognized Will, who always took extra care with her, from years past. Will did not at first notice, fixed as he was on his father's words.

"Its too late for that," Will replied in a voice he intended to be calming and reassuring but accomplishing neither. "The time has already passed to make a choice. One way or the other." He squeezed his father's hand where it still grasped him by the shoulder. "Even way out in the new state of Minnesota. I had to make a choice."

"So you did, son," Peter Rourke said in a somber voice. "I pray it was the right one." Will squeezed his father's hand again. Harder.

"I believe it is, father," Will replied in a tone still intended to be reassuring but sounding nearly as somber as his father's. Behind him La Foudre suddenly snorted, whinnied and nudged Will so that he was pushed forward a few inches. Will's expression exploded into a grin as he looked at his father.

"And so does Ma Petite La Foudre!" The elder Rourke, who had never heard French spoken, raised his eyebrows quizzically. Will noticed and grinned.

"Her name is Lightning. My little Lightning." Peter Rourke did not return the grin.

"Lightning?" He continued his firm grasp on his son's shoulder. He was not smiling.

"I hope she's fast enough to dodge Yankee bullets."

### The Big Sioux River

Whit Jackson, Lance and Markus Landes rode, still tingling with relief at their eleventh hour rescue, with Wicasa and a handful of his stalwarts as they left the main body of the buffalo hunters to ride to the Yankton camp spread out along the banks of what the whites called the Big Sioux River. Many in the camp knew Lance and some also knew Whit. They were made welcome. Wicasa, the close friend of Will Rourke every since Rourke's pioneering days, affectionately called Whit grandfather. They sat in his lodge smoking the ubiquitous long-stemmed pipe, the deep red bowl queried on the Minnesota border at a place that would soon bear the literal name of Pipestone. Markus Landes joined them, carefully watching Whit and Lance to guide his behavior. Since crossing the frontier he had grown more wary and cautious with each passing day.

"We have heard of these little white girls you speak of," Wicasa said in his Yankton dialect of Dakota. He could speak English, but preferred his native tongue.

"This young un, here, " Whit replied in Dakota, motioning at Markus, "is the big brother to the lost babes." Just as Whit had thought, Wicasa and the two other Yankton notables in the lodge with them nodded approvingly. A brother braving the unknown for his sisters was good cause for admiration among the Sioux. Markus Landes' stature immediately improved in their eyes.

"The girls be from a fam'ly only recently arrived from beyond the great sea we used ter talk about with you and Will," Whit continued. They do nay speak the tongue o' the English."

"And the brother? Does he speak it? " Wicasa asked, curious.

"He be learnin', but still with a good way to go."

Then Wicasa, switching to English, said something that caught Whit, Lance and even Markus with his imperfect English, completely by surprise. "The girls," he began.

"I know where they are."

### James

The Youngest Rourke.

Stepping into the age of one's majority could be an adrenaline charged experience for young men in the adolescent United States of the 19th Century. Life was full of promise, adventure, seemingly endless possibilities. There was a huge land full of forests to clear, prairies to plow, farms and towns and cities to found, rivers to bridge, a whole continent to bring under the civilizing hand of man. Or so most thought. Few considered, and even fewer in any depth, what that _really_ meant for the native peoples and even fewer for the natural environment. At times the promise of the future was dimmed by the gathering storm clouds of war. The Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, numerous scrapes with the natives. But none of them, even lumped together as one, could even come close to what the American Civil War would mean to the entire youthful nation.

Nothing would ever be the same.

Nothing _could_ ever be the same.

Such it was for James Rourke, and his peers, South and North. James Rourke had arrived at the threshold of his nineteenth year just as the threat of civil war made the fateful leap from threat to reality. James Rourke's dreams for his future tattered and were gone. In their stead would be a newly serious straight backed young man with a Springfield musket and a coat of gray. Not what he, nor any of his family, would have hoped for.

He was the youngest of the Rourkes and, though inevitably doted on as the baby of the family, was free of the potentially crippling defects of being the pampered youngest child. Among the Rourkes doting stopped in its parental tracks long before pampering could slide in and gain an emotional foothold. James was hot tempered and at times too quick with his fists, which was by far the biggest source of discord between James and his parents. It wasn't just the Catholic Irish who were considered prone to brawling, as James--too frequently to his parents' minds--often demonstrated. Yet that uneasiness in his parents' minds was considerably leavened by the fact that more often than not James' brawling involved confronting bullies and protecting the bullied. He didn't always win the fights. But he always did make his point. And, now, to his mind, the biggest bully of them all, the North, was threatening the smaller and weaker South. It had happened in the Rourke family before. James' grandfather and great grandfather had both joined George Washington's Continental Army when the Goliath of Great Britain attempted to crush the fledgling American colonies. They considered themselves patriots and freedom fighters.

James saw himself, and the overall political climate, in much the same way. Virginia was invaded. Everyone had to made a stand. Tyranny must be confronted. As in 1776. Few people on either side believed then that slavery was the fundamental issue. On the one side was the concept of the inviolability off the Union. On the other was the loyalty to one's state and state's rights. Among those rights, the right to secede. The colonies had successfully seceded from the British Empire. But only after a bloody war of independence. Now came the second war for independence.

No one was surprised when James Rourke volunteered for the army, first known as the state militia, then as the Confederate Army and then, as often as not, as the Rebel Army.

Like his brothers and his sister he was a sturdy shoot off the Rourke family tree. And, like them, and like the majority of his other friends, relatives, neighbors and acquaintances in Rockingham County, he was at first dead set against Virginia's seceding from the Union. Among the oldest residents of the county were some who remembered the heady days of the American Revolution. There was even one ancient man who had fought in the revolt against Great Britain as a boy. Even eighty years later the American revolution was revered among the European-rooted populace of Virginia.

What the African-rooted Americans thought was not something James Rourke had any concept of. His family had no slaves and there were very few slaves among the yeoman Scots-Irish and German families of the Shenandoah. Most, in fact, ranged from dislike of the so-called 'peculiar institution' of slavery to a downright detestation of the involuntary servitude of other human beings. But James, again as almost all of the other inhabitants of his small chunk of the world, did not embrace the radical doctrine of the abolitionists.

Most of the people, to James' mind, seemed to give the subject little prolonged consideration As one of James's uncles, one of the numerous Jacksons, of which James' mother was one, once said to him. "Slavery will die of its own weight. It cannot endure into these modern times. Has not Great Britain not already years past abolished it?" And, raising both his voice and his bushy graying eyebrows for emphasis, " _without_ great violence." That attitude, though infrequently voiced, underlay the opinions of most in James Rourke's world. Do not promote slavery. Do not abolish it. Let it expire gradually as all outdated ideas and institutions eventually do. Let the abomination wither away until it was finally abolished, as a legal eulogy at the funeral of the dead and gone. Abolitionism, moderated and stretched out over a few years while attitudes and prejudices recalibrated to new, modern realities. Which probably is what would have happened. Had not the hotheads and demagogues, North and South, prevailed. A cruel demagoguery that would cost the American people dearly in blood.

James Rourke's included.

" _Virginia has seceded from the Union!"_

As was so true for legions of Americans, far too many lethally so, those words headlined in the Richmond newspaper changed James Rourke's life forever. The Union, beloved still, was sundered, the newspaper said, because of the foolish federal government refusing to negotiate over secession and the Republican President Lincoln calling for a levy of troops from all the states to suppress it. The call for troops had the opposite effect. Four more Southern states would secede, and several others attempt to. The glue of union was stronger in the North than in the South. Slavery was of course one of the core issues, but state's rights and the actual invasion of Southern states held more sway in the South than loyalty to the union. It was war! Virginia was invaded. War!

Like most of his contemporaries, James Rourke was flush with outrage and rushed off to join the local militia. A militia that would morph into a regiment and before long be taken into the Confederate service. It became the 33rd Virginia, one of the five Valley regiments, the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 27th, that would make up what was, if not the best, certainly the most widely known of all the Confederate brigades.

The Stonewall.

The Brigade, from the very beginning of the war, would be in most of the major battles, and numerous skirmishes large and small, until three years hence when disaster would strike at Spotsylvania Courthouse in May of 1864.

And the Rourke and Jackson kin, James included, would be there from the beginning.

Deutsche Schwillingschwestern

The German Twin Sisters

At the Yankton camp Lance tended to the pack horse wounded at the beaver dam fight. The ball that struck the horse was underpowered and didn't cause nearly as much damage to the horse as the profuse bleeding had initially indicated. Lance removed the ball, with the assistance of a half dozen Yankton who helped to restrain the animal, and treated the wound with a poultice of mud and herbs he had often used in the past. The animal was weakened from loss of blood, but would survive and soon recover. Whit left the animal at the Yankton camp and traded for a sturdy pinto to replace it. Then he, Lance, Markus and Wicasa, along with four of Wicasa's kinsmen, rode out to another Yankton camp where the two girls were being held. As the day was fading into dusk they approached the small camp beside a storm fed prairie pothole. As the group rode up to the little pond a pair of mallards, both drakes, erupted out of the reeds alongside the pond and noisily flew away. The hen mallards, their drab coloring, unlike the gaudy drakes, hid them from view as they stayed protectively settled on their nests of eggs. An old man, a generation older than Whit who had known the exhilarating free ranging life of the buffalo hunting Sioux long before the arrival of the whites, came out to greet the arrivals. He was a distant kinsman of Wicasa and knew of both Lance and Whit, as well as being a acquaintance of Will Rourke during his early years on the prairie. He knew some English, but spoke in the tongue of the Yankton Nakota.

"What brings you here, kinsman," said the old man, though, seeing the two white men with Wicasa, he already understood what they wanted.

"The little white girls," Wicasa answered. "The young white man here is their brother. He has come to return them to their family." At that moment a woman stepped uneasily from one of the nearby lodges, apprehension as plain on her face as paint was on the face of a warrior readying for a raid. She was the adopted mother of the twin girls.

"The children have a home here," the old man said, though he knew they would have no choice but to yield the girls. With Wicasa siding with the white men, he understood that all he could do was to make the best trade he could for the girls. "Why not leave them be?" He motioned at the apprehensive form of the adoptive mother, whose name translated loosely from the Dakota as Dew On The Spring Grass. "This woman is their mother now. She cares for them well."

"We must take them," Wicasa replied. "You know that." He looked over at Whit. "Jackson here has brought goods to give you in return for the girl. A good rifle. Powder and ball. A metal axe. A big kettle. Two bolts of fine cloth and strings of colored beads." Jackson spoke, also in Dakota.

"We know this be rugged hard fer the woman, but the young uns have much family grievin' for they lost babes. The pony with the trade goods be yer'un, too." The Yankton woman began to weep and ran back inside her lodge. Wicasa and two of his kinsmen slid off their horses and followed her into the lodge. A few moments later they emerged with a pair of mirror image towheads dressed as Yankton toddlers. The scared and surprised girls began to sob, but Markus was quick to rush to them, gathering them both into his big arms. The girls stopped sobbing and clung to him so tightly it would have taken some very strong arms to pry them loose. The Yankton woman had followed them out of the lodge, angrily yelling, but stopped when she saw the girls hanging onto their brother. She understood. And accepted her newfound twin daughters were hers no more. As the riders gathered up the little girls and rode out to return to Wicasa's camp, she wheeled and went back inside her lodge, where she wept disconsolately far into the night. She had lost two daughters to the mysterious dreaded white man's diseases a year earlier. Providence had replaced the lost daughters with the two little white girls. Now they, too, were gone. It was too much.

Sometime during that night she drowned herself in the little prairie pond.

### Samuel Rourke

Samuel Reilly Rourke was the spitting image twin of Michael. Like the Dakota said of the two little towheaded German girls, 'as alike as two drops of water.' They both had their father's cornstalk hair and bright blue eyes, genetic reminders of the Viking presence in the British Isles. But they were to take very different paths in life. Like the other Rourke men, Samuel lingered in the neighborhood of six feet when he stopped growing. He was quiet and thoughtful, though he shared his oldest brother Will's interest in distant places. Whereas Will went west to the western wilderness, Samuel went north to the excitement of the intellectual, cultural and economic center of North America. New York City. Like his twin brother, Michael, Samuel was pursuing a legal career. Michael, in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia at the regional center of Winchester. Samuel a few hundred miles north in New York. With Samuel things turned sour. He soon became aware that incompetence and corruption were rife in the New York legal world, the qualifications for the profession so low that it drew the inept as well as the corrupt and even the criminal. Disillusioned, Samuel was on the verge of returning to the world of the Shenandoah Valley farmers, a world he knew to be far more transparent and honest than the dissolute one in New York.

Though he had never been much of a church goer, he began to feel an increasing need for some kind of moral compass in the bewildering morass of New York City. And that is where he fell under the influence of the spell binding oratory of the abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher at his huge Plymouth Church on Orange Street in Brooklyn Heights. Beecher was a brother of writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote the inflammatory and hugely influential Uncle Tom's Cabin, and had raised money to send rifles to Kansas abolitionists in the bloody sectarian warfare with Missouri. Samuel, already anti-slavery as were the other Rourkes, began to morph from a non-committed moderate to a committed abolitionist. Then war came.

Samuel, as his older brother Will in far off Minnesota, had to make a choice. Side with family, home and roots. Or follow the lead of Beecher into embracing abolitionist violence as necessary to end slavery. Though abolitionist sentiment in the North was not widespread, they were powerful and blatantly vocal and commanded attention far out of proportion to their numbers. Samuel was captivated by Beecher's oratory and believed the Civil War to be about ending slavery. In the beginning, at bare minimum, very few in the North would agree with him. But Samuel, enthralled by Beecher, believed the North was fervently abolitionist. When newly elected President Abraham Lincoln asked the states for 70,000 troops to put down what he called the 'rebellion,' Samuel Rourke stepped forward and enlisted.

The Rourke family, like the nation itself, was to be sundered by the impending cataclysm.

### The First Virginia Cavalry

Peter and Sarah Rourke had watched with sadness as their eldest son, Will, the third of their four sons to join the Confederate Army, rode off to war. The sadness, compounded by worry, would be further deepened a few weeks later when the startling news filtered through the lines, in a letter sent from New York by their son Michael, that he had joined the Union Army and was a private soldier in the 69th New York regiment.

Now all four sons, and their son-in-law, Dick Riley, were in the war. And, with the latest news, on both sides.

"It is truly a war of brother against brother," Peter said in a subdued voice after they heard about Michael. "The nation has gone mad." There would be no argument from Sarah. Philosophies, political and social opinions, pratings by courthouse windbags and flowery rhetoric in the newspapers were naught to a mother whose sons were in peril. At that moment she hated Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis with equal motherly vehemence.

"All we can do is pray," she said, fighting back bitter tears.

"I fear even prayer will not be enough," Peter said, under his breath, so quiet that Sarah couldn't hear. Then, louder. "Yes. Pray." His face betrayed his underlying emotions. Peter Rourke clearly saw a cataclysm ahead. For Virginia. For the Confederacy. For the whole American nation. And, far, far worse in his mind, to his sons and other relatives, friends and acquaintances in the army, and their families still at home.

Yet even Peter, far seeing as he was, did not envision the utter ruin that lay ahead.

### Major McGraw

Tom Sykes at his side, Will Rourke rode into Harrisonburg to join up with a group of local young men coalescing into a company that would eventually be part of the 1st Virginia Cavalry. More than two score of them were camped in a field outside town awaiting more recruits, organization and then assignment to the regular army. Major Langston McGraw, a Harrisonburg merchant and former officer of the militia cavalry unit that was in the process of becoming a regular Confederate cavalry company, received Rourke and Sykes with a broad smile. He and Will had known each other years earlier before Rourke went west to his youthful adventures.

"Will!" McGraw blurted out in an excited shout. "I heard you came east to join us. Out of the wilds into civilization!"

"Not so wild anymore," Will quipped. "And not so civilized here, either. Not anymore. Not when we're at war with our countrymen."

"Make that _former_ countrymen, Will," McGraw countered, still grinning. He reached over to grab Will's hand after Rourke and Sykes slid off their mounts. "Welcome to the festivities," he said. "We'll do our best to keep you entertained."

"Of that, sir," Will replied with a smile, warming up to meeting an old friend, "I have no doubt whatsoever."

It was chaos at first. McGraw was well intentioned, but being the major of an untrained and untested militia company, with no previous military experience of his own, did not prepare him for the blizzard of small things he had to attend to. Weapons for the men. Ammunition. Equipment. Saddles and tack for the horses. Clothing. Rations for the men, fodder for the horses, tents and oilcloths and a thousand little things that had him close to being rattled. His old friend Will Rourke, still young in years but with a decade of hard won practical knowledge behind him, stepped in to help. Within a week Will Rourke was Lieutenant Will Rourke and Tom Sykes was his sergeant. A rank both would retain until later in the war when Rourke accepted a captaincy, though Sykes preferred to remain a sergeant and turned down an offered promotion to lieutenant so he could continue to ride with Rourke as his sergeant.

Less than a month passed before over a hundred young men joined the company. Most were either unprepared or over-prepared. The unprepared, who were the majority, came in with their horses and little else. A few had no weapons, expecting that the government would issue then. Not likely. The government did not yet have weapons, or much of anything else, to supply them. Most of the men had hunting rifles or shotguns, many had pistols and nearly everyone had a bowie knife. Of those who came over-prepared, they had so much baggage that it was literally laughable. Folding cots, camp chairs, kettles, trunks of clothing. Two brothers, the Graysons, sons of a local planter, brought their black servants to be their orderlies, which did not set well with most of the young troopers who came from families who had no slaves and no such entitlements as the pair of aristocratic brothers.

There were those obdurate southerners who continued to refuse to relinquish their black body servants, even in the army. Not so the Grayson brothers who, like almost all the other recruits, soon grasped the reality--and the gravity--of the situation. The brothers sent their servants and their luggage home, as did many others with too much luggage, and the unprepared learned to scrounge for the equipment they needed. Every reasonably serviceable firearm for sale in Harrisonburg was soon obtained, by purchase, chit, barter or dramatic appeals to patriotism, as were innumerable other basic necessities from tooth brushes to frying pans to saddles to boots and belts and hats. And clothing. It would be another two months before they had enough uniforms to make them reasonably presentable as a military unit, though there would permanently remain plenty of variance from the ideal standard of uniformity. What the Confederacy could not supply, which varied from barely adequate to almost nothing, the troopers would obtain by whatever means they could. Often that meant taking it from their enemies. Many a trooper before long would be wearing Yankee boots, carrying a captured Yankee weapon and clad in a heavy Yankee overcoat. Many also would ride horses 'donated' by the Yankees as well as saddles, the Union saddles universally considered superior to the ungainly and uncomfortable Confederate issue.

Which was true of just about everything military. The Yankees had more, and better quality, of just about everything. The available manpower in the North was at least three times that of the South. The available industrial power of the North dwarfed that of the South. But the South, the infantry as well as the cavalry, did have some assets that helped to counterbalance the Union superiority. The cavalier spirit of many of its more privileged young men and a corollary frontier martial spirit among the rank and file. Many had been raised with firearms and hunting, a great many of them on farms with horses. The South already had the makings for a superb cavalry arm as well as infantry. They brought with them an intangible asset that went a long way towards evening the unequal balance with Northern abundance.

The spirit of the individual soldier and trooper.

Nowhere was it more evident than in the Confederate Cavalry under the undeniably theatrical and flamboyant, yet also undeniably talented, General Jeb Stuart. It was repeated throughout Virginia. The Confederate Cavalry under Stuart was unbeatable!

At least that was what the government officials in Richmond believed, which was echoed in the newspapers of Richmond and far beyond, even in the North. To the individual troopers on the ground it was not nearly so glorious. True, they did have their exhilarating moments of victory, more often that not sending their Yankee counterparts into ignominious retreat. And they did have a certain élan that was often plain to see. But there were many other times that were the antithesis of glamorous. The endless hours of picket duty, sitting their horses in all weather, fair or foul. Blistering heat, freezing cold, pouring rain, sleet, biting wind and even snow. Inadequate equipment, not enough food for the men and horses. Outgunned by the Yankees with the North's mass produced breach loading carbines and, later, their Sharps and Henry repeating rifles. Their horses were gradually worn down, both from hard service and poor nutrition. Large numbers of the cavalrymen were often out of action, either without a horse or with a rundown horse unfit for service. Many others were detailed to, somehow, friend fresh mounts.

The horsemen, though glamorized by the public and even the infantry, did not have it nearly so easy as commonly believed. They had little rest, being continually sent on duty as pickets, scouts, couriers or escorts. Because they were on the move so much they were often beyond contact with the provisioning quartermasters and thus were frequently even poorer fed than the underfed infantry. Their mobility did allow them greater opportunity to forage, but that faded as the surrounding countryside was stripped of resources. They, however, and this was the core reason they were both reviled and envied by the infantry, were largely spared the horrendous mass slaughter the infantry units suffered in the major battles. But the casualties did happen, in smaller numbers in engagements minor and major, and eventually added up well into the thousands. Joining the cavalry was not a pass to avoid becoming a name on the casualty lists.

Something Will Rourke would soon see for himself.

It was early in the summer of 1861. Although not officially ordered, the muddled chaos of disorganization not yet resolved, Major Langston McGraw, believing he was taking he initiative where others balked and using an offhand comment by a Confederate colonel as his justification, led his troop on a scout towards the Potomac, looking for signs of what the Federals were up to. The cavalry were the eyes and ears of the Rebel Army and most of the competent commanders understood that. Not one to shirk a challenge, Major McGraw headed thirty of his troopers, Will Rourke as his second in command, on the scout. As they approached the Potomac they heard rather than saw a Federal column just ahead on the far side of a low tree-crowned hill. McGraw led the troopers into the grove of trees where they dismounted, holding their mounts, while the Major and Rourke crept forward on foot to the edge of the trees to see what lay just beyond that was making so much noise. Both men's mind were set racing at what they saw.

It was a Federal train of a dozen wagons with twenty or so cavalry escorting the noisy creaking, ungreased wagons, the unwary Federals having been assured that there were no Rebels closer than twenty miles. Major McGraw was no stranger to the Southern cavalier spirit and, though his unofficial mission was to scout and gather intelligence, saw the lightly guarded wagon train as an irresistible target. Wordlessly nodding at Rourke, who had no trouble divining McGraw's intentions, he hurried back to his horse, quietly ordered his troopers to mount up and then led them out of the trees where, by quickly forming a lateral skirmish line, they demonstrated the drills at camp had been of at least some use. McGraw drew his saber and yelled the word every single trooper had been waiting for weeks to hear.

"Charge!"

The band of Rebel troopers caught the Federals, who were a raw Pennsylvania militia unit recently pressed into service, by surprise. They turned tail and galloped away as fast as they could. Except for one brave soul. He slid off his horse, aimed his carbine and fired a single shot that struck Major McGraw in the forehead and killed him instantly. He toppled out of his saddle and nearly knocked Will Rourke from his mount when La Foudre dodged to avoid the major's tumbling body. The brave, some would say foolish, Yankee soon joined McGraw in the death march when an outraged trooper, a cousin of McGraw, rode up to the Yankee and fired his revolver point blank into the doomed man's face. Some said the Yank tried to surrender before he was shot. Others said otherwise. It made no difference to the dead man, who left behind a widow and one small child. As did Major McGraw. Tit for tat. Bullet for bullet. Widow for widow. Orphan for orphan. Senseless death for senseless death.

The war had begun in blood-stained earnest for Will Rourke.

### Pursuit

While the troopers captured the wagon train and chased away the cavalry escort, Will Rourke pulled up La Foudre and leaped from the saddle, dashing to the inert form of the downed Major McGraw. There was nothing to be done. McGraw was dead, the Yankee minie ball having struck him squarely between his eyebrows and killing him instantly. It might have been just imagination, but Rourke could swear the expression on McGraw's face was one of profound surprise. A few minutes later two troopers, one of them McGraw's cousin who had shot down the Yankee that killed the major, and Sergeant Sykes, helped Rourke gently lay the major's body in one of the captured wagons, preparatory to the dour task of returning him to his family in Harrisonburg. Rourke clearly saw McGraw's cousin gun down the Yankee as he was throwing down his gun in surrender. Rourke said nothing further about it. He had crossed yet another dark threshold in the Brother's War that was anything but brotherly.

The major was the only Rebel casualty. One Yankee was dead, two others, wagon drivers who gamely tried to resist. were wounded. Five more wagon drivers, mostly older men not fit for a combat unit, surrendered without a fight. A sixth scampered off into a nearby woods and escaped. Rourke made a quick assessment of the contents of the wagons. Two of them were loaded with provisions. Barrels of flour, boxes of hardtack and more barrels containing salt pork. Plus, to the delight of the coffee-loving Rebels, a dozen twenty pound sacks of coffee. Most of the other wagons were loaded with building supplies for a railroad bridge the Yankees were repairing, the bridge having earlier been destroyed in a raid by Rebel cavalry. But in one of the wagons was a genuine bonanza. Six crates of Sharps breach loading rifles and boxes full of thousands of rounds of ammunition. The escaped wagon driver hiding in the nearby woods heard the jubilant excited shouting when the troopers found the highly coveted Sharps and, lying flat on his stomach behind blackberry bushes and. unable to see beyond a few feet, wondered at what the devil had set the wild-haired Rebels to hollering so.

Rourke had his men cut loose the teams from most of the wagons and set the wagons on fire. The animals and three remaining wagons, driven by the captured drivers, he immediately sent on their way to Rebel controlled territory. Ten of his men--Rourke was now the commander, being the only surviving officer--were detailed to herd the animals and guard the wagons. He put Sergeant Wilson Fisk, another old acquaintance from his early years who had once sparked Will's sister, Susan, in charge of the wagons and animals.

"If somehow the Yankees overtake you, Wilson," Rourke said in what Fisk was relieved to hear was the crisp, decisive voice of someone who is comfortable with command, "the one thing you cannot lose is the wagonload of carbines." A wagon that, after Fisk thoughtfully suggested it, also became an impromptu hearse for the corpse of Major Langston McGraw. Hardly twenty minutes elapsed from the beginning of the attack before Sergeant Wilson Fisk led the procession of captured animals and wagons as fast as they could travel towards Rebel territory. Rourke, after first tending as best they could to their wounds, left the two wounded Yankees to be found by the pursuit that was sure to come after them. With his remaining twenty troopers, Rourke and Sergeant Sykes covered the rapid withdrawal of the captured Union wagons and horses.

Rourke was right in his assessment. The routed Pennsylvania horsemen, smarting at their poor performance, and heavily reinforced by part of their nearby regiment, were soon in pursuit. They found the burning wagons, the two wounded men and the wagon driver who had escaped into the woods. Major Hiram Woods, commanding the pursuit, was in peculiar synchronicity with the Rebel Major McGraw. Like McGraw, he was a town dweller and commander of a militia unit that was called into regular service. Also like McGraw, Woods was long on enthusiasm but short on experience. He spent too much time quizzing the wounded men and the wagon driver before procrastinating even more before setting off into earnest pursuit of the Rebels. Some of his men were so frustrated with his laggardly manner that they almost launched off into pursuit of the Rebels without orders.

Woods finally set his column in motion. And made another mistake. He ordered the column into a full gallop in pursuit of the Rebels. By the time they caught up with the Southerners the Pennsylvania cavalrymen's horses would be winded, the men battered by the rough jarring in their saddles. Rourke could not have planned it better himself. And he did, in fact, intuit that the pursuit would come at a gallop, and therefore paced his horses slower so that they would be relatively fresh when the expected clash took place.

Hardly an hour passed after Rourke and his twenty men began their withdrawal before Sykes motioned at Rourke to look behind them. There, still out of sight, but revealed by the dust of scores of horses on the dry ground, was the Yankee pursuit, riding hard. Rourke led his twenty men behind a thicket of sumac, so overwhelmingly redolent with the treacle smell of the sticky blooms that it almost made some of them nauseous, detailed five of the men to hold the horses and had the other fifteen come with him to the front of the thicket where they lay concealed. The men all had revolvers, some of them a pair, and about half also had a long arm or a shotgun. They lay, hidden, in the grassy sumac thicket as the Yankee column, riding in columns of four, approached on the gallop, their horses' manes flowing and the men's hats flapping, excitement plain on their faces even at a gallop.

"Shhhh," Rourke said in as low a voice as he could muster and still be heard. "Do not fire until I do. Repeat! They need to be close. Do not fire until I do!" The Yankee column grew closer and the Rebels could clearly see the details of the Union cavalrymen's faces. Some beardless youths, others with moustaches or full beards. Major Woods, unconsciously mimicking a popular Southern style, wore a Van Dyke beard. He was in the process of yelling something when Rourke fired his pistol. Immediately all fifteen of the Rebels emptied their pistols at the Yankees from their undiscovered hiding places hardly fifty feet away.

Whatever Major Woods was about to say, it remained forever unsaid. His peculiar synchronicity with Major McGraw was grimly consummated as he, too, died in his saddle. Will Rourke had aimed for the Yankee major, knowing that a leaderless enemy was far easier to defeat than a well led one. Something Rourke's Dakota friend, Wicasa, had taught him in his early frontier days when they battled the hostile Ojibwe together. Behind Major Woods all four riders and their horses in the first rank of riders went down, causing the rank behind them to trip, stumble and crash to the ground, followed by two more ranks mostly unable to veer aside in time. As the horses and riders charged into a tangled mess of men and horses, Rourke's men, all of whom were good shots from their youthful hunting days in the valley, picked off the Yankee troopers with pistols, rifles and shotguns. Two more officers, intentionally targeted by Rourke's men, also went down. The rest of the Yankees jerked their horses around and resumed their gallop--in the opposite direction. Rourke wasted no time. His men were back in the saddle and again on the trail of the wagons in less than five minutes.

As Rourke calculated, the Yankees regrouped and resumed the pursuit. More cautiously, but with renewed determination. They might not be naturals in the saddle and well schooled in the use of firearms like the Southerners, but they were not cowards. Rourke was ready. He stayed behind with his own long gun and two troopers who were the best shots with the most accurate long range rifles. A fourth man remained with them to hold the horses. The three shooters settled into a concealed location while the rest of the troopers continued after the wagon train. As the Yankee column reappeared, trotting, rather than galloping, Rourke sighted on the single remaining officer who led the column. His rifle cracked, kicking back hard against his shoulder. The Yankee column reined to a stop at the sound of the rifle shot, not knowing where it had come from. The officer remained mounted.

"Looks like you missed him, Lieutenant," one of the troopers said. "Want I should do it?" Before Rourke could answer the Yankee officer slid from his saddle onto the ground and lay there writhing. Rourke nodded at his two troopers, who knew what to do. Both carefully squeezed off shots and two more Yankees pitched out of their saddles. That did it. The Yankee horsemen beat a hasty retreat again. And, again, Rourke did not linger in remounting and following after the main body of his troopers. A half hour later they set up another ambush. The Pennsylvania cavalry were on their trail again, this time even more cautiously. An advance scout moved out ahead of the main body, which now was reduced to half of is original size by casualties and detailing men to care for the casualties. Three Yankee troopers rode cautiously several hundred yards ahead of the main body. As they came within rifle range three shots rang out. Two of the Yankees pitched out of their saddles. The third lingered a few moments more before slipping to the ground. Rourke and his small group were long gone before the main body of Pennsylvania soldiers timorously advanced to where lay their three scouts. An hour later Rourke passed into Confederate territory and soon rejoined his main body. Reunited, they caught up with the wagon train and made a triumphant entry into the Rebel camp. Behind them the dogged Yankee pursuit ended when the Union horsemen prudently retreated when they encountered the menacing muskets of two companies of Virginia Confederate infantry, alerted to their approach by Rourke and his troopers.

There was jubilation all around at the successful raid, the citizens from nearby farms and hamlets regaling the troopers with food and drink. Cheese, biscuits, sausages, washed down with cold well water and buttermilk, and also with the much appreciated glass or mug of good whisky. There would not be many such feasts in the coming hard years of campaigning, and the men so thoroughly indulged themselves it was almost as though they knew of the hard times that lay ahead. One man, however, was not celebrating. First he had a quiet, private and very serious discussion with sergeants Sykes and Fisk. Then, after the crates of Sharps rifles and ammunition were unloaded, he climbed into a wagon seat and began the solemn trip back to Harrisonburg.

Will Rourke was bringing home the body of his old friend, Major Langston McGraw.

### The Quartermaster

Rourke had guessed right again. After years of seeing shady government officials and Indian agents dupe and swindle the Sioux, he had a very good idea what would happen with the captured wagon train. As soon as the Confederate quartermaster in Gordonsville heard of the wagon train exploit, he rode north to confiscate the captured provisions and weapons "in the name of the Confederate government," as the nattily uniformed officer put it. The quartermaster was Colonel Beaufort de Remy, from a wealthy tidewater planter family, commissioned a colonel in the Quartermaster Corps at the suggestion of his wife's cousin, Varina Davis, the wife of President Jefferson Davis. In four years of war he would not see a single day of combat, though he was full of martial oratory.. He was, as one witty orator once put it, "like a shallow river. A mile wide at the mouth and an inch deep."

To his extreme irritation, Colonel de Remy found that another quartermaster officer had beat him to it and appropriated the captured Union provisions and guns. His face turned beet red and he clenched and unclenched his fists in sputtering exasperation.

"Wha...wha....what! Who did this? Where did he take the wagons? What authority did he have?" By this time Will Rourke had returned from his solemn trip to Harrisonburg and handed Colonel de Remy a very official looking document.

"This is the authority he had, Colonel," Rourke said. "We had no choice but to comply."

"But....but....but..... _I_ am the one with the authority!" The red faced de Remy fumed. He looked more carefully at the document, started, snorted and angrily threw the document to the ground. "That is my name! This is a forgery! How could you allow this to happen? I will bring you up on charges for this!"

"We had no idea who you are, Colonel. None of us have ever seen you before. I believe we had better report this to Richmond at once," Rourke replied. De Remy, who was resplendent in his expensive tailored uniform and intimidating in his haughty manner, however had a less than luminous brain and never grasped how he had been snared. He did however clearly realize that to report it to Richmond would make him look bad. He was, after all, the officer responsible. And, more directly relevant, he had not yet informed Richmond of the capture of the Yankee weapons.

"Forget it, damnit! Let it go. Lesson learned." He then remounted his horse and retraced his way back to his comfortable headquarters in his father-in-law's plantation mansion near Gordonsville. He thought it best to not mention the affair to anyone, especially considering he had not passed on the first report of the Sharps capture, having had his own very private and very unofficial plans for the weapons. To the handful who did inquire, he snapped, with imperious finality: "It was _false_ information. There was nothing!" There were a handful of insiders who knew the truth, and had many a good private laughs over it, de Remy being universally detested by the officers who were genuine citizen soldiers. The captured Sharps carbines belonged in the hands of the front line troopers, not with some politician's or general's pet unit far from the battlefield. Which is exactly what Colonel de Remy intended to do. Trade the Sharps carbines for political and personal favors.

Will Rourke had seen his Sioux friends skied numerous times and had himself angrily confronted venal traders and officials more than once. He could do no less for the men of his cavalry troop. Who, after de Remy left, were all issued brand new Sharps carbines.

After the war Colonel Beaufort de Remy moved to New York where he joined other ex-Confederates in pursuing the many business opportunities of that bustling world class port city. In postwar New York there more former Confederate generals than there were in Richmond or Atlanta. And plenty of colonels.

Some said de Remy had begun his New York activities long before the war ended.

### The Election

Two weeks after Major McGraw's death Will Rourke's cavalry troop was formally inducted from the Virginia militia into the regular Confederate service. As did most of the units at that time, they held an election for officers and non-commissioned officers. In Rourke's unit the election was kept by higher authorities to one lieutenant and two sergeants. Rourke was urged to run for the lieutenancy. He agreed to do it, largely because he realized that as an veteran of the turbulent frontier he had a better grasp on the realities of combat than the farm boys and town dwellers who made up the bulk of the company. "Better you, Will Rourke, veteran of the wild west that you are," said Rainier Zeller, another of Rourke's old childhood acquaintances, the same second generation German-American who had tutored Will in his rudimentary German. "Better you than one of these silk shirt city boys who have never fired a shot in anger." After the successful wagon train raid, the men now all armed with brand new Sharps carbines, Will Rourke was a shoo in. His only competition came from a tall, pompous aristocrat, Lane Davis, a man Rourke knew from his youth in the Valley, who, some of the men joked, was so full of himself his head might explode at any moment. Davis did not take the defeat lightly, being especially agitated by being bested by what he termed "...some border country ruffian from the Valley's dirt farming underclass." As an aristocrat Davis was convinced it was his natural right to be an officer. He had not grasped that he was not well liked among the men, largely because of his arrogantly superior attitude, and he took his defeat very personally. Though Rourke had bested him in a gentlemanly contest, and had refrained from any personal attacks on him, Davis did not accept defeat graciously. Rourke had bested him.

For now.

Sergeants Wilson and Sykes were reelected, Wilson, a self-effacing and solidly competent man, easily won reelection. Sykes just squeaked by. Being an outsider where most of the troopers came from the same area and knew each other weighed heavily against him. But Rourke's firm support, and Sykes' steady performance during the wagon train raid won him the election. Unlike Lane's rancor at Rourke's victory, however, no one resented Sykes election. He was good natured, cheerful and already popular with the men, many of whom were around his age. The only truly discordant note in the election was when Lane Davis angrily stomped off and was not seen again.

The reason for Lane's disappearance became clear one week later. He reappeared at the company bivouac in a brand new tailored uniform sporting the collar insignia of a captain. Everyone stared at him in astonishment.

"Gentlemen," Lane said in an amused, but still undeniably haughty, voice. "Welcome your new captain."

It was no ruse. Lane had gone to his father, a man of power and influence, who had in turn used his influence to have Lane commissioned as a captain and assigned to Rourke's cavalry troop as its commanding officer. Hardly an unusual occurrence in either the South or the North, where personal contacts influenced many a promotion. Competence as often as not hardly even considered. As the newly minted Captain Davis walked on through the encampment, announcing as he went to the astounded and chagrined troopers that he was their new commanding officer, Sergeant Wilson Fisk sidled up next to a bemused Will Rourke and nudged him in the side.

"This pompous blueblood, Will Rourke, is gonna be one royal pain in the ass." Fisk had once worked for the Lane family and knew them for the selfish and arrogant manipulators that they were. "Take care, Will," Fisk said. "He's vindictive. Watch your back." Lane Davis was not the first of his type Will had encountered. Rourke's reply came back in a voice hardened by that experience.

"I already am."

Like many a Southern aristocrat, Lane Davis was tutored in the arts and sciences of what they called a gentleman. He spoke French fluently, danced a quadrille with athletic grace, was a superb horseman, a deft swordsman and a crack shot. Unlike Rourke and most of the other troopers, he was a stranger to the use of the axe, shovel, plow and hammer. Lane exuded privilege, hauteur and self confidence and consciously considered himself a cavalier in the classical sense. A Christian knight serving in the noble cause of God and country. That, at least, was they way he saw things. What most of his men saw was an insufferable, self-obsessed bully of indifferent abilities who could very well get them all killed with his rash blundering.

Will Rourke consciously--and all of his men knew it--did his best to counter the galloping ego of Captain Lane Davis and keep his troopers alive. Still, Will had to admit that the man was a master horseman who, with his tall form, elegant uniform and plumed hat leading a saber waving charge, was indeed a stirringly romantic sight to behold. Especially with Will and the rest of the men right behind him hollering the Rebel yell, waving their sabers and pistols, battle flags and guidons. Three months into the war, and three such--fortunately--successful charges behind them, Will remained committed to doing his damnedest to keep Lane's wild romantic charge mentality from being a repeat of the famed disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War of a few years earlier. A foolish dash into the jaws of death. Two of the ingredients for the disaster were already there. The jaws of death in the direct form of the increasingly competent well armed Yankee enemy. A vainglorious rash officer, in the person of the feckless Captain Lane. The impetuous and military inept Davis was very capable of doing just that. Rashly leading his men into a slaughter pen. It was only matter of time before it happened.

And then the day finally came when it did.

### Simon Rourke

Peter Rourke was up at dawn, caring for the animals, and had just come into the house to sit down to breakfast with Sarah when they heard a horse gallop up outside and someone yelling.

"Peter! Sarah!"

Before the Rourkes could get to the door the unseen person was already there, beating on it so hard the handle shook. Peter pulled open the door and there stood his older brother, Simon, looking agitated, which was not something often seen in the usually unruffled Simon Rourke.

"My God, Simon," Peter said in an uneasy voice, "what's wrong?"

"I was just in Harrisonburg," he said in a worried voice. "There's been a big battle. Lots of casualties." Sarah pushed her way between the two men and stared hard at her brother-in-law, her voice with a hard, even angry, edge to it.

"Was the 33rd there? Were our boys there?" Simon's face flushed. His son and son-in-law were both in the 33rd, along with James and Michael Rourke and dozens of other relatives, friends and neighbors.

"Yes," Simon said, his face now suddenly grown pale. "The 33rd was there. They say there were many casualties among them." A mournful expression. "Dozens of them." Without another word Sarah wheeled and disappeared into the house, holding the angry, bitter tears until she was out of sight. But not out of hearing.

"Are there any lists of casualties?" Peter said, trying hard to remain calm.

"The Provost Marshall in Harrisonburg, Captain Lawson, said that the Richmond papers will have at least a partial list of casualties. As soon as one arrives they'll post it at his headquarters. He said it should come soon."

Peter Rourke hastened to his modest, sturdily constructed stable, built a few years earlier by Rourke and his sons after an earlier stable was destroyed in a horrific straight line windstorm, and solemnly saddled a riding horse. Together with his brother he rode into town to wait for the arrival of the dreaded casualty lists. Two hours later, a thick crowd of anxious relatives and friends thronging the Provost's headquarters, the lists went up. People approached the lists, some anxiously, others with halting trepidation. The reactions were mostly one of two. An exclamation of relief. Or a mournful outpouring of grief.

With the Rourke brothers it was both. Neither of Peter Rourke's sons were on the list. Nor was Simon Rourke's son. But his son-in-law, Andrew Hanley was. Killed in action at the battle that would come to be known as First Manassas. First Manassas and the first of the family to die in the war. But not the last.

There would be four more years of casualty lists.

Simon Rourke, like most of those in the family, detested slavery and had opposed secession, but had responded to the invasion of Virginia as had all the others. A reluctant support of the Confederacy. All that was on his mind as he rode slowly home, his head hung in a dreary sadness, wondering how he was going to break the news to his daughter that her husband, jovial prankster Andy Hanley, an exuberant hope-filled young newlywed only a few months ago, was dead on the battlefield at Manassas.

The pallor of gloom that enveloped Simon might have been a harbinger of what was to come. His daughter, not yet twenty years old and a widow, could not let go of her grief and sank into a permanent depression. A futile death for a questionable cause.

And a childless widow left to face a ruined future.

Chapter 4: The 33rd Virginia

Unlike their cousin Simon and his brother-in-law Andy Hanley, James and Michael Rourke were spared the first of the horrific blood lettings of the Civil War. They were part of a detail left behind while the bulk of the regiment and the rest of what would soon be called the Stonewall Brigade went off to a battle in central Virginia at a place the Yankees would call Bull Run. The Rebels called the battle Manassas. It was a rout, with the Federals retreating in panic towards Washington, and because of the heroic defense put up by Stonewall Jackson's troops, where Confederate General Thomas Jackson would ever after be known as Stonewall. Eventually his brigade would be known as the Stonewall Brigade.

The Rourke brothers were not in the battle, but they heard plenty about it from acquaintances in other companies in the 33rd who were in the fight. The slaughter was stupefying, 40 percent casualties, including fifty dead and dying. which opened the eyes of the survivors to the reality of war that was far from the glory of battle painted by the patriotic flag wavers and pontificators of both sides. The gruesome accounts of the battle by the survivors left the Rourke brothers subdued and bereft of words. The Rourke's were passingly acquainted with a number of the dead and wounded. One of the missing, Lucius Moore, was a neighbor they knew well before he moved to a neighboring county and joined the army in another of the 33rd Virginia's companies. They never did hear what happened to Moore. He disappeared. One of the unknown buried in a mass grave after the battlefield? Gone over the hill to the California gold fields, never to return? Captured and died in the hellhole of a Union prison camp? In at least one of the Yankee POW camps no one bothered to record the names of Rebel POWs who died in their miserable starved hundreds.

As the war went on the list of missing grew longer and longer. Some returned. Exchanged prisoners. AWOLs caught by the provosts and returned to the Army. Others, POWs released when the war ended. Deserters who returned home after the war. And another long list became known after the end of the war. Though not nearly as well known, nearly as many Rebels, close to 30,000, died as did Yankees in little known Northern prisoner of war camps as bad or worse as the infamous Southern prison camp of Andersonville. Point Lookout, Fort Delaware, Elmira, Camp Douglas. Even more than in the South, the soldiers who died in the Union prison camps suffered not only from miserable living conditions and disease but also of periodic intentional neglect, and, sometimes, some suspected, even worse. Southerners believed that Ulysses Grant insisting on shutting down prisoner exchanges condemned many thousands of solders, Yankees and Rebels, to a filthy, ignominious death in squalid prison camps. As Union General Sherman acidly remarked: "War is hell!" That it was, but, as one of the ordinary enlisted men among the hordes of prisoners of war put it: 'This war be bad 'nuff....

....and the pufferbelly gen'rels and politshens makes it wo'se!'

Of the huge numbers of missing, many, a very great many, were never heard from again and their families left with nothing but a lingering, eventually forlorn, hope.

The abolitionists sat safely in their ornate Northern Second Empire homes and the Southern slave owners comfortable in their antebellum mansions while the Rourkes of Virginia, and so many hundreds of thousands others from all the states, went to war and the entire country bled itself to a near fatal national anemia. And, most disgusting to everyone, North and South, were the speculators, profiteers and legions of sharp businessmen who made fortunes while the nation descended into fratricidal slaughter. Many a Yankee wrought their capitalist fortune from the blood of the nation's young men, as did not a few greedy Southerners.

The Rourke brothers were spared the first of the vicious big battles. No one now doubted that there would be more to come. No fighting for the Rourkes, not yet, not against the enemy. The human enemy. But nature often seemed at war with them as they endured pelting rainstorms on the march, slogged through muddy roads and were continually tormented by insects. Lice were a near constant plague to them. They slept in the open much of the time, often in the rain, and in the winter, the snow. Rations were erratic. They had to scrounge the countryside to make up for inadequate rations and left many an angry farmer cursing them. The Army called it foraging. The farmers called it thievery. Two words, in this reality, that meant the same thing.

The harsh living conditions made many men sick. In the hot weather, mosquitoes spread malaria and yellow fever, in the winter pneumonia raged among them. Because of the general ignorance about hygiene, dysentery and typhoid fever decimated the ranks. Measles and mumps were common. And, at times, to everyone's horror, the dreaded smallpox raised its ugly head and spread fear as well as death. Many a family at the soldiers' homes in Virginia received the sad news that their warrior son had died in camp from disease. Poor nutrition, harsh living conditions, inadequate provisioning of almost everything and, too often, harsh and inept leadership combined to undermine the health of the soldiers. As the years passed observers watching them march past thought they looked more like ragged scarecrows that soldiers. But, despite that, and the growing casualties, their morale stayed high. They believed in the rightness of their cause, though they were often vague in just what that meant beyond the emotional and patriotic notion of it being the Second American Revolution. And underneath it all, with the superb leadership of Jackson, Lee, Longstreet and Stuart, they had hope.

They believed they would win the war.

### The Irish Brigade

### The 69th New York

When Samuel Rourke joined the 69th New York Infantry in the flush of idealism and patriotism he didn't realize it would be almost completely composed of Catholic Irishmen, many if not most of them non-citizens and often recent immigrants. The recruiting officer saw his name, Rourke, and assumed he was a Catholic Irish-American. Rourke was at first unaware that he had set foot in the Irish lion's den. Not for long. The Protestant Irish and the Catholic Irish were oil and water. A tempestuous mix in the best of times. Rourke was already regretting his decision to join in the first week of his enlistment when the full nature of his identity filtered to the Irish recruits. He was a Southerner, a Protestant, with roots in Protestant Northern Ireland, a land appropriated over Irish protest by Protestant Scots and others and a permanent bitter bone of contention among the Catholic Irish. Hardly three days into his enlistment Samuel Rourke became an unwilling surrogate for the intensely hated English hegemony over Ireland.

"Ye be a feckin' Ulsterman, we be hearing," Rory O'Toole, a native of County Cork, built as solid as a granite outcrop in Sam's home country of the Blue Ridge, said to Samuel in a thick menacing brogue. Rourke, though easy going and mild mannered in his ways, was as handy as the rest of his clan with his fists if the need arose and not known for a propensity to back down. Unfazed, he looked levelly back at the hostile Irishman, who had lately been a stevedore on the New York docks.

"Does this look like Ulster to you?" He replied, calmly. "I was born and raised in Virginia and am here to fight to free the slaves just like the rest of you." At that totally unforeseen watershed moment another Rourke stepped through a dark threshold into a series of reality shocks that would rattle everything in him, body and soul and intellect. The first of them was when the tough Irish stevedore and a handful of his watching cronies began to chortle and snicker and even laugh out loud.

"Free the black is it, Ulsterman," said another man, less rough looking and better spoken, who would soon be one of the regimental officers. "Is that what you think?" Rourke, rattled, nodded a confused yes. "If that be your belief, lad," the Irishman, Patrick Meagher, a cousin to the man who would lead the Irish Brigade, Thomas Meagher, said with a mix of amusement and sarcasm. "Then you are alone among us."

"We don give a rat's ass for the friggin' niggers," spat out another of the Irish immigrants. "We fite fer the Union."

"And fer Irish respect in this hostile pagan Protestant land," said another. "We sure as feckin' hell don't want a bunch of raggedy free niggers grabbing the lowly jobs the devil Yankees give us, miserly and paltry paid though they be." Rourke stared back at them, speechless. Was this the way they all thought? It was. Most of them, anyhow.

These would prove to be the sentiments Rourke would repeatedly hear from the Catholic Irish. Some joined up thinking the war would be an adventure. Others joined to get away from their dreary lives of toil. There was hardly a whiff of abolitionism. The predominant sentiment was that fighting for the Union would earn the Catholic Irish a seat at the Protestant American table. Many of the Irish, in fact, likening the Union to the English in Ireland, admired the South for standing up to what they considered an oppressive government. Their attitude towards the blacks ranged from indifference to dislike to a hatred teetering on the very edge of violence. To the preponderance of the Irish, the free blacks and slaves were not blacks, or negroes. They were niggers, the word spit out by the Irish with a vehemence that sent shivers up Rourke's spine. He was awash in confusion and disenchantment. Good Lord! Had he made a mistake in joining up? It didn't matter. Not now. He had enlisted in the Union Army, in the Irish Catholic 69th New York, which would be one of the regiments in the Irish Brigade. Samuel Rourke was not a man to cut and run.

He was trapped.

As the Irish Brigade coalesced out of three New York Irish regiments, the 63rd, 69th and 88th, a non-Irish regiment, the 29th Massachusetts, was added to the brigade, as was later another Irish regiment, the 116th Pennsylvania, recruited from the Irish in Philadelphia. Samuel Rourke, as a Protestant with roots in Ulster, was the butt of numerous, grating insults from the Catholic Irish of the 69th New York, the Irish Brigade containing many Irish Republicans and even some veterans of rebellion against the English. The commander of the Irish Brigade, Thomas Meagher, had in fact been condemned to death by the English, but instead sent to exile in Australia, from where he escaped to the United States. Rourke was further astonished when one of the more level headed Irishmen commented that many of the Irish joined the Union Army to gain military experience with the intention of using that learned military knowledge to overthrow the English occupation of Ireland.

The world was growing increasingly complicated for Samuel Rourke.

The Catholic Irish equated the Ulster Protestants with English imperialism and suppression of the Irish Catholics and Sam had a rough time of it. Hardly a week passed when he didn't have to defend himself with his fists. He gave as good as he got, but it was wearing him down, not so much physically as emotionally, and especially, the wounded spirit of his abolitionism that inspired him to enlist. He hadn't joined the Union Army to find himself a target as a flesh and blood symbol of British Imperialism among a crowd of rough men who called the slaves niggers and wanted no part of abolitionism. Then a sympathetic officer, Catholic Irish but not as fervently anti-Ulster as many others, arranged to have Samuel Rourke transferred to the largely Protestant 29th Massachusetts regiment in the Irish Brigade. Rourke breathed a huge sign of relief. Now he would be among like minded soldiers.

Or so he thought.

The 29th was largely made up young men from old line English families, some direct descendants from the Mayflower, and they were as obdurate in their Protestant ways as the Irish Catholics were in theirs. Captain Zachariah Berwell stared coldly at Samuel Rourke when Rourke reported to Berwell's company, where he was assigned when he transferred from the 69th New York.

"Rourke," Captain Berwell snapped in a vaguely nasal Massachusetts accent. "Irish. Why do you not remain with one of the Irish regiments? We are a Protestant regiment. Are you sure you want to be here? You will not be well received." This was not the first time Rourke was stereotyped, be the stereotype true or no, as a rowdy, brawling Catholic Irishman because of his name. He replied, as he had those several kindred times in the past, calmly and persuasively.

"Not Irish, sir," he replied. "Scots-Irish. Family originally from Northern Ireland. Ulster. _Protestant_ Northern Ireland. I am a Protestant, not a Catholic." Captain Berwell's cold stare vanished.

"Good Lord," Berwell exclaimed. "You must have had a time of it in the Catholic 69th!"

"That I did, sir," Rourke answered. "I'm relieved to be among like minded men. The Catholic Irish care not for the slaves and not much more for the Union. They are a rough and rowdy lot, but I'll wager they'll be hard fighters when it comes to battle."

Captain Berwell seemed about to say something, thought better of it and instead sent Rourke on to one of his sergeants to settle him into a squad of men. What they called a mess, meaning a small group of men who lived and cooked together. One of their number had succumbed to an unknown disease, labeled with the generic name of recruit fever out of the limited medical knowledge of the day. Only 18, the rural Massachusetts lad made the soldier's journey of many a thousand, North and South, from camp to hospital to graveyard. Rourke was to be his replacement. The other men, seven of them, hearing his Irish sounding name and sharing the common Protestant prejudice against the Catholic Irish, received him with stone faced unease until they learned Rourke was a Scots-Irish Protestant, of which there were several others in the company. He was no Episcopalian or Methodist or Congregationalist, but at least he wasn't a Catholic.

"Come to save the Union have ya, Rourke," one of them said.

"The Union, yes," Rourke replied. "But more than that, to free the slaves from their chains." The Massachusetts soldiers stared at him.

"Free the slaves? That is why you joined?" Said one.

"Of course. Didn't you?" For the second time Rourke was greeted with general disfavor, if not outright derision, this time with a thinly veiled condescension.

"You're one of those abolitionists, are ye?" Said one of them. "Who got us into this fine mess in the first place?" Rourke at first hesitated to reply.

"You....you mean you men did not join the Army to free the slaves? Then why?"

"Try workin' yer arse off sunrise to sunset six days a week on a farm and hardly have a coin in yer pocket to buy a drink on Sunday, if you can even find a place open to sell it," said one of the men. "This was a chance to get free a' the drudge and have a spot of adventure." Several of the men nodded in agreement.

"What Upton here says is true for most of us," said another. "And for me, at least, I also joined to save the Union." More nods of agreement.

"But what of the slaves? Doesn't the abomination of slavery bother you? How can it not? It is a stain upon the nation's soul." A young man named Joseph, Joseph Mandeville Caldwell in full, answered.

"Slavery is not much of an issue with most of us, Rourke. The hotheaded abolitionists are more inclined to urge others to fight than to do it themselves. There are not many of the hotheads among us. We do not condone slavery, sir, but we are mostly farmers who have but scant truck with the blacks in the cities. We have not seen slavery as you have in your home in Virginia."

"We fight to preserve the Union," said another of the young men, Prescott Morehouse, who would become Rourke's closest friend in the Union Army.

"The fact is, Rourke," interjected Caldwell, "we have no love for the blacks. They never should have come to this country and should be sent back to Africa. This is a white man's country and should remain so."

"Even Abraham Lincoln said that," said another of the Massachusetts soldiers. "Send them back to Africa." Samuel Rourke's hopefulness of a few moments ago was as long gone as yesterday's sunset. The promise of a new beginning in a new regiment collapsed.

He was still trapped.

Over the coming weeks that stretched into months and then years Samuel Rourke would nevertheless bond with the men of his mess and his company as closely as he did with his own brothers. The rough privations to body and mind in the hard marching outdoor living of the active campaign, and even more, the soul shattering cauldron of the battlefield, bound them together beyond what any intellectualized philosophy or shared set of beliefs ever could. They lived and fought and endured. Together. And, one by one, the men of his company would fall. Some to battle, others to disease, the rest to debilitating wounds. Philosophy, politics, even morality, all faded away before the daily struggle to survive. The great issues of slavery and of secession were little talked about among the combat soldiers. Only God and religion and thoughts of home could gain much currency in their thoughts and words. Their concerns were basic. Food, above all. Shelter, health. And, always, always, mortality.

Would they live to see their homes again?

Both Samuel Rourke and Prescott Morehouse were solid, competent men. Both were promoted to sergeant. Morehouse was literate, educated and more inclined to tolerate Rourke's moderately abolitionist views. Views that became increasingly unpopular among the combat soldiers as they went through battle after battle, their comrades killed and maimed and, for even more of them, an unheroic lingering death in camp from the recurring epidemics of dysentery, typhoid fever, smallpox, mumps, measles and pneumonia. Many directly from the diseases, others weakened so much their bodies could not recover. Many a soldier died a filthy, ignominious death from what the helpless physicians called the bloody flux. One of the unfortunates succumbing to the miserable disease being Samuel Rourke's closest army friend, Sergeant Prescott Morehouse. What little sense of humor Samuel Rourke had left died with Prescott Morehouse. Samuel was enmeshed in a web of death from which there seemed no escape.

