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off with a sweeping gesture and bowed to Ryan. "I am Judas Portillo," he said, in a surprisingly broad
Southern cracker accent. "Have I the honor of addressing the Ryan Cawdor?"
"You're addressing a Ryan Cawdor," the one-eyed man replied with a grim smile.
Portillo forced a smile in return, which flickered for a moment across his well-shaved jowls and then
disappeared. "You wish to be shown around the battlefield?"
"Yeah. How much?"
Portillo shrugged his shoulders. "Just a small handful of jack if you're pleased."
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"I got a very small handful of jack," J.B. said. "Very small."
The smile hesitated again. "I am sure that you outlanders won't disappoint me."
"I'm sure," said Ryan. "Just so long as you don't disappoint us, Judas."
They settled their account with Ma Jode, who insisted on hugging them all and wishing them well in their
journeying, assuring them that their raft would be safe and snug at the landing when they returned.
IT WAS SURPRISINGLY CLOSE to the river, an easy walk that took only a short time. Even Ryan, with
his healing wound, enjoyed the morning stroll.
They had passed through rolling fields of wheat and barley, along narrow, high-walled lanes and lines of
trim picket fences that divided meadows where horse-drawn plows went about their placid business.
Doc stopped, waving away some persistent flies. "By the Three Kennedys! But this is truly a pastoral
idyll. It quite takes me back to my days of yore when I would lend a hand with the harvest."
"Good land," Portillo said quietly.
"This the scene of the battle?" Krysty asked as they paused on a crest of land, looking toward the
northwest. The light mist had burned off, and it promised to be a fine day.
"Road passing left to right is the old River Road. Also called the Hamburg Road. Look way over yonder
and see the little spire. That's a church stands on the same spot as the meeting house of Shiloh."
"The heart of the fight was ahead, wasn't it?" J.B. asked eagerly. "I recall places called the Peach Orchard
and the Hornet's Nest."
Portillo scowled. "Want me to tell you or not? I'd just as like go sit on the porch and sip moonshine."
The Armorer sniffed. "You go right ahead. Tell us like it was."
The guide adopted a strange singsong recitation as he began to tell the bloody saga of Shiloh.
"April 6 and 7 of 1862 saw the first major battle of the western campaign of the series of fights called
either the Civil War or the War between the States, depending on where you come from. During the
Battle of Shiloh, the Northerners lost over thirteen thousand men, while we only lost a tad over ten
thousand good old boys."
"So the Confederacy won?" Krysty asked.
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Portillo hesitated, his love of the South fighting with his desire for truth. "Well the South failed to push
home and beat the Yankees, and that opened up the trouble at Vicksburg. Guess the fact is that Shiloh was
like a poisoned arrow straight in the heart of the Stars and Bars. But Grant took the losses hard, and it
kind of slowed down the war for a while."
Ryan shifted position, trying to take a little weight off the injured thigh. The good news was that it
definitely felt a lot better than it had the previous day. He looked across the green, undulating fields,
trying to imagine them scattered with lines of weary men in blue and gray.
"I got here a plan," Portillo said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a tattered piece of paper that he
unfolded and laid carefully on the ground, smoothing it.
There were rectangles and arrows in different colors, mainly either blue or red.
"Yankees is blue," Portillo said, pointing with a long twig he'd picked up. "South's red."
"Not gray?" Doc asked. "Why red?"
"Gray faded and got kind of dirty," their guide replied, pulling a sullen face. "So's I had to go to red. Look
here. Reading from the north, the Army of Tennessee, as they called themselvesI says the blue-bellieswas
commanded by Sherman here, with McLernand, Prentiss, Wallace and Stuart. On the other side we got
Hardee in the middle with Number Three Corps of the Confederate Army of the Mississippi. Bragg with
Two Corps is here, just behind him. Major-General Leonidas Polk with One Corps is in the third rank,
and Brigadier-General Bieckenridge at the rear with the gallant lads of the reserve."
Ryan looked at the fields, with their gentle curves. The coppices of young trees, leaves bright green,
turning and shifting in the light breeze. And he tried to imagine the battle unfolding in front of him as
Judas Portillo droned on the damp, muddy ground, churned by hooves and boots and the wheels of the
heavy artillery; the swirling masses of men, their uniforms streaked with dirt, wreathed in huge, blinding
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