JUST BEFORE HIS CAVALRY REGIMENT BROKE FROM CAMP, Marley's young cousin Joe had burst into his tent with the confirmation: May Freiburger was indeed coming to picnic with Joe's congressman father and the two families. The congressional page who had carried the note to Joe told him that a line of buggies, barouches, gigs, and carriages stretched from the high ground just to the north of Manassas Junction nearly the entire twenty-five miles back to Washington City.

There are liable to be more spectators than participants in this battle, Marley thought with a jolt. Joe secreted that the courier had even offered him a slug of champagne from a still-cold bottle he had tucked in his saddlebags.

And indeed, all of Washington was aflutter at the comeliness of young May Freiburger as she passed by in the congressman's barouche, the rattle of musketry and crash of artillery sounding in the distance, then took a place, daintily, on the large spread picnic blanket at the site her father had spotted under an ancient huge oak.

“From what Corporal Harding tells me,” Freiburger told Joe's father, their wives, and Joe's two teenaged sisters, “this ground is remote enough so as to insure safety, yet close enough that we may sense the drama of this glorious day.”

James Freiburger had never fought in combat.

The picnic spread was magnificent—minced pies; cold chicken, ham, and roast; deviled eggs; caviar; pickled pears; sweet cakes; peach cobbler; sarsaparilla; and buckets of champagne. Now all that was needed was a victory.

A mile away, McDowell's brilliant flanking move, set up with a couple of major feints at other points on the line along the small stream known as Bull Run, had smashed into the Confederate left flank. Only the stubborn, profanity-laced leadership of Southern Colonel Nathan “Shanks” Evans delayed the bluecoats long enough at a Bull Run crossing known as the Stone Bridge to prevent a complete rout that would have rolled up the Southern left and swept the Confederates off the field and back across the Manassas Gap rail line.

Still, Shanks Evans was outnumbered ten to one, and despite belated reinforcements from the Confederate right, he finally had to relinquish his forward post. Now the Southerners had more men in position to meet the onslaught from the northwest, but the Federals had the momentum and they barreled through one grayback regiment after another, shoving them around woods, over green rolling fields, and across the Warrenton Turnpike, to the foot of a broad gentle incline known as Henry House Hill.

The Freiburgers and Joe's family joined the wave of cheers that roared forth from the long line of Yankee spectators at word that the Federal assault appeared to be driving the Rebels from the field. May giggled demurely and brought a fan to her face upon hearing the whispers of nearby youths that she would soon be wedded to young Joe. And her father felt barely a twinge of regret that many of the bullets being fired at young Joe and his comrades by the secessionists had been—and continued to be—manufactured from his own New England factories.

But Joe, Marley, and the other mounted hundreds in Colonel William Tecumseh Sherman's brigade felt no remorse at all as they led the infantry into the fray, riding down graybacks, shooting, slashing, and trampling as they went. Where is the vaunted Reb cavalry? Marley thought fleetingly as he slashed another screaming foe to crimson death.

“Look!” Joe shouted, not far away, his smoke-darkened face aflush with triumph and manhood. “They're chasing up that hill.”

Marley turned and stared into the smoke. Sure enough, it was a hill ahead. In fact it appeared, through his one eye, in the screaming deafening murky roar to be a colony of gray and butternut ants, scrambling for their lives up the grade.

“Colonel Sherman says to press on, men!” a captain rode by shouting, “We're to drive them across the rail line.”

Marley paused for just an instant, pinching more bullets into his revolver, as Joe and twenty other riders swarmed after the captain toward the hill. Could it be that we are going to finish it today? he thought to himself. Then he recognized the sickening sweet pungent aroma of spilled intestines and blasted brains. Not since Mexico had he—suddenly, something swung him around, to his blind side. There, a wounded Reb on the ground raised his rifle to fire at Marley. His gun just loaded, the Yank jerked off a shot that coincided with the Reb's. But it was just a shade quicker, and the other man's bullet took off Marley's hat instead of his scalp. Marley's shot went through the Southerner's heart. But he noticed before he swung around to ride off that the soldier had sustained at least four previous wounds. The Pennsylvanian flinched as the realization struck him, Those Southern boys are getting licked, but I fear they are dying hard, very hard indeed.

Then Marley turned and joined the tidal wave of men ahorse and afoot that now swarmed up Henry House Hill. As he rode, he wondered what it was that had turned him to his blind side and delivered him from death and eternity by the scantest instant in time.

For months, since he left peacetime Lexington, Jackson's health had prospered. He feared this day might reverse that condition and not because of war, but the lack of it.

