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come sit in their new shebang and discourage claim jumpers, and another man came forward to help bear one of the corpses while Limber took the feet of one and Barclay took the wrists.
    “This is Romeo Larkin,” Limber said, introducing a stocky fellow with a prodigious mustache and short-shaved hair.
    “Well be with you, gentlemen,” said Larkin, touching the cracked brim of his faded cap.
    “Larkin used to teach English at a college in Ohio. He swipes much of his fancy talk from Shakespeare, so we call him Romeo.”
    Larkin stood over the corpse for a moment and shook his head.
    “Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death, and death will have his day.”
    “Nice,” said Charlie, stooping to hoist up the corpse’s hands. “You get his feet.”
    As they bore their stinking burdens toward the South Gate, men gave them a wide berth, and those who had them removed their caps till the dead men had passed.
    “You two bunkin’ together, then?” Limber asked.
    “We figured on it,” Charlie said.
    “ ’Less it’s a problem, sir,” said Barclay, knowing full well that a white man and a black man sharing space was uncommon.
    “No problem with me. We all maintained unit cohesion best we could when we got here, but now space is space. Some camp together, some don’t,” he said. “So long as you report to roll call with your own ninety, don’t matter where you sleep.”
    “Ninety?” said Charlie.
    “Every sergeant’s responsible for ninety men.” He nodded to Barclay. “Except for nigras. There’s only about a hundred of you as is.”
    He nodded in the general direction of the northwest of the camp.
    “Up there you got the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters. They got took at Petersburg, most of ’em. Company K’s all Indians. They even got an honest-to-God medicine man. But right past there you got the 35th and 8th U.S. Colored and the 54th Massachusetts.”
    Barclay bit his lip but said nothing.
    “Make no mistake,” said Limber. “You hang your hat where you like. I don’t subscribe to that bullshit about nigras bein’ the reason we ain’t bein’ paroled. Rebs goin’ right back into the lines probably are just as much to blame. I only point ’em out to say you ought to go and report to Major Bruegel. He sorta leads the coloreds around here.”
    “A major? I thought officers got sent to separate prisons,” Charlie said.
    “Not no white officer taken in charge of Negroes,” Barclay said.
    “That’s a fact,” Limber said. “Confederates don’t recognize Bruegel’s rank. They treat him like a common soldier. Worse. When he arrived, they took him to the hospital to fix a belly wound. Surgeons refused to treat him. Sent him back. He ain’t got long. But he’s the highest rank we got here.”
    “I reckon I’ll see him,” Barclay said.
    A little farther toward the South Gate, they crossed paths with a wiry man with deep red sunburned skin and a long beard and hair. In his shredded clothes, he looked like some kind of island castaway. He was dragging a heavy iron ball by his skinny ankle, and he stared at them as they passed.
    “Runaway?” Charlie asked when he was out of earshot.
    “Best runaway we got,” Limber told him. “Skinny Hank Wilderbeck. Think he’s from Delaware. He’s busted loose four times. The last time he made it all the way to Macon before they brought him back. Some think he’s some kinda spy. Most think he’s crazy.”
    “How’d he get away all those times?” Charlie asked.
    “A stubborn outside, with an aspect of iron,”
said Romeo.
    “Best not to think on it, soldier,” said Limber. “Next time he tries it, I got a feeling it’ll be his last.”
    When they reached the South Gate at last, they found a sizable array of corpses already laid out. Their feet were uniformly bare, the big toes tied together and hung with a tag bearing the corpse’s name.
    They set their burdens down nearby, and Limber removed the shoes.
    “These look about your size,