Blood and iron

XII

Lucien Galtier looked up into the heavens. He got a glimpse of the sun, which he rarely did these days. It scurried along, low in the south, and soon ducked behind the thick gray clouds that were the dominant feature of the sky as October gave way to November.

Drizzle started spattering down. Soon, he judged, it would be turning to sleet, and then to snow. "Do your worst," he said. "Do your worst, or even a little worse than that. You did not do it during the harvest, and you cannot hurt me now. Go ahead. I could not care in the least."

"Do you always talk to the clouds, Papa?" asked Georges, who must have come out of the barn while Lucien was mocking the weather for missing its chance.

"Always," Lucien replied solemnly. "It is, I am convinced, my best hope of getting an intelligent answer around these parts."

"Truly?" Georges glanced toward the farmhouse. "Could it be that I should tell my chere maman of your view in this matter? I am sure she would be most interested to learn."

"I am sure that, if you breathe even a word of it to her, I will break open your head to see if it is altogether empty or just almost," Lucien said. "If I had to guess, I would say you have nothing at all in there, but I could be wrong: you might have some rocks. No sense, certainly"

''Mais non, certainementpas" Georges said. "And do I take after you or after my mother in my senselessness?"

"I will take after you in a moment-with a hatchet, by choice," Galtier said. "Have you done everything with the livestock that wants doing?"

"Oh, no, not at all," his son answered. "I am always in the habit of quitting work when it is but half done."

"What you are in the habit of is driving me mad," Lucien said. Georges bowed, as if at a considerable compliment. Just then, a motorcar came to a halt beside the farmhouse. Lucien laughed. "Look-here is your brother-in-law. See if you can drive him mad. You have not done it yet, and not from lack of trying."

Dr. Leonard O'Doull seemed to unfold like a carpenter's rule as he got out of the Ford. Seeing Lucien and Georges, he waved to them and came sauntering over. If the cold, nasty drizzle bothered him, he gave not a sign. "How does it go?" he called around the cigar in his mouth.

"It goes well," Lucien answered. "And with you, how does it go?"

"Well enough," his son-in-law said. "Today is Saturday, so I have only a half day to put in at the hospital. I thought I would stop by and say good day before I drove up to town, to Nicole and little Lucien."

"And I am glad to give you good day as well," Lucien said. He glanced toward Georges. They both nodded, ever so slightly. No day on the farm was a half day. Leonard O'Doull was a first-rate fellow. The longer Galtier knew him, the more he thought of him. But one thing O'Doull was not and could never be: a farmer. He did not understand-by the nature of things, he could not understand-how hard the folk of his family by marriage worked.

Georges obliquely referred to that: "With but a half-day's work today, how can it go only 'well enough' for you?"

"Well, for one thing, what does the last day of October mean to you?" O'Doull asked.

Georges scratched his head. So did Lucien Galtier. At last, Lucien said, "It is the even of All Saints Day: all very well, but not a holiday to speak of alongside Easter or the festival of our Lord's birth."

"The Eve of All Saints Day." O'Doull nodded. "We call it Halloween in English. We have a custom of celebrating it with costumes and masks and carved pumpkins and parties-and sometimes pranks, too. It is a jolly time, a time of pretended fright."

"We do not do this here in Quebec," Georges said.

"I know," O'Doull said. "I miss it."

"Halloween." Galtier let the English word roll off his tongue. "I remember, when I was in the Army, the English-speakers had this holiday. But Georges is right: we do not do this in Quebec. I would be amazed if I had thought of it three times in all the years since I came home to my farm."

O'Doull looked unhappy. "Last year, I carved a pumpkin into a jack-o'-lantern"-another English word-"and put it in the window with a candle inside. I won't do that again. All my neighbors thought I was a pagan. It's a good thing Bishop Pascal knows about the custom, or there would have been a lot bigger stink than there was."

"You did not tell me about this then," Lucien said. "Nicole did not speak of it, either."

"I think we both felt foolish about it," O'Doull said. "And it was my own fault."

"I know men who go their whole lives without ever saying those words," Lucien remarked.

"They aren't doctors." His son-in-law spoke with great assurance. "Every doctor in the world knows he has buried patients he should have saved."

"It could be so," Galtier said. "If it is so, why would any man want to become a doctor?"

"Because we also save patients who would be buried without us," Leonard O'Doull said. With what sounded like considerable effort, he changed the subject: "And Tuesday is also a day different here from what it will be in the United States."

"And why is that?" Lucien's acquaintance with American holidays had begun only with the U.S. occupation of Quebec. He knew it remained incomplete.

"Because on Tuesday, we will vote for our president" O'Doull replied, "and, for the first time in longer than I have been alive, I think the election will be very close." He kicked at the dirt. "And here I am, a resident alien in the Republic of Quebec. All I can do is wait to see what my country does."

"How can the Americans not elect Roosevelt again?" Georges asked. "Behind him, they won the war. Without him, who knows what might have happened?"

"You have reason," O'Doull said. "But the war has been over almost three and a half years now. For me, the war was very fortunate, for without it I would not have met Nicole-nor any of you other fine Galtiers, I make haste to add. But many were hurt, and many who now can vote lost loved ones in the fighting. And there has been endless labor strife since. People may vote for Roosevelt, certainly. But then again, they may not. And no one has ever won a third term as president of the United States."

"For whom would you vote, if you were back in the United States?" Galtier inquired.

"I am not really sure," O'Doull said slowly. "With Roosevelt, I know exactly what the country would be getting. If the Socialists had run Debs again, I would also know what we were getting. But with Sinclair, it is harder to tell. He has the energy of a young man, and, from what I can tell from up here in Quebec, a lot of people think he would lead the United States in a new direction. Maybe that would be good. As I say, it is hard to be sure."

"It will be as it will be," Galtier said with a shrug. "However it is, the United States will still be a large country and the Republic of Quebec a small one. I hope you are not unhappy, having left your country to make your home here."

"Unhappy?" O'Doull shook his head. "It was only a lifetime ago that my ancestors left Ireland for the United States. We have pulled up stakes before, the O'Doulls. I have done it again, that's all."

Galtier scratched his head. His ancestors had lived not merely in Quebec but on the ground on which he stood since the seventeenth century. Even having his daughter remove to Riviere-du-Loup seemed an uprooting. He could not comprehend how O'Doull talked about one place as if it were good as the next. For him, that would have been a manifest-indeed, an unimaginable- untruth. His son-in-law took it for granted, as a fact of life.

O'Doull said, "Well, I had better head back to town, or Nicole will wonder what has become of me. I hope you get the chance to come up before too long, before the weather gets too bad." He touched the brim of his fedora, then hurried back to his automobile. It roared to life. He drove away.

