Steve at first thought he might be dead, for it was cool and dark under the tilted canvas, and there was a momentary effect of quietness. The carbine had been fired; perhaps the bullet was in his brain. The uncertainty held but a second; outside the fracas burst forth again, and beneath him something moved in the straw. It proved to be the driver of the wagon, wounded, and fallen back from the seat in front. He spoke now in a curious, dreamy voice. "Get off the top of my broken leg--damn you to everlasting hell!" Steve squirmed to one side. "Sorry. Gawd knows I wish I wasn't any nearer it than the Peaks of Otter!" There was a triangular tear in the canvas. He drew down the flap and looked out. "They were Ashby's men--all those three!" He began to cry, though noiselessly. "They hadn't ought to cut at me like that--shooting, too, without looking! They ought to ha' seen I wasn't no damned Yank--" The figure in the straw moved. Steve turned sick with apprehension. "Did you hear what I said? I was just a-joking. Gawd! It's enough to make a man wish he was a Johnny Reb--Hey, what did you say?" But the figure in blue said nothing, or only some useless thing about wanting water. Steve, reassured, looked again out of window. His refuge lay a few feet from the pike, and the pike was a road through pandemonium. He could see, upon a height, dimly, through the dust and smoke the Rockbridge battery. Yellow flashes came from it, then ear-splitting sound. A Federal force, horse, foot and guns, had hastily formed in the opposite fields, seized a crest, planted cannon. These sent screaming shells. In between the iron giants roared the melee--Ashby jousting with Hatch's convoying cavalry--the Louisiana troops firing in a long battle line, from behind the stone fences--a horrible jam of wagons, overturned or overturning, panic-stricken mules, drivers raving out oaths, using mercilessly long, snaky, black whips--heat, dust, thirst and thunder, wild excitement, blood and death! There were all manner of wagons. Ambulances were there with inmates,--fantastic sickrooms, with glare for shade, Tartarean heat for coolness, cannon thunder and shouting for quietness, grey enemies for nursing women, and for home a battlefield in a hostile land. Heavy ordnance wagons, far from the guns they were meant to feed, traces cut and horses gone, rested reef-like for the tides to break against. Travelling forges kept them company, and wagons bearing officers' luggage. Beneath several the mules were pinned; dreadful sight could any there have looked or pitied! Looming through there were the great supply wagons, with others of lighter stores, holding boxes and barrels of wines and fruits, commodities of all sorts, gold-leafed fripperies, luxuries of all manner, poured across the Potomac for her soldiers by the North. Sutlers' wagons did not lack, garishly stocked, forlorn as Harlequin in the day's stress. In and around and over all these stranded hulls roared the opposing forces.