One of the Rebels was very young. With youthful awkwardness he was trying all at once to put on his shirt, hold his blouse and rifle, and run for his life. As he ran his shirt streamed out behind. He dropped his rifle and when he stopped to pick it up he dropped his blouse. When the boy’s face turned toward his pursuers Tim raised his pistol as if to shoot. The boy deliberately picked up his blouse and his rifle and turned his back; he moved a few steps closer to the shelter of a dune.
Tim signaled for his men to hold their fire. He lowered his pistol. They watched the lad as he cut loose and sprinted like a rabbit for the safety of the dune, his shirt still clinging to one of his arms and streaming out behind.
Tim looked back. The Federal force was moving forward in a solid line. He scrambled up a knob of sand. Beyond him, over a waste of dunes, a Rebel battery was just about to be deserted. Behind the cannon the ground was dotted with soldiers in full retreat.
The attackers paused to catch their breaths. Off to the right Red had taken prisoners. He was giving orders to three of his men who were acting as guards. He gestured and pointed toward the rear, then turned his back on his prisoners, looking over the ground ahead.
Tim and his boys moved forward again, this time so fast that they caught a gun crew off its guard. Tim dropped behind a crescent-shaped drift of sand, and edging forward, found himself staring straight into the muzzle of a cannon—a parrot rifle not fifty yards beyond. Five of the gun crew made themselves scarce, but two of the braver ones started to empty their powder barrels. One of the men saw Tim and grabbed for a rifle, but Tim brought up his pistol and fired. The Rebel winced and grabbed his shoulder, dropping to the sand as the other man scurried away.
The fleeing man paused in the cover of a little valley and brought up his rifle. Corporal Steele lay close to Tim, his rifle cradled easily in his hands. He squeezed the trigger and the man pitched forward and lay still on the sand. Then one of Steele’s hands left his rifle. He reached into a hollow in the sand and brought out a speckled sea-gull egg. Steele slipped the egg into his cartridge box and both men stood up and moved toward the gun.
Tim spoke to the man he had shot. “You hurt bad?”
Blood had soaked through the man’s gray blouse. There were patience and sadness in his face. “The war is finished for me now,” he said.
Tim propped the man against the cannon and took up the chase again.
The sun traveled across the hard blue sky as the Yankees moved along the shore, taking gun after gun and turning them on men who had manned them minutes before.