"American politics," Georges said with a shrug. "I care very little for American politics."

"Had you said this in 1910, you might have shown some sense," his father replied. "In 1910,1 knew very little of American politics, but they were important to us even then. Saying it now… well, I chaffed you before for senselessness. If American politics were different, would we have had a war? If American politics were different, would we be living in the Republic of Quebec? If American politics were different, would you have the nephew you have?"

"If American politics were different, I would still have a father who lectures me more than the schoolmasters ever did," Georges said. Lucien made an exasperated noise, but then started to laugh. Georges was as he was. The right wife might whip him into shape, but, on the other hand, he was liable to stay as he was even married to the most somber girl in the neighborhood.

Not that Lucien and Marie intended saddling Georges with the most somber girl in the neighborhood. For one thing, Beatrice Rigaud would bring only a small bridal portion with her. And, for another, Lucien did not think it right to do such a thing to his fun-loving younger son. That reason, though, ran in second place behind the other.

Halloween came and went, unremarked, uncelebrated. Galtier wondered whether Dr. Leonard O'Doull carved a pumpkin for his own family. He would not put it in the window this year- he'd made that very plain.

Two days later, the American elections also came and went. They produced no fanfare that reached Galtier's farm. Had Lucien not had an American son-in-law, he would not have known on which day they took place. Eventually, he would find out who won: if the news hadn't got to his farm before then, he'd learn when he went into town.

Marie said, "I have heard that not all American women can vote: it is for them, poor dears, as it was for us in the days before the Republic."

"I do not know anything about whether American women can vote," Lucien replied. He remained unconvinced that granting the franchise to the women of Quebec had been the best idea in the history of the world. But he'd discovered that saying as much to his wife landed him in hotter water than anything this side of announcing he'd taken a mistress. He knew several men who had taken mistresses, none of them rash enough to announce it.

"I hope the Americans elect the Socialist," Marie said. "They will be calmer if they do."

"I think they will return Roosevelt," Lucien declared. "Even if he is a Protestant, he is a very great man. And Socialists, from everything I have heard, do not believe in le bon Dieu at all."

He thought that would change his wife's mind; she cared far more for the trappings of piety than did he. But she said, "Perhaps le bon Dieu believes in them," a reply so oracular, Galtier had not the faintest idea how to respond to it.

Hal Jacobs said, "What was that song Lord Cornwallis' band played when he had to surrender to the Americans at Yorktown?"

"I haven't the faintest notion," Nellie Jacobs answered. Her schooling had stopped early. Not only that, Clara was trying to twist out of her arms and land on her head on the bedroom floor. That kept Nellie from thinking as clearly as she might have done.

"Now it will bother me," Hal said. "It is something I used to know, and I am not such an old man that I should be forgetting things." He smiled at Clara. "If I were such an old man, I would not have a little daughter now."

Nellie had not expected he would have a little daughter now. Even more to the point, she hadn't expected she would have a little daughter now. Had she expected such a thing, she would have taken precautions. She admitted to herself, though, that she did enjoy having Clara around.

Hal snapped his fingers, which made Clara stop wiggling and look to see where the funny noise came from." 'The World Turned Upside Down'!" he exclaimed.

"What, when we had the baby?" Nellie said. "It sure did."

"No, no, no," he answered. "I mean, yes, it did, but no, that is not what I meant." He paused, by all appearances having confused himself. After a moment, he went on, "What I meant was, 'The World Turned Upside Down' is the song Cornwallis' band played at the surrender."

"Oh," Nellie said. "Well, why didn't you say that, if it's what you meant? And why are you bothering your head about Corn-what's-his-name in the first place?"

"I wasn't thinking about Cornwallis so much," Hal said. "I was trying to remember the name of the song. You must admit, it fits the news of the last couple of days."

"Oh," Nellie said. "The election." It hardly seemed real to her: she was disenfranchised not because she was a woman but because she lived in Washington, D.C. Hal hadn't voted on Tuesday, either, and couldn't have.

"Yes, the election." He clicked his tongue between his teeth. "When the Democrats lose for the first time since 1880, the world has turned upside down. And when the Socialists win for the first time ever, it has really turned upside down."

"I suppose it has." Nellie shook her head. "Doesn't seem right, turning President Roosevelt out of a job after he went and won the war for the United States. I can't name anybody else who could have done that."

"Dada," Clara said. She said mama, too, and Eh-uh, which was intended as the name of her half sister.

"How about it, Hal?" Nellie asked. "Do you think you could have won the war for the United States?" After a moment, she went on, "As a matter of fact, you did go a long way toward winning the war for the USA, at least as far as Washington goes."

Hal waved a hand. He was, Nellie had seen, as modest and self-deprecating a man as had ever been born. That had helped keep her from noticing his many good qualities for longer than she should have. He said, "For one thing, I had the very best of help, of which you were no small part."

"Pooh!" Nellie said.

"Pooh!" Clara echoed. She gurgled and laughed, liking the sound she'd just imitated.

"Pooh!" Nellie repeated, which made Clara laugh again. Nellie continued, "I got a medal I didn't especially deserve, and you deserved one and never got it."

Hal Jacobs shrugged. "I know what I did. My country knows what I did. I do not need any medals. And besides, if anyone should have won a medal, it was Bill Reach. I was far from the only man who reported to him. He was the one who put everything together and got most of it out. I know you did not much like him, but it is very sad that he did not live to see our victory."

"You've said that before," Nellie replied, and dropped it there. She was the only person in the world who knew what had happened to Bill Reach, and she intended to take the secret to the grave with her. As far as she was concerned, he deserved everything she'd given him. But Hal still thought well of him, so she'd kept her own remarks to the fewest she could get away with.

"President Upton Sinclair." Hal, to her relief, went back to the world turning upside down. He shrugged again. "It does not sound like a name that belongs to a president. Presidents are named John or Thomas or Andrew or Theodore. Upton?" He shook his head. "It sounds like a name for a butler, not a president."

"Well, so it does," Nellie said. "We've got four years to get used to it, though. By the time 1924 rolls around, it'll seem natural enough."

"I suppose it may," Hal admitted. "By then, I hope the country will be sick of it, and will vote him out of office and put in a good Democrat with a nice, ordinary name."

"Maybe it won't be so bad." Nellie slid a finger under the edge of Clara's diaper. "Oh, good-you're dry." She sat down at the edge of the bed and began to bounce the baby gently up and down. "Come on, sweetheart, time for you to go to sleep."

"Time for you to go to sleep so your mother and father can go to sleep," Hal added. He yawned. "I had forgotten how much sleep you lose when a baby is small."

"So had I," Nellie said. "And the other thing is, I need sleep more now than I did when Edna was little. I'm not as young as I used to be, and boy, does Clara let me know it." She glanced warily down at her daughter, whose eyelids were fighting a losing battle against sliding shut. "Shh. I think she is going to drop off."

Only after Nellie had put the baby in the cradle that made the bedroom crowded did Hal say, "You are still young and beautiful to me, my dear Nellie. You always will be."

"Pooh!'" Nellie said once more. She knew why men talked that way: to get women to go to bed with them. Any woman who believed such blandishments was almost enough of a fool to deserve what she would assuredly get. So a hard lifetime of experience had taught Nellie. But living with and listening to Hal were giving her occasional second thoughts.

She was too tired to indulge in second thoughts now, or even first ones. She let herself collapse onto the bed. Had she lain there for even a couple of minutes, she would have fallen asleep without changing into nightclothes. She'd done that a couple of times, on days when Clara was teething or sick or just ornery. Falling asleep in a corset was impressive proof of what exhaustion could do.

Tonight, though, she decided she wanted to be free of lacing and steel rods. With a weary sigh, she got to her feet, took off her skirt and shirtwaist, and escaped from the corset. A wool flannel nightgown went over her like a friendly, comfortable tent. Hal put on not only a nightshirt only a bit shorter than her gown but also a wool nightcap with a tassel. No cold breezes would take him by surprise.

"Good night," he said as he and Nellie crawled under the covers. "I hope little Clara will let us sleep till morning."

She did. She did more often than not these days, a blessed relief from the first few weeks after she'd come home from the hospital. Still, the nights when she didn't were appalling enough to make up for a lot of the ones when she did.

But she woke the next day so smiling and cheerful, Nellie smiled, too, even before she'd had breakfast or, more important, coffee. She gave Clara her breast. The baby was taking cereal these days, and other solid food as well, but still enjoyed starting the day at the same old stand.

Nellie changed her-she emphatically needed it now-slapped powder on her bottom with a puff, and took her downstairs after getting dressed herself. She let Clara crawl and toddle around while she built up the fire in the stove and got the first pot of coffee going. She and Hal and Edna would split that one; customers got what came afterwards.

"Quiet night, thank God," Edna said when she came down a few minutes later. Living across the hall from a baby wasn't that much different from living in the same room as one. Edna started toasting bread, and melted butter in a frying pan to do up eggs for herself and her mother and stepfather. In another pan, she fried ham steaks in bacon grease left over from the day before. Hal Jacobs came down in time to eat before anything got cold, but too late to keep Nellie and Edna from teasing him about dawdling.

He was about to go across the street and open up his shoemaker's establishment when a fancy motorcar pulled to a stop in front of the coffeehouse Nellie ran. The driver hurried to open the door for his passenger, a portly gentlemen of late middle years. The fellow headed for the coffeehouse door.

"Lord, Ma," Edna breathed, "will you look at that? It's the president. He's coming here again."

Nellie snatched up Clara, who howled in outrage at not getting the chance to eat the tasty-looking piece of dust she'd picked up. "Hush, you," Nellie whispered sternly, which did no good at all.

In came Theodore Roosevelt. "Good morning, Miss Sem-phroch," he said, bowing to Edna. He turned to Nellie. "And good morning to you, Mrs.-Jacobs. Ha! I got it right, by jingo!'" He looked pleased with himself. "Good morning to you, too, Mr. Jacobs," he told Hal. "You have a lovely daughter here. Congratulations."

"Thank you, your Excellency," Nellie and Hal said together. Hal went on, "A great shame the election went against you, sir."

"The people have spoken," Roosevelt said. "It's another case of what Austria told Russia after the Russians saved their bacon in 1848: 'We shall astonish the world by our ingratitude.' Astonish it they did, by not helping the Czar in the Crimean War. Now we have a similar example on our own side of the Atlantic. But the country will survive it-I have great faith in the United States-and I shall, too."

"What will you do?" Nellie asked.

"I don't precisely know," Roosevelt answered. "Hunt big game, perhaps, or fly an aeroplane-maybe I shall hunt big game from an aeroplane. That might be jolly. But it's not why I came here today."

Edna gave him a cup of coffee. "Why did you come today, sir?" she asked.

Today, Roosevelt was without bodyguards. No-Nellie corrected herself. Today, the guards had not come into the coffeehouse. A couple of them paced outside, watchdogs in homburgs and fedoras. Roosevelt reached into his waistcoat and pulled out a small, felt-covered box. "I have here a token of appreciation for the signal service Mr. Jacobs rendered his country during the late war. This is a Distinguished Service Medal-I pulled some strings to get the War Department to issue it, since Mr. Jacobs was not formally in the Army during the war. But they humored me in this matter: one of the few advantages of lame-duckhood I have as yet discovered."

Nellie clapped her hands together in delight. So did Edna. Hal Jacobs turned red. He said, "Mr. President, I thought I made it perfectly clear I wanted no special recognition for any small things I may have done."

"You did," Roosevelt said. "I'm ignoring you. There-another advantage of lame-duckhood: I don't have to listen to anyone if I don't feel like it, not any more. You'll take your medal and you'll be a hero, Mr. Jacobs, and if you don't happen to care for it. too bad. What do you think of that?"

"He thinks it's splendid!" Nellie exclaimed. Hal Jacobs gave her a dirty look. She didn't care. She didn't care a bit. If a wife couldn't speak for a husband when he needed speaking for, what good was she? None at all, as far as Nellie could see.

Arthur McGregor shooed a hen off her nest and grabbed the egg she had laid. The hen's furious squawks and flutterings said she was convinced he'd murdered part of her immediate family. She was right-he had, or would as soon as Maude got around to cooking the egg. McGregor had had a member of his immediate family murdered, too. It gave him some sympathy for the hen… but not enough to keep him from robbing her nest.

He slipped a china egg in there and let the hen return. She kept on fussing for a moment or two. Then she discovered the substitute. Her clucks changed from outrage to contentment. She settled down and began to brood an egg that would not hatch even on Judgment Day.

A scowl on his face, McGregor went on to the next nest. No one had given him any kind of substitute for Alexander. He wished he were as stupid as a chicken, so that a photograph might fool him into thinking he still had a son. Unfortunately, he knew better.

All he could hope for was revenge. The scowl grew deeper. "I couldn't even get that," he growled, knocking the next hen out of her nest with a backhand blow that almost broke her fool neck. She had no eggs in the nest, so he might as well have done her in.

"Dentures!" What a word to make into a curse! But if Custer hadn't broken his false teeth, he'd still have been sitting in Hy's when McGregor's bomb went off. As things were, McGregor had killed more than a dozen innocent people without getting the man he really wanted. He felt bad about that, and worse because they were all Canadians, victims of the U.S. occupation no less than he.

