n their determination to storm that barricade and
pluck out the Yankees with their hands. They were wild men, with no
thought of personal safety. A color bearer went down. His standard was
seized by his right rank man before its red folds hit the churned,
stained ground, the soldier flinging aside his rifle to take tight grip
on the pole. The line came on at a run. Now broken squads of Kentuckians
re-formed; a battered lacework of what had been companies, regiments,
joined the newcomers.

Drew was on his feet. Where Kirby or any others of the small Morgan
contingent had vanished--whether Boyd _had_ been with them--he did not
know. He jammed his now empty Colt into its holster, drew its twin,
still not wholly aware that the breastworks were too far away for small
arms' fire to have any effect.

Now the whole world was no larger than that stretch of open ground and
the breastworks, the men in blue behind them. Only the flanking fire
still withered the gray lines, curling them up as the sun had withered
and curled the leaves on the shrubs by the dried stream bed. This was
walking stiff-legged through a bath of fire--sun fire, lead-death
fire--with no end except the hope of reaching the ridge top and the
fight waiting there.

But they could not reach that wall--except singly, or in twos and
threes, then only to fall. And the waves of men no longer broke from the
woods to lap up and recede sullenly down the slope. Out of nowhere, just
as they fell back to the first fringe of trees, came an officer on a
tall gray horse. His coat was gone, he rode in his shirt sleeves, and a
bullet-torn tatter waved from one wide shoulder. Above prominent
cheekbones, his eyes were hot and bright, his clipped beard pointed
sharply from a jaw which must be grimly set, his face was flushed, and
his energy and will was like a cloud to engulf the disheartened men as
he bore down upon them.

His galloping course threaded through the shattered groups of
Kentuckians, men fast disintegrating into a mob as the realization of
their failure on the slope began to strike home--no longer a portion of
an army believing in itself. But, sighting him, they followed his route
with a rising wave of cheers--cheers which even though they came from
dry throats rose in force and violence to that inarticulate Yell which
had raised them past all fear up the hill.

From his saddle, the officer leaned to grab at a standard, whirling the
flag aloft and around his hea