Blood and iron

XI

"Down with TR! Down with TR! Down with TR!" Along with everyone else in the great hall in Toledo, Flora Hamburger howled out the chant. The air was thick with tobacco smoke. It was also thick with an even headier scent, one never caught before at a Socialist Party national convention: the smell of victory.

"We can do it this time." Flora didn't know how often she'd heard that since coming to Toledo. Whether it was true or not remained to be seen. True or not, though, people believed it. Scarred and grizzled organizers who'd been coming to conventions since long before the turn of the century were saying it, and saying it with wonder in their voices and on their faces. They'd never said it before.

"Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!" Haifa dozen people here on the floor clamored for the attention of the august personage on the rostrum.

Bang!The gavel came down. "The chair recognizes the leader of the delegation from the great state of Indiana."

"Thank you, Mr. Chairman," that worthy bellowed. The chairman rapped loudly once more, and kept rapping till something a little quieter than chaos prevailed. The leader of the Indiana delegation spoke into it: "Mr. Chairman, in the interest of victory and unity, the state of Indiana shifts twenty-seven votes from its own great patriot and statesman, Senator Debs, to the next president of the United States of America, Mr. Sinclair! We so act at the specific request of Senator Debs, who understands that the interests of the Party should, indeed must, come ahead of all personal concerns."

Flora had never been on the battlefield. If the roar that went up at that announcement didn't match that of a great cannonading, though, she would have been astonished. More men, including the chairman of the delegation from New York, waved hands or hats or banners to attract the chairman's attention. After five indecisive ballots, the Socialists had their presidential nominee. Someone moved that the nomination be made unanimous; the motion passed by overwhelming voice vote. That done, the proud and happy delegates voted to adjourn till the next day.

But they did not want to leave the floor. As if they had already won the election, they milled about in celebration, meeting old friends, making new ones, and having themselves a terrific time.

Being taller than most of the men at the convention, Hosea Blackford was easy for Flora to spot as he made his way from the small Dakota delegation to the large one from New York. "It's done," he said. "The first part of it's done, anyhow, and done well." When he grinned, he shed years. "Ain't it bully, Flora?"

"Yes, I think so," she answered. "And the second part-who knows what the second part may be?" She wanted to take him in her arms. She couldn't, not in public. She couldn't, even in private, not while the convention was going on: no privacy in Toledo was private enough. "When you find out the second part, please let me know, whenever it is you happen to hear."

"Whether it goes one way or the other, I will do that," Blackford promised solemnly. "Shall we have supper now?"

"Why not?" Flora said. They left the hall and went back to the hotel where they were both staying. Neither of them minded being seen in public with the other; their friendship was common knowledge in Philadelphia. That they were anything more than friends, they kept to themselves.

They were working their way through indifferent beef stew when an excited-looking young man in a brightly checked jacket approached the table and said, "Congressman Blackford?"

"That's right," Blackford answered. The young man in the gaudy jacket glanced toward Flora. Understanding that glance, Blackford said, "Do I understand that you come from Mr. Sinclair?" The newcomer nodded. "Speak freely," Blackford urged him. "You may rely on Congresswoman Hamburger's discretion no less than my own."

"Very well." The eager youngster tipped his bowler to Flora. "Pleased to meet you, ma'am." He gave his attention back to Blackford. "Mr. Sinclair says I am to tell you that you are his first choice. It's yours if you want it."

Flora clapped her hands together. "Oh, Hosea, how wonderful!" she exclaimed.

"Is it?" Blackford said, more to himself than to anyone else. "I wonder. If I take it and lose, I go home. If I take it and win, I go into the shadows for four years, maybe for eight. It's not a choice to be made lightly."

"You can't turn it down!" Flora said. "You can't, not this year."

"Can't I?" Blackford murmured. She looked alarmed. The young man in the loud jacket didn't. Pointing to him, Blackford smiled and said, "You see? He knows there are plenty of other fish in the lake." Flora sputtered angrily. Smiling still, Blackford went on, "But no, I don't suppose I can, not this year. Yes, sir: if it pleases Mr. Sinclair to have my name placed in nomination for the vice presidency, I shall be honored to run with him and see if we can't tie a tin can to Teddy Roosevelt's tail and send him yapping down the street."

"Swell!'" The youngster stuck out his hand. Blackford shook it. "My principal will be delighted, and I already am. This time, by thunder, we're going to lick 'em." He waved and departed.

"We're going to lick them," Blackford repeated. His smile was wide and amused. "Well, by thunder, maybe we are. What I'm afraid of is that tomorrow you're going to have to listen to nominating speeches telling the convention what a saint I am, and you'll laugh so loud, you'll get yourself thrown out of the hall."

"I would never do such a thing!" With a mischievous twinkle in her eye, Flora added, "Not right out loud, I wouldn't."

And, indeed, she sat beaming with pride as speaker after speaker stood up to praise Hosea Blackford the next day. A couple of other names were also placed in nomination, but Blackford won on the first ballot. Flora clapped till her hands were red and sore, and she was far from the only one who did.

But, even in the nominating convention, the would-be vice president yielded pride of place to the man heading the ticket. A runner went to summon Hosea Blackford (custom had forbidden him from being in the hall while the nomination proceedings went on). The chairman of the convention said, "And now, my friends"-no ladies and gentlemen, not in the Socialist camp-"I have the privilege of presenting to you the next president of the United States, Mr. Upton Sinclair of New Jersey!'"

More applause followed, louder and more prolonged than that which had announced Hosea Blackford's nomination. Sinclair bounded up to the platform. Both his stride and the white summer-weight suit he wore proclaimed his youthful energy: Flora couldn't remember whether he was forty-one or forty-two. Set against the sixtyish Roosevelt, he seemed boyish, bouncy, full of spit and vinegar.

He knew it, too. "My friends, it's time for a change!" he shouted in a great voice, and cheers went up like thunder. Sinclair held up his hands, asking for quiet. Eventually, he got it. "It's time for a change," he repeated. "It's time for a change in ideas, and it's time for a change in the people who give us our ideas, too." Flora, to whom even Sinclair was not all that young, clapped hard again.

"What this convention has done here in Toledo marks the first step in that great and necessary change," Sinclair said. "This convention has passed the torch to a new generation, a generation born since the War of Secession, tempered by our troubles, disciplined by the harsh peace our neighbors forced upon us, and eager for the freedom and justice and equality of which we have heard so much and seen so little. Tell me, my friends: are you willing to witness or permit the slowing of those freedoms to which this nation has always been committed?"

"No!" Flora shouted, along with everyone else in the hall.

"Neither am I! Neither is the Socialist Party!" Upton Sinclair cried. "And I also tell you this, my friends: if our free country cannot help the men who are poor, it surely cannot-and should not-save the few who are rich!" Every time Flora thought the next round of applause could be no louder than the last, she found herself mistaken. When silence returned, Sinclair went on, "Now that we have suffered so much in the struggle against our nation's foes, let us struggle instead against the common enemies of mankind: against oppression, against poverty, and against bloody-handed war itself!"