Rourke, seeing so much death and misery, lost much of his former enthusiasm for emancipation. Were any people, blacks, whites, Indians, worth so much death and suffering? Though he would not know it, his views would come to parallel those of his older brother Will, who Samuel now knew from his mother's letters smuggled through the lines, was in the Confederate Army along with his other two brothers, his twin Michael, and James, the youngest. Samuel eventually shared Will's belief that it was a war that was brought on the masses by demagogues and radicals, as often as not surrogates for the Machiavellian self-righteous intransigent abolitionists of the North or the uncompromising slave owning aristocracy of the South. As his great uncle Whit out in far off Minnesota would say, 'rabble rousin' pettifogers doin' the divil's work.' Samuel, again like his brother Will, came to believe that a compromise should have been achieved and war averted. But hotheads prevailed. The war came. The demagogues had their way.

And the whole nation would pay the bloody price.

The bloody price was no literary or conversational allusion to Samuel Rourke. A messmate, George Furlong, with his head literally torn off by a cannonball, blood spurting like a fountain from the headless corpse at the Battle of Antietam, close enough to Sam that he was drenched in Furlong's blood. Made far worse by the ugly fact it was a Union cannonball from a battery that did not see the 29th lying behind a swale, waiting to charge. Daniel Waller, a second messmate, was gut shot at Antietam, in what the generals called a valiant charge but the soldiers called a slaughter, and took a long time to die, screaming in misery until the very last. And another, Ezekiel Larson, shot in the arm, the arm amputated and healing in the hospital until the killer of so many soldiers, the infections that haunted the hospitals, set in and killed him. And still another, Bartholomew Green, gone over the hill in Kentucky after seeing too much gore at too many battles. No one knew what had happened to him. The rest of the original eight messmates, down to four, would eventually be wounded and most be deathly ill from one or another of the diseases that plagued the camps. They survived and all returned to duty. There were no replacements. For whatever reason, the war department sent no one to replace the lost and the 29th Regiment shrank in numbers until it hardly made what was a single full strength company at the beginning of the war.

The 29th was transferred out of the Irish Brigade before the Battle of Fredericksburg and was not there when the Irish Brigade was almost annihilated. The Irish Brigade was so badly handled that of the 1600 man brigade only a few hundred were fit for duty after the battle. The slaughter of the Irish was one of the pivotal events that eventually soured the Irish immigrant masses against the war. It was probably the most one sided major battle of the war as Union General Burnside sent wave after wave of troops to be slaughtered in the lethal curtain of fire from well entrenched Confederate positions. The men of the 29th silently thanked the God of their understanding that they were transferred out of the Irish Brigade before the blood bath of Fredericksburg. It would be but a temporary reprieve from the slaughter.

There were hard times yet ahead.

### The Conscientious Objector

Peter Rourke was working in his wheat field when he saw a horseman ride up to his house. The horseman saw Rourke in the nearby field and waved at him, slid off his horse, tied it to the hitching post outside the Rourke farmhouse and strode towards Peter. As he came closer, Peter recognized his wife's nephew, Farley Jackson. They exchanged handshakes and Peter looked curiously at his nephew, wondering what had brought him on a rare visit.

"Can we go to the house and have a talk together with Aunt Sarah?" Farley said. Peter, now even more curious, quickly agreed.

"Of course," he said, shouldering the hoe he was using in the field. "Let's go."

A few minutes later they were seated at the Rourke's kitchen table, Sarah brewing a pot of coffee from their nearly depleted store of increasingly hard to obtain coffee.

"So," Peter began. "What is this about."

"I wanted your opinion, Uncle Peter," young Jackson said. "And yours, Aunt Sarah. I have a weighty decision to make." That riveted the attention of both Sarah and Peter. Farley always had been on the serious side, but this seemed something beyond the usual. It was.

"I did not join up with the army as most of the others did," Farley said. "Your boys, all my cousins and friends. Most, anyhow." He looked inquisitively at his uncle and aunt.

"Did you ever wonder why?" Sarah was quick to answer.

"We knew why. You are very religious and opposed to both war and slavery. Most of us are. But you take it a step beyond most."

"Even so far as to defy the government?" Farley said, surprising the others with the sudden, and fervent, tone of his comment.

"Oppose the government?" Peter said, both concerned and confused. "How so?"

"You know the government passed a conscription law," Farley said. Both the Rourkes nodded affirmatively. "I have just been conscripted."

"And you don't know what to do?" Sarah said, thinking she understood.

"Not quite that," Farley quickly responded. "I believe I know what to do."

"And you want us to validate a decision you have already made? How does that work out to coming to us for advice?" Peter said, a touch testily. Farley always had been opinionated and often hard to talk to. Which, in most situations, Peter just shrugged off. But with all four of his sons and his son-in-law volunteers in the armies, despite their personal misgivings, he had little patience for his nephew's self-obsessed waffling.

"Why not apply to the authorities for an exemption based on your religious beliefs? Get assigned to the ambulance corps or as hospital orderly. Would that not salve your religious objections?" Peter said, hiding his growing irritation.

"I already tried that, Uncle Peter," Farley shot back, feeling his own touch of irritation with the unspoken but palpable lack of sympathy from his uncle. "They rejected my request."

"So.....where does that leave you?" Sarah said. "Will you continue to oppose your conscription? They'll throw you in jail."

"Or worse," Farley snapped back. "Hanging or a firing squad."

"You'd be willing to face that?" Peter said, incredulous. "That is very extreme, Farley."

"That is what I am debating right now. Face up to them or....." He paused, looking at his uncle and aunt for a long moment before continuing...

"Riding north."

"You would flee, where others have stood their ground!" Peter snapped angrily.

"That is the way my parents reacted," Farley answered just as angrily. "And why I came to hear your opinion." Peter didn't get a chance to answer. Sarah was on her feet and grabbed her nephew's shoulder with a grip as firm as either of the men.

"Ride north, Farley! Save your life. They'll be need for men such as yourself after this madness is finally done."

That same day Farley Jackson left the valley for sanctuary among the Yankees.

He rode north and then east into the breakaway western chunk of Virginia that would soon become the state of West Virginia. By chance he had accompanied his father on a religious mission to the same country two years earlier and knew of a little traveled trail in an isolated valley that was, as he believed it would be, unguarded. He was soon into territory that remained disputed but was mostly under the control of the United States military. The trail joined a road in a broader valley and Farley continued to ride north.

A few hours later he encountered a mounted Union patrol on the road. The patrol was led by a brash and uncouth officer, Captain Hiram Blair, known in his part of western Virginia as a malcontent and a troublemaker. A few weeks later he would be cashiered for his severity and obdurate nature and soon thereafter join a band of ruthless partisan Union guerrillas. Blair galloped menacingly up to Farley and jerked his horse to a stop almost with touch of the young Virginian.

"Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?" Farley, who had not been expecting a hostile reception, stuttered his reply.

"I....I....am....co..co..coming from Virginia. To escape the Confederacy."

"A deserter then, boy, is that what you are?" Blair snarled at Farley.

"No si..si..sir," Farley stammered. "I do not believe in war and refused to be conscripted. I had no choice but the come north." Blair snickered at Farley's words.

"Do we have a faint heart here, boys," he said to his men. "Or do we have a spy come to snoop among us and cause mischief?" Blair swiveled his head and his attention from his handful of men to the thoroughly cowed Farley Jackson. "I'll tell ye what, lads. I think it's the latter. I believe we just caught us a Rebel spy."

"Sp....spy?" Farley tried to argue. "I told you the truth. I am a religious man who does not believe in war and refuses to serve."

"Hang the spy," yelled one of Blair's men, his own younger brother who, if anything, was even more bloody minded than his big brother.

"Yes! Hang him!" Echoed another of the Yankee soldiers.

"You cannot hang a man on such flimsy evidence, " bellowed out a strong voice from among the troopers. It was Joshua Tanner, a sergeant who'd done a hitch with the United States dragoons in Indian country and seen more than one unjustified hanging. "You must bring this man to regimental headquarters for questioning. They will make the decision of what to do with him."

"I think not, Tanner," Blair blustered. "I am in command here."

"I guarantee you won't be for long if you hang this man. I will see to it that charges are brought against you."

"I'll shoot you down myself if you defy my orders," Blair snapped back, though he was now doubting his course of action as too extreme.

"That, sir, will put you in front of a firing squad. Not all here would abide your behavior." More than half of the soldiers murmured in agreement. They'd already had enough of Blair's imperious, high handed ways. He was going too far this time. Blair picked up on the sentiment.

"Very well, then, _Sergeant._ We'll take the spy to headquarters for questioning. They can hang him." He leaned forward and waggled a finger at Sergeant Tanner. "And I'll be bringing charges against you for insubordination in the face of the enemy."

"An unarmed boy who may or may not be a spy is the enemy?" Tanner snapped back. "We shall see, sir. We shall see."

They did. Blair's superiors were already disgusted with him and gave his allegations of insubordination short shrift. Blair would be booted out of the army a few short weeks later, devolving into a guerrilla ruffian feared and hated by Yankee and Rebel alike. He did not survive the war, shot down by one of his own men in a drunken rage.

Sergeant Tanner was soon recognized for his ability and experience, promoted to lieutenant and went on to become a regimental officer in Pleasanton's Union cavalry brigade. He also would not survive the war, killed in the very last days of the war charging at the head of his troops as the Rebels retreated from Petersburg, his horse shot out from under him and Tanner trampled so badly by the hooves of dozens of his own men's horses that he would die within the week from his injuries.

Farley Jackson was no spy and the interrogating Union officers soon realized it. But what to do with him? Uncertain of their course of action, the Union officers decided to detain him as an enemy civilian. Farley was sent to a series of detention and prison camps where he mingled with others such as himself, along with northern civilians with pro-Southern sympathies, what most would soon call Copperheads, plus other northerners who held strident anti-war beliefs and others who defied the federal government. And, in ever increasing numbers. they were joined by waves of Confederate prisoners of war. After a few months Farley was transferred to the Union prisoner of war camp at Fort Delaware. There, just before he was to be released along with a number of other civilian detainees, he contracted that great killer of so many prisoners, pneumonia. Conscientious objector Farley Jackson died in the prison hospital two days after he was scheduled to be released. He was buried, in fact actually dumped, in an unmarked grave.

Despite himself, yet another casualty in the merciless war he tried so hard to avoid.

33rd Virginia and the Valley

"He's gone," Michael Rourke said to his brother, James, as he looked up from a letter he'd just received from home. "Zeke. Our cousin. Ezekiel Rourke. Dead of recruit fever in Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond."

"Oh, God," James said, his voice reflecting his mournful expression. "Poor Aunt Betsy and Uncle Samuel. That's the second son they've lost to the war."

"And not to battle. To disease."

"Don't let them take me to Chimborazo, Michael," James suddenly blurted out to this brother. "Most only come out of that place feet first. It's a death sentence to go there." It really wasn't, but many of the soldiers didn't see it that way. And it was true the stark sprawling graveyard outside Chimborazo grew larger by the day. Before the brothers could comment further on the deaths of their cousins, and so many others, from the diseases that ravaged the camps, they heard the officers yelling. Both young men immediately tensed.

"Looks like we're in or it this time," Michael said. The words hardy left his mouth before Lieutenant Blucher strode past.

"Move it, gentlemen. Go to the wagons and draw three days rations and sixty rounds of ammunition. We're soon to be on the march."

And they were.

The Rourke brothers missed First Manassas, where the 33rd Virginia was cut in half, nearly fifty men killed or soon died of wounds and three times as many wounded. They would not be so lucky in the coming weeks. They were about to embark on what would one day be called Stonewall Jackson's brilliant Valley Campaign, in which he outfoxed and whipped several Federal armies. That was the view of the colonels and generals, and of those who were not there, the politicians and demagogues, newspaper editors and military strategists safe in their homes and offices. To the ordinary soldiers of the Stonewall the Valley Campaign would be long weeks of misery. Of marching in mud that at times rose nearly knee high, of wagons stuck in the mud and having to be repeatedly manhandled free of the mire. Of rain turning to sleet and then snow, coating the marching soldiers with ice, their bodies and whiskers trailing icicles an inch or two long. Of sleeping outside, without tents and often without covering beyond their coats and a threadbare blanket, on the cold ground. Of marching and countermarching for days in the miserable weather. Of inadequate food, sometimes going for two or even three days without eating. Of men falling out one after another with fatigue, scores of them developing pneumonia, from which many would never recover. More men lost to disease and disability than battle. And then, after weeks of this, in the midst of this continual misery, with the weather finally moderating, came the shock of the First Battle of Kernstown. This time the Rourke brothers' luck from missing the bloodbath of First Manassas would not hold. They would not miss the First Battle of Kernstown. Nor would they ever forget it. That was when, as the veteran soldiers dryly put it, they first 'saw the elephant.' No more patriotic speeches. No more courthouse square vainglory. It was, Michael would say in an exhausted, deadened voice after the battle....

"The Devil set loose among us..."

It seemed as though they had marched close to fifty miles in less than two days as the Stonewall Brigade arrived on what would be the Kernstown battlefield. They were tired, footsore and hungry. The ranks were thinned by the hard pace, a rapid marching by what would later be called Jackson's foot cavalry, and stragglers trailed for miles behind the marching troops. Some few decided they'd had enough of war and snuck away into the mountains. A few more were grabbed by Yankee cavalry who slipped through the protective screen of Ashby's Rebel horsemen. Others were so worn they were picked up by the Rebel cavalry and sent to rear area hospitals. But most, the spirit willing even if the body wasn't quite up to it, plodded on until they caught up with the main body of troops in time for what one darkly waggish soldier euphemistically called 'the main event.'

The Rourke brothers, like the rest of the common soldiers, had little grasp of tactics and even less of strategy. They marched and countermarched and marched again in what seemed to them futile, confused and questionable leadership. Whatever the reality, the 33rd Virginia and the Rourke brothers arrived on the battlefield at the same time as the Yankees. As it soon was discovered, a whole bunch of Yankees. Far more than the scouting cavalry had reported, a Union force nearly three times the size of the Rebel troops. The Confederates were in immediate deep trouble.

As front line infantry, the Rourkes had the infantry's typical truncated ground level view of the fight. No grand panoramas or detailed maps of the generals. Just the small patch of ground in their immediate front. Wheat fields, groves of trees, a house here, another over there, a fieldstone fence between fields. And a forest of blue uniforms. They had no idea what had happened, only that they were facing hordes of Yankees hell bent on killing them. The Rourke brothers were carried along with the surging wave of troops as the 33rd and 27th Virginia regiments launched into a deadly foot face against a large body of Yankees. The goal was a fence line built of stones which would give cover to whichever body of troops got there first. The Rebels won the race. Not by much. But enough to have the protective stone wall between them and the charging Union troops. And there is where James and Michael Rourke first saw the elephant in all its grisly gory reality.

The Virginia soldiers fired volleys into the yelling, charging Yankees at close range. It was butchery. James killed his first man in the first moments, a stout, bearded Union sergeant hurtling right at him. James shot him down barely ten feet from the wall. The line of charging Union troops seemed to dissolve before the Rebels' eyes. Michael Rourke had the odd thought it was like an ominous storm front that suddenly dissipated just before it struck. But this dissipation was not one of water vapor and rain drops, but of blood and gore. Body parts flying through the air. Limbs torn off bodies. Blood spurting from maimed bodies, some of it so close the Rebels were sprayed. Tangles of bodies lay before the Rebels, many dead, others wounded and moaning, screaming and crying. Everyone seemed to be yelling. The noise of the hollering men and the discharging muskets was so intense it was impossible to hear anything but the overpowering cacophony of battle. Mace Kennedy, a neighbor of the Rourkes in Rockingham County, was reloading his musket next to Michael Rourke when a single Yankee soldier made it through the lead curtain of Rebel bullets and drove a bayonet into Kennedy's' neck. Blood spurted from the dying Rebel's neck, drenching Michael Rourke and sending him over the edge into what he would later call a kind of battle hysteria. Mace Kennedy was a good man, solid, the father of three small children, and Michael had known him all his life. Michael never did remember what he did next. Others told him that he took his clubbed musket and beat the Yankee soldier to death with it, the man's face battered beyond recognition before other Rebel soldiers pulled the berserking Michael away. Michael Rourke had seen the elephant. It was the Devil. And worse. The Devil?

It was _inside_ him.

There was no time to bemoan a momentary descent into barbarism. More files of Yankees appeared, charged, were driven back and yet more would charge again. The Union soldiers now had the prescience to stop and fire their own volleys at the Rebels. The men of the 33rd began to fall one by one. Some dropped like a stone, dead before they hit the ground. Others had limbs nearly torn off, some had horrific stomach and chest wounds. One seventeen year old boy, a second cousin of the Rourkes, was gut shot and staggered back from the protective rock wall, intestines spilling out of his gaping wound. He was only a few feet from the rock wall when a minie ball smashed into his forehead and killed him. Which, given the lingering painful inevitable death from a stomach wound, was in its own gruesome battlefield way an act of mercy. More and more Yankees kept coming and more and more of the men of the 33rd and neighboring 27th regiments fell. Finally, out of ammunition, exhausted beyond endurance and about to be overwhelmed, the 33rd and the rest of the Stonewall Brigade were ordered by its brigadier, Richard Garnett, to withdraw. He did so without authorization from General Jackson and in withdrawing opened up an adjoining Confederate unit to an enfilading fire that probably caused the entire Rebel line to begin crumbling. Jackson had no choice but to order a retreat. After the battle he would not hesitate in removing Garnett from the command of the Stonewall Brigade. A stain on Garnett's reputation and honor that would only be expunged when he courageously led a new brigade at Gettysburg a year later and was killed at the head of his troops.

After the fighting ended at Kernstown most of the wounded of the 33rd and the rest of the Stonewall, those who could not walk or be easily moved, were captured by the Yankees and taken to a hastily improvised Union field hospital in Winchester. The soldiers of the 33rd would later learn from citizens of Winchester that several of the captured Rebels died at the Union hospital. At least two of them did not appear to have life threatening wounds. Whether true or not, the Rebels came to believe that captured Confederate wounded would not get much medical attention from the Yankees. Which, and at least some of their officers tacitly encouraged this notion, made the men all the more determined not to be captured.

The Rebels, exhausted, whipped, dispirited, glumly marched back the way they had come to the battle that would be known as the First Battle of Kernstown or, simply, First Kernstown. It was a defeat. And it wasn't. Jackson's aim was to divert Union troops from converging on Richmond. He accomplished that, and more. He never considered Kernstown as a defeat but as a strategic withdrawal. And that was just the beginning of what would be a military campaign recognized throughout the military world well into the next century as one of strategic and tactical genius.

But to the line soldiers like the Rourke brothers it was more endless days of marching, often in deep mud, in the early days at times over slippery, frozen roads, with rarely enough to eat. They slept outside, pelted by sleet and rain, sometimes waking with frost and even snow covering their blankets, and the ranks continued to be depleted by disease and privation. For the most part the only breaks they had in this miserable routine was when they fought yet another in the series of battles that would make Stonewall Jackson famous for generations yet to come. And, despite the hardships, the constant attrition to disease, battle and, admittedly, desertion, the ordinary soldiers came to understand that they were the stuff of legend and history as much as their commanding general was. Hard to believe as it might seem, amidst all this privation and death, the men of the 33rd, the Stonewall Brigade and the other brigades in Jackson's modestly sized army, developed a spirit, an élan, a verve and confidence and a spring and spirit to their step that would reside in their breasts even, for those who survived, into their old age. And the Rourke brothers, despite the hardships and losing over a dozen friends and relatives to battle and disease, were no exception. They really had no choice. To think otherwise would be to say all the death and suffering was pointless and in vain. But, that, too would change. Eventually. The war was not yet half over. The worst of the carnage lay in the future.

A future that would not linger in coming.

Stonewall Jackson was far from being done with his maneuvers. The nearly 20,000 men in his army were soon on the march again, this time to join Robert E. Lee and Thomas Longstreet's troops before Richmond, who were uneasily facing a Union force twice theirs that was moving on the Confederacy's capital, Richmond. And the Yankees were close. Scarily close, to the administration in Richmond, which was on the brink of considering evacuation. The arrival of Jackson's army changed the military equation and a series of hard fought battles, not the most brilliant in either Lee's or Jackson's otherwise illustrious careers, ended the Union threat at great cost in blood and forced the retreat of the huge, ponderous Union Army.

The Rourke brothers, along with the bulk of the Stonewall Brigade, missed most of the vicious fighting of the series of battles later called the Seven Days, with the exception of the fight at Malvern Hill. Even with missing most of the fighting, the 33rd still suffered twenty percent casualties to their already diminished number. But what the Rourkes would remember most about that time were a pair of very dissimilar events. The first was a fondly recalled pleasant one, when the men of the 33rd made a temporary truce with an opposing Union unit and both Gray and Blue joined together in picking blackberries, exchanging news and trading tobacco for coffee. An event, discordant as it might seem, which was not all that unusual in that confusing, convoluted war of brother against brother and neighbor against neighbor.

The second event was actually the culmination of a series of events that set in motion another of the seemingly discordant but not at all unusual elements in the war. An officer so detested by his men that he was in as much danger in battle from his own men as from the enemy. This officer was the current, and thoroughly hated, commander of he Stonewall Brigade, Brigadier General Charles Winder, an 1850 graduate of West Point. He was an arrogant and inflexible disciplinarian who might well have been killed by his own men had not a Yankee artillery shell beat them to it at the Battle of Cedar Mountain.

Or at least that is what the official records said.

### Minnesota

### Antrim.

The first Crisis _._

While Will Rourke was gone east and, with his brothers, enmeshed in fighting a war they didn't want or really believe in, disaster threatened Antrim. Twice. Whit Jackson was there for the first one and averted the disaster. But the second disaster? Whit wasn't. There. Not for the second disaster. Though he was there for the first one, when a roiling violent chaos almost overwhelmed them at Antrim in the Minnesota River Valley in the late summer of 1862. Will Rourke was in Virginia with the Rebel cavalry maneuvering and reconnoitering before the second battle of Manassas. It was weeks before an accurate account of what happened at Antrim filtered through the Virginia front lines to the anxious ears of Confederate cavalryman Will Rourke. It was good news. The first time. When oblivion lapped at the edges of Antrim like the waves beating away and undermining the shoreline on the Virginia coastline close to where the Rourkes fought in more battles than they cared to remember. Antrim, the family ranch in Minnesota, like the Virginia coastline, didn't crumble into oblivion. Not then.

Not the first time.

Summer. 1862. Mid-August. While the opposing armies in Virginia maneuvered prior to the battle of Second Manassas, Antrim, the Rourke and Jackson place, was facing its own debacle. Once of questionable legality until they obtained clear legal title under the Homestead Act of 1862, Antrim was in the verdant Minnesota River Valley. Nearby, clearly visible and almost within earshot, was the Dakota reservation that hugged the river bank. Every year, it seemed, the Americans pulled a sly political rabbit out of a geographical hat and the Dakota reservation shrank. The eastern Dakota, the Santee, until just a few years earlier lords of huge tracts of land in the woodlands and prairies of the upper Midwest, were confined to narrow strips of reservation along the southern banks of the river. The government was trying to convert them to the farm life that most Americans practiced, the Jeffersonian ideal of the yeoman farmer that still held considerable sway. The missionaries were trying to convert them to Christianity. And the traders on the reservations were trying to convert Dakota annuities into dollars in their own pockets at the expense of the unwary, largely powerless Dakota. Future governor and future general Henry Sibley was one of those who enriched himself at the Dakota's expense and somehow still managed to portray himself as their friend and ally. He was not remarkable in that regard in the murky duplicitous world of the frontier.

It was a story too often told in America's drive to continental hegemony. Treaties made. Treaties broken. Promised supplies diverted by mismanagement and corruption. Inept and/or venal Indian agents. Bureaucratic bumbling. Avaricious traders. Inordinate delays in delivering annuities. A recalcitrant and unpredictable chunk of the Native American population already teetering on the edge of violent retaliation. In the summer of 1862 the Dakota were on the edge of starvation because a tardy federal government had not delivered the promised annuities the Dakota depended on to survive. Besides being on the edge of starvation, the majority of the Dakota saw their way of life crumbling around them. It wasn't just a powder keg. It was a whole series of powder kegs. The match was not long in coming.

A match that took the bizarre form of a clutch of hen's eggs.

Four young Dakota, hunting to the north of the reservation near the town of Acton, came across that clutch of hen's eggs near the home and store of a white settler. An argument broke out among the brash young Dakota over whether they dared take the white man's eggs. One was called a coward by another for fearing to take the eggs. That verbally flung gauntlet enraged the young Dakota. A coward! He would show the others just how brave he was. Throwing the eggs to the ground, he hurled the challenge that would echo through the ages as the incendiary act that triggered the events that would end their way of life forever. The door to oblivion flew wide open.

"A coward!" He spit out in an arrogant mocking challenge in their native tongue. "I will show you what a coward I am! I will shoot the white man! Do you have the courage to kill the whites, too? Or is it just more of your words as empty as the passing wind?" The hot-headed young man's words were far from empty. What soon followed were the murders of three white men and, even worse, two white women. The four heedless young Dakota knew it even then. The match was lit. The powder kegs would come next. They hastened back to the reservation with the literally world shattering news of what they had done. In an astoundingly short time, like a wildfire whipped into a racing conflagration by gale force winds, word passed up and down the reservation. And from there on to the second Dakota reservation farther west near where Minnesota bordered the huge expanses of the Dakota Territory. Councils leaped to life in all the villages. Incendiary words as heated as their campfires flew between them. Some for war. Others for peace. Without a clear decision.

The principal leaders among the Dakota congregated at the home of Little Crow, considering by many to be their preeminent leader. Little Crow's home mirrored this complicated and conflicted man trapped in the jaws of historical change. The government built him a European-American house, but he maintained his traditional Dakota lodge just outside the house. He had tried to balance Dakota tradition with the change he knew to be inevitable. He was a brave man, a stalwart warrior in the age old vicious feuding with the Ojibwe. He bore crippling wounds to his hands from standing up to his half-brothers over who would be the next chief. He also had a ruthless side. The pair of half-brothers who opposed and wounded him were later murdered.

Little Crow, though conflicted, was among the more adaptable Dakota and believed he would persevere through the tumultuous years of change. Like many of the tribal leaders and elders he knew war against the whites would be utterly foolhardy. Along with other Dakota leaders he had ridden the iron rails to the east, to New York and Washington DC, and been the subject of much interest. And also the subject of a handful of eager practitioners of the revolutionary new technology of photography. The slow and cumbersome box like cameras required the subjects remain absolutely still. Which invariably resulted in photographs of immobile, solemn wooden figures more like the inhabitants of a wax museum than of living people. Thus began the enduring image of the stolid Native American.

The cameras, primitive and clumsy though they might be, were symbolic of the mind boggling enormity of the American world intruding on that of the Dakota. Little Crow had seen the immense numbers and resources of the white men. Even a thousand Dakota warriors stood no chance against the might of the United States. Yet, himself challenged by some of the hotheads as being too faint of heart to fight, Little Crow angrily agreed to listen to the hotheads and a handful of older leaders, Red Middle Voice and the irascible Shakopee preeminent among them, argue for war. Little Crow had his own axe to grind. He recently was defeated in his attempt to become the principle speaker of his people. Though still an important leader, his influence was waning. That must have been on his mind as the young men of the volatile soldier's lodge and a number of chiefs and other leaders came to seek his council. He was at this moment, as he still imagined himself, the nexus of the Santee Dakota. Not fanciful. Not this time. This was _real_. There could be no denying it. The Dakota were flocking to him for guidance. For leadership. His vision was realized. Little Crow at the forefront of his people. The leader of the nation! Little Crow's considerable ego was stoked as never before.

"It is now or never!" The firebrand Shakopee, one of the principle chiefs, who was a notorious recalcitrant and a favorite of the raucous soldiers' lodge, shouted above the cacophonous crowd. "The whites will come and destroy us all. We have no choice. We must strike _first_." His words were greeted with wild enthusiasm by the hot blooded young men of the soldiers' lodge but with grim silence by those who could see what the inevitable outcome of a war with the whites would mean. Disaster for the Dakota and the destruction of what remained of their traditional way of life. The more level headed among them spoke of just that. A war would eventually result in the destruction of their people. The young firebrands and some of the more hostile older leaders tried to shout them down, but others rushed to the side of those against war. It was an impasse. One faction shouted for war. Another argued vehemently against it. The rest, the majority, were ambivalent. Among those who looked on with increasing alarm was Lance, Whit Jackson's Dakota son-in-law. He could hardly believe that the Dakota would be foolish enough to make war on the whites. It was suicide. Suicide for an entire people. And, in fact, more than a few already understood that. But not enough. The hotheads would prevail.

"Better to die a Dakota warrior," one of Lance's own brothers said to him that same propitious night, "than to be a dog licking the white man's boots."

Shakopee, his crony Medicine Bottle and their allies were adamant. And they had some facts and logic on their side. The whites were preoccupied with fighting each other far away in the South. Now was the time to strike. When the whites were at their weakest. Reluctantly, probably glumly prescient of what lay ahead for their people, Little Crow and some of the other Dakota leaders seriously considered going to war. Others refused and stalked away, yet most would eventually be sucked into the maelstrom, willingly or not. Little Crow's ego was stroked even more when the hotheads repeatedly implored him to be leader in the war against the whites. He had to listen. During the heated debates that went on in and outside of his home for hours that portentous night, he finally realized that the hotheads would go to war no matter what he and the other elders said.

Little Crow made his choice. He could not stop the war. But he could try to guide it in a more organized way that might have just a tiny chance of success. His secret hope was for a truce and a compromise with the whites. Was that not true among the whites themselves? Among their own people the whites of the South hoped for a truce and a compromise with the whites of the North. There was at least a fragment of hope. A feather in the wind. Insubstantial, but still there. Little Crow made his decision. Dislike the decision as he did, he still made it.

It was war.

By daybreak the next morning the Dakota, especially the young hotheads, and against the council of many of their elders, exploded off the reservations onto the white farms that had sprung up right up to the edge of the reservations. The close proximity of the farms to the reservations had long unnerved the Dakota and made them both fearful and angry. They were being inundated by a flood of outsiders. But the very proximity of the white men's farms was also a golden opportunity. The Dakota could fall upon them before anyone realized what was happening.

It was the single bloodiest Native American uprising in all of American history. Hundreds of unsuspecting settlers, many of them Germans and Scandinavians who had little experience with firearms, died in the first few days. A platoon of soldiers sent to confront the Dakota was ambushed and decimated. There were rapes and mutilations as well as murders. Panic seized the survivors and the country emptied of settlers as thousands fled to the safety of the towns. In the nearby German settlement of New Ulm safety proved to be illusory as the Dakota twice attacked the town. Dozens died. The inhabitants of New Ulm, and the refugees, fled farther east while the town burned.

Whit Jackson was there, at Antrim, the family farm and ranch, not far from the reservation. He was out at first light that fatal morning, feeding and watering the horses, when his Dakota son-in-law, Lance, came galloping in through the waist high tallgrass prairie, the ripe seed heads of the grasses exploding as he rode through them and clinging to both Lance and his lathered horse. Jackson's senses immediately jangled alert. Lance was not given to pushing his piebald pony much beyond an easy, comfortable lope. Except in unusual or dire circumstances. Like chasing down buffalo. Or fleeing an ambush by the Dakota's inveterate enemies, the Chippewa. But this was something else. Something more. Jackson had never seen Lance so agitated or ride with such obvious reckless abandon. This was something very big. And, probably, as Lance grew closer and Whit could see Lance's normally calm face distorted by his agitation, it had to be something very bad. Whit froze in his tracks as his daughter's husband came wildly galloping into Antrim's ranch yard.

"The Dakota!" Lance yelled in Dakota, a language Whit, after long years living with the Dakota, spoke, although accented, as fluently as a native speaker. The agitated Lance jerked his pony to a stop next to Jackson. "They are going to war. They're raiding all the white farms and ranches. We have to be ready to fight them off!" Long years on the frontier had sharpened both Whit Jackson's instincts and his reactions. There was not even a fraction of a second of hesitation.

He burst into a flurry of movement.

Lance's wife, who was Whit Jackson's daughter, Fleet Foot, and their two children were already at Antrim. As was Jackson's son, Light Eyes, and Will Rourke's wife, Marie, their four children, and Jackson's wife, Good Bed, A name that only imperfectly translated from the Dakota and that had no sexual implications, meaning instead that she was a diligent and fastidious keeper of her home.

Lance had already hastily put out the word to those few on the reservation he knew he could trust to pass on to the others who wanted no part of war. Come to the Jackson place as quickly and a quietly as you can. And be prepared to fight off hostile attacks. Within a half hour other refugees began to arrive from the reservation. Some walked, others rode horses. Most came in wagons with whatever belongings they could bring without arousing suspicion, though that hope was futile. They were noticed and even followed. Most were what were called half breeds or mixed bloods, people of conflicting heritages and loyalties, but who wanted no part of an uprising. Not all came. Some of the mixed bloods cast their lot with the war and would eventually suffer from it. Death for some, in battle or by hanging or from disease in prison. Those who remained were banished. A few escaped onto the vast prairies or fled to Canada. But that was for the future. This was now. And the hostiles, full bloods and mixed bloods, boiled off the reservations to exact a terrible revenge on the usurpers who had stolen their country from them.

Who can say they did not have reason to go to war? But, and this was what the more sensible leaders of the Dakota tried to tell them, if you must make war, make war on white men, not on helpless women and children. The young hotheads, many, if not most, did not heed the warning. Their blood was up. The war was on. There was no stopping them. It was not just war.

It was also murder.

The refugees from the closest reservation, the Lower Sioux Agency, weren't just mixed-bloods. Another group of Dakota, known derisively by the traditionalists among their people as cut hairs, also fled to Antrim. Not all of them, not even a majority, just a fraction, the relative few who had wholly embraced the 'civilizing' road the American government offered them as their best chance of survival. They cut their hair, farmed, went to church. The traditionalists hated them and considered them traitors. Worse that traitors. Judases. The cut hairs thought differently. The hardcore traditionalists were the ones who were the biggest danger to the future of the Dakota, not the cut hairs. And they said as much. Few listened. Until it was too late.

The vast majority of the Dakota, traditionalists and cut hairs alike, would reap the whirlwind.

As the morning sun moved overhead towards a hot late summer day a few whites joined the refugees at Antrim. The massacres had begun at the reservation's government buildings at the Lower Sioux Agency and a few of the white residents there were able to escape. Almost invariably because a Dakota friend warned them of the impending danger or actually helped them to escape. It was one of the many clashing peculiarities of the uprising that individual Dakotas, even those who were hostile, took great risks to protect whites and mixed bloods who were their friends. One such courageous Dakota, Chaska, was later hanged that same year along with nearly forty other Dakota in the town of Mankato. A mass hanging on the day after Christmas witnessed by a huge crowd of unsympathetic whites. Chaska was hanged because he was mistakenly confused with another Dakota of the same name who was the actual murderer. An innocent man was hanged. A murderer and rapist was freed.

Because of a clerical error.

It was only one of many, many errors, miscalculations, blunders, misadventures and disasters. A time of duplicity and altruism. Of heroism juxtaposed with cowardice and untold senseless brutalities as well as numerous quiet and often secret kindnesses during those bloody late summer weeks in the Minnesota River Valley in 1862.

Many of the Dakota were against the war even after the decision was made to go to war, some outspokenly so and risking retaliation by the hotheads. With the mixed race residents in and near the reservation, part Anglo, part French, part Dakota, part other Native tribes like the nearby Winnebago, there was utter confusion. The Dakota mistrusted them. So did most of the whites. They were caught in a very dangerous middle. Some chose sides. Most tried not to. Even the overall leader of the Dakota, Little Crow, must have known in his heart the war would end in disaster. It did. Including to Little Crow himself.

Whit Jackson's wife, Good Bed, was Dakota. His children, half Dakota. His daughter Fleet Foot's husband, Lance, was a full-blooded Dakota. Whit's son, Light Eyes, had often gone hunting with some of the very same young men now boiling out of the reservation with murder in their eyes. Whit, and his family, along with the Rourke family, were caught in the middle of the boiling ethnic cauldron of the Dakota uprising. Danger lurked everywhere. And, to make matters even worse, the most hated of the Indian traders on the reservation was Pierre Bottineau, Marie Bottineau Rourke's uncle. Whit put it to the family in his characteristic bluntly colorful way. "We be sittin' on top o' ol' Vesuvius, young un's....

"And she be gettin' ready ter blow."

And she did. Blow. But Whit was there. And Whit was ready. He and friends among the Dakota and the mixed bloods protected their families and the farm. Antrim became a refuge for the farmer Indians, the mixed bloods, the Dakota who opposed the war, the handful of whites who escaped the wilding Dakota warriors. They were well armed and there were enough of them that the raiding parties of the reckless young Dakota avoided Antrim, though they managed to steal a pair of horses and snipe--ineffectively--from afar. But nothing more. Not at first. The leaders of the Dakota insurrection refused to order an organized large scale assault on Antrim.

"They are not the true enemy," said Little Crow. "We must fight the whites, not our own people, be they full bloods, cut hairs or mixed bloods. It would be a waste of warriors' lives and, especially, of time. We must concentrate on driving out the few soldiers at Fort Ripley and the whites in the town of New Ulm before reinforcements come." Little Crow was under no illusions. No one knew for sure, but some said he recognized the looming cataclysm and chose to die along with his people and their way of life. As to the fugitives gathered around Whit Jackson, Little Crow had his own very personal reasons for leaving Whit and the others be. Little Crow had long known Whit Jackson, liked and respected him, and also had several relatives among the fugitives at Antrim. There would be no raid. At least none that Little Crow sanctioned.

Most of the other Dakota, looking at the bristling array of armed defenders with Whit Jackson, were not inclined to attack the place. But there were a few, actually it would turn out, more than a few, who thought differently. Their motives were many, but most were because of intensely personal reasons. A close relative among those seeking refuge at Antrim who was believed to have betrayed his people by becoming a farmer Indian. A mixed blood at Antrim who had a wife the warrior desired. A man who had bested another in a fight. Another who had tried to steal a pony at Antrim, been caught and punished with a year in the white man's jail. The list went on and added up to nearly twenty young hotheads and a pair of older men who had personal grudges against Whit Jackson.

Their names were Shakopee and Medicine Bottle. Shakopee had coveted Jackson's wife Good Bed before she married Jackson and bore a double grudge against Jackson. One for losing Good Bed to Jackson, the other for Good Bed choosing a detested white man over him, Shakopee, a famous warrior in a nation of warriors. Medicine Bottle had been caught trying to sell furs to Whit Jackson that Medicine Bottle had stolen from a Métis trapper he had ambushed and left for dead. When the very much undead Métis trapper showed up at Antrim Medicine Bottle barely escaped with his life and still carried a musket ball in his shoulder that Jackson fired at Medicine Bottle as he fled Antrim. He didn't stop until he was far out on the tallgrass prairie among the Yankton Dakota. It was over a year before he slipped back onto the Lower Sioux Reservation. Both Medicine Bottle and Shakopee held bitter grudges against Whit Jackson that could only be satisfied by Jackson's death. Was it was any surprise they were among the few elders among the Dakota vehemently arguing for a race war of extermination against the whites?

Then there were the Wahpekutes. And Inkpaduta.

### Inkpaduta

Inkpaduta might be a hunted outlaw to the whites and a thorn and embarrassment to the Dakota leadership, but he was viewed differently by many of the young men among the Dakota and even other Sioux tribes still unrestrained in the vast Dakota Territory. To them he was a hero and a patriot who dared to challenge the white man's usurpation of their ancestral lands. True, he launched raids that were successful of themselves but caused great problems for the other Dakota. The whites, typically, held all the Dakota responsible for the actions of an outlaw few and insisted the Dakota hunt Inkpaduta down and bring him to the white man's idea of justice. Either that or they would hold all the Dakota responsible and punish them.

Little Crow, caught in the middle trying to balance change and tradition, himself led an expedition against Inkpaduta, which, though it failed to catch the elusive Wahpekute chief, did drive him and his raiders far off into the Dakota prairie. That somewhat satisfied the whites, who relented in their pressure against the Dakota leadership. There were those that whispered that Little Crow never had any intention of catching Inkpaduta and made sure the Wahpekutes escaped into the vast Dakota prairie. True? Maybe. Maybe not. But Inkpaduta was quick to bring his band of raiders onto the Minnesota Sioux reservations to join in their war against the white invaders. Little Crow and the other Dakota leaders welcomed them.

Inkpaduta had a pair of agendas. The first one everyone knew of. He would contest the white's taking of the Dakota's lands as long as he lived. The second only a few knew of.

Whit Jackson and Will Rourke had led a posse that chased Inkpaduta's band after they raided a frontier ranch not far from Antrim. Just by chance a passing rider saw the raiders and raced to pass the information on to Jackson and Rourke at Antrim. They were soon in the saddle in pursuit with a hastily gathered posse. The Indians did not expect such a quick pursuit and were caught from behind at dusk on a May evening in 1859. In the running firefight that followed several of the Wahpekutes, whose horses were jaded from being pushed too hard for too long and overtaken by the pursuers, were unhorsed and three of them captured alive. The captured Indians were turned over to the military authorities in the state of Minnesota and, after a trial no one who respected the law would say was even in the distant neighborhood of fair, were condemned to hang. On July 4, 1859, amidst a raucous Independence Day celebration, the three Wahpekutes were strung up and slowly choked to death at the end of the hangman's ropes. All three were relatives of Inkpaduta.

His cousin.

His brother.

And his son.

In the 1850s, before the repeated white outrages radicalized Inkpaduta, especially those of a white man named Lott who went unpunished by the whites for his murder of a number of Wahpekutes, he and Whit Jackson and Will Rourke were on friendly terms. They smoked the pipe and hunted buffalo together. Now, these two old friends had turned into Judases. He believed they should have known what would happen and let the three Wahpekutes go free before the vengeful American military got their hands on them. They didn't, and Inkpaduta's relatives died, not as warriors, but as common criminals hanged before a crowd of drunken, jeering whites. Inkpaduta blamed Whit Jackson and Will Rourke for their deaths.

And from that day forward he was their implacable enemy.

Inkpaduta knew that Will Rourke had gone east to fight in the white man's war, a war in which Inkpaduta and many, many other Native Americans hoped the whites would kill each other off. But Whit Jackson was still at Antrim, organizing a defense against the raiding bands of Dakota. There were among those sheltering at Antrim some who were waffling, afraid to pick the wrong side in the war. They passed information on to the warring Dakota in hopes they would survive should the Dakota prevail. While also taking care to not make the defenders of Antrim aware of their duplicity. In both scenarios they would eventually fail.

Inkpaduta joined forces with Shakopee and Medicine Bottle, both of whom had their own grudges against Whit Jackson and Antrim, as well as considering the white man's fortified ranch so close to their reservation to be an insult to the entire Dakota nation. The combined forces of Inkpaduta, Shakopee and Medicine Bottle numbered nearly fifty men. Enough so that other young Dakota were attracted to them and their number bulged to over seventy. Enough, they were certain, to overrun Antrim and either kill everyone there or send them fleeing for their lives. That done, lingering only to plunder the coveted materiel goods of the white men's ranch, the raiders would return to the main body of Dakota and finish the cleansing of the Minnesota River Valley of the hated intruders once and for all.

Though he did yet know who they were, Whit Jackson was aware that there were deceitful souls among the refugees at Antrim. He couldn't do much about that but, together with his son-in-law Lance, son Light Eyes and a pair of farmer Indians who had not lost their inner warriors' pluck when they cut their hair, came up with their own alternative.

"I will go to Little Crow's camp and talk of truce between us and them," said John Otter, a thick bodied, hard muscled farmer Indian of some forty years. He was old enough to remember the free days before the whites engulfed them. But also wise enough to choose the middle road of farming. Otter, although a short-haired farmer Indian, nevertheless remained a Dakota at heart and took the name of his totem animal, the otter, as his 'white man's' patronymic. He rode off to Little Crow's camp and encountered agitated young painted Dakota less than a mile from Antrim. He might have been in for trouble, but his brother's two sons were among them and he was allowed to pass on to Little Crow's camp. Little Crow was not there, so Otter passed on the message that the people at Antrim wanted a truce, While at the Dakota camp, which was hardly five miles from Antrim, he went to see his closest friend who, although he was not a farmer Indian, retained the life long bond of friendship forged in their youth during the free ranging days. This man told John Otter of Inkpaduta's presence and of his plans, along with Shakopee and Medicine Bottle, to attack Antrim.

"They care not what Little Crow thinks," the long haired Dakota said. "They have gathered many of the wild young men, eight times the number of your fingers, and will attack Antrim. Be wary, old friend." Then, as John Otter rose to leave, he added.

"And beware of snakes among you."

Otter was accompanied by his old friend, a man widely respected among the Dakota because he had once almost single handedly blunted an Ojibwe ambush, and made it past more of the hostile Dakota to return safely to Antrim. Otter did not linger in informing Jackson and the others what the Dakota were planning. When the raiders came, they would be ready. But they did not come.

Not yet.

Aside from an occasional potshot by a young hothead, Whit and the others at the ranch at first escaped the wrath of the Dakota that spread death and destruction all along much of the Minnesota River Valley. Fort Ripley and New Ulm would not be so fortunate. Both would be attacked. Twice. As so often happened with Native Americans, it was the rash young hotheads among the Dakota who stopped the Native Americans from being at least initially successful. It was far more tempting to raid the largely undefended and helpless nearby settlers' farms for the spoils of war. Easy scalps. Hostages. Weapons. Liquor. Women for the taking. Horses and wagons and all kinds of food stocks. The settlers were not starving. The Dakota were. They raided what they considered the rich, fat farms of the white settlers. Most of the Dakota leaders in the war, many of them only reluctantly involved in the uprising and inclined more towards strategy and long term goals than wanton raiding and looting, tried to organize assaults on Fort Ripley and New Ulm, the closest town of any size to the reservation. The young hotheads eventually listened. Too late. By the time large scale assaults were organized and mounted against Fort Ripley and New Ulm both had received enough reinforcements to drive off the Dakota. The Dakota retreated westward to their rapidly approaching denouement. They would soon be gone, many dead, the rest imprisoned or banished.

But not before Antrim had to battle for its survival.

Chapter 5: The Rebel Cavalry

In the early months of the war the Yankee cavalry units were thoroughly outclassed by their Rebel counterparts. That slowly changed as the veteran cavalrymen from the prewar Union army whipped their new volunteer units into shape. The Yankees still lost most of their engagements with the Confederates, but fled in panic less often and put up a stiff resistance more often. Which was the opposite of what typically had happened when the Gray and Blue cavalrymen clashed in the early months of the war.

The tactic used successfully so many times, where the romantic bravado of leaders like Captain Lane Davis leading a charge had carried the day, was soon to change. The Yankee cavalry units were improving steadily. Yankee infantry learned that charging horsemen were no match for volleys from massed muskets with fixed bayonets. And there was yet another factor. Yankee artillery, already roughly equal to the Rebs, was capable of stopping a cavalry charge in its tracks.

There were more than a few Lane Davis characters in the Rebel officer ranks. Some either met an early death or were wounded and temporarily or permanently invalided. Most, however, learned to temper bravado with prudence. More importantly, the Confederate cavalry was well stocked with former United States Army cavalry and dragoon veterans who learned their lessons quickly and cautioned the impetuous young bloods against foolish and unnecessarily dangerous maneuvers. Captain Lane Davis was one of the handful of hardheads who just didn't get it. The glorious cavalry charge, sabers drawn, remained fixed in his mind as the combat ideal. Where others judged each situation before deciding on whether the classic cavalry charge was feasible, Davis continued to see the charge as his only acceptable cavalry combat tactic. Aristocratic Captain Lane Davis, tall in the saddle, always carefully resplendent in his tailored uniform and with his plumed slouch hat signaling his dashing cavalier élan, saber held high and charging the detested Yankee vermin at the head of his company of the First Virginia Cavalry Regiment. That was the image Davis always held foremost in his mind.

To many of his men, however, he was 'that puffed up dandy who's gonna get us kilt.'

There was yet another facet to Davis that rankled his men, Will Rourke foremost among them. Davis insisted on bringing along one of his family's slaves as his personal body servant. A man Rourke had himself encountered years earlier. The man's name was Reuben and Davis had known him since they were boys together on the Davis plantation. The bonds of boyhood frayed beyond repair when they passed through puberty into young manhood and faced adult reality head on. Davis was the master. Reuben was the slave. Not a roughly handled field hand. But still a slave.

Rourke was certain that the genuine fondness that once existed between the two men had been replaced in Reuben's mind by a deep sense of betrayal. Still, Reuben efficiently performed his duties as Davis' servant without noticeable rancor. He washed the man's clothes, polished his boots, cleaned his uniform, cared for his horse, cooked his meals and managed his baggage and personal papers. It would not do for Davis' servant to be seen in raggedly slave clothing, so Davis made certain Reuben wore a presentable Confederate private's uniform. An indignity that completely missed Davis but was not lost on either Reuben or Rourke. After mulling it over for a while, Rourke made a decision. When the opportunity arose, as he believed it almost certainly would, he was going to urge Reuben to flee north to the Yankees and freedom. A thought that remained confined solely to his own mind and none other.

The first big battle, the Union called it Bull Run and the Confederacy called it Manassas, was a victory for the Rebels and a disastrous rout for the Yankees. As they fled the battlefield in disarray the First Virginia Cavalry slashed at the flanks of the fleeing Union army, wounding and killing many of the invaders of the First's beloved Virginia homeland and capturing scores of them. Captain Lane Davis was in his glory, as his Harrisonburg company repeatedly charged the fleeing Yankees and scattered whatever meager resistance they offered. It was indeed glorious, but also darkly ominous. Davis was more convinced that ever of the efficacy of the dashing cavalry charge. Reuben, along with a handful of other service personnel, remained in camp during the fighting. No chance yet, Rourke knew, of him gaining his freedom by going over to the Yankees even if he was seriously considering it.

Rourke's life in the cavalry occasioned sights of the Confederacy's luminous warriors. Stonewall Jackson, Ewell, the Hills, Longstreet, Robert E. Lee himself. The First Virginia Cavalry Regiment's commander in early months was the fabled Jeb Stuart. Rourke also saw two southern warriors who died early in the war. Turner Ashby of the cavalry and John Pelham of Stuart's famous horse artillery. And Robert E. Lee wasn't the only warrior in the Lee family. His son Rooney and nephew Fitz were both stalwarts of Stuart's cavalry. As was another solid cavalryman who would also go on to fame. Wade Hampton, who would survive the war to be a governor of South Carolina and a U.S. senator.

Those luminous beings lived in a different world than Will Rourke and his comrades. Lieutenant Rourke, sergeants Sykes and Fisk and their troopers were almost constantly on the move, not knowing the comforts of sleeping in a bed or warming themselves by a woodstove in a cozy cabin or farmhouse. They lived outside, slept on the ground, endured the weather in all its flavors, from bitter winter cold to blistering humid summers, frequently went hungry and battled an enemy who outnumbered and outgunned them. Captain Davis had no choice but to endure some of the same hardships, but he made every effort to mitigate them by having his body servant always present to pitch his tent and prepare his meals. Will Rourke, although also an officer, was a commoner in Davis' world view and not often invited into the comfort of Lane's tent. A fact that Rourke, unbeknownst to Davis, far preferred to being in the arrogant man's irritating presence. Though no words were ever exchanged on the subject, Rourke was certain that Reuben somehow understood. With increasing frequency their eyes seemed to meet in an unspoken mutual agreement. Finally, one day, both comfortable with their silent understanding, Rourke spoke in a low voice when they were alone and he was certain they would not be overheard.

"Would you like to be free, Reuben?" The black man, sturdy and muscled despite not being a field slave, stared speechlessly at Rourke. "Reuben?" Rourke repeated, his voice gentle and unthreatening. "Would you?" Still wordless, Reuben nodded a definite affirmative. "When the chance comes, Reuben," Rourke whispered. "Take it!" Reuben didn't say a word. But the look in his eyes, and a second affirmative nod, were eloquent enough. If, and when, the chance arose, he _would_ take it.

The Harrisonburg company and one other from the First Virginia were detailed to return to the Shenandoah Valley and sent to picket and watch the movements of the Yankees who lurked along the Potomac in the north of the valley. During the balance of the war the Shenandoah would be fought over as the armies maneuvered, repeatedly advancing and retreating. The communities in the northern part of the valley changed hands a score or more times over the course of the war. It was a fluid theater of war that would soon draw the interest of the most famous of all the partisan rangers on both sides during the war. John Singleton Mosby, a fair haired man, slight of build but heavy of grit, who was in the process of morphing from being a country lawyer to a celebrated Southern hero. Mosby was still with Jeb Stuart, the general's trusted scout and frequent companion, where the bulk of the First Virginia was busy screening the Confederate army east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Rourke had heard of him, and of his desire to establish a partisan ranger presence in the Valley, and was entertaining the thought of joining Mosby if he made the move to the Valley.

But not yet. Mosby was still east of the Blue Ridge. Rourke was in the Valley with Captain Lane Davis. Lane remained his impetuous, reckless, arrogant self. Not satisfied with merely picketing, observing and reporting on the enemy's movements, he resolved to recreate the memorable wagon train raid that had killed Major McGraw--thus opening up the company commander's posting to himself--and made the commoner Rourke's reputation. Davis would lead a raid that would outdo Rourke's earlier one and cement Davis' own reputation as a dashing and effective cavalry commander. It would, he liked to believe, result in his quick promotion to major and possibly a position on the regimental staff. Where, Davis convinced himself, he would become a valuable assistant to the redoubtable Jeb Stuart. In reality Jeb Stuart did not long suffer fools or incompetents and Lane Davis, powerful friends and family or not, stood zero chance of making it onto Stuart's staff. Stuart had, in fact, heard of Davis' dangerously reckless impetuosity and was considering replacing him with--Oh! Bitter pill to Davis if he were to know--the solidly reliable Will Rourke.

### Don Quixote Davis

Davis was waiting for just this kind of news. One of his pickets galloped into camp with the information Davis had instructed the pickets to watch for. A Yankee supply train, ripe for the pickings. Trooper Wade Harbaugh, the son of one of the overseers on the Davis plantation, was sure the information would earn him some kind of favor with the captain. Maybe a promotion to corporal. Or a three day pass to ride south to visit his family. Better yet. A bottle of good whisky.

"A doz'n wagons," Harbaugh said excitedly. 'Bout fives miles from here. A guard on each o' the wagons and a squadron be screenin' the train.

"How many cavalry?"

"By count, 'roun thirty, Cap'n. Though there may be more scoutin' ahead or flankin'."

"Make a total of maybe fifty, Harbaugh?"

"In that nai'berhood, fer sure, Cap'n. Nay more." Davis did the calculations quickly in his head. Fifty enemy cavalry, spread out. A dozen rifles on the wagons. He had nearly a hundred cavalrymen fit for duty in the company. One of his signature charges would certainly unhinge the Yankees and win the day as it has several times before.

"Any idea what's in the wagons," Davis said to Harbaugh after a few moments of calculating

"Co' nay tell, sir. But, it get to me thinkin'. With so many guards on the wagons I be wonderin' if there be a Yankee paymaster on board with a bunch o' greenbacks." That was a whole cloth supposition by Harbaugh, offered to enhance his importance, and it had the effect of brushing aside any doubts Davis might have had. He was immediately on his feet, ordering Sergeant Fisk to alert the men and prepare them for a combat patrol.

"How soon, sir?" Fisk asked.

"Immediately!" Davis thundered. "We're leaving. Now! Get the men ready." Then, turning to Harbaugh.

"You'll guide us, Harbaugh." The trooper, thinking he'd scored himself a nice little coup, eagerly snapped to attention and saluted.

"Yes, sir!" He said.

Harbaugh's overenthusiastic assessments were wrong. Dangerously wrong. Two troops of Yankee cavalry, under strength but still mounting nearly one hundred and fifty men, were escorting the wagon train, the main body trailing unseen two miles behind the wagons. This Yankee unit had been trained to function as dragoons, mounted infantry. They were armed with fast firing breach loading Sharps carbines--plus one section of each troop was issued the more cumbersome but also more accurate long range Sharps rifle--that enabled them to either fight from horseback as cavalry or their preferred way to fight, dismounted as infantry. The Rebels, by contrast, preferred to fight on horseback. Which made them vulnerable to disciplined infantry fire. Even worse for the Rebels. The wagon drivers and guards--Harbaugh had neglected to mention each of the wagons also carried a guard as well as driver--were armed with the new Spencer repeating rifles. Though the Spencers were still not officially issued by the U.S. Army, the guards and drivers were armed with them as part of the vetting process the government was performing before giving the weapon final contractual and manufacturing approval. The commander of the wagon train had specifically requested the weapons. This was no ordinary train of supply wagons. It was in fact a trap for Rebel wild hairs such as Lane Davis. Like a trout grabbing a cast fly in a mountain stream in the Blue Ridge, the impetuous Davis grabbed the bait.

Captain Davis was about to lead the Harrisonburg Rebels into his own miniaturized version of the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade.

Will Rourke was dubious from the very start. Davis was never forthcoming with much information to Rourke and this time even less so. With the simple command for Rourke to "mount up" he had already sent Reuben to saddle his horse and was busily donning his uniform blouse, buckling on his pistol belt and saber and putting on his plumed hat. He turned to look at Rourke, his face wreathed in a sarcastic smile.

"Today, Rourke, I make history!"

At that instant Rourke had one of his gut feelings, as powerful as any he'd ever had, so strong it almost literally punched him in the intuitive gut.

This was not going to turn out well.

Rourke rode out from the company bivouac at the head of the troopers, Captain Davis in his ostentatious uniform and gaudy plumed hat in the lead with trooper Harbaugh at his side pointing the way. Lieutenant William Rourke was as troubled as he looked, being far more preoccupied with what Davis might do than with the nature of the Yankee enemy. Trooper Harbaugh was a fawning man, obsequious to Captain Davis, and Rourke didn't consider him a reliable witness. He wasn't. Harbaugh had been himself observed and trailed by Yankee scouts helping to bait the trap. Harbaugh, as Davis after him, had jumped at the bait. One of the Yankee scouts reported back to the main body of Union horsemen while others watched the Rebels responding to the bait.

When Davis' company rode past the Confederate picket lines another hidden watching Yankee scout rode off at a full gallop to report to the commander of the Union dragoons. The commander was Major Byron Scott, himself a veteran of the prewar United States dragoons and a native of western Virginia. There were virtually no slaves in Scott's mountainous west Virginia home county and Scott held no empathy for the slave holding aristocracy or even for the concept of states rights. He was no abolitionist, and, like most northerners, was indifferent to the fate of the blacks beyond a distaste for human bondage.

