bullet split the standard, another--a spent ball coming from the
hillside--struck the bearer in the chest. Billy came to his knees, the
great crimson folds about him. Cleave appeared in the red-lit murk.
"Pick him up, Allan, and bring him away."

It was almost dusk to the green and rolling world about the field of
Kernstown. Upon that field, beneath the sulphurous battle cloud, it was
dusk indeed. The fighting line was everywhere, and for the Confederates
there were no reinforcements. Fulkerson yet held the left, Garnett with
conspicuous gallantry the centre with the Stonewall regiments. The
batteries yet thundered upon the right. But ammunition was low, and for
three hours Ashby's mistake as to the enemy's numbers had received full
demonstration. Shields's brigadiers did well and the blue soldiers did
well.

A body of troops coming from the wood and crowding through a gap in a
stone fence descended upon the Rockbridge battery. Four regiments of the
Stonewall brigade clung desperately to the great uneven field which
marked the centre. The musket barrels were burningly hot to the touch of
the men, their fingers must grope for the cartridges rattling in the
cartridge boxes, their weariness was horrible, their eyes were glazed,
their lips baked with thirst. Long ago they had fought in a great,
bright, glaring daytime; then again, long ago, they had begun to fight
in a period of dusk, an age of dusk. The men loaded, fired, loaded,
rammed, fired quite automatically. They had been doing this for a long,
long time. Probably they would do it for a long time to come. Only the
cartridges were not automatically supplied. It even seemed that they
might one day come to an end. The dusk deepened. They had, beneath the
red-lit battle clouds, a glimpse of Garnett, a general chivalric and
loved, standing in his stirrups, looking out and upward toward the dark
wood and Sullivan's fresh regiments.

A sergeant came along the line stretching a haversack open with his
hands. In it were cartridges. "I gathered all the dead had. 'T isn't
many. You've got to shoot to kill, boys!" A man with a ball through the
end of his spine, lying not far from a hollow of the earth, half pool,
half bog, began to cry aloud in an agonizing fashion. "Water! water! Oh,
some one give me water! Water! For the love of God, water!" A grey
soldier started out of line toward him; in a second both were killed.
Garnett settled down in his saddle and came back to the i