He went on in that vein for some time. It seemed more an inaugural address than an acceptance speech. No Socialist presidential candidate had ever spoken not only to the Party but also to the country with such easy confidence before. Upton Sinclair sounded as if he took it for granted that he might win. Because he took it for granted (or sounded as if he did), would not the rest of the country do the same?

And then, at last, he said, "And now, my friends, I have the pleasure and the honor of introducing to you the next vice president of the United States, Congressman Hosea Blackford of the great state of Dakota."

Blackford got more than polite applause. Flora's contribution was as raucous as she could make it. As the tumult died away, Blackford said, "I too am of the generation born after the War of Secession, if only just. And I am of the generation that learned of Socialism from its founders: in my case literally, for Abraham Lincoln pointed out to me the need for class justice and economic justice on a train trip through Montana-the Montana Territory, it was then-and Dakota."

Lincoln's name drew a nervous round of applause, as it always did: half pride in the role he'd played in making the Socialist Party strong, half fear of the contempt that still clung to him because he'd fought-and lost-the War of Secession. Flora hoped that, with victory in the Great War, the country would not dwell on the War of Secession so much as it had in earlier days.

"I stand foursquare behind Mr. Sinclair in his call for freedom and in his call for justice," Blackford said. "The Socialist Party, unlike every other party in the USA, is committed to economic freedom and economic justice for every citizen of the United States. Others may speak of a square deal, but how, my friends, how can there be a square deal for the millions of workers who cannot earn enough to buy a square meal?"

That won him solid cheers, in which Flora joined. Possessive pride filled her: that was her man up there, perhaps-no, probably, she thought, defying a generation and a half of Democratic tenure in the White House-the next vice president, as Upton Sinclair had said. Hard on the heels of pride came loneliness. If Blackford was to become the next vice president, he'd be crisscrossing the country between now and November 2. They wouldn't have many chances to see each other till the election.

More solid applause followed Blackford's speech: the sort, Flora thought, a vice-presidential candidate should get. Blackford had spoken ably, but hadn't upstaged Sinclair. "On to victory!' the chairman shouted, dismissing the delegates and formally bringing the convention to a close.

On the street outside the hall, a sandy-haired fellow in the overalls and cloth cap of a steelworker called Flora's name. "Yes? What is it?" she asked.

"I wanted to ask how your brother's getting along, ma'am," the man said. "I was his sergeant, the day he got hurt. Name's Chester Martin." He took off the cap and dipped his head.

"Oh!" Flora exclaimed. "He spoke well of you in his letters, always. You know he lost the leg?"

"I thought he would-I saw the wound," Martin answered. "Please say hello for me, next time you see him."

"I will," Flora answered. "He's doing as well as he could hope on the artificial leg. With it and a cane, he gets around fairly well. He's working, back in New York City."

"That's all good news, or as good as it can be," Martin said.

"He's a Democrat," Flora added, as if to say all the news wasn't good.

"I used to be, but I'm a Socialist now," Martin said. "It evens out. And I think, with Sinclair running, we may win the election this time, ma'am. I really do."

"So do I," Flora whispered-she didn't want to say it too loudly, for fear Something might hear and put a jinx on it. "So do I."

Anne Colleton gave her brother an annoyed look. "I still don't see exactly why you think I ought to meet this person."

"Because I remember very well the soldier who wrote to me about him," Tom Colleton replied. "If Bartlett says something is important, you can take it to the bank." He looked sheepish. "These days, as a matter of fact, Bartlett's word is a damn sight better than taking something to the bank."

"I think you want me to meet this Brearley because you're still trying to get me out of the Freedom Party," Anne said.

"If the big wheels in the Party aren't just the way you think they are, isn't that something you ought to know?" her brother returned.

If Roger Kimball isn 'tjust the way you think he is, isn 't that a reason to stop your affair with him? That was what Tom meant. Kimball could have been a Baptist preacher, and Tom would have disapproved of the affair. That Kimball was anything but a Baptist preacher made the disapproval stick out all over, like the quills on a porcupine.

Her brother did have a point, though. Anne was not so blindly devoted to either the Freedom Party or to Roger Kimball as to be blind to that. "He's coming. I can't stop him from coming. I'll hear him out," she said.

"So glad you're pleased." Tom grinned impudently. "Seeing as his train gets into St. Matthews in twenty minutes, I'm going to head over toward the station. Want to come along?"

"No, thank you," Anne answered. "This is your soldier and your soldier's pal. If you want to deal with him, go right ahead. You invited him down without bothering to ask me about it, so you can bring him here on your own, too."

"All right, Sis, I will," Tom said. "See you soon-or maybe not quite so soon, depending on how late the train is today." He grabbed a hat off the rack and went out the door whistling. Anne glared at his back. If he knew she was doing it, he didn't let on.

Anne resolved to be as poor a hostess as rigid notions of Confederate hospitality allowed. But, when her brother returned with the stranger, her resolution faltered. She hadn't expected the fellow to look like such a puppy. Out came a peach pie whose existence she hadn't intended to admit. She put on a fresh pot of coffee. "Your name is Brearley, isn't that right?" she said, knowing perfectly well it was.

"Yes, ma'am," he answered. "Tom Brearley, ex-C.S. Navy. Through most of the war, I was Roger Kimball's executive officer aboard the Bonefishr

"Of course," Anne said. "I knew the name sounded familiar." It hadn't, not really; Kimball had mentioned his exec only a couple of times, and in less than flattering terms. Anne had an excellent memory for names, but Brearley's had slid clean out of her head. He hadn't wanted to give it before coming down, either; only her and Tom's flat refusal to meet with a mystery man had pried it out of him.

Brearley said, "Up in Richmond, I saw in the papers that you were working for the Freedom Party, and that he is, too."

Tom Colleton raised an eyebrow. Anne ignored it, saying, "Yes, that's right. The war's been over for three years now. That's far past time for us to get back on our feet again, but the only people who want this country to do things and not just sit there with its head in the sand are in the Party, seems to me."

"I don't think that's so, but never mind," Brearley said. "I didn't come down here to argue politics with you. Getting somebody to change politics may be easier than getting him to change his church, but it isn't a whole lot easier."

"Why did you come down here, then?" Anne asked. "In your last letter, you said you knew something important about Roger Kimball, but you didn't say what. I'm not sure why you thought it would matter to me at all, except that both our names happened to end up in the same newspaper story."

Kimball hadn't talked much about Brearley to her. How much had Kimball talked about her to Brearley? Men bragged. That was one of their more odious characteristics, as far as she was concerned. She'd thought Kimball relatively immune to the disease. Maybe she'd been wrong.

She couldn't tell, not from reading Brearley's face. He still looked like a puppy. But he didn't sound like a puppy as he answered, "Because if what he did ever came out, it would embarrass the Freedom Party. For that matter, if what he did ever came out, it would embarrass the Confederate States."

"You don't talk small, do you?" Tom Colleton remarked.