He was however a firm believer in the insoluble nature of the American union and well prepared by his earlier military service to fight to preserve that union. A belief shared by the majority of his troopers and widespread throughout the north. Still, when the southern states seceded, and numbers of his dragoons with southern sympathies made to leave to join the Southern cause, he made no effort to stop them. They, like him, were men following what they thought conscience and duty demanded of them. He hoped he would never face any of them in battle and be forced to fire on them as enemies. The Rebels were enemies in the faceless abstract. But when the faces were known? It was not so simple. A dilemma shared by many, North and South. Every single one of the Rourke brothers at one time or another were vexed by what they would to if they faced one of their brothers on the opposing side in battle.

Major Scott moved his company of dragoons closer to the wagon train while still remaining out of sight when another scout reported the Confederate cavalry was coming fast. There was no look of satisfaction on his face, despite knowing that his plan was working and the trap about to snap shut on the Rebels. He had seen too many men die. In the Mexican war and in the Indians wars. He took no pleasure in killing and found the prospect of ordering his own men into mortal danger to be the most disagreeable part of command in his entire military career. His stomach always churned when combat was near. That did show on his face. His orderly, little more than a boy and newly posted as his orderly, saw the discomfort on the major's face.

"Are you all right, sir?" The youth orderly said. "You look ill."

"It is not that I am ill, lad. It is that I sense death ahead." The young orderly blanched and said not a word more.

William Rourke dug his heels into La Foudre's flanks enough to rouse the horse to surge forward beside Captain Davis. Rourke leaned towards him and yelled over the thundering of the horses' hooves and of the noisily jangling creaking gear.

"Captain! We should stop and send scouts ahead to reconnoiter. The situation might have changed since Harbaugh came in." Davis did not look at Rourke.

"The secret to success is to strike first while the enemy is unprepared. We have done it numerous times before, Rourke. We will not stop to send out scouts. Return to your place in the column." He did then deign to swivel his head to glare sternly at Rourke. "Now, Rourke. Now!" Will reined La Foudre back and fell in beside Sergeants Fisk and Sykes. He leaned towards Fisk, who was an expert horseman and had the fastest horse in the company.

"Wilson, we are going in blind. Ride ahead and see what you can see, then report back to me." Fisk looked at Rourke.

"You, sir? Not Captain Davis."

"Me, and Davis if he is present. But not solely to Davis. Understood?" Fisk nodded, and grinned. He knew full well what Rourke thought of their fancy blueblood captain. A sentiment Fisk, and almost all of the other men, shared. "And don't let Davis stop you!"  
With a whoop Fisk galloped off ahead of the column.

"Hey! You! Come back here!" Davis yelled at Sergeant Fisk's back. Fisk yelled back that his horse was running away from him and he couldn't stop him. Rourke urged La Foudre up to Davis' side again, leaning towards Davis and shouting loud enough for him to hear.

"That's the fastest horse in the company. No way to catch him. Fisk'll just have to ride the animal out until it makes up its mind to stop. I warned Fisk that his horse had a stubborn streak that could cause him trouble some day. Reckon today is the day." Davis was more than a little suspicious, but was helpless to do anything about it. Fisk was rapidly galloping out of sight. The company maintained its fast trot, Captain Davis having finally been convinced of the wisdom of preserving the energies of the horses until the exigencies of combat and/or a hasty exit demanded the faster gallop.

"Stubborn animal or not, see to it that Sergeant Fisk is put on report when we return to camp." Rourke saluted.

"Yes, sir!" He snapped.

Which made Davis even more suspicious.

Fisk galloped on until he was about a mile ahead of the company. Then, not wanting to be caught in a dangerous situation with a winded horse, he slowed to a trot to allow his horse to regain its wind. After another mile he topped a low rise in a grassy field and saw the wagon train another mile off below him. And not just the wagon train. The company of Yankee dragoons were already riding up to deploy next to the wagon train. The cavalry escort stopped and dismounted, the Yankee dragoons taking up positions behind the wagons along with the guards. A trap!

The last of the Yankee scouts watching the Confederate cavalry had gone to report to Major Scott and Fisk was therefore able to approach the Yankee scene unobserved. At first. Then he saw a hand, soon followed by several more, point at him. In an instant Fisk wheeled his horse and galloped at top speed back towards his company. They had to be warned before riding into certain death.

Major Scott realized his trap had been discovered and immediately changed his battle plan. He ordered the entire company of dragoons, the wagon escort as well as the main body, totaling nearly two hundred men, to pursue the lone Confederate scout. The man would be riding to warn the Rebels of the trap and would therefore lead Scott and his men directly to the Confederates. The major knew the strength of the Rebel unit was half that of his company and that they preferred to fight from horseback. There were spies and informers everywhere in the northern Shenandoah Valley and Scott had earlier been apprised by a brigade staff officer of the presence of Captain Davis' company and his reputation for reckless bravado. Major Scott's scouts having identified the approaching Confederate flags as those of Davis' Harrisonburg cavalry company, Davis' known impetuosity figured as a major factor in setting his trap. Scott was a West Point graduate who had fought, and been twice wounded, in the Mexican War. He understood tactics and strategy and therefore had backup plans in place. He now chose one of them. He would lead his dragoons to within carbine range of the Rebels, then have most of them dismount and take up stable firing positions on the grounds. Scott was certain the rash Captain Davis would order a charge, not understanding he was sending his men into the effective killing range of men trained not only as cavalry but also as infantry. It would be Davis' last mistake.

Fisk came tearing up to the Rebel company in such an uproar that even Captain Davis realized something bad was happening.

"It's a trap!" Fisk yelled, as breathless as his lathered horse. "There is a large force of cavalry with the wagons. At least twice our number."

"Did they see you?" Rourke said.

"Yes!" Fisk said.

"Are they following you?"

"I am not sure, I....." Sergeant Sykes interrupted, pointing at a cloud of dust less than mile off.

"Look!" He said. As the others looked, the first of the dragoons rode into view.

"Prepare the men for the charge," Davis said, excited and agitated at the same time. This was a first. Yankees coming at him? "We will show them the Rebel blade." Rourke grabbed Davis' arm, which caused the Captain to violently try to shake Rourke's hand loose. Rourke's hand stayed clamped on the captain's arm.

"Unhand me, man! You'll be up on charges for certain this time!"

"I don't give a damn for you or your charges. You cannot charge that many enemy. Do you not see what they are?" Rourke had often seen United States dragoons in the west. "They are dragoons. Mounted infantry. They will dismount and cut us to pieces." He squeezed Davis' arm even harder. "For once in your arrogant life, use some sense. You are going to get us all killed. We must retreat. And now!"

"You are under arrest for cowardice in the face of the enemy," Davis angrily fumed. He turned to look at Sergeant Fisk. "Sergeant! Place this man under arrest!" Fisk did not move. "Sergeant! Did you not hear me! Place this man under arrest!" Fisk spit at the ground and looked Davis directly in the eye.

"There is not a man in this command who will obey you at this moment, sir. Our only hope is for Lieutenant Rourke to try to lead us out of this trap." By now the full complement of Bluecoats had appeared and expertly wheeled into line of battle. They halted four hundred yards away, sitting their saddles and waiting for the expected Rebel charge, the Rebels already having been ordered by Davis into line of battle. As soon as Davis ordered his men to the charge, Scott would have the bulk of his dragoons dismount to where the stable firing platform of the ground would be far more lethal than that the jostled one of a mounted, charging horseman. The scent of death again visited Union Major Scott. He grimaced, as he always did at such moments. The young orderly noticed. And said nothing.

"You both will go before a court martial on charges of cowardice in the face of the enemy," Davis snarled, so angry his whole body was shaking. These men were even worse than that defiant uppity slave back home before the war. He'd known how to deal with the slave. The lash and then the auction block. And he knew how to deal with Rourke and Fisk. "I'll personally push for a firing squad for the pair of you, traitorous cowards that you are!"

Rourke knew full well that refusing a direct order by a superior officer in combat was a capital offense that could well end in a firing squad. He did not make his decision lightly. But he could not abide this foolish pampered scion of the upper classes leading his company to destruction. Many of them men and boys he knew from his youth in the Valley. And most of the others were from families that he knew. He could not sit back and let them be slaughtered. Rourke might have ridden to the charge himself, been killed and thereby freed from his dilemma. But that begged the question of the survival of the men. He had no choice but to disobey Captain Davis' suicidal order.

"The men will follow me!" Davis yelled, drawing his saber and hollering as loud as he could. "Troopers! At the trot. Draw your sabers! Forward!" Davis trotted forward on the spirited blooded animal he'd brought from his plantation, saber waving in the air and plumed hat flapping in the wind. Not a single man followed him. Not even the obsequious trooper Harbaugh.

Scott's dragoons were then the spectators of the most unusual sight any of them would ever see during the years of war. A single Rebel officer charging two hundred dragoons, yelling and waving his saber. Scott understood immediately.

"Damn fool! That must be the Davis we've heard about. Looks like his men have more sense than he does. They won't take the bait." As Davis trotted towards the dragoons, still expecting his company to burst into action and follow him, Scott passed the word down the line to his subordinates. "Do not shoot the damn fool. Take him prisoner." Those words had hardly reached the end of the dragoon line when Davis spurred his horse into a gallop and charged headlong into the Yankee dragoons. One of them clubbed his carbine and knocked Davis out of his saddle. Others quickly subdued him. He would soon become famous among the local Union soldiers as a man both brave and stupid and thus was born his nickname on both sides.

Don Quixote Davis.

Will Rourke watched Captain Davis in his foolhardy solitary charge into the massed Yankees and thought that, somehow, Davis' actions symbolized the Southern cause. Rourke's mind had no time to dwell on Captain Davis' fate. The adrenaline of unanticipated sudden command in such desperate circumstances sent his mind racing to grasp some way to extricate the company from its potentially lethal predicament. A charge against twice their number, especially dragoons, was out of the question. Should he dismount the company and wait for the dragoons to charge them? Should they beat a hasty retreat and hope the Yankees couldn't catch them before they made it back to Rebel territory? He hastily called over Fisk and Sykes and asked their opinion. It was unanimous. Discretion was the better part of valor. Retreat was the wisest option. At least until the reached a more defensible position.

"Wheel about and retreat!" Rourke, Fisk and Sykes yelled out to the men. They didn't need to be told twice. The dangerous situation they were in was obvious to them all.

With veteran precision the company wheeled and began to move at fast trot away from the Yankees. Major Scott, on seeing this, did not hesitate to react. He ordered his men forward in pursuit. At a gallop. The Rebels, seeing this, also went to the gallop.

The race was on.

The Yankee horses were in better physical condition than the poorly fed Rebel animals, and were also fresher. The gap between the retreating Rebels and pursuing Yankees steadily grew smaller. Rourke kept a close eye on the Yankees as they drew nearer and nearer.

"We're not going to make it," he yelled at his nearby sergeants. "We're going to have to make a stand. Keep an eye out for the right terrain!" At that moment, some of the Rebels would later claim that the hand of divine providence was at work, a defensible wooded hillock rose up before the fleeing Rebels.

"That's it!" Sykes yelled even as Rourke and Fisk were about to do the same. Rourke yelled at the company to converge on the hillock. He yelled at Sergeant Sykes to ride up to his side as the company converged on the forested hilltop.

"Take a couple of men and ride like hell for our lines. One of you at least have to make it through. Bring back as much help as you can as quick as you can. We won't be able to hold out for long against these Yanks. These boys have grit!" Sykes took the two men he knew to have the best horses and immediately galloped off. Major Scott saw the three riders scampering away and made his only mistake of the day. "There go three faint hearts not up to the fight," he said to his adjutant, Captain Sloan. "They'll have some powerful explaining to do in the very near future. Desertion in the face of the enemy could get them shot." Captain Sloan nodded in agreement. It didn't occur to him, either, than the three riders might be riding for help rather than fleeing the battle. Major Scott's mistake was in fact only a mistake because of serendipity. His scouts had earlier reported that there were no sizeable Confederate cavalry units in the area and therefore no possibility of a relief force. But that had changed since his scouts returned.

Rourke ordered the horses brought inside the copse of trees, ancient original growth oaks, maples and chestnuts some mindful steward had preserved from the axe and saw. The copse was ungrazed by cattle and thick with undergrowth. A handful of troopers were left to manage the horses, who were firmly tied to the big trees, while the rest were deployed in the undergrowth at the edge of the trees. Rourke had the majority of his troopers facing the oncoming Yankees, but prudently had a few watching the sides and rear. He had little doubt they would soon be surrounded and that an attack could come from any direction. But, positioned in the woods, with the protection of the big trees, the Rebels would make the Yankees pay dearly if they made a direct assault. It would go far harder on the Yankees than if the pursuing Union dragoons had caught up the Rebels in open country on horseback. There the overwhelming Union numbers would have decimated the Rebels with relatively fewer Yankee casualties. But here, behind the thick trees, the Rebels at least had somewhat evened the odds.

Major Scott halted his dragoons, barked an order to one of his staff, who then rode off at a gallop in the direction from which they'd just come. Scott then ordered his men to take up positions at right angles to each other on two adjacent sides of the trapped Rebels, opening them up to enfilading fire. The major didn't yet deploy any troopers on the other two sides, fearing that firing from all four sides would potentially expose his own men to fire from their fellow dragoons shooting from the opposite direction. Scott did, however, station scouts behind the trapped Rebels to warn him if they again tried to make a run for it. He also detailed twenty of his dragoons to manage the horses and keep them in readiness should a mounted pursuit resume. Scott was a methodical, efficient officer who would eventually rise to the rank of brigadier general. A rank he received over two years later before being blown to pieces along with his horse and his orderly by an errant misfiring Union artillery shell at the slaughter pen known as the Battle of Cold Harbor, the only battle that Ulysses Grant would even begin to admit might have been a mistake. An admission that was a bitter one indeed to the loved ones of the thousands of Union soldiers massacred that bloody day.

Scott had the Rebels trapped. He also knew that the Rebels intended to put up a hell of a fight and make the Yankees pay in blood for overrunning them. Scott was not one of those vainglorious officers, of whom there were far too many, who cared less for the fate of their men than they did for the advancement of their own careers. He would not needlessly squander the lives of his men. They would wear down the Rebels until they were forced to surrender. He ordered a line of skirmishers to advance within effective carbine range, taking cover and then beginning a constant galling fire that would start the process of wearing the Confederates down. A constant rattle of carbine fire soon began and continued, Scott replacing the skirmishers when they ran low of ammunition. A supply train of a half dozen mules had followed the dragoons with extra ammunition, water and hardtack. None of which the Rebels had.

The thick trees allowed for considerable protection, but well aimed skirmishers' shots still made it between the trees. The Rebels began to take casualties. One trooper was shot through the head when he picked the wrong time to peek around a thick tree trunk. Another was grazed by a minie ball and left dazed. Another took a ball in his upper arm and was bleeding profusely until Fisk managed to stop the bleeding with a combination of pressure and the application of a tourniquet.

"Believe you'll save the arm, Johnnie," Fisk said. "Bullet straight through the flesh. Don't look like the bone was broke." What he didn't say was that the man would be OK _if_ the butchers they called surgeons and the death houses they called hospitals didn't inadvertently kill him like they did so many others.

Then things began to get worse. The meticulous Major Scott had thought to bring a section of sharpshooters with their Sharps rifles, six of them, with his unit. He ordered them into position and they soon began to take a toll of the Rebels. One Rebel, a boy barely seventeen, took a ball in the kneecap as he dodged between trees. He staggered to the ground, screaming. A second Rebel, an older man in his thirties with a large family back home on his farm, was shot in the chest and lay on his back, gasping for air. Rourke ordered all the men to stay behind the thick tree trunks and not show themselves at all. He then picked the four men who were the best shots with the most reliable rifles, all of them hunters who had ranged the woods of the Virginia mountains from early childhood and kept their accurate Kentucky rifles with them when they entered Confederate service. Captain Davis had initially tried to force them to get rid of the weapons as being 'unmilitary' but Rourke had managed to talk him out of it. Now, with their help, Rourke was determined to counter the Yankee sharpshooters.

They had one advantage over the Yankees. Rourke had three days earlier been able to quietly procure a bag of the new smokeless gunpowder paper and ball cartridges a Rebel raid by another of the First Virginia's companies had captured from a Yankee supply point. Rourke had prudently, and, at this moment also providentially, stored it in his saddlebag. The regular gunpowder both sides were using blew out a thick plume of smoke when their weapons were fired, clearly revealing the location of the shooter. With the smokeless powder there was no such telltale smoke and concealed shooters remained undetected. Rourke doled out the smokeless powder paper and ball cartridges to the men and explained their obvious tactical advantages. All of them grinned when they grasped they just received a whopping advantage over the Yankees. Especially considering it was almost always the Yankees who had the benefit of new technologies and weapons.

Rourke and the other four took up various positions at the edge of the trees, taking great care to conceal themselves, and watched for the puffs of gunpowder smoke coming from the guns of the sharpshooters. One of the Rebels, a nimble youth who outdid all of his youthful companions at climbing trees in years not long past, clambered up an ancient black oak and found a comfortable well hidden firing position high in the tree. He was the first to score a hit on one of the sharpshooters. After he hit a second one the others became leery and hesitant. One fired off a round at the trees without knowing exactly where the marksman was and gave away his position. Both Rourke and one of the others fired instantly. Both bullets found their mark. With three of the sharpshooters down, Scott called the remaining three back to preserve them for possible future use.

That opened up the rest of his skirmishing line to the Rebel marksmen and the skirmishers began to take casualties. First one, then a second, a third and a fourth. With the fifth skirmisher down, Scott recalled them to relative safety and reconsidered his options. Being the judicious and well schooled military man he was, Scott already had his latest piece in this battlefield chess game on the way. The horse artillery howitzer he'd had trailing his main body of troopers. Just in case. And that case had come. Which was where his staff officer had galloped off to an hour earlier. To bring up the artillery.

"This is one move they won't be able to counter," Scott said to his adjutant. "Whoever is in there commanding them is a clever fellow. I'll grant him that. But not good enough to counter artillery. We'll either make them surrender or flush them out and run 'em down. Have the men get mounted when the artillery arrives. We'll have this over and be back in camp in time for supper."

Which was what would have happened but for serendipity. Or what would soon be known as Rourke's Luck.

As the Harrisonburg Rebel cavalrymen held off the Yankees in the protective green womb of the ancient trees, Sergeant Sykes and the two men with him rode as fast as their mounts would carry them towards the thinly held Rebel picket line that marked the beginning of Rebel held territory. Halfway there one of the men's horses ran out of steam and slowed to a walk.

"Your horse is done. Walk him in," Sykes yelled. "We'll go on to get help." Sykes and the second man, a handsome young dark haired youth, Jeremiah Jackson, who was a second cousin to Will Rourke's mother, Sarah, rode alongside. After another mile his horse, too, ran out of wind and slowed to a walk. Sykes repeated what he had said to the first trooper and rode on. His own horse was about to collapse when Sykes came in sight of the Rebel picket line.

"Confederate horseman, coming in!" He yelled in case a nervous militiaman had a jittery trigger finger. He rode up next to the picket, who, in fact, was a nervous fifty year old militiaman with everything jittery, including his trigger finger. "There are two more behind me coming with broken down horses," Sykes puffed at the man. "Where are the nearest units?" The nervous older man was jittery for sure. But also observant. Serendipity--Rourke's Luck--then reared its mischievous face.

"There be a battalion of horse done just come out of the mountains. Officer by the name of McCracken at they head."

"Where are they?" The older man turned and pointed at a nearby barn.

"Just t'other side o' that barn. Just settled in there not three hour past." Sykes horse was up to one last burst of gallop and carried him hollering and yelling into the midst of the Rebel bivouac in a farmer's hay field.

"What the hell is going on here," demanded a rugged but worn looking man in the uniform of a major who came bursting out of a tent only recently erected. He was about to lay down for a much needed rest when Sykes came hurdling into the camp. Sykes excitedly explained to the major and a growing crowd of onlookers what had happened. Major Hugh McCracken was one of those Confederate leaders who was a kind of mixture. Part of him was a partisan ranger. The other part was a regular Confederate cavalryman. He and his men had just spent the last months battling the Yankees in the mountains of western Virginia. In another of the war's bizarre coincidences, Major Scott's dragoons were one of the Yankee units they had clashed with. Like Union Major Scott, McCracken wasted no time. In barely ten minutes he had the best mounted of his men, close to two hundred of them, mounted and following Sykes, who was given a fresh horse by McCracken's adjutant. Behind them came the balance of the command, some on less hardy mounts and more, their mounts worn out, in three commandeered wagons. Plus, echoing the prudent Yankee Major Scott, following behind came a pair of horse artillery mountain howitzers with one of the best artillery crews in all of Virginia. So good that Jeb Stuart would eventually lure them over to his own brigade command.

As McCracken and his men galloped towards where the Harrisonburg company was trapped, all of them hoping they could get to the troopers in time, Major Scott's own artillery piece arrived at the battlefield. The crew, new and not yet adept with their cannon, were slower than Scott would have liked setting up their piece. Unsurprisingly, the crew raw and unpracticed, their first shots were far off the mark. Scott was not perturbed. He knew they would soon get the range. And then it would be all over for the plucky band of Rebs in that stand of grand old trees. Scott, who had always been a keen lover of nature, hated the thought of having to drop shells in on those old trees and destroy them. But war had little or no consideration for trees or most of the other creations of God's earth. He watched with some discomfort as the artillery gradually zeroed in on the stately venerable trees that might well have been there when the Native Americans still ruled the land.

An artillery shell crashed into the spreading crown of an ancient chestnut tree, showering slivers of wood, as deadly as shrapnel, onto the Rebels below. The first burst caused little damage. A few men were pierced by pieces of branches in their arms and legs. Nothing serious. Not yet. Another round fired by the Yankee howitzer had too little powder in its charge. The shell fell far short, as close to the Yankees as to the Rebels. That prompted Major Scott to ride over to where the howitzer was positioned to yell at them to mind their duty more closely. As he towered above them on his horse the youthful Rebel, still hiding in the black oak foliage close to the tree's crown, sighted and aimed at the major. Had the major's horse not jerked its head at that moment the major would have been shot into the stomach or chest. Instead the horse took the bullet in its neck and careened off in a panic, screaming, with the major trying to control him.

That so surprised the Yankees that the artillery crew stopped their combat drill and watched in astonishment as Major Scott tried to control his wounded horse. That bought the trapped Rebels a little more time. Not much. But, with McCracken's troopers on the way, though Rourke and his men had no way of knowing it, even a little bit of extra time might make the difference. Finally, Scott, who was an adept horseman with long years of experience, was able to control the animal. He dismounted and handed the reins to his orderly, telling the man to have one of the dragoons who was skilled with treating injured and wounded animals see what he could do. Like any good cavalryman or dragoon, Scott took great care with his horse. This time, though, it would be to no avail. The horse was bleeding so severely it couldn't be stopped. He died within the hour. One of the many hundred of thousands of horses and mules that would die in the war. Major Scott, however, had a ready replacement for his lost horse. A fine animal unwittingly provided by Captain Lane Davis in his vainglorious Don Quixote charge.

Scott resumed his command position and hollered at the howitzer crew, with no little irritation, "Why are you just standing there like a bunch of stumps? Get back to firing that damn gun! Now!" That shook up the crew and in their agitation they began to make mistakes. The next shot had too much powder and sailed far over the Rebels. That was too much for Scott. Years earlier he had a temporary assignment as an artillery officer and knew something about the mechanics of using artillery. More, it soon turned out, that the green artillery crew who had recently been assigned to him, his veteran crew having been reassigned away from his command against his wishes by a covetous superior officer. Scott took the place of the gunnery sergeant and directed the actions of the crew, taking care not to fluster them any further than they already were. Scott's cool head soon prevailed. One, then a second, shell sailed into the trees, spewing shrapnel and splinters on the trapped Confederates. This time two men were seriously injured, a half dozen others less so. Will Rourke knew that their valiant defense was about to fail. He couldn't let the men be slaughtered by the artillery. The massed dragoons hovering perpendicular to the howitzer made an attempt to flee on horseback likely to just end in more slaughter. Much as it dismayed him, there seemed no recourse but to surrender.

"If Sykes doesn't bring back help within twenty or thirty minutes," he said solemnly to Sergeant Fisk, "we'll have to surrender. To continue to resist will just get us all killed." Fisk's sour expression conveyed his intense dislike at the thought of surrendering, but he could not fail to fathom the desperate situation they were in just as much as Rourke did.

"The thought galls me, Lieutenant," Sykes said, darkly. "But I have to agree." Though neither of them said it, they did not really believe Sergeant Sykes would bring relief in time.

Major McCracken's horses were not fresh and one by one they fell behind. Halfway to the trapped Rebels his command was down to little over one hundred, the other hundred trailing behind at a pace that their horses could manage. Even farther back came the rest of the battalion on their jaded horses, the three wagonloads of dismounted troopers and the two pieces of horse artillery. Altogether, more than enough to counter Major Scott's dragoons.

If they got there in time.

Fifteen minutes passed and another seven Rebels were wounded by hurling splinters and shrapnel. Rourke's countenance darkened as he moved closer to making the decision to surrender. Two more minutes passed, another Rebel fell in a shower of splinters, and Rourke was about to raise the white flag of surrender. A trooper stationed at the rear of the dubious refuge of old trees suddenly yelled out.

"Dust! Riders are coming. From the _South_! Rebs!" Rourke skittered between the trees to look for himself. Sure enough. Dust. Maybe a mile off. And coming towards them. Fast. Two minutes later the first of McCracken's cavalry rode into view and Rourke and the men watching with him recognized the Confederate battle flag flapping in the breeze where a trooper, at Major McCracken's order, had the slender flagpole securely anchored in its holder on the soldier's saddle. The flag, to Will Rourke and his men, waving a fervently received welcome respite to their near disaster. Relief was here! Sergeant Fisk was soon at his side.

"This fight ain't over, Lieutenant," he said, in obvious relief. At that moment another artillery shell smashed into the thinning crowns in the overhead trees and a six inch sliver from an oak tree came hurtling down like a piece of shrapnel. It struck Rourke in the muscle of his upper arm and penetrated nearly to the bone. He doubled over, groaning, then straightened up, grabbed the splinter and jerked it out of his arm. The blood immediately spurted out. For the second time that day Fisk quickly improvised a pressure bandage, ripping a piece off his shirt and his belt to hold it in place.

"That'll have to do for now, Lieutenant," Sykes Fisk, almost apologetically. Fisk had at one time trained to become a doctor but had to quit his schooling when his father died in a freak buggy accident and he had to care for his mother and siblings.

"It'll do, Wilson," Rourke said. "Just fine." He reached over to clasp Wilson Fisk's shoulder with his good arm. "And....Wilson...thanks! You're a damn good man and one hell of a soldier!"

Nearly a hundred of McCracken's men were now in view and Scott quickly repositioned the artillery piece to shoot at the newly arrived Rebel reinforcements. The range was much farther than the trapped Rebels in the trees and at the edge of the cannon's reliable range. The first round fell two hundred yards short. The second shot, one hundred. The third had not landed before McCracken had moved his troopers back far enough to avoid the artillery round that would have been a direct hit. Scott also had the bulk of his dragoons dismount and prepare to meet a Rebel charge with disciplined carbine fire. McCracken and three of his staff returned to the place where the last artillery shell had plowed up the earth. Major McCracken pulled a pair of field glasses from his saddlebag and studied the Yankee dispositions.

"Yates!" He said with amusement to his aide, sitting his mount next to him. "It's our old friends from the mountains. Major Scott and his dragoons." At that very moment Major Scott was looking through his own pair of field glasses and making a similar exclamation to his aides. Both now had a clear picture of what they were facing. McCracken led a battalion of cavalrymen that, for once, outnumbered the Yankees. The dragoons were trained as infantry as well as cavalry. Which meant a mounted charge against them by the Rebel cavalry would mean an unacceptable amount of casualties. But riding to join the trapped troopers in the trees could very well mean that they, too, would be trapped. He could send a rider in to the trapped men and tell them they'd cover for them while they rode out to safety. There was one big problem with that. What about the wounded who couldn't ride? Leave them for the Yankees and a dicey future as wounded prisoners of war? While McCracken was debating this, and Scott was trying to figure out a way to block whatever McCracken was going to do, more and more of the Rebel horsemen arrived. And, raising its own cloud of dust less than a mile behind them as the crew rode like madmen to bring up the cannons, was McCracken's horse artillery led by the soon to be famous Lieutenant Chew.

Scott sent another artillery round sailing at the Rebels and McCracken pulled his men back just out of range once more. Then the Rebel artillery came racing up and the daring Chew led his pair of cannons out in front of the horsemen, set the cannons up with the celerity of his well practiced veteran crew, and had the range of the Yankee cannon manned by its green crew--Scott had been forced away to plan his counter to McCracken--and disabled the Yankee cannon with the first half dozen shots.

Scott realized the opportunity was lost and ordered his slowest units, the pack train, damaged howitzer and wagons, to head north to Union territory while he covered the withdrawal with his dragoons. Scott and his dragoons remained on foot, ready to repel a mounted charge, while the pack train, wagons and ambulances vanished to the north. He held that position until the train was well ahead of them, then had his men mount up, rode to the wagons again, and had the men dismount again in line of battle. A squad of McCracken's troopers tailed them, knowing it would be folly to charge into the dismounted dragoons. Many a time in the war a victorious Confederate force would find all manner of Yankee equipment and personal items left behind in an unruly retreat. Not this time. Scott's men were disciplined and competent and they left nothing behind them but gobs of expectorated tobacco juice. It was another of the bizarre peculiarities of the Brothers War that the two commanders, McCracken and Scott, admired each other. As did, in fact, many of the men on both sides.

McCracken rode with this staff to the copse of old trees where the Rebels had taken refuge.

Rourke stepped out of the trees to meet him.

"Are you the commander of this unit, sir?" McCracken said in a less than friendly voice.

"I am, Major. Lieutenant William Rourke," Will replied in a reasonably strong voice, considering his painful wound.

"How, sir, may I ask did you manage to get your men in such a disastrous situation?" The edge to his voice was harder. Rourke had no chance to answer. Sergeant Fisk jumped forward, saluted smartly and promptly set the colonel straight.

"It was not Lieutenant Rourke, sir. It was our Captain Davis. Lane Davis. He blundered us into this mess. Lieutenant Rourke saved us."

"And where is Captain Davis?" McCracken snorted.

"Captured, sir," Rourke answered.

" _Captured_? How did _that_ happen?" And then Major Hugh McCracken, a balanced and reasonable sort even if quick and decisive in battle, listened in amazement as Rourke, Fisk, Sykes and a number of other troopers related how the rash and impetuous Davis had led them into a trap and only the quick thinking of Rourke had prevented the slaughter of the entire unit. The Confederate officer corps in that area was not so large that McCracken had not already heard of the questionable impetuosity of Captain Lane Davis. He soon concluded that Rourke had indeed saved his unit.

While McCracken's men helped put Rourke's wounded and dead into the wagons they had brought and prepared to return to Confederate lines, Rourke, McCracken, two of McCracken's aides and Sergeants Sykes and Fisk walked to the front of the copse of trees, standing just inside their sheltering trunks. Scott's dragoons were still in place, dismounted, ready to repel a charge, but out of carbine range. As the Rebels were wearily congratulating each other on their narrow escape and rescue, one of Major Scott's sharpshooters, whose close friend was one of the sharpshooters killed by the Rebel marksmen, acting without orders, took careful aim on the small group of Rebels just inside the trees. A single shot rang out. He was aiming for McCracken. His aim was off.

Sergeant Wilson Fisk was dead before his body drooped to the leaf strewn earth below.

### The Horses

Peter Rourke was in his barn when he heard riders pull up outside. Curious, he put down the pitchfork he was moving hay with and went to the barn door. Outside were two men in Confederate uniforms, one of them a major. It was a man he knew, Tom Crowley, who, like Peter's son, Will, had joined the Confederate cavalry. Tom was a horse breeder and trader in civilian life. The military recognized his experience and detailed him to procure remounts for the cavalry.

"I see they promoted you to major, Tom," Rourke said. "Last time I heard you were a captain." Tom, although a long time acquaintance of Peter's, sat uneasily on his saddle.

"Reckon they were desperate, Peter," he replied, lamely. Peter didn't need any more clues. Something unpleasant was about to happen.

"Peter," Tom Crowley said in an apologetic tone. "The army is desperately short of horses. We need yours." Peter was not surprised. Everyone knew the government was taking people's horses, sometimes, if necessary, by force.

"And how am I to work my farm without horses?" Peter said, trying hard to not let his rising anger get the better of him. He took great care with his beloved animals. Such, he was certain, would not the case if the government took them. He'd heard it too many times. They wore the animals down through hard service and then discarded them, sometimes shooting the broken down animal and leaving the carcass to rot. Which was what might very well happen with Peter Rourke's beloved animals. Major Crowley leaned back and motioned at something out of Rourke's line of vision. He gesturing was shortly followed by three Confederate troopers leading a string of four very bedraggled looking horses.

"An exchange, Peter." "We take yours, and leave these for you. Bring them back to health and keep them."

"No deal, Tom," Peter snapped back. I'll be keeping my horses." Suddenly another horseman jerked his mount from out of sight to where Peter could see him. He had the rank of a colonel. And the attitude of a stern hard drinking judge.

"You will relinquish your horses, sir! The Confederacy needs them. This is _war_. Where is your patriotism!" Peter Rourke was not easily intimidated.

"I have three sons in the army! Is that not enough patriotism for you?"

"I am not going to argue with you, sir. We are taking your animals. If you attempt to resist my men with subdue you." Tom Crowley noticeably blanched. Then hurriedly spoke.

"At least you are getting something in return, Tom. The farmers in the northern part of the valley where the Federals are in control have their horses and everything else the Yanks want ripped from them without any form of compensation. They even burn some of the barns and the occasional house of those who resist."

"We will give you Confederate script for the value of your horses, sir," the colonel interjected. "Plus these animals for you to use your considerable skills in healing." Rourke was still having none of it, then suddenly noticed he was not alone. Hearing the loud talking outside, Sarah had come out of the house and was listening.

"You will not...." Sarah grabbed Peter's arm, squeezing hard and, when he turned to look at her, she stared hotly at him.

"No, Peter. It's no use. It's the war. Let it go." Crowley was quick to pick up on it.

"Yes, Peter. Please! Let it go." The next voice was Sarah's.

"At least leave us one of the field horses. We can't plow the fields without at least one." The Rebel officer, though hardened by his distasteful duty, was not nearly as mean spirited as he felt himself obliged to project. He agreed immediately.

A few minutes later Peter Rourke watched disconsolately as his prized horses, nearly as dear to him as his children, were led away to what was almost certainly a dismal fate. A single tear fell from his eye. After the horses were out of sight, he turned to his wife.

"Our country. Our sons. Our horses. What is there left for them to take from us?" Sarah's tongue was silent. But her mind was racing. _There will be more_ , she thought to herself. Her mind recoiled from the next thought, which struck her with the force of a overwhelming precognitive vision _. Everything......_

They'll take everything.

### The Execution

The war was a hard teacher and an even harder taskmaster. Privations such as even the most disadvantaged among the Confederate soldiers could not have imagined. Marching in the capricious weather of all seasons. Rain, snow, sleet, mud ankle deep and more, roads so slippery footing was dicey and sometimes treacherous. In the hot weather, the opposite. Blistering heat. High humidity. Men falling out with exhaustion, some into heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Sweet drinking water almost a luxury, the men having to get the water from scum covered ponds or muddy creeks and rivers. And rations lean to nearly non-existent. Sleeping in a bed was only a fading memory, as the soldiers had to make do on ground soggy in summer, frozen hard in winter, snow sometimes covering the fitfully sleeping men. Clothing threadbare and inadequate for the conditions. Tormented by insects, especially lice. Many of the men with chronic dysentery. All of this too often made so much the worst by arrogant and or indifferent officers.

Should it be a surprise that during the worst of these times even the most stalwart souls among the soldiers had to wonder if it was all worth it? And, among the less stalwart or less committed soldiers, that thought went beyond wonder. No! It wasn't worth it. There was always a trickle of desertions from the 33rd and the rest of the Stonewall. As there was in all the armies, North and South. Rich man's war, poor man's fight. Yankee capitalists safe in their ostentatious New York and Chicago mansions. Southern slave owners secure in their graceful antebellum mansions in South Carolina and Georgia. It's a wonder more of the soldiers didn't turn and walk away from the madness.

Of those who did, the reasons were many. For most it usually was an impoverished family at home with no men to plant and harvest the crops, a wife or parent begging the soldier to come home. Some deserted only to join other Confederate units who were closer to their homes. For others it was a genuine disbelief in the war. Still others were conscripted against their will and were ready to desert at their first opportunity. More than a few had seen too much of death and killing and could stomach no more. Altogether, the various types of deserters numbered into the hundreds in the Stonewall alone. Once caught, their punishment varied widely. For a few it couldn't get any worse.

They were sentenced to be executed.

The 33rd Virginia, along with the rest of the Stonewall, was marched out to an open field where a single grave had been dug. Next to it was a coffin. The soldiers formed on three sides of the grave, leaving one side open. After they had taken their positions the drum roll began and a drummer marched in followed by a guard of four men, an officer and a minister. The condemned man marched in the center of the guard, oddly, James Rourke thought, in perfect step with the guard. The procession reached the open grave and coffin, the drummer and guard withdrawing to the file of watching soldiers, the officer and minister remaining with the condemned man.

Few of the soldiers had anything but a vile distaste for military executions. They knew too well the conditions that drove men to desert. Almost all of them knew friends or family, or fellow soldiers, comrades, who had deserted. Shooting one of their number might have made the higher level officers think they were making their point and enforcing discipline, but it never seemed to have much effect toward stopping desertion. Men continued to slip away up until the very end of the war. Shooting one of their number in front of their fellows only made the sour taste of war even more bitter. Especially since only enlisted men were shot for desertion. Officers could effectively desert without penalty by simply resigning their commissions. Enlisted men could not resign.

The condemned man was hardly a man. Just turned nineteen. Joshua Meddaugh. Conscripted at age 18, forced into the infantry though he tried to get into a non combat unit as a teamster or quartermaster assistant. An only child, orphaned at an early age and raised by an overly doting grandmother. He was a shy and awkward boy, unpopular among his peers, tending towards the fearful and with an overall negative view towards life. In no one's imagination was he good soldier material. A sage officer might have recognized that and agreed to send him to be a teamster. Joshua Meddaugh had no such luck. A rigid and opinionated officer considered the lad a slacker and a dissembler and sent him to the infantry, which was already suffering from a manpower shortage. That, eventually, sealed Joshua's fate.

Joshua Meddaugh did not have the grit to remain in the infantry. He deserted. Three times. The third time was too much for the brigade commander, also a rigid and calloused officer, who chose to make an example of the boy. He was court martialed for multiple desertions and sentenced to death.

A line of eight men marched into the field and took up positions fifty feet from Meddaugh, the unhappily detailed firing squad facing to the open fourth side of the square. The minister had a few words with the condemned man, then the officer tied the youth to a post driven into the ground behind the grave and put a blindfold on him. Meddaugh made not a sound, but the quivering of his body was obvious to everyone who could see him. The officer then ordered the firing squad to get ready. Four of them had weapons loaded with minie balls. The other four had weapons loaded with blanks. The men of the firing squad would never know if they fired the lethal shot. The order came, the eight rifles belched smoke and fire, and Joshua Meddaugh, a timid and fearful boy just turned nineteen, slumped over dead. The soldiers of the 33rd and the rest of the Stonewall were then marched off the field. It was not the first such execution they had witnessed. Nor would it be the last.

There was not a single face among them that was not set in a tight jawed glower.

### Antrim Attacked

The First Raid

1862

As the bulk of the many hundreds of Dakota warriors were battling at Fort Ridgley and the German settlement of New Ulm, Inkpaduta, Shakopee and Medicine Bottle and their seventy plus warriors began their stealthy approach towards Antrim, most of them crawling through the waist high grasses of the ungrazed tallgrass prairie south of Antrim. They had to stop a hundred yards from the cluster of ranch buildings. Whit Jackson had prudently used his farming equipment to knock down the grass in a roughly hundred yard wide strip between Antrim and the tall grass. As dusk approached, concealing the crawling warriors, two wagons, refugees from the fighting, approached Antrim on a muggy late August night in 1862. The first contained a family of cut hair Dakota seeking shelter from the marauders. The second wagon was driven by a pair of old people with the wagon bed piled high with their personal belongings. Whit Jackson's son-in-law Lance's cousin, a mixed blood young man, his white name John Meadows, his Dakota name Crow Wing, was the perimeter guard on Antrim's access road as the wagons approached.

"Keep a close eye, Crow Wing," Lance had just said to his cousin as he made the rounds of the perimeter sentinels. Jackson, Lance and a few others had organized Antrim's defense in three groups. One group functioned as the sentinels. A second waited ready to respond if an attack took place. The third group rested. Every eight hours the groups rotated assignments. Jackson headed one group, John Otter the second and Lance the third. Jackson's son Light Eyes was in charge of seeing to the safety of the non-combatants, the women, children and aged, all of them inside the thick walls of Antrim's main building.

It was Lance's group's turn to take over the sentinel posts that evening.

"Most of the warriors are away fighting at Fort Ripley and New Ulm," Lance had said only a few minutes earlier to Crow Wing, repeating what he had heard that afternoon from his uncle, an aged Dakota who remained neutral in the war and traveled back and forth between the reservation and Antrim. "But there might be some we don't know about lurking nearby. There are rumors that Inkpaduta has come in from the prairie to join the fighting." A pause, while Lance stared out at the gathering night. "And Inkpaduta hates Whit Jackson like a crazy man." Lance had turned to walk away when the pair of wagons were first heard approaching. He stopped fifty or so feet away from Crow Wing's sentinel post and stared in the direction of the noise. Soon a wagon slowly, and noisily, appeared in the waning light. Followed by a second wagon, even noisier than the first. "Someone needs to grease those axles," Lance thought to himself. But just as the thought was about to slip away, he grabbed it and brought it back. This wagon? Was it _too_ noisy? It was. Part of Inkpaduta's strategy was to make the wagons so noisy that the defenders of Antrim would never suspect that they were part of the attack. Lance stood motionless and stared at the approaching wagons.

"Crow Wing," he yelled out in English, Crow Wing, like Lance, having a basic knowledge of both languages. "Be careful!" Crow Wing was raised as a farmer Indian and had never been a Dakota warrior. He was guileless in the ways of the warriors. All he saw were two wagons with older people, children and their belongings. What was there to be leery of? Lance must be getting jumpy.

"Who are you?" Crow Wing called out in Dakota to the approaching wagons. He was answered in Dakota by a man who looked to be another cut hair farmer driving the first wagon.

"We seek refuge, brother," the man said. "From the crazy young men who are killing everyone they can find." Lance, who was carefully listening, heard the exchange and sensed something strange about it. He puzzled for a moment, then it hit him. The voice from the wagon. He recognized the voice. It belonged to Deer Killer, one of the few older men who supported the uprising. Lance immediately suspected a ruse.

"Crow Wing!" he yelled. "Watch out! I think they are hostiles!" Lance's words had hardly left his lips before Deer Killer pulled out a shotgun and blasted Crow Wing from a range of barely twenty feet, eviscerating Crow Wing and killing him instantly. Lance immediately hollered the alarm as loud as he could to the other sentries at Antrim and they in turn yelled the general alarm. Within a minute the ready response team was rushing to the Lance's assistance. The rest of the armed men gathered quickly at the core of Antrim, the main house and adjacent barn and stable. All of the noncombatants, the aged, the women, the children, were in the underground storage room beneath the main house. But not all of the women. Lance's wife, Whit Jackson' daughter, Fleet Foot, and Whit Jackson's wife, Good Bed, as well as Will Rourke's wife, Marie, picked up rifles and went to join the men, as did two young Dakota women, sisters who had lost their father at an early age and had to learn to hunt to feed their mother and younger siblings. The addition of the women and the rest of the sentinels brought the total number of defenders to nearly forty. The attackers were double their number.

A dozen hidden Dakota jumped out of the wagons and began firing at the onrushing defenders. The rest of the Dakota attackers rose up from their hiding places at the edge of the tall grass and rushed in to join the others. Lance was quickly joined by the response group, led by John Otter, all of them taking up previously selected protected spots to fire from. A hot firefight developed over the next few minutes, most of the Dakota having firearms, many of them recently looted from settler's cabins. After another minute or two the balance of the Dakota joined the attackers, breathing hard from their hundred yard dash. At the same time another group of defenders joined the first ones. The firefight grew increasingly intense. A half dozen defenders were shot, as were a like number of attackers. Inkpaduta stayed in the background, waiting for his chance to finally wreak his revenge on Whit Jackson personally, while Shakopee and Medicine Bottle lead the attackers.

"Burn the buildings!" Shakopee yelled at some of his warriors. Soon Antrim's outbuildings, an old stable, a workshop, a bunkhouse, a summer kitchen, all were set afire by the attackers. Which had two effects Shakopee, who was a fierce warrior but no strategist, did not anticipate. The buildings were lost to the Dakota to use a shelter in the battle. And, in the rapidly gathering dark, the light of the fires made it possible for the defenders to spot the darting figures of the attackers and shoot down two of them.

It was close to a stalemate. Then bad luck blindsided the defenders. A Dakota raiding party of over twenty young men, returning from raiding settlers' farms in the country to the north, heard the firing, saw the flames and rode in to join in the attack, knowing full well that Antrim was where all the naysayers to the war, who the hostiles considered to be traitors to their people, had gone for refuge. With the addition of so many more attackers, the defenders were forced to fall back to the core of Antrim, the main house, barn and stable. The few remaining armed people at the house, mostly women, and the rest of the sentinels, retreating from their exposed positions, joined Lance and the other fighters as they withdrew, ready to make a desperate last stand. Inkpaduta came closer, quietly exulting, ready to watch the final destruction of the hated Jackson and the alien presence of Antrim in the Dakota heartland. Nearby, Shakopee was readying warriors to begin shooting fire arrows at Antrim's remaining buildings. There had not been much recent rain and the Indians knew the dried out wooden buildings would burn easily, as had the outbuildings already collapsing after being consumed by the flames.

It was starting to look hopeless. But wily Whit Jackson had a surprise for them. On his most recent visit to Fort Snelling and Saint Paul, knowing of the volatile powder keg the reservations were becoming, he had found what was almost an antique. A small cannon of the type that were formerly mounted on the quarterdeck of a ship and often found on steamships that came up the Mississippi in the days when the country was wild and untamed. He moved the small cannon into position, having previously loaded it with powder and a lethal mixture of nails and buckshot, and waited until the attackers were massing to make what they believed would be the final assault that would overcome the defenders. Shakopee ordered a half dozen warriors to rain fire arrows down on the remaining Antrim buildings. The defenders would have no choice but to try to extinguish the flames. As the fire arrows fell onto the buildings, Inkpaduta gave the order for the Dakota to rise up and rush forward.

As the Dakota came racing at Antrim's main house, Jackson set off the cannon and the nails and buckshot blasted out like a giant shotgun, slashing into at least a dozen of the attackers. None were killed instantly, but all them stopped in the tracks, stunned. Immediately, at Jackson's order, Lance and the remaining Antrim defenders opened up a furious fusillade that dropped several more of the Dakota. The cannon, and the fusillade, broke the back of the assault, the Dakota being preternaturally wary of cannon fire, and also loathe to suffer many casualties in a fight. The Dakota faded away into the night, taking their wounded and most of their dead with them. Three bodies were left behind, as were two wounded Dakota who had crawled off to hide after being wounded. Some of the defenders wanted to kill the two wounded men. Both Whit Jackson and Lance refused to let them kill the Dakota.

"There's been enough killing," Whit said. And he was right. It was enough killing.

But even he probably knew it was a very long way from being the end of it.

33rd Virginia

2nd Manassas

They were on the march again after the battle of Cedar Mountain. The cold and frost of the early Valley campaign were long gone, driven out by the no less oppressive smothering heat and humidity and great clouds of choking dust. The roadside was sprinkled with men overcome with heat prostration and exhaustion, a few gone too far into the feared cherry red skin color of heatstroke. The troops were about to revisit the site of the first major battle of the war a year earlier. What the Yanks called Bull Run and the Rebels called Manassas. In a few days Bull Run and Manassas would ever after become First Bull Run and First Manassas, as a second great battle raged over much the same ground. For the 33rd Virginia Second Manassas was among its bloodiest contests in the war. More than 120 men were lost, twenty percent of that number killed, the rest wounded. Among the many casualties sprawled on the field of battle was James Rourke's older brother, Michael. As the fighting died down and night fell, James, and most of the survivors of the 33rd, searched the field for their missing friends and relatives. Though it was dark and difficult to see, that night would ever after be seared into his memory as indelibly as the English manufacturer's stamp on his brother's Enfield rifle musket.

The dead and dying lay everywhere, making it awkwardly nerve wracking to walk over the field of battle without stepping on some poor soul. Rourke stumbled on one body early in the evening and, though the man was dead or at least not moving, was shocked by it and thereafter took even greater care where he trod for the rest of that awful night. A night, in the grace of darkness, that hid much of the carnage. But not all. A man seemingly unscathed, but without a head, a pile of entrails and no other body parts, detached arms, hands, legs and feet. A boot with a foot in it. Horses eviscerated and, twice, horses scattered into bloody chunks of meat by direct hits from enemy artillery. The worse of it was the wounded. They lay there, in that miserable field, by the hundreds. Some moaned, some cried, some hollered, some babbled. Many were silent, their faces ghostly in the wan light of the kerosene lanterns of the searchers. If there were any Yankees on the far side of the field, they humanely held their fire and left the searchers to their macabre quests.

James did what he was able to for some of the wounded, binding up injuries as best he could, giving them water, reassuring them that the litter bearers would soon arrive to carry them off to the aid stations. Some of these men were Rebels. Some were Yankees. James made no distinction in his treatment of them. All over the field other survivors were doing the same as James. But a few, more than a few to James' disgust, were robbing the dead. And, possibly, even probably, the living. Then, close to midnight, James recognized the still form of his brother, Michael. He rushed to his side, plunged to his knees and put his fingers to Michael's neck, frantically feeling for a pulse. It was there! The pulse! Michael was alive! Thank God! Yes. God. Even in the midst of such overwhelming misery and carnage, a man could believe in God. Both sides. North and South. Both believed that God was on their side. It gave them some little comfort. And also, justification.

Few tried to explain or understand why God, North or South, would allow such slaughter. The inscrutable Divine. Faith was one of the few things left to the soldiers.

It did not depart easily.

James carefully examined his brother's supine body. Michael was alive, but unconscious. The explosion of an artillery shell near him had knocked Michael insensate and sent slivers of shrapnel into his legs and chest. Nothing seemed broken. He had bled at first, but the bleeding had mostly stopped when the chill of evening settled over the bloody field. James found a pair of his comrades from the 33rd nearby and asked their help in getting Michael to an aid station. The two men, willing to help, were conflicted. They were searching for their own relatives among the dead and wounded. Then James saw a pair of stretcher bearers approaching, soldiers, this pair were religious men opposed to killing, who were regimental musicians at camp and stretcher bearers during battles, who heard Michael's plea for help and soon were at his side.

"Is this man alive?" One of them, Gustavus Schmidt, a second generation German-American, a blacksmith back home at Harrisonburg in Rockingham County and a trumpeter in the band, who knew both James and Michael.

"It's my brother, Gus. Michael Rourke," James said, trying with limited success to hide his apprehension. "He's not dead. Just unconscious. Wounded, but not very bad and no longer bleeding. I am certain he will survive if we get him to the field hospital." Without another word the pair of musicians cum stretcher bearers gently picked up Michael and put him on the stretcher. They wheeled and headed for the Confederate lines, James close by their side, still careful not to tread on the dead and dying. One man, lying flat on his back, grabbed James' leg as he passed.

"Help me," he gasped. "Please." James motioned at the stretcher bearers to stop, then kneeled down to the man's side.

"We'll see to this man first, them come back for you. Understand." The man, who Rourke now recognized was a Yankee, wheezed out a weak "thank you." Everyone there, probably including the Yankee, knew he'd be dead before the stretcher bearers could return. Forcing that grim thought from his mind, James and the stretcher bearers resumed their tortuous path through a field that was so recently ripe with grain but now fouled with dead and dying humans. A sight they could not forget. A sound they could not forget. The continuous low moaning from the wounded lingered in their ears long after they had safely reached the rear.

"Wounded coming in," hollered Gustavus Schmidt as they approached the Confederate positions. "Don't shoot." It was a prudent precaution, but probably not necessary. All evening long and well into the night the wounded, some under their own power, others being helped by comrades, had been limping in off the battlefield. The soldiers in the line were deeply distressed by the mournful sounds of the wounded still lying on the battlefield and greeted each new survivor with a muted relief. And, also, reassurance. The next time it might be them lying out there on the field of battle, wounded, waiting for some angel of mercy to save them--as was happening this somber night before their weary eyes deep set in faces blackened with gunpowder and grime.

The stretcher bearers and James went as quickly as they could to the nearby aid station. It was not the first trip the two stretcher bearers would make, nor the last, When they arrived at the aid station, which had hurriedly been set up in a barn belonging to a local Dunker who was a lifelong pacifist, they arrived at a scene of utter chaos. It was as bad, no worse, than the field of battle. There, on the battlefield, darkness hid much of the carnage. Here, under the kerosene lanterns, the true state of the wounded could be clearly seen. Men minus legs and arms, noses shot off, eyes dangling from their sockets, the hopelessly gut shot writhing in agony. Blood covered the ground, a barn door was set on sawhorses as an improvised operating table, and the surgeons, their aprons and clothing soaked in blood, were doing their sanguine grisly duty. Which, in the primitive medicine of the day, often meant sawing off limbs so damaged by minie balls and artillery the surgeons believed them beyond saving. They had no more anesthetic and were plying the patients, who, more than a few would sourly declaim, were victims rather than patients, with as much whiskey as they could drink to deaden the pain. It wasn't enough. While medical assistants held the screaming wounded soldier down, the surgeons sawed off arms and legs and discarded the limbs into a fetid pile growing larger and more disgusting with each new amputation. James saw this, was instantly nauseous, and had to hurry outside the barn to empty his stomach, unable to control his projectile vomiting spewed over an inert form lying in the grass. It made no difference to the dark form below. He was already dead. As he wiped his face free of vomit, Gustavus Schmidt and his fellow stretcher bearer passed by on their way back to the battlefield.

"I pray Michael survives," James," Gustavus said. Then, pausing, his bearded face gravid. "Don't let those butchers cut off his legs unless you believe it absolutely necessary. They do it because they are too ignorant of medicine to know what they should do. Cutting off a limb is a lot easier and quicker than trying to save it." With that Gustavus clapped James on the shoulder and was off with his companion to fetch another of the wounded. A year later, at Gettysburg, Gustavus would be shot dead by a sour-faced Yankee sharpshooter as he tried to carry a wounded soldier off the battlefield. Gustavus was a member of a church similar to the Mennonites, was against slavery and secession and war and only joined the Confederate Army because foreign troops, the Yankees, were invading his homeland, and only then so he could help to save lives on the battlefield. Which he, in fact, did.

A fact that was of little solace to his impoverished widow and fatherless children.

Chapter 6: Kentucky

The Peculiar Symbiosis of twins

The 29th Massachusetts was transferred to the western theater and stationed at Paris, Kentucky, tasked with defending against marauding Confederate guerillas. The residents of Kentucky were thoroughly terrorized by Confederate and Union guerrilla bands, some of which were little more than bandits who were not particular about the allegiances of their victims. It was so harrowing that many of the residents of Kentucky were trying to move north to get away from the guerrilla menace. The 29th Massachusetts was one of the Union regiments sent to restore order to the chaos of wartime Kentucky. Instead of restoring order they became favorite targets of the guerrillas' hit and run tactics. Still, the 29th suffered comparatively few casualties and was spared the continual slaughter of their former unit, the Irish Brigade, which would soon be bled out of existence. The 29th lost far more men to disease than it did to battle. Especially in Kentucky.

No cavalry available that fateful morning, Samuel Rourke was among a small group of infantry ordered to scout a country lane ahead of a train of wagons sent to resupply one of their brigade's fortified outposts. The small patrol passed through a wheat field and cautiously approached a grove of trees. Sam was admiring a handsome tulip poplar tree at the edge of the grove when flashes of fire and smoke suddenly erupted from the trees. Silas Grosvenor, before the war a merchant in Salem, Massachusetts, the lieutenant leading the patrol, was shot in the forehead and dead almost as soon as his body slumped to the ground. A second man, a recent recruit named Monson who Rourke did not know, was shot in the leg and collapsed onto the packed earth of the country lane. Samuel and the other veterans dropped to the ground and immediately returned fire. Another of the new recruits took a ball in his shoulder and commenced to moan.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the firing stopped. The hidden guerillas were noisily making their retreat to where they left their horses and riding off with hoots and jibes to the accompaniment of galloping horses. The Confederates' mission, if in fact they really were Confederates, was the guerilla's core tactic, to strike without warning and then quickly vanish. After a few moments the surviving Union soldiers cautiously rose from their cover to help the wounded, including Monson, who lay writhing in the lane, his leg broken and bleeding heavily. Samuel was first to Monson's side when a fusillade of pistol fire erupted from the trees. The infantrymen, new to guerilla warfare, had fallen prey to another of the guerillas' tactics. An ambush within an ambush. Three of the Massachusetts infantrymen went down. And then a fourth. Samuel Rourke. Like his Rebel twin in far off Virginia, Samuel Rourke fell in battle. His body jerked violently from the impact of pistol balls smacking into him. He pitched backwards.

And lay still.

### Dakota Territory

Fugitives

As Little Crow and the other elders feared would happen, the Sioux uprising failed. They were reservation Indians who lived in villages, not nomads like their western brethren. Once driven from the villages by the retaliating whites the Santee Sioux, encumbered by wagonloads of women and children, as well as scores of hostages, retreated west along the river until they were finally defeated in the Battle of Wood Lake. Many of the Santee surrendered, many others fled west over the prairies into the vast unsettled Dakota Territory. Those who fled chided those who chose to surrender, insisting that surrender would only lead to their deaths.

