Major Rawlins pointed with his sword at the newspaper on the sawdust floor. “You have the temerity to boast of a bloodbath where we Confederates charged with valor, outnumbered and outgunned, led by our beloved commander, who died on the field that day along with ten thousand brave soldiers of the South—”
“Just a minute, Major.” Oliver Knight took a step. “Ike Silver never mentioned—to me or anybody else—anything about his service at Shiloh. That’s something I found out myself.”
“You just stand back, Mister Knight, this matter doesn’t concern you. This is between him . . .”—Rawlins pointed the sword at Ike—“and me. Isn’t it, Officer Silver?”
“The war’s over, Major.”
“Some wars don’t end because somebody signs a piece of paper. There’re some wars that go on . . . inside. Wars for comrades who fell.”
“Fifteen thousand Union comrades fell at Shiloh, Major.”
“And tonight one more is going to fall.”
Rawlins’s eyes were twin torches of vengeance. He widened his stance for just a moment, emitted a wild Rebel yell, lifted the sword, charged, and in a vicious strike swung it down toward Ike Silver, who maneuvered swiftly aside as the sword slashed with devastating effect against the bar, sending shattered bottles and glasses in all directions.
In that instant, Ike’s right hand clamped onto Rawlins’s wrist, pounding it hard once, twice, three times against the bar until the sword fell from Rawlins’s grasp.
Ike shoved Rawlins away, picked up the sword and faced the man who had just tried to kill him.
Rawlins stood erect, almost at attention, waiting for . . . he knew not what.
Ike Silver looked for a moment at the sword he now held in his hand, and then into the eyes of the enemy; then he turned the sword around, held it by the blade with one hand, the sword resting on his other arm with the handle extended toward Rawlins, in the traditional signal of surrender.
Rawlins stood frozen by the unexpected gesture. So did everybody else in the saloon.
“You wanted satisfaction, Major. Take back your sword.”
Rawlins remained immobile.
“Go ahead . . . take it!” Ike commanded.
Slowly, Rawlins reached out and took the handle of the weapon that pointed once again at Ike.
“Now. Whatever it is you crave . . . satisfaction . . . vengeance . . . reprisal. Go ahead.” Ike turned just a bit so his left arm was a clearly exposed target. “Go ahead.”
Everybody gasped as Rawlins, sword in hand, slowly began to raise his arm above his shoulder.
“This is your last chance . . . to end the war,” Ike said.
They stood face-to-face.
Two survivors of Shiloh.
Two enemies on a long-ago field of battle.
Each remembering the clash of resounding arms.
Bugles in the morning and afternoon. Rifles and revolvers. Bloody bayonets and dripping swords. Muskets and mini-balls. Peach blossoms fallen, red with the blood of the dead and dying. General Albert S. Johnston, the Confederate commander, wobbling in his saddle . . . falling mortally wounded onto the twisted troopers in hell’s orchard. Bodies limp and lifeless piling one atop another . . . anguished cries and screams . . . confusion . . . chaos . . . destruction and death, with ever more waves of bluecoat reinforcements whirling out of every direction, wreaking havoc on diminishing ranks of Rebels, until their remaining forces could no longer survive the onslaught, broke and fell back as vultures circled above, then later dove into the grizzly harvest of ungathered dead.
All this and more, both men—Montgomery Rawlins and Ike Silver—remembered as only soldiers can remember . . . and want to forget.
It all came and went in a terrible instant. In a fleeting instant that only the two of them looking into each others’ eyes could comprehend.
Rawlins trembled, once again feeling the pain in the arm that was no longer part of his body.
Ike Silver had given him his last chance to end the war . . . one way or another.
Rawlins lowered the sword.
With a barely perceptible nod of acknowledgment and softened eyes, he turned and walked a soldier’s walk through the bat wings and into the night.
They all watched—Oliver Knight, Binky, Antonio Gillardi, Tom Bixby, the piano player, the saloon girls, Belinda, even Rupert Lessur—watched and began to breath again.
It was then that Belinda Millay slipped the derringer back into her garter and walked up to Ike Silver.
“Mister Silver,” she said, “you are one hell of a poker player.”