"My granddad would have called it a sockdologer, sure enough," Brearley said, "and he'd have been right, too. Let me tell you what happened aboard the Bonefish right at the end of the war." He detailed how Kimball, fully aware the war was over and lost, had nonetheless stalked and sunk the USS Ericsson, sending her to the bottom without, so far as Brearley knew, a single survivor.

"That's it?" Anne said when her visitor fell silent. Tom Brearley nodded. "What do you expect me to do about it?" she asked him.

She was asking herself the same question. Kimball had certainly kept this secret from her. She wasn't surprised. The more people who knew about the Ericsson, the more dangerous the knowledge got. She made a point of not looking over at her brother. She knew how he was likely to use it: not in any way that would make her comfortable.

Tom Brearley said, "What I do with it doesn't matter. I'm nobody in particular. But you're involved in the Freedom Party, same as Roger Kimball is. How do you feel about working side by side with a cold-blooded murderer?"

Anne gnawed the inside of her lower lip. No, Brearley didn't talk like a puppy. He minced no words at all, as a matter of fact. She decided to match his bluntness: "If you really want to know, Mr. Brearley, it doesn't bother me one bit. If I'd been in position to hit the Yankees one last lick, I'd have done it, and I'd have done it regardless of whether the war was supposed to be over or not. What do you think of that, sir?"

Now Brearley looked like a horrified puppy. He coughed a couple of times before blurting, "No wonder you back the Freedom Party!"

"The United States worked for fifty years to get their revenge on us," Anne said. "I don't know how long I'll have to wait for my turn. I hope it isn't that long. However long it takes, I think it'll come sooner from the Freedom Party than from anybody else out there right now."

Tom Colleton said, "Mr. Brearley's right about one thing, though: if the United States ever get word of what the Bonefish did, they can put us in hot water on account of it. If Roosevelt wins a third term, he'll do it, too."

"Then we have to see that the United States don't find out about it," Anne said, doing her best to put Brearley in fear with her expression.

It didn't work. She should have realized it wouldn't work, not if he'd gone through the war in a submersible. He said, "If you want to make sure the story gets to the United States, arranging an accident for me is the best way to go about it. I didn't come here without taking the precautions a sensible man would take before he stuck his head in the lion's mouth."

"I didn't threaten you, Mr. Brearley," Anne said: a technical truth that was in fact a great, thumping lie.

"Of course not," Brearley said-another lie.

Anne wondered if she ought to offer to pay him to keep the secret of the Bonefish from reaching the United States. After some thought, she decided not to. If he wanted money in exchange for silence, let him bring it up. If he wanted Confederate paper money in exchange for silence, he was a bigger fool than he'd shown himself to be.

Her brother said, "Mr. Brearley, you do understand that, whatever score you may want to settle with Mr. Kimball, you're liable to hurt the whole country if this story gets told too widely." Anne looked at him now, in nothing but admiration. She hadn't been able to come up with anything nearly so smooth.

Brearley nodded. "Of course I do. That's why I've kept quiet for so long. You may call me a great many things, but I love my country. If you'll forgive me, I love my country too well to want to see it fall into the hands of the Freedom Party."

"I'll forgive you for that," Tom Colleton said. "Whether my sister will is liable to be a different question."

Brearley glanced at Anne. She looked back, bland as new-churned butter. "I don't agree, but Mr. Brearley didn't come down here forme to change his politics, either," she said.

Brearley looked relieved. Anne almost laughed in his face. One thing he plainly didn't understand about the Freedom Party was that so many people joined it because they wanted revenge: revenge against the United States, revenge against the Negroes in the Confederate States, and revenge against the government and Army that had failed to live up to the CSA's long tradition of victory. Hunger for revenge had led Anne into the Party. Now she had one more piece of revenge to attend to, as opportunity arose: revenge against Tom Brearley.

He said, "I'll leave it at that, then. I do thank you kindly for hearing me out. Next train north doesn't come in till tomorrow, does it?"

"No," Tom Colleton said. "St. Matthews isn't the big city. You'll have seen that for yourself, I reckon. If you want to come along with me, we'll see whether the hotel has an empty room." He snorted. "Let's see if the hotel has any rooms that aren't empty besides the one you'll be in. Come on."

As soon as her brother took Tom Brearley out of the flat, Anne tried to get a telephone connection through to Richmond. She didn't want to put anything down in writing, which eliminated both the telegraph and a letter. Telegraphers weren't supposed to pay any attention to what they sent, but they did, or they could. Letters could go astray, too.

And so could telephone connections. "Sorry, ma'am," the operator reported. "Don't look like you can get there from here today." She laughed at her own wit.

Anne didn't. Anne was not-was emphatically not-amused. She snarled something wordless but potent and hung up the telephone with a crash. She hoped it rattled the operator's teeth. Who could guess where the trouble lay? Storms knocking down wires? Squirrels gnawing through insulation and shorting out the line? Anything was possible-anything except getting through to Richmond.

Her brother came in a couple of minutes later. "Well, what do you think of Kimball now?" he asked.

"The same as before," Anne answered, to Tom's evident disappointment. "Like I told that fellow, if I'd been in the Bonefish, I'd have torpedoed that destroyer, too."

"My fire-eating sister," Tom said, more admiringly than not.

"That's right," Anne said. "That's exactly right. And anybody who forgets it for even a minute will be sorry the rest of his livelong days."

Cincinnatus Driver looked back at the house in which he'd lived his whole married life. He looked around at the Covington, Kentucky, neighborhood in which he'd lived his whole life. There was a last time for everything, and this was it.

He cranked the engine. The shabby old Duryea truck thundered into life. It didn't give half the trouble it usually did, as if it too were glad to shake the dust of Kentucky from its tires. Cincinnatus hurried back to the cab.

There sat Elizabeth, Achilles on her lap. "We ready?" Cincinnatus asked as he slid in behind the wheel. In one way, it was a foolish question: everything they owned and aimed to take along was behind them in the bed of the truck. In another way, though, it was the question, and Cincinnatus knew it. He still didn't know whether he and his family were ready to abandon everything they'd ever known in the hope for a better life.

Ready or not, they were going to do it. Elizabeth nodded. Achilles yelled "Ready!" at the top of his lungs. Cincinnatus put the truck in gear. He waited for the engine to die or for something else dreadful to happen. Nothing did. Smooth as if it were ten years newer, the Duryea began to roll.

As Cincinnatus turned out of Covington's colored district and onto Greenup, Elizabeth said, "I do wish your ma and pa decided to come along with us."

"I do, too," he answered. "But they're set in their ways, like folks can get. I ain't gonna worry about it much. Once we find a place, you wait and see if they don't come after us "

"Maybe they will," his wife said. "I hope they do. Won't be so lonesome if they do, that's for sure."

"Yeah." If Cincinnatus had let his hands drive the truck for him, he would have gone on to the waterfront. He'd been heading there, walking or taking the trolley or driving the truck, since the early days of the war. But he wasn't going to head there any more. Instead, he took the suspension bridge north across the Ohio River and over into Cincinnati.

"The United States," Elizabeth said softly.