"Surrender to the whites and they will kill you," said one of Little Crow's lieutenants, Big Thunder, to the large number of Dakota who planned to surrender to the advancing army of Colonel Sibley and turn over their roughly two hundred and fifty captives to the white soldiers. "You cannot trust their words. They are snakes." Wakesha, a leader of those who had been against the war thought otherwise.

"We did not join in your war and we will not follow you onto the plains. The winter is coming. Where would we find shelter? Where would be find enough to eat? We must stay here, let the whites arrest the guilty ones, and the rest of us return to our villages.

"You are dreaming, old man!" Bellowed Big Thunder. "They will kill you all!"

He wasn't far wrong. After the surrender drumhead military tribunals were hastily set up by the vengeful Americans. The rule book of jurisprudence was tossed out the legal window as the surrendered Dakota were tricked into being disarmed and held prisoner to be tried in what were later recognized to be extremely dubious so-called legal proceedings.

Of the five hundred Dakota warriors tried by military tribunals close to three hundred of the surrendered warriors were condemned to death on the flimsiest of evidence. Even Abraham Lincoln, despite being intensely embroiled in his struggle for the nation's survival, was so disturbed by the judicial travesty that he ordered a reinvestigation of the charges. Those who remained condemned were a mere fraction, less than forty, of the original death sentences. Even then many of those whose death sentences were commuted died of disease and privation in Union prisons and detention camps. Some would say many of the Dakota in fact really died of despair. Hundreds of other Santee died in the detention camps, the very young and the very old among the first to die. Perhaps a quarter of the eastern Santee Sioux perished during their diaspora, imprisonment and banishment from Minnesota to a new reservation on the Missouri River in Nebraska.

Little Crow was not among them. Nor were Shakopee and Medicine bottle. Or Inkpaduta and his small band. As the autumn of 1862 colored the maples and oaks of western Minnesota many of the Santee Dakota fled west into the Dakota Territory, some, including Shakopee and Medicine Bottle, continuing on into the refuge of a foreign nation. Canada. Inkpaduta's elusive band fled west to the wild country of the western Sioux, the Lakota, but continued to return on stealthy quick raids. He and his band of hardcore Wahpekutes would continue their David and Goliath struggle with the whites up to and beyond the Little Big Horn.

Little Crow, too, from his refuge in the northern Dakota Territory, continued to send small bands of elusive raiders into Minnesota. The next summer he led a raiding party himself.

It was the last of his bad decisions.

Or.....maybe it wasn't.

### The Yankee Hospital

Union soldier Samuel Rourke's first conscious realization was of one hell of headache. He opened his eyes, slowly, blinking at the sudden brightness. Where......where was he? A....building. Some kind of building. Big one. There were windows, huge windows at least six feet high, that let in wide splashes of daylight that almost hurt his eyes. Then he saw he was in a high ceilinged long room. Rows of beds on both sides of the room. Men in the beds. Then it hit him. The ambush. This was a hospital. He had been wounded. Rourke had a moment of, if not panic, intense apprehension. He had seen with utter horror more than one field hospital where mounds of arms and legs from amputations were piled up outside the hospitals' operating tables. Fearing what he'd find, he slowly reached down to feel if he had both legs and arms. He did. One leg was wet, bathed in bloody bandages. Another bloody bandage was on his head. The reason for his headache. He'd been shot twice. Once in the leg. Once in the head.

"Feelin' better, Yank?" Said a voice. Rourke craned his neck to look at a red headed man peering at him from the bed next to his. Yank? Was Rourke a prisoner in a Rebel hospital? "Fer a while there we thought you was a goner." The red headed man propped himself up on his elbows and leaned a bit towards Samuel. His voice was friendly, but weak. "You did a lot of moaning while you was out. Somethin' bout yer brothers." A pause. "They in the army, too?"

"Yes, they are. In yours. Confederates. In Virginia." That caught the red headed Rebel by surprise. "Ooh! Would not a figured that. How come you be a Billy Yank, then?" Rourke's head was hurting like hell, and he was in no mood to talk, but he had not yet lost his inbred Rourke family civility and politeness. Perhaps with more than a touch of pained pique, but he did answer the man. "I was living in New York. When the war came I joined up because I don't believe in slavery." The Rebel let out a low noise that was a close relative of a whistle.

"I don't much believe in slavery either, but that didn't stop 'em from putting me in the army." Another pause. "My name is Jesse McCourt, born in Ohio in recent years living in West Tennessee, and I reckon I am in one way or another your prisoner, even if we're in hospital beds next to each other." That caught Rourke by surprise. Prisoner? He tried to raise himself up, but his headache slapped him back down flat on the bed.

"Prisoner?" He managed to say through the waves of pain assaulting his brain. "What do you mean by that?" McCourt realized that Rourke was unaware of where he was. "I'm a Rebel," McCourt said. "And this is a Union hospital. Which kinda makes me yer prisoner."

The peculiar juxtaposition of the two men, a Southerner in the Union Army and a Ohio born man in the Confederate Army, served to eventually bond the two men together nearly as firmly as if they were messmates actively campaigning. As the days and the weeks passed both mended and they talked long about their lives, the war, and the insanity that had slid the nation into its horrific bloodletting. They both agreed that slavery had to end, but that a peaceful solution should have been worked out. Demagogues and radicals on both sides had cajoled the nation into disaster.

"And the most of them not seeing a day of battle," McCourt said acidly about the vitriolic rabble rousers that had brought down the hell of war onto the nation. "Ain't that the way of life."

"Rich man's war," Rourke answered with disgust, echoing the attitude of most soldiers on both sides, "but poor man's fight."

"Hallelujah, brother Sam," said McCourt. "That is fer sure the Gospel truth."

McCourt was a thoughtful, albeit noticeably puckish in happier times, man who'd gone South when little more than a boy to escape the drudgery of farm life and an overbearing alcoholic stepfather. He worked the river, the great pulsing artery of the mid-continent, the Mississippi, as a riverboat man, first as a deckhand and climbing the ladder of experience to assistant pilot. He was twenty-three when war came and most of the young men of his age, fired up by the incendiary preachers and politicians, rushed off to join the army. McCourt was not of a mind to join in the mass insanity, but the increasingly precarious position of being originally from Ohio but living in the South when the war broke out nudged him into making the self preservative move of joining up with his friends and shipmates in the Rebel army. Especially considering most viewed enlistment as a lark and didn't expect the war to last much beyond a few weeks. He wasn't in the army for long. His riverboat experience was soon noticed and he was transferred to the fledgling Confederate Navy. He was on a converted river steamer when it was ambushed by Union gunboats and sunk, with McCourt severely wounded but managing to grab onto a piece of floating debris. Someone on a nearby Union boat shot at him, but was stopped by a Yankee officer who McCourt clearly heard loudly curse the soldier or sailor shooting at him. He was fished out of the water and surprised at the sympathetic care he received from the Union sailors, though a handful of black sailors glared at him from nearby and likely had a very different fate in mind for McCourt than the Union hospital bed he soon found himself in. A bed next to a Union soldier who was unconscious, but moaning and sometimes mumbling words that were occasionally intelligible. 'Brothers' the most frequent of the discoverable mumbles.

McCourt, who had no desire to return to Confederate service and took the oath, as it was called, was allowed to stay in the hospital and not sent on to a prisoner of war camp. Which most likely would have been the hellhole of Camp Douglas in Illinois, which killed more Rebels than did many of the individual battles of the long war.

"You'll not be finding any abolitionists in the South," he said to Rourke one fine early summer day while they sat outside, already well on the mend, casually chatting under the graceful vase shape of a huge elm tree. "Any who might have had such views were shouted down and soon learned to keep their tongue else they might lose it." Gingerly, Rourke stretched out his injured leg and flexed the healing muscle, thanking God as he did it that some butcher of a surgeon hadn't taken the quick route to treating Rourke's leg wound by taking a saw to it. Though, with the leg healing nicely and his head wound almost completely healed, he might end up back with the 29th for the balance of the war. Not a thought he found at all pleasant, though he would like to see his comrades from the 29th again.

If they were still alive.

"There was plenty of abolitionist sentiment in New York," Rourke answered. "But also a lot of opposition to it. The Democrats, and especially the Irish. At times very heated. And also perplexing. The Irish in New York were of two minds. They detested the Yankees who controlled their lives, and were sympathetic to the South for standing up to them, but still volunteered in large numbers in the Union Army."

"That don't figure, " McCourt said, confused. "Why'd they sign up?"

"They told me themselves when I was in the Irish 69th New York for, thank God, a relatively short time. "They joined to force the Protestants to accept them as fellow Americans with equal rights, being as they were discriminated against everywhere and forced into the most menial of low paying jobs."

"Fight fer the ol' Stars 'n Stripes and win respect." McCourt said, nodding understanding. "Now that _does_ figure."

"It did until they were slaughtered on the battlefield at Fredericksburg and their families back in New York and Philadelphia still suffered the same discrimination. Could make for some nasty times ahead."

"Nasty times. And in the South, too," McCourt replied. "The war, the Yankee invasion, so many already dead, the blockades and the speculators getting rich off of other folk's misery. That is building up a whopping store of anger." He nodded towards a black groundskeeper who was working nearby. "And, people being the damn blockheaded fools they are, now blame the blacks for it instead of the fire breathers who are really behind it all."

"Be more trouble ahead," Rourke said in a low, melancholy, voice. "And it won't end with the war."

"Mebbe not with guns anymore, but there'll be trouble aplenty fer a long time to come." Neither man said anything more, lapsing into silent thoughtfulness.

Nearby, another black groundskeeper, who was hidden behind the thick trunk of the huge ancient elm and within hearing of the conversation between the two convalescent soldiers, nodded his head in solemn agreement.

"White boys got some sense to 'em," he muttered. "Jubilee be a long ways off." He spit at the ground. "Damn sure!"

And walked away.

In the latter part of June of 1863 Samuel Rourke and Jesse McCourt both were about to leave the hospital.

"There will be fer damn sure no welcome for me in Ohio, my having been a Rebel," he said in an easy offhand ramble to Rourke. "Nor can I go back to Rebel territory after taking the oath. I hear tell the Union is signing up Rebel prisoners who took the oath to go west to fight Indians. I believe I'll join up with them. Don't know what else I could do, having no money or property or home to go to."

"I know of them," Rourke replied, having heard about them from a Union surgeon whose brother was one of the officers. "They call them Galvanized Yankees. You might be in for a time of it out there in the west, Jesse. My older brother Will settled in the western wilderness a decade past and had many a hair raising tale to tell of his adventures there with the Indians."

"Wild Indians?" McCourt was caught by surprise. "Your _brother_?"

"Sure enough, Jesse And it wasn't just the Indians who were wild. Some of the whites who went to the frontier were dangerous characters. And more. Greedy. Treacherous. Skying the Indians with all kinds of dodges to line their pockets. Made for a lot of anger and resentment among the natives." McCourt let out a low whistle.

"And I be walking smack right into that," he said.

"You don't have to sign up," Samuel replied. A strange expression spread over McCourt's face.

"Oh, yes, I do!" He said, grinning. "You've whetted this ol' Rebel's interest but good!"

They parted ways. McCourt north to join the Galvanized Yankees, Samuel Rourke with a convalescent furlough while his leg continued to heal. He couldn't go to Virginia, where he would probably be arrested as a Union soldier and possibly even considered a spy. So he returned to the home he had before the war. New York. He thought himself spared a little while longer from returning to battle.

He thought wrong.

Sergeant Samuel Rourke climbed out of the railway coach at the station in New York and was immediately confronted by a Union officer, a captain in the provost guard charged with finding soldiers absent from duty without authorization. He looked coldly at Rourke.

"Orders, soldier," he snapped. "show them to me. Now!" Rourke, who knew the well deserved reputation of the dyspeptic provosts, pulled his papers from his pocket, glaring back at the Union captain.

"Sergeant Samuel Rourke. 29th Massachusetts. Veteran of Second Bull Run and Antietam, wounded in Kentucky and on convalescent leave." A heated look at the Union captain.

"Where did _you_ serve, Captain? The provost captain, James Chastain, tensed, his face flushed. Behind him the two soldiers he had with him as guards tried not to smirk. Rourke had hit a nerve. The captain had never seen combat. Which made him all the more irascible. As Jesse McCourt said during one of their rambling conversations, "once you seen the elephant you ain't so quick to judge." The captain looked at Rourke's papers, inspecting them carefully, searching for some little thing that would give him justification for detaining and possibly arresting Rourke.

"I see no reason why you can't be part of the Invalid Corps here in New York, Sergeant Rourke. Report to the commander of the Invalid Corps tomorrow. Major Hanlon. You'll find him at the Invalid Corps barracks in town. _."_ Another hard stare. "Make sure you report, else I'll send a squad to bring you in." Behind him the pair of soldiers, who actually were combat veterans, were glaring at the back of the captain's head. Rourke, ever a man to both retain his composure while not backing down, saluted the captain.

"That I will, _Captain._ " A short pause as he glanced at the pair of combat veteran soldiers behind the captain and winked. "By the way, _Captain_ , you didn't say where you served." Captain Chastain grew redder, growled under his breath and clenched his teeth.

"Just be damn sure you report tomorrow as _ordered_ , Sergeant." Behind him both the veteran soldiers grinned broadly at Rourke, knowing that were Captain Chastain to display such an arrogant and overbearing attitude in a combat unit he might very well come under attack from more than just the Confederate enemy in the heat--and confusion--of battle. Captain Chastain wheeled and stomped off, the pair of grinning veteran soldiers behind him, with Rourke wondering just how this martinet of a captain proposed to find him a city of a million people. As the trio of Union soldiers strode away, one of the veteran soldiers, still grinning, turned and gave Rourke an energetic thumbs up. Rourke returned it.

Rourke took the horse drawn streetcar to the law office of Sanford Wells, where Samuel had apprenticed to study law before the war carried him away. He opened the door and saw an old man he didn't know behind the clerk's desk outside Wells' office. The old man, who in fact was a veteran of the War of 1812, suddenly was full of life and excitement when he saw Samuel Rourke walk in, still limping on his wounded leg, in the uniform of a Union sergeant.

"I know you, sir," the old man, Cadmus Winchell by name, said as he jumped with surprising agility to his feet. "Mister Wells has spoken of you often. You must be Samuel Rourke." Winchell reached out to grab Rourke's hand, a grip with considerable strength for one who seemed so frail. "A pleasure, sir," the old man said, "to meet a man unafraid to serve his country." He turned and pointed at the door into Sanford Well's office. "Go in. Mister Wells will be overjoyed to see you."

He was.

There would be no more work for Sanford Wells that day. He closed the office, gave Cadmus Winchell the day off, with pay, and took his old friend and understudy by the arm to exclusive Delmonico's Restaurant, where Samuel Rourke had the finest meal he'd had since before the war began, a meal well attended by glasses of aromatic red wine, all of which Sanford Wells insisted on paying for. After a desert of fresh fruit smothered in cream, the pair of old friends repaired to a gentleman's club on the next block, Le Refuge, where they switched from wine to brandy. Brandy that, to Rourke's amazement, came warmed in glass mugs with handles. Despite the pleasures of the moment, he could not help but notice some disapproving looks at him from the snobbish clientele who thought a mere sergeant was beneath the dignity of this gentlemen's club. No one, however, probably because they noticed Rourke's limp and intuited what it meant, said anything to either Rourke or Wells.

These men, Rourke understood even then, where the very same he and Jesse McCourt had talked about when they said it was a rich man's war but a poor man's fight. Rourke, despite being in company with his old friend, felt more than slightly uncomfortable. Until, that is, well into his second mug of warm brandy, by which time he was feeling considerably more agreeable and even conciliatory towards the wealthy patrons of the gentleman's club, many of whom were of military age and not a one in uniform.

Until a tall, graceful man in the uniform of a Union major came in the door, spied Rourke and immediately went to this table. The tall major, Valent Brentwood, who was well over six feet and towered over almost everybody, stared sternly at Rourke.

"Sergeant! What are you doing here? This is a gentleman's club. You must be an officer to come in here." Rourke was taken aback, and at first said nothing. Sanford Wells, however, who was known as a quick tongue, even quicker with a few drinks in him, did not hold his tongue.

"How dare you, you popinjay! I know you, Brentwood. You pretend to be a patriot while avoiding going to the front! This man has been to the front, been wounded, and is now recovering. He is more of a man than you could ever be, no matter how many stars they pin on that well pressed unbloodied uniform of yours, toy soldier that you are!" Brentwood froze, stiff as a board, acutely aware that such insults could not go unchallenged, especially in front of witnesses. But before he could say anything an older man, almost as tall as Brentwood and looking enough like him to be his father, though he was actually his uncle, hastened over to the table where the confrontation was and took him by the arm.

"Come on Valent," the older man said. "Let us not have a scene here. It is indecorous behavior. Come." Major Brentwood, visibly relieved at having an easy exit, without a word wheeled and followed the older man to a table on the far side of the large main sitting room of the club.

"I shouldn't have been surprised," Sam said to Wells. "But I was."

"As was I, Sam. At least at the blatancy of it. Such displays of bluster are not welcome in this place. Which is why they call it The Refuge. A refuge from the battles of daily life."

"So this is the place where the elite of the city come to meld with their kind?" Rourke said. Wells chuckled.

"They would like that label, certain. But, no. They are not the elite here. Some are the managers and the professional employees of the elite. Such as myself. But the most of these here are the newly moneyed, the nouveau riche, men who have made fortunes small and large out of the war and seek entrance to the hallowed halls of the genuine elite, the old line and old money aristocracy of New York. The genuine elite have their own clubs and neither you nor I would be able to gain entrance to them." He leaned towards Sam, his voice low, sounding conspiratorial.

"Major Brentwood, so the whispers go, is a procurement officer here in New York who is growing rich from the contracts he arranges." A sweep of his arm. "With some of the very men in this room right now. This so called refuge is every bit a place of business as any office in this city." His voice dropped even lower. "There is even more corruption here than in the rest of New York, which is already a deeply corrupt place. Here sly men barter and scheme to enrich themselves while men such as you risk their lives on the battlefield. Some actually are abolitionists, but that surely does not interfere with the business of making a fortune." Wells was plainly disgusted.

"That's the truth of it, Sam. Lots of flowery, patriotic words being uttered by those who urge the soldiers to fight on for union and emancipation, while at the same time they privately make their slimy business deals and line their pockets. I doubt a one of them believes blacks to be equals to whites, and they detest Catholics and the Irish as much as they heap invective upon the Southern slave owners." Wells had had too much to drink, and his words were as intemperate as his inebriated person, though the remarks from his drink loosened tongue were not far off the mark.

"The world, damnit, Sam, is not such a pretty place to behold on many a day!" A grim fact combat veteran Sam Rourke knew all too well. He'd seen the elephant. More than once.....at times it seemed more like a whole herd of elephants.

The next morning Sam reported to the headquarters of the Invalid Corps, in New York City. There he found Major Timothy Hanlon, a wounded veteran of the Irish Brigade who commanded the Invalid Corps in New York, a much more sympathetic personality than Captain Chastain at the train station.

"You say Captain Chastain ordered you to come here even though you have signed orders giving you a month's convalescent leave?"

"That he did, sir," Rourke answered. "I thought it wise to report to you, since he seemed a difficult sort."

"That he is, Sergeant," Hanlon replied. "He holds a very high opinion of himself. So high, in fact, that he is too important a personage to be endangered on the battlefield." Rourke was of a similar opinion, but, not knowing Major Hanlon, chose only to nod his head without comment.

"Come, Sergeant Rourke, and have a seat with me in my office." He turned and Rourke followed Major Hanlon into a plain office of high ceilings and big windows, the promise of view from the big windows however blocked and blighted by a neighboring dirty brick building. The room had the sour smell of human bodies and cigar smoke. The major took a bottle out of his desk and two glasses, pouring two fingers of whiskey into each without comment. He slid one of the glasses towards Rourke.

"Sergeant, let us drink a toast." He raised his glass, waited for Rourke to raise his, then clinked them together.

"To soldiers. _Real_ soldiers. All of them. All of....us!" Both men drained their glasses.

"Rourke," Major Hanlon began, his expression shading from friendly to serious, "this city is a boiling cauldron. You have the radical Republicans who push for total war, emancipation and draconian measures against the South. You have the Democrats, many of whom are against the war and lobbying for a negotiated peace. You have hundreds of new millionaires here in this city alone, growing fat on the soldiers' blood, and you have a vast number of impoverished workers, mostly Irish, plenty of Germans, too, who work 12 hour days six days a week and can barely feed their families." Major Hanlon picked up his bottle and poured another two fingers of whiskey into their glasses.

"The Irish rushed off to fight for the Union in the first days of the war. I was one of them."

"As was I," Rourke answered, "though I am Scots-Irish in my ancestry." _Ulsterman?_ Hanlon blinked but said nothing.

"The Irish fought to save the Union, to prove their equality with the Prods and be accepted as American citizens. But when Lincoln and the Republicans changed the nature of the war from preserving the Union to emancipating the slaves, the Irish backed off in a hurry. 'What!' They said. "Emancipate the blacks and have millions of them competing for our jobs, menial and low paying though they be?" He downed his second drink, though Rourke didn't touch his.

"Bad enough. But now the fools in Washington are going to enact a national conscription law that will force men such as the impoverished Irish here in New York into the Army and leave their families to starve on the pittance of a soldier's pay." Major Hanlon's voice rose along with this temper. "And now the bloody nits have gone and allowed an exemption. Anyone who is called in the draft can buy their way out with three hundred dollars." Rourke repeated yet again the all too familiar litany.

"Rich man's war. Poor man's fight."

"Exactly! And when they roll those drums full of names to be drafted, this city could very well blow up in our faces." He leaned towards Sam Rourke. "You are a veteran. A cool head. A moderate man. I need such as you in this time of extremity. Many of my men are not combat veterans and my most trusted sergeant is in the hospital with a severe case of pneumonia that, pray God he survives, will incapacitate him weeks to come. Will you adjust your convalescent leave to work with me as this seething city threatens to explode?" Sam didn't need to think about it.

"When does the lottery take place?"

"That is part of the problem. They haven't told us yet. The idea I suppose is to keep the date secret so opposition doesn't have a chance to organize protests. But it also makes it difficult for us to make our own plans."

"I will report to you as soon as you contact me, or in four days from now. That all right with you." Hanlon nodded his head in agreement.

"See you then, Major."

"That you will, Sergeant. And pray that this doesn't explode as I fear it will."

"I served with the Irish, Major," Sam answered. "I have no doubt whatsoever." Major Hanlon looked at Sam quizzically.

"And?"

"It _will_ explode."

### Minnesota

Whit Called To Guide

On a mild sunlit day in early June of 1863 Whit Jackson's old friend, burly Moses Taylor, recently promoted to major, rode into Antrim. With him were five others, two of them state militia, one a regular Union officer, the other pair civilians with the state government. Escorting them was a cavalry escort of a dozen men led by another old friend of Whit Jackson's, Benjamin Woolsey, also newly promoted, Woolsey now commissioned as a lieutenant in Taylor's special Border Watch unit of state militia. Whit Jackson was in his cornfield, assessing the extent of deer and raccoon depredations, already sketching out in his mind how he, Light Eyes and Lance would shoot the deer and trap the raccoons, when the group of horsemen pulled up before Antrim's main house. Jackson was not surprised. He already had a very good idea of what was going on.

He was would soon prove to be right.

In a few minutes Jackson was seated at the big rectangular table that served as both a kitchen and dining room table, a thick-planked black oak piece of sturdy furniture he'd built himself along with Will Rourke and Jackson's son, Light eyes. Jackson's wife, Good Bed, and Will Rourke's wife, Marie, brought out biscuits they had just baked, fresh butter and milk from Antrim's small dairy herd, along with coffee for those who wanted it. Moses Taylor sat next to Jackson. Sitting in the seats close to Jackson were the Union regular officer, Colonel Jenkins, Colonel Westcott and Major Jones of the state militia, and civilians Leander Burdette of Governor Ramsey's staff and U.S Indian agent Malcolm Schiller.

"Colonel Sibley is going to lead a punitive expedition against the Sioux," Taylor began. "At least a couple thousand militia, soldiers and civilian volunteers." Taylor looked over at the Union officer, Colonel Jenkins, a lean, ascetic man with the sharp features and direct, brusque manner often associated with New England Yankees. He was already over sixty, a decorated veteran of the Mexican war, retired from the army, but called back to serve in this time of national emergency. Two emergencies, actually. The Dakota War. And the Civil War.

"The army can't spare regular troops, Mr. Jackson," Jenkins said in a distinctive Vermont twang. "They are all needed to fight the Rebs, who are giving us a devil of a time. I've been assigned as an advisor to the state militia and Colonel Sibley's troops." He stopped, looked levelly at Whit Jackson, sizing him up and concluding that Moses Taylor was not exaggerating when he recommended Whit Jackson for the job. A job Jenkins was about to offer.

"I can offer technical advice, sir. Military advice. Tactics, weapons, equipment, quartermaster guidance and so forth. What I cannot offer is knowledge of these Indians, nor of the country where they reside."

"Which brings us to you," interjected Colonel Westcott, a small, rotund man more at home in his pre-war land speculating real estate office than in the uniform of the state militia. "We wish you to provide us with that knowledge so that the troops will not flail about blindly in the Dakota territory."

"Well," Whit said, acting as though he didn't know where this was going. "What is it ye would like to ken about the Dakota?" Moses Taylor laughed out loud.

"Oh, there you go, you coon dog, you. Whit. You know durn well what these men want."

"You to guide the troops," added Colonel Jenkins. " _Personally_."

"And to try to prevent unnecessary confrontations as much as you are able," added Indian agent Malcolm Shiller, one of the few Indian agents who actually gave a damn about the native Americans. "They must be made to see that peace and accommodation is the only genuine option they have." The state militia officers threw barely hidden barbed looks at the Indian agent. They had little sympathy for the Dakota, Schiller's unwelcome presence forced on them at the insistence of the Lincoln administration. A presence that would be undermined in the near future and a more representative Indian agent, a man in fact hostile to the Sioux, appointed to replace him. Whit Jackson's expression was plain for all to see. Dour.

"Ye mean fer the Dakota to give up they way o' life of many a long century and toady to the whites," Jackson said with a sharp edge to his tongue.

"There is no other way," Schiller said, diplomatically, so he thought, side stepping naming the underlying reality, the steamroller of Euro-American hegemony, they all knew lay at the core of their presence at Antrim. "Accommodation. Or extermination. Those are the only choices." Much as it galled Whit Jackson to admit it, he knew that Schiller was right. The Dakota way of life was fast fading into history. Did he want to see them exterminated or shattered into splintered shadows of the past, as so many of the white frontier hotheads were demanding and what had already happened to God knew how many other Native American tribes? Hell, no! His wife was Dakota, his children half Dakota, his daughter married to a Dakota. He had dozens of friends and relatives among the Dakota. Which was why he had no choice, as Moses Taylor well knew. Whit Jackson was bound by ties of blood and friendship to do his damnedest to mitigate the effects of the tribal disaster even then already underway. He shot an irritated glance at Taylor.

"Damn yer eyes, Moses Taylor, ye knows damn well I be havin' to do this."

Taylor did not gloat. He didn't want to see the Dakota massacred any more than Jackson.

And, despite his words, Jackson knew that.

"I know your concern will be about the safety of your family here, sir," Leander Burdette, of Governor Ramsey's office, said. "With the Dakota still raiding into Minnesota. The governor has ordered Major Jones here, of the state militia, to personally take over the protection of your home and family."

"The detail of cavalry with us will stay and remain bivouacked at Antrim," Taylor said. "At all times until you return."

"We will pay you handsomely," Burdette said. "And whoever you choose to take with you as scouts." Jackson already knew who he'd take with him as scouts. Just one. His Dakota son-in-law, Lance. Jackson's son Light Eyes would remain at Antrim to manage the day to day running of the ranch along with Jackson's wife, Good Bed, and Will Rourke's wife, Marie.

"It be done, then," Jackson said to the others. "When do be leavin'?"

"Right now!" Said both Jenkins and Taylor, only partly in jest.

Not long after, on another fine early summer day in June of 1863, Whit Jackson and Lance rode out to join Sibley's army. The squadron of cavalry remained at Antrim while they were gone. Antrim was protected.

For now.

### The Rourkes of the 33rd Virginia

Wounds

The surgeons didn't hack off any of Michael Rourke's appendages. His brother James planted himself at Michael's side and made damn certain they didn't bring out their butcher's saws when Michael's turn came on the filthy blood and gore smeared barn door set on saw horses that did improvised service as an operating table. One of the surgeons, an overstressed captain in a blood soaked apron, blew up at James and ordered him to quit interfering and as, he put it with a surly bluntness, "to get the hell out of here! Now!" Nearby, a pallid-faced major, a bullet just removed from his arm and the wounded arm in a sling, heard the comment and moved as best to could, his arm still throbbing in pain, to where James Rourke stood hot-eyeing the surgeon.

"The soldier stays, captain! This man is his brother! He stays. Period!" The major's own brother, with only a flesh wound and no bones broken or major arteries destroyed, had his leg amputated by an overworked and overtired surgeon after the fighting at Gaine's Mill, one of the Seven Days battles. Amputations, though not often openly admitted, the fastest way to deal with the overwhelming deluge of casualties. Michael kept all his appendages, but the surgeon did sternly insist that his wounds were serious enough to warrant sending Michael on to the huge sprawling Chimborazo hospital complex in Richmond. Something which made James' face drain of color. Chimborazo! The very place James considered a death trap and was determined never to enter. A patient admitted to Chimborazo had a better than one in ten chance of not surviving. And his brother was being sent there! A dark scowl settled over his face.

Later, drowsy, still at Michael's side after nearly a day had passed, James again jumped forward to strongly object when he overheard one of the surgeons directing orderlies to prepare Michael and several others with wounds of similar severity for transport to Chimborazo. Dazed from lack of sleep and food, filthy with battlefield grime and gunpowder residue, his ragged clothes and unwashed body stinking of sweat and the unsanitary hard life in the field, James lurched out of his shabby somnolent lethargy to leap to his feet and again try to protect his brother. His sudden transformation caught the surgeon by surprise.

"No! Please! Don't send him to Chimborazo. Let me take him home to Harrisonburg. Our mother will care for him and soon bring him to health and back to the army." The surgeon, not the same one as before, was a contract surgeon and not in the Confederate army. He had slyly avoided being conscripted by becoming a contract surgeon, though he had scant medical training. Whatever medical knowledge he had was learned in the hardest way--on the battlefield, at the operating table and the rows of groaning patients awaiting treatment. Still, he was sympathetic, despite the hectic atmosphere.

"Soldier,"' he said in a calm, steadying voice to James. "How would you get him there? Yankee cavalry infest much of the country between here and the Shenandoah Valley. To be captured in his condition would mean his death. Even if you avoided capture the journey over rough roads and through mountain passes would probably kill him. And would your commanding officer even free you to take him home? They are sorely pressed for troops after all the casualties of the past year." The surgeon, once a callous, self centered man, but now shocked into humility by the misery he had seen, reached over to put his hand on the still unconscious Michael's shoulder. "His best chance is to go to Chimborazo. There are many fine doctors and nurses there." Reluctantly, James watched as Michael and three others were carried on stretchers and placed in an ambulance.

"God be with you," he said, softly, fervently.

Was God with him? Was God even listening? Both sides prayed to the same God and both were firm in their belief that God was on their side. But.....which side was God on? Was God even on any side? That was a discussion the front line soldiers in the Rourkes' company sometimes had. Most were convinced they were in the right and God was on their side. Some, the relatively few agnostics, doubted whether God cared.

"Y'uns humans got yeself in this mess," one of James Rourke's messmates opined about God one evening over a scanty supper of hardtack fried in bacon grease, washed down with tepid water from a nearby pond. "You's kin get yersleves out'a it. That be the way I figures it, Jimmy." James Rourke didn't reply. But he was damn sure thinking about it. And he continued to think about it as he survived the mixed up mess that was Sharpsburg and the gruesome slaughter of the Yankees at Fredericksburg when he, and most of his mates, felt disgust and even remorse over the way their opposite numbers, the Yankee soldiers, were ordered forward by Union General Burnside to be slaughtered. Wave after wave of them. Knowing that the next time it might be them who were ordered to charge forward to be butchered, not many of them exulted in the one-sided carnage. The one-sided victory. Yes. The carnage. No. Same old story. Rich man's war. Poor man's fight. Old man declare war. Young men fight it. Old men smoke cigars in their rocking chairs, write grandiloquent editorials and pound their fists on their legislative desks.

Young men just die horrendous deaths.

James took a shell fragment in his upper arm at Sharpsburg, the bloodbath of a battle in Maryland the Yankees called Antietam. He pulled it out himself, had a doctor look at it after the battle and returned to his company even though the doctor recommended a week in the hospital for observation They might have sent his brother to Chimborazo, but there was no way James was going there or any other hospital. As the doctor suspected, James' arm did develop an infection. Which might have developed into gangrene had not one of the soldiers in his company been from a family, mostly women, of country healers living back in the hollers of the Virginia mountains little visited by doctors. A poultice of herbs carefully gathered by James' soldier comrade did the trick. The infection abated, then disappeared.

At the battle of Fredericksburg James was with his company behind a low defensive wall, hurriedly built from fence rails, field stones and soil after the soldiers were inexplicably moved from a earlier much better prepared position. Between the suicidal waves of charging Yankees, the Union artillery shelled the Rebel positions. A Union shell hurtled into the wall and exploded twenty feet away from James, wounding a half dozen and blowing two men to pieces, sending grisly pieces of their bodies showering over James and the others close to the shell's impact. A human eye tumbled onto the ground at James' feet and lay there, and James for all the world could swear that it was staring directly at him. He had nightmares in the following days after he learned that the eye probably belonged to one of his childhood friends, Joseph Riddle, one of the two soldiers blown apart by the artillery shell. Joseph Riddle was the third, but not the last, of the Rockingham County Riddle clan to die in the war. They, like most of their friends and neighbors, were initially against secession and uncomfortable, if not downright opposed, to human bondage, but went off to war when Virginia was invaded. That was the critical fulcrum. Political and philosophical opinions tattered away into insignificance when the Bluecoats marched south over the Virginia state line.

For whatever reason, whether God listened or not, Chimborazo didn't kill Michael Rourke. After a month he was sent home on a convalescent leave and on his return to the army, too soon, his mother fruitlessly argued, he was placed on light duty with the quartermaster for an extended period. He missed the big battles of Sharpsburg and Fredericksburg. Not so with the smashing Rebel victory at Chancellorsville. He was back with the 33rd and the Stonewall wearing out his ill-fitting brogans on the Virginia roads alternately slippery with mud or smothered in clouds of choking dust. After more days and weeks of marching and countermarching through scorching heat and pelting rainstorms, sleeping on the ground as best they could in the weather, as often as not without rations for a day or two or even three, weary and footsore, filthy and rank with their unwashed bodies, plagued by insects and especially lice, in tattered clothing, some of them shoeless, the battle finally came. And with it an unexpected dramatic victory that banished all the hardships of the recent past to the exultation of the moment.

The 33rd missed the early action when the van of Jackson's troops were flanking and rolling up the Union line. Caught by surprise, the Yankees dropped everything and took off running. In their frantic haste they left behind all manner of equipment. Tents, rifles, knapsacks and canteens, wagons and horses and even artillery pieces. There were numerous campfires where they had been preparing their evening meal. It was a rout, though some of the Yankees were already rallying and offering resistance. The 33rd missed the first of the rout. But they were soon hot in pursuit and passed through the Yankee camps where their officers had to repeatedly yell at them not to stop to plunder the largesse showered upon the Union troops, so unlike the scanty rations and equipment of the Confederates. James did manage to grab a revolver next to a dead Yankee and stick it in his waist band as the 33rd charged through the Yankee camps with hardly a shot fired.

That soon changed. The Yankees were surprised and routed, but not all of them. Yet again the men and boys of Rockingham County in the 33rd faced another lethal holocaust of Yankee shot and shell. The soldiers of the 33rd dropped singly, in twos and threes and, when an artillery shell ripped through their ranks, in frightful numbers. Some died instantly. Others dying in few minutes. Still others lingering on for hours with lethal wounds that went untreated on the battlefield. The sights of the battlefield, to those who saw them and survived, would remain vividly in memory as long as the survivors lived. Mere boys eviscerated, one, his stomach sliced open, trying to push his entrails back into his body. Another trying to get up despite his legs being shredded and useless. An older man with an arm blown off trying desperately to stop the bleeding. Corpses without heads, others without limbs and some literally blown to pieces. Bad enough. Worse were the cries and shrieks and moans of the wounded. Some calling out to God, others to their mother, many pleading for water. A few, perhaps more than a few, begging their comrades to put them out of their misery. Many only moaned and suffered in silence. Bad enough during the battle. After the battle, walking over the battlefield, was to most a literal hell on earth.

Amidst the carnage there was a great whooping and hollering of the Rebel Yell. The Yankee line broke and folded up on itself and the Confederacy, despite the great loss of life, had scored another smashing defeat of the Yankees. A stunning victory. Michael and James were both there, jubilating at Stonewall Jackson's brilliant envelopment. That is, until they learned Jackson was wounded. And, more bitter than the sourest vinegar, wounded by his own troops. A fortnight later Jackson was dead. Not from the wound, which was survivable. His own doctors, prisoners of their time and not graced with the medical knowledge and techniques that lay not distant in the future, were as likely as not his killers. Inadvertently, certainly. But nevertheless very likely true.

The Rebels, despite Jackson's death, optimistic after the one-sided victories of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, decided to invade the north and force the Union to seek a negotiated peace. The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, close to 70,000 of them, began to march north. Driving the Federals out of Winchester and catching an entire regiment by surprise, capturing nearly 800 of them. North again, splashing across the Potomac into Maryland. Past the grisly memories of Sharpsburg, into Pennsylvania, past Chambersburg and a rich country unravaged by warfare as northern Virginia had been. A mood of expectation, of hope, prevailed among the Rebels.

The Rourke brothers, Michael and James, Michael promoted to sergeant and James to corporal to replace those lost at Chancellorsville, like most of their comrades, picked up the excited anticipation of the army. This might be the battle to end the war! They marched farther into Pennsylvania, past the rich farms, many of them of Germans, some recent immigrants, but most first, second and even third generation German-Americans.

"Looks like home," said a Confederate soldier in the Stonewall as he gazed at the lush farmland all around them, the wide expanse of corn fields, the well kept farms and barns, livestock in their pens and poultry in the chicken coops. Everywhere around them in early July in the farm country of Pennsylvania lay the promise of a rich harvest and a fat life.

"You means like 'twas before the war," replied another soldier whose home was north of Winchester in the part of northern Virginia fought over and devastated by both armies. "It don't like look this no more. Not hardly." The first soldier nodded his head and was silent. He didn't want to think of what might happen if the Yankees reached his own neighborhood near Staunton.

The German farmers watched the soldiers as they marched past. The troops called the Germans Dutch, a misconception based on the German word for themselves, Deutsch. The Germans were almost unanimously against slavery and pro-Union and glowered at the Rebel interlopers with silent scorn. The Rebels marched on through a hostile population of farmers, a few small villages and towns. Then, finally.....

To a place called Gettysburg.

It was the first day of July. 1863. Michael Rourke pointed to the north. "James. Hear that? The battle has already started." James heard, eyes bright, his mind somberly fixing on what lay ahead. He was long past the naive patriotism of the first months of the war. The war had distilled to perseverance for Michael. Perseverance. With a slight glimmer of hopefulness for the future.. But especially, more than anything else, grit.

He was a Rourke.

The 33rd was far from the first day's fighting on July 1st and saw no action, though the sounds of the battle, the roar of the artillery and the constant rattle of musketry, left no doubt with the veteran Confederates that a big battle was already in progress. One, they all hoped, that would end the war and force the Yankees to seek peace. A final battle that, in winning, would make all the suffering and death somehow have at least some justification and validation. The victorious conclusion of what most believed to be the Second American War of Independence, viewed very much like their grandfathers did in the First American War of Independence.

The second day of July came, the battle raged, and the Stonewall Brigade and the 33rd saw limited action. Then came the turning point. The 3rd of July. Multiple Confederate assaults on the Union line anchored by the huge numbers in General George Pickett's charge. What many would call the high tide of the Confederacy. The 33rd was not in Pickett's charge. Where they were was almost as bad. Culp's Hill. Three times they were ordered up the hill into the concentrated fire of the Yankee defenders. Hiding behind tiny humps of land, boulders and trees on the thickly wooded slope, firing their Enfield rifles at the entrenched Yankees, the 33rd Virginia tried to work its way up the steep hill. Bullets thudded into tree trunks, ricocheted off rocks and whistled overhead. Some, too many, made the dreaded sound of smacking into a human body. James and Michael, their cousin Simon at their side, along with other relatives and neighbors, tried to fight their way up the slopes of Culp's Hill. With every advance of a few feet there were fewer attackers. Michael watched in amazed horror as so many bullets hurtled at them from the Yankee breastworks that small and even middle sized trees were shot to pieces and toppled over.

"We're not going to live through this," Michael whispered. "We are in hell."

The young and not so young Rockingham County men and relatives the Rourke brothers had known all their lives fell on that hill. One after another. A Jackson cousin. Shot dead through the chest. Michael's boyhood friend, George Washington Skye, wounded in the leg, unable to crawl to cover, as the hail of Yankee bullets engulfed him and punctured his body in a dozen places. Another Jackson, a second cousin, Joshua Jackson, was struck by three minie balls at once and hurtled backward to fall supine onto a death bed of rotting leaves and bloody soil. Another neighbor of the Rourkes, Milton Carew, crumpled up with a fatal stomach wound. Another cousin, Jason Rourke, was shot through the forehead and died instantly. Simon Rourke, only son of their uncle, also named Simon, caught a bullet in his shoulder and dropped onto one knee in shock. Michael Rourke started to rush to his side. Too late. A Yankee marksman found the target. A Rebel down on his knees, in plain view, immobile. The Yankee touched off a shot and Simon Rourke pitched over, dead, a minie ball embedded between his eyes. Those were just some of the deaths. There were others, and dozens of wounded. Some would survive the war. Some as physical invalids, the rest damaged in other ways. Many left behind widows and fatherless children. The shattered 33rd and the adjacent regiments of the Stonewall fell back from the butcher shop that was the crest of Culp's Hill. Some saw the staff officer gallop up with orders and grew ashen at what he yelled out at the battered surviving soldiers.

"The General says to charge them and take the hill! We must take the hill!" More than one of the begrimed soldiers had a passing urge to point their Enfield at the fancy dressed staff officer who was ordering them to their deaths. A man who, despite the superficiality of his relatively immaculate uniform, had until recently been a regimental commander, twice wounded, and delivered the order to advance with deep personal misgivings. A moment later came the single word every single one of the surviving soldiers dreaded.

"Forward!" Yelled Captain Virgil Longwood, once, in what now seemed like a distant long ago life, a school teacher in Harrisonburg, the only officer in the 33rd still on his feet. "One more time and we'll break them. Victory is within our grasp." Longwood didn't really believe that, but he was the only officer left and felt compelled to carry out the foolhardy order, one that could have never have come from someone who actually experienced the firestorm of Yankee bullets on the flanks of Culp's Hill.

Captain Longwood, Sergeant Michael Rourke, Corporal James Rourke and a ragtag band of bloodied survivors made ready to charge up Culp's Hill one last time. Soon to encounter a swarm of bullets so thick they sounded like angry bees in a hive. Then came the third and last assault up Culp's Hill, the final slaughter of still more men as they traded rifle fire with the entrenched Yankees in a futile last gasp before the begrimed, bone and soul weary pitifully few survivors made their way back down that rocky hillside. Much of the youthful masculine promise of Rockingham County, Virginia, was sacrificed on Culp's Hill that July 3rd day. And with their lost promise, and the failure of Pickett's ill-fated charge, also went the last best hope of the Confederate States of America for independence.

The next day, July 4th, an Independence Day never to be forgotten, came with the two armies facing each other menacingly like the wounded beasts they in fact were. That evening the Confederate Army began its retreat back into Virginia.

One third of the soldiers in the Rebel army that marched to Gettysburg were casualties. Thousands of wounded were loaded in wagons and joined the retreat. Other wounded, hundreds if not thousands, were captured. Thousands more Rebels were captured.

At least 4500 of those cocky, confident Rebels who marched to Gettysburg would never leave. They lay mangled and bloody on the battlefield. Captain Virgil Longwood would never teach school in Harrisonburg again. He bled to death amidst the shattered tree trunks on Culp's Hill. Many from the Rourke and Jackson clans of Rockingham County were lost. Lying close to the crest of Culp's Hill in a concealing pool of his own blood, his face a death mask blackened by gunpowder streaked with blood, was one of them. One of the Rourkes. Two hundred miles away, in New York City, Samuel Rourke was suddenly enveloped in a deeply melancholy shroud that nearly brought him to his knees. He knew it right away. His identical twin brother, Michael...he....was....was.....

_Dead_.

Michael was dead. What about James? Wallace Ingleby grew up with James Rourke. They were good friends who often competed, mostly good naturedly, with each other. In foot races. Horse races. Wrestling. Sparking the same girls. A hormonal fist fight or two over those same girls. Wallace, along with his brothers, joined the 33rd Virginia at the same time that the Rourkes did. He was wounded in a skirmish near Richmond, but it was minor and he was soon back with the 33rd. Worse was the typhoid fever that raged through the camp when the soldiers drank from an infected well. He was one of the lucky ones and survived his stay in Chimborazo. He was relatively healthy and had the dubious fortune to be back with the 33rd when they marched to Gettysburg. He charged Culp's Hill during the first attempt and fell back with the others when the assault faltered.

Ingleby went up the hill in the second attempt and again fell back when the assault failed. His guts churned and he tried to steel himself for what seemed certain death when the order came for the third assault. It took everything he had to force himself to go up that hill of death a third time, grinding his teeth, narrowing his eyes and expecting death at any moment. Then it came. Death. This time, death missed. A bullet crashed into Ingleby's chest directly over his heart. Ingleby was carrying his musket chest high and the bullet smacked into his Enfield's stock with such force it knocked the wind out of him, the muzzle jerking back with enough force to give him a solid blow on his forehead. His hat flew off his head and he dropped like a stone. Those nearby who saw him fall thought he was dead. He wasn't, though he could at first hardly move. Lying there in the forest detritus of Culp' Hill, gasping for air, struggling to clear his head and regain consciousness and his footing, he saw the final charge of the 33rd flounder before the Yankee breastworks. He saw the last of the lost, a mere pitiful half dozen who made it that far, including Captain Longwood and Michael Rourke, tumble to the ground close to the Yankee trenches and lie still. A lingering sliver of the Southern cavalier spirit drove Captain Longwood on, though he knew, as certain as he ever knew anything, that he would not survive this last futile assault. Michael Rourke had a different spirit, that of the free yeoman farmer, the Jeffersonian ideal, the intrepid spirit of the Scots-Irish who had long battled the British and now, the Yankee, oppressors, that refused to let him turn tail and careen back down that hill of death. Michael fell next to Captain Longwood, not five feet from the Yankee line.

Ingelby saw a few others throw down their rifles and surrender, crawling over the lip of the Yankee entrenchments. He saw his old friend James Rourke go down close to the same spot where his brother Michael and Captain Logwood fell. James was down, but moving. Ingleby, still struggling to regain his footing, saw two Yankees leap over their fortification, pick up the writhing James Rourke by his arms, and carry him back over the barrier of logs and dirt and stone that formed their defensive bulwark. The pair of Yankees, like the Rebels at Fredericksburg, were sickened by the slaughter and wanted to salvage at least some semblance of their humanity by an act of compassion. At least that was the way that Ingleby would later tell the story, and the way he wanted, no, _had,_ to believe. Painfully struggling to his feet, still dazed, the neural receptors in his chest blasting the message that he had three broken ribs and a bruised lung, Ingleby stumbled to join the few survivors scrambling back down the bloody hill in Pennsylvania where Rockingham County, Virginia, lost much of its future.

Its young men.

### Will Rourke at Gettysburg

Lieutenant Will Rourke was now Captain Will Rourke, promoted at Major McCracken's recommendation to the command of the Harrisonburg company. Rourke's company, along with the rest of the First Virginia Cavalry Regiment, now part of a brigade led by Fitz Lee, was assigned to Fitz Lee's uncle, General Robert E. Lee, and his Army of Northern Virginia. They provided screening for Lee's maneuvering army as it marched to the bloody battlefield of Sharpsburg, as well as the one-sided victory at Chancellorsville, but saw little action in the even more one-sided victory at Fredericksburg where Union general Burnside sent thousands of his young men in blue to be butchered.

Not long after the fighting ended Rourke and Sergeant Sykes rode up to the front line to dismount and walk over the Fredericksburg battlefield below Marye's Heights just as the Yankees retreated back across the Rappahannock River. The carnage was not anywhere close to what the Rebel horsemen were accustomed to. Cavalry battles usually were strung out, as were their casualties, and did not have the ghastly appearance of an infantry's battlefield. Even the occasional heated cavalry fight at close quarters could not begin to mirror the soul wrenching devastation of the Fredericksburg battlefield.

Yankee soldiers by the thousands lay before the Rebel entrenchments. Dead, dying, wounded. Others lay pressed to the earth in shallow hollows in the ground or behind the bodies of the slain, afraid to move for fear of being shot down. Confederate infantrymen were moving among the thousands of blue bodies, taking prisoner the survivors who could walk, calling stretcher bearers to retrieve the incapacitated wounded. Other Rebels were on a different mission. Robbing the dead. In some, probably most, cases the robbery was more like foraging. The Rebels were perennially short of just about everything, so they routinely scoured the battlefields for whatever they could use. Rifles. Pistols. Ammunition. Shoes and boots. Coats. Blankets. Rainproofs. Cartridge boxes. Canteens. Haversacks, with a sharp eye for food and whisky. Some of the Rebels, though, took it farther, pillaging the dead for money and valuables.

It was a sight that seared Will Rourke's soul. He'd seen massacres in the west, men tortured with knives, men burned to death, whole families and even small villages wiped out, immigrants caught by hostiles and brutalized in ways he would not have believed possible. All that was dwarfed by the Fredericksburg battlefield. Men torn apart in every way conceivable, from those who were stone dead but who seemed to be without any visible wounds, to those who were only shreds of bone and muscle and bloody pieces of fragments of blue uniforms. There were thousands of them. Thousands more were wounded, lying on the battlefield in their own blood, arms dangling by a single tendon, legs blown off, stomach wounds where the intestines were oozing out of their eviscerated innards, noses and ears and jaws shot off, fingers and hands and feet gone, dazed, pallid, fearful doomed faces of men who had been full of life and hope not long ago. Now all gone, destroyed, the battlefield a vicious and ugly panorama of man's inhumanity.

"This is goddamn insane!" Rourke, who was not a man to use profanity, blurted out. "How can we do this to each other? Damnit, Tom, what is wrong with us?" Sergeant Sykes, as stricken by the sight of the battlefield as was Rourke, said nothing. He couldn't. He had no words for something like this.

The two Confederate cavalrymen called to other nearby members of their company and the troopers spread out over the bloody field to stolidly join the Rebels already scouring the battlefield for wounded. For the next several hours they helped carry the injured Yankees to the hectic overcrowded Confederate field hospital nearby where an entirely different macabre scene of death and suffering assaulted their battered senses.

As the men of the Harrisonburg company rode away that evening from the Fredericksburg battlefield a grim silence hovered over them and not a man said a word. They were silent, but thinking.

And privately thanking God they weren't in the infantry.

The First Virginia Cavalry did see action during the battle of Chancellorsville, but nothing like the front line infantry. They shared the exuberance of the infantry over the stunning victory, as well as the despair over the wounding and eventual death of the South's battlefield hero, Stonewall Jackson. They also picked up on the hopefulness of the invasion of the North that Robert E. Lee ordered after the great victory of Chancellorsville.

"The war'll be over after this, Will," Tom Sykes said as they rode with their company and regiment out wide from Lee's advancing army, scouting and screening the army from prying Yankee eyes. "You can go back home to your family out west." Rourke looked at Sykes.

"What about you, Tom? Where will you go? Stay in Virginia? Go back to your uncle's place in Indiana?" Sykes snorted.

"My father is long dead and my mother married a man I cannot abide. There'll be no Virginia for me, Will. And, my uncle's place? In Indiana? After me being in the Rebel cavalry? Don't see that happening, either, Will." A pause, then the question that Rourke already knew was coming. "Think there might be room for me out there in those wide open spaces you call home?" Rourke laughed.

"You know darn well there's a place for you," he said, grinning. Then, thinking of all the death and destruction they'd seen, with the horror of the Fredericksburg battlefield clear in his mind, he added. "If Providence sees fit to let us live through this madness."

Sykes had been at Rourke's side when they walked the Fredericksburg battlefield.

"That's a great big if, Will," he said in a colorless tone.

After a long silence Tom Sykes spoke. "Your brothers. Aren't they in the Stonewall Brigade? Do you know where they are?"

"Very likely somewhere in this huge army moving north, Tom. God forbid they run into something like those poor Yankees did at Fredericksburg."

"What of the other brother? The one who went north and joined the Yankees?"

"My parents got word that his unit was transferred to Kentucky," Rourke answered. "That's the last I've heard."

"Does it trouble you that he sided with the North?"

"He followed his conscience," Will replied. "As did you and I. His conscience led him in a different direction. That I respect." He twisted in his saddle to look at Sykes.

"He stood his ground, though it be not the same ground as ours."

Rourke wanted to get free for a day or so to ride over to Harrisonburg to see his family. Were he only a trooper, he might have been able to. But he was the company commander and couldn't leave his men at such a critical time. One in a long series of critical times that kept him from getting to see his family more than a single occurrence a few months earlier during the relatively quiescent month of January of 1863. It was not a pleasant visit. His parents, especially his mother, were so worried about their sons that it made Will's short visit uncomfortable. He was, though he wouldn't admit it, relieved when he had to leave.

The huge Army of Northern Virginia edged north, marching regiment by regiment, brigade by brigade, division by division through the northern Shenandoah Valley towards the Maryland border. Brief cavalry clashes were frequent as the Rebel horsemen fought to keep the Yankees from seeing what the huge Confederate Army was up to. And that brought up another question, equally as important. What was the Yankee army, a third again as large as the Rebels, doing in response to the Confederate movements?

In the latter part of June a horseman rode up to Will Rourke. It was his regimental commander, Major Andrew Liston, a dapper small man who was a large landowner and merchant in Winchester before the war. He was also a former dragoon who fought in the Mexican War. Rourke liked the man, despite knowing he had a number of slaves. "The world," as Rourke's father Peter often said, "can get darned confusing sometimes." So it was for Will's personal liking and admiring Liston despite his being a slave owner. Part of it was probably because Liston once told him, after a few drinks of hard cider in camp one evening, that he intended to manumit his slaves at the end of the war, no matter who won the war. "It's time," he said. "Way past time." Liston's pragmatic and realistic view, however, as Will well knew, was still very much a minority one. The plantation owners didn't want to lose their investment in what they, and the law of the land, called their property. And the average Southern private soldier didn't want to see the slaves freed to compete with them for jobs, many of the slaves being skilled craftsmen and others equally as skilled at farming. There was, as always, a heavily racist element, too, though that was almost as widespread in the North as in the South. A concept that in later years would be known under the euphemism 'Separate but Equal.'

Major Liston reined up his chestnut gelding next to Rourke.

"Captain Rourke," he began, "brigade wants us to gather intelligence on the enemy. Take your company and see what you can ascertain." Rourke saluted and less than a hour later led his company at an oblique angle away from the main line of Confederate advance, knowing Yankee scouts could not be far away.

They weren't.

A half dozen Union horsemen saw Rourke's men and immediately galloped away. The Rebels did not pursue them. Their mission was to gather intelligence and not to engage in combat unless circumstances demanded otherwise. Let the Yankees think they were just a patrol screening their own army's movements. Will's intention was to avoid the Yankee scouts and slip through the Union's own protective screen of cavalry to see what the main bodies of Yankee troops were up to. And for that he would have to leave most of his command hidden somewhere while Rourke led a handful of riders and attempted to slip past the screening Federal horsemen.

Some among Rourke's company either were from the area they were riding through or had visited it frequently before the war. After Sykes queried the men and found out who they were, Rourke called the men, there were three of them, to him to question them about the area.

"There is a big farm not far from here," said trooper Emmanuel Trammel, whose own family home was only a dozen miles away. "It is owned by a strong Secesh man named Winslow Brownlee who has two sons in the service. He has two big barns. Big enough to hide the company." An hour later a very surprised Hugh Brownlee, almost beside himself with excitement to see Confederate soldiers after longs months of Federals frequently in the neighborhood, opened his barns to the Rebels. The young horsemen of the company hid in the barn, enthusiastically ministered to by the Brownlee family with what provisions they could muster on such short notice. As darkness began to envelop the Virginia countryside, Will Rourke rode out from the farm with Sergeant Tom Sykes and trooper Emmanuel Trammel. The trooper knew the neighborhood well and led them over little traveled back roads and trails well away from the Federal pickets on the main roads. Towards midnight they emerged from an old cattle trail on the edge of a second growth patch of white pines and topped a small rise.

"Ooohhhh," muttered Trammell. There, stretching out as far as the eye could see, were the campfires of the Union Army of the Potomac.

"Got to be at least a whole corps," whispered Sykes. "Mebbe more."

"They probably are moving parallel to our army," Rourke said. He turned to the others. "We'll make sure of it. Camp here in the pines and see which direction they go in the morning."

The three Rebels picketed their horses out of sight in the center of the white pines and took turns watching the Yankee campfires while the others tried to sleep. Sykes was on watch when the slanting early morning light of dawn spread over the huge army in the valley below. He nudged the others awake and all three Confederates watched the rare sight, one they would never forget, of an entire army gradually stirring awake and readying their day. Bugles blowing, officers and non-coms yelling, men huddled over breakfast campfires and the forming up to begin marching. It was not yet 7:00 in the morning before the first regiments of the huge army, flags flapping in the light breeze, officers prancing on their horses, began to march. Intently peering through the brass English spyglass he'd taken off a Yankee officer a few weeks earlier, Will Rourke pointed at the direction of the march.

"Yes. Definite. They are paralleling our army." He rose and started towards their horses. "We have to report this." They had not yet mounted their horses when they heard sounds jarringly familiar to them. Horses moving at a brisk walk, saddles creaking, gear jangling, men speaking in low voices. A mounted Union patrol passed hardly fifty yards away. The Rebels froze, holding their horses' noses and praying they would make no sound, and held their breath. The Yankee patrol rode on, disappearing over the lip of the valley, following the direction of their army. They were screening the Federal force, much as Rourke's men had been doing as the Confederates advanced towards the Potomac and the Maryland border. The Rebels waited twenty minutes, then mounted and retraced their path back to the Brownlee farm. As they drew within sight of the farm they were in for another unpleasant surprise. A detail of Union cavalry, a dozen of them, were in the Brownlee's farmyard.

Rourke, Sykes and Trammell sat astride their horses, unseen, and watched as Winslow Brownlee walked with four of the Yankee soldiers to the nearest barn. A barn that held, hidden, half of Rourke's company, a young lieutenant named Adam Rawlings in charge of the Rebels in the barn. As the three horsemen watched, Brownlee pulled open the barn door and went inside with the four Federals. Rourke expected all hell to break loose. It didn't. There was only silence. Rawlings had used his head and grabbed the Yankees without firing a shot or alerting the other Federals in the nearby farm yard.

Rourke guessed that young Rawlings, or perhaps one of the veteran sergeants, seemed to have the situation well in hand. He couldn't see it, but after two or three minutes a Confederate hastily dressed in a captured Yankee's uniform came briefly to the barn door and motioned at the other Yankees to come to the barn. They took the bait and as they reached the barn door a score of Confederates jumped out of the shadows with their pistols drawn. The rest of the Yankees surrendered without a fight. Rourke laughed and slapped Sykes on the shoulder.

"Looks like we'll be taking back some prisoners, too." Rourke, Sykes and Trammell rode down to the Brownlee farm to where Lieutenant Rawlings and the entire company came out to greet them with broad smiles, along with the entire Brownlee family running out, cheering and laughing, from their farmhouse. No one noticed the Yankee who had wandered away from the others earlier to pick June apples in Brownlee's orchard, came out of the orchard, his knapsack full of June apples, and realized what had happened. If he had given it any thought he would have either hidden or surrendered. But he didn't give it any thought. In a knee jerk reaction he dropped his knapsack, brought up his Sharps carbine and fired off a single round.

Lisa Brownlee, just turned ten years old, screamed once, crumpled to the ground and lay still, her life's blood soaking into her father's barnyard.

The June Apple Yankee couldn't run fast enough.

The jubilation at a successful patrol, with a dozen prisoners, ended when the little girl died. The captured Yankees were as stunned and saddened as the Rebel troopers and plainly showed it. Outside of the shooter, there was no retaliation against them. Just sadness, on both sides, that this war that many of them believed never should have been fought would claim the life of an innocent little girl not yet on the threshold of adult life. A gloomy pall rode along with the Confederates and their captives as they rode back to Confederate lines. The intelligence gathered, by observation and by interrogating the captured Federals, was valuable and Rourke and his men were commended by Major Liston and the brigade commander. The praise fell on deaf ears. Rourke's ears still rang with the heartbroken sobbing and shrieking of the Brownlee family. And his eyes still saw the little girl lying dead in her family's barnyard. There was one repercussion of the little girl's death that Will Rourke later heard of. One of her older brothers, Hastings Brownlee, who was in the Confederate infantry, swore he would avenge his sister's death. And he did. He deserted the infantry, joined the irregular partisan rangers and began his own personal war against the Yankees.

A war which had no room for compassion.

The Rebel army crossed the Potomac into Maryland on the way to the rich farm country of Pennsylvania. Robert E. Lee intended to replenish his provisions from the Pennsylvania farms, especially to round up horses, mules and other farm animals as they moved north, and eventually force the Federals into a battle that the Confederates hoped would be decisive in ending the war. As the army moved through Maryland towards Pennsylvania, the cavalry screening the army, scouting, searching for Union storage depots and supply trains to commandeer the fabled Yankee materiel largesse for their underfed and poorly clothed soldiers. And always, always, looking for fresh horses to replace their played out mounts.

As the army moved north in a many miles long serpentine organic gray line of infantry, artillery and cavalry, the horsemen ranged out, Rebel riders clashing with Union cavalry with increasing frequency. The Yankee cavalry units were much improved over the previous year, and very numerous. In dozens of brief skirmishes men from both sides were killed, wounded and captured. Not the wholesale slaughter of an infantry battle. A slow, steady attrition that enervated but did not destroy. An attrition, like all else in this war, that the Union could replace but the Confederacy could not. Men lost. Horses lost. Hundreds of horses worn down to marginal usefulness. The Confederacy could not sustain such losses for much longer. All the more reason to raid Pennsylvania, round up all the horses, as well as all the feed and forage they could find, and in one great heroic effort finally deal the Yankees a defeat that might end the war and bring Southern Independence.

So thought the generals and many of the officers. It was also sensed by many of the men. Their step was, as always, weary from the long days of marching, but there was a certain verve to it, an innate sensing of a coming great climax to the fighting. Perhaps even hope. Yet the world of the soldier in the ranks remained largely unchanged, consumed, not with grand allusions to victory, but with the daily details of soldiering. Rourke's company alternated with others in the brigade in patrolling well away from the main army. When one company encountered resistance, the rest of the regiment would be called up to overcome the resistance. Sometimes the skirmishing grew into larger cavalry battles involving entire brigades and even multiple brigades. Yankee superiority in numbers, equipment and fresh horses were often almost too much for the Rebels to handle. But they held on. Sometimes just barely. But they held on. And also dealt a good many defeats to the Yankees. The skirmishing ebbed and flowed between the two sides, most of them small clashes of a company or two, the rest developing into bigger, if brief, battles.

The attrition continued. Not a vast field of bodies, as at Fredericksburg or Sharpsburg. It was not possible to trail the cavalry advance by following a trail of bodies. But they were there. In ones and twos and threes and, occasionally, dozens or even scores. Attrition. The life blood of the Southern horsemen dribbling out one human life drop at a time. By the time they reached Gettysburg hardly a unit was anywhere near full strength and a large percentage of the horses were jaded, the men saddle sore and groggy from lack of sleep. The same was true of many of the Yankee cavalry brigades, too. The difference was they had fresh reserves to call on, something the Confederates were sorely lacking. Still, it was the apogee of the South.

With an outcome yet to be determined.

Since Will Rourke's company was armed with the breach loading Sharps carbines, they were often called on to act as dismounted skirmishers in cavalry actions. In most of the cavalry units the sharpshooters, or skirmishers, were made up of those men who were armed with carbines. Since Rourke's men were all armed with Sharps carbines, the order to dismount and establish a skirmishing line came more frequently to his unit that the others. The result was that Rourke's men were in combat more often than most and, because of their fighting dismounted from the more stable platform of the ground than a moving horse, inflicted far more casualties on the Federals than their sister units. Several times Rourke's sharpshooters broke up charging Union horsemen with disciplined dismounted fire.

The flow of battle was often much the same. Contact with an enemy force was initiated by a handful on other side. Rourke was ordered to set up a skirmish line. The men dismounted, those with questionably reliable weapons detailed to hold the horses, the balance of the unit quickly took protective cover and, if there was time, built improvised breastworks. The Union cavalry would charge, often not aware of the line of sharpshooters, and recoil when Rourke's men opened fire. Yankees were unhorsed, some of them trampled, animals shot down, horses tripping over the fallen, followed by a confused chaos and a hell for leather retreat.

"Bad enough," Sergeant Sykes said to Rourke during one of their clashes with Yankee cavalry, "to see men shot down and cry out. But the screaming of the wounded horses is like hell opening up before us." Rourke nodded. It was true. The screaming of the wounded horses was enough to unhinge the most stalwart of soldiers. It was not just humans that suffered in this war. It was also the animals. Horses and mules by the hundreds of thousands killed and wounded. Farm animals commandeered for meat for the starving soldiers, including dairy cows and farm pets otherwise spared the butcher's knife. Plus, perhaps worst of all, habitat for all kinds of wild things destroyed by the warring soldiers. Forests either cut down or shot to pieces. Streams and fields fouled by the excrement of thousands of soldiers, contaminated with all the pestilences the soldiers carried with them, knowingly or not. Wildlife nearly exterminated in the perennial soldiers' search for food. Farmers' crops in the fields by the thousands ruined by passing troops, orchards picked clean. Barns destroyed. Homes abandoned and vandalized. It was a human caused holocaust. And almost totally in the former slave states, most of which joined the Confederacy. It was, in the eyes of Will Rourke and a great many others, a terrible price to pay. To many.....on both sides....

Too much.

The skirmishing between the Confederate and Union horsemen grew steadily with each passing day, at times involving whole brigades as well as artillery and infantry brought in as support. Rourke's men were as often as not in the thick of it and were experiencing a worrying Yankee stiffening of resolve. The Yankees were also dismounting and trading carbine fine with the Confederates and the casualties were mounting on both sides.

"Look!" Sergeant Sykes yelled, pointing at a 60 degree angle from the Confederate skirmish line. Will Rourke, heavily engaged with his men against an opposing Yankee skirmish line, caught the urgent tone in Sykes' voice and jerked his head around to follow the sergeant's pointing finger at the cause of his urgency. At least an entire Federal regiment of cavalry, several hundred of them, about to charge down on Rourke and his hundred Rebel skirmishers. It was a disaster just about to happen. Before Rourke could react out the corner of his eye he saw the welcome sight of the rest of his regiment coming up to meet the Yankee charge. Rourke, Sykes and their men, as well as the Yankee skirmishers opposing them, all stopped to watch one of the most spectacular sights of the war. Regiments of opposing cavalry charging full tilt at each other. Major Andrew Liston, a small man who somehow seemed much larger astride his stallion with his saber waving menacingly over his head, gave the order.

"First Virginia! For God and Country! Forward!"

The Rebel horse trotted forward. The Yankees, not of a mind to cut and run, mirrored he trot. _Towards_ the Rebels.

"Good God almighty above!" Uttered one of Rourke's troopers. "They gone charge each to the other!"

The Yankees broke into a gallop. The Rebels, at the order of Major Liston, drew their pistols, a few choosing to use their sabers, and the 1st Virginia Cavalry broke into a gallop and the Rebel Yell and the Yankee Hussah! joined the cacophony of galloping horses, creaking and jangling equipment, horses snorting and men cursing. Not a shot was fired from either side by the skirmishers as every single eye was fixed on the pair of hurtling hordes of horsemen charging full tilt at each other. They ate up the ground almost quicker than the watchers could believe. Two hundred yards. A hundred yards. Fifty yards. Twenty. Ten. And, then, a great tumultuous avalanche of sound as the hurtling masses of men and horses crashed into each other.

The chaos was so intense and widespread that the watchers at first had difficulty picking out individual sights. A roiling cloud of close quarters combat. A saber flashing, a revolver belching black smoke, a trooper plunging off his horse, a horse collapsing to the ground. What looked like a human hand, probably sliced off by a sharp blade, hurtling through the air. Masses of tangled men and horses on the ground, many of those still mounted fixed on trying to avoid trampling the fallen while fighting the enemy at the same time. Then the chaos started to subside, the fog of war lifting. The battle devolved into individuals and tiny knots of men engaged in hand to hand combat with sabers, pistols, carbines and even fists. Men fell. Horses stumbled. The Confederate flag started to sink to the ground but was grabbed by a dismounted trooper before it touched the earth. Another trooper pulled the dismounted man, and the flag, up behind him on his horse. Then, as quickly as it began, it was over. Another Confederate regiment came up to join the fighting and the Yankee survivors wheeled their mounts and galloped away. The Confederates, smelling another rout, charged after them. A single rider separated from them and rode at what seemed like a reckless gallop for Rourke and his men. It was Corporal Wilton Orme, Major Liston's orderly.

"Captain Rourke," the breathless Orme said in a voice grown hoarse from hollering in the recent combat, "Major Liston desires you mount your men and join in the pursuit." Rourke glanced over at where the opposing Yankee skirmishers had been lined up. They were already mounted and riding off.

"Tell the Major we're on our way!"

Rourke led his men as they galloped after the fleeing Yankees and pursuing Rebels. Rourke's men were gaining steadily, their mounts being held at readiness while the fighting raged and therefore fresher than the animals of the other troopers. They were almost abreast of the pursuing Confederates when it happened. Rourke grasped it immediately. Too late. Another trap! An entire full strength brigade of Yankee cavalry, fresh and unbloodied, waiting behind a swell in the undulating ground high enough to hide their presence. They struck the Rebels broadside right where Rourke's men were and immediately reversed the flow of pursuit. The pursued became the pursuers as the Rebels did a hectic turnaround and raced for the protection of covering units in their rear.

The merry-go-round changed again. The Rebels rushed to the own support, the balance of the brigade, plus two guns of the horse artillery and a regiment of tough Georgia infantry, and it was the Yankees' turn to do a quick about face and scamper away.

As they advanced closer to Gettysburg each day became more and more hotly contested by the Rebel and Yankee horsemen. The First Virginia Cavalry lost a quarter of its men. Four killed, eleven wounded, two missing and presumed captured and the rest rendered ineffective with spent horses. Then came the first day of July of 1863 and the beginning of the momentous battle. The First Virginia and Fitz Lee's brigade had not yet reached Gettysburg, but still were battling the Yankee cavalry Rourke was leading his men in yet another clash with the Yankees when it happened.

### Will Rourke Gone Missing

It was not the hell of the Gettysburg battlefield but a different kind of hell that was about to descend on Will Rourke. When Jeb Stuart's cavalry made an end run around Union general Meade's Army near Gettysburg, Will's beloved horse, La Foudre, was shot out from under him during a running encounter with Union horsemen. Will still might have escaped had La Foudre, bound to him in death as in life, not toppled over onto his left leg, pinning him as securely to the ground as a stake did to a tent back at camp. Before he could wriggle free his men, who had not seen him fall, were far in the distance and the Federals all around him. A Yankee lieutenant rode up to him, pulled up his horse and actually grinned.

"Looks like the war is over for you, Johnny Reb." The grin faded to something less pleasant. Possibly even presentiment, since the Yankee lieutenant would himself receive a dangerous wound on the third day at Gettysburg. A wound that would fester and spread infection and bring death to the young lieutenant before the month was out. But not yet. At this young warrior's moment he was still virile and invulnerable and looking down amusedly at his Rebel prisoner. "This just might be your lucky day," he said to Rourke. "You're out of it." And he was. Out of the fighting. But otherwise, it would soon turn out, not out of harm's way. He had jumped from the frying pan of combat into the fire of a Yankee prisoner of war camp. In less than a week he and a host of other captured Rebels walked through the gloomy gates of the Union prison camp most feared by captured Confederates. The South had its Belle Isle and Salisbury and, later, Andersonville. The North had Elmira, and Point Lookout. And this place. Will Rourke had survived the hell of war to enter a different kind of hell. A name whispered in dark dread by battle-hardened Confederates.

Fort Delaware

### The News

They came to the Rourke farm just as Peter and Sarah Rourke were sitting down to Sunday dinner with Peter's brother Simon, his wife Mary and widowed daughter, Jasmine. The Rourke's daughter, Susan, was not there, Susan still clinging to her tiny house in Harrisonburg despite her husband, Dick Riley, being away in the army. Life had not yet grown lean for the farmers and residents of the southern Shenandoah Valley in the summer of 1863 where the war had not yet blighted the land. There was chicken, cornbread, fresh milk, apple pie for desert. A simple enough meal in ordinary times, but one only visited in dreams and fantasies by the soldiers in the field. Remembering that, the Rourkes offered humble thanks for their meal and prayed with heartfelt intensity for the continued safety of their sons in the army.

They heard the riders outside and everyone at the dinner table shuddered with anticipation at what new indignity would be laid upon them. All their boys off in the army, Jasmine's husband dead at Manassas, their farm horses taken, hay and oats confiscated for the Rebel cavalry, left with unsound worn out animals to try to do the hard work of the farms.

"Now, what the devil do they want?" Simon Rourke, grown increasingly bitter as the war ground on, hissed. "Haven't we given them enough?" There was a knock on Peter Rourke's door. Peter rose and strode to open it. There, standing looking as disconsolate as anyone Peter had ever seen, was his old friend, the horse breeder turned Confederate officer, Major Tom Crowley. The anguished expression on Crowley's face caused Peter Rourke to stop cold in his tracks.

"Peter, my old friend," Major Crowley began, shuffling his feet and blinking. "You know there's been a big battle?" Peter tensed. The news of the battle had spread through the community like a wildfire just two days earlier. "It was in Pennsylvania.....

"At a place called Gettysburg."

All the people at the dinner table jumped to their feet. There was talk that there had been a huge number of casualties. They all stared at the grim expression on Crowley's face. This had to be something bad.

It was. Sarah Rourke plunged forward towards Major Crowley, tears already streaming down her cheeks.

"Wh....whi....which one, Tom? Which of our boys are down?" Crowley's brow lowered, his jaws set tight, his eyes starting to water, his resolve fading. This was his fourth such wrenching visit this day. His reply was a verbal bomb of gray gloom exploding in the room. His jaws worked but couldn't seem to force out the words. Finally, the words came. Slowly. Mournfully.

"Will, Michael, Peter and Simon's son, Simon. Casualties.....all....all....

"....all of them."

### Tom Sykes

Near Gettysburg

Tom Sykes was preoccupied with getting the hell away from the horde of Yankee horsemen coming hard after the outnumbered Rebels. He didn't see much of anything besides clouds of enveloping dust and the bodies of the men and horses closest to him. Neither Tom or any of the other Confederate cavalryman in his company saw Will Rourke go down when La Foudre was killed. Several scrambling, hectic minutes passed before Tom realized his captain was nowhere within sight. That would only mean one thing. He was down somewhere on the running fight of a battlefield behind Sykes and the rest of the fleeing Rebels. Sykes jerked his horse to a stop and turned to look behind him. All he could see were Yankee horsemen charging at the Rebels in overwhelming numbers. He jerked his horse around and rejoined the headlong retreat. There was nothing Sykes could do until the Yankees stopped their pursuit. Then he would retrace his steps and try to search the battlefield for Will Rourke, be he dead or alive.

Fifteen minutes later the Yankees reined up when they were faced with a brigade of North Carolina infantry, a fresh brigade of Rebel cavalry, two batteries of horse artillery and the retreating rebels wheeling about to meet the Yankee charge. The Union horsemen, seeing the massed infantry and the artillery, wisely chose to withdraw, closely followed by the reinforced Rebels for a mile or two before they, too, stopped their pursuit. Sykes followed the retreating Yankees at a safe distance and began to search the battlefield when he came to the series of trampled wheat and corn fields where he thought Captain Rourke would mostly likely have fallen. He did his searching as fast as he could, knowing that the Yankees would soon be back to search for wounded that might have been overlooked in their withdrawal, and also to scavenge the battlefield for anything useful. Sykes resisted the strong urge to help three different wounded men he came across, two of them Rebels and one a Yankee, in his nearly frantic search for his friend and captain, Will Rourke. Then Sykes saw a clear sign of Will Rourke's presence. A horse. A very familiar horse. La Foudre.

A very much dead La Foudre.

But no Will Rourke. He was gone. Either hiding somewhere. Or, more likely, captured. Yes. Captured. A sigh of relief. If anyone could escape being captured by the Yankees, it was Will Rourke. Sykes looked up to see a detachment of Yankee cavalry a mile off, returning to the battlefield. Sykes quickly stripped Will Rourke's saddle bags from La Foudre, barely able to pull them free because the horse's body was on top of part of them, and quickly was on his horse and riding away. But not far. He stopped to where the wounded Rebels and Yankee were, told the Yankee that help was coming and to yell at them when they came near. One of the Rebels had died while Sykes was discovering La Foudre's body. The other wounded Rebel, Jacob Weitzel, a bilingual second generation German-American man from the Harrisonburg cavalry who Sykes knew well, was disabled from a broken leg when his own horse, a handsome animal that Weitzel had lovingly raised from a colt, went down in the fighting.

Weitzel had tears in his eyes. Not from his injury. For his beloved lost horse. Tom Sykes helped the injured man onto his own horse and together they rode to the safety of the Confederate lines. The rescued trooper went to a field hospital where his broken leg was set and put in a cast. A few months later Weitzel was back in the saddle and became Tom Sykes' shadow, determined to protect the life of the man who had saved his. He stayed so close to Sykes that the other troopers joked that he was glued to Sykes. A waggish German speaker among them then gave Weitzel a new nickname that soon became universal. Herr Kleister. Even thirty and forty years later, at survivors' reunions in the Shenandoah, the aged troopers still called Weitzel Herr Kleister.

Mr. Glue.

Tom Sykes was in no way Will Rourke's sycophant. He was a solid trooper and non-commissioned officer, respected by the men in his company. Few if any would have objected to Sykes being promoted to take Will Rourke's command of the Harrisonburg horsemen. The regimental commander did, in fact, offer Sykes the promotion. Sykes was fully capable of handing the responsibility, despite his youth--which was hardly unusual in the army--and was not intimidated by the thought of command. He did, however have a somewhat superstitious side, thanks to his borderline spiritualist grandmother, and somehow convinced himself that not taking Will Rourke's position would eventually bring Rourke back. He, respectfully, declined the position. Tom Sykes was absolutely convinced Will Rourke would return. And that was that.

No one could convince him otherwise.

Chapter 7: Little Crow

A raiding party of fewer than twenty Santee left their refuge in the northern Dakota Territory close to the Canadian border. They rode east into Minnesota. It was the summer of 1863, nearly a year after their debacle at Wood Lake and the resulting hurried flight of many of the Santee into the Dakota Territory. The fugitive Santee made it a dangerous time for anyone who attempted to travel the rivers, the Minnesota and the Red, and the trails that linked St. Paul with Winnipeg. The war was lost, their country gone, their people banished from Minnesota, yet some fought on despite the hopelessness of it. Among them was Little Crow. He took with him on his raid into Minnesota the last of his followers, relatives, friends, diehards, one woman and his own son, teenaged Wowinape.

Minnesota is where three different natural environments meet. In its center harmoniously commingle the northern pine forests, the deciduous broad leafed forests of the east and south-- known as the Big Woods, and the tallgrass prairie of the west. All of them well supplied with lakes large and small, lingering reminders of the great glaciers that retreated even as the first humans were making their appearance.

Little Crow's band could move through the forest when caution deemed it prudent. But mostly they traveled over the easier traversed terrain of the open prairie where the country, already sparsely populated before the Dakota War but now almost completely depopulated after the outbreak, was empty of people. There were occasional patrols of Union soldiers from Fort Abercrombie on the Red River, which was the boundary between Minnesota and the Dakota Territory. Other patrols came from various places in central and southern Minnesota. The elusive Santee had no trouble avoiding the relatively ponderous Americans. The Santee were far more wary of their hereditary enemies, the Ojibwe, who dwelled in the pine forests of central and northern Minnesota and who regularly hunted in the belt of deciduous forests and prairie that ran diagonally northwest through Minnesota. One of the main instigators of the Sioux War, a hotheaded Santee named Red Middle Voice, fleeing north towards Canada, himself fell victim with his family and small group of followers to a raiding party of Obijwe and were massacred. The Santee were well advised to be wary of the dark forests.

On their small scale furtive raids the Santee were rarely seen. They struck quietly, ambushing a wagon driver here, a trapper there, a family in an isolated cabin somewhere else. More commonly, they stole rather than killed. Horses were their first choice, closely followed by firearms. Other farm animals they stole to butcher and eat while they continued their raiding. Only infrequently did they burn anything. Smoke would be noticed, something they avoided at almost all costs. Of the murders and thefts rarely was their any definitive proof that the Santee were the culprits. Nevertheless, the whites all believed the Santee were behind the depredations. And they were. Most of them.

But not all.

Little Crow's small band became even smaller as it splintered into factions. Some returned to the Dakota Territory. Others left to raid elsewhere. Little Crow eventually was left only with his son, Wowinape. They camped on the edge of the Big Woods near the town of Hutchinson. It seemed to Wowinape that Little Crow, disheartened by the Sioux defeat and his own loss of status because of the lost war, no longer cared to live. Had he intentionally come back home, to the old Santee hunting grounds, to die? No one would ever know for certain, though some who knew him well were certain that was his intent. As it was, Little Crow's Sioux War odyssey ended as bizarrely as it began. The war started with a clutch of hen's eggs. And for Little Crow it ended with a raspberry patch.

A pair of settlers named Lamson happened upon Little Crow and Wowinape when the two Santee were picking berries from a wild raspberry patch. The Santee were caught unaware and the pair of settlers ambushed them. In the ensuing firefight one of the Lamsons was lightly wounded and Little Crow was killed. His son lingered briefly over the body and then slipped away. Little Crow lay dead in a wild raspberry patch. The next day his body was brought into Hutchinson and brutally desecrated. On the same day Robert E. Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania failed at Gettysburg and Confederate General Pemberton surrendered the fortress of Vicksburg to Union General Grant. A truly historic and symbolic day in American history for both the Minnesota Sioux war and the American Civil War.

July 4, 1863.

The State of Minnesota awarded Nathan Lamson $500 for the killing of Little Crow.

### Samuel Rourke

New York

Sam was staying with his old friend, Sanford Wells, at his comfortable bachelor residence just off Broadway, in the tonier part of the city, Broadway being a virtual divide between the classes in New York. Wells was in fact descended from the venerable old line Anglican English aristocracy of New York and remained one of them. Not all the New York aristocrats were elitist snobs, Wells preeminent among them. He did actually, though he didn't admit it to Rourke, belong to the exclusive clubs of the city, but knew better than taking Rourke to one in his Union sergeant's uniform. They would have been turned away at the door. By, in another of the many clashing ironies of the time, an imperious hulking black doorman.

Well's vaguely Second Empire styled home was spacious and comfortable, but, considering his social status, relatively modest, having only two floors and a basement. He employed a pair of servants, Paddy and Mary Donahue, a Catholic Irish couple originally from County Donegal, who cooked and cleaned and did the routine maintenance of the building. Unlike many of the mostly Irish servants of the New York upper class, Wells' servants were paid a reasonable living wage. A fact he had more than once been criticized for by his upper crust acquaintances, delivered with typical patrician hauteur, as setting a bad precedent. Often the same people who fervently supported the war to end slavery were loathe to pay their own servants a living wage.

There was a servants' apartment adjacent to the kitchen in Wells' home and one of the Irish servants sometimes stayed there for special occasions, such as a dinner party, but only occasionally since they had children living with Mary's mother, also with the ubiquitous Irish name of Mary, in an apartment near the fetid crime ridden tenements not far from the notorious Five Points. Living among and being part of them, the Donahues had their eyes and ears close to the ground in the tumultuous, tempestuous, impoverished and disease ridden world of the New York underclass. The Catholic Irish immigrants and the first generation Irish-Americans for whom the theoretical promise of liberty and equality of America was as empty as the pile of empty kegs behind the local taverns.

"I be tellin' ye, Mister Wells," Paddy said after Wells questioned him about the conditions in the Irish tenements. "Da Irish lads will no be a goin' off ter free dose black deevils. No w'en dey is starvin' in da ten'ments and treated wose dan da blacks. If da gover'mint tries to force 'em with that draf' law, there'll be big tro'ble fer sure. W'en da day come fer the drawin' of the names, I be warnin' ye, shure. Abide yerself safely in yer home. Do no betake yerself into da strehts. Dey'll see you ta be a gen'leman type whose can buy da tree hunerd dollar blod money exemp'on an' ye be shore ta be handl'ed rough." Samuel Rourke, who was with Wells when he questioned Donahue, listened to the Irishman's words. He took them seriously. Very seriously, since he had a well grounded feel for the New York Irish temper and mindset from his days in the Irish Brigade. The Irish had good cause to be in ferment. When he reported for duty to the Invalid Corps and Major Hanlon, Rourke was certain, there would be no easy time of it in the days ahead.

Which would prove to be as woefully monumental an understatement as that of the Roman official in Pompeii who declaimed that Vesuvius would never erupt.

July 5th arrived along with the wildly celebrated news of the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Samuel Rourke reported to Major Hanlon at the Invalid Corps barracks near the waterfront two days later. The Major, himself an Irishman and a combat veteran of the Irish Brigade, had his own sources among the roiling Irish masses. He looked, and was, jittery and nervous.

"We'll be having a rough time of it, Rourke," he said after they exchanged the, to them, at least, perfunctory formalities of salutes. "I've lost my only officer and senior non-com, who were sent to Pennsylvania with a militia unit to meet the Rebel invasion there, so I am putting you in charge of the few men I have, hardly fifty of them, and an unhealthy lot they are. Issue muskets and ammunition, see to it that they all have bayonets, and do your best to get them ready for the troubles ahead. There are police aplenty in this city, the Metropolitans, but I foresee them being hard pressed and needing our assistance. We need to be as prepared as we can be." He looked at Rourke, and Sam thought he looked deeply troubled. "I never thought I'd be preparing to make war upon my own people. These times are hard for a man to bear." Samuel Rourke nodded in his own conflicted understanding. He was a Southerner in the Union Army, his brothers were in the Confederate Army and his idealism had been crushed by reality. At times he was tempted to follow the lead of so many others, North and South, to abscond and head for the California gold fields. But he didn't. He couldn't. He was a Rourke. Good or bad, right or wrong, a Rourke. When challenged, or confronted, one thing was sure. For better, or for worse. Rourkes stood their ground.......

Even if it killed them.

While Sergeant Samuel Rourke went into the barracks to try to organize as best he could the marginal effectiveness of the fifty odd soldiers in the Invalid Corps, Major Hanlon sat alone at his desk, a glass of Irish whiskey in his hand. Major Hanlon was a first generation Irish American, his parents immigrants from County Clare. Though he had escaped the bitter poverty of the Irish tenements of New York, he retained numerous contacts there with family, friends and acquaintances high and low. He had no illusions about the real grievances of the New York Irish. They were crammed together in dimly lit, vermin infested, poorly ventilated tiny apartments and shanties, many thousands living in muddy cellars. Clean water was only a dream and sanitation almost non-existent as the trash and offal piled up in the streets and courtyards sometimes several feet high. Privies were few, nauseating, often overflowing, even into the streets where the effluvium mixed with garbage, trash and the droppings of the horses, pigs, cows and other animals that trod the streets. The filth was even worse near the numerous slaughter houses and butcher shops, where entrails were dumped into the alleys and streets and left to rot. Hardly one in four of poor Irish children would live past the age of five. The Irish were vilified by the white Protestants far more than the local blacks were, which the Irish hotly resented, and the large Irish families were barely able to survive on the wages they earned in their hard working 12 hour days at menial, low paying jobs. They had lost hope after the Union changed the overarching flavor of the war from reunification to emancipation. Be drafted to free the blacks, who would compete for their jobs, menial though they be, while their families starved on the pittance of a soldier's pay? The answer, increasing in intensity until it was an outraged roar, was NO!

And here he was, Marcus Hanlon, son of Irish immigrants who'd once lived in the fetid tenements, now charged with suppressing his own people. He scowled, smashed his fist on the table.

And swallowed his drink in a single angry gulp.

Less than half of Rourke's fifty convalescents in the Invalid Corps' tiny detachment in New York were combat veterans. Some were not fully recovered from their wounds, like Rourke. Others were permanently disabled but patriotically requested to remain in the Army until war's end. The others were recruits and support soldiers who had been injured in accidents or rendered marginally effective by one or other of the numerous killer diseases that ravaged the armies of both North and South. At least two of them had recurrent bouts of malaria. Rourke did what he could with the men--who he privately referred to as 'the fragile fifty'--but had little confidence they would amount to any serious obstacle to trouble when, no longer if but when, in Rourke's view, civic discord should raise it's contentious Irish head.

The battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg were past. The North rejoiced over the victories. New York City's reaction was mixed. The Republicans supported the war, the Democrats wanted to make peace with the South. The poorer classes of New York, mostly Irish with a scattering of others, wanted no part of a war to free the blacks, fearing that millions of freed slaves would come north and compete for their jobs, menial and low-paying though they were. The New York militia was gone, sent to the fighting at Gettysburg. Few troops remained in the city. The federal government in Washington, needing more bodies to replace the tens of thousands lost in the war, prepared to initiate the draft, a hotly resisted subject by the Democrats and especially the poor Irish. Knowing that there might be trouble, the government kept the date of the draft lottery drawing secret until just the day before, and even then it was not widely publicized. On July 11th some of the drums containing the names of all those registered in each district began to roll and blindfolded provost officers plucked the names of the unfortunate draftees from among the drums. Nothing much happened that first day. Then, making another major tactical blunder, the first one being that the draft began while the local troops were still at Gettysburg, the draft adjourned for the Sabbath on the morrow, intending to resume on the following Monday.

All day long on Sunday the Irish workers, many of whom were not working that day, grew more and more restive. The bars were open and the alcohol flowed freely, further fueling the struggling workingmen's anger. Demagogues and rabble rousers circulated among them, exhorting the angry Irish to take action against the draft, the refrain 'rich man's war, but poor man's fight' repeated over numberless times throughout the teeming tenements and shanties. In the taverns the slogans became exhortations. Resist!

"Are you to go off to fight to free the slaves, while your families starve," yelled one of the instigators, a man from Virginia who might have been a Confederate agent. Agent or not, he was a firebrand, one among a number of incendiary persons who became the leaders of what soon become a raging mob of angry, and often drunk, workingmen.

"A rich man can buy his way out of the draft with three hundred dollars," said the incendiary leaders. "And you go off to fight the rich man's war and leave your families in worse poverty that they already are!" These were inflammatory words indeed, but the sober minded, including even some Republicans, realized that the words were true. Immigrants, struggling to survive day to day, forced to fight and die in a war that was not of their doing and that they wanted no part of. They had already been incidents in New York where blacks had been brought in as strike breakers taking, as the Irish saw it, jobs away from the Irish workingmen. Rich men could buy their way out of the draft, Irishmen drafted to fight to free the slaves who they believed would take their jobs. And the sons of the rich, who were often the officers in the combat units, had the right to resign and leave the Army. Something the private soldiers could not do. They could be, and too often were, shot if they tried to desert and go home.

There was a pervasive, widespread anti-Catholic sentiment among the native born Protestants. Miserly wages, miserable living conditions in filthy, disease ridden slums and systemic prejudice against the Irish more virulent in New York than that against the blacks. A widespread belief among them that the federal government intentionally threw the Catholic Irish brigades into the heaviest combat to spare the non-Irish Protestant units the heavy casualties. The militia gone to Gettysburg. The city was a powder keg.

The spark that set it off was the draft begun on July 11th.

All hell broke out in New York City the next few days. Sergeant Samuel Rourke of the 29th Massachusetts, survivor of a half dozen battles and skirmishes, recovering from wounds and temporarily detailed to the Invalid Corps in New York City, was there. In the path of the howling mob of a human maelstrom.

And soon engulfed by it.

Major Hanlon's pallid complexion was even paler than normal. He looked worn and overwrought. His worst fears had burst from the cocoon of apprehension into a brutish reality as a surging mass of outraged Irish, women and some children as well as men, were attacking the draft offices and police stations, as well as numerous other buildings. They even had attacked the arsenal and were handing out weapons to the enraged crowds.

"It's a bloody full scale insurrection, Rourke," he growled at the sergeant as he came thundering into the Invalid Corp barracks. "The police are being overwhelmed. Take your troops to the street by the nearest station house to assist the police and restore order as best you can." A short pause. "But take care not to fire live ammunition. That will surely inflame them even more, as happened so many times in the past with the goddamn English." After Major Hanlon left, as Rourke was hurriedly organizing his men, James Chastain, the captain who'd collared him at the train station, came running into the room.

"Quick, you men," he said. "Get at it. We've got to stop those filthy Irish scum before they burn the city down. We need to keep them from crossing Broadway." Which, almost everyone there understood, meant keeping the rioters from the wealthy neighborhoods of New York, including Chastain's family home. He stared at the soldiers, his gaze settling to glare at Rourke.. "You! Make yourself useful, war dodger, get these men going." He wheeled and started for the door. No one followed. The soldiers all knew who he was and detested him for being the son of a powerful Republican politician who protected his son and kept him from combat. Something which the son did not even consider contesting. Chastain, seeing no one was following him, pivoted angrily on his heels and yelled at the soldiers.

"Did you hear me! Damn it! Get moving!" Rourke stepped forward, grabbing Captain Chastain's eye and holding it.

"We have our orders from Major Hanlon. Those are the orders we will obey." The captain, who was a bully as well as arrogant, grew so red in his face that some of the men whispered to one another that he looked as though the top of his head might blow off.

"Which," one of the soldiers, in a very low voice, said to another, "would make the world a better place fer damn sure." Chastain continued to rant.

"What! You cannot disobey a direct order. I'll have you court martialed. And more. To disobey a direct order in a crisis situation will get you in front of a firing squad."

"See you then, Captain," Rourke replied, turning to the soldiers, who were all watching with barely concealed glee the arrogant captain's bluff being called. "Come on men," Rourke said. "We have work to do." Rourke marched out of the barracks, the fifty convalescents following him, while Captain Chastain stood fuming, still red faced, his fists tightly clenched. His words, snarled as he stomped off behind the soldiers, fit his mood and the hard set glare on his face.

" _This isn't over, soldier_."

Captain Chastain stood rigid, jaws set tight in anger, as Sergeant Rourke led his tiny band of soldiers out onto the dangerous, riot torn streets of New York. After a few moments it dawned on him. He was alone. In a Yankee uniform in a Yankee barracks with anti-Yankee Irish rioters scouring the city for signs of the hated Yankees and their war and their unjust draft. Chastain's rigidity vanished in a chastened instant as he hurried after Rourke and the soldiers, thinking they would at least protect him even if they wouldn't listen to him.

They didn't have to go far. Less than a half mile away the soldiers encountered a tumultuous throng of Irish. Rourke was shocked to see so many women and children among them, threatening a bare dozen Metropolitan Police who had no firearms. Rourke called to the embattled police to get behind the soldiers as he lined up the troops across the street, blocking it.

"Fix bayonets," Rourke ordered. "But for God's sake don't shoot at them with live ammunition!" The crowd pushed up to with ten feet of the soldiers, the sight of the bayonets holding them at bay. Temporarily.

"Please!" Rourke yelled. "We do not want to hurt anyone. Please. Return to your homes before it is too late." As the crowd milled in front of the soldiers, indecisive and leaderless, Captain James Chastain pushed his way forward with his revolver drawn.

"This is the way to deal with this rabble!" He shouted. "Men! Fire upon them! Now!" Chastain fired four quick shots from his revolver and a raven haired firebrand of a teenage girl screamed as a bullet tore into her breast. The crowd exploded in rage. The thin blue line that tried to hold back the Irish flood was immediately engulfed.

Samuel Rourke among them.

### After Gettysburg

As Robert E. Lee led his battered Army of Northern Virginia from the debacle at Gettysburg back across the Potomac to Virginia, none of the four Rourke clan were among the bedraggled and begrimed long lines of Confederates. Michael Rourke and his cousin, Simon Rourke, lay where they had fallen. On the battle scarred slopes of Culp's Hill at Gettysburg. James Rourke was wounded on the same bloody slope and captured. Will Rourke had his horse shot out from under him, his leg caught under the dead weight of his beloved La Foudre and, unable to move, also captured. The pair of dead Rourkes on Culp's Hill would bloat under the July heat until burial details, sickened by their job and the overpowering stench of decay, unceremoniously threw their bodies along with dozens of their friends and comrades from Rockingham County in a mass grave marked only by a board with the scribbled words.....

76 Rebils beried here.

James Rourke was seriously wounded, shot in the side and left arm. A third, less serious wound, was a inch deep furrow alongside the outer edge of his right leg when a minie ball plowed through but, fortunately for James, if such a thing could even be called fortunate in his overall condition, the ball missed the major veins and arteries and did not touch the bone. Not so the other wounds. James' arm. And his side. Still dazed and groggy, as much from long days of hard marching and hours under the sun without food or water, and lost in a mist of pain, James was only dimly aware as he was carried to a Yankee aid station and left there. Laid down gently, he noticed, despite his disorientation, by the same pair of Yankees who had jumped over the breastworks to drag him out of the hailstorm of bullets. The passionless Gods of War were unimpressed. Neither of the courageous Yankees would survive the war.

James lay in some Gettysburg farmer's yard for he knew not how long, drifting in and out of consciousness, the welcome respite of being unconscious repeatedly broken by surges of intense pain. The July heat was chased away by a powerful thunderstorm that drenched the tangle of moaning wounded lying in the churned up dirt of the farmyard. Which soon became a sea of mud and increased the suffering of at least some of the wounded when they became chilled. One man, a bearded Confederate of around thirty years of age named August McTaggart, James' comrade in Company I of the 33rd and a neighbor of James' uncle Simon, lay next to James on the ground. He was gut shot and had suffered horribly, crying out and begging for someone to kill him and end his misery, until he, too, slid into the welcome grace of unconsciousness and died as James looked on in agitated impotent anger. He was far from the first man James had seen die, but this man's death struck him deeply. It was pointless. What utter goddamn folly! McTaggart dead, leaving a wife and orphans bereft of a husband, father, and, above all, provider and protector. Multiply this by the tens, nay, hundreds of thousands. All of these men dead and dying, North and South, men who were of the same people, men who left behind widows and orphans who would have a hard road ahead to merely survive. At that moment James Rourke had a moment of lucidity amidst the bursts of pain and spells of drowsiness. Whatever his fate would be as a Federal prisoner, he would never again pick up a rifle and go to war. And he wouldn't. As it turned out, not only wouldn't, couldn't.

It takes two arms to hold a rifle.

Treatment of the wounded on the Gettysburg battlefield was spotty. Some received treatment almost immediately. Others lay in the open, between the lines, for two or three days as the battle raged. For those who were retrieved and taken to Union aid stations and field hospitals, their fate remained unpredictable. Some surgeons were so overworked and overwrought with the deluge of prisoners that they labored mechanically, some shutting out the horror with alcohol, others with laudanum or morphine, cutting corners and doing shoddy work, as they tried to maintain some kind of focus and sanity dealing with the endless stream of broken bodies and broken lives.

The fate of Rebel wounded in Yankee hands was even more problematical. At some of the field hospitals the Rebel wounded had to wait until the Union injured were cared for. Many died horrible, painful deaths, untreated. Other aid stations and field hospitals treated casualties based not on their uniform color but on the severity, and whether they were treatable or not, of their injuries. Those with hopeless injuries, such as the hapless August McTaggart, were left to die in miserable solitude. Even had the Yankees wanted to help the dying Rebels, and there were some, there were not nearly enough medical orderlies to deal with those who might survive, much less attend to the dying. Many a young man, North and South, breathed his last in the Union aid stations and field hospitals during and after the Gettysburg battle. Many others would not long survive their wounds and would die in the weeks and months ahead.

James Rourke was only semi-conscious when he was picked up by Union medical orderlies and laid on a table. Through the fog of pain and weariness he could hear the Yankee surgeons talking, but couldn't quite make out what they were saying. He was about to try to ask what was happening when he felt something wet, like a cloth or bandage of some kind, placed over his mouth and nose. His body jerked in protest, but then he rapidly lost strength and resolve, to fade until there was nothing but blackness. He awoke some time later in excruciating pain and a dawning horror of what had happened. He tried to feel the bandage on his left side where he had been wounded. Then the horror hit him full force. He couldn't lift his left arm. His eyes shot down and to the left. He didn't have to go to Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond to be mutilated. The Yankees did the butchering.

His left arm was gone.

### Will Rourke

Prisoner of War

Will Rourke was an officer. In the rank and status conscious armies, as in the greater societies from which they sprang, he received different treatment from that of what was, often disparagingly, referred to as the common man. In the army common man meant common soldier. Strange as it might seem, Will Rourke, _Captain_ Will Rourke, was treated by the officers of the Union cavalry squadron that took him prisoner almost as though he were one of their own. He was not manhandled and stripped of his valuables and other useable possessions, as were the enlisted men who were captured. That would soon change. Not as drastically as with the enlisted men who were taken prisoner. But the farther away he was taken from the Union combat soldiers to the rear area soldiers who had seen little or no combat, his treatment, and that of all the other prisoners, became progressively rougher and more disagreeable. He saw one defiant Confederate soldier bayoneted in the arm by a skinny Union private not yet eighteen. Another soldier was knocked to the ground with a rifle butt when he protested the rough treatment.

Rourke was sent under guard to a prisoner collection point where the officers were winnowed from the enlisted men and sent to separate detention compounds. In Rourke's case, a huge barn reeking of urine and cow dung. From there a group of two hundred captured Confederate officers were marched, without food or water, for what he reckoned was at least thirty miles before halting. Along the way several of the officers, worn out from marching and battle, some lightly wounded, could not keep up and fell behind. Rourke had no idea what happened to them, though he had noticed the hostility of some of the guards, members of a raw Ohio militia unit recently Federalized and brought into service. Rourke offered a silent prayer for those officers who fell behind. And also for his own brothers, who he believed must have also been in the battle at Gettysburg. Before the battle he was told by an infantry officer, when Rourke asked about the Stonewall Brigade, that the Stonewall, and therefore also the 33rd, was with the army marching into Pennsylvania.

The captured Confederate officers were soon joined by another group of officer captives . Among the later group were numerous wounded, most of them lightly and still ambulatory, but a handful who were in worse shape. The ranking Confederate, a colonel with an arm wound who had somehow survived Pickett's doomed charge, took issue with the Yankees over the badly wounded Confederates being transferred with them.

"These men belong in a hospital, sir," the Rebel officer said to a Union major commanding the guard detail. "They have been mistakenly overlooked and sent here with the uninjured and lightly wounded. Can you not see them to a hospital?" The Union major, less than two weeks into his militia unit being federalized, was not yet dehumanized or brutalized by the war.

"I will see to it, Colonel," the youthful major said before motioning to some of his men to remove the seriously wounded Rebels from the mass of others. Rourke then witnessed one of those peculiar sights that popped up in this otherwise brutal and fratricidal war. The confederate colonel stood to attention and saluted the Union major.

"I salute you, sir, for your humanity." The Union major, surprised and somewhat embarrassed, give a tiny flicker of a smile and awkwardly returned the salute. Rourke noticed that several of the Union soldiers were frowning at the exchange and guessed that some among them would report their major to his superior for, as one put it, 'coddling those goddamn Rebel traitors.'

The Confederate prisoners were loaded onto an empty train of freight and passenger cars. From there they rode the rails through a handful of connections through the much better railroad system of the North. At times they were the butt of considerable abuse as the train passed through Northern cites and towns, other times watched with stolid hostility, still others looked upon with neutral curiosity or even sympathy in the former slave states of Maryland and Delaware. They eventually ended up near an island in the Delaware River on the Delaware coast. Pea Patch Island was the incongruous name for the location of a prisoner of war camp. On the island was a massive Federal fort. A place the mention of which brought strong apprehension, if not actual fear, to the most stalwart of Rebels.

Fort Delaware.

The prisoners did not go to the fort itself. They were herded, with no little rough hostility, into a compound of ramshackle barracks surrounded by high fences and divided between a larger area for the enlisted men and a smaller one for the officers. The highest ranking captured Confederates, such as General Jeff Thompson and a number of other generals and colonels, were housed in separate quarters where they received the preferential treatment both armies afforded to their highest ranking prisoners. For the rest of the prisoners, however, it was a very different reality. Including the lower ranking officers, the lieutenants, captains and a few majors, plus two colonels who refused preferential treatment. Captain Will Rourke was among this throng of Rebel officers. They would endure living in filthy conditions, crowded together, inadequately fed and housed, disease running rampant, hope dwindling by the day, civility giving way to despair and disinterest.

As they slowly wasted away the topic on everyone's minds distilled to a single subject. Food. Some of the officers received money from friends and relatives and could buy food supplements from the sutler. Others received food and clothing parcels from friends and relatives. They fared better than most. Those less fortunate had to use their wits and ingenuity to find ways to help them increase the odds of survival. Men who once would have been repelled by the idea now found themselves catching and eating rats to supplement their meager issue of rations. They were fed twice a day on substandard and inadequate food rendered even less nutritious and palatable by unscrupulous contractors and Yankee administrators and guards who appropriated for themselves much of the better quality items in the provisions.

Among the enlisted men it was worse. They had drafty quarters, too hot and infested with vermin in the summer, frigid in the winter. Many had only a single threadbare blanket. Many more were in filthy uniforms that were little more than tattered rags. Some were barefoot, even in winter. The sanitary conditions were among the worst in all of the prisons, North and South, of the war. Thousands of men dropping their body wastes every day, many with diarrhea, in long lines of hundreds of men waiting to use the fetid places they called latrines. The men's excreta mixed with the mud of the compound to make the place a stinking miasma of death and disease. Men died by the hundreds and, finally, the thousands. Some of the Yankees quietly, and some not so quietly, were gratified to see so many of the Rebels die 'without a shot being fired.' Other Yankees, though, were so disturbed by the misery and death that they were hard pressed to have normal lives after the war. And more than a few of the guards also succumbed to the diseases that ravaged the captured Rebels.

This was the world where Will Rourke went after Gettysburg. And not just him. He didn't know it, but his brother James had survived his amputation and other wounds and recovered enough in a hospital in Gettysburg to be discharged. He was also sent to a prisoner of war camp. The same one as his brother, though neither one knew it.

Fort Delaware.

### Samuel Rourke

New York

Samuel Rourke woke with a start to a wracking pain that seemed to come from every bone and muscle in his body. He had been badly beaten. His nose was broken, forehead lacerated, left arm possibly broken, his body covered with bruises. It took him a minute to focus, confused, until he remembered the riot and the crowd exploding in anger. They were all over him and then everything went blank. But.....where was he? It looked like someone's home. A very modest one. Tidy, but plain and obviously a home of someone in the struggling masses of the impoverished working class in New York. The crosses and cheap framed reproductions of Jesus and Mary and what he guessed were saints convinced him he was in the home of working class Catholic Irish. But who? And where? And, _why?_ He was in a bed, nearby was an unpretentious chest, a washstand, a chair and an open free standing clothes rack with both men's and women's clothes hanging on it.

"Ooh!" Samuel was startled when a face suddenly appeared over his prostrate form. A freckled little girl with hair the color of ripe carrots, soon joined by a second curious child, a scrawny boy with coal black hair and sparkling blue eyes. Then, an adult loomed over him. A familiar face! It was Paddy Donahue, the Irish servant at his friend Sanford Wells' home. But he certainly wasn't at Wells' home. This place was far too drab and plain compared to even the servants' lodgings--albeit relatively modest by his social standing--of his friend Wells.

"Tis our poor place, sir," said Donahue, recognizing his confusion. "We sees ya in da strehts when da mob run da soljer boys o'er. We brung ya here to our place before dey could do ya in proper." Mary Donahue appeared at the edge of Samuel's limited range of vision and joined her husband at his side.

"We tol' 'em ya was an Irisher named Rourke and dey backed off. We d'nay mention ya bein' Ulster." The husband chuckled.

"They'd a roasted ye alive, Ulster, if dey was knowin'!" He reached over to gently pat Rourke's shoulder. Despite the gentle touch, Rourke grimaced, his shoulder bruised to the bone. "I sent me brother Sean ta tells Mr. Wells that ya be wit us 'n safe." He paused, cocking his head to listen for sounds outside in the street. There was still a noticeable noisy commotion outside. "Safe, fer now, sir. But we best be gettin' ya outta here befer some low guttersnipe finds out dere be an Ulster soljer boy at the Donahue place. It'd go hard on ye---'n on us, too."

"I seen tings I wish to me mortal soul I'd never seen," Paddy said. "They chase down Cyrus Vert, a black man who rooms hereabouts and worked down t' da docks. They beats the poor man senseless, then strings him up on a lamppost and crazy dance around him, screaming and yelling and callin' da poor man a goddamn nigger as he chokes ta death."

"And t'warn't jes men. Womens and lil' ones too. All full o' hatred. Ooch, t'hurt me eyes to see it. Tho I knows da Irish have greht caus' ta be angry, it still made me feel shame fer me Irish, let me tell ya, sir. I knows we be better folk than that. The times, sir," Paddy said, sadly, mournfully. "We be pris'ners o' these times. The dev'l hisself be set loose amongst us." Paddy wasn't done with recounting his sour experiences.

"An da mob even burns da orphan place fer da black children. Burn da building down to nothin'. I seen the smokin' heap o' ruin meself. But da little ones did get out saf'. Thank you, God, fer dat small piece a' salvation!" Rourke's mind was clearing now, even with the pain, but he wasn't about to say anything. Later, after two glasses of the only anesthetic Donahue had, a cheap but effective Irish whisky, when the pain was not so immediate and distracting, the subject slipped back into his mind. And stayed there. Where was God in all this madness?

He had long past begun to have grave doubts about a God who would let this abomination of a war continue. It was a question he had no answer for. There were those who tried to explain God's role in the war, but Rourke considered them to be just another species of demagogue who were full of empty words devoid of wisdom or meaning. Such as the ones who'd manipulated and mesmerized the nation into the insanity of fratricide. Samuel could not abide the thought of a Godless universe. But where in this seemingly Godforsaken war was the grace, the salvation, the soothing hand of Divinity? In small things, true. Yankee soldiers helping Rebel wounded. Matrons volunteering to face misery and disease by ministering to the wounded and sick. There were many, even countless, such instances of compassion and selflessness. In the particular. But in the larger view? The mass slaughter, terrorism in the borderlands, families ripped apart, farms and businesses and ways of life destroyed? Where was God in all that? Samuel grumbled, grimaced and did what he always did with such thoughts. Forced his mind onto a different subject. Which was not at all difficult. Not this time.

Not with the liquor wearing off and the pain coming back.

Paddy Donahue's cousin Sean made it to Wells' house with some difficulty, being three times stopped by police who demanded to know, with balled fists and menacing glares, what he was doing. He told them the truth and, except for the one officer assigned to accompany him, both to assist and to verify his story, they let him pass. The single officer, who was skeptical but not hostile, insisted on accompanying Sean to Sanford Wells' home, where a brief conversation verified the Irishman's mission. The officer, who was himself Irish, conflicted between his sense of duty and his Irish identity and distraught over the havoc the rampaging mob had wrought, quickly arranged an escort to go with Wells to retrieve Samuel from the seething Irish tenements around Five Points. Depending on his condition, they would either bring Samuel to Wells' home or to a hospital.

It was not yet noon when a police detail with an ambulance arrived outside the Donahue's humble flat and loaded a surprised and very grateful Samuel Rourke into the ambulance. After a few words between the Donahues, the police and Wells, it was decided. Because the hospitals were swamped with the injured from the rioting, Wells chose to take Samuel to his home and summon his own personal physician and close friend, Wellington Vandiver, to come to his home to tend to Rourke's injuries. Three hours later Rourke was in a bed at Well's home and the physician was examining him.

"You're a lucky man, Sergeant Rourke," the physician said after carefully examining Samuel's injures. Much more carefully, and thoroughly, Samuel was thinking, than the army doctors he'd encountered. Another perquisite of the wealthy and highly placed of society. In other circumstances he might have been critical. But not now. He was grateful for the competent professional care. "Nothing broken besides your nose," Dr. Vandiver said. "The nose and cartilage are not out of place and it'll heal by itself." He waggled a friendly admonitory finger at Rourke, and also glanced over at Wells, who had stood close by throughout the examination. "Your body is much compromised by the beating, Sergeant," the doctor cautioned. "You must rest for a good while." Samuel, as a soldier, knew he just couldn't take time off to recuperate without permission, was quick with a question.

"How long, sir?"

"Two weeks. Minimum." Samuel thought for a moment, considering the confused situation where he was already on a convalescent leave but had been ordered to the Invalid Corps by the acerbic Captain Chastain. He made a request.

"Would you please write this down so I can submit it to my commanding officer?" The physician, whose own son was a surgeon with Union Army of the Potomac, understood well enough the attitudes of some of the more rigid officers in the military.

"Of course, Sergeant. I'll write it up today. Shall I have it delivered? And to whom?" Wells interjected.

"I'll pick it up at your surgery, Wellington, and take it to Sam's commanding officer myself." And that was it. Simple enough.

Or so it seemed.

### Fort Delaware Prisoner of War Camp

Lieutenant Leland Covington

Will Rourke set off one mild afternoon to walk the length of the officers' barracks at Fort Delaware. He had never ventured to the far end, the nauseating pestholes they called latrines, the water point and mess hall were all close to his end of the compound. For whatever reason, to get a bit of exercise, to change the monotony of scenery, if only a little, he set out for the far end of the compound. As he approached it a single ragged figure detached himself from the crowd of prisoners in the prison yard and waved animatedly at Will and hobbled towards him.

"Rourke!" A sallow faced scarecrow, a shadowy vestige of the man who once was, but still with his measured and cultivated Southern drawl, held out his scrawny hand. "Do you remember me?" He grasped and held on to Rourke's hand. "I'm Leland Covington. I was a first lieutenant in the 1st Virginia. Wounded and captured on the Peninsula after Malvern Hill. Been a prisoner ever since." Rourke's mind grabbed a string of observations and realizations. Lieutenant Covington looked like he was starving to death. When he made his febrile attempt to smile his gums looked raw and sore, a symptom of scurvy. Rourke also noticed the too thin lieutenant's left leg seemed shorter than the right one. Likely a wound from the ferocious fighting around Malvern Hill in the Seven Days battles that drove the Yankees from the gates of Richmond. He also figured, noting his cultivated speech and studied dignity, that the lieutenant was from the aristocracy. Probably a family of rich planters. Not much caring for the aristocracy and the planter class, Rourke was a little surprised that he found himself thinking he was somehow going to be connected to this unhealthy looking Southerner of the gentleman class.

"I see you are now a captain," Covington continued.

"A mixed blessing," Rourke replied. "Seems that being an officer made me a tempting target."

"We can certainly agree on that subject, sir," Covington said as he slapped his bad leg with a surprising vigor, considering the man's decrepit physical condition. Then a look of utter astonishment washed over Rourke's face. Covington. Leland Covington. Of course!

