It recounts the fate of a young Boy Scout during the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. There he is randomly assigned to assist a veteran, one Captain Montgomery from North Carolina. The captain brandishes an antique pistol at the unnamed scout, and orders a wagon and team. Fortuitously, just such a team shows up, and the captain heads out to "Iverson's Pits", where he expects to reach a consummation to his long-held obsession with achieving a revenge on his former commander, Alfred Iverson. Apparently, Iverson's incompetence had led him to order his men into the teeth of a Union trap while he had lunch. To cover his own failing, Iverson claimed to one and all that his men were cowards and had tried to surrender.