Cincinnatus nodded. Oh, Kentucky was one of the United States these days, but in many ways Kentucky still seemed as it had when it belonged to the Confederacy. That was the biggest reason Cincinnatus had decided to better his luck and his family's elsewhere. He wasn't going to wait around holding his breath till he got the vote and other privileges whites in Kentucky took for granted.

Back in the days before the war, he'd spent a lot of time looking across the Ohio. Negroes didn't have it easy in the USA. He knew that. Had he not known it, he would have got his nose rubbed in it during the war. A lot of men down from the United States thought they had to act like slave drivers to get any kind of work out of Negroes. But not all of them did, and laws restricting what blacks could do were milder in the USA than in the CSA: he didn't have to worry about a passbook any more, for instance.

One reason for such mildness, of course, was that blacks were far thinner on the ground in the United States than in the Confederate States. That did worry Cincinnatus. He'd always spent most of his time among his own kind. That would be much harder now. Covington hadn't had a huge colored community, but what would he do in a town with only a handful of blacks?

Down off the bridge, down into Cincinnati, went the truck. The waterfront on the northern bank of the Ohio didn't look much different from the one with which Cincinnatus was so familiar. But Elizabeth noted one difference right away: "Look at all the white folks doin' roustabouts' work. Wouldn't never seen nothin' like that in Covington. Wouldn't never see nothin' like that nowhere in the CSA. White folks doin' nigger work?" She shook her head.

"This here's what I been tellin' you, honey," Cincinnatus said. "Ain't no such thing as nigger work in the USA, or not hardly. Ain't enough niggers to do all the dirty work that needs doin', so the white folks have to lend a hand. A lot of 'em is foreigners, I hear tell, but not all of'em, I don't reckon."

"What's a foreigner, Pa?" Achilles asked.

"Somebody who's in a country he wasn't born in," Cincinnatus replied.

His son thought about that, then asked, "How do you tell a foreigner from somebody who ain't?"

"A lot of times, on account of he'll talk funny-they don't talk English in a lot of them foreign places," Cincinnatus said. By that standard, though, a foreigner's son, somebody who went to school in the USA, would turn into an American indistinguishable from any other. If Achilles ended up as educated and eloquent as Teddy Roosevelt, he still wouldn't be an American indistinguishable from any other. That struck Cincinnatus as unfair.

He shrugged. It was unfair, no two ways about it. His hope was that Achilles would find things less unfair elsewhere in the USA than in Kentucky.

People were looking at him: people on the sidewalk, people in motorcars, even a couple of men who stopped painting a sign to stare. They were all white. Cincinnati had some Negroes; Cin-cinnatus knew as much. But he saw none on the streets. That was a change, a jolting change, from the way things were back in Covington, over on the other side of the river.

A fat, red-faced policeman held up his hand. Cincinnatus stopped in front of him, as he should have done. He was very pleased at how well the spavined old Duryea was behaving. He'd spent a lot of time getting the truck into the best shape he could, but the only thing that would really have cured its multifarious ills was a new truck, and he knew it.

The expression of distaste on the cop's face was broad enough for him and the truck both. The fellow jerked a thumb toward the curb. "Pull over that wagon," he said in gutturally accented English. "I will with you speak."

"Is he a foreigner, Pa?" Achilles asked excitedly. "He talks funny, like you said."

"Reckon he might be," Cincinnatus answered. "They do say Cincinnati's chock full of Germans."

"Real live Germans?" Achilles' eyes were enormous. The USA's European allies were folk to conjure with, just as Frenchmen had been in the CSA… until the war came, and France lost.

When Cincinnatus stopped the truck by the curb, the policeman strutted over. "You are from where?" he demanded.

"Covington, Kentucky, suh-just the other side of the river," Cincinnatus answered. He wouldn't have got uppity with a Covington cop, and he wasn't so rash as to think the police would be much friendlier on the north side of the Ohio.

"What do you do here?" the policeman asked. "Why don't you stay on the other side of the river where you belong?"

"I ain't plannin' on settling down in Cincinnati, suh," Cincinnatus said hastily. "My family and me, we're just passin' through."

"Where are you going to?" the policeman inquired.

"Headin' for Iowa," Cincinnatus told him. "Des Moines, Iowa."

"This is a good long way from Cincinnati," the cop said, as much to himself as to Cincinnatus. "You will the worry of the people in Iowa be, not the worry of the people here. Very well. You may go on." He even condescended to stop traffic and let Cincinnatus pull out once more. Cincinnatus would have been more grateful had it been less obvious that the policeman was getting rid of him.

"Welcome to the United States," Elizabeth remarked. "Welcome-but not very welcome."

"I was thinking that myself, not very long ago," Cincinnatus said. "Better here than if we'd headed down to Tennessee."

His wife didn't argue about that. He went back to concentrating on his driving. He knew where he was going, but he wasn't completely sure how to get there. Road maps left a lot to be desired. He'd studied as many as he could at the Covington library, so he knew how far from perfect they were. He also mistrusted road signs. Oh, roads in towns had names and numbers; he could rely on that. But he'd seen during the war that roads between towns might change names without warning or might never have had names in the first place. That made traveling more interesting for strangers.

He managed to get out of Cincinnati, and congratulated himself on that. Only after he'd been out of town for a while did he realize he was going due north, not northwest toward Indianapolis.

"Don't fret yourself about it none," Elizabeth said when he cursed himself for fourteen different kinds of a fool. "Sooner or later, you'll come across a road that runs into the one you should have used. Then everything'll be fine again."

"Sure, I'll come across that blame road," Cincinnatus snarled, "but how the devil will I know it's the right one? It won't look no different than any other road, and it won't have no sign on it, neither." He felt harassed.

He felt even more harassed a couple of minutes later, when one of the truck's inner tubes blew out with a bang that would have put him in mind of a gunshot had he not heard more gunshots than he'd ever wanted to hear the past few years. He guided the limping machine to the side of the road and began the slow, dirty business of repairing the puncture.

Motorcars and trucks kept rolling past him as if he weren't there. Every one of them-every one he noticed, anyhow-had a white face behind the wheel. Most, no doubt, wouldn't have stopped to help a white man, either. But would all of them have sped past a strange white without more than a single hasty glance? Maybe. On the other hand, maybe not, too.

At last, when he was wrestling the wheel back onto the axle, a Ford did pull up behind the truck. "Give you a hand?" asked the driver, a plump blond fellow in a straw hat and overalls.

"Just about done it now," Cincinnatus said. "Wish you'd come by a half hour ago; I don't mind tellin' you that."

"Believe it," the white man said. "Where you bound for?"

"Des Moines," Cincinnatus answered, and held up a filthy hand. "Yeah, I know I'm on the wrong road. I missed the right one down in Cincinnati. You know how I can get back to it from here?"

"Go up… lemme see… four crossings and then turn left. That'll put you heading toward the highway to Indiana," the white man said. He cocked his head to one side. "You got family in Des Moines?"

"No, suh," Cincinnatus said. "Just lookin' for a better place to live than Kentucky." He waited to see how the white man would take that.

"Oh. Good luck." The fellow climbed into his automobile and drove away.

"Thanks for the directions," Cincinnatus called after him. He couldn't tell whether the white man heard. He shrugged. The man had stopped, and had given him some help. He couldn't complain about that-even if, worn as he was, he felt sorely tempted. "Des Moines," he said. He'd be on the road again soon.

"Come on," Sylvia Enos said impatiently to George, Jr., and Mary Jane as they made their way across the Boston Common toward the New State House. "And hold on to my hands, for heaven's sake. If you get lost, how will I find you again in this crowd?"

U.S. flags fluttered from the platform that had gone up in front of the New State House. Red-white-and-blue bunting wreathed it. Although President Roosevelt wasn't scheduled to start speaking for another hour, the crowd was already growing rapidly. Most of the people gathering around the platform were men. Why not? They enjoyed the right to vote.

Even though Sylvia didn't, she wanted to hear what Roosevelt had to say for himself. She wanted to see him, too, and to have the children see him. They'd remember that for the rest of their lives.

Mary Jane, at the moment, had her mind on other things: "The dome sure is shiny, Ma!" she said, pointing. "It's as shiny as the sun, I bet."

"That's because it's gilded, silly," George, Jr., said importantly.

"What's gilded mean, Ma?" Mary Jane asked.

"It means painted with gold paint" her big brother told her.

"I didn't ask you, Mr. Know-It-All," Mary Jane said. "Besides, I bet you're making it up, anyway."

"I am not!" George, Jr., howled. "I ought to pop you a good one, is what I ought to do."

"I'll pop both of you if you don't behave yourselves," Sylvia said. What ran through her mind was that she'd remember this day for the rest of her life, but not because she'd seen the president.

"You tell Mary Jane that I do so know what gilded means," George, Jr., said. "I learned it in school. And there's a wooden codfish inside there somewhere, and it's gilded, too. They call it the Sacred Cod." He frowned. "I don't know what sacred means."

"It means holy" Sylvia said. "And your brother's right, Mary Jane. Gilded does mean painted with gold paint. And I'll thank you not to call him names. You're supposed to know better than that."

"All right, Ma," Mary Jane said in tones of such angelic sweetness, Sylvia didn't believe a word of it. The face Mary Jane made at George, Jr., a moment later said her skepticism had been well founded.

Sylvia worked her way as close to the platform as she could. It wasn't close enough to satisfy her children, who set up a chorus of, "We can't see!"

At the moment, there wasn't anything to see. Sylvia pointed that out, but it did nothing to stem the chorus. She finally said, "When the president starts to speak, I'll pick both of you up so you can see him, all right?"

"Will you pick both of us up at the same time?" Mary Jane sounded as if she liked the idea.

"No!" Sylvia exclaimed. "If I do that, you and your brother can pick me up afterwards and carry me home." She thought that might calm them down. Instead, it got them jumping around with excitement. George, Jr., did try to pick her up, and kept trying till she had to smack him to get him to quit.

After what seemed like forever, people started coming out of the New State House and going up onto the platform. They had the same look to them: plump men, middle-aged and elderly, many with big drooping mustaches, all of them in somber black suits with waistcoats. Most wore top hats; a few of the younger ones contented themselves with homburgs. They might have been rich undertakers. In fact, they were Democratic politicians.

They buried more men in the Great War than undertakers could in a hundred years, Sylvia thought bitterly. One of them stepped forward. "Hurrah for Governor Coolidge!" somebody shouted, which told her who the fellow was.

"You didn't come here to listen to me today," Coolidge said. "I'm going to step aside for President Roosevelt." With a bow, he did just that. "Mr. President!"

"Thank you, Governor Coolidge." Theodore Roosevelt matched the rest of the men up there in age and build and dress, but he had enough energy for four of them, maybe six. He bounded to the front of the platform, almost running over the governor of Massachusetts in his eagerness to put himself in the public eye. "Ladies and gentlemen," he cried in a huge voice, "this is the greatest nation in the history of the world, and I am the luckiest man in the history of the world, to have had the privilege of leading her for the past eight years."

"No third term! No third term!" The cry broke out in several places around Sylvia at the same time. She suspected that was not an accident. She also suspected Roosevelt would be hearing the same cry everywhere he went up till election day.

He must have suspected the same thing. He bared his mouthful of large, square teeth and growled, "Ah, the Socialists are barking already. If they'd had their way, we would have sat on the sidelines while the greatest struggle the world has ever known was decided without us. I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, that a great nation does not let others choose its destiny for it. A great nation makes its own fate: that is the mark of greatness."

He got a round of applause. But the hecklers sent up another chant: "How many dead? How many dead?" That one hit Sylvia hard. Had Roosevelt sat on the sidelines, her husband would have been alive today. Maybe the USA wouldn't have been so strong. Sylvia would have made that trade in a heartbeat, if only she could have, if only someone would have asked her.

"How many would have died had we waited?" Roosevelt returned. "How many would have died if we'd let England and France and Russia and the Confederate States gang up on our allies? After the Entente powers beat down our friend Kaiser Bill, how long do you think it would have been before our turn came around again? They piled onto us in the War of Secession, didn't they? They piled onto us in the Second Mexican War, didn't they? Don't you think they would have piled onto us in the Great War, too? By jingo, I do! We're young and virile and up-and-coming, just like the German Empire. The countries that had the power didn't care to share it with the countries that wanted it, the countries that deserved it. Well, if they wouldn't yield us a place in the sun, we had to go and take one. And we did. And I'm proud that we did. And if you're proud, too, you'll vote the Democratic ticket in November."

That earned him more applause, with only a thin scattering of boos mixed in. How many dead? still echoed inside Sylvia Enos as she lifted first her son and then her daughter to see Theodore Roosevelt. The president was a master of the big picture; he made her see the whole world turning in her hands. But that still counted for less with her than a husband who had not come home.

And the hecklers hadn't given up, either. "No third term!'" they called again. "No third term!"

Roosevelt stuck out his chin. The sun flashed from the lenses of his spectacles, making him look as much like a mechanism as a man. "Because George Washington decided he would not seek a third term, is it Holy Writ that every succeeding president must follow suit?" he thundered. "We are speaking of the United States of America here, ladies and gentlemen, not a hand of auction bridge." He pounded fist into palm. "I refuse to reckon my actions bound by those of a slaveholding Virginian a hundred and twenty years dead. Vote for me or against me, according to whether you think well or ill of me and what I have done in office. This other pernicious nonsense has no place in the campaign."

"Four more years! Four more years!" Roosevelt had friends in the crowd, too: many more friends than foes, by the number of voices urging a third term for the president. With so much support, Sylvia didn't see how he could fail to be reelected. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. He probably wouldn't find any excuse to start a new war between now and 1924.

"Capitalist tool! Capitalist tool!'" The Socialists started a new jeer.

Roosevelt had been talking about the vote for women, which, rather to Sylvia's surprise, he professed to favor. "I am the tool of no man!" he shouted, meeting the hecklers as combatively as he had throughout the speech. "I am the tool of no man, and I am the tool of no class. Let me hear Mr. Sinclair say the same thing, and I will have learned something. A dictatorship of the proletariat is no less a dictatorship than any other sort."

