Some said the whole town would have burned, with nary a soul left alive to see it fall, had it not been for a single person. Ray Bittle, on horseback, galloped through town with the alacrity of ten men, riding so fast he had to hold his hat down atop his head. He yelled at all who made to flee, making a great show of circling the men in particular.
“Cowards!” he screamed. “Vile cowards. Defend your home. Defend your town!”
Until the fire had made it to town, it was difficult to find a single individual who could remember seeing him awake, let alone speak, his spirit roused in the manner of a long-dormant geyser that had suddenly revived itself. He spewed forth vitriol with such animation that all who looked on could do nothing but stand in amazement, their flight arrested by the man’s hysterics. In short order he energized them through the same passion with which he’d shamed them, and all who heard his pleas were unwilling to abandon the very place that had been left to burn so many times before.
Not that it worked. The bucket brigade was laughably futile, and the participants finally ran off, comforted by the attempt at bravery （at least they could tell the others they’d tried）。 The real hero, many claimed, was not Ray Bittle but the fire warden, who saved the latter portion of town with his decision to destroy Roth’s Lumber Mill and Mr. Rainey’s Meats and clear them out as a natural firebreak to arrest the spreading flames. With the fire stunted, the brigades from Selby and Campton arrived, making three hose carts in all. They fought the blaze for an hour and yet it still took the reinforcement of a dying wind to bring the chaos to a sudden halt. The town grew so silent as night turned to morning that the destruction felt absolute, but chatter resumed as citizens picked up the pieces and returned to their homes; oddly enough, a relief had already set in that, come what may, the sun would rise come dawn. The world would carry on and they would be there to see to it.
The next day, children ran the town. Families were so immersed in taking stock of their losses at home （with the council of the town penned up in the church discussing how to rebuild） that they had not the capacity to attend to their stores. Owners sent their children to watch for looters, and so the sight to any newcomer was that of young boys and girls, soot-colored and eager with energy, milling inside the shops and calling out to one another around the square, informing the others of what had been lost as though caught up in a competition.
Brigadier General Glass organized a cleanup crew of soldiers and yet no one would allow his men into the charred remains of their shops. The state of things was so dismal that he feared the sort of chaos that greets an apocalypse. There were whispers of revolt. He and his men braced against the possibility of looters overrunning the schoolhouse and stripping the soldiers of their weapons. He was holed up there, cowed by the total destruction of the town placed in his charge, and couldn’t be roused from the stupor induced by his failure.
These were the conditions that met the federal agents sent by the military governor. They arrived with no fanfare and no warning, a cavalry of black and white men riding as one, in fresh blues and heavy boots, with a confident bounce to their gallop that verged on the arrogant. Behind them on a smaller pony rode a petite man wearing round glasses and a suit that was neither cheap nor fine. He dismounted first and asked a small girl what had become of the town and where he might find Glass. He walked the rest of the way to the schoolhouse, leading his cavalrymen, nodding to each child in his path, pleasant in every interaction. He was in the schoolhouse only a short while before he left it alone, composed as ever, and made his way to the church. There he and the cavalrymen were received with silence and dubiety, as all those seated craned their necks to watch him make his way to the altar, where he introduced himself to the councilmen as the Secretary of the Freedmen’s Bureau, sent to assess the town in its conformity to the rule of law as enacted by the United States of America. There were gasps and groans—had they not endured enough?—but the cavalrymen, their rifles at their hips, ensured a climate of civility.
The councilmen demanded emergency assistance in such dire times, lamenting that Glass had let them down by never having enough stock to feed more than the poorest, the neediest, among whose ranks they would all find themselves in the wake of the fire. This demand then turned into passionate fulmination against the Union, which, according to everyone present, had forgotten a stitch in its fabric, a town that deserved more and had been left to smolder under the watch of an incompetent general. The Secretary smiled as these men went on, and when they were finished, he stepped up to speak. All citizens could claim rations that were only a day away, he said. They would receive the assistance they sought as well, as much as their country might give, much more in fact than Glass had been able to offer. All that was required of them was the reading out of an oath. Each citizen would have the opportunity to make the pledge. They would form a line and recite it in full: