The Valley was still, written by Manly Wade Wellman, read by Andrew Schneider.

Wind touched the pines on the ridge and stirred the thicker forest on the hills opposite.

But the grassy valley between, with its red and white

houses at the bottom, was as still as a painted backdrop in a theater, not even a grasshopper

sang in it. Two cavalrymen sat their mounts at the edge of the pines. The one in the torn butternut

blouse hawked and spat, and the sound was strangely loud at the brink of that silence.

"'I'd reckon the yanks was down on that there little town,' he said.

"'Chano, it's called.

"'Joe, you look like a yank yourself in them clothes.'

His mate, who wore half-weathered blue, did not appear complimented.

The garments had been stripped from an outraged sergeant of Pennsylvania Lancers, taken prisoner

at the seven days.

They fitted their new wearer's lean body nicely, except across the shoulders.

His boots were likewise trophies of war, from the Second Manassas, where the Union

Army had learned that lightning can strike twice in the same place. And his saddlecloth, with its

U.S. stamp, had also been unwillingly furnished by the Federal Army. But the gray horse had come from

his father's Virginia farm, and had lived through a year of fierce

fighting and fiercer toil. The rider's name was Joseph Paradine, and he had recently declined,

with thanks, the offer of General Jeb Stuart to recommend him for a commission. He preferred to serve

as a common trooper. He was a chivalric

idealist and a peerless scout. You'd better steal some Yankee blues yourself, doggar, he advised.

Those homespun pants would drop off of you if you stood up in your stirrups. Yes, the enemy's

...