George, Jr., tugged at Sylvia's skirt. "What's the pro-prole- prolewatchamacallit, Ma?"

"Proletariat. It means the people who do all the work in factories and on farms," Sylvia answered. "Not the rich people who own the factories."

"Oh." Her son thought about that. "People like us, you mean."

"That's right, people like us." Sylvia smiled. Painting red rings on galoshes was about as proletarian a job as you could get. If she didn't come in tomorrow, the foreman could replace her with just about anyone off the street. And, the day after that, Frank Best would no doubt be trying to get the new ring-painter into bed with him.

Up on the platform, concerned with bigger things, Theodore Roosevelt was winding up his speech: "I love this country. I have served this country all my adult life, and with every fiber of my being. If it please you, the citizens, that I continue to serve the United States, that will be the greatest honor and privilege you have in your power to grant me. I hope it will. I pray it will. Let us go forward together, and make the twentieth century be remembered forevermore as the American century. I thank you."

"Is he finished?" Mary Jane asked as the crowd applauded. Sylvia nodded. Her daughter found another question: "Can we go home now?"

"All right, dear." Sylvia didn't quite know how to take the question. She wondered whether Mary Jane really would remember the day as long as she'd hoped. As they were heading toward the trolley stop, she asked, "What did you think of the president?"

"He talked for a long time." By the way Mary Jane said it, she didn't mean it as a compliment.

"He had a lot of things to talk about." Sylvia gave credit where it was due, even if she didn't care for all the things Roosevelt had said. "Running the country is a big, complicated job."

"Huh," Mary Jane said. "I bet more people would vote for him if he didn't talk so much." Sylvia tried to figure out how to answer that. In the end, she didn't answer at all. Her best guess was that Mary Jane had a point.

Jake Featherston had never imagined he'd end up working out of an office. He had one now, though, paid for with Freedom Party dues. He had a secretary, too, whose pay came from the same source. Without Lulu endlessly tapping away on the typewriter, he wouldn't have got done a quarter of what needed doing. As things were, he got done half of what needed doing, sometimes even more.

Lulu couldn't handle everything by her lonesome. Featherston studied the snapshot on his desk. It showed a British- or Confederate-style rhomboidal barrel in the middle of some dry, rough-looking country. The letter that had come with the photo was from a Party member fighting for the Emperor of Mexico against rebels who had Yankee backing.

We're not really here at all, the letter read. Neither is our friend. The friend in question was the barrel. Only a couple of us ever used these critters in the war against the USA. Now we all know how to handle them. Some of us are going to try and see if we can't get some stronger engines, too, so they '11 go better. You bet we '11 bring home what we 're learning. Freedom!

Slowly, Featherston nodded to himself. The Confederate States weren't allowed to have barrels of their own. So the United States said, and the United States were strong enough to make their word stick. But Confederate mercenaries in Mexico, in Peru, and in Argentina were getting practice fighting in barrels and in aeroplanes and on the sea, and were figuring out improvements for the machines they used. A lot of those mercenaries belonged to the Freedom Party. Jake figured he knew as much about clandestine Confederate military affairs as the War Department did-and the War Department didn't know how much he knew.

Lulu stopped typing. She came into his private office: a thin, gray-haired woman, competent rather than decorative. "Mr. Kimball is here to see you, Mr. Featherston."

"Bring him right on in," Jake said. "We've got some things to talk about, sure enough." His secretary nodded, left, and returned a moment later with Kimball. Jake rose and shook his hand. "Good to see you. Glad you could get up to Richmond."

"I hadn't planned to," Roger Kimball answered, "but things have a way of coming up when you don't expect them, eh?"

Featherston nodded. After Lulu went out and started typing again, he said, "Just when you thought you had everything sunk down out of sight for good, you find out you were wrong. That fellow who went and saw Anne Colleton isn't by any chance lying, is he?"

Kimball looked as if he wanted to say yes, but in the end he shook his head. "I sank the Yankee bastard, all right. So the war was over? Too damn bad." He glared at Jake, defying him to make something of it.

"Good," Jake said. Kimball stared. Featherston went on, "I fought the damnyankees up to the very last second I could. You think I care if you waited till the cease-fire went into effect before you gave 'em one last lick? In a pig's ass, I do. What matters to me is whether it'll make trouble for the Party and trouble for the country. If I decide it will, I'm going to have to cut you loose."

He waited to see how Kimball would take that. The ex-submersible skipper said, "I'll kill that son of a bitch of a Brear-ley if it's the last thing I ever do. I knew he was a weak reed right from the start."

"You will not," Jake Featherston said. "You will not, do you hear me?" He waited to see how Kimball would take the flat order.

Kimball took it just the way he'd expected him to: he blew his stack. "The hell I won't," he snarled, going brick red. "I told that bastard I'd murder him if he ever started running his big mouth. He damn well has, and I damn well will."

"Then I damn well will cut you loose right this minute," Featherston said. "Forget what I told you down in Charleston. I don't want a man who can't do what he's told in the Freedom Party. I don't want somebody who's liable to blow up behind my back in the Party. If you want to kill Brearley after I told you not to, you can kindly wait till you don't have any connection to me. Do whatever you please on your own hook. Don't embarrass the Party."

He waited again. What would Kimball do? He'd been an officer. Would he get shirty about taking orders from an ex-sergeant? A lot of fellows who'd worn fancy uniforms couldn't stomach anything like that. Or would he remember that, in the Freedom Party, he was still a mid-ranking officer and Jake was commander-in-chief?

Kimball started to blow his stack once more. Featherston could see it begin… and, a moment later, could see Kimball ease off again. Jake eyed the former Navy man with respect he hoped he concealed. Not everybody could go into a rage and then clamp down on it. The people who could were apt to be very useful indeed.

Slowly, Roger Kimball said, "All right, Sarge, suppose I let the son of a bitch live for a while? That means you've got a line on giving him what he deserves some other way, right?'"

"Not yet, it doesn't," Featherston answered. Yes, Kimball was worth keeping around, all right-he'd got one step ahead of Jake, which didn't happen every day. "I'm not saying I will yet, either. Have to cipher out how I want to do it, if I decide to do it. Do I want it to look like the Party didn't have anything to do with it? Or do I want the job to say, You screw around with the Freedom Party and you 7/ end up good and dead?"

All at once, instead of taking it personally, Kimball started looking at it as a tactical problem. Jake saw the change in his eyes. He smiled to himself, but only to himself-he didn't want Kimball to know he could read him.

"That's a nice question, isn't it?" Kimball said. "I guess the one to ask right afterwards is, If we let the world know the Freedom Party got rid of Brearley, can we do it without having anybody go to jail?"

"There are places we could," Jake answered. "South Carolina's one of'em, I reckon: Anne Colleton has big chunks of that state sewed up tight for us."

"I haven't done too bad my own self, you don't mind my saying so," Kimball replied. Was that touchiness in his voice?