"How could I forget this! You were the officer who shot that Yankee who was about to skewer me from behind during the Peninsula fighting! You saved my life!" Despite Rourke's astonished and apologetic words, the actual fact was that in the chaos of the battle he never got a good look at the Rebel officer who saved his life. Only later did one of his troopers tell him the officer's name. Covington. Leland Covington. Of the very aristocratic and well connected Virginia Covingtons. It all came back to Rourke in a jumble of confused, and somewhat conflicting, memories. Will Rourke was no friend of the aristocracy, be they Yankee capitalists or Southern planters. Both self serving groups exploited the workers, whether slaves or laboring under the euphemism of free labor. Another reason this goddamned war should never have been fought. Let the bastards who caused it fight it our among themselves and leave the common people out of it. But, yet....Damn! Here was another of those goddamn conundrums of life. Will Rourke looked with no little confusion and discomfort at the rich Southern aristocrat who had saved his life. Covington spoke first.

"As to saving you life, you are welcome, sir, and I am sure you would do the same." Covington said in his soft, cultivated Virginia drawl, again showing his diseased gums in an attempt at a wan smile. At that moment the realization came thundering into Will Rourke's head like one of Jeb Stuart's irresistible cavalry charges in the Virginia battles. This man had saved his life. Now it was Will's turn. Whit Jackson would probably have said something like, 'damn yer eyes, ye struttin' pestercrat,' to Covington. But not Will Rourke. He believed there was a reason for most everything, though he didn't couch it in any kind of mystical or religious sense. And this was the reason he was in this Yankee hell hole of a prison. To return the favor. To save the life......

Of the wasted, skeletal scion of Southern aristocratic entitlement and the slave holding planter class, Lieutenant Leland Covington.

One of life's inscrutable enigmas had blindsided Will Rourke yet again.

### Captain Llewellyn Jones

Though many, even most, of the wealthier, often aristocratic, Virginia Confederate officers imprisoned at Fort Delaware received parcels from their relatives, Leland Covington received nothing. The reason was a very personal one. Intensely personal. Covington was a student at Harvard when Virginia seceded and immediately withdrew to return to Virginia. His roommate at Harvard, Llewellyn Jones, initially a close friend, was a fervent Republican and abolitionist and the two had many heated discussions about state's rights and slavery in the year before the war started. Like the country itself, the confrontation escalated. Llewellyn Jones took it deeply personal that his friend and roommate would desert the union to join, as he put it, 'those wretched slave masters and traitors.' As Leland Covington was packing to leave, he and Jones got into the most heated of all their arguments. It devolved into violence when Jones blew up and attacked Covington. The Virginian, young and vigorous and a natural athlete, soundly whipped Jones, finished his packing and was gone South without another word between them. Jones never forgot the humiliating beating. Or what he considered his former friend and roommate's treasonous embracing of the secessionists' cause.

Jones was now Captain Llewellyn Jones.

The quartermaster officer in charge of, among other things, incoming parcels for the Rebel prisoners at Fort Delaware.

Though his family managed to send Covington a number of parcels of food, clothing, money and miscellaneous items, none of it reached him. Jones intercepted all of the parcels, keeping the choicest bits for himself and giving the rest to others. Including to Rebel prisoners willing to inform on their fellows. Other Rebel officers knew what was going on, complained to the prison authorities about it, but the commandant, Brigadier General Albin Francisco Schoepf, a disgruntled European-born combat soldier who had served in the armies of three different nations, was largely disinterested in the daily affairs of the camp and seemed to pay little attention to them. The other Rebels then attempted to help Covington but Jones made it clear that if they aided Covington they would soon find themselves in a similar predicament. Still, some of the Rebel officers tried to help Covington by covertly slipping him food, clothing and small personal items, but Jones heard about that from his informant in Covington's circle and initiated a policy of unannounced searches that somehow always seemed to catch Jones with his recently acquired so-called contraband. Which was forthwith seized.

Will Rourke sniffed out what was happening soon enough and personally made an appeal to the prison authorities. No one listened. Rourke was far too stubborn to give up easily and he did not take long to figure out who the officer was among Covington's circle who was informing on him, and others, to Captain Jones. The informant was a young lieutenant from South Carolina, Charles Waltham, a bookish young man who far preferred the library to the field and the dinner table to the campfire, but who had been pressured into joining the Confederate Army by his prominent slave-owning family.

"It simply will not do for my son to sit out this war when others go off to fight and die!" Thundered the young man's overbearing father. The son reluctantly joined the army and almost jumped at the chance to be taken prisoner and avoid the privations and the slaughter as soon as the opportunity arose at Second Manassas. His diffident attitude was discerned by Captain Jones, who easily converted him to be an informer with the promise of special favors and extra parcels, supposedly from his family, reinforced with a thinly veiled threat to intercept Waltham's own parcels should he not cooperate. Some of the parcels Waltham received were actually from Covington's family, though their origin was concealed. He was not the only scion of a wealthy family who received an unusual number of parcels, so suspicion was not immediately aroused. But Will Rourke had deep experience with duplicitous persons in the west and soon identified the informant. He cornered Waltham and had a very one-sided, heated conversation with him that permanently put the fear of Rourke into the waffling Waltham.

"Either you cooperate with me, or I'll tell the others you have been informing on them. You wouldn't last a day once they found out." His stout index finger bore into the man's quivering chest. "And even if your Yankee friends rescue you, word will still get back to your family that you were a traitor and an informer on your own people." From that day on Captain Jones' unannounced searches for contraband only discovered what the Rebel prisoners wanted them to find. All of the officers who received packages, and even some who didn't, slipped Covington extra food. Within a week Leland Covington was already looking healthier.

Several weeks later Covington was almost as healthy as the majority of the prisoners--which could only be called 'healthy' within the overall unhealthy context of the prison. Captain Jones had grasped something was going on but couldn't find a way to discover or stop it. He had his own stubborn streak, actually closer to vindictive than stubborn, and wasn't about to be thwarted. He pondered a number of new ways to get at Covington. When he finally settled on a plan he told no one--but for a single man.

One drizzly early fall day Covington, whose wounded leg healed badly and left him with a crippled, shuffling gait, was returning from the latrines. An acceptable word in ordinary discourse for the reality of the gruesome fecal pits they called sinks. A negro guard yelled out to him to move quicker. His wound kept him from moving any faster.

"Move faster!" Yelled the guard. "Now!" Covington tried, but was physically unable to go any faster. "You was warned, cracker!" A single rifle shot rang out.

Leland Covington fell, mortally wounded.

Almost immediately dozens, then scores, then hundreds of prisoners gathered near the body, shaking their fists and screaming.

"Murderer! Murderer! For shame!" The black guard recoiled in fright, his weapon empty, but several dozen other black soldiers, suspiciously close by, rushed to his side, brandishing bayonets on loaded rifles. Among them were numerous former slaves, as well as free blacks, who had a firmament of personal axes to grind. It was, everyone recognized, an explosive situation teetering precariously on the very edge of violence. Will Rourke pushed his way to his dying friend's side and held his head in his lap as Covington breathed his last.

"Get back you damned Rebel," yelled a white officer who commanded the black soldiers, a fervent abolitionist who hated the South and all things Southern, and harbored a nasty vehemence towards the Rebel prisoners at Fort Delaware. He didn't need much of an excuse to shoot. "Or you'll be next," he snarled. Rourke hard eyed him.

"Then shoot me, sir, in front of all these witnesses, but I will not leave my dying friend's side." The Yankee officer, aware that too many people would see him murder Rourke, kept his finger on the trigger of his Colt revolver but did not pull it tight. Just then a Confederate major, a minister and college professor before the war who had been a chaplain in Hood's division and also captured at Gettysburg, stepped forward. Major Hughes Blackburn, well liked and respected by the Rebels, the Yankee guards and even some of the black soldiers, now stood in front of the Confederates to try to quiet the tempestuous throng of outraged Rebel officers and defuse the volatile confrontation.

"Go back to your barracks, men," he said with a strong, but reassuring, voice of authority. "There is nothing to be gained from more bloodshed." He gestured with his one good arm towards the barracks. "Go back. Go back. We will try to resolve this peacefully." Reluctantly, grumbling, all but a few slowly retraced their steps to the hovels the Yankees called barracks. The major returned his attention to the Yankee officer, who was so agitated his face was flushed and his pistol wavering in the air pointed at Blackburn. He was about to pull the trigger when another Confederate officer stepped forward.

"Major Blackburn's cousin is Mary Todd. Mary Todd of Kentucky. Mary Todd Lincoln. The wife of Abraham Lincoln. Do you really want to shoot this man? No one will step forward to defend you and you will certainly be hanged." Will Rourke looked up at that moment, Leland Covington having finally breathed his last, and was astounded at what he saw. There, among the black soldiers. A sergeant. A man he knew. Reuben! It was Reuben, the slave and body servant of Captain Lane Davis in the early days of the war. The same man Rourke had encouraged to break the chains of slavery and go North. Which he plainly must have done. Rourke rose to his feet, moving next to Major Blackburn and the other officer. He pointedly looked at Reuben, who was the non-commissioned officer overseeing the colored troops. Reuben recognized him. Rourke nodded. Reuben nodded. And Reuben then turned to calm his agitated soldiers, some of whom were on the edge of firing no matter what anyone said. Further bloodshed was averted. Just barely, but averted.

Funerals for Rebels who died at Fort Delaware were hardly common. That of Leland Covington was the rare exception. The commandant of the prison, Brigadier General Albin Francisco Schoepf, paid enough attention in this instance to grasp the controversial and incendiary nature of the situation and allowed a half dozen of Covington's friends and comrades to accompany his body to a marked grave and have a short service over his earthly remains.

A few days later Will Rourke was summoned to the provost marshall's office at Fort Delaware. He was directed into a room with a single occupant. A Union sergeant. A black union sergeant. The former slave once known simply as Reuben. Rourke was mildly surprised when Reuben held out his hand. Rourke took it and they shook hands, provisionally, then firmly, knowing the huge implications of that not so simple handshake.

"Well, Reuben, you obviously took my advice. And you're fighting for your freedom, too. I have to admire that, even if you are on the side of the enemy. I can hardly fault that, since my own brother wears the Union blue." A pause. "What do you call yourself now? Reuben what?" A smile touched Reuben's face.

"Freeman. Reuben Freeman. Reuben..... _Free Man!_ " Rourke chuckled.

"And that you are. I thank you heartily, Reuben Freeman, for helping to calm that mess after Lieutenant Covington's death. It could have been a lot worse." Reuben nodded.

"Came close, damn sure. My boys were itchin' to shoot some crackers. " He took a step closer, his face seeming to Rourke almost conspiratorial. "I hear tell that the dead Reb be your friend. That true?"

"Yes. I owed him my life." Reuben, in another of life's disjointed peculiarities, was unusually well educated for a former slave and had an easy command of both spoken and written English. His former masters, the Davises of the Shenandoah, had once groomed him to be their connection with the bulk of their slaves, a kind of slave overseer. The Davises had backed off when Reuben showed too many signs of independence and it dawned on them that educating a slave was not such a wise idea for a slave owner. Reuben devolved to Lane Davis' body servant, but they could not take away his command of English.

Reuben had a shrewd and active brain and was working over something in his mind before he put it into words.

"We knew about the way Cap'n Jones was doin' the man. Were it just 'tween white folks, I'd not give a blue damn. But, seein' it was you, I need to tell you what I know." Rourke was silent, though he was keenly aware he was going to hear something that would further roil his already shaky equilibrium.

"That soldier who shot your friend, name of Moses Tidwell, was promoted to sergeant that same week." Reuben leaned even closer, his voice dropping low, towards Rourke. "I am certain that Cap'n Jones bribed Tidwell to shoot your friend." A short pause while his mind searched for the right words. "We were direct ordered by Cap'n Jones to be nearby before your friend was shot. Being nearby was no kind of coincidence, I'm thinkin' the Cap'n was behind it." As Rourke was digesting this, and his anger starting to rise towards the boiling point, Sergeant Reuben Freeman had even more jarring things to say.

"I got Tidwell drunk two nights past and he confessed the Cap'n had him shoot the man." Freeman stepped back, looking relieved.

"You done me good, Cap'n Rourke, and I owed you this."

"Thank you, Sergeant Freeman," Rourke said, actually snapping a salute of gratitude to the man, then changing the subject to the personal between them. "And I am mighty pleased to see you doing so well." A glower spread over Freeman's face. And stayed there..

"Not so well's you might think. The Yankees talk good but they don't back it up much. Black soldiers be paid less than white ones, we have white officers over us, our barracks be worse than the white boys and we have little medical care. A black soldier down with one of those badass killer diseases don't stand much chance. The run o' the Northern white folk aren't much better than the Southers. They don't like us and lots o' em call us niggers to our faces. We still be second class citizens. White folk don't want to mix with us. Try even talkin' to a white girl and the next thing you know you be hangin' from a branch of a sour apple tree. We know that a good many white soldiers have their way with the freed slave girls, be the girls willing or not, and as often as not go unpunished. Emancipation sounds good, but it doesn't put food in our chillen's bellies or bring notions of equality to the hearts of the white folks." The glower on his face graded into a kind of sadness.

"Fact is, Cap'n Rourke, the black folk still have a long, long way to go."

Will Rourke parted from Sergeant Reuben Freeman with mixed feelings. He realized that Freeman wasn't exaggerating about the plight of the blacks. He had heard enough stories and anecdotes to know that it was all too true. Rourke was nevertheless happy the man had the fragment of freedom he was able to grab. But the one overarching fact that Rourke carried away from their conversation was a name. A name that burned into his soul with the intensity of a hot iron branding a maverick steer. A name he could not, would not, ever forget. The man behind the murder of Lieutenant Leland Covington.

Captain Llewellyn Jones.

Sergeant Moses Tidwell stood in front of Captain Llewellyn Jones, his eyes downcast, hiding his former slave's intense resentment at being upbraided by a white man even if he was Tidwell's commanding officer. Jones had heard some gossip about Tidwell getting drunk with Sergeant Freeman and talking too much. He had also heard that a Rebel officer named Rourke and the same sergeant Tidwell drank with, his lead sergeant, Reuben Freeman, met privately in one of the provost marshal's rooms. This Rourke was the same man who defied the guards to jump to the dying Lieutenant Covington's side and cradle his head as he died. Jones was watching from a nearby building and saw Rourke with Covington. He called Sergeant Tidwell in to his office to try to find out exactly what was going on.

"Did you say something to Sergeant Freeman about our, er, shall we say private arrangement?" Tidwell wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was clear enough that he might have screwed up big time.

"I mighta said somethin', sir," Tidwell said in a low, nervous voice. "I got me a mean drunk on and don' rightly 'member what I said." Further questioning of Tidwell didn't clear things up any further. Jones did later learn, from another black soldier who didn't realize he was being pumped for information, that this Rourke character and Sergeant Freeman were acquainted in Virginia long before they both arrived at Fort Delaware. Jones was certain the meeting meant trouble for him. Big trouble. He knew what he had to do. That same week Sergeant Tidwell was transferred to a brigade of colored US infantry and would die less than a year later at the Battle of Chaffin's Farm in Virginia. Sergeant Freeman was soon transferred to a team recruiting former slaves and other blacks for enlistment in the United States Colored Infantry.

William Rourke's fate came even sooner. Two days after Jones realized how dangerous Rourke was to him the wily Yankee captain added Rourke's name to a group of Rebel officers slated to be moved to the Union prison camps at Rock Island in far off Illinois, hoping Rourke would be among the hundreds of Rebel prisoners who died of smallpox and pneumonia in the foul weather and unsanitary conditions of the camp. And Rourke might well have died there, as did close to 2000 other Rebels, had he ever arrived at the camp. But he didn't. Arrive. When the prisoner transport finally arrived at Rock Island Confederate Captain William Rourke was nowhere to be found. Three of the Rebel officers being transported to Rock Island bribed their guards to under report the number of prisoners by three. During the first night the prison train sped through the night from Delaware to Maryland and into Pennsylvania the three Rebels slipped off the train somewhere in the dark countryside and made their escape. Will Rourke was one of the three.

In little more than a week he was back in the saddle as a Confederate cavalryman. He had no idea that among the thousands of Rebel officers and enlisted men left behind at Fort Delaware was his own brother. James Rourke healed enough in the Gettysburg hospital to be transferred to the hospital at Fort Delaware. A hospital considered by those who knew with even more dread than the sprawling Chimborazo Confederate hospital in Richmond. He arrived at Fort Delaware before Will was sent west, though neither were aware of each other's presence. James Rourke was soon aware of something else. The grim reputation of Fort Delaware's hospital. Not long after Will Rourke mounted a horse to rejoin the Confederate cavalry, his youngest brother, James, was being carried into Fort Delaware's hospital. Not the main hospital. A separate building. A quarantine building. The Yankees called if the Smallpox Ward.

The prisoners called it the Death House.

### Court Martial

New York 1863

After the draft riots in New York Samuel Rourke's good friend Sanford Wells called at the medical offices of his own friend and personal physician, Dr. Wellington Vandiver, a cultivated man descended from the original Dutch inhabitants of New York from the distant days when it was known as New Amsterdam. His mission was to pick up the doctor's diagnosis and strong recommendation that Samuel Rourke needed at least two weeks to recuperate from his serious injures. Wells thanked Vandiver and took his carriage to the Invalid Corps barracks to deliver the Doctor's orders to Major Marcus Hanlon. He went to Hanlon's office, knocked on the open door and was invited in with a curt wave of the officer's hand. Wells was taken aback when he saw that Hanlon, too, had been soundly beaten. His left arm was in a sling, his eyes blackened, a bandage on one of his ears.

"Good God, sir!" Wells exclaimed. "Did the mob get at you, too?" The man behind the desk looked sourly back at Wells.

"Well, what the hell does it look like to you? They damn well did beat the hell out of me, those Irish scum!" Wells was taken aback again. The Irishman Hanlon calling his own people scum? Then he had a sudden realization that sent his spirits plummeting into the pit of his stomach. He had just recognized the man behind the desk. He was the son of a prominent New York Republican politician, Berwood Chastain. This wasn't Major Hanlon. It was Captain James Chastain, the same man who had tried to countermand Major Hanlon's orders during the rioting and had precipitated the disastrous overwhelming of Rourke's soldiers when he rashly opened fire on the rioters with his revolver.

"You are Captain Chastain, sir?" Wells said, almost stammering. "Where is Major Hanlon?" A scowl from Chastain.

"The mob damn near killed him. He is in a coma and not expected to recover. That is why I'm here. Despite my injuries, I was ordered to take this command." Wells' spirits drooped even further. He silently debated whether or not to give Chastain Dr. Vandiver's diagnosis and recommendation. There was no choice. Chastain was now in command. He handed the Doctor's medical diagnosis to Chastain. "I brought this here on behalf of Sergeant Samuel Rourke, who was severely beaten by the mob and is recovering at my home." A light seemed to Wells to switch on inside of Chastain's eyes. He leered with those bright eyes at Wells.

"Rourke! He is alive? And at your place?"

"Yes," Wells answered, uneasily. "That he is."

"And where exactly are your quarters, sir?

"Why do you ask?" Wells countered, growing ever more uneasy at Chastain's hostile behavior. Chastain would have leaped to his feet in excitement, were his body still not so sore.

"Because Sergeant Samuel Rourke is to be court martialed and will be arrested immediately!"

"Court martialed?" Wells stammered. "You can't be serious. The man is a hero." Chastain did then manage to struggle to his feet. He leaned towards Wells, his face livid with anger.

"Rourke disobeyed a direct order in the face of the enemy! He _will_ be court martialed!" In his agitation he pounded his free hand on his desk, grimacing and instantly regretting the gesture, but even more adamant in his determination to punish Sam.

"Rourke will soon face a firing squad!"

Sanford Wells barely had time to return home before Chastain's provost guards arrived to arrest Samuel Rourke. As the guards hauled out the injured but volubly protesting Rourke, Wells confidently reassured his astounded, struggling friend. "

"I will attend to this travesty, Sam," he said as Rourke was pulled forcibly through the door. "That bastard will not get away with this!" After Rourke was gone Wells collapsed into a chair, his head in his hands. The Chastains, and their allies, were very powerful people in New York, known to be both clever and ruthless. Wells was not nearly as confident as he pretended to be to Rourke.

He was, in fact, profoundly, deeply, nail bitingly worried.

### The Rourke Farm

The Rourke farm in Rockingham County, Virginia, plunged into an unremittingly deep gloom. Michael Rourke. Dead. Simon Rourke. Dead. Simon's sister' Jasmine's husband, Andrew Hanley, already long dead at First Manassas. James Rourke. Wounded and taken prisoner. Will Rourke. Missing. Samuel Rourke. No news of any kind from him since his unit went to Kentucky. Peter and Sarah Rourke's son-in-law, Dick Riley, husband of their daughter Susan, survived Gettysburg but was wounded in a skirmish near Winchester a month later and was degenerating into a demoralized pain-wracked one-legged cripple soon to be invalided out of the army.

Sarah Jackson Rourke was a strong woman who had endured hardships bravely and stoically. But this? This was too much. Far too much. All of her sons, all four of them, dead, wounded or missing. Her son-in-law a despondent cripple. Her nephew Simon, an only son, dead. Simon's brother-in-law, Andrew Hanley, a favorite of Sarah's with his light-hearted humor, also dead. His widow, Jasmine, hardly more than a girl, was inconsolable at the loss of her husband and her only sibling. Peter and Sarah Rourke's daughter, Susan, was also nearly inconsolable between the tragedies of her brothers and worry about her crippled soldier husband. And, the worst part of it?

The Rourkes weren't alone.

Up and down the Shenandoah Valley shattered, broken hearted families wept for their lost loved ones. Crippled veterans were common sights already midway through the war. The only exceptions to the butchery were some among the pacifist members of the Dunker and Mennonite faiths who did not believe in war or slavery, although the latter was true of many others in the Valley who nonetheless served. Some of the Pacifists were eventually allowed to buy exemptions based on their documented faith. Others provided or paid for substitutes. Still others fled north to avoid conscription. Some who did not flee were conscripted and forced into the army. Others, through the offices of sympathetic Confederate men of influence, such as Stonewall Jackson, were conscripted but allowed to enter non-combat units as hospital orderlies or teamsters. There were among the pacifists some who were so adamant in their beliefs that they refused to cooperate in any way with the military and therefore faced a variety of consequences, for the most part--usually temporary--incarceration or confiscation of property. More common, however, were men who paid the fines, grumbling under their breath, but nevertheless paying.

"Paying a fine of three hundred dollars!" Simon Rourke said bitterly to one of the pacifist Mennonite farmers, Herman Falk, who lived near him and was complaining about having his horses confiscated and being forced to pay a fine. "How does that compare to losing a son to the war!" Simon, a hothead like his nephew James, unlike Simon's even-tempered brother, Peter, came close to punching the Mennonite who was whining about being fined for resisting the Confederate government's conscription law. Even equable Peter, had he been there, would have been moved to anger by the whining Mennonite. "Where is your son, Herman?" Simon spit out. "Fled north to avoid the war." Simon balled his fist and raised it, though he didn't strike the man. "Who remains to protect you from the Yankees when they come?"

"They will not molest me," Herman Falk said in a voice that was shaky, but nevertheless confident. "I did not support this evil war and will tell them so." Simon was surprised when the pacifist Falk balled and raised his own fist, shaking it in Simon's face.

"The Yankees will not bother me."

Herman Falk would be in for an unpleasant surprise.

### Christmas 1863

Minnesota--The Hanging

On Christmas Day in 1863 thirty-eight Dakota Indians, most of them from the Santee Mdewakanton and Wahpekute bands, prepared to die. The next day all of them, all 38, would be hanged in the town of Mankato, Minnesota, in what would be the largest mass hanging in American history. Many hundred of whites, the curious and the vengeful, gathered to watch the executions. Close to three hundred others, originally also condemned to death, were spared the death penalty. Abraham Lincoln, although told he could count on more votes in the upcoming 1864 elections if he hanged all of the Dakota originally convicted and urged by vengeful Minnesotans to hang them all, refused. Hang men to get votes? Not Abraham Lincoln. Saved or not, the men remained in prison, many for two or more years. One third of those saved from the gallows would never be free men again. They died in prison. Another bitter fact was that many, probably most, of the Dakota most guilty of atrocities during the Dakota War did not surrender. They escaped to the west, some to be absorbed into the numerous bands of Sioux ranging far into the west. Others fled to Canada.

Which is where two of the leaders of the Sioux war, Shakopee and Medicine Bottle, were that Christmas of 1863. In a Dakota camp safely, so they thought, inside Canada. Shakopee in particular was a wanted man by the whites. He had been one of the most vociferous of the Dakota leaders inciting the Dakota to war. A U.S. military officer named Hatch stationed with his troops on the U.S. side of the border offered to pay a bounty to anyone who would kidnap Shakopee and Medicine Bottle and spirit them across the border to Minnesota. A pair of deceitful, greedy Canadians, who knew the wanted Dakotas, lured them under false pretenses to a promised meeting with Canadian officials at Fort Gary, Canada, to discuss annuities. En route they stopped at the home of one of the Canadians where the Canadians plied the unwary Dakota chiefs liquor that might have been laced with laudanum. Once the Indians were insensate they were further subdued, strapped to sleds and taken secretly across the border to be delivered to the U.S. military in early January of 1864.

Major Hatch, the officer who had offered the bounty, apparently without authorization, likely thought the pair of captured fugitive Dakotas a heartily received belated Christmas present.

In November of 1865, nearly two years after being kidnapped, Shakopee and Medicine Bottle, after another mockery of a trial, were hanged in St. Paul.

The government eventually paid the pair of treacherous Canadians a bounty of $1000.

### The War

1863 slid into 1864. A few months into 1864 and the war would last but one more year. Except for the war profiteers, almost everyone was hoping it would end soon. A negotiated peace, the South hoped, granting them independence from the Union. Total victory, the North hoped, and the South returned to the Union. The latter would eventually prevail, but the full reunification would not be a matter of a year or two, but of generations. Especially for those huge areas of the South and border states where warfare approached the total war that would characterize future wars. Yankee General Sherman's taking of Atlanta and destructive march to the sea would be long remembered. Not so widely remembered, except by those in his path, was that of a different Yankee general. Sheridan. Not in Georgia. In Virginia. The Shenandoah Valley. The summer of 1864 would bring down upon the Rourkes of Virginia, and especially their oldest son, Will, disasters beyond their wildest fears.

### Minnesota

Whit Jackson and his Dakota son-in-law, Lance, had ridden with Sibley's army into the Dakota territory in 1863 to punish the Sioux and drive them from the frontier. The results were mixed at best. The Dakota continued to raid into Minnesota. The following year a regular Union general, Alfred Sully, was tasked with decisively defeating the Sioux in the Dakota Territory and ending whatever menace remained from them. Once again Whit Jackson and his son-in-law, Lance, were asked by Whit's old friend, Major Moses Taylor, to help guide and scout for the military expedition. Whit and Lance agreed, contingent, as the year before, on a squadron of Union cavalry being stationed at their ranch and farm, Antrim, which had already endured one all out assault by the Dakota and a half dozen minor incidents since then from small groups of recalcitrant elusive hit and run Dakota raiders. Major Taylor, with the concurrence of the authorities in Saint Paul, readily agreed to Whit's conditions, as they had the year previous.

This time, as Whit and Lance rode out from Antrim for yet another scouting expedition with the army, things would remain the same as the previous year for those who stayed behind at the ranch. Whit's grown son, Light Eyes, a competent man like his father, would run the ranch in Whit's--and the long gone Will Rourke's--absence. Whit had every confidence in Light Eye's ability. It was well deserved.

But even the most capable of individuals have their limits.

### Antrim. 1864

Disaster.

The twin Union victories of Gettysburg and Vicksburg were over a year in the past. The war was in its final bloody year as the opposing armies slaughtered each other in the devastated northern Virginia countryside as the Confederacy slowly slid into the storied stilted myths of history. Late summer heat lingered in the lush Minnesota River Valley. The corn and wheat at Antrim were nearing harvest in the fields, apples hung ripening in the orchard. Whit Jackson and Lance were still out on the Dakota prairie scouting for General Sully's army. Word had reached Sibley's army the year before of the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, but Jackson had heard nothing in the past year of the fate of Will Rourke, Will's brothers and all the other kin who were in the Rebel army. Will Rourke's wife, Marie, home at the family farm and ranch, Antrim, also had heard nothing of her husband's fate. She had no idea he had been a prisoner of war at Fort Delaware and that he was now again in the Rebel cavalry. Rourke had in fact sent several letters to her, but all had been intercepted by the authorities in Minnesota as being enemy contraband and destroyed. It was well known in the Minnesota River Valley that pioneer Will Rourke had joined the army of the traitorous Confederacy. The government could not abide sending on letters from a man they considered to be a traitor.

Whit Jackson also did not know something else that would have greatly upset him had he known. And very likely have sent him galloping back to Antrim in a headlong hurry. An Indian scare, which turned out to have little foundation, had caused the authorities in Saint Paul to order Major Moses Taylor's Minnesota Border Watch unit to northern Minnesota where the Ojibwe were supposedly about to explode in violence as the Dakota had two years previously. Egged on, so it was said, by Confederate agents in Canada. There were Confederate agents in Canada, and in fact they actually carried out raids and sabotage in the northeastern United States from Canada. They were also known to be involved in Chicago where there was a huge Confederate Prisoner of War compound called Camp Douglas where the Rebel prisoners died in huge numbers in conditions approaching those of the South's lethal Andersonville. The prisoners there were desperate to escape. Knowing of the unrest in not so distant Chicago, the Minnesota officials were soundly alarmed by the rumors of Ojibwe unrest and surreptitious Confederate instigation.

Whatever the reality or source was, the result was that the jittery authorities in Saint Paul, who still retained lurid memories of the horrific Dakota uprising of two years earlier, took the supposed threat of uprising very seriously. Over the objections of Whit Jackson's old friends, Major Moses Taylor and Lieutenant Benjamin Woolsey, the Border Watch unit, with Taylor and Woolsey leading them, went north. The detail at Antrim, which the government had promised Whit Jackson would be a squadron permanently camped there, was reduced to a mere four troopers.

The troopers were patrolling around Antrim's perimeter when they spied another group of four Union troopers appear over a slight undulation in the tallgrass prairie coming towards them, the grass so tall it reached the flanks of the troopers' horses. The sergeant in charge of the four Antrim videttes, Seamus Muldoon, was wondering why the troopers were riding in from the prairie rather than on Antrim's wagon road. A rough road, to be sure, but still a road.

"Must be that bloody feckin' rain," Muldoon muttered. "That road be a muddy splippin' and slidin' mess for a horse when the rain be fallin'." He let the thought slid away, which he would later profoundly regret.

The four troopers rode up to the Antrim videttes and stopped. One of them, a large man on a huge bay that looked to be a hybrid of a draught horse and a Quarter Horse, reached out with an envelope and handed it to Seamus Muldoon.

"This here's an order from Headquarters at Fort Snelling," said the big man, also with sergeant's stripes on his Union uniform. He gestured at the other three mounted Union cavalrymen who'd ridden in with him to the Rourke ranch. "You're ter ride back to yer unit at Fort Snelling. Our fancy pants colonel sent us to replace y'uns here," he gestured again, sweeping his arm at the buildings of the Rourke ranch. Sergeant Muldoon, opened the envelope, read the contents, then looked at the face of the sergeant who had handed him the order. A face Sergeant Muldoon recognized as scarred by the pox. He's seen many of them when a smallpox epidemic had swept through an Army camp in Kentucky. The lucky ones were often scarred, but at least they survived. The unlucky ones filled graveyards all over the country. Everyone, soldiers, north and south alike, and civilians, feared the smallpox. A shiver ran up his spine as at the thought of smallpox before he retrieved his attention to the order the pock-marked Sergeant had handed him.

"I don't recollect the name on this here order." Muldoon said, after looking at the order. "Who be this Colonel LaRue?"

"New man, real fond o' heself," the other sergeant answered. "Come in from the east. VRC. Veteran Reserve Corps, they calls it now. Used to be the Invalid Corps. An entire regiment of 'em, mostly wounded or sickly or too old for combat, sent to free up a healthy regiment to go south to the butcher." He looked levelly at Sergeant Muldoon. "You might be seein' the elephant before long, Sarge."

"I already saw the bloody elephant," Muldoon shot back. "In Kentucky and Tennessee." He looked again at the orders from headquarters at Fort Snelling, intuiting that this probably meant his cavalry troop would be going back to the fighting. He was no faint heart, but, like most of the veterans, he was in no great hurry to return to the epic slaughter of the war. Or, as he pock-marked sergeant put it, 'go south to the butcher.'

"OK, boys," Muldoon said, a sour look on his face and in his voice, to the other three men with him. "Looks like we're in for it agin." Within a half hour the four had packed up their gear and were riding east to Fort Snelling to report to the headquarters of their unit.

The fort was an ominous stone built structure constructed on the frontier nearly a half century earlier when Minnesota was a largely unknown wilderness. It loomed over the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers between what would become the booming twin towns of Minneapolis and Saint Paul and sent a very clear message of intimidation to the resident Native Americans. In 1864, after nearly a half century of stonily overlooking the mingling of the waters of the Mississippi and the Minnesota and the local Native Americans, the fort was still there. The Native Americans weren't.

The pock-marked sergeant and the men with him waited a full hour after Muldoon and his men rode away, Muldoon having explained to them the routines at Antrim. The man was a sergeant. And he wasn't a sergeant. He had been a Union sergeant in the fighting in Kentucky. One close call too many convinced him. Especially after that near fatal encounter with the smallpox. He was no coward, but neither was he a patriot. He deserted after he got into trouble with his officers after he shot an unarmed Kentucky farmer over the man's resisting having his horses forcefully taken by the Union cavalry. He was no kind of genuine Union sergeant that late summer day in 1864 at Antrim. Nor were the three men with him Union cavalrymen.

Or the others, as eight concealed horsemen rode out of a nearby copse of thick trunked original growth oaks, maples and basswoods to join them after the faux sergeant gave them a prearranged signal by taking off his hat and waving it back and forth. None of the additional eight had bothered to hide their identities with Union uniforms. They were dressed in an assortment of clothes and styles, but mostly ragged and rough. Which befitted them. They _were_ ragged and rough. A few of them were also deserters, two from the Union, one from the Confederacy, the rest bushwhackers from the Missouri/Kansas border wars. All had one thing in common. They had long ago crossed over to the wrong side of the law. And everything else that entailed. For most of them the vicious fighting in Missouri and Kansas was their training ground. They had learned their lessons well. Whatever rules of civilized human behavior might have once existed among them were as long gone as the covenant that had held the country together. They were like the outriders of Hades.

Hell was about to descend on Antrim.

Chapter 8: The Shenandoah

1864

The flowering dogwood trees and blooming wildflowers in the spring of 1864 did little to brighten the lives of the people in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The war was grinding into it's fourth year. The grim casualty lists grew longer every day, Rebels and Yankees chased each other up and down the Valley, each army appropriating what they needed from the powerless civilians. Some said the Rebels were worse than the Yankees because the Rebels were always short of everything and the Yankees had everything to excess, thanks to the economic engine of Northern industry. Still, the overall impact in the upper valley, which, counterintuitively as it sounded actually referred to the southernmost part of the Shenandoah Valley--the reason being the Shenandoah was a north flowing river--was not nearly as great as farther to the north in the lower valley. There the country in many places was stripped clean by a devil's brew of a combination of foraging and Union retaliation against civilians for the depredations of the partisan rangers. The Union retaliations grew in severity, including lynchings, executions, heavy punitive fines, burning of barns and houses and the seizure of personal property. Not as bad as the intense brutality along the Kansas/Missouri border. Not yet. But moving with increasing velocity in that bitter direction in northern Virginia and other contested regions of the Confederacy. And also, it would soon turn out, also moving south into the upper valley. Years later everyone in the Valley would remember. 1864 would be the year when everything changed. It would always be remembered as _the_ year. The year of .......

The Burning.

Sarah and Peter Rourke had received some good news. At least in the relative sense it wasn't more tragic news such as that which had shattered their lives after Gettysburg, Their friend Major Tom Crowley brought the news, for once a wide smile of relief on his worry lined face at being the bearer of something other than more heartbreak. The prisoner exchange cartel had passed on the information that both James and Will Rourke were alive and were prisoners of war. He omitted telling the Rourkes their sons had been sent to the dreaded Yankee prisoner of war camp, Fort Delaware. They'd had enough bad news already. Too much bad news in a world already overflowing with bad news.

There was more good news beyond James and Will being alive, even if in a prisoner of war camp. A letter from their son Samuel made it through the lines and they learned with immense relief that he had been wounded in Kentucky, 'not a serious wound,' he emphasized by underlining it. The letter, written two days after Gettysburg, said he was convalescing in New York and had not been at the huge battle at Gettysburg. That made for heartily received good news for three of their sons. But the fourth, Michael, was dead at the slaughtering ground that was Gettysburg. That left a hole in their lives, 'in our souls' is how they put it, in the aching way the loss of a child affects a parent on a deep and permanent level. But their other three boys were still alive! They let themselves hope that three Rourke soldiers would survive the war.

There was no such hope for Simon Rourke. His son was dead. His son-in-law was dead. His wife and daughter were sunk in a perpetual gloom that hung over their home like a pall. No. Not a pall. A shroud. A shroud for the dead. And, if seemed to Simon, for the dying as well. The Simon Rourke family had lost the will to live.

The despondency in Simon's mind slowly simmered into an angry bitterness. He swore he would not pass this Earth before he did something to strike back at those who had ruined his family. When the Confederate government became increasingly desperate for manpower and started organizing old men, a few boys, war invalids and a scattering of others into a home guard they called the Virginia Reserves, Simon Rourke jumped at the chance to join. As spring of 1864 came to the Valley Simon Rourke was often gone somewhere with the Reserves. As often as not, off to Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia where the Reserves took over tasks from regular soldiers to free them up for combat. Something which the regulars didn't always greet with much enthusiasm. War fever had long since subsided and most just wanted it to be over so they could go home. Many times, more and more as the war ground on through the bloody months and years, the dispirited soldiers voted with their feet and deserted, creating even more holes in the already depleted ranks.

Ominously for the Reserves, as manpower continued to drain away from the Confederacy, the Reserves were increasingly used in operations that, if not quite combat roles, were approaching what the regular soldiers did. Simon several times found himself with a unit of Reserves picketing river crossings and gaps in the mountains, with the proviso they would resist any Yankee incursions until regular troops, which were spread increasingly thin, could be brought up. The preponderance of the men and boys in the reserves didn't much care for the idea of combat. Many of the men were veterans invalided out of the active army. Others were in religious sects that, if not downright pacifists as were the Mennonites and the Dunkers, were from sects like the United Brethren which tended to frown on both slavery and the war and only grudgingly participated out of an increasingly thin patriotism for Virginia. Among the older men were many whose grown sons were all off in the army, or dead in the war, and there was no one to work their farms if they were away in the Reserves. There were only a few boys in the Reserves and their main reason for being in the Reserves, besides the innate adventurousness of youth, was to get away from their homes and the drudgery of farm work. There would have been many more had their families allowed them to go. The families jealousy guarded their youngest boys without consciously realizing they were preserving the human seed of the Valley and the very future of the Valley itself.

There was one exception to the general distaste among the Reserves towards active service. Simon Rourke. It seemed to the men he served with as though with every passing day he grew angrier and more bitter. He made the others in his Reserve unit uneasy--few wanted any part in the outright butchery the war had devolved into--as he became very vocal about actually getting the chance to fight the Yankee bastards who'd killed his son, Simon, son-in-law, Andy and nephew, Michael, as well as a dozen other relatives killed, wounded or captured. The war continued on month after month, and the Confederacy continued to shrink, Simon Rourke's chances of grabbing his goal of fighting Yankees came closer and closer to reality. When it finally came most of the Reserves bravely faced it. But only one embraced it with the dark underbelly of glee.

Simon Rourke.

The Shenandoah Valley was widely considered to be, and for the most part actually was, the breadbasket of the Confederacy and the source to Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia of the bulk of its provender and supplies. Including everything from men to horses to leather goods to military items such as sabers and percussion caps manufactured in the industrious foundries and shops and smithies of the Valley. And, more than anything else, it was the source of much of the grain and meat that fed the army. The Rebels were well aware of this. But, also, increasingly and with ominous foreboding, so were the Yankees. Once Ulysses S. Grant became the commanding general of the Union forces, with his strategy of unrelenting total war, the prosperous days of the Shenandoah Valley were about to end. In 1864. The year of the Burning. After Ulysses S. Grant took command it was inevitable.

The Valley was doomed.

A drizzly winter day, dark bellied clouds draping the mountains and nearly touching the Valley floor. Despite the weather, Peter Rourke was mending a broken gate in his corral when a solitary figure in Confederate gray rode into this farmyard. Even from a hundred yards off Peter recognized him immediately. He threw up his arms, not noticing he'd just sent the hammer in his hand sailing into the air, and began to run. "My God! My God! _Will_!" He yelled at the top of his voice. Inside the house, Sarah heard her husband yelling, went to the door, opened it and looked outside. And was immediately rushing towards the dusty familiar horseman as he unwound himself from his mount and dropped to the ground.

A very emotional few minutes followed. Then they went into the house and Sarah set about making her eldest son, the adventurous long gone William, the first sumptuous home cooked meal he'd had since the day nearly three years earlier when he rode away from his parents' home to go to war.

"We learned that Michael was wounded in Kentucky," Peter said to his son who, despite himself, was so overwhelmed by the largesse of the dining table that he was uncharacteristically wolfing down the food. "He couldn't come here to convalesce, so he went to where he lived before the war. New York. He was there during the battle of Gettysburg." Will Rourke's fork froze in midair at the mention of Gettysburg, his parents already reluctantly given him the bad news about the family disaster in Pennsylvania. The place where his brother and cousin were killed and another brother severely wounded and taken prisoner. A mask seemed to slide over his face as he tried to hide his emotions. He didn't fool his mother.

"Was it that bad, son?" Sarah asked. Will didn't answer at first. That bad? How thin and poor, so pathetically impotent, such words were to describe battle. How could he possibly convey to those who hadn't experienced war first hand what it was like? Will was an articulate man, but he had no words capable of describing the hell of the battlefield. And, _especially_ , of its aftermath. He hadn't seen it at Gettysburg, but he had seen it in all its grisly reality after the slaughter of the Yankees at Fredericksburg. It seemed like a long time to his parents before he answered, though it was hardly a minute.

"You don't want to know," he said in a low voice with resolute finality.. "War is an evil thing and there is no glory in it at all. Only death and destruction." Peter Rourke was a little taken aback by his son's comment. This didn't sound much like his intrepid son, Will, who'd gone out to the western wilderness as a cheerful fifteen year old to make a new life of adventure for himself.

"You've changed, Will," Peter said. "You never were so heavy hearted as you are now."

"War changes you," Will answered. "It changes everything."

His words, it would soon turn out, were as prophetic as they were descriptive.

Will skipped over the bulk of the negatives of his wartime service and months in the prison camp at Fort Delaware. He knew that a smallpox epidemic had swept through the prison camp and that hundreds of Rebel prisoners had died, but he wasn't about to tell his worried parents that. None of them yet knew that James was already dead, another reeking corpse dumped in Fort Delaware's smallpox graveyard in a common grave with a half dozen others, his meager belongs all burned to kill any possibility of lingering pestilence on them.

As they talked on into the afternoon Will kept the conversation light, if such a thing were possible in their grim world, and dwelled instead on his escape from the Yankee train.

"They were sending groups of captured Confederate officers to prison camps out west. one on an island in Lake Erie. Johnson's Island, they called it. Near a town called Sandusky. Another camp was also on an island. Rock Island. On the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. Which is where they were sending me. I don't know why the Yankees were sending the Rebel officers to that place, but, for whatever reason, they were." The Rourkes were not much for drinking, though certainly not abstemious, but on this occasion Peter brought out a bottle of hard cider he'd squirreled away in a cupboard for special occasions such as this, pouring glasses all around. Even Sarah, who rarely drank, accepted one. Will took a pull of the hard cider and a smile creased his weathered, careworn face. Despite her joy at seeing her eldest son safe, Sarah could not help noticing how very thin he was.

"Been a very long time since I tasted something like this!" Will grinned. He neglected to mention that it was not all uncommon for Rebel horsemen to raid Yankee wagon trains and liberate, as they called it, considerable quantities of liquor. Nor was Will Rourke loathe to sampling the liquid booty. But, never, well, almost never, to excess. Still, there had been nothing to compare to his father's homemade hard cider. He put it in words.

"Tastes like home, Pa," he said, after taking another drink.

"Tell us about the escape, son," Sarah, who had her own adventurous streak and always secretly envied those who had the freedom to seek adventure, said with keen interest.

"It was night. Everyone was asleep. The guards were drowsy. I got up to use the latrine at the rear of the train car and, when the guard wasn't looking, slipped through the door onto the little balcony at the rear of the train." He stopped, amused and almost laughing at his mother's apt attention.

"And then I...... _jumped!_ " He said it with such emphasis that both his mother and father reacted unconsciously by rising an inch or two in their chairs in unconscious syncopation.

"I rolled down an embankment and into some kind of sticker bush, which darn near set me to cursing, then got my bearings." He looked at both of his parents, neither of whom commented on his cursing, something he was not known to do in the past. "Remember how we'd go outside at night and you'd point out the stars in the sky and how they moved through the night and the seasons?" Both Sarah and Peter nodded at the pleasant memory. Happier days. Now long gone.

"I used that knowledge of the stars to guide me. I think I was somewhere in Pennsylvania, maybe not so far from Gettysburg, though I have no way of knowing, and I moved only at night, following the stars. That worked out all right for two nights. The third night was cloudy. It began to rain. I found an old shanty in a farmer's field and got out of the rain. I had been able to drink from streams, but had nothing to eat. When the rain let up that night I crept up to the farmer's barn, went inside and found some hens' nests." There was a slight tilt to his head and a curious look in his eyes as he glanced at Peter and Sarah. "I ate the eggs raw." Neither of his parents flinched. "And they were darned good, let me tell you." Suddenly there was a heavy, insistent knock on the door. Peter rose to answer it. It was his brother, Simon.

"Will!" Simon yelled, rushing to his nephew's side as Will rose to meet him. "I heard you were here. Darn, boy, it does my old heart good to see you. But....how is it that you are here. We were told you were in a Yankee prisoner of war camp."

"I escaped," Will said, his words and manner uneasy knowing that his uncle's son and son-in-law were both dead in the war.

"He was just telling us about it," Sarah said. "Sit down, Simon, and listen." Simon sat, though looking more troubled that joyous to see his nephew's miraculous return home. Will resumed his narrative, but didn't get far before Simon interrupted him.

"Did you kill many Yankees, Will?" He asked. "How many? A lot, I'm hoping." Will was at a loss for what to say, though he understood that the deaths of his son and son-in-law had affected him deeply. And, he was starting to grasp, in a disagreeable and potentially violent way.

"I'm in the Virginia Reserves now, Will," Simon said. "We've been several times called to duty, once all the way to Richmond. We have yet to meet the Yankees, but I am more than ready to fight them." A pause. A chilling, darting-eyed pause that made all of the Rourkes uncomfortable. "I'm looking to kill some of those murdering scum for what they did." He glared at his brother, sister-in-law and nephew. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth!"

Simon's gaze took on a peculiar glint that Will had seen before, in those who had seen the aftermath of Indian massacres in the west and soldiers whose thinking and emotions were scrambled by too much death. Will knew then that it would not end well with Uncle Simon. Could he blame him? No. Simon had cause to be the way he was.

Will Rourke would not know it for some time, but he would one day have as much--or more--reason to be as morbidly obsessed with revenge as his Uncle Simon. For Will Rourke, like the Shenandoah Valley itself, 1864 would be a bad year. A _very_ bad year. Or as his colorful great uncle Whit Jackson would put it...

"A devlish Godfersaken yar worsen' all tothers combined."

And even that might have been an understatement.

### Liza Jane

Will didn't tell his family about all of his experiences during his escape. On the fourth day Will came upon a river that he recognized as the Potomac and swam it where the current was sluggish and the river not very wide. Chilled to the bone and shivering towards hyperthermia on the Virginia side of the river he went to a ramshackle farmhouse in the foothills, knocked on a door and explained to the frightened woman who answered the door that he was a Confederate soldier who'd been a prisoner of war and escaped. The woman's fear vanished in a twinkling and she hustled Will inside, made him strip out of his wet clothing while she waited in another room and left him two blankets to wrap himself in as he sat before the fireplace. She came back in the room with all she had to eat. A plate of cold corn bread and a glass of cold water.

"We don't has much, no any more, soljer," she said, part wistfully and part bitterly. "The Yankees comes and takes what they pleases. Don leave us'ns with much."

"Your husband?" Will said. "Do you have a husband." The woman scoffed.

"Husband? No one gots a husband They's all gone to the war, like mos' every man hereabouts. Last I hears he is somewheres near Richmond." The woman stopped, cocked her head, listening, then shook her head and smiled. Wanly.

"Thought I hears somethin'. Them Yankees is always snoopin' about." A serious expression marched onto her face and Rourke could see that she had to be a determined woman. Tough. Like most of the farm folk in the Valley. Hard work was their lot in life, but most thought the benefits of open spaces, scenery with mountains all around, fresh air, clean water and plenty of food to be worth the hard work. But now, with the war, life was unremittingly hard and not much beauty or cheer was left.

"We bes' be hidin' you, soljer, befor them Yankees comes 'roun agin. You wouldn't be the first Reb they caught in these parts and done hanged or shot." Rourke sat up straight.

"Hanged or shot? Confederates? _Uniformed_ Confederates."

"Yessir, soljer. Them partisan rangers gives the Yankees fits and the damn Yankees gets theyselves downright nasty mean 'bout it. Any ranger gets heself caught by them Yankees gets the noose or bullet, 'n no jest the ranger boys. Them Yanks is none too particular about whos they hangs or shoots. There be more than one reglar soljer home as sick or invalid or mebbe on leave done been caught and killed." Rourke was silent. This sounded like the way it was in Missouri when he passed through there early in the war. Way too much like Missouri. It cemented his conviction that any notion of chivalry or humanity that may have characterized the war in the early years was fast disappearing. It was becoming, much as he detested it, the same breakdown in civilization that he had seen in Missouri.

"What do the partisan rangers do about these murders?" Will asked. The woman got a sly look on her face.

"The way I hears it, Yankees soljer boys get to disappearin' and never be heard from agin."

"The rangers kill them?"

"Sure do seem that way," she said, her sly look sliding into a sly smile. "Serves them thievin' murderers right, says I. To perdition with all o' em!" Just then a tow-headed little girl of about three years old timidly peeked around a corner.

"Is that daddy?" The little girl asked. Rourke blinked. Daddy?

"She ain't seen her daddy since he gots a leave near two years past. Don't reckon she rightly 'members what he looks like." She motioned at the little girl to come to her. "This ain't yer daddy, Sarah," she said in a soothing voice. "This man be a fren." Rourke had a sudden nearly overpowering desire to get to his family's home farther south in the upper valley. Hearing the name, Sarah, which also was the name of his mother, triggered the sudden bout of what was at least a touch of homesickness, or maybe nostalgia for what once was and, he knew, would never be again.

The woman, Lisa Jane was her name and she was barely twenty years old but looked ten years older, gave Will what she could to take with him. Three pones of skillet baked cornbread, a small jar of molasses and, crucially important to Will, the revolver her husband had left for her in case she needed to defend herself against marauding Yankees. Not that there wasn't danger. And not just Yankees. Besides the partisan rangers there were groups of men, mostly draft dodgers and fugitives, banded together in what were in essence outlaw gangs, though they often tried to pass themselves off as partisans. Which was part of why the Yankees were so vicious towards captured partisan rangers. The outlaw bands committed atrocities and the Yankees, not knowing the difference between the partisans and the bandits, blamed the Confederates for the atrocities. Though, truth be told, atrocities were not unheard of among the uniformed ranks of both the Rebels and the Yankees.

Lisa Jane gave Will the revolver for her several reasons. Will needed it for self protection. She didn't much care for revolvers. She was much more comfortable with the idea of using her double barrel shotgun to protect herself and her little daughter. She was certain her husband would understand when he finally came home. _If_ he came home. She also gave Will her husband's rainproof winter coat, a blanket, and fresh socks and underwear. She offered clothes, too, but Will thought it wise to continue to wear his uniform in case he was recaptured. Out of uniform he would be considered a spy or a partisan. In uniform he was a soldier and would be treated as a prisoner of war. Unless he got unlucky and they thought he was a partisan. Lisa Jane insisted that Will let her wash his filthy, ragged uniform and patch it as best she could. He stayed with her the next day and cut firewood for her stove and hearth, sleeping in a pallet in a side room. The last night she prepared a bath for him and he had the first real washing he'd had in months. That night, late, Will woke to Lisa Jane sliding under the blankets at his side. He woke to her touch. She smelled perfumey and clean and fresh from her own bath.

As soon as dusk fell the next day he slipped away and was gone.

Will moved into the flanks of the mountains, traveling at night along mountain paths, more than once coming within earshot of Yankee camps and twice almost being seen by Union pickets before he saw them first and slipped out of sight into the woods. At times he could see out it into the valley where the scattered spots of nighttime light showed where a farm was and tiny concentrations of lights revealed a small town. Plus, too often in his mind, there were the campfires of Yankee units. Too many campfires.

"Regimental size," he muttered to himself one dark night as he stared at the campfires in the Valley below. "No," he corrected himself. "More than that. A brigade. At least." How, he was wondering, would he be able to tell when the campfires were Rebel ones? He couldn't take the chance of slipping up close enough to tell. Then he had the idea. He'd watch from hiding places during the day until he was certain he was seeing Rebels and not Yankees.

On the third day of watching he clearly saw a Confederate cavalry unit close to what was commonly called the Back Road in the Valley. He left his hiding place and hurried towards the horsemen. They were Rebels all right and, after he identified himself, knew who he was. The Rebels were from one of the companies in his regiment. Two of them grabbed an extra horse, recently the property of the Yankee cavalry, and escorted him over a mile down the road to where they approached another Rebel unit, the men off their horses and eating dinner--such as it was in those lean days. As he got closer one of the Rebels started to holler.

"Look! My God! Look! It's Cap'n Will Rourke come back from the grave!" The trooper doing the yelling was none other than Will's old friend and sergeant, Tom Sykes. The mischievous gods had rolled the dice of serendipity and, amazing and outrageous as it seemed, Will Rourke had stumbled onto his own men. A company, he soon learned, that was leaderless. The young officer commanding the unit, Lieutenant Buford Ord, was wounded the day before and evacuated to a field hospital. To everyone's amazement, Will Rourke was back to commanding his men. But there was one problem. A very big problem.

Captain Lane Davis.

Davis, the squadron's first commander who had recklessly led the unit into a trap and then been captured, was back. He was exchanged for a Yankee officer and, because of his political connections, had been promoted to major and was reportedly about to become a colonel. Major Davis was an arrogant and vindictive type of man, one among a malevolent minority among the aristocracy who would carry their sense of entitlement and superiority to extremes. The sort who never forgot a grievance and dwelled on them until they became obsessions. Will Rourke refusing to attack the Yankee dragoons at the beginning of the war, an example followed by all the men in the troop, had duped Davis into making a complete fool of himself by charging the Yankee dragoons by himself and being unceremoniously knocked off his horse and captured, earning him the very unwelcome nickname of Don Quixote Davis. He seethed at the ignominy and blamed Will Rourke for it. He had been very vocal about what he would do if Rourke should somehow show up again. His threats were more than mere threats. Major Davis was now the assistant provost marshal for the upper valley. As such he had the power of arrest as well as that of bringing court martial charges.

Which was what he was determined to do. Davis would soon bring court martial charges against Rourke for failing to obey a direct order and cowardice in the face of the enemy. The latter was a capital offense punishable by firing squad. After Sykes and the other men told him about Davis, Rourke gauged the situation quickly and just as quickly borrowed a horse and headed south to his family's farm. He was determined to see them while he still could. Davis was certain to have him arrested as soon as he learned Rourke had come sauntering in like some kind of apparition from the mountains. Rourke wasn't about to give him the opportunity to arrest him before he got a chance to see his family. Granting permission for Will to see his family was something the vindictive Major Davis would never do. He'd see him straight to the guardhouse and nothing less. So Will grabbed a horse and rode south.

And none too soon. As soon as Davis heard of Rourke's seemingly miraculous reappearance, Davis exulting at this totally unexpected opportunity to get his revenge, he sent out a detail of provost guards to arrest Rourke. Whether the guards knew what he looked like or not--Major Davis was no more popular with the provost guards than he had been with his troopers in the cavalry, plus all the soldiers knew of Rourke's reputation as a fine soldier and leader--the fact is they rode right past Rourke as they went north to where Rourke was reported to be with his old unit. Rourke realized who they probably were and nonchalantly rode by them with a perfunctory salute and greeting. One of the provost guards winked at another one as they rode away.

Will spent two days with his family, helping his father with some of the heavier work on the farm that needed more than one back and an extra set of strong arms to complete, then bid his farewells to a tearful mother and outwardly stolid father and rode back to where his unit was bivouacked. The provost guard was waiting for him and he was promptly arrested. Many of the men who had been with the company that day when Davis fecklessly led them into a trap were still with the unit. They knew the truth and it was touch and go for some very tense moments when they intervened and refused to let the guard arrest Rourke. It could well have resulted in violence, but Rourke adamantly insisted the men back off and let him be arrested.

"The truth will out," he said to the men. "We all know what happened. I trust the court will soon discover what we already know. Let them take me." Reluctantly, still menacingly hostile, the troopers relented and let the provost guards take Rourke. Their reluctance had a deeper cause than Will realized. Some of them knew that Major Davis' rich and influential slave owning aristocrat father was arranging to have the court martial packed with officers who, for their varying reasons, would be more sympathetic to Major Davis than to Will Rourke. Major Davis was adamant that Rourke be convicted and, if not executed, either imprisoned or drummed out of the service. And that was the way it was looking to actually play out.

But for Sergeant Tom Sykes.

Sykes and two of his comrades found out where Major Hugh McCracken's cavalry unit was and rode to talk to him. McCracken, having been at the confrontation with the Yankee dragoons, also knew the truth of things. When Sykes told him that Rourke was about to be railroaded by the Davises, McCracken exploded.

