Cain at Gettysburg by Ralph Peters

group of officers and raced back along the column. Yanking back too hard on the bit, he reared up short of Blake.
    â€œSergeant Blake! Take out skirmishers! Right and forward. Honor to the Twenty-sixth!”
    And the boy turned away again, without having said how many men were to go. Blake culled a dozen and waved them out along the edge of a woodline, then pushed on into the trees. On either side of him, men checked their weapons as they walked, then trailed their rifles to load them with dry powder.
    Blake’s senses burned bright. The rustle of the column off to his left fitted into a box, letting him hear the other, nearer sounds. Wet brush stroked him, briars went ignored. It was ever a wonder to him how the mind ranked dangers so finely, concentrating mightily on survival.
    The trees weren’t thick enough to hide a man. No birds sang.
    He kept a watch on the men beside him, but they knew their work and maintained their intervals. Some crouched like hunters, while others walked upright and strained to see ahead, but all of them moved silently. The wet earth smelled of rot.
    They climbed through the grove. Their silence grew wintry, the stillness of men intent on killing game.
    The trees didn’t thin, they just stopped. Every man paused before breaking from the concealment. The crest of the ridge lay just a dash ahead. But no one had a mind to run.
    Blake stepped out into the open, going cautiously at first. Other men took his lead. A crow’s abrupt complaint startled them all.
    They had moved at an angle and, looking left, Blake saw that they had only come parallel with the head of the column. Other skirmishers had been thrown forward, too. He reached a narrow lane that traced the crest. A few hundred yards northward, General Pettigrew sat on his mount, surrounded by his subordinates, all of them focused on a distant scene.
    Blake followed their line of vision.
    Before a cluster of fine brick buildings, blue-jacketed cavalrymen watched the men in gray who were watching them. Some of the Yankees remained mounted, but others had their boots on the earth, carbines ready.
    Blake waved his skirmish line forward, down a mild slope of wet wheat. A column of Federals trotted out from the town beyond the near buildings, reinforcing their comrades. They did not appear alarmed by the Confederate presence.
    â€œThose ain’t no militia,” Pike Gray said.
    â€œKeep moving,” Blake told him, trying to pitch his voice just right. “No talking.”
    This was it, then. How it began. Again. A few men against a few men. Would it remain a minor skirmish? Or lead to a fair battle? It hardly mattered to him and those beside him. As they descended the slope, headed toward the flank of the Union horsemen, they moved at the edge of the world.
    A courier broke from General Pettigrew’s side and cantered down the ridge toward the skirmishers. Blake signaled to the men to halt where they were. Some knelt down, half-disappearing into the wheat. Clutching their rifles.
    The rider reached them, a lieutenant Blake didn’t recognize. The officer eyed Blake’s chevrons.
    â€œWithdraw your men, Sergeant,” the lieutenant told him. “Fall back on your company. Orders are to reverse the march immediately.” He spurred his mount back toward his brother officers.
    â€œTake a shot?” John Bunyan asked as the hoofbeats faded away. “I could drop one of them blue-bellies from here.”
    â€œNo,” Blake said.
    *   *   *
    Brigadier General James Johnston Pettigrew was born on July 4, 1828. His family possessed wealth and social prominence that reached from their North Carolina plantation southward to Charleston and northward to Philadelphia. Handsome and brilliant, Pettigrew graduated first in his class at Chapel Hill at the age of nineteen, received a prized appointment as an astronomer at the Naval Observatory in Washington, and soon discarded a position that