It was, Jake decided. Was Kimball jealous of Anne Colleton? Damned if he wasn't. That was a useful thing to know. Feather-ston filed it away. He couldn't use it now, but that didn't mean he wouldn't be able to somewhere down the line. For the moment, he needed to stick to the business at hand: "I'm not so sure about Richmond. We've got a lot of cops in the Party here, same as most places, but they've got city hall and the state government and the Confederate government all sitting over 'em. They might have to go after us, whether they really want to or not."

"I can see that." Kimball raised an eyebrow. He was cool and collected again. Yes, he would have made a formidable submarine skipper. Nothing fazed him for long. Jake could easily picture him stalking and sinking that U.S. destroyer after the war ended, and banking on success to keep him out of hot water. He went on, "The Whigs and the Radical Liberals don't fancy the Freedom Party much these days, do they?"

"If they did, I'd reckon I was doing something wrong," Feather-ston said. "Pack of damn fools, want to keep on doing things the same old way. That's real sly, ain't it? That's how we got into the mess we're in. That's how we'll get into more messes, too, sure as the devil."

"I don't reckon you're wrong there." Kimball leaned forward, Brearley almost forgotten. "What the hell are you going to do about the niggers if we ever get the chance?"

"Smack 'em down and make sure they don't have the chance to get back up on their feet and stab us in the back again," Jake answered: the reply he usually gave. He had more in mind, but he still didn't know if he could do, if anybody could do, everything he really wanted. What he'd told Kimball would suffice for the time being. "Let's get back to this business here. There's no paper, nothing in your log or anything, that says you sank this Yankee ship too late, right?"

To his relief, Kimball nodded. "I made sure there wouldn't be. Brearley can't prove anything like that. But I didn't sink the Ericsson all by myself, either. If the rest of the crew start blabbing, they could give me a hell of a hard time."

"Would they do that?" Jake asked.

"Most of'em wouldn't, I'm sure of it," Kimball said, again the reply Featherston wanted to hear. "They were howling like a pack of wolves when we sent that damn destroyer to the bottom. But even on a little boat like the Bonefish, there's a couple dozen sailors. I can't tell you nobody would chime in with my exec, because I don't know that for a fact."

"All right" Jake scratched his head and thought for a while. "Here's what we're going to do for now: sit tight and see what happens. If Brearley goes to the papers, he damn well does, that's all. I don't reckon it hurts the Party. You weren't in the Party during the war, on account of there wasn't any Party to be in during the war."

"Fair enough," Kimball said: yes, he was ready to take orders. "What do we do if he does go to the papers?"

"You don't do anything," Featherston said, "not to him, anyhow. You go back down to South Carolina and stay there. If reporters start asking questions, tell 'em… tell 'em you can't talk about it, that's what you say." He grinned. "You got to remember, Roger, our only big worry is getting the USA riled at us when we're not strong enough to hit back. Most of the people in the CSA-hell, in your shoes, they'd've done the same thing."

"By Jesus, they would've. You're right about that. You're dead right about that, Sarge," Kimball said. "HI do just like you say. I'll tell the snoops I can't talk about it. And if they ask why I can't, I'll tell 'em I can't talk about that, either"

"There you go," Jake said, nodding. "Make it sound mysterious as all get-out. That'll drive the whole raft of reporters crazy, same as a girl who plays hard to get drives the guys crazy. Reporters are used to people who put out. Most folks love to talk-no thin' they love better. You keep your mouth shut and you're a long ways ahead of the game." He studied Kimball. "You reckon you can do that?"

"I can do it," the ex-Navy man said, and Jake thought he could. Kimball went on, "Be kind of fun, matter of fact, leading 'em around by the nose."

As far as Jake was concerned, very little was more fun than leading reporters around by the nose. Much more often than not, reporters wrote the stories he wanted them to write about the Freedom Party. They usually thought they were slamming the Party-but they were slamming it the way he wanted them to, a way that let them feel clever about themselves but at the same time made the Party look appealing to a lot of their readers.

He didn't tell Kimball that. Maybe Kimball was smart enough to figure it out for himself. If he was, he also needed to be smart enough to keep it to himself.

"Anything else on your mind?" Jake asked him.

"I don't reckon there is," Kimball said after a little thought. "We've got things squared away here, don't we?"

"Yeah, we do," Featherston said. "I'm right glad you came up-glad we had the chance to talk about a few things." He was even gladder Kimball had proved sensible, but the other man didn't need to know that, either. Having used the stick before, Jake threw him a carrot now: "Looks to me like you're going places in the Freedom Party. I've said that before, haven't I? Still looks like it's so."

"I aim to," Kimball said. "Yes, sir, I aim to." Jake studied him again. How high did he aim? The trouble with ambitious men was their nasty habit of aiming straight for the top.

But Jake was aiming for the top, too, for a different top, one high above anything to which he thought Roger Kimball could aspire. If everything went perfectly, he'd get there next year. He hadn't imagined he could win even a couple of months before. Now he thought he just might. And if things went wrong, he'd take longer, that was all. Either way, he aimed to do it. "I'm glad we've got you settled," he said, "on account of I don't want anything getting in the way of that run for president when 1921 rolls around."

"No, sir!" Kimball said, and his eyes glowed.

Colonel Irving Morrell and Agnes Hill hurried across Wallman Park toward yet another statue of John Brown-they seemed to be everywhere in Leavenworth. Decked with bunting as this one was, it looked far more festive than the dour old warrior for freedom had ever been in truth.

"Everyone in town will be here today." Agnes Hill pointed to the throngs of people crossing the foot bridges over Threemile Creek.

"Everyone in town should be here today," Morrell said. "Upton Sinclair drew a good crowd when he spoke a couple of weeks ago. Only right the president should draw a bigger one."

Agnes nodded. They shared a common faith in the Democratic Party. They shared a lot of things, including a great deal of pleasure in each other's company. Morrell laughed at himself. He'd gone to that dance not intending to fall in love with the first woman he set eyes on, and here he'd gone and done it. And, by all appearances, she'd fallen in love with him, too.

Not only was President Roosevelt a potent magnet for the crowd, but the day itself seemed to be summoning people outdoors. With September running hard toward October, the summer's muggy heat had broken. The sun still shone brightly, and the oaks and elms and chestnuts in the park still carried their full canopies of leaves to give shade to those who wanted it. The blight spreading among the chestnuts back East hadn't got to Kansas yet; Morrell hoped it never would. The air felt neither warm nor crisp. In fact, he could hardly feel the air at all.

"Perfect," he said, and Agnes Hill nodded again.

A lot of the men in the crowd wore green-gray like Morrell's, Fort Leavenworth lying just north of the town whose name it shared. That helped Agnes and him advance through the crowd: soldiers who spotted his eagles made way for his companion and him. "This is swell!" she exclaimed when they ended up only three or four rows from the rostrum at which Roosevelt would speak.

"It is, isn't it?" Morrell said, and squeezed her hand. They grinned at each other, as happy as if alone together rather than in the middle of the biggest crowd Leavenworth had seen for years (Morrell did hope the crowd was bigger than the one Sinclair had drawn, anyhow).