But Alexander had been innocent, and Alexander had been a victim, and nothing would ever bring him back to life. As far as McGregor was concerned, the war against the United States went on. Canadian forces might have surrendered (though rebellion did still simmer here and there, especially in parts of the Dominion the U.S. Army hadn't reached before the Great War ended). The mother country might have yielded. Arthur McGregor kept fighting, whenever he saw the chance.

He finished gathering the eggs and installing china pacifiers under the hens. As he headed back toward the farmhouse, he thought again how much easier life would have been had the U.S. issued him a china son, and had he been stupid enough to reckon it the same as the real thing.

Winter and reality slapped him in the face as soon as he left the barn. The wind cut like a knife. The sky was clear and blue, a blue that put him in mind of a bruise. If he stayed outside very long, he'd start turning blue, too. He'd never met a U.S. soldier who'd taken Manitoba winters in stride. The USA just didn't manufacture weather like this.

"So why the devil did the Yanks want to come up here and take this away from us?" he asked. The snarling wind blew his words away. That didn't matter. The question had no good answer, save that the Americans were as they were.

When he opened the kitchen door, the blast of heat from the stove was a blow hardly less than the one the freezing wind had given him. Where he'd been shivering an instant before, now sweat started out on his forehead. He shed his hat and heavy coat as fast as he could.

Maude looked up from the carrots she was peeling. "How many eggs have you got there?"

"Seven." McGregor looked in the basket. "No, I take it back- eight."

"Not bad," his wife said. He shrugged. He didn't want to look on the bright side of anything right now. Maude went on, "If things keep going the way they have been, we'll come through this winter in better shape than we have since before the war."

"We won't ever be in the kind of shape we were before the war," McGregor answered, his voice colder than the weather outside.

Maude bit her lip. "You know what I mean," she said. He did, too. It didn't help. Had Alexander been there with him, a year where he didn't end up broke might not have looked so bad, even under U.S. occupation. As things were, every year showed a loss to him, even if he made money.

"If only-" he began, but he let that hang in the air. He still hadn't exactly told his wife about his bombs. She knew he'd gone to Winnipeg, of course, and she knew what had happened while he was there. But they both still pretended that was nothing but coincidence.

"You know the Culligans are putting on a dance next week if we don't get a blizzard between now and then, and maybe even if we do," Maude said.

"No, I didn't know." McGregor looked at her in some surprise. "You want to go dancing?" She hadn't shown any interest in that sort of thing since before the Great War. He shrugged. "If you do, I'll take you. I'll be switched if I think I remember the steps, though."

Maude shook her head. "I don't care one way or the other. But Julia and Ted Culligan have known each other since they were little, you know, and I think she'd enjoy dancing with him more than a bit."

"Do you?" McGregor made automatic protest: "But she's just a-" He stopped, feeling foolish. Julia wasn't just a baby any more. She'd be eighteen in a few weeks. He'd been engaged to Maude when she was eighteen. He coughed a couple of times. "I never paid any attention to Ted Culligan one way or the other. Does he matter that much to Julia?"

"He might," Maude said. "I don't know if she's serious, and I really don't know if he's serious-you men." McGregor only blinked at that blanket condemnation of his half of the human race. When he did nothing more, Maude shrugged and went on, "They could be serious, I think. We have to decide if we want them to be serious. The Culligans aren't bad folks."

"No, they're not. They mind their own business-they're not like any of the people who got Alexander into trouble." McGregor made up his mind. "All right, we'll go to this dance."

Go they did. It was snowing, but not hard. Julia chattered excitedly as McGregor drove the wagon toward the Culligans'. Mary chattered even more excitedly; it was her very first dance (actually, it wasn't quite, but she'd been too little to remember going to any of the others).

People had come from miles around, including the families of a couple of the boys who'd named Alexander as their fellow plotter. McGregor held his face still when he saw the McKier-nans and the Klimenkos. He'd been holding his face still for years. Doing it now wasn't that much harder than any other time.

Ted Culligan's ears stuck out. Other than that, he seemed a nice enough kid. He wasn't good enough for Julia; that was obvious. But it was also obvious no one else could be good enough for Julia, either.

A handful of American families had come up and taken over deserted farms around Rosenfeld. McGregor had wondered if the Culligans would invite them to the dance. Keeping his face still would have been harder then. But he didn't see them, and didn't hear any American accents, either.

A pair of fiddlers, a fellow with a concertina, and a man who pounded a drum with more enthusiasm than rhythm provided the music. The tunes were all old ones, and all safe ones. The little band stuck to love songs. McGregor would have loved to hear some of the regimental ballads he'd learned in the Army, but understood why the musicians fought shy of them; word would surely have got back to the U.S. authorities in town, which would have brought trouble on its heels.

McGregor danced a couple of dances with Maude. She did recall the steps better than he; he was content to let her lead. He noticed he wasn't the only farmer whose wife did the steering, either. That made him laugh, something he rarely did these days.

After those first few dances, McGregor was content to stand on the sidelines and drink punch. His eyebrows rose at the first taste of it. The Culligans hadn't stinted on the whiskey. A cup or two, and a man would think he could stay warm outside without coat and hat. He might even prove right. He was more likely to freeze to death.

Julia danced with other boys besides Ted Culligan. That helped ease McGregor's mind. His daughter was having a good time, which made him feel good. He danced a dance with Mary, whose head, he realized in surprise, came almost to the top of his shoulder. When had she grown so big?

There stood Julia, talking with Ted over a cup of the potent punch. Suddenly, McGregor didn't mind the weather at all. In the summertime, courting couples might slip out to a barn for a while. Doing that now invited frostbite, not romance.

McGregor shook hands with Ted Culligan's father when it was time to go home. He pretended not to see Ted kiss Julia on the cheek. That wasn't easy, not when she turned the color of a red-hot stove.

"I had a wonderful time," she said over and over on the drive back to the farm. "Simply wonderful." She was young enough to forget for a while what had happened to her family and her country, and to enjoy the moment. McGregor wished he could do the same.

Back at the farmhouse, he lit a lamp in the kitchen. His wife and daughters went yawning upstairs to bed. He brought the lamp outside and set it on the wagon while he unhitched the horse. Then he picked up the lamp again and carried it in his left hand while leading the horse to the barn.

He put the beast in its stall and started out of the barn again. But he stopped after a couple of steps: stopped and held the lantern high, peering around in all directions. No, he wasn't wrong. Someone had been in the barn while the McGregors were at the dance.

Fear and ftiry warred inside him. At first, fear was uppermost. Whoever had pawed through his things hadn't bothered trying to conceal his presence. Tools weren't where they should have been. A couple of drawers under McGregor's work table were open; he knew he'd left them closed, for he always did.