As the morning hours passed, he had been dispatched from one end of the field to the other by his superiors, to support engaged units. He had not so much as glimpsed any action. But he had heard that the day went sore against his people.

As blue-white smoke spread across the sky ahead of Jackson and the earth shook from the rumble of artillery and masses of pounding men and horses, he led his brigades toward the Stone Bridge, point of the main Union assault.

The color in his bronzed face receded and his eyes seemed to shrink into dark hollows as he heard the fury ahead. O God, he thought, two nations and tens of thousands of men come out against one another, and the war may end today, and I not allowed even to participate? Even to witness it? For what have I been prepared? How ever shall our name be righted?

Then his furrowed brow, nearly hidden by the dusty sweat-stained VMI forage cap pulled low over his forehead, crinkled deeper. Those guns are not coming from the Stone Bridge. They are closer. The Federals are pushing us back. He turned to Douglas and Sandie. They heard it too. Without a word, he kicked Little Sorrel into action and veered obliquely left away from the direction of the contested Stone Bridge.

Douglas and Sandie traded knowing glances. He has received no such orders contravening the previous ones to support Evans, Bee, and Bartow at the Stone Bridge, nor does anyone know what he is now doing, Douglas thought. Weary tatterdemalions in gray and butternut, many garnished with crimson, their lips and faces black with powder, began to emerge on foot from the direction of the fighting.

“Too many,” one soldier panted to Sandie and Douglas, “too many.”

Then Jackson's young staff officers rode hard after him.

Shanks Evans had succeeded in wrecking the entire brigade of General Ambrose Burnside. That organization sat the rest of the day on the sidelines. But when Sherman spotted a crossing downstream from the Stone Bridge that allowed the flanking and finally dislodging of Evans as well as the supporting brigades of Bee and Bartow from their forward positions after two hours of tenacious fighting, the Confederates were bloody, disorganized, and scattered. Chased by Marley and hundreds of other Union cavalrymen, and thousands of infantry, they scrambled toward the top of Henry House Hill where Imboden's battery of three guns blazed away. There they purposed to stand.

Into the gap flew Wade Hampton, the richest planter in South Carolina, and his volunteer legion of cavalry. Down Henry Hill toward the Federals they flew, firing revolvers and shouting. They drove most of their foes off the hill and reached the Warrenton Turnpike, where they decimated one Union counterattack.

Hampton had no military experience and little training, but he was a born leader of men, boasted enormous innate physical strength, and brimmed with quiet confidence. For a while, his six hundred men stymied the Northern effort along the entire front. Then, the bluecoats' superior numbers produced a withering enfilading fire that forced Hampton back up the hill. Defiant, he tried to stand again, but the Yankees surged around both his flanks. Nearly surrounded, he fought on, until Shanks Evans himself rode into the smoking hellish din and screamed for Hampton to pull back. This he finally did, swarming hordes of Yankees breathing down his backside. In fact, the entire Confederate left front that had opposed McDowell's flanking attack now collapsed, and the men of Bee, Bartow, and Evans, as well as Hampton's legion, all fled across the flat top of Henry House Hill.

Contemptuous of the Northern advance, and angry that Bee's troops were retreating past him rather than supporting his battery, Imboden directed his guns as they continued ripping into the oncoming Northern lines. But two salty Federal career officers, James Ricketts and Charles Griffin, and their rifled twelve-gun batteries of U.S. army regulars, now zeroed in on Imboden's outnumbered placement. As the Union batteries' fire became overwhelming, Imboden noticed fresh new ranks of Federal infantry massing a few hundred yards away on the turnpike. They are pointing at me, he thought with a shudder.

“Sir, we are nearly out of ammunition,” a sergeant called to Imboden. Blood streamed from the man's right shoulder. Imboden looked around. Half his men lay sprawled on the ground. Nearly all his horses were down in bloody heaps. Equipment was strewn everywhere. One cannon was shattered, another damaged. He wanted to

continue, he wanted to keep fighting, but—“D——!” he screamed,

his face a raging purple. “Where is Bee? Where is my infantry support?”

Then another shell showered him with turf and elicited a wailing scream from one of his already-wounded men.

“Sir, we've got to retreat,” the sergeant pleaded.

Imboden cursed again, then gave a quick frustrated nod. He knew that after he patched together makeshift limbers to transport his two surviving guns back across the flat top of Henry Hill, nothing stood between the Federals and their gaining that high ground and from there rolling up the entire off-balance Southern army. And thence the Manassas Railroad and Northern Virginia. And thence—

He cursed again, bitterly.