"I'll be damned if I let that happen, Sergeant!" He thundered. McCracken promptly jumped on his own horse and rode to see one of the brigade commanders under Jeb Stuart. Fitz Lee, the nephew of Robert E. Lee and a respected brigadier general in his own right. Fitz knew of both Will Rourke's reputation and of Davis' foolish and irresponsible handling of his men at the time of what they all called the Dragoon Fight. He also knew of, and chuckled at, Davis' unwelcome nickname, Don Quixote Davis. A courier was soon en route to the upper valley with sealed orders from Fitz Lee's commanding officer. Jeb Stuart himself. When Major Davis opened the sealed orders he could be heard yelling from a hundred yards away. General Stuart had ordered that all charges against Will Rourke be dropped and he be released from custody.

Immediately!

Will Rourke returned to his old unit as their commanding officer. He noticed the changes immediately. The men, and the horses, were worn down. They were underfed and under rested, indifferently equipped and their former zeal considerably dampened by the continual stresses of their mission and the constant attrition of men and horses. That was when he fully grasped the reality that had long played around the edges of his consciousness. The war? It was lost. He had an urge or two to just chuck it all and point his horse west to go back home to Antrim. It was a tempting notion. Very goddamn tempting, he thought. But he couldn't do it. Will Rourke was not a man to quit once he started something. He would see this war through to the end. Not for patriotism. Not for Virginia or family or anything else. He did it because Rourkes didn't quit.

And Will was as solid a Rourke as could be found all down through the generations.

### Sergeant Reuben Freeman

Petersburg, Virginia

1864

Reuben Freeman was unusual among the former slaves. He could read and write and was well spoken. But not so much that he gave an impression of arrogance or superiority. He was well liked and respected and would have risen far in the ranks were there not a racial ceiling. Black soldiers were acceptable. So were black non-commissioned officers, like Sergeant Reuben Freeman. But not as officers. None of the black Union soldiers failed to notice that their officers were white men, the blacks' pay less than white soldiers and their accommodations and treatment similarly unequal. They received one small victory when their pay was raised to the same as the white solders. Which, black or white, didn't amount to much more than a pittance. Still, they fought for freedom and for the right to be American citizens.

Sergeant Reuben Freeman understood that and was actually exultant when he was reassigned to a combat regiment of the USCT--United States Colored Troops. The 28th U.S Colored Troops Regiment. A regiment which would be deeply, and bloodily, involved in one of the Civil War's most controversial clashes. The Battle of the Crater.

A Union officer who was a mining engineer hatched the idea. The opposing Union and Confederate armies in Virginia were in a stalemate outside the town of Petersburg, which was a crucial rail junction not far from Richmond, the railroad connections being the lifeline of the Confederate capital. Ulysses Grant directed his Union army to seize the town. Robert E. Lee's efforts were concentrated on his Confederates keeping that from happening. After repeated bloody clashes the two armies settled into a months long trench warfare that would be reflected on a hugely larger scale fifty years later in another horrendous human cataclysm--The First World War.

The stalemate of trench warfare was when the Union mining engineer hatched his idea. He would run a shaft under the Confederate lines at one point, extend it laterally, pack the excavated gallery with thousands of pounds of black powder and detonate it. The resulting explosion would blow a gigantic hole in the Confederate defenses that massed Union divisions would immediately exploit and possibly end the war by rolling up the Confederate defenses and marching on to Petersburg and then to Richmond.

The idea of the Union officer, a regimental commander named Pleasants, was received with less than great enthusiasm, but he was allowed to move forward--although not with much support. He was nevertheless able to run his mine shaft--something else that was mirrored in the First World War--from a hidden location behind Union lines to under the Confederate defenses. As the work progressed the Union commanders grew more interested and Sergeant Reuben Freeman's regiment was among those selected for the assault.

An entire division of black troops, including Freeman's regiment, lead by General Ferrero, was to assault the hole in the Confederate defenses after the massive mine was exploded. The troops were trained in the operation beforehand. At the last minute the Union commander in chief, Meade, countermanded the original battle plan of overseeing General Burnside and replaced the black division with a while one. An act that would remain controversial for years to come. Some said that Meade didn't trust the black soldiers to do the job. Others said that he was afraid that, if the assault went bad, the massive casualties to a black division would be viewed in a racist context. Save the white troops. Send in the blacks instead. The plan was revised almost at the last minute and a white division, which had not been prepped or trained for the assault, would lead the attack. The black division and two other white divisions would follow up on the initial attack.

It started out wrong. The thousands of pounds of black powder at first failed to ignite because of faulty fuses and it was past the appointed hour before the explosion came. But when it came it _really_ came. That much did go right. It was a roaring massive explosion on a scale far beyond the experience of any soldier in the war, killing and injuring hundreds of defending South Carolina soldiers, numbing the survivors and opening a huge hole in the Confederate defenses. That was as far as success went for the Yankees. The attack, which would result in courts martial of several among the high level Union generals directing the assault and ruin the military careers of Generals Burnside and Ledlie, was delayed.

The troops who then blundered into the crater were leaderless, their commanding general, James Ledlie, a peacetime civil engineer with no military training and little command competence and who had not briefed the men on what they were to do, spent the hours of the battle in a bombproof behind the lines drinking liquor while his men died. Not knowing what they were supposed to do, most of them charged into the crater rather than around it and were trapped there by the steep sides of the crater rising thirty feet over their heads from the bottom of the huge manmade chasm in the Confederate defenses. Added to that were the quick reactions of an agile minded Confederate general named Mahone who brought up his troops to counter the Union assault.

The black division and the other white ones were sent forward to support the assault, as planned, and most of them were trapped in the crater along with the first attackers. The black soldiers, who were supposed to spearhead the assault and were the only ones trained for the attack, were also the most motivated.

Yelling "No Quarter!" and "Remember Fort Pillow," which was a massacre of black troops in Tennessee, they charged into the crater. It was another of the war's bloodbaths and one of the grimmest. The rallying Confederates gathered on the edges of the crater and poured rifle and pistol and even some cannon fire into the masses of trapped union soldiers.

Among them was Sergeant Reuben Freeman. Unlike many of his fellow soldiers, white and black alike, he didn't throw down his rifle and try to surrender or run away. He kept fighting up until the time the Confederate infantry descended into the milling throng and began bayoneting the blacks. And then something happened that chilled to the bone every black soldier who survived that day. White Union soldiers started bayoneting black Union soldiers, apparently afraid of Confederate retaliation for fighting alongside blacks. Blacks, especially former slaves, who got the chance did not hesitate to bayonet Rebels, and did it with vehemence. It was chaos, full of individual acts of brutality, callousness and even the occasional discordant act of compassion, and Sergeant Reuben Freeman was in the midst of it.

"Take the whites prisoner," some of the Rebels yelled, "kill the blacks." Not all the Rebels murdered surrendering black Union soldiers, and not all the bayoneted soldiers were blacks, but there was enough of it to cast a permanent racial pall over the battle. A wild-eyed group of Rebels approached where Sergeant Reuben Freeman still defiantly fought and one of them, perhaps admiring Freeman's pluck despite the Rebel's ingrained racism, ordered Freeman to throw down his rifle and surrender. Freeman didn't comply and the Rebel was about to pull the trigger on his rifled musket when another Rebel jumped in front of him

"Drop the rifle. Surrender!" A young Rebel from Georgia yelled at Freeman. "Drop the damn rifle and surrender. Damnit! Surrender!" Freeman knew that captured black soldiers who had been slaves were routinely enslaved again after capture. That was not going to happen to Sergeant Reuben Freeman. He would die rather than be enslaved again. Ironically, the young Rebel himself had come closer than he cared to being lynched when neighbors back home in Georgia found out he had fallen in love with a mulatto girl--even though she was free born and not a slave.

"I am a _Free Man_!" Reuben yelled as he lunged at the young Rebel with his own bayonet. Parrying the Rebel's counterblow, Freeman's bayonet plunging into the man's stomach in a wound sure to be lethal. A moment later two other Rebels skewered Reuben with their bayonets and a third leveled a revolver at his face.

"Die you goddamn nigger bastard," the Rebel snarled as he pulled the trigger on his revolver. There was pure hate on his face. The soldier Freeman had just bayoneted was the man's younger brother.

Reuben Freeman's life blood joined that of thousands of others in the slaughter euphemistically called the Battle of the Crater. He died as what he had become. Reuben Freeman.

A...free....man.....

But still not equal. Like the black attendant at the military hospital in the west where Samuel Rourke was hospitalized had sourly muttered after hearing Sam talking to his Rebel friend Jesse McCourt about the likely realities of emancipation.

"The Jubilee still be a long time a-comin'."

### The Shenandoah Valley

The Burning

1864

Many people in the North had a two dimensional view of the South. A slave owning aristocracy, a heritage harkening to the ancestral class bound English, masses of blacks bound in miserable involuntary servitude, and a low class of rough and ignorant country people who were largely illiterate. That was no more accurate than Southerners thinking all Yankees were greedy capitalists who treated their workers worse than the South did the slaves and that the workers were little more than soulless drones. Yet both stereotypes had some truth to them.

The Shenandoah Valley was a microcosm of the South. It had some plantations with numbers of slaves. It had a number of large farms who also had a few slaves. There were many other farms where there were no slaves. Among the settlers of the early Valley were groups of Germans seeking religious freedom and a place where they could be left to live according to their religious precepts. Most of these German-Americans were anti-slavery and against secession. Foremost among them were the Mennonites and the Dunkers, many of whom were so set in their beliefs that they would refuse to cooperate with the Confederate government. Many others took the path of least resistance and cooperated. Many more were less devoted to their religious principles and more inclined to support secession once it happened. All of these German-descended groups were primarily composed of industrious farmers who made the Valley of Virginia a gorgeous cornucopia. Not only were there hundreds of rich farms, there were also scores of mills and shops, foundries and small manufacturing businesses, plus the good sized towns of Lexington, Winchester and Staunton. At the head of the Valley was historic Harpers Ferry where John Brown launched his ill-fated insurrection which was a prelude to the fracture of the nation that followed little more than a year later when Southern states began to depart the Union.

Alongside the Germans were original English settlers, who made up the majority of the slave owners. The other large chunk of the population was Scots-Irish, the Rourkes and Jacksons and their ilk, with their strong heritage of self reliance and defiance of authority. In Ulster. In the Colonies. And against the Yankee invasion of Virginia. Few supported secession in the beginning, but changed once Lincoln called for soldiers from all the states to suppress what he called the rebellion. The Scots-Irish had comparatively few slaves and also had built up prosperous farms over the past century in the Valley. They had proved they were hard fighters in the American Revolution. They would again prove they were hard fighters in what many of them called The Second American Revolution.

In the mountains that flanked the Shenandoah lived a hardy backwoods people who were closer to the stereotype the Northerners had of what they called poor whites or white trash. They were, in fact, often unlettered, but far from ignorant. Theirs was a hard life and they had no choice but to develop ingenious skills and ways of coping in order to survive in the mountains. Few had slaves. Among them, as there was all along the chain of the Appalachians, was considerable antipathy towards secession. The mountainous western part of Virginia, where there were relatively few slaves and aristocrats, went so far as to separate from mother Virginia into the new non-slave state of West Virginia. Throughout the mountains rival bands of Union and Rebel supporters ganged together and made life a hell for just about everyone. Many were little more than bushwhackers. Others joined the army, some to the South, others to the North, and were as hard a fighter as any officer would want to see.

Will Rourke had a full dozen of such men in his unit.

When Ulysses Grant set in motion the forces of the Valley's destruction he might not have known that the Shenandoah Valley held numerous Union supporters, was full of people who had resisted secession, including a substantial number who refused to serve the Confederacy and sent many of their young men North to avoid Confederate conscription. In the end their loyalties were overwhelmingly irrelevant. They lived in a rich land that supported the Confederacy and it had to be destroyed. Throughout the South Grant's total war was only imperfectly applied. It came closer to perfection with Sherman's March to the Sea. And even more in the burning of the Valley. The Union general who organized the final destruction of the Valley was a diminutive--he was a foot shorter than Abraham Lincoln--first generation Irish American whose nickname was Little Phil. There was nothing little about the way he waged war and he would twenty years later be promoted to General of the Army. Though he would later anchor his place in history by promoting the establishment of Yellowstone National Park, in the Shenandoah he would long be remembered with intense bitterness. His name was Sheridan. General Philip Sheridan.

Sheridan The Destroyer.

The initial Ulysses Grant-ordered Yankee excursion into the Valley in 1864 was led by a German immigrant, Franz Sigel, who was a veteran of the failed 1848 European revolutions. He was a political general, rumored to be favored by Lincoln because he had great influence with the huge numbers of German immigrants and coaxed thousands of them into Union service. He was, however, a mediocre general at best and his excursion into the Valley was stopped in May at the Battle of New Market when Confederate General Breckinridge defeated Sigel's Army. A setback, but the Union was not deterred, returning this time under a controversial, violent and aggressive virulently anti-slavery general, David Hunter. Hunter was the first of Grant's generals to employ scorched earth tactics in the Valley. He defeated a Rebel Army under General Benjamin Jones at Piedmont and continued down the valley, spreading destruction as he went by burning whatever struck him as being of military use to the Confederacy. Hunter's troops also helped themselves to forage for their horses and food for themselves as they stormed south in the Valley. They caused great destruction in the towns of Lexington and Staunton, including burning down the Virginia Military Institute and the home of former Virginia Governor John Letcher and desecrating Washington College. Hunter's scorched earth tactics would be returned in kind in the near future when Confederate cavalry burned the town of Chambersburg in Pennsylvania as retaliation. Which, in turn, would bring another cycle of retribution as the Yankees returned to the Valley in overwhelming force.

Hunter's rampage in the Valley came to an abrupt end when a corps of Confederate Infantry under Jubal Early, and accompanying cavalry units, met Hunter's Army at the Battle of Lynchburg just two weeks after Hunter's victory at Piedmont. Hunter was obliged to hurriedly retrace his steps with the Confederates in hot pursuit and retreated all the way beyond the Shenandoah into West Virginia.

Will Rourke's regiment was among the reinforcements sent to stop Hunter at Lynchburg and from that battle on was present through most of the subsequent confusing combinations of victories and defeats that finally ended in the devastation of the Valley by mid-October. As Hunter retreated and the Confederates came nipping at the Yankee real guard Rourke and the others began to see the results of the Union's new scorched earth tactics.

"Would ya look at that, Cap'n," said one of Rourke's troopers, pointing at a farm where the barns and outbuildings had been burned, the stored hay, wheat and hay burned and the animals all either taken or killed. "I ain't see nothin' like this before," the stunned trooper said. As they continued to ride by more and more smoldering examples of Yankee scorched earth tactics the stunned trooper, and all the others, grew silent. Here a barn was burned, there a blacksmith shop, and over there a mill was burned to the ground. Cows and pigs lay slaughtered in farm yards where the Yankees had no time to either drive the animals before them or butcher them for their own use. The faces of the Rebel horsemen grew grimmer with each passing mile. Many were from the Valley and took the destruction as far more than an act of war. It was the act of a barbarian horde in their minds and the germ of vengeance was planted in them that would soon bear bitter fruit.

Their simmering indignation was intensified when Southern civilians told how they had been robbed of everything, personal valuables as well as food and animals, with an occasional pistol whipping of resisters. There were also tales of individuals suspected of being partisans summarily shot or hanged. True or not, and it was a fact that some atrocities did happen, though most of them were committed by quasi-military dregs who shadowed the armies, the Confederate soldiers blamed the Union soldiers. The Rebs grew increasingly angry and were convinced the marauding Yankees were capable of just about anything.

The Yankees did commit some atrocities. When an old man stopped Rourke's troop as it passed his farm he yelled and waved his arms, pointing at a fresh grave near the road. "The shot my grandson!" He wailed "He was only a wounded regular soldier from Lee's army, home to convalesce. But the Yankees said he was a partisan and shot him." The old man strode angrily up to Rourke's side. "Kill the bastards, Captain!" He hissed. "Kill them all!" Rourke was not about to start shooting down Yankees in cold blood, but he couldn't help noticing the angry expressions on his troopers' faces. He knew he would be hard pressed to try to contain their growing rage.

When the Rebels first began their pursuit they overtook numerous fleeing Yankees and made them prisoner as they always had done, usually with little rancor or violence. But as the Confederates advanced up the Valley, and saw more and more of the devastation wrought by Hunter's army, any Yankees overtaken by the Rebels were likely in for a hard time of it. None were murdered. Not yet. But they were roughly handled, often stripped of their boots, coats and hats and anything else of value and forced to walk barefoot to the temporary prisoner of war pens where little consideration was given to the basic needs of food, water, shelter and sanitation. Not after what they had done to the beloved Shenandoah.

Rourke was not shocked by the devastation. He had seen the like in Missouri and farther north in Virginia. But nothing anywhere near the scale of what happened in the Valley. The devastation was by no means complete. Fully two thirds or more of the barns the Yankees had passed remained unburned, and probably ninety percent of the homes were not damaged in any appreciable way. Not so with the shops and mills. The Yankees had burned almost every one they came across, plus stripping the farms of their fence rails for firewood and cutting down their groves of trees and orchards for their campfires. Again, not complete devastation, mostly a narrow corridor where they had passed. but enough to cast a pall of blight over the once bountiful and gorgeous valley where the pursuing Rebels passed in the wake of retreating Yankees. Light drizzle falling on the occasional chilly gray day served only to deepen the depressing vistas.

On the second day of chasing the Yankees Rourke saw the first dead Yankee who looked like he might have been murdered. He knew there were hotheads in the cavalry, particularly among those who came from the upper valley, who had ignored orders and ridden ahead of the main bodies of Confederate horsemen. The officers realized it but did little to stop it--unless they were actual witnesses to atrocities. Two of Rourke's men were among those who rode ahead. Men who were solid veteran troopers, but who had just seen their family's property destroyed. The barn of one of the trooper's father. The trooper's father had tried to put out the barn fire and suffered severe burns. The other trooper saw his uncle's life work, his blacksmith shop, turned into a pile of burnt rubble. Their stories were repeated over and over among the outraged Confederate troopers and, following them, the infantry. No one spoke of it openly, but all knew. There were those who were executing the Yankee marauders and hiding their bodies. Total war had arrived. To both sides. But what none of them knew, even the Yankees, was that this was only the beginning. It would get worse.

And it wasn't long in coming.

It began in earnest when Ulysses Grant put the intense Phil Sheridan in charge of the Union forces that would strip the Valley of its resources and, therefore, its use to the Confederacy. Sheridan had overwhelming superiority in numbers and defeated the Confederates, driving them further and further south. His orders were to drive all the way down the valley and then turn towards the interior of Virginia, as Hunter had done before him until he was stopped at the battle of Lynchburg. This time the Confederates, though they had many small victories and a handful of larger ones, could not stop the Yankee colossus but slowed it enough that Sheridan could not continue on into the interior of Virginia. Then, as cool, at times chilly, October weather began to settle over the Valley, Sheridan implemented his plan. The thousands of Union cavalry, followed by more thousands of infantry, spread across the entirety of the Valley.

The Burning was about to begin.

The Union Army had passed through Harrisonburg on the way south and committed their usual sporadic depredations and their much more extensive foraging for provisions. Many a farm was stripped of anything remotely useable. If they had any warning at all, the farmers wisely hid their livestock in groves of trees or swamps, those nearest the mountains driving their animals into the wooded foothills. They took similar precautions with their foodstuffs, hauling barrels and bags and bushels of wheat and corn, and hay to whatever hiding places they could find. And, almost universally, the farmers and people of the small towns buried their valuables--money, gold, silver, jewelry--and tried to conceal the burial with various contrivances. One farmer went so far as to bury his tiny savings of gold coins under the floorboards of his outhouse.

But many, probably most, were caught unawares and had no time to take precautions and were stripped of their crops, foodstuffs, fodder and animals.. Sometimes the farmers' efforts at concealment were successful. Other times not. When the Yankees were in a hurry the chances were better. When they took their time, not as good. Worse. Mixed among the Yankees were men who were little more than bushwhackers, the riffraff that armies trailed behind them like vermin, and with them things could get very nasty. Though it was not yet common, there were a few instances where uncooperative farmers were hung from a tree until they either revealed the location of their caches or, more frequently, someone in the family, fearing for the man's--almost always an older man--life and told the thieves what they wanted to hear. When such men were caught in the act by either army they were summarily shot down with zero recrimination. But, like most everything else, there were exceptions.

Simon Rourke was not one of them.

Simon was with a small group of Virginia Reserves hiding in the flanks of the mountains watching the Yankee hordes move south towards Staunton. A small group of riders rode into a foothills farm not two hundred yards from where the Reserves were hiding. They watched as the old man who lived there, a Mennonite named Bachman, was brought out of the house and pushed around the farmyard by the Yankees who were yelling and waving their fists at him. The Reserves couldn't hear what was said, but past experience told them the Yankees were likely bushwhackers looking for valuables.

"I say we go get them," Simon said to the others. "There aren't many of them. Let's go before they kill old man Bachman." The others, though not as fervent as Simon, agreed. They couldn't just stay hidden and cowardly watch the old man beaten and possibly killed. The squad of Virginia Reserves, four men over fifty, one over sixty, two boys of fifteen and three invalided soldiers, went stealthily towards the Bachman farm, using the cover of a field of unplowed cornstalks to approach the farmhouse unobserved. They dropped to their bellies and crept the last twenty yards on their stomachs. Then, at the edge of the cornfield, they took aim at the five Yankees in the farmyard and, when Simon whispered the command, fired. Three Yankees went down immediately, one grabbed his side and seemed frozen in place and the other one ran for his horse and was soon galloping as fast as he could go down the rutted track that served as a road to the Bachman farm.

The Reserves jumped to their feet and hurried to the farmyard where two of the Yankees on the ground were dead, another wounded in the leg and the fourth shot in the side. Simon Rourke took out his pistol and was about to shoot the wounded Yankees when Bachman, who was a Mennonite elder and a vocal opponent of the war, grabbed Simon's arm.

"We are not barbarians, Simon!" He snapped. "We do not shoot unarmed wounded men. Let them go." Simon was not of a mind to let them go, but the others in the Reserve squad agreed with Bachman. They tied the two wounded Yankees on their horses and sent them trotting after their vanished comrade, took the pair of dead Yankees into a nearby fallow field and buried them. The Reserves then returned to the mountains and began to trail the Yankee army as it went south.

The five Yankees were not bushwhackers but a regular Union patrol who conspired to hide their larcenous activities from their command. The first trooper who returned to the command, knowing he had to hide the truth, gave a warped account of treachery at the Bachman farm, far from what had actually happened. A dozen troopers immediately mounted up and rode to the Bachman farm where they soon discovered the fresh graves. They didn't bother to ask questions. They shot the old man down in his farmyard and burned his barn, home, outbuildings and set fire to the cornfield. The two wounded men were picked up by another Union patrol and taken to a field hospital. When they heard what had happened they quietly agreed they had no choice but to corroborate the false report of their fellow larcenous soldier. The duplicity was further compounded when the local citizens concluded that the Yankees had wantonly murdered Elder Bachman and destroyed his farm for no reason other than he was a despised Virginian.

And so the cycle of misunderstanding and distrust continued to fuel the spiraling mutual hatred. A breakdown of civilization, of the standards of humanity. A cataclysm that carried the monumentally inadequate two dimensional label of....

Total war.

General Sheridan gave the order. All barns, shops, mills, smithies, factories. All crops, all forage, all animals, all fences. From one side of the Valley to the other. The whole valley. Take what can be driven or carried, and burn what was left. Burn it! Burn it all!

And they did. Parties of Yankee cavalry spread out across the valley and visited nearly every farm. Few escaped the burning. Barns, crops, animals, farm implements. All gone. Houses, too. Not so many as the barns, and not always intentionally. The plantation houses where there were numbers of slaves were put to the torch. But so were the barns and crops, and livelihoods, of many anti-war Dunkers and Mennonites. Anti-war or not, if left alone their crops and produce would be appropriated by the Confederacy, so their worldly goods were consumed by flames alongside the possessions of the rabble rousing demagogues who had so fervently demanded secession and brought the fires of retribution upon everyone. One of those who helplessly watched his barns and outbuildings burned was Herman Falk, the Mennonite who had heatedly declaimed to Simon Rourke that since he was anti-slavery and anti-secession he Yankee troopers would not molest him. "They will not molest me!" He had said.

His words burned in his throat along with his barns.

The Rebel cavalry continually attacked Sheridan's troopers, but a thick screen of cavalry and infantry kept the Rebels from the burning parties who were behind the protective wall of Union soldiers and horsemen. The day had been a grim one for the Southern horsemen as they continually came upon grief stricken women and children weeping outside their burned farms, left with no means to get through the coming winter. Then, when night fell, Will Rourke and his troopers looked on in horror as the entire Valley was ablaze from mountain to mountain. A pall of smoke and haze hung over everything giving an ethereal roseate cast to the hellish night.

"It looks like the whole damn Valley is bleeding, Will," Sykes said as he sat atop his horse next to Rourke. "It's blood red."

"In more ways that one," Rourke replied, sourly. He was very close to embracing the attitudes of those who already were executing Yankees captured in the act of burning. A passing cavalryman who had been with the legendary Colonel Mosby said that Mosby was executing any Yankee who could be proved to have burned the houses of civilians. Mosby wasn't the only one. It wasn't just the guilty who died, either. It was war. Total war. Phil Sheridan's war. Ulysses Grant's war. Abraham Lincoln's war. But, in the end, in the contested fields and forests, rivers and harbors, towns and farms across the border states and in the invaded South it was not just war against a government or an army. It was a war against a culture, institutions, a way of life. It was a war against an entire people. The Southern People.

They had to be broken.

Will Rourke's company had twice moved from the Army of Northern Virginia near Richmond to the Shenandoah Valley. The second move was just as Sheridan's overpowering advance had the Confederates so weakened they could offer little resistance. Then Sheridan began, in earnest, his campaign of scorched earth. And, with a volatile mix of rage, impotence and sadness, the Rebels nipped at the heels of the Yankees, killing some, losing some of their own, unable to penetrate the thick screen of Union protective cavalry and infantry. Then something happened that tipped Rourke, who was one of the last of the Rebels to keep even a semblance of balance, over the edge.

Three Confederate troopers, one of whose family home was nearby, were behind Union lines ahead of the burners and, thinking they knew the back trails better than the Yankees, were trying to make their way back to Confederate controlled territory. Three Union horsemen stumbled upon them and gave chase. The Confederates wheeled to face the three Yankees and in the ensuing melee one Confederate and one Union trooper were wounded, the wounded Yankee captured, and the third Union trooper manage to escape. Lying dead on the road was the other Yankee, Union Lieutenant John Meigs. The young lieutenant was a recent West Point graduate, a brilliant engineer and cartographer who was a key member of General Sheridan's staff. He was also one of Sheridan's favorites. And, ominously, Meig's father was Montgomery Meigs, the Quartermaster General of the United States Army and one of the key figures in the final Union victory.

The Yankee trooper who escaped gave a confused and possibly deceitful account of what happened, and General Sheridan--and Meig's father in Washington--believed young Meigs had been murdered by what he called bushwhackers, the incessant raids by the partisans having been a constant problem for him. In a rage, Sheridan ordered that all buildings within several miles of where Meigs was killed should be burned. _Including_ houses. That same day Yankee cavalry descended on the doomed area that would long after be known as the Burnt District.

And in that district were the homes of Peter and Simon Rourke.

Simon Rourke was not the only one in the family to be in the Reserves. In the desperation of its manpower shortage few had escaped its net. Simon Rourke had joined willingly. Peter Rourke did not resist joining the Reserves, understanding that the Valley was under attack, but he did it with little enthusiasm. He had been against the war from the beginning and with some bitterness watched as his sons went off into the fratricidal maelstrom. And now it was his turn.

Simon and Peter were both with a Reserve unit that was guarding stock and personal belongings carried into the foothills ahead of the burners. Everyone knew what was coming. One had only to look at the towering pillars of smoke and nighttime glow of the fires. Refugees from the upper valley told them what to expect, and Sherman had sent cavalry ahead to warn people of the coming of the torches and to get out with their belongings while they could. They would not be molested if they went north. Wagons by the score and, finally, by the hundreds, piled high with personal belongings, were on the roads heading north ahead of the burners in the doomed Burnt District. Others were not so fortunate. The burners arrived without advance notice and gave the inhabitants a few minutes to save whatever they could from their houses. The more vicious of them were so callous they burned the houses without giving the inhabitants a chance to remove anything. Other times the Yankees relented and didn't burn the house. Quite a few barns and houses, though still only a small fraction of the whole, were not burned because individual Yankee burning parties were sympathetic to the pleas of the afflicted farmers. The Union troopers often were farmers themselves and understood what the burning of a farm's buildings would mean for the inhabitants. Other times the Yankees left the houses and barns burning and the farmers put out the flames in time. But, for the vast majority, the barns and outbuildings and most of the houses in the Burn District were put to the torch. There was only one general exception. Sheridan had earlier ordered that if the farm resident was a widow, the barn and house would not be burned. An order that was often ignored in the Burnt District.

There, in the Burnt District, just about everything burned. Barns, shops, mills, smithies, businesses, tanneries, crops, fodder, fences And, this time, also homes. Peter and Simon Rourke watched from within the trees at the edge of the foothills and saw flames erupting everywhere. Not just barns and haystacks. Everywhere. _Everything._

"My God, Peter!" Simon yelled in sudden agitation. "The Yankee devils are burning our homes!" He grabbed his brother's arm in the iron grip of a man who has farmed all his life. "Our homes, Peter! Our homes!" Before Peter could say anything, or react, Simon grabbed a horse and galloped off towards the Burnt District.

That was the last time Peter saw his brother alive.

The burners gave Sarah and her daughter, Susan, who was now living with them while her one-legged soldier husband was still in the Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, ten minutes to remove what they could from their home. It wasn't much. Blankets, clothing, a chest that had been in the family since pioneer days. They had already hidden what food they had left and their few valuables. Sarah's daughter screamed and cried as the barn, Peter's beloved stable, the outbuildings and the house were all consumed by flames until they was nothing left but piles of smoldering ashes and smothered dreams. The Yankees left as soon as they were certain the fires couldn't be put out and moved on to the next farm. A few minutes later they heard shooting not far away, but had no idea what it meant. Then, after another few minutes, three horsemen rode into the farmyard. One of them was Peter Rourke. He jumped off his horse and ran to his wife's side.

"Are you all right, Sarah," he said, as they embraced, mingling tears and fears.

"We will not molest you, they said," she spit out in bitter words, "They destroyed our farm. Our entire life's work! How is that not molesting us!" Peter leaned back, looking into Sarah's face.

"They killed Simon." Sarah's sagging body tensed.

"How? I thought he was with you."

"We saw the burning from the hills. He jumped on a horse and was gone before we hardly knew what was happening. We had little choice but to mount up and follow him." His voice, usually strong and resonant, was weak and cracking. "We found him at his farm, which was all on fire, outside his house, his wife and daughter sobbing over his body." Peter stopped. Simon, dead. His son dead. His son-in-law dead. Peter's own son Michael dead. God knew the fate of his other sons. His daughter Susan's husband, Dick Riley, a one-legged cripple. It was too much. The stalwart soul that was Peter Rourke crumbled. He was defeated.

"He did shoot one of them," he added, almost as an afterthought. "That's what the women said. He shot one and knocked another one to the ground with his rifle before the other Yankees killed him." It was too much for Peter. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes.

"Oh Sarah, if only I had stopped him from going....." He began to weep, then sob, and Sarah, who had known Peter almost her entire life, instinctively knew there was more. He stopped his sobbing and took her hands in his and continued in a low, shaky voice. "We came on them just after they shot Simon. Reuben Wheldon, who was in the 33rd with our boys and invalided out with a crippled leg, shot one of them as he tried to mount and ride away and chased after the others with some of the Reserves. I jumped out of my saddle and rushed to where Simon's wife and daughter were crying over his body. It was obvious he was dead. He'd been shot several times, one of them through his eye. My brother, his face, not even recognizable. It was.....was.... _horrible_." He shuddered, stifled more sobs, steeling himself for what was to come.

"Then I looked over to the pair of Yankees Simon's daughter Jasmine told me Simon had dropped. The one he shot was dead. The one he beat to the ground with his rifle was alive." Another pause, another effort to stifle sobs, this one barely sufficient. "And then....then......Sarah. Sarah. I killed the man! I murdered him!" Sarah then said something that so surprised him it shocked him out of his despondent grief.

"Good, Peter! I'm glad you killed the devil. I wish you had killed all of them!"

A week earlier, before the Yankees arrived from the north and drove the Rebels away, Peter already gone with the Reserves, Major Tom Crowley came again. This time with that ominous hangdog expression on his worry-lined face. It had to be bad news. It was. One of James' fellow soldiers in his company, also captured at Gettysburg and sent to the Fort Delaware prisoner of war camp, had been exchanged with a severe case of pneumonia for a Yankee with an equivalent life-threatening illness in an increasingly rare instance of compassion. The soldier, Alexander Mahoney, brought back all the news he could glean of the others from his company who had been captured and sent to Fort Delaware. Three of them had died in the smallpox epidemic. Major Crowley passed on the sad news, the second out of three he had to deliver in his soul-numbing duty that day. James Rourke was one of the three. Died of smallpox in the prisoner of war camp at Fort Delaware. Sarah had cried herself out well before Peter came galloping into their desolate farmstead a week later with the news of Simon's death. A new emotion had risen in Sarah Rourke. One once foreign to her but now a permanent resident.

Hatred.

Total war had arrived at the Rourke farm.

Chapter 9: Antrim

Requiem

Sergeant Seamus Muldoon rode into imposing Fort Snelling with his three troopers. It was the second day after being relieved of their guard duties at Antrim. The four cavalrymen rode to the stables, dismounted and took care of their horses before Muldoon went over to their commander's office to report. He noticed several other cavalrymen looking curiously at him as he approached Colonel Franklin DeWitt's office. He knocked before entering.

"Come in," boomed the small bodied but deep voiced and strong willed DeWitt. Muldoon opened the door and stepped inside. And saw the most intense look of surprise he had ever seen on a person's face.

"Muldoon!" Colonel DeWitt yelled and, being a nervous and excitable sort after one too many hairy escapes in battle, jumped to his feet. "What the hell are you doing here!" That was when Sergeant Seamus Muldoon had the first glimmering of something very, very bad. Those four who relieved them at Antrim. There was something about them. Something just a touch off. And, it was now turning out, more than just a touch.

One hell of a whole lot more.

"Colonel, sir," Muldoon replied in a tense, uneasy voice, thinking he was about to receive one of Colonel DeWitt's blistering, albeit rare, chewing outs. "We were relieved and ordered back here to Fort Snelling. Sir." Colonel DeWitt was the officer who had made the difficult decision to only have four men detailed to watch Antrim. Even though a larger force was promised to Whit Jackson before he agreed to guide General Sully's army in the Dakotas. DeWitt had not liked having to go back on their promise to Jackson, but felt he had inadequate manpower to allow more than the four he sent to Antrim. Besides, the four were tough veterans of the war, unlike the local militia and guard who were untrained and unreliable, and who could handle any situation that could conceivably come up at Antrim. Plus Sergeant Muldoon was the best of his non-commissioned officers. But, and this was what was grabbing at the colonel's instincts. Muldoon and his troopers were of absolutely no use to Antrim if they weren't there.

But first he needed more facts.

"You say you were relieved, Sergeant?"

"Yes, Sir!" A nervous Muldoon answered.

"By _whom_?"

"Four troopers, sir. Men we had n'er seen. Recent transfers they be sayin.'"

"And what was their authority to relieve you?" Muldoon had one strong ally in what was otherwise a very much one-sided encounter. The relief orders. In his back pocket. Which he now pulled out.

"Here, Colonel," he said, usual for him, sheepishly, handing the orders to DeWitt. The officer took them, read them, read them again and studied the document for a full minute. Then he looked up at Muldoon with his anger fast dissipating.

"This is a forgery, Muldoon. A forgery. But, to your favor, a very excellent one that would fool anyone not familiar with the details. There is no Colonel LaRue." A look of concern, even alarm, chased away his earlier anger and agitation. He could see that Muldoon, who was a quick study going back to his boyhood days, first in Ireland and then in the New World of America, plainly understood the situation.

"You _know_ what we have to do, Sergeant Muldoon," Colonel Dewitt said in a voice sounding hollow, devoid of its usual crispness. "Get fresh horses and a dozen men equipped for four days in the field and get them ready faster than you ever have." A pause, concern etched on his face. "I am the one responsible for this, so I will lead you myself." He actually reached over and extended his hand to Muldoon. "You can't be blamed for this, Seamus. But I fear that whatever these mysterious bogus troopers were up to, it is already far too late to stop them." An expression of dread. And, mirroring the look now spreading on Muldoon's face, guilt.

"I have a deep feeling this is going to turn out bad....."

Within an hour Colonel DeWitt and Sergeant Muldoon rode out of Fort Snelling with a dozen troopers and two support soldier leading pack horses with loads of provisions scaled down for fast travel. They stopped only to rest their horses and arrived at Antrim as dawn broke on the second day. The Union horsemen topped a small rise in the prairie, still devoid of people since the Dakota uprising, and looked down at the smoking ruins of the destroyed outbuildings of Antrim. Their hearts sank.

"Too late," snarled Colonel DeWitt. "Damnit! Too goddamn late." They then began the apprehensive ride towards what had been the thriving ranch and farm called Antrim. They rode slowly, some would say mournfully, almost like a military death march. There was no hurry. Not any more. They were too late. Every single one of the troopers, all of them veterans of hard fighting in the west in Kentucky and Tennessee who had seen the brutality of partisan warfare, were having dark premonitions about what they were going to find at Antrim.

They were wrong.

It was worse.

Seamus Muldoon had seen the elephant. He'd seen men cry. And more. Break down and sob. Some who became uncontrollably hysterical. But not Seamus Muldoon. He had not yet shed a tear over the carnage he'd seen over the war years. Not a tear. Until now. After they dismounted and walked, hesitantly, into the barn. Colonel DeWitt heard a gulp and a sigh and looked over at his rock solid sergeant.

Seamus Muldoon was crying.

The men and children had been forced into barn and then shot in the head. The men were bad enough, but the sight of the little murdered children was too much even for the tough Union veterans. And even that wasn't the worst of it. The women. Marie Bottineau Rourke, Will's wife. Good Bed, Whit Jackson's wife. Fleet foot, his daughter. All had been raped, almost certainly repeatedly, in the beds in the main house. They, like the men and children of Antrim, then had been shot in the head. Three of the tough troopers vomited after they saw the murdered women and children. The others had to turn away. Muldoon grabbed blankets to cover the women's brutally violated nakedness and set his men to searching for possible survivors.

Will Rourke was in far off Virginia and no one knew whether he was still alive after three years of war. Whit Jackson was several days ride away, somewhere in Dakota. Colonel DeWitt had no choice but to order a burial detail to inter the corpses, which were already putrefying in the late summer heat. He had one of the troopers write down a description of each body so that when Jackson, and Rourke if he ever came back from the war, would know where each of their loved ones lay in the little graveyard the soldiers constructed on a small hill overlooking Antrim. A hill with a panoramic view of the broad grasslands, patches of hardwoods and the distant line of trees along the Minnesota River.

"Maybe this spot will give the poor men a touch of solace, Seamus," DeWitt said, "when they come back." Muldoon didn't say anything. He didn't know Whit Jackson very well, but he was pretty sure solace would not be his primary reaction. It would be the same as Muldoon's would be.

Find the bastards who did this.

There were a half dozen outbuildings on Antrim, two barns, a bunkhouse--which was the original settlers' cabin--and the main house. Some of them rebuilt after being burned in the Dakota raid two years earlier. All had been set on fire, but one of Minnesota's towering black-bellied thunderstorms came roaring in off the prairie after the raiders were gone and put out all the fires except for some of the smaller outbuildings. The house had been thoroughly plundered, drawers emptied out onto the floors, mattresses torn open, sofas and padded chairs cut open, their stuffing littering the floor. All the cupboards had been emptied and in several places boards in the walls and the floors had been pried loose. The barns and outbuildings were similarly ransacked.

"They were certainly looking for something, Sergeant," Colonel DeWitt said after they had searched through all the buildings and surrounding fields and woods, where they also found a number of places where holes had been very recently dug into the ground. "But the question is, Sergeant, what was it that was so compelling that these men, whoever the murdering devils were, would do this?" Muldoon's answer was so quick it surprised Colonel DeWitt.

"Gold," Muldoon said with such conviction it resurprised DeWitt. "There be a rumor that ol' Jackson had heself a whoppin' horde o' gold nuggets he got out 'n Dakota somewheres." That nailed down DeWitt's attention. There was considerable creditable evidence that there were rich gold fields in the west in land still under control by the Native Americans. Including in the mountains in the western Dakota territory. The place the Sioux called the Paha Sapa. Muldoon continued.

"Jackson betook heself to the assay office over in St. Paul with a couple o' them nuggets. Big nuggets, they were indeed, sir, and rich ones, were the words o' the assay man." Muldoon looked over at Colonel DeWitt. "I had me a drink or two with the assay man and heard it from his own two assay lips. He war certain Jackson had him plenty more o' the gold nuggets." He paused, grabbing at a thought, then added. "I was not the only one to hear the tale of ol' Jackson's gold. There be others. A plenty." A dour look from Colonel DeWitt, his thick shaggy graying eyebrows quivering in a sudden flush of barely suppressed rage.

"True or not, _somebody_ believed the rumors."

"Evil men, Colonel, sir, fer certain." Muldoon replied. He spit violently at the ground.

"The spawn o' da Deevil heself!"

### After Sheridan

The Shenandoah Valley

Riding jaded, underfed horses, there being almost no forage left in the Valley after Sheridan's scorched earth tactics, Will Rourke, Tom Sykes and the remnants of their cavalry company and the rest of their depleted brigade trailed the marauding Yankees. The Rebels were too weak in numbers and equipment, their horses worn and near collapse, to seriously contest the overpowering numbers of the Union horsemen and infantry. They did win many small contests where the numbers of the enemy were less overwhelming. Hit and run tactics, attacking small units of Yankees, causing whatever damage they could in a short time, and then fleeing before Union reinforcements arrived.

And then there were the other times.

Many of the Confederate cavalrymen were from the Valley and had intense personal experiences when they saw the farms, mills and businesses of family and friends burned to the ground. They were especially incensed by the less frequent, but still far from rare, house burnings. And the few citizens who came forward with tales of abuse by the Yankees, true or not, agitated the Rebels even more. They might not have used the phrase total war, but they understood the reality all too well.

The Yankee nation had abandoned whatever was left of their humanity.

That was not altogether true, but it was true enough to push many of the Rebels over the edge. Woe to the Yankee who fell into the hands of the Rebels. In most cases they would only be roughly captured and sent on to prisoner of war camps. But there were instances, far too many in the minds of those who still tried to maintain some sense of humanity, of abuse. Most often it meant the Yankee got a sound beating. Other times, especially when a Yankee was either caught in burning a home or identified as having been one of the house burners, it was worse. Death. Though the numbers who were killed were certainly not great, no one would ever know how many. Hanged. Shot. Thrown into a burning building. Beaten to death with rifle butts.

The Yankees replied in kind. Anyone they caught suspected of being a partisan or even carrying a gun out of uniform was as likely as not to be shot or hanged. Like begot like and the cycle continued to spiral as the Yankees moved north through the Valley, burning as they went, and the largely impotent Rebels followed close behind. Then came the day in early October when Will Rourke rode into what had been his family's farmyard. It was in the most devastated part of the Valley, what was called the Burnt District, and hardly a structure was still standing. The houses, barns, stables, outbuildings, mills, smithies, shops. All gone. No fences left anywhere. Whole orchards cut down or set to the torch. Not a living animal to be seen. Dead ones were scattered throughout the Valley, shot or stabbed when the Yankees didn't have the time to take them north. The same with the crops. What the Yankees couldn't take with them were burned in the field, wheat and corn, hay and fodder and grain burned or scattered to the winds. It was a desolate wasteland.

And part of that wasteland was once the Rourke family farm.

Will Rourke did not cry, but tears did touch the edges of his eyes as he looked on the ruin of generations of Rourkes' hard work and sacrifice. Confronting British arrogance and control in Northern Ireland. Coming to the New World with nothing but hope and their own two hands. Generations of hard work, clearing the forests, plowing the land, building their own homes and barns, defending against Native American attacks, fighting the British in the American Revolution. Generations of toil and blood, all gone for naught in a few hours of Yankee total war. He cursed the Yankees, he cursed the Southern hotheads and Northern abolitionists who brought on the war, he cursed General Sheridan and General Grant and Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. He cursed slavery and the slave-owning Southern aristocracy and the greedy Northern capitalists who kept millions of working people in perpetual penury. Finally, he cursed God for allowing such a monumental human holocaust to happen. From that day on the only God in Will Rourke's life was one who was disinterested in the fate of humanity.

The Burnt District was not completely devoid of life. Many of the farmers had been able to hide some of their animals, forage and provisions. The farmers began to reappear from the edges of the mountains as Rebel horsemen rode in. But they came without their precious salvaged animals and food. Hard experience had taught them that the Rebels were as rapacious foragers as were the Yankees. And there was something else in their eyes. Sykes pointed it out to Rourke.

"The people are defeated, Will," he said. "Look at their faces. The war is lost and all was in vain." Rourke sighed. Long. And deep.

"It'll soon be over, Tom," Rourke replied in a toneless voice. "We'll need to think ahead to after the war finally ends."

"Back west?" Sykes said.

"Of course. My family. All may be lost here with my people, but I still have my family back at Antrim. An undamaged way of life waiting for me. Something few of our men can look forward to."

Will could not know it, but even then the news was making its way from Minnesota to Virginia that his way life at Antrim, too, was no more.

Will found his parents at a gathering of locals at a farm that had not been burned. He had never seen such a hangdog group of bedraggled people, huddled together against the growing October chill, hunger and despair hanging over them like a black cloud of doom. The farm belonged to an anti-war Mennonite who had begged and cajoled the Yankee burners to leave him be since he had never accepted secession. He was not the only farmer to make such claims, some of them actually genuine, but most of them fell on deaf Yankee ears. Orders were orders. Their farms were burned. But, almost miraculously, not this one.

The Mennonite was as generous as he was anti-slavery and anti-secession and opened his home, barns and outbuildings to his dispossessed neighbors. There was not enough food to go around, but at least there was shelter from the elements. It was in one of the barns that Rourke found his parents. Tears came to his corners of his eyes again when he saw them. They, like the Valley and the South itself, were broken, mere shadows of their former selves. He silently revisited his litany of curses as he approached them. Then it got even worse. There were the listless, shrunken forms of his aunt and cousin, Simon Rourke's wife and daughter. Their faces reminded Will of apples stored too long, shriveled, the juices of life sucked bone dry. They looked like people waiting to die.

He was at a loss for what to say.

"There is no future, Will," Sarah Rourke said, her face no longer ruddy, her figure no longer robust. "Everything is gone." She was, as were Simon's family, shrunken into a near parody of her former self. Will's father wasn't much better.

"Yes, _there is_." Will said, hiding his sorrow as best he could and trying to sound at least a little positive. "I have a prosperous farm and ranch in Minnesota with plenty of room for all of you. Please..... _please._ Come west with me when this war is finally done. We will all begin anew in a new land. Like the Rourke pioneers in the old days." His words rang hollow even to his own ears and there was no glimmer of excitement or relief in the faces of the others. Their world, their way of life, their homes and friends and family. All destroyed. Talk of a new life? Not now. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

But, at least, Will thought as he rode away, I have planted a seed _._

A seed of hope.

A hope that would soon prove to be as dead and lifeless as the Valley itself.

### Minnesota

Fort Snelling

Colonel DeWitt wrote a detailed report, albeit judiciously omitting the grisliest of the facts, of the massacre at Antrim. He wrote a second report, one that omitted nothing, for forwarding up the military channels. The first report, with a heartfelt personal note at the end, he sent by special courier to Whit Jackson with General Sully's army in the Dakotas. It took nearly a week for the courier to find Sully's army and then Whit Jackson, who was scouting ahead of the army. When the courier, accompanied by a major on Sully's staff who was an acquaintance of Jackson's, rode up with a detail from Sully's headquarters Whit knew from the expressions on their faces that something bad had happened. He could not, in his wildest dreams, have imagined just how bad it was.

They said you could have heard him yelling a mile away that day. There was no way that General Sully could restrain him from leaving, Sully was wise and compassionate enough not to try, and that very day Whit Jackson and his son-in-law Lance, whose russet complexion had turned an angry crimson, rode for Antrim. Where it took the courier a week to find Jackson, it only took Jackson and Lance three and a half days to arrive back at Antrim. A squad of the Border Watch unit, led by Jackson's old frontiersman friend, now Union Major Moses Taylor, was waiting for him, ordered there by Colonel DeWitt. The Colonel was unable to leave his responsibilities at Fort Snelling for the amount of time it would take for Whit Jackson to show up--if he even showed up at all. That was the reasoning in his mind. Underneath he felt responsible and didn't want to face Whit Jackson. Not yet.

Several days of hard riding had served to somewhat settle Whit Jackson's ire. Not a lot. But enough where he was able to carry on a conversation without starting to yell and make threatening gestures. Jackson had lost another family in his early days on the frontier when a Ojibwe raiding party murdered his Dakota wife, who was pregnant, and their toddler son. But, now, God, no, no, no, not a _second_ time! There were not enough curse words in the English and Dakota languages to fully express his riotous emotions. Major Taylor knew to stay a few feet from Whit when the fire-eyed tough old frontiersman rode up and literally jumped--with amazing agility for his age--from his pony.

It was not a pleasant conversation.

### War's End

Virginia

The bedraggled Rebel cavalry was worn down to near collapse by constantly rushing to flash points. The Yankees repeatedly threatened Rebel lines all over the shrinking Confederate territory of Northern Virginia. It was the cavalry, jaded as it was, that was called on over and over again to plug the gaps until scarce infantry could be brought up. Every day, it seemed, there were fewer of the Rebel horsemen. Some to casualties, killed and wounded and the growing total of captured troopers whose worn mounts were unable to escape the freshly mounted Yankees. Most of the of losses, though, were not casualties. Close to a majority of the troopers were without horses, their animals either killed or too spent for active service. The other cause of the diminished numbers was a bitter one to the Confederate leadership. Desertion. More and more often the troopers and soldiers could abide no more of the war, or even the Confederacy itself, and simply rode or walked away.

Will Rourke and Tom Sykes were not among them, though they understood well enough why the troopers vanished. Why die in the last months of a lost war, leaving their loved ones without men to take care of them in the sure to be difficult postwar years? Especially since so many men had already died and left gaping human holes in their families up and down the Shenandoah. Desertions became so severe in the last months of the war that the Confederate leadership, including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, ordered draconian countermeasures to the steady drain on manpower from desertion. Which meant something that the soldiers abhorred. Execution.

Rourke had seen military executions three times over the war years. They left him with a sour taste in his mouth and angry thoughts to match. Why was it necessary to shoot the men? It did no good. The soldiers detested the executions and desertion rates continued to escalate. Who could blame them? Especially the infantry. After three, now going on four, years of slaughter. Antiquated military tactics had not kept up with the advances in modern weaponry and the generals of both sides sent men charging in compact formations against those modern weapons to be mercilessly mowed down. To Will Rourke, and many, many others, it was almost unbelievable that so many hardy souls had braved the butchery of the infantry for so long. Why, Will wondered, didn't the soldiery of both sides rise up, knock their generals and politicians off their high horses and demand an end to the mass murder of the brutally uncivil Civil War? The blood of the flower of the South, and of the North, already had seeped into the ground on the eastern and western battlefields and in the innumerable small clashes all over the contested sections of the country. Word was whispered with narrowed eyes among the soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia how their fellows in the Confederate Army of Tennessee were slaughtered at the Battle of Franklin in Tennessee. Poor generalship by their commander, General Hood, who might well have been mentally compromised by medications and pain from his severe wartime injuries, and the resultant flawed tactics had wrecked an Army and killed thousands of men. More thousands would die of wounds or in Yankee prisoner of war camps where the captured Rebels, already emaciated, in rags and in poor physical condition, fell to disease by the hundreds in the cramped, unhealthy conditions in the prison camps.

It was all, Will Rourke thought when he heard of the foolishly led slaughter of Hood's Army of the Tennessee, another nail in the coffin of American civilization. The question in his mind....after the war.......

Would America ever recover from this national descent into barbarity?

1864 became 1865 and the Confederacy continued to crumble. In the infantry what were once full brigades were often now little more than a single regiment and regiments in turn were little more than company strength. Many companies had only a handful of survivors left in the ranks. Partly because of the shortage of horses, it was little better in the cavalry. Will Rourke and the ever diminishing Rebel horsemen did the best they could to counter the Yankee menace but the enemy were just too many and too well equipped and there was no way to stop them. They might blunt the advances here and there, but the overall momentum was obvious to all. The Confederacy was in its last days.

Then came the Yankee breakthrough in the Petersburg trenches, Lee's army was flanked and the Army of Northern Virginia fled south where it was finally brought to bay by the hordes of Union cavalry and infantry. At Appomattox Courthouse, in the parlor of a man named Wilmer McLean, who had four years earlier lived in a home `close to the raging battle of First Manassas, the surrender of Robert E. Lee's humbled Army of Northern Virginia took place. It was April 9th. 1865. Lee's infantry stacked arms and surrendered. Many of his cavalry did not, especially those under Fitz Lee. The First Virginia, many of whom came from the relatively nearby Shenandoah Valley, simply rode away, back to the ruins of their world in the destroyed Valley.

Will Rourke and Tom Sykes among them.

There were still Confederate armies in the field and the last of them would not surrender until June. The Confederate warship Shenandoah did not surrender until November, when it gave up its colors in London. But Rourke and Sykes and all the other troopers and soldiers knew the war was over, the cause lost. Then, barely a week after Lee's surrender, came another hammer blow to the South. The selfishly egotistical actor John Wilkes Booth, a vocal advocate of secession and a Southerner by birth whose patriotism did not reach so far as to join the Rebel army and fight for Southern independence, murdered President Lincoln and brought the heavy fist of retribution on the South for years to come. Lincoln's murder so outraged Rourke that he very uncharacteristically lost control of himself and began to rant and kick at whatever was in reach. Finally, teeth and fists clenched, he calmed down and turned to Sykes, who was watching Rourke with open mouthed astonishment at Will's unprecedented outburst.

"That goddamn pompous strutting fool! Killing Lincoln was absolutely the goddamned worst thing that could have happened," he fumed. "Now there really will be hell to pay." Sykes nodded wordlessly. What was there to say? Who would have thought that things could get any worse than they were in the devastated, broken South?

But, with Lincoln's murder, they just did.

Rourke found his family at the same Mennonite's barn they had been in after The Burning. There weren't many people there, not like before. Mirroring the Valley itself, which, to Rourke's sad eye was barren and empty, sheared of much of what it had been before the war. The Mennonite's barn had been partitioned off into improvised individual family quarters and a few of the rescued implements of daily life mitigated at least a little of the grimness of the surroundings for the handful who remained. Faced with starvation, most had become refugees and gone north to wait out the end of the war, including Simon Rourke's family. Peter and Sarah Rourke were among those who remained, believing they had to wait for Will's and, God willing, Samuel's, return. Their daughter Susan had already gone to Richmond to be with her crippled husband, Dick Riley, who was still in the Chimborazo Hospital. The Rourke's drawn and pallid faces, so long creased in sadness and grief, lightened when they saw Will come through the barn door. But then their expressions were gone and replaced by guarded ones that made Will instantly wary. Did they have more bad news? Was Samuel also dead in the war?

No. It was something beyond imagination. Whit Jackson had arranged for Colonel DeWitt to send the news of the Antrim massacre through official channels to be exchanged through a formal truce and conveyed to the Rourke family in the Valley. It was delayed for months as some feckless bureaucrat in Washington, who managed to stay out of the war by working in the War Department, neglected to pass it on. Another bureaucrat, this one, however, a one-legged man who had not stayed out of the war, found the official document and saw to it that it was forwarded as intended. It finally found its way to the Rourkes just two weeks before Appomattox. No one knew where Will was then, so they had to wait for his return. At least that's what they said. Privately, in whispers, both Sarah and Peter agreed. If Will heard about the murders of his family while he was still fighting, it could very easily stir him to suicidal behavior in battle. His family was dead? Why live on? So they kept their secret.

Sarah Rourke started to tell Will about what had happened, but broke down into heartbroken sobs before she could get more than a few words out. Peter, as broken in spirit as Sarah but still managing to stubbornly fight back the tears, gave Will the world shattering news. All color drained out of his eldest son's weathered face.

Will Rourke had hardly ever sobbed, even as a child, but now he stormed outside the barn, fell to his knees and sobbed for what seemed like hours. For the lost war, the epic slaughter, his dead brothers and uncle and cousin and legions of dead fellow troopers and now, above and beyond all, the murder of his own family. As the last of the sobs echoed away, Will Rourke looked at the sky, raised a clenched fist and shook it violently at the heavens above.

His thoughts went far beyond the merely blasphemous.

In many parts of the Southern and border states a toxic mix of absconders, resisters and bandits had formed gangs of marauders in the wilder and more thinly settled lands of the former slave states. They were still there when the war ended and the returning veterans had first to deal with restoring order to their home areas before even a semblance of recovery could begin. Discordant as it seemed, it was not unusual for returning veterans, Rebs as well as Yanks, to join with Union occupation troops to hunt down the outlaw gangs.

In the Shenandoah Valley bands of outlaws lingered in the mountains on both sides of the Valley. Especially to the west in the part of Virginia that had seceded from Virginia to become West Virginia. A fact that darkened the brow of many a Virginian. Virginia had no right to secede from the nation, but part of the state could secede from Virginia? Whatever that mountainous country was called, Virginia or West Virginia, it was seething with opposing factions and bands of marauders that ran the gamut from officially enrolled partisans to bands who called themselves partisans but often were mere rowdies to gangs of outright bandits. Add to that a population that would remain divided, often bitterly, for generations, and it was a volatile mix.

Every army is a microcosm of the larger society and has its share of the less desirable. Shirkers and thieves slipped away from both armies and joined the gangs of bandits. Deserters from the Rebel cavalry, though officially deserters, were mostly just men sick of war and ready for peace. They were the first to confront the bandits coming down out of the western mountains. Then, when the veterans trickled in after Appomattox, the deserters, who were veterans themselves and usually friends and relatives of the returning paroled veterans, joined together with the paroled veterans to end the Valley of the plague of banditry, at times even joined by Yankee cavalry.