Heart hammering in his throat, he went over to the old wagon wheel beneath which he hid his bomb-making paraphernalia. Holding the lamp close, he tried to see if the snooper had tampered with it. As far as he could tell, it was undisturbed. His secret remained safe.

When he realized that, fury overtook fear. "God damn those sons of bitches," he said softly. "They do still figure I might be a bomber." He was, if anything, more indignant than if he'd been innocent. The Yanks had paid-no, the Yanks had seemed to pay-no attention to him the past couple of years. He'd thought they'd forgotten about him. He'd been wrong.

But they hadn't found anything. They'd have been waiting here for him if they had. "They're trying to rattle me," he murmured. "That's got to be it." They couldn't prove he'd planted bombs, so they were showing their cards, trying to force him into a mistake. He shook his head. He didn't intend to oblige them.

By the time he went back to the farmhouse and upstairs to his bedroom, Maude was sound asleep. He shrugged. Even if she'd been awake, he wouldn't have said a word. He got ready for bed himself.

Before the presidential election, a lot of firms had put printed messages in their workers' pay envelopes. The one Chester Martin got had read, If Upton Sinclair is elected on Tuesday, don't bother showing up for work Wednesday morning. The capitalists had tried to the very end to keep the proletariat from voting its conscience and its class interest.

They'd tried those games before, too, though not so aggressively: up till this election, they hadn't been so worried about losing. Well, they'd lost anyhow. Martin laughed every time he thought about it. Come March 4, it would be out with the old and in with the new, and the United States would have their first Socialist president. He could hardly wait.

Here it was late December, too, and he hadn't been fired. He didn't expect to be fired any time soon, either, not unless he hauled off and punched his foreman or something of that sort. His foreman was an idiot. Everyone on the foundry floor knew as much. The foreman's boss didn't, though, and his was the only opinion that mattered. But work went on as usual, in spite of there being a Socialist president-elect.

"Did you really expect anything different?" Albert Bauer asked when Martin remarked on that one day at the Socialist hall near the steelworks.

"I don't know that I expected anything different," Martin answered. "I will say I wondered."

"Mystification," Bauer said scornfully. "That's all it is- nothing but mystification. The capitalists tried to intimidate us, and tried to make us believe they had the power to get away with intimidating us. It didn't work, and now they'll have to learn how to walk a lot smaller."

"Yeah," Martin said, and then, "How much do you think Sinclair will be able to do once he gets in?"

"Don't know," Bauer answered. "We've got a majority in the House, and I think the Socialists and Republicans and progressive Democrats make a majority in the Senate. The courts are full of reactionaries. They'll give us trouble."

"If they give too much trouble, we'll stop listening to them," Martin said. "Let's see them get their way if everybody ignores them. Or let's see them get their way if the worst reactionaries start having accidents."

Bauer laughed at him. "This from the man who used to be a Democrat? I've heard people who've been revolutionaries since before you were born who didn't sound half as fierce as you do."

"In for a penny, in for a pound," Chester Martin said, shrugging. "Besides, nobody who's been through the trenches is going to fuss about killing a judge or two. Once you've had practice, killing looks pretty easy."

"Something to that, I shouldn't wonder." Bauer looked thoughtful. "The capitalists might not have realized what they were doing when they started the war, but they helped create opponents who wouldn't back away from meeting force with force when they had to."

Martin nodded. "After artillery and poison gas and machine guns, cops are nothing special," he said, a thought he'd had before. He paused, then asked, "What do you think of this Freedom Party down in the CSA, Al? They're another bunch that doesn't seem like it's afraid of mixing things up with anybody they don't like."

"Reactionary maniacs," Bauer said with a toss of the head. "They want to turn back the clock to the way things were before the Great War. You can't turn back the clock, and you have to be a fool to think you can."

"That's about what I thought," Martin said. "You believe the papers, though, a lot of people like what they're saying. Stupid damn Rebs."

"Stupid damn Rebs," Bauer agreed. "But if we'd lost the war, imagine how fouled up our politics would be. There'd be a bounty on Socialists now. You'd better believe there would- they'd be hunting us in the streets. And they'd go on electing Democrats president for the next fifty years. So maybe we shouldn't blame the Rebs-too much-for being stupid."

"Hmp," was all Chester Martin said to that. He'd spent three years with the Confederates shooting at him. Hell, they hadn't just shot at him-they'd shot him. He had the Purple Heart to prove it, and the note of sympathy signed by Theodore Roosevelt, too. Even with the war almost three and a half years behind him, he wasn't inclined to feel charitable toward the former enemy.

Bauer slapped him on the back. "Go on, get out of here. Go home. Go Christmas shopping. Go somewhere. I keep having to tell you that. You've got a case of the mopes, looks like to me. You won't do yourself any good till you get over 'em. You won't do the Party any good, either, so go on. Scram."

Martin didn't argue with him. He buttoned his overcoat and headed out of the Socialist hall. The trolley stop was a couple of blocks away. His breath smoked around him. The one thing he envied the Confederate States was their mild winter weather. Summer in Virginia, on the other hand, was a pretty fair approximation of hell. Of course, summer in Toledo wasn't all that far removed from hell, either.

Shops shiny with tinsel and bright with electric lights beckoned to people walking past them on the street, BIG SALE! signs in the window shouted. Some of them might even have meant it. But Martin had gone into more than a few shops, and had yet to see much in the way of price cutting. The signs were just a come-on, like the tinsel and the bright lights.

He would have to get presents for his father and his mother and his sister. He wanted to get something for Albert Bauer, too, though Bauer was the least sentimental man he'd ever known off the battlefield. Maybe some shaving soap, he thought. That would be thoughtful and useful at the same time.

"Shaving soap," he said several times. A woman walking past gave him an odd look. He didn't care, or not too much. Saying something out loud helped him remember it.

Coins jingled in his trouser pocket: only a faint noise through the thick wool of his coat. He wasn't broke, as he had been through the labor strife after the war. With a Socialist administration, maybe there wouldn't be any more labor strife. That had been his hope as he'd made an X in the square beside the names of Upton Sinclair and Hosea Blackford. The capitalists had had everything their way for a long time. Now, he thought, it's labor's turn.

He unbuttoned his coat long enough to grab a nickel. A bum came up to him while he waited for the trolley. The fellow whined for change. He stank of unwashed hide and stale beer. Martin knew he'd just buy another mug with a nickel, but tossed him the coin anyway. "Merry Christmas, pal." He dug another five cents out of his pocket.

"God bless you, mister," the bum said. Martin waved impatiently, wanting him to get out of there before he regretted his own generosity. The bum had had practice at what he did. He faded away.