When Jackson reached the southeast foot of Henry House Hill, his mouth dropped open and he drew rein on Little Sorrel. Father, can this be so? he thought with anguish. A tidal wave of his countrymen flooded at, through, and around his startled troops. Some wounded, some defeated, a few cowardly, all outnumbered, out-equipped, and outgunned, they had had all the fighting they wanted.

Jackson's thin lips drew thinner. Douglas noticed a muscle twitch in his commander's taut jaw.

“They need help, sir,” one retreating soldier, his arm in a bloody sling, said to Jackson. “They need your help up there. The blasted Yankees are cutting them to pieces. Their—” The soldier strained for a word adequately detestable, but failed to find it. “Their artillery is tearing us to pieces, sir, and it's getting closer. Please, sir, you've got to help them.”

The man nearly fainted, but two of his mates caught him and helped him along.

Jackson raised his field glasses to his eyes. Flat terrain behind me, a rising grade ahead, the Yankees still beyond that.

“Shall we go to their aid, sir?” Sandie asked.

Jackson looked around at his aides, each of whom he had selected after careful study. Such fair, fresh, honest young faces, he thought. And good, so far as men's hearts can be good.

Then above the din of muskets, cannon, screaming, and shouting rose the booming curses of an angry man. Despite its thick jet coating of smoke and sweat, Jackson recognized the thin frame of Imboden stalking toward him.

Jackson had thought his quartermaster Harmon could swear fleas off a hound dog, but Imboden proceeded to raise (lower?) the art to new heights. The artillery captain did not appreciate being chased off the hill and nearly killed due to lack of infantry support, when he had been doing his job. Jackson's already grave visage grew darker as Imboden's raging, tearful oaths multiplied. Finally, huffing from his verbal exertion, Imboden noticed Jackson's granite stolidness.

“Uh,” the artilleryman stammered, remembering Jackson's piety.

The general, his eyes grim slits, stared at his mounted subordinate. His heart urged him onward, to engage the advancing enemy, or at least to support his own embattled comrades. But his girded wits would have none of it.

“I'll support your battery,” the Virginian said quietly. “Unlimber right here.”

At least you are not beaten, my foul-mouthed friend, he thought.

Imboden's mouth opened in surprise. He turned and shouted for his men to set up shop. When he turned back to thank Jackson, all he saw were Little Sorrel's departing haunches.

Surprise arrested the aides' crestfallen faces. “But our brothers are up there, over that hill, being cut to pieces,” each countenance seemed to shout. But Jackson had already left them and was observing a long thick stand of pines stretching to his left. A thick, dark, tangled stand, he thought to himself. It curved outward on both right and left from a lengthy straight center. To his right, the hill rose a few hundred yards to where it crested with a wide plateau. At the other end of the plateau sat a two-story frame house glistening white in the smoky sunlight. Outbuildings and a barn flanked it.

“Check that house,” Jackson said over his shoulder to Douglas.

Jackson pulled up for a moment. His gaze took in the pine copse. Protection on three sides from attack, he thought, and ahead, good elevation for my guns out front, even better if I shield them by placing them slightly down from the plateau.

He looked around for Douglas. “I need a lemon, sir.” Douglas produced one from a supply in his saddlebags. Jackson bit into it with relish, a fresh juicy mist spraying his bearded dirty face. Refreshed, he thought to himself, if the day is to be won, this is the spot from which it must happen.

“I lived here since the Revolution, sonny—the first revolution,” eighty-two-year-old Judith Henry snapped at Douglas as he beseeched her to accompany him to safety behind the Confederate lines. “I ain't a-going anywhere. If them dad-blasted Yankee curs want me out of here, they'll have to blast me right out.”

Just then, an exploding shell took off the roof of the Henrys' barn thirty yards away.

Mrs. Henry hooted like an old crow at Douglas and his cowering friends, all three of whom had dived to the floor. Douglas, red-faced, managed a mortified smile and stood up. The old woman hooted again. Douglas sighed and fumbled with the sweat-stained broad-brimmed gray hat he held in his hands. The air outside was rife with smoke and the sounds of heavy- and small-arms fire, which had closed to within a few hundred yards of the sturdy two-story white framed house. He glanced at the two hulking men, no older than he, who flanked him in Mrs. Henry's second-floor room.

“We are prepared to escort you to safety, ma'am—,” Douglas said in a wavering voice.

“I never needed no escorts yet, sonny, and I don't need none now,” she cut in.

“Forcibly, if necessary,” Douglas finished.

