Patrick saw the Bluecoat pitch forward and fall.
It seemed he only needed to point his gun. Not even squeeze the trigger and they would fall. As if he hadn’t shot them, just aimed the intent at them. He marvelled at the sighting scope on his rifle. It made a sharpshooter invincible. Giving the enemy nowhere to hide.
Just as if the Yankee was stood in front of him. Waiting.
Patrick could not decide how to choose to which of the enemy he would send his singing bullet. An awkward movement which attracted his attention; an upright runner; or one crouching too low, trying to escape his notice. Whatever notion took him at the time. He was the arbiter of death … and its dispenser.
He always tried for the heart. To make it a quick dispatch. Sometimes, unwittingly, another Yankee stood up and took the shot, sometimes a jerk of the body over uneven ground, an angle of flight changed and he would miss the heart, shatter a shoulder instead, or a man’s throat.
The words of Emeritus Labiche drummed through his head: ‘I pray that this Southern rifle may bring tears from many a Northern mother before this thing is over!’ Emmeline’s father would be proud of him. Patrick was exhilarated, brimming with the destruction he was wreaking, stopping only when his barrel, hot from death, burned his hand and he could no longer hold it. Then, he would fall to the ground at the base of the tree on which he was leaning his musket. Then the whining minié balls of the enemy would harmlessly thud into the tree bark. They, too, had their sharpshooters but he was untouchable. Now, with his barrel cooled, he was ready again.
‘The colour bearers,’ Stephen had instructed. ‘Lower the colours and you will lower morale.’
He must not think so much on everything, he reminded himself. Only concentrate on the job at hand. A fresh wave of Federals pushed forward, Stars and Stripes to the fore. Patrick tried to swing his rifle around but the fork of the tree where he rested his musket was narrow and would not allow it. Casting all caution to the wind he shinned the tree to the next level. ‘Thwack.’ A minié ball struck his knapsack, another so close he thought the hair on his forehead singed. He collapsed down to earth again and slowly edged upwards along the trunk of the tree.
A boy, carrying the flag of his country, entered Patrick’s vision. For a moment Patrick hesitated, then pulled the trigger. He saw the staff of the Union rise upwards like a prayer, slowly somersault on itself and then fall, banner downwards into the Confederate mud of Virginia. A great cheer went up from the Louisianians but before it had subsided, the enemy banner was again aloft. Once more he sighted the bearer. This time a slow moving, red-faced infantryman – a family man. He could not think of that, Patrick told himself and, letting his sight drift momentarily, mistakenly sent a bullet to the man’s head, instead of his heart.
Then, thinking of Oxy, Patrick scanned for his own flag. He rammed his cheek against the sweaty stock of the gun, closed one eye and rotated the sights through the Confederate lines. With what relief he spotted Oxy, somewhat adrift from the colour party, struggling to get back to his small band of men. Patrick relaxed, dropped to his knees, exhausted from the noise and the heat and the feverish excitement of the kill.
Then it was all over, a Rebel charge had repelled the Union troops, who ‘skedaddled, tails between their legs all the way back to Boston,’ Oxy reckoned.
Stephen who, from his big white charger, had led his command gallantly praised them both. Oxy, ‘for our colours never once being soiled’ and Patrick for his ‘unerring eye for Yankees.’