Up rattled the trolley, almost fifteen minutes late. Martin grumbled as he threw his nickel in the fare box. He grumbled some more when he saw he'd have to stand for a while: the car was full, with a lot of passengers festooned with packages. He did the best he could, positioning himself next to a pretty girl who also had no place to sit. She glanced over toward him once, a look colder than the weather outside. When she left a few blocks later, he was more relieved than anything else.

He eventually did land a seat for himself; more people got off than on as the trolley rolled up to Ottawa Hills. Not for the first time, he thought about renting a place of his own as he walked to the apartment he shared with his parents and sister. He could afford it-as long as the work stayed steady, he could afford it. But his paycheck helped his folks pay the rent here, and they'd carried him when he was out on strike, carried him even though they'd disagreed with his stand. He didn't have to do anything in a hurry.

When he walked in the front door, his father was draping the Christmas tree with tinsel. A fresh, piney scent fought the usual odors of tobacco smoke and cooking. "That's a good one, Dad," Martin said. "You haven't found such a nice, round, plump one in a long time."

"Haven't gone looking for nice, round, plump ones, not since I married your mother," Stephen Douglas Martin answered. Ignoring his son's half-scandalized snort, he went on, "I am pretty happy with it, though. Found it at a little lot round the corner; I jewed "em down to four bits for it."

"That's a good price," Martin agreed. "You recall where you hid the star and the other ornaments after last Christmas?"

"I didn't hide them," his father said with dignity. "I put them away safe." About every other year, he had to turn the apartment upside down because he'd put the decorations away so securely, he hadn't the faintest idea where they were.

This time, though, he came up with them and gave his son a superior look that Chester did his best to ignore. They hung the ornaments together. "Are we going to have candles on the tree this year?" Chester asked.

"Unless you really want 'em, I'd say no," Stephen Douglas Martin answered. "Every year, you read in the paper about some damn fool"-his eyes went toward the kitchen as he made sure Louisa Martin hadn't heard him swear-"who burns down his house and burns up his family on account of those things. I don't aim to be that kind of fool, thank you very much."

"All right," Martin said. After bombs and barrels and shell fragments in the trenches, after cops and goons with pistols and clubs, candles struck him as a silly thing to worry about. But his father wasn't wrong; people and houses did go up in flames every Christmas. Martin supposed that, absent big fears, small ones pushed their way to the fore.

Sue came in while they were still decorating. She scaled her broad-brimmed flowered hat across the room as if it were an aeroplane and said, "I get to put the star on top. After the day I had today, I've earned it."

"What happened today?" Chester asked.

"Everyone wanted everything typed at the same time, and it was all stupid," his sister answered. "And everyone yelled at me because I couldn't do sixteen different things at the same time. If half the people in the office would have thought for even a couple of seconds before they started piling stuff onto me, everything would have been fine. But throwing things at me and then yelling their heads off was easier, so they did that instead."

She took the gilded glass star and impaled it on top of the Christmas tree. Then she glared at her brother and her father, defying them to tell her she had no business getting angry. Chester was not about to take his life in his hands. He said "Why don't you go get a bottle of Schmidt's out of the icebox?"

Sue didn't usually drink beer. Tonight, she nodded briskly. "I'll do that. Thank you, Chester." Off toward the kitchen she went. Chester Martin grinned at Stephen Douglas Martin. He might have been trained as a soldier, but he'd just served the cause of peace.

Scipio seldom saw snow. Because he seldom saw it, he enjoyed it when he did. So did everyone else in Augusta. Pickaninnies made snow angels and threw snowballs. So did their parents. So did their grandparents, some of whom had hair as white as that snow.

Because of the clogged, slippery streets, he got to Erasmus' later than he should have, and with his hat askew on his head. More and more boys played football Yankee-style these days, which meant more of them threw the ball, which meant they had practice they used to good effect with snowballs.

Erasmus' eyes glinted with amusement, but all he said was, "Mornin5, Xerxes. How you be today?"

"Cold," Scipio answered. "This here nothin' but damnyankee weather. Far as I is concerned, it kin stay up there wid they."

"Fish keep longer," Erasmus said. "Don't got to buy so much ice from that thief of an ice man for a couple days. Outside o' dat, I ain't gwine argue with you."

Scipio had just started his morning sweeping when the first breakfast customer came in. Erasmus had found he made money serving breakfast, so he'd started. The customer shouted for hot coffee. Scipio didn't blame him. He had to pry himself away from the nice, warm stove to bring the fellow the steaming cup, and then the fried eggs and grits that followed.

After pouring down several steaming cups and shoveling in his food, the black man got to his feet, stuck a hand in the pocket of his dungarees, and looked a question toward Scipio. Even if it was wordless, Scipio understood it. "A million and a half," he said.

"Was only a million last week," the customer said with a sigh. He gave Scipio two crisp, new $1,000,000 banknotes, with Robert E. Lee's portrait on one side and a picture of Jefferson Davis taking the oath of office as provisional president in Montgomery on the other. Scipio handed him five $100,000 banknotes (older and more worn, because they'd been in circulation longer) for change. As he'd hoped, the customer left a couple of hundred thousand dollars' tip when he went on his way.

"When was the last time you seen silver or gold money?" Erasmus asked, his voice wistful. "I ain't even seen no pennies in a hell of a long time."

"Me neither," Scipio said. "Not since the war jus' over. Somebody put down a dime or a qua'ter, reckon I fall over. Somebody put down a Stonewall, I knows I fall over."

"How much paper you reckon a Stonewall buy these days?" Erasmus' lips moved silently as he made his own calculation. "Somewheres around twenty, twenty-five million, I reckon. What you think?"

"Sound about right," Scipio agreed. Erasmus had no formal education, but he was shrewd with figures. Scipio added, "Ain't bad fo'fi'dollars in gold."

"Sure ain't," Erasmus said, and said no more. Scipio wouldn't have been the least bit surprised to find out his boss had a nice pile of Stonewalls hidden away somewhere. If he needed them, they'd come out. If times ever got better, so that money stopped stretching like India rubber, they'd come out then, too. Scipio wished he had his own pile.

He wondered how many goldpieces Anne Colleton had these days. He was willing to bet she had a good many. She'd always been one to land on her feet. And, if the papers didn't lie, she'd been pumping money into the Freedom Party. That worried Scipio. His former boss didn't back losers. He'd seen as much, time and again. But if the Freedom Party was a winner, every black man and woman in the CSA lost. What the men in the white shirts and butternut trousers had already done in Augusta made that crystal clear.

If it hadn't been for Bathsheba, he wouldn't have worried so much. He'd always been able to take care of himself. Even after the Congaree Socialist Republic collapsed in blood and fire, he'd taken care of himself. Taking care of somebody else, though, somebody he loved-that was different. It was harder, too: he didn't dare take risks for Bathsheba that he would have cheerfully taken for himself.