Thirty-eight-year-old Ben Henry, as big as Douglas's two mates and much more menacing, stepped out from the corner where he had been observing the conversation. His thick hands gripped a shotgun, which he pointed at Douglas's chest. “And we are prepared to escort you straight to hell, dandy.” He clicked back the hammer. “Now you heard my grandmama—move out.”

Douglas feared Jackson, but not as much as the wrong end of the shotgun now facing him.

Twenty minutes later, a Union shell made Judith Henry, born the day Lord Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington in 1781, the first civilian casualty in the War between the States.

Jackson, acting on his own counsel, distributed his twenty-five hundred man First Virginia Brigade along the front perimeter of the pine trees, including where they flared forward on both the left and especially the right, the latter at almost a right angle to the concentrated force in the center. There Jackson expected the heaviest attack, so he placed two of his five regiments directly behind his guns. Each regiment lay on the ground in two lines, forming a formidable four-deep formation, plus the guns in front of them.

Many of the men were actually concealed within the tangled thicket. All of them were veiled by the Henry House Hill, including the two cannon.

As the smoke and thunder roiled ahead of him, beyond the pla-teaued top of the hill, Jackson sat erect on Little Sorrel. His dusty uniform and cap as blue as those of the enemies fighting to get to him, he brought his field glasses to his eyes. Nothing yet, he thought. Then he began to walk Sorrel slowly, along a line parallel to his men but out front of all of them. He knew the battle was coming to him. He felt it. Knew it could be no other way. More men streamed past him and his five regiments. The occasional minié ball whistled overhead. Jackson continued to walk the rotund Sorrel, who walked with composure.

From one end of the long line to the other he rode, steady and quiet. For a long while, nothing happened. The sounds of battle grew fainter and the minié balls stopped. He ordered his batteries, however, to launch their own salvo against the distant Federals.

Jackson, piloting Little Sorrel back and forth, waited...and waited...and waited. Where have they gone? he wondered behind his bearded blank face. Have I erred in posting here? No, the battle must come through here; it must. And it is our best station for standing.

Then came over Jackson a depression so strong that for a moment he keened in his horse. But what if I am mistaken? What if it all ends, and I here with my men, out of position, away from where I was sent to support?

A burning bolt of panic flashed through his body before he straightened back up. I must stay strong for my men, he thought.

After a bit the minié balls began to return, with greater velocity.

“Why, lookee there at nonchalant Old Jack,” Jake McCullough, laying near Willy, cracked in his easy nasal drawl to those around him, “his chin cocked up as if he was expecting a rain and 'tweren't averse to having a drop of it on his face.”

The observation heartened Willy. He was terrified. Lying prone on the hot ground, out front of the pine copse, he peeked up and looked left and right. As far as he could see in both directions, men lay as he did. He was ready to do his part, but nobody had said anything about just laying out under the scorching July sun hour after hour, waiting—and that ornery Jake McCullough and his tales about laying there even while the shells were coming down, why, that couldn't be true, could it?

Willy's answer came with the abrupt crashing of a shell fifty yards out ahead of the front line, of which he was a part. He stared at the flying debris and smoke. My heavens—

Then another shell landed far down the line to his right. This one registered hysterical shrieks. The realization crashed home to Willy: Men are hit. He had seen very little of that at Falling Waters. Had he even seen a dead man? He did not think so. A couple wounded. No one was hit in the area where he had fought. Then he ducked instinctively as another shell screamed directly over his head before crashing into the pines behind him.

Jackson glanced back at the forest, where men were beating out the flames of a fire that had sprouted from the exploding shell. Now other shells began to pock the field and woods where lay Jackson's brigade. And the infrequent singing of minié balls grew to a chorus.

A mounted aide, ducking low in the face of the escalating enemy fire, reported to Jackson that his orders to gobble up additional four-gun batteries from adjacent commands had begun to produce fruit. One battery was coming now, and another would be soon.

Jackson had scanned his surroundings. He knew just where he wanted the guns placed.

“I'll swan, boys,” McCullough said, peeking up from where he had burrowed into the rich black earth to duck the rain of bullets now flying in. “Look at him now.”

Willy, clawing even lower than McCullough, adjusted his sweat-stained, dirt-caked face to sneak a peep at Jackson. The general continued to ride slowly and steadily out in front of the line, from one end of it to the other. Willy stared at his friend. But how—

“How in tarnation can he do that?” Eddie Drake gasped.

“Why he's riding around in this shower of death calm as a farmer about his farm when the seasons are good,” McCullough marveled.

