"At Cold Harbor we knew that we'd been beat." Leej dipped the tip of the cigar in his brandy, then drew deeply on it. " That was my last battle. My first was Mill Springs, and I was clean and well fed, brave and immortal. Death was a novel concept, and it held my admiration. It was there that my brother fell. He did not die bravely.We were mounted, and I had asked him for chewing tobacco. In the act of leaning toward me, he was struck from his horse by a minie ball. As he fell, he looked at me in shock and surprise, yet with an incredulous half-smile as if I were in part responsible but he held no grudge. I dismounted and knelt over him. He found my hand and pressed into my palm a plug of burley tobacco. That was Henry's glorious death."

But by the time of Cold Harbor I was well acquainted with Death. Which is not to say I feared him less, only that we had attained a level of comfortable intimacy. I detested him with all my heart. He reciprocated by laying all about me low with his sickle, and leaving me untouched. We had thought, at War's beginning, that we could whip the Yankee and send him running, and that would end it. Well, we did whip him. And he did run. But there were always more to whip. And by Cold Harbor, he would no longer run, but stand and die. And die in the thousands they did, on that field. Five thousand, they say, fell to our grapeshot and ball in less than one hour there. I can still see the ranks of dim specters looming through the thick smoke, coming without end, falling in rows as our ranks poured shot into them."

And when the smoke had cleared, you might have walked 300 yards stepping on the bodies of the fallen, never touching the earth. Some had approached our rampart as close as 20 feet. Among those in this grim vanguard lay a young fellow who called incessantly for water. I went to him at last with a canteen, and held his head up to drink. He had pinned a paper upon his breast, bearing his name, and that of his State and Company. Most of his comrades who lay around him had done likewise, so that someone at home would learn of their fate. This boy had fallen from a stomach wound, and in falling had more grievously injured himself by dropping upon the blade of his own bayonet. He implored me to take it from his chest. This I did, afterward holding my hands tight upon the wound, and I told him I must keep my hands there to prevent him instantly bleeding to death. At that moment, a mood of peace seemed to come over him. 'I am prepared, sir,' he said, and bade me take my hands away.

That night I saddled my mount, riding unchallenged through the picket lines. I changed my uniform for a workman's clothes, and at long last reached my home." Leej took another sip of the brandy, turning to smile at the young woman who sang, accompanied by a young man on piano, Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair. " At Cold Harbor, I knew that the victor would not be those who could hold or take the ground, those who were right or wrong, those who were cowardly or brave. The Great Victory would go to those who would spill the most blood, and I knew we would lose, for the enemy had more blood to spill."

A deep throbbing note reverberated across the river and through the Tavern of the Hansell. Leej leaped to his feet, running through the door to the starboard rail. The Maid of Ohio was now clearly in view. She was no longer following them in the main channel, but had veered well outside on this great bend in the river, hoping to use the faster current there to close on the Hansell." That man is taking a great chance! The water there is quite shallow. Perhaps he knows something that we do not." The pilot of the Maid was seen on her bow, dropping the line on first one side then the other. Again the distant riverboat sounded a low tone. " Ha!" said Leej," he's cocky! Wasting steam on taunting us. Catspaugh had better have something up his sleeve,though, I think."