Another Negro came in, asking for flapjacks and eggs. He wore a ribbon on his jacket. After a moment, Scipio recognized what it was: the ribbon for a Purple Heart. Pointing to it, he asked, "Where you git that?"

"Up in Virginia," the man answered. "Some damnyankee shot me in the leg. I was damn lucky, let me tell you. All he did was blow off a chunk o' meat. Bullet didn't hit no bone or nothin', or I reckon I'd be walkin' around with a peg leg."

Listening to somebody talk about how lucky he'd been to get shot struck Scipio as strange, but he'd heard white veterans go on the same way. He said, "So you fit the war and done everything the gummint want?" The customer nodded. Scipio hurried back to get his breakfast and bring it to him, then asked, "And now you is a citizen? Now you kin vote an' do like the buckra all kinds o'ways?"

"Can't marry no white woman." The veteran shrugged. "Don't want to marry no white woman-like the colored gal I got. But yeah," he went on with quiet pride, "I's a citizen." He reached into his pocket and displayed an elaborately printed form attesting to his service in the war. "I carry this here 'stead of a passbook."

Scipio hadn't thought about the aspect of citizenship. He was deeply and sincerely jealous of the veteran, who enjoyed a liberty he was unlikely ever to know. "Freedom Party give you trouble?" he inquired. He didn't know why he asked the question: was he trying to ease his own mind about what the Freedom Party could do, or was he hoping to make the veteran feel bad in spite of the privilege he'd earned?

The man's mouth tightened. His eyes narrowed. A vertical groove appeared between them, and other lines by the edges of his lips. 'Them bastards," he said quietly. "You know any niggers don't get trouble from them?"

"Sure enough don't," Scipio answered. "I was hopin' you did."

"Ain't none." The Negro veteran spoke with assurance. "Ain't nothin' we can do about it, neither, nothin' I can see. Yeah, I'm a citizen. I punch one o' them sons o' bitches for callin' me names or givin' me some other kind o' hard time, what happen then? White folks' jury send me to jail for about twenty years. That Freedom Party man kick me in the balls, what happen then? White folks'jury say he didn't do nothin' wrong." He didn't try to hide his bitterness.

"But you kin vote against they," Scipio said. "Most black folks can't do nothin' a-tall."

"I can vote." The veteran nodded. "I went an' did it last election, an' I'll do it again come November. But so what? So what, God damn it? Ain't but one o' me, an' all them Freedom Party white folks. Even if all the niggers in the country could vote, wouldn't be enough of us. White folks can do what they want, near enough. Why shouldn't they let me vote? They can afford it."

He got up, laid two million dollars on the table, and stamped out without waiting for change.

"Hope you didn't ride Antiochus so hard, he don't come back," Erasmus said. "That ain't good business."

"Sorry," Scipio answered, which was true in the business sense if in no other. "You hear what he say?" He waited for Erasmus to nod, then went on, "You still reckon we ain't got nothin' to fear from no Freedom Party?"

Erasmus nodded again. "I keeps tellin' you an' tellin' you, the white man ain't gwine do the work hisself If he ain't gwine do it hisself, he ain't gwine do us no harm-or no worse'n usual, anyways. You show me them Freedom Party fellas out in the cotton fields at pickin' time, then I commence to worry. Till then-" He shook his head.

Scipio wished he could take matters in stride the way his boss did. Rationally, everything Erasmus said made sense. That should have sufficed for Scipio, himself a man rational by inclination and education both. It should have, but it didn't.

The past few years had been hard on rationality. If the Negro uprising of 1915 hadn't been an exercise in romanticism, he didn't know what was. The Reds hadn't had a chance, but they'd risen anyhow. He didn't think the Freedom Party had a chance of restoring the status quo ante bellum, either. That didn't stop whites from flocking to its banners. Most whites liked the way things had been before the war just fine.

And there were, as the Negro veteran had said, a lot of whites. If they got behind the Freedom Party, Jake Featherston and his pals might win. How far could they turn back the clock? Finding out would be as big a romantic folly as the Red uprising. But nothing had stopped Cassius and the other Red leaders, and likely nothing would stop Featherston, either.

Scipio sighed. "Life ain't easy, and at the end you can't do nothin' but up and die. Don't seem right."

Erasmus busied himself making a fresh pot of coffee. When he was through, he said, "So tell me then, you gwine kiss your lady friend good-bye? You gwine lay in bed by your lonesome, waitin' for to drop dead?"

" 'Course not," Scipio said angrily. Then he stopped and stared at Erasmus. The fry cook had pierced his gloomy pretensions as neatly as any white man with a fancy degree in philosophy might have done-and with a tenth, or more likely a hundredth, as many words. Instead of angry, Scipio felt foolish, to say nothing of sheepish. "Got to get on with your reg'lar 'fairs," he mumbled.

"That there make a deal more sense'n what you was spoutin' a minute ago, don't you reckon?" Erasmus demanded.

"Yes, suh," Scipio said. So far as he could recall, he'd never called a black man sir before in his life. Whites got the title because they had the whip hand in the CSA. He gave it to Erasmus because-because he deserves it, was the thought that ran through Scipio's mind.

Erasmus noticed, too. His head whipped around sharply. Scipio would have bet several million dollars-maybe even a Stonewall- nobody'd ever called him sir before that moment, either. "Just get back to work, will you?" he said, his voice gruff. He didn't know how to respond to being treated with respect.

Why should he? Scipio thought. It's altogether likely no one has ever shown him any With that, Scipio came closer to understanding why the Reds had rebelled against the Confederate government than he ever had before. Was being treated like a human being worth fighting and dying for? Maybe it was.

What do I know about being treated like a human being? he thought. / was only a butler He didn't think in the dialect of the Congaree, but in the precise, formal English he'd had drilled into him. Sometimes that helped him: it gave him a wider, more detailed map for his world than he would have had if he'd gone to the cotton fields. Sometimes it left him neither fish nor fowl. And sometimes it made him angry at what the Colletons had done to his mind, to his life. They hadn't done it for his sake, either. They hadn't cared at all about him, except as a thing. They'd done it for their own convenience.

"Just got to get through the day and not worry about nothin' you can't change anyways," Erasmus said. Scipio nodded. The fry cook was pursuing the thought he'd had a little before. But Scipio's thought had veered in a different direction. How can a black man make life worth living in the Confederate States? he wondered. The question was easy to ask. Finding an answer, though…

"Here is the latest report, sir." Lieutenant Colonel Abner Dow-ling set the document on General Custer's desk.

