The dirt road along the bayou was yellow and hard-packed and the dust from the retreating column drifted into his face. He wore no socks and the leather in his shoes had hardened and split and rubbed blisters across his toes and on his heels. He watched the retreating column disappear around a bend, then ordered his men to fall out and form a defensive line along a coulee that fed into the bayou. He lay below the rim of the embankment and peered back down the road. Houses were burning in the distance, and when he pressed his ear against the ground he thought he could hear the rumble of wheeled vehicles in the south, but he could see no sign of Union soldiers. Where were they? he asked himself. Perhaps sweeping south of New Iberia to capture the salt mines down by the Gulf, he thought. It was shady where he lay on the embankment, and he could smell wild-flowers and water in the bottom of the coulee and for what seemed just a second he laid his head down in the coolness of the grass and closed his eyes.
