"We're finished. We were finished months ago." It was true ... they had been finished at Franklin, their cause dead, their hopes dead, everything dead except men who had somehow kept on their feet, with weapons in their hands and a dogged determination to keep going. Why? Because most of them could no longer understand any other way of life? There was that long line of battles General Forrest had named.... And marching backward through weeks, months, and years a long line of men, growing more and more shadowy in memory. Among them was Anse--Drew tried not to think about that. Now, out of the dark there suddenly arose a voice, singing. Others picked up the tune, one of the army songs. Just as Kirby had sung to them on the big retreat, so this unknown voice was singing them on to whatever was awaiting at Plantersville. The end was waiting and they would have to face it, just as they had faced carbine, saber, field gun and everything else the Yankees had brought to bear against them. Drew joined in and heard Boyd's tenor, high but on key, take up the refrain: "On the Plains of Manassas the Yankees we met, We gave them a whipping they'll never forget: But I ain't got no money, nor nothin' to eat, I'm afraid that tonight I must sleep in the street." The Army of the Tennessee hadn't seen the Plains of Manassas, maybe, but they had seen other fields and running Yankees in their time. Drew found himself slapping the ends of his reins in time to the tune. "I'm a poor Rebel soldier, and Dixie's my home--" Croaker brayed loudly and with sorrowful undertone, and Drew heard a laugh, which could only have come from General Forrest, floating back to him through the dawn of a new morning. 18 _Texas Spurs_ The soft wind curled languidly in through the open church window, stirring the curly lock which Boyd now and then impatiently pushed away from his eyes ... was a delicate fingertip touch on Drew's cheek. A subdued shuffle of feet could be heard as the congregation arose. It was Sunday in Gainesville, and a congregation such as could only have gathered there on this particular May 7, 1865. Rusty gray-brown, patched, and with ill-mended tears, which no amount of painstaking effort could ever convert again into more than dimly respectable uniforms, a sprinkling of civilian broadcloth and feminine bonnets. And across the church a smaller block of once hostile blue.... As the recessional formed, prayer books were closed to be slipped into pockets or reticules. The presiding celebrate moved down from the altar, his surplice tugged aside by the wandering breeze revealing the worn cavalry boots of a chaplain. "For the beauty of the earth, For the beauty of the skies, For the love which from our birth Over and around us lies." Men's voices, hesitant and rusty at first, then rose confidently over the more decorous hum of the regular church-goers as old memories were renewed.