Despite himself, not noticing the dirt sneaking into his parched mouth, Willy raised his head a bit higher for a better look. Why is he doing it? he thought. Then, Why is he not hit?

“What's he saying?” McCullough said as Jackson neared their point in the line.

Willy's eyes grew wider the nearer Jackson rode. The boy forgot the buzzing fat blue flies that bedeviled his wet face. He even forgot the bullets whizzing past. What is he saying?

Then Jackson was passing them, only a few feet away. Willy stared up at him. Just then, the sun hung over Jackson, shimmering down over the general's shoulder into Willy's heated face and putting Jackson into black eclipse. As shot and shell rained around them and the roar of battle escalated, the nearby Confederate batteries belching their own hot metal death, Willy attempted to block the sun with his forearm, but all he could see was Jackson's square lean silhouette. What is it he is saying? Willy wondered, straining to hear over the growing din of war.

He listened.

“All's well, all's well.”

Over and over, as soothing and sure as a mother with a frightened babe in the crook of her shoulder. When Jackson arrived at Willy's point, the looming giant presence stopped and covered the boy with its cooling shadow. Still, Willy, try as he might, squinting, could not make out the features of horse or rider, though the familiar rustic aroma of the sweaty beast permeated his nostrils.

“All's well, son, all's well.”

Then the rider moved on and the sun burned into the boy's face again. As minié balls continued to zip past, Willy turned and his gaze connected with McCullough's. He had heard it too. For once, the grizzled lanky prankster had no joke, no bit of irony to offer. Their eyes met and their thoughts were one: What manner of man is this?

Willy watched for a moment as Jackson proceeded on down the line. All's well. Then a bullet tore the boy's right collar from his shirt and he slammed his head back to the ground. A deep breath, then, Indeed it is.

Up and down the line, hundreds of men, hearing their leader's calm steady words, relaxed and proceeded with their remembered Scripture, prayers, and Catechism, even as death visited itself upon them, and their comrades from beaten regiments raced through and past them for sanctuary in the rear.

Now Jackson knew his soldiers were being hurt. Here a shell exploded and a cluster of men shrieked. There a bullet splatted a man's skull and widowed and orphaned a distant frightened family.

Where is the battle? he agonized. It should have been here by now. Everything in his heart tugged him forward, toward the sound of the guns that now visited terror upon his beloved boys of the Valley. Everything in him screamed at him to unleash at long last this splendid array of manhood. These men who for years had been insulted, patronized, mocked, and scorned by many of their countrymen from the North. These men, these boys, who had been called forth from their homes, fields, businesses, and plantations to defend against these “brothers” that had now physically invaded and trampled the very earth upon which they lived and worked.

When a handsome towheaded youngster no older than eighteen screamed and clutched his throat as it pumped forth crimson, Jackson despaired and his shoulders slumped. After a moment, he looked heavenward. Lord, how long? Bullets whipped past him. One ripped through the left waist of his blue coat, another nicked his right boot. He swallowed hard. His aching heart pounded. Father, my men are being cut to pieces, Sir. Are we to be shamed, Sir? Have I shamed us? When shall we be allowed to defend the right? Then something drew his attention to the west.

There through the haze loomed the distant Blue Ridge, radiant in the clear noonday brilliance. Jackson stared at the long ancient rampart of the Shenandoah Valley. Beyond it lay all on earth meaningful to him. All the people, all the memories...the once great name of Jackson. We are here...for all of them.

Then the Lord strengthened him and he squared his shoulders, sat again erect, and turned Little Sorrel to return back down the line.

Galloping toward him was the only other mounted Confederate in sight oblivious to the fusillade, a handsome familiar face above a strapping build, also a general and also in a blue coat.

“Why they didn't tell me it was General Tom Jackson,” General Barnard Bee of South Carolina saluted, his countenance momentarily given reprieve from its grimness at the recognition of an old friend.

“General Bee,” Jackson said, returning the salute, then shaking the proffered gauntleted hand.

“How is your Spanish, General?” Bee said with a quick wink.

“Fine, sir,” Jackson replied, his face serious. “Oh,” he blushed, remembering long ago shared days in Mexico.

“General,” Bee said, resuming his grimness, “they are beating us back. We are decimated. They are too many, sir.” His perfect head of jet-black hair glinting in the sun, he pointed up the hill. “They will be appearing over that crest any minute, sir.”

Jackson eyed the smoking scene ahead. Bee noticed the Virginian's eyes flash.

“Then, sir, we shall give them the bayonet.”

Bee could scarcely hear the quiet words over the tumult of battle. It was the white-hot cobalt eyes that roared thunder.