People whooped like red Indians when President Roosevelt ascended to the rostrum. Off to one side, a brass band blared away at "The Stars and Stripes Forever." Morrell wished the band had picked a different tune; that one rattled around in his head for days whenever he heard it, and it made noisy company.

Roosevelt said, "By jingo, it's always a pleasure for me to come to Kansas. This state was founded by men and women who knew a Southern viper when they saw one, even before the War of Secession." He glanced back at the statue of John Brown. "There is a man who knew who the enemy was, and a man who hit our country's enemies hard even when they still pretended to be friends. For that, I am proud to salute him." He doffed his homburg and half bowed toward the statue.

Morrell clapped till his hands ached. Beside him, Agnes Hill blew Roosevelt a kiss. "Should I be jealous?" Morrell asked her. She stuck out her tongue at him. They both laughed.

"People say-newspapers say-I'm in the fight of my political life," Roosevelt went on. "I say, bully!'1 He reveled in the new round of applause washing over him from the friendly crowd. "Maybe they'll drag this old Democratic donkey down," he shouted, "but if they do, I tell you this: they'll know they've been in a fight, too."

"You won the war, Teddy," somebody called. "You can win this fight."

Roosevelt, Morrell happened to know, did not care to be called Teddy. On the campaign trail, though, he endured it His grin looked friendly, not forced. And then somebody else yelled. "The country needs you, Teddy!"

"I don't know whether the country needs me personally or not," Roosevelt said, "but I do know for a fact that I take enormous pride in having served the country. And I also know for a fact that the country needs a Democrat in Powel House or the White House, and I seem to be the one the Democratic Party is putting forward this year.

"Here is something I want you to think about, ladies and gentlemen: in the years since 1852, the Democratic Party has won every presidential election save two. Every schoolchild knows that, but I am going to take a moment of your time to remind you of it once again. In 1860, the voters sent Abraham Lincoln to Washington, and he saddled us with a war, and a losing war to boot. Twenty years later, having forgotten their lesson, the people elected James G. Blaine, who gave us another war-and another loss.

"When war came around yet again, the United States were ready for it. Democratic presidents had made this country strong. Democratic presidents had found us allies. And, thanks to the people, we had a Democratic president at the helm of the ship of state." He preened to remind his audience who that Democratic president was.

"We won the Great War, with God's help. We paid back half a century and more of humiliation of the sort no great nation should ever have had to endure. And now, the editorial writers say, now the people are grown tired of the Democratic Party. They say we were good enough to win the war, but aren't good enough to govern in time of peace. They say the Socialists deserve a turn, a chance."

Roosevelt looked out over the crowd. "Well, let them say whatever they please. It's a free country. Thanks to the Democratic Party, it's stayed a free country-and, I might add, a victorious country as well. And now I am going to tell you what I say. Ladies and gentlemen, I say that, if you elect a Socialist president in 1920, the mischief he will do the United States will make Lincoln and Blaine's mischief look like what a couple of skylarking boys might do."

"That's right!" Morrell shouted at the top of his lungs. The whole enormous crowd was shouting, but Roosevelt caught Morrell's voice and then caught his eye. They'd met several times in Philadelphia, and had always got on well: two aggressive men who both believed in taking the fight to the enemy.

"Here in Leavenworth, you've already seen how the Socialists have gone after the War Department budget with a meat axe," Roosevelt said. "They've done the same thing to the Navy Department, too. If they control the presidency as well as Congress, we'll be lucky to have a War Department and a Navy Department by the time we can vote them out of office. Here in front of me, I see one of our nation's most distinguished soldiers, Colonel Irving Morrell, the leading exponent of barrel warfare in this country. I know the pittance on which Colonel Morrell has had to operate since the election of 1918. Like a good patriot, he soldiers on as best he can with what he is allotted, but I know, as you must know, he could do far more if only he had more with which to do it. Isn't that the truth, Colonel?"

"Yes, sir, that is the truth," Morrell said loudly. Agnes stared at him with sparkling eyes. She might have imagined a great many things when coming to hear Roosevelt, but surely she hadn't imagined the president would praise Morrell for everyone to hear. Morrell hadn't looked for any such thing himself.

Roosevelt said, "There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, straight from the horse's mouth. If you want to keep the United States strong, vote for me. If you don't care, vote for Sinclair. I thank you."

He got another ovation as he stepped down from the platform. Then, to Morrell's further surprise, Roosevelt beckoned to him. "How's that test model doing, Colonel?" the president asked.

"Sir, it's a great improvement over the barrels we used to fight the war," Morrell answered. "It would have been better still if we'd been able to build a real barrel to that design, not a lightweight machine armored in thin, mild steel."

"You will have such a machine, Colonel," Roosevelt boomed. "If I have anything to say after this November about how the War Department spends its money, you will have it."

"That would be wonderful, Mr. President," Morrell said, and then, "Sir, I'd like to introduce to you my fiancee, Agnes Hill."

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Hill." Roosevelt bowed over her hand. "I want you to take good care of this man. The country will need him for a long time to come."

"I'll do my best, your Excellency," she said. "It's a great honor to meet you."

"Fine, fine." The president smiled at her, then turned away to talk to someone else.

Agnes had stars in her eyes. "How about that?" Morrell said, grinning. He hadn't really expected to get a chance to talk with Roosevelt, nor to be able to introduce Agnes to him. Because of his previous acquaintance with the president, he'd hoped something along those lines might happen, but he'd spent enough time playing poker to understand the difference between hope and likelihood. Every so often, though, you got lucky.

"How about that?" Agnes echoed. "I didn't know you were such an important fellow." She studied Morrell. "But even the most important fellows, from everything I've heard, ask a woman if she'd like to be their fiancee before they introduce her that way."

"Oops," Morrell said, which made Agnes burst into laughter. Gulping a little, he went on, "I guess the only way I can make amends is by asking later instead of sooner: would you like to be my fiancee, Agnes?"

"Of course I would," she answered. "You've taken your own sweet time getting around to finding out, but I didn't worry about it too much, because I always figured you would."

"Always?" Morrell asked, still nervous but happy, too. "How long is always?"

"Ever since we met at that first dance," Agnes Hill said. "I thought you were a catch, and I figured I ought to be the one who caught you." She raised an eyebrow. "Now what are you snickering about?"

"Only that I've had my eye on you since that dance where we met, too," he said. "That comes out fair and square, doesn't it?"

"It sure does," Agnes said. "I think everything will work out fine."

"You know what?" Morrell said, and she shook her head. "I do, too," he told her. He meant every word of it. She knew what being a soldier's wife was like, and knew it the best possible way: she'd been one. She'd been through the worst that could happen to a soldier's wife-she'd been through it, she'd come out the other side, and she was willing to try it again. What more could he ask for?

Only after all that went through his mind did he stop to wonder what sort of husband he was liable to make. Agnes might know what she was doing heading into this marriage, but he didn't. He had no clue; marriage wasn't part of the curriculum at West Point. Maybe it should be, he thought. It might not produce better officers, but was very likely to produce happier ones.