Will Rourke, bloody minded from both anger and grief, was willing to join in the hunt. Not just willing. Enthusiastic. He needed an outlet for his outrage. Any bandit foolish enough to resist would not get the chance to regret it. He became so intense, and so lethal, that Tom Sykes and some of the others had to try to restrain him. They did. Some. Maybe enough to save his soul from teetering over the edge. And maybe not. Maybe it was too late for him.

Maybe it was too late for all of them.

Two weeks passed and Will was preparing to return home to Minnesota. He had only a single thought in mind upon his return. Like Whit Jackson, and his Dakota son-in-law, Lance, he would be single-mindedly fixated on finding those who had raped and murdered at Antrim. Then, just a day before he was to leave, a miracle happened. A miracle in the form of a worn, somehow familiar figure in a Yankee uniform who came slowly walking down the road. Not so much walking as limping, with a thick crooked stick of sturdy oak as combination crutch and cane. He had something wrong with one of his legs. As the Yankee came closer Will could hardly believe his eyes. He screamed it out so loud everyone within earshot jerked their heads in astonishment to look.

"Sam! My God! Sam! You're alive." He set off running to grab his brother into an embrace a long time coming. A very, very long time coming.

Samuel Rourke, too, had survived the war.

### Samuel Rourke

Samuel Rourke's court martial had gone as Captain, now Major, James Chastain had manipulated it. Friends and allies of his powerful family packed the court. Witnesses were bribed or intimidated--or both--into cooperating. Major Hanlon, who could have exonerated Samuel Rourke, had been beaten by the mob so badly during the draft riots that he was in a coma and not expected to recover. Despite the best efforts of Samuel Rourke's friend Stanford Wells to get an alternative counsel approved, the court appointed a defense attorney who was another of the Chastain family's allies. It was over before it even started. Samuel Rourke was convicted of refusing to obey a lawful order in the face of a violent insurrection and sentenced to ten years in prison. He was sent to the prison at Point Lookout. A prison which also contained thousands of Confederate prisoners of war. He was there for nearly a year before Major Marcus Hanlon suddenly awoke from his coma, and, as soon as the news of his recovery reached Stanford Wells, was immediately apprised by Wells of what had happened. Hanlon, still weak from his ordeal, nevertheless, together with Wells and a thick folder of substantiating evidence Wells had accumulated through the Pinkerton Detective Agency, went directly to the office of the Federal Provost Marshall in Washington D.C.

They got nowhere with the rigid military bureaucracy, so Wells used some of his own contacts to gain an audience with Abraham Lincoln's private secretary, German born John Nicolay, who was often used by Lincoln to investigate situations brought to his attention. It was Nicolay's fastidious investigations of the dubious military courts martial of the Dakota convicted by vengeful self-proclaimed jurists in Minnesota in 1862 that chopped the list of those condemned to execution from close to three hundred to less than forty. Nicolay, well aware of the potential for revenge and abuse in the military justice system, lent a willing ear. He examined the evidence Wells brought and listened to Hanlon's first hand testimony. Convinced, he went to Abraham Lincoln who, despite the draconian, dubiously legal and often unconstitutional measures he enacted during the war, still remained a compassionate man towards individual situations.

One week later Samuel Rourke was a free man and Major James Chastain was forced to resign from the United States Army.

Samuel Rourke returned to his old unit, the 29th Massachusetts, in time for the final months of the Petersburg siege. In another of the war's valiant but doomed charges he suffered another wound, a minie ball that grazed the edge of his knee, knocking off a chip from it and bruising the knee so deeply it left him with a pronounced limp. He was on light duty, driving a quartermaster's wagon, when Lee surrendered. His commanding officer, aware of the injustice the rich and powerful far from the realities of war had inflicted on war veteran Samuel, readily gave him a pass to go to his family's farm in Virginia.

Samuel expected the hostile looks from the Valley inhabitants as he made his limping way in his Union uniform down the old Back Road in the Valley towards his childhood home. Some of the hostile expressions seemed to have the potential to go beyond looks into action, so Samuel stayed close to the Union soldiers now thickly seeded throughout the Valley. And then, one day, already shaken by the devastation of the once beautiful, bounteous Valley of Virginia, he was dumbstruck when he saw the Rourke family farm, the fruit of so many generations' blood, sweat and toil, was gone. No house. No barn or stable. No outbuildings. No animals. Not even any fences. A passing old man recognized Sam, knew he had been in the Union army, but was one of the many lukewarm at best about secession and not hostile towards him. He explained to Samuel where he would find his family. The old man pondered whether he should be the one to tell him of the deaths of his two brothers and so many others in the war, but thought it best his own family told him. He did, however, not hesitate in giving him some good news.

"You brother Will is here, too." Samuel, overjoyed to hear of Will, wounded leg or not, set off an awkward lope for the barn where his family was.

His joy would be soon shattered when he learned his twin brother and younger brother were both dead in the war. As a twin, he already had dark premonitions that something bad happened to his identical twin, Michael, and that he was probably dead. But not James. No. Not James. The baby of the family who everyone doted on without even really realizing it.

It was a bittersweet family reunion.

During the burning of the Valley, when Will Rourke found his family's farm in ashes, he began questioning captured Yankees about who the officer was in charge of burning the Rourke home. The captured Yankees, with frightened eyes and cowed countenances, fearing for their lives, and rightly so, were quick to give whatever information they had. Any information. It didn't take Rourke long to figure out that they were saying whatever they thought would help them in their predicament. A dangerous predicament, considering the intense angry looks from many of the Rebel horsemen. Doing battle with men was war. Doing battle with civilians, women and children and the aged, was not war. It was barbarism. And many of the Rebels had a very good idea of just what to do with barbarians.

Rourke finally nailed it down. Two captured Union cavalrymen told him who they believed was the officer in charge of the homes burned in the immediate area of the Rourke farm. A man named Major Dunlee, commanding a detachment of Custer's cavalry in the burning in that part of the Valley. Then Rourke came across a captured Yankee who had actually been there. It wasn't Major Dunlee who burned the Rourke place. It was a Captain named Clay. Captain Theodore Clay, commander of a squadron of Indiana cavalry from the county of Sullivan on the central Indiana border with Illinois. How did the captured Yankee, a sergeant named Liston who did not show the fear of the other captured Yankees, know all this?

"We're from the same county. Sullivan. County seat of the same name. I have a little farm there on the prairie. Clay is the son of the town's major and brother of the county sheriff. His father and older brothers are good men, but Ted is different. His parents always doted on him as a child. He could do no wrong. And he has always been a bully."

"You know all this?" Rourke said, dubious. "That's a lot of personal information, even in the world of small town gossip."

"I should know, Captain," Liston said without hesitation, just the tiniest hint of a wry expression touching his weathered face. "I'm married to his sister."

Sarah had earlier told Will how when the burners came to their place there was arguing going on among them. Some were against the burning, the most vocal a tall sergeant with hair the color of ripe carrots and a drooping mustache to match.

"There was this officer," Sarah said. "Kind of rough. Thick bodied. Mean looking. He was yelling at the men and threatening them if they didn't do the burning. They went ahead and burned our place, but I could see some of them were none too happy about it.

Rourke looked at Sergeant Liston. He was tall, with carrot red hair and a drooping mustache a shade darker. Had to be the same man. Liston's credibility took a huge leap in Rourke's mind.

"Captain Clay, Theodore, is a sure enough bully, sir," Liston had continued. "And worse. Even most of his own family don't much like him." Liston looked hard at Rourke. "He took pleasure in the burning and sometimes even laughed when people begged us not to burn their homes. Most of us are farmers and we hated to see the farms destroyed, knowing how much work and care went into building them up."

"Is this Clay an abolitionist? Is that why he is so dead set on burning Southern homes and farms?" Rourke asked. Liston snorted, his eyebrows, as red and bushy as his mustache, scrunched down in a glower.

"Abolitionist! Clay? Hell, no. You'd see the Second Coming before Ted Clay accepts blacks as equals to whites. He hates blacks just like he hates damn near everyone." That didn't surprise Will. He had long known that dislike for the blacks was almost as common among the soldiers of the North as those of the South and that racial equality in the North was a distant dream at best. "Captain," Liston concluded. "Captain Theodore Clay is just flat out mean. He is the only man I ever met in the army who actually enjoyed the war."

Will Rourke personally escorted Sergeant Liston to an official prisoner of war enclosure, making certain he was not waylaid by irate Rebels, and left him in the care of the provost guard. Rourke would be making a stop on the way home after the war. Actually, there would be two stops.

One of them in Sullivan County, Indiana.

After Rourke, Sykes and the Valley's veterans had rid the country of the marauders, and after Samuel Rourke miraculously showed up, the family had a very long and intense discussion. Antrim's inhabitants were gone, but most of the buildings and farm were still intact. Why stay here in the ruined Valley where starvation would stalk the land and it would be a generation before it recovered? Why not come with Will and Sykes to Antrim and start anew there? The Rourke and Jackson--Sarah was a Jackson by birth-- roots were deep in the Valley. But the Rourkes were disgusted with the South and the bitterness and vengefulness that already was beginning to dominate the thinking of the survivors in the Valley. Samuel Rourke, for his part, having seen the corruption in New York and the machinations of the rich and powerful elitists like the Chastain family and the utter poverty of the working class Irish in New York, was equally disgusted with the North. Susan Riley, the Rourke's daughter, would stand by her crippled husband whether he agreed to go west or remain in the Valley and could not yet make a choice. Beyond that, it was agreed. Will and Sykes would go first, the others would follow. The Rourkes, not including Simon's widow and daughter, who had already left to live with her relatives in Kentucky, would go west. West. To a new life.

Or so they hoped.

### An Eye For An Eye

The week previous a thin, almost emaciated sergeant, a wounded veteran leaning on a thick crooked oak stick, stood before Major Edwin Egan in the personnel office of the War Department in Washington, DC. Did the Major have the current assignment or home address of a Captain Llewellyn Jones who had been an officer at the prisoner of war camp at Fort Delaware? The sergeant's brother had died at Fort Delaware and the sergeant had been told by soldiers who had been stationed there that an officer, Captain Llewellyn Jones, might know at least the approximate location of his brother's grave. If at all possible, the family would like to exhume his body and rebury him in the family cemetery.

"Your brother was in the Rebel army?" Major Egan asked, curious and perhaps skeptical.

"Yes," Samuel Rourke replied. "I am originally from Virginia. My brother went with the South. I stayed with the Union." The Major, who was also a combat veteran, his back heavily scarred by shrapnel at Second Bull Run, and who had relatives who fought for the South, was not unsympathetic. And still curious. And cautious.

"What was your regiment?" He asked.

"The 29th Massachusetts," Rourke answered.

"You were at Petersburg, then?" Rourke nodded, slapping his bad leg.

"I was there, sir."

"Come back next Monday and hopefully I'll have the information you need."

Samuel Rourke, still officially in the army though on terminal convalescent leave, was back the following Monday. Major Egan rose, shook his hand, then gave Rourke a sheet of paper.

"Captain Jones was reassigned from Fort Delaware and is now stationed with the occupation troops in Richmond. This is his military address." Samuel Rourke smiled, thanked Major Egan for his help, and hobbled--intentionally exaggerating his limp--out of the Major's office. Captain Llewellyn Jones was the officer at Fort Delaware who had ordered the murder of Will Rourke's friend, Lieutenant Leland Covington. Will Rourke would now know where the other stop would be before returning west to Minnesota. Indiana would be the second stop on the way back to Minnesota.

Richmond would be the first.

One of the salient realities of Richmond had not changed when the city transitioned from the Confederate government to Yankee occupation. The bordellos continued to flourish, too many of the women in them the widows of Rebel soldiers who had no other way to make a living. Captain Llewellyn Jones was not a man to practice abstinence from drink or chastity of body. He was a regular at one of the better bordellos in Richmond, a place once frequented by highly placed Confederate officials and officers but now servicing the Yankee occupiers. The bordello owners were not displeased. Confederate money in the latter years of the war was virtually useless but the Yankee dollar was solid. They might have lost the war, but the bordello business was booming.

After lingering with drink and bedding a dark-eyed young girl of perhaps sixteen, another of the host of war orphans, her father dead at Gettysburg and her mother wasted away into the grave from consumption, a smug Captain Jones was on his way back to his lodgings. He was quartered in one of the private homes not destroyed when Richmond fell and were subsequently requisitioned for use by Union officers. As he walked on the board sidewalk, blissfully tipsy and his mind still dwelling on the voluptuous young girl from the bordello, a figure suddenly stepped in front of him. Jones' attention snapped to the present and he stared at the shady figure before him, speaking with the authoritative voice he had often used at Fort Delaware. With his own troops as well as the prisoners.

"Out of the way, man," he said, pushing past the shadowy figure which he now realized was someone in a Confederate uniform, a broad brimmed hat partly concealing his face. A Confederate uniform was hardly unusual in Richmond in the weeks after the war. The city was full of them. An arm reached out from the figure and stopped Jones cold. An arm, Jones could not help but notice, that had considerable strength behind it.

"What do you think you are doing, you Rebel bastard? I'll have you in prison for this!" The face behind the arm moved closer to Captain Jones. A face that Jones thought seemed vaguely familiar.

"Do you remember Lieutenant Leland Covington," the shadowy Rebel said. In a flash Captain Llewellyn Jones remembered Covington and the face of the man before him.

"R....R....Rourke. You...you....you're....Rourke......"

Those were the last words Captain Llewellyn Jones ever uttered.

Two weeks later Will Rourke and Tom Sykes rode into western Indiana. By chance Sykes knew the area reasonably well. He had worked on his uncle's farm in Vigo County before the war. Sullivan County, which was where they were going, lay just below Vigo County. And Sullivan County was where Captain Theodore Clay, now discharged and a civilian again, had his home. One moonless night a knock came on Clay's door. He opened it to find a pair of hooded men pointing revolvers at him. In a few minutes Clay's wife and two small children were standing with the former captain in their yard. Rourke and Sykes both noticed the bruises on the woman's face and the way she favored one of her arms. As though it was injured. Not quite grasping what it meant at first, Will Rourke then described in detail to Mrs. Clay how her husband had burned the houses and barns of the people of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and left them so destitute they were starving. The young woman, battered yet again earlier that evening by her husband, had actually wished her abusive and arrogant husband hadn't come back from the war. She had no doubt the hooded man, who had to be a former Rebel, was telling the truth. Such meanness fit Theodore Clay perfectly. She, as did everyone in Sullivan County when the troopers came home after the war, knew about the burning of the Shenandoah Valley.

Clay had said nothing about it, but she was certain that he had a part in it. Now there could be no more doubt. He was one of the burners, and not just a burner, he was one of the men who directed the burning out of whole families and left them with nothing. And reveled in the destruction! Such wanton brutality was alien to the parts of the country untouched by the grim realities of total war. She could not forgive her husband. Not this time. Not ever again. Never. She had been thinking about it every since he came home and resumed his abusive and domineering ways. Now she was resolved to do it. Despite the difficult economic and personal circumstances of any divorced or widowed woman, she was going to leave the bad tempered controlling bully once and for all. She at least had family to fall back on when she left. They all knew what kind of a man Clay was and would understand. Her parents, in fact, had been urging her to leave him for some time.

"Do you propose to burn our place, then, sir," she replied, "in some form of recompense for what obviously must have happened to your family?" A gentle nod from Rourke.

"Then be done with it, Mr. Rebel, and throw this evil man into the fire while you're at it." Ted Clay started, looked irately at his wife and raised a fist to strike her down. Will Rourke knocked Clay's fist from her face.

"Will you wait until I load up a wagon with my things before burning the house?" She said, surprising Will and Sykes. "I propose to make this a final ending to a marriage I should never have made." Sykes tied Clay to a tree and he and Will helped her carry out the belongings she wanted to keep to a wagon, load it to overflowing, and then hitch up a team of horses. The soon to be the former Mrs. Clay nestled her two children in a pallet in the wagon, climbed up to the wagon seat and took the reins.

"I'm glad you came," she said, and she meant it. "I thank you. Now burn the place, and him in it!" With that she snapped the reins, yelled at the horses and the wagon jerked into movement and soon disappeared down the road. Will and Tom would never have imagined this kind of outcome, but had to admit that it was considerably more gratifying than just burning down the house. They did set the place on fire, though they didn't throw Clay in the burning house despite the strong temptation to do just that. They rode away as Clay, still tied to a tree, watched his house burn, his wife gone, his life in tatters, and hollered every curse word he had ever heard, plus a few he made up on the spot, at the pair of Rebels as they rode away. Later, when red-headed ex-Sergeant Liston, home after being released from a Confederate prisoner of war camp, heard about it he had absolutely no doubt about who had burned down Ted Clay's house. _The son of a bitch deserved it,_ he thought to himself.

Until the day of his death more than half century later Liston never told a single soul about Will Rourke.

### New York

Before heading west to Indiana the two surviving Rourke brothers paid a visit to Sam's old friend, Sanford Wells, in New York. Wells had feared for Sam's survival after he returned to the war and was overjoyed to hear Sam survived. Survived, but not completely intact.

"Sam, you're injured. Again. Your leg. Will it ever be normal?" Wells asked.

"A small price to pay," Sam Rourke replied, "where so many others paid with their lives."

"Including," Will Rourke interjected in an intentionally exaggerated Southern accent, "our two brothers, our uncle and many a relative and friend gone to the grave. And the family farm burned to ashes by your General Sheridan." Wells caught the underlying accusatory slant to Will's words, Wells being after all a prosperous New Yorker who had advocated abolitionism before the war and had not served in the army, though Sam had told him Wells had rheumatic fever as a child, had a weakened heart and consequently was rejected as physically unfit when he tried to enlist.

"He is not _my_ General Sheridan," Wells replied, a touch heatedly. "I deplore the methods of Sheridan, and Sherman and even Grant. I am now convinced it was a war that should never have been fought. Too much blood. Too much misery. Too much sanctimony and far too much hypocrisy. To what point? The slaves are now free to starve or be wage slaves as are the workers in the north. Can the country ever be the same again?"

"Never!" Both Rourke's answered.

"Different, to be sure," Will added, "but never the same as before." Sam leaned towards Sanford Wells.

"There is a reason we are here. To thank you and say goodbye."

"Goodbye?" Wells replied. "Meaning what?"

"Meaning I will soon be going west to Will's place in far off Minnesota. Start a new life. There is nothing left for me in the east, in either New York or Virginia." He reached over and put a hand on Wells' knee. "I wanted to thank you for all you have done for me, Sanford. I am forever in your debt. If there is ever anything you need I can help you with, please, please let me help." A smile slowly slid across Sanford Well's face.

"There is, in fact, something you can help me with. Something we have in common. A settling of scores." The smile on Wells' face widened, showing his teeth and giving him an almost wolfish look. "With a certain former Union major named James Chastain."

Two days later James Chastain, still a prosperous member of New York's elite despite being forced to resign from the army, received an enticing note to meet a mysterious lady admirer at a New York hotel where certain assignations were handled with the utmost discretion for the rich and powerful clientele. Chastain knocked on the room number noted in the message and waited with barely suppressed anticipation for the door to open. When it did Chastain had no chance to cry for help as three sets of strong hands grabbed him, covered his mouth and pulled him into the room. The three men in the room, all of them masked, put a rag in Chastain's mouth and pulled a pillowcase over his head. The beating did not kill him, though he never fully recovered and suffered from paranoia for the rest of his life. And rightly so. Before the assailants left him, one whispered in his ear.

"Leave it be, Chastain," the whisper becoming a hiss, "or we'll be _back_."

His attackers never were identified.

Chapter 10: Return to Minnesota

Whit Jackson was on the Dakota prairie when an ashen faced beardless Union lieutenant who had yet to see his 21st birthday, tasked with the grim duty by Colonel DeWitt, took him aside with the news. They'd come in to the ranch that late summer of 1864, around a dozen of them, judging by the tracks found later by would be rescuers, and at least some of them known to be impersonating Union cavalry. Using forged orders, they'd gotten rid of the quartet of videttes guarding the ranch, far fewer than the full squadron Jackson had adamantly insisted upon before he would leave the family to scout for Sully's army. The ruse worked. Before anyone realized what was happening, the raiders had descended on the ranch and made everyone prisoner.

Then it had begun, the raping and brutalizing of the women. Rourke's wife Marie, Jackson's Sioux wife, Good Bed, her half-Sioux daughter Fleet Foot. The raiders abused them for hours within earshot of the captive children and the two men, Jackson's son Light Eyes and a day laborer, a recent Norwegian immigrant named Lars Giswold. The women, and the men, were all tortured as the raiders tried to coerce the location of Whit Jackson's cache of placer gold from the Black Hills. No one gave them the location, despite the threats and the torture. They couldn't. The raiders would not believe it, but there was no hidden gold. It was just another false rumor, dramatically enhanced, as so many others, by copious quantities of alcohol This one, however, with lethal consequences.

The debauchery at Antrim was too much for the local man who guided the raiders into the Rourke farm. Jeremiah Cooper had a score to settle with Rourke, but he hadn't expected anything like this. When he saw them dragging Marie Rourke off to be raped, and heard her screams, he staggered off into the bushes and puked his guts out. When the killing started he got on his horse and rode off, only pausing once to throw a furtive fearful glance over this shoulder at the horrors that had descended on the Rourke ranch. Horrors Jeremiah Cooper had brought on Antrim by leading the raiders to the place.

Will Rourke was not a popular man in the thinly settled farm and ranch country where he had his place. Not after he rode off to join the Rebel army. There wasn't much concern for Rourke or his family among his neighbors, though they had plenty of concern about themselves. No one knew the identity of the raiders, though there was some gossip that the killers were Northern vigilantes bent on destroying the farm of Confederate sympathizers. Far fetched as it was, almost unheard of in frontier Minnesota, it was way too common in the border and Southern states.

The mystery would have stayed just that, a mystery, had Jeremiah Cooper not taken to heavy drinking after the massacre. The vivid memories of rape and murder at Antrim would not leave him and the only way he could cope with the lurid memories was to deaden them with alcohol. That was his undoing. He said the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person while in a sodden stupor. Word drifted back to Jackson. When Rourke and Sykes rode in several weeks after Appomattox and Rourke's great uncle Whit Jackson told them what had really happened at the Rourke ranch, not a day passed before they were back in the saddle looking for Jeremiah Cooper. He was not hard to find. Maybe, Jackson thought, knowing the man and that he had least a fragment of conscience, he _wanted_ to be found. Cooper's long simmering jealousy over losing the dark-eyed beauty Marie Bottineau to Rourke years earlier could not even begin to justify, even in his habitual remorseful inebriation, the hell he had brought upon her and the rest of the doomed people at Antrim.

The poor drunken wreck of a man told them everything. Willingly. Everything he could. The names of the raiders, the location of one still in Minnesota. He had ridden away when the horrors started and only knew that the raiders believed a rumor that Whit Jackson, protected by his Dakota relatives, had gathered a hundred pounds or more of placer gold in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory. He was said to have hidden it on the ranch he shared with his great-nephew, Will Rourke. Like most rumors, there was a kernel of truth to it. But only that. Two of Jackson's distant relatives among the Sioux who traveled near the Paha Sapa had collected a handful of what they considered worthless pebbles and traded them for a couple of Antrim's sturdy horses, hybrids with a hardy mixture of Quarter Horse and Indian pony genes. Jackson had the placer nuggets assayed, which was the birthplace of the rumor that led the raiders to the Rourke/Jackson farm that fateful violent day in 1864.

Micah O'Toole, one of the raiders, had been brash--or foolish--enough to stay on in the Minnesota country. They found him where Jeremiah Cooper said they would. At a sleazy tavern he ran on the St. Paul waterfront. A rundown neighborhood earlier known as Pig's Eye. O'Toole closed up his sour-smelling dingy tavern one rainy night in the wee hours of morning and was never seen again. Three hard-eyed men, Jackson and Rourke and Sykes, grabbed him outside his seedy saloon, tied and gagged him, put him under a waterproof in a wagon bed, rode the ferry over the river and took him miles away to an isolated tiny patch of prairie on the edge of a stand of huge mature growth hardwoods where there was no one to see. Or hear. The country for miles around was still largely depopulated from the days of the Sioux uprising, small parties of Dakota still occasionally mounting raids into Minnesota and discouraging the settlers from returning. Many, in fact, bitter for years to come, never did return.

The three men tied Riley to a massive burr oak tree overlooking the cemetery where the Jacksons and the Rourkes were buried. It took two days before he finally talked. When he did, he spilled everything the same way Cooper had. Rourke carefully wrote it all down to make sure he had all of the details. There had been an even dozen of them. O'Toole, Cooper, three brothers named Davis and a man named Charlie Gibbons had been marginal to the raiders and hadn't taken much part in the raping and none of the killing at the Rourke farm. At least that was what O'Toole blurted out, hoping and praying the avengers would let him live. A slim hope, to be sure, but enough to keep him talking.

"Me and Gibbons and the Davis boys didn't do the killin' and rapin'," he said through parched lips, momentarily grateful to his captors for the fervently begged for deep drink of water they finally gave him. "Nor did the Professor. Fact is he was the only one tried to stop 'em." He coughed. "Not that it did any good. Sneth backed him down but good."

O'Toole, as best he could in his weakened, cowed condition, continued to tell the three avengers what he knew of the Antrim murderers. The ones who were the most brutal were the ringleader, a pockmarked hard muscled former Union sergeant named Butt Sneth, a wily little whip of a man named Ferret Smith and a brutal half-wit called Willy Soames. The two Kelper brothers were little better. The remaining man was one they called the Professor, an educated Southerner who told the others his name was Grandby Miles, though they doubted that was his real name. He was a professional riverboat gambler and con man who had fallen on hard times when the war came and joined up with the raiders out of desperation.

According to the sallow, broken shadow of a man, who now bore little resemblance to the cocky, and greedy, saloon keeper Micah O'Toole, the Professor had been the only man among the raiders who tried to stop the raping and killing. But he had been unwilling to go as far as fighting and had backed off when Sneth threatened him. The Professor backed away as the other raiders raped and murdered the people at Antrim. And not just him. O'Toole, his voice weak and wavering, continued to insist he had nothing to do with the raping and killing.

None of the three believed him..

Ironically, O'Toole died without any added help from the trio of avengers. It was ironic because during the night the three had decided to let him go and send him to warn the others that they were coming after them, intending to trail O'Toole to some of the other raiders. But when they came to cut him loose in the morning they found the once handsome Irishman dead. Rourke buried him in an unmarked grave near the woods below his family's cemetery.

Jeremiah Cooper did not long survive O'Toole. The three avengers left him a present one night while he slept in a drunken fog in a corner of his shabby shack. Cooper awoke to find a hangman's noose swinging from the one solid rafter in his ramshackle hovel. He used it just before dawn.

Not long after he died, a tall, muscularly lean figure came in and removed the dead man's belt buckle. Will Rourke added the belt buckle to the same stark white cross he had already put Micah O'Toole's buckle onto. The simple wooden cross was in front of Marie Rourke's grave. The two buckles hung from hooks set into the cross' side.

There were still ten empty hooks on it.

### West

A year earlier the raiders had disappeared into the tumultuous American West, certain no one would ever know their identities, much less search them out. They were oblivious of the bulldog tenacity of such men as Will Rourke, Whit Jackson and Tom Sykes. But even if they had been aware of the possibility of pursuers they, in their lawless hubris, would have simply blown them off as of little concern.

The ten empty hooks on Marie Rourke's grave said otherwise.

Now, a year later, three determined, men, with hard set faces, mounted their horses at Antrim. They were going west. They were survivors, these three. Survivors with a mission that rose to the level of a overarching quest. They were pursuers, avengers, bent on what the Germans called the Biblical Auge Um Auge--Eye For An Eye. They _would_ find the raiders. And visit upon them the retribution of the Righteous. And, in so doing, possibly even find absolution.

Or so they, with the intense fervency of a Crusader in days of old, believed.

Chapter 11: Bibliography

(Note: The Bibliography is only of non-fiction books in the author's personal library, print and digital, and does not include library books, novels or volumes no longer in the library. The total of books read on the Civil War and the Sioux Indians is at least twice those in the bibliography.)

.

Rourke Books

### General

Botkin, B.A. _A Civil War Treasury of Tales, Legends and Folklore_ University of Nebraska Press Lincoln NE Bison Press 2000 Random House 1960

Brown, Dee _The Galvanized Yankees_ Open Road Integrated Media New York NY

Catton, Bruce _The Civil War_ Houghton Mifflin Company Boston MA 1960 1988

Cisco, Walter Brian _War Crimes Against Southern Civilians_ Pelican Publishing Co. Gretna LA 2007

Davis, Burke _The Civil War Strange & Fascinating Facts_ Wings Books New York NY 1960

Driver, Robert J., Jr. _First Virginia Cavalry_ H.E. Howard Inc. Lynchburg VA 1991

Flagel, Thomas R. _The History Buff's Guide to the Civil War_ Cumberland House Sourcebooks, Inc. Naperville Il 2003 2010

Foote, Shelby Editor _Chickamauga And Other Civil War Stories_ Delta Dell Publishing New York NY 1993

Freeman, Douglas Southall Harwell, RichardAbridged Version _Lee_ Collier Books Macmillan Publishing Company New York NY 1961

Furguson, Ernest B. _Ashes of Glory Richmond At War_ Vintage Books Division of Random House New York NY 1996

Glatthaar, Joseph T. _General Lee's Army From Victory To Collapse_ Free Press Simon & Schuster New York NY 2008

Groom, Winston _Shrouds of Glory From Atlanta to Nashville: The Last Great Campaign of the Civil War_ Pocket Books Simon & Schuster New York NY 1995

Harwell, Richard B. _The Confederate Reader How The South Saw The War_ Dorset Press New York NY 1992

Hattaway, Herman _Shades of Blue and Gray_ Harvest Book Harcourt Brace & Company New York NY 1997

Heatwole, John L. _The Burning Sheridan's Devastation of the Shenandoah Valley_

Howell Press Rockbridge Publishing Charlottesville VA 1998

Henderson, Lt. Col. G.F.R _Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War The Definitive Biography of the Great Confederate General_ Two Volumes The Blue & Gray Press Book Sales, Inc. Secaucus NJ

Henry, Robert Selph _Nathan Bedford Forrest First With The Most_ Mallard Press New York NY 1991

Irwin, Gregory J.W. Editor _Black Flag Over Dixie Racial Atrocities and Reprisals in the Civil War_ Southern University Illinois Press Carbondale IL 2004

Kennedy, Francis Lee Editor _The Civil War Battlefield Guide_ The Conservation fund

Houghton Mifflin Company Boston MA New York NY 1998

Kennet, Lee _Marching Through Georgia The Story of Soldiers & Civilians During Sherman's Campaign_ Harper Perennial New York NY 1996

Longacre, Edward G. _Lee's Cavalrymen_ Stackpole Books Mechanicsburg PA 2002

Miller, David Editor _Uniforms, Weapons And Equipment Of The Civil War_ Salamander Books London England 2001

Mingus, Scott L., Sr. _Human Interest Stories of the Gettysburg Campaign_ Colecraft Industries Orrtanna PA 2006

Pryor, Elizabeth Brown _Reading The Man A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters_ Viking Penguin Group New York NY 2007

Reidenbaugh, Lowell _33rd Virginia Infantry 2nd Edition_ H.E. Howard Inc. Lynchburg VA 1987

Robertson, James I., Jr. _The Stonewall Brigade_ Louisiana State University Press Baton Rouge LA 1963

Robertson, James I., Jr. _Stonewall Jackson The Man, The Soldier, The Legend_ Macmillan Publishing Simon & Schuster New York NY 1997

Schecter, Arnold _The Devil's Own Work The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America_ Walker & Company New York 2005

Stackpole, Gen. Edward J. They Met At Gettysburg Stackpole Books Harrisburg PA 1956

Stewart, George R. _Pickett's Charge A microhistory of the final attack at Gettysburg, July 3, 1863_ Hougton Mifflin Company Boston MA 1959

Storrick, W.C. _Gettysburg Battle & Battlefield_ Barnes & Noble New York NY 1994

Symonds, Craig L. _Stonewall Of The West Patrick Cleburne And The Civil War_

University Press of Kansas Lawrence KS 1997

Tanner, Robert G. _Stonewall in the Valley Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's Campaign, Spring 1862_ Stackpole Books Mechanicsburg PA 1996

Walsh, George _Damage Them All You Can Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia_

Tom Doherty Associates New York NY 2002

Wert, Jeffry D. _A Glorious Army Robert E. Lee's Triumph 1862-1863_ Simon & Shuster New York NY 2011

Wiley, Bell Irvin _The Life Of Johnny Reb_ Louisiana State University Press Baton Rouge LA 1943

Wyeth, John Allen _That Devil Forrest Life Of General Nathan Bedford Forrest_ Louisiana State University Press Baton Rouge LA 1959

### Civil War Prisons of the North

Adams, Michael C.C. _Living Hell The Dark Side of the Civil War_ John Hopkins University Press Baltimore 2014

Gillispie, James M. _Andersonvilles of the North The Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners_ University of North Texas Press Denton TX 20008

Hesseltine, William B. _Civil War Prisons_ Kent State University Press Kent OH 1962

Horigan, Michael _Elmira Death Camp of the North_ Stackpole Books Mechanicsburg PA 2002

Ivy, Major Jack Morris, Jr. USAF _Camp Chase, Columbus Ohio 1861-1865 Union's Treatment Of Confederate Prisoners_ Pickle Partners Publishing Digital Edition 2014

Levy, George _To Die in Chicago Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas 1862-65_

Pelican Publishing Co. Gretna LA 1999

Speer, Lonnie R. _Portals To Hell Military Prisons of the Civil War_ Stackpole Books Mechanicsburg PA 1997

### Original Sources

Barefoot, Daniel W. Editor and Compiler. _Let Us Die Like Brave Men Behind the_

_Dying Words of Confederate Veterans_ John F. Blair Publisher Winston-Salem NC 2005

Burr, Virginia Ingraham Editor _The Secret Eye The Journal of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas 1848-1889_ University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill NC 1990

Casler, John O. _Four Years In The Stonewall Brigade_ University of South Carolina Press Columbia SC 2005 State Capital Printing Company 1893 Appeal Publishing Company 1906

Chamberlain, Joshua Lawrence _The Passing Of The Armies_ Bantam Books New York NY 1993 G.P. Putnam's Sons Publishing 1915

Chestnut, Mary _A Diary from Dixie_ Edited by Martin, Isabella Avery, Mryta Lockett 1905 Gramercy Books New York NY Random House Value Publishing Company New York NY 1997

Douglas, Henry Kyd _I Rode With Stonewall_ University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill NC 1940,

Fletcher, William A. _Memoirs of a Confederate Soldier_ Penguin Meridian Group New York NY 1997 Originally Published Beaumont: Press of the Geer print Beaumont TX 1908

Garrison, Webb _More Civil War Curiosities Fascinating Tales, Infamous Characters and Strange Coincidences_ Rutledge Hill Press Nashville TN 1995

Gragg, Rod Editor T _he Illustrated Confederate Reader Extraordinary Accounts By The Civil War's Southern Soldiers and Civilians_ Harper & Row New York NY 1989

Haskell, Lt. Frank A. USA & Coates, Col. William CSA _Gettysburg_ Bantam Books New York NY 1992

McCarthy, Carlton _Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia 1861-1865_ University of Nebraska Press 1993 Originally Published McCarthy Richmond VA 1882

Morgan, Sarah _The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman_ Edited by Charles East

Touchstone Simon & Schuster New York NY University of Georgia Press Athens GA 1991

Sorrel, G. Moxley _Recollections Of A Confederate State Officer_ Bantam Books New York NY 1992 Neal Publishing Company 1905

Watkins, Sam R. _"Co. Aytch"_ Collier Books McMillan Publishing Company New York NY 1962

### Partisan Warfare

Barton, O.S. _Three Years With Quantrill A True Story Told by His Scout John McCorkle_

The Western Frontier Library The University of Oklahoma Press Norman OK 1992

Filbert, Preston _The Half Not Told The Civil War in a Frontier Town_ Stackpole Books Mechanicsburg PA 2001

Gilmore, Donald L. _Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border_ Pelican Publishing Co. Gretna LA 2006

Jones, Virgil Carrington _Gray Ghosts and Rebel Raiders_ EPM Publications McLean VA 1956, 1984

Trotter, William R. _Bushwhackers The Civil War in North Carolina The Mountains_

John F. Blair, Publisher Winston-Salem NC 1998

Younger, Cole _The Story Of Cole Younger_ Minnesota Historical Society Press St. Paul MN 2000 Henneberry Company Chicago IL 1903

### Dakota Native Americans

Neihardt, John G. _Black Elk Speaks_ Digital Edition Board of Regents University of Nebraska 2014 Original Printings 1932 1959 1972

Anderson, Gary Clinton and Woolworth, Alan R. Editors _Through Dakota Eyes Narrative Accounts of the Minnesota Indian War of 1862_ Minnesota Historical Society

Press St. Paul MN 1988

Berg, Scott W. _38 Nooses Lincoln, Little Crow And The Beginning Of The Frontier's End_ Vintage Books Random House New York NY 2012

Carley, Kenneth _The Dakota War of 1862 Minnesota's Other Civil War_ Minnesota Historical Society Press 1961 1976

Oehler, C.M. _The Great Sioux Uprising_ Da Capo Press New York NY 1997

Schultz, Duane _Over the Earth I Come The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862_ Thomas Dunne Books St. Martin's Griffin New York NY 1992

### Rourke Online Sources

### Civil War

Journals

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/civil-war-journals-diaries-and-memoirs

Environment

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/the-civil-wars-environmental-impact/?_r=1

Cavalry

http://www.thomaslegion.net/americancivilwar/civilwarcavalryweaponsmilitary.html

### Civil War Prisons Union

Point Lookout

http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/20632

http://www.jefpat.org/NEHWeb/Assets/Collections/images/18st61/PDFs/baltimore_sun_newspaper.pdf

Fort Delaware

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Delaware

http://www.fortdelaware.org/prisoner%20&%20garrison%20queries.htm

http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh2-1.html

Camp Douglas

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/gazetteer/places/america/united_states/illinois/_Texts/journals/JIllSHS/53/1/Chicagos_Camp_Douglas*.html

### Civil War Prisons (North and South)

http://thomaslegion.net/civil_war_prisoner_of_war_prison_union_confederate_prisoners_and_prisons_.html

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v02/v02p137_Weber.html

### Civil War North Military Units

29th Massachusetts

https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UMA0029RI

http://www.civilwarindex.com/armyma/29th_ma_infantry.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/29th_Regiment_Massachusetts_Volunteer_Infantry

The Irish Brigade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Brigade_(U.S.)

http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/the-irish-brigade

### Dakota Environment

Wildlife

https://gfp.sd.gov/wildlife/docs/sdwildlife-brochure.pdf

South Dakota Prairies

http://www3.northern.edu/natsource/HABITATS/Sdprai1.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_Pothole_Region

### Dakota Native Americans

Dakota War of 1862

http://www.usdakotawar.org/

Inkpaduta

http://www.american-tribes.com/Dakota/bio/Inkpaduta.htm

http://www.colinmustful.com/inkpaduta-villain-or-hero/

collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/48/v48i01p024-035.pdf

Language

http://www.native-languages.org/dakota.htm#language

http://www.native-languages.org/dakota_words.htm

Little Crow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Crow

http://aktalakota.stjo.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8765

### Iowa

Environment of Iowa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_of_Iowa

History of Iowa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Iowa

Geology of Iowa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_Iowa

Iowa in 1861 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1861_establishments_in_Iowa

### Kentucky Civil War

http://www.jcs-group.com/military/war1861guerrilla/famous.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_in_the_American_Civil_War

http://history.ky.gov/landmark/tag/guerrilla/

http://eakycivilwar.blogspot.com/2010/06/cooks-guerrillas.html

### Language

Historical Slang

http://www.alphadictionary.com/slang/?term=&beginEra=1860&endEra=1865&clean=true&submitsend=Search

Older Southern American English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Older_Southern_American_English

Common Words of the 1860's

http://www.patriotfiles.com/index.php?name=Sections&req=viewarticle&artid=6424

Old West Slang

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~poindexterfamily/OldWestSlang.html

### Minnesota

Minnesota River Valley files.dnr.state.mn.us/aboutdnr/reports/parks/mnvalley_studysummary.pdf

Minnesota History

collections.mnhs.org/mnhistorymagazine/articles/48/v48i01p024-035.pdf

### Miscellaneous

Irish Clans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irish_clans_in_Ulster

Fort Stedman

ww.civilwar.org/battlefields/petersburg/petersburg-history-articles/americas-civil-war-pre-dawn.html

### New York

Draft Riots 1863

http://www.history.com/news/four-days-of-fire-the-new-york-city-draft-riots

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_draft_riots

http://maap.columbia.edu/place/52.html

http://www.virtualny.cuny.edu/draftriots/Intro/draft_riot_intro_set.html

### Virginia Shenandoah Valley

Jackson's 1862 Valley Campaign

https://www.nps.gov/cebe/learn/historyculture/overview-of-the-1862-stonewall-jackson-valley-campaign.htm

Campaign of 1864

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_Campaigns_of_1864

Chapter 12: Sample

The Lords of Power

### by

### James Whitesell

### I

### Lila Mannering

Air Force One had long ago lifted off from its last trip to his California home. The Pres was gone but sure as hell not forgotten. President Ronald Reagan, before the onset of his sad, slow slide into the oblivion of Alzheimer's, continued to rattle and/or entertain the American public with his quick wit. Fred Redbird was still chuckling at the way the whimsical Reagan verbally blindsided a pushy reporter on the late news that night before Redbird came in for the graveyard shift. Fred Redbird came from a whole different cultural universe from most of those who voted Reagan into office, but that didn't bother Fred any. He had little interest in politics or politicians, but he did like a good joke and a ready wit. And that made him a fan of Ronald Reagan. The only other person who'd made Fred laugh more was that crazy black guy, the comedian Richard Pryor, who Fred considered to be hands down the country's funniest comedian. Period. Talking about it earlier that day, when his buddy Charlie Cooper was coming in for his day job and Fred coming off graveyard at the condos where they both worked, Charlie took issue with Fred's casual comment about Richard Pryor being the funniest comedian. An issue, however, delivered with twinkling mischievous jerk-your-buddy's-chain eyes.

"Mark Twain, Fred," Charlie insisted. "He's the best. Always was. Always will be."

"I'm talking about _living_ comedians," Fred retorted, feigning indignation. "Dead guys don't tell jokes." To which Charlie had nothing further to say, though he did wink that mischievous eye at Fred. But they did agree on one thing. Ronald Reagan, completely aside from any questions of effectiveness or legacy, was without a doubt the funniest President in American history since the troubled days of Mark Twain's contemporary, President Abraham Lincoln. Who, despite the huge weight on his wartime shoulders, still managed to crank out the one liners and break up--and/or (like Reagan) deflate--his listeners. The same Abraham Lincoln who had the soul crushing task to decide which among the over 300 convicted and condemned Dakota Indians from the 1862 Minnesota Sioux uprising to hang. Fred Redbird was an Ojibwe, a people who in the old days were inveterate mortal enemies of the Minnesota Sioux. Still, enemies or not, the thought of nearly forty Sioux Indians hanged at once rattled Fred's Native American bones at the historical ethnic one-sidedness of American justice. A subject Richard Pryor was sure as hell not afraid to tackle.

How, Fred thought to himself, could Lincoln, in the middle of that horrific civil war, still have a sense of humor after condemning nearly 40 Dakota to hang in what would be America's largest mass hanging? But then he remembered that the bitter and furious surviving settlers in Minnesota, hundreds of their fellows, mostly German and Scandinavian, murdered by the Sioux in the uprising, wanted, even _demanded_ , that Lincoln hang all, over three hundred, of the condemned Indians. Lincoln, humane even as he waged a sanguine fratricide with the South, tempered necessary justice with mercy.

But Fred still thought Ronald Reagan was funnier.

After his retirement from twenty-three years in the U.S. Army, and after a few attempts at other jobs he soon found disagreeable, mostly because of jackass bosses, Redbird was in his third year as the senior security guard at the exclusive Lakeside Villa condominiums. The pay wasn't the greatest but the work was OK. Low key. Not much stress, even though the management wanted his combat veteran's wary presence on the graveyard shift where serious crime was somewhat more likely to happen. He had plenty of stress in the Army and goddamn well didn't need any more. He had his military pension and benefits to supplement his salary and it all added up to a comfortable living. Having his military pension and benefits to fall back on also meant he didn't have to take bullshit from some pufferbelly supervisor. One guy had tried. Fred set him straight right way. He'd survived Viet Nam. Twice. No way some goddamn walking donut with a bloated ego was gonna fuck with him.

The guy never tried to mess with Fred again.

Things hadn't always been that way. Not even close. The notion of a comfortable living, if even thought of at all, was as alien to his world as a 15th Century Ojibwe would be on the skyways in contemporary downtown Minneapolis. Redbird's early life started out in the wild country of the Leach Lake Indian Reservation in the jack pine and paper birch forests of northern Minnesota, a land dotted with azure lakes chock full of walleye and northern pike and vast stands of wild rice, a land laced by cold running streams and rivers mostly too far north to be part of the vast Mississippi River drainage. The Ojibwe called the place Gaa-zagaskwaajimekaag, a name Redbird never could pronounce, having only an imperfect grasp of the Ojibwe language. He didn't know much about his language or his heritage. He did know that the Leach Lake Reservation, with the unpronounceable name of Gaazagaskwaajimekaag, was a wonderfully beautiful natural area. That was the way casual sightseers and prosperous hunters and fishermen from the Twin Cities saw it. But the little piece of that wonderfully beautiful natural area that was Fred's real world growing up was one of hard hungry years of long frigid winters, of poverty and abuse, and Fred got the hell out as soon as he could by managing to stay in school until he got his high school diploma and then joining the U.S. Army. It was a decision he never once regretted. Not even a little. Just about the only times he returned to the reservation were for funerals. And even then he had to force himself to make the grim trip that never failed to bring back memories he would rather stay buried in the past. Which was all the more startling, considering Fred had more than his share of horrific memories after two tours and three TDYs to Viet Nam and other places in Southeast Asia--some still shrouded in secrecy from the American public--during the war.

Fred left the guard kiosk in the dank parking lot basement, inured to the pervasive malodors of oil and car exhaust and no longer even noticing them, and walked to the brightly lit doorway leading to the stairs. He unlocked the door and swung it open, noticing that it creaked on its hinges, and making a mental note to pass on to his buddy Charlie Cooper, the condominium maintenance supervisor. A man who, ironically from Fred's veteran's viewpoint, was a conscientious objector during the Viet Nam war. Conscientious objector or not, he still ended up doing his own government ordered tour. 15 months in the Federal prison at Sandstone, but out after six months and later pardoned by President Carter, himself a former military man, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former commander of a nuclear sub. Charlie's anti-war history didn't stop the pair from becoming friends, even close friends, and regular hunting buddies during the fall hunting seasons. Deer, waterfowl, pheasants and other game birds, and fishing partners, summer and winter. Lolling in Charlie's bass boat in the summers. Hunkering in Fred's ice fishing shack in the winter. Charlie could call a wild turkey with such natural skill that Fred puckishly proclaimed him "an honorary Native American.....in the Turkey Clan." Not that Fred had any idea what the hell a Turkey Clan was. Fred thought of himself as a soldier, not as a Native American He could live with the label of Native American soldier. It never occurred to him that it could have a potential double meaning.

Thinking of Charlie triggered off a string of associations in Fred's memory ending with the memory of Charlie forgetting to load his shotgun before their final pheasant hunt in a southwestern Minnesota cornfield the previous autumn. As sure as there was water in Lake Superior the mischievous Gods of the Hunt chose that moment to scare up a bunch of rooster pheasants right in front of empty-gun Charlie. He reacted instinctively, jerking up his Remington 12 gauge and squeezing on the trigger. _Click!_ A tiny sound that reverberated way out of proportion in his surprised ears. Shortly followed by Charlie's emphatic excursion into, as Charlie's English teacher wife would describe it, 'an extensive sampling of vernacular American English expletives.' Which instantly made him the butt of a whole bunch of jokes among their crowd of hunting friends. Fred was chucking at the thought as he began to climb briskly up to the first floor to begin his regular inspection of the condominium complex's upper corridors and doors. "That Charlie," he said, chuckling at the thought. "What a character."

"You just never know what to expect next."

The door had hardly closed behind him before a shadowy hooded figure in dark clothing slipped inside the underground garage's entrance and disappeared inside the cavernous concrete depths of the garage.

Twenty minutes later Fred Redbird was almost finished with his upstairs rounds when a sleek red Ferrari pulled up from the deserted rain swept streets outside and paused at the underground garage entrance while the driver pointed a remote at the electronic eye of the vehicle barricade. The barricade, to the driver's mildly drug-tinged eye, oddly reminiscent of a horizontal version of an old-fashioned barber pole as the red and white painted barrier arm jerked itself to the vertical. The Ferrari roared off down the garage ramp, wet tires squealing on the dry basement concrete as the driver slammed on the brakes and pulled into one of the reserved parking spaces of the exclusive condominiums above. The door swung open and the shapely tanned legs of a tall, lean woman, sensuously clad in a diaphanous light summer dress that dramatically clashed with the chill of the early spring weather. She uncoiled her long legs from the Ferrari and stepped into the dank chill of the garage. Hers was a regal presence, theatric, even if there was no one there to watch. Her filmy fuchsia skirt shimmered as she walked, reminding the hidden watcher of the iridescence of hummingbirds in dappled light. It was the only thought that was even remotely pleasant as he watched the woman from where he lay hidden a hundred feet away in the puddle of shadow thrown off by a parked Lincoln Town Car. Had he known the owner was a prominent Minneapolis defense attorney he would have been darkly amused.

Always theatric in her movements, like a fashion model strutting on a runway with a lithe, saucy loose-jointed erectness, the woman strode with self confident sensual athleticism for the elevator, typed an access code into the control module, then pushed a button and waited for the door to open. She stood impatiently under the harsh light, drumming her fingers on the elevator door. She was a strikingly beautiful woman, but the beauty was a cold and hard one under the judgmental harsh light of the dingy basement garage.

A single drop of hopelessly impotent sperm fell from the inside of her thigh just when she noticed the odd little shiny object on the wall next to the elevator button. The long, graceful fingers of her right hand inched over to probe and lightly caress the shiny object. At the exact moment she touched it the flat crack of a silenced rifle rang out dully in the cavernous underground garage. A small red hole instantly appeared almost in the very center of her forehead.

All the human flavorings that were Lila Mannering, along with the momentary puzzlement over the shiny thing on the wall, fled as the life left her face. She pitched over backwards and came to a final supine rest obscenely spread eagled on the cold garage floor. Even in death she had a cold, striking beauty.

Fred Redbird found her body less than five minutes later. The first of the police arrived in another five minutes. More continued to come. Then came the media. Less than twenty-four hours later Fred Redbird would be out of a job. He was a convenient scapegoat. The first.

But not the last.

Two old men sat cross-legged before the pungent smoke of a ponderosa pine campfire. Their skins were baked a deep bronze from long years under the glare of the shortgrass prairie sun. The age-wrinkled pair spoke in low, murmuring tones in an ancient language very unlike English. Off somewhere in the rolling prairie undulations cascading off the Black Hills a family of coyotes caterwauled into the star-filled night. Wood smoke rose lazily in the still night, hazing over the thin sliver of a waning moon. One of the old men, in the intense fervor of his conversation, was eerily reminiscent of the crazy-eyed prophets from the distant days of the Old Testament. He kept pointing towards the east.

Towards where the morning sun would rise.

Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Thompson, Ben to those who knew him, stood in the locker room staring at his bare chest in a mirror. He flexed his muscles and smiled approvingly. Even deep into his forties he still had the powerful body of a linebacker. Not big enough for the pros, maybe, but certainly enough to tear the hell out of a backfield of cocky college running backs. And also enough to knock the cover off a softball and send it sailing out of sight. He put on his uniform shirt and went out into the stadium where the department's softball team was playing. A teammate beckoned at him to take his turn at the plate. Thompson grabbed the heavy hard maple bat he favored and strode for the plate, pulling his cap down to protect his eyes from the dazzling light of the sun.

He looked over at the scoreboard and saw his team was down by one run, and that there were already two out in the last inning. Then he squinted towards second base and saw the lanky, awkward form of Sergeant Ed Davis standing on the sack. It'd have to be at least a double. Davis would never make it otherwise. Thompson swung his hips, adjusted his hands on the shaft of the bat and bent his powerful body to receive the pitch with all the power the symbiotic Thompson/hard maple bat construct could muster and send the ball rocketing over the fence.

The dark-uniformed pitcher of the opposing team, silhouetted in the dazzling sun, wound up and sent the pitch whistling at him. Thompson coiled, ready to swing. Then he recognized the aquiline profile of the opposing pitcher. It was Scapella, the police chief. He was so surprised that the pitch sailed by him before he could react.

"Strike one!" Yelled the umpire. Thompson turned to scowl at the official. He was surprised again when he saw that the umpire was one of Scapella's aides, a man Thompson considered to be a fawning toady. As he stared at the form of the umpire a second pitch came in past him.

"Strike two!" Yelled the umpire. Thompson immediately jerked towards the pitcher, just in time to see the dark form silhouetted against the sun hurl another pitch at him. He coiled once more, cocked his bat and felt something grab it. He wheeled to find that the catcher had hold of his bat with both hands. Behind the catcher's mask was the face of another of Scapella's police toadies, Captain Thornton. Thompson roughly pushed him away, whirled towards the onrushing ball and swung to meet it. He knew when the bat struck the ball that it was gone.

The softball hurtled six feet off the ground at the pitcher, ricocheted off his head and knocked him down, then began to gain altitude. The outfielders didn't even bother to give chase. The ball was high in the air and sailing far over the fence. Thompson watched the ball as he began to lope around the bases. Just as he rounded second he saw a dark shape come out of the sun and descend towards the soaring softball. As Thompson watched in amazement a huge eagle dropped from the sun, pounced on the softball, took the ball in its talons and began to fly away with it. Sergeant Ed Davis was scoring and Ben was rounding third base when he heard the phone start to ring. Ben walked the rest of the way to home plate, then over to the pitcher's mound where he shoved aside the prostrate form of the pitcher and reached down to pick up the phone underneath him.

His eyes snapped open. There was Betty's sleeping form reassuringly beside him. The twilight of sleep tattered as he recognized all the familiar things of his bedroom and he shook his head slowly in a dazed confusing goulash of dreams and consciousness as he listened to the voice talking over the phone.

It was the night police dispatcher with the news of Lila Mannering's death.

Sergeant Ed Davis, along with half of the uniforms on the dog shift that night, was waiting for him in the dank underground garage where Mannering's corpse lay bloody and still under the harsh light. Davis was kneeling by the body, pretending to be a detective, but Thompson knew he was more likely giving the dead woman's body a lecherous appraisal. The woman's skirt rode high up her thighs when she pitched over backwards and didn't leave much to the imagination as she lay spread eagled on her back. At least not to Sergeant Ed Davis' testosterone-fueled imagination. _Damnit, Ed!_ Ben thought to himself, is there ever a time when you don't have your brains in your dick?

The lieutenant winced. Getting out of bed in the middle of the night to see the milling throng of a police circus that always happened with violent crimes, and Davis panting over a corpse, only reconfirmed his growing desire to get out of police work after he hit retirement age in another eighteen months. He was growing increasingly weary of it and his job was weighing him down, in spirit if not in body. Davis glanced up at him.

"Can you imagine this? Who would want to take out a babe like her?" Thompson grunted grumpily at the lanky redhead without saying anything. He looked over at the flashing lights of the squads with their crackling radios, at the milling crowd of police officers looking for some excitement in the boredom of the dog shift, at Davis staring up the dead woman's dress. Suddenly he thought of the peculiar dream he'd had that night and he had a fleeting feeling that he was dreaming again. He clamped his eyes shut, opened them again slowly and shook his head, but the mad chaos was still there. And so was the bloody corpse of Lila Mannering. Her dead eyes stared back at him and he had the peculiar thought that even in death she was an intimidating woman.

"What a waste," Davis mumbled to himself as he knelt over the body. "What a goddamn shameful waste."

"That it is, Ed," Thompson replied softly. And he wasn't just thinking about the dead woman.

Lieutenant Thompson finished his minute hands-off examination of the woman's body and the immediate surroundings, taking care not to upset the newly reorganized forensics team's procedures when they sleepily arrived a few minutes later, then rose to go towards the elevator. He'd seen something glinting there under the light. As he approached it he saw what it was, hunched over the object and scrutinized it carefully without touching it. Davis detached himself from his morbid sexual fantasies and walked to Thompson's side.

"What ya got here, Ben?"

"Odd," Thompson replied in a thoughtful voice. "It's a nickel. Seems to be fixed to the wall somehow. Old-fashioned kind of nickel, too. Indian Head." He straightened up out of his awkward hunched posture. "Have the crime scene folks check it out, Ed. Might be something important."

Thompson then began a meticulously scrupulous examination of the underground garage for some shred of evidence. He might have been growing weary of his job, but he remained a dedicated and competent professional. He was as solid as the granite mountains in the homeland of his Norwegian ancestors and even dutifully went off to fight in a war he never had believed in on the other side of the Earth in Southeast Asia. He bent to his minute investigation with the studied fastidiousness of a Jesuit scholar.

The red dawn came and was long gone before he was finished.

The man came with the red dawn. He was a small man, short, compact. His face was narrow and angular, his body lean, taut, wiry. His movements were beyond the merely quick. They were explosively sudden, and his arms seemed to jump from place to place without passing through the spaces between. A shabby transient who was sleeping in the bushes of an isolated corner of the city park woke to nearby movement and secretly, thinking himself hidden, watched as the quick little man went through a series of martial arts exercises. He was in a secluded patch of meadow surrounded by the maze of bushes the Minneapolis Park Department intentionally left alone to provide a vestigial fragment of animal habitant in the human jungle. The homeless man's watching began as curiosity, changed to amazement and then became something of an altogether different order of magnitude.

Fear.