"Well, let's have a look at it." The electric lights in the overhead fixture glittered off Custer's reading glasses as he picked up the report and started to go through it. Abner Dowling waited for the explosion he guessed would not be long in coming. He was right. The commander of U.S. forces in Canada slammed the typewritten sheets on the desk. "Poppycock!" he shouted. "Twaddle! Harebrained idiocy! Who was the idiot who produced this nonsense?"

"Sir, Captain Fielding, our operative in Rosenfeld, is one of the best we have anywhere in this country," said Dowling, who had read the report before giving it to Custer. "If he says there's no evidence this McGregor planted the bomb in Hy's chop house, you can rely on it."

"If he says there's no bloody goddamn evidence, he can't see the nose in front of his face," Custer snarled. "Christ on His cross, McGregor blew up this brilliant operative's"-Custer's sarcasm stung-"predecessor. Otherwise, this imbecile wouldn't have the job in the first place. Look at McGregor's photograph. Does that shifty-eyed devil look like an honest man to you?"

"There's no evidence for that, either, sir," Dowling said patiently. "They've searched McGregor's farmhouse and barn and grounds any number of times, and they haven't found a thing to suggest he's the bomber."

"Which only proves he's not an imbecile, very much unlike our own people down there," Custer said with a sneer that displayed the fine white choppers in his new upper plate. "The chap who was there during the war ordered McGregor's son shot, didn't he?"

"Among a good many other executions, yes," Dowling answered with a sigh he barely tried to hide. He'd been certain ahead of time Custer would take this line. Custer was irresistibly attracted to the obvious.

And, sure enough, Custer charged ahead as if he hadn't spoken: "Other bombs around Rosenfeld, too. All of them either had to do with families that got his brat in trouble or with people connected to that other operative down there, the one who got himself blown sky high the night the war ended. Coincidence? Are you telling me it's coincidence?"

"Sir, someone's been making bombs, yes," Dowling said. "But it's no more likely to be McGregor than anyone else down there. Major Hannebrink-the operative who's dead now-had to hold down the countryside during the war, and he didn't use a light hand. No one used a light hand during the war, sir."

Again, Custer might not have heard him. He went right on with his own thoughts, such as they were: "And was this McGregor down on his farm when Hy's was bombed? He was not. You know he was not."

"I know where he was, too: visiting kin in Ontario," Dowling said. "He didn't make a secret of where he was going. His farm was checked after the bombing, and then again a little before Christmas, in the hope he might have gotten careless. I don't think he could have gotten careless, sir, because I don't think he had anything to get careless about."

"Ought to haul him in," Custer said. "Ought to haul him in, give him a blindfold and a cigarette, and stand him up against a wall and give him the same his son got."

"Sir!" Dowling exclaimed in real alarm. "Sir, the country's been pretty quiet lately. Do you want to give the Canucks a martyr? If you execute a man when you can't prove he's done anything, you're asking for trouble. Don't you think it's better to let sleeping dogs lie?"

"That dog of a McGregor lies, all right, but he's not asleep," Custer retorted. "He's wide awake and laughing at us, that's what he's doing. And as for asking for trouble…" He looked sly, always a dangerous sign. "With the damned Socialists coming into power in another five weeks, I'd love to see the Canucks turn fractious. It might remind the Reds in Philadelphia why we have soldiers up here."

That was devious. Dowling wondered how a soldier who'd gained his reputation by charging straight at the foe-regardless of whether the situation called for it-had acquired such a byzantine sense of politics. It might even be a clever move… if you didn't stop and think about what it meant to this Arthur McGregor and what was left of his family.

Dowling said, "Sir, this fellow's already lost his son. If you shoot him, you leave a widow and a couple of orphaned daughters. That's pretty hard, sir. If he were the bomber, he would have conspired with somebody, wouldn't he? There's nothing to show he's done that. I mean nothing at all, sir. No claims, no circumstantial evidence-zero. He hasn't done it, period."

"Lone wolf," Custer said, but he didn't sound so cocksure as he had a moment before. Lone-wolf mad bombers weren't that easy to believe in, even for Custer.

Pressing his advantage, Dowling went on, "So you see, sir, it really isn't that bad a report. I know it would be more satisfying if they could tie up the bomber with a pretty pink ribbon, but there are millions of Canucks and millions of square miles in this miserable icebox of a country. Catching the stinking bastard isn't easy."

"Bah," Custer said-a sign of weakening. Then, as if it proved something, he added, "He almost blew you up, too."

"Believe me, sir, I know that," Dowling said fervently. Nobody cared enough about him personally to want to do him in. But if Custer went, he was liable to go, too. He'd make one line in the fourth paragraph of the newspaper stories. The commanding general's adjutant also perished in the blast-all the obituary he'd ever get.

He sighed. His name and photograph wouldn't make it into the encyclopedias or the history books. If he ever wrote his memoirs, the only reason they might find a publisher would be that people had an endless appetite for stories about Custer. Dowling coughed. He could tell stories about Custer, all right, stories that would curl the hair of anybody with an ounce of sense.

He did not think he was boastful in reckoning himself smarter than the senior soldier in the U.S. Army. Custer had graduated dead last in his West Point class-hardly a shining example, save perhaps of what not to do. Whenever Custer had been right, all through his enormously long military career, he'd been right for the wrong reasons. The shouting match he'd got into with Teddy Roosevelt about how and why they'd used their Gatling guns in Montana Territory the way they had proved how far back that went.

And yet, for all his failings, Custer was, and deserved to be, famous. He might have been right for the wrong reasons, but he'd been right at the right times. That counted for more. And Custer, whatever else you said about him, never did anything by halves. That counted for a lot, too.

Flaws and all-and Dowling, from long exposure to them, knew how massive they were-Custer would live in the country's memory for generations to come. And, when authors got around to writing historical novels about him, they would have to invent a character to play his adjutant, because no one would remember that perfectly competent but uninspired lieutenant colonel, Abner Dowling, whose only measurable defect was measurable indeed, in his uncommon and ever-increasing girth. It hardly seemed fair.

No doubt it wasn't fair. But then, life wasn't fair. Some people were smarter than others. Some were handsomer than others. Some-Custer sprang to mind-were pushier than others. You did what you could with what you had. And, even if no one would recall the contributions of an obscure officer named Dowling, Custer had done more than he might have otherwise because he'd had that obscure officer at his side and guarding his back.

Testily, Custer said, "Oh, very well, Dowling-have it your way. If you think this McGregor is pure as the driven snow"-a comparison that hardly required a poetic spirit in Winnipeg in January-"we'll leave him alone. On your head be it. And if he sets off another bomb, on your head it will be."

"You already pointed that out, sir." Dowling sounded on the testy side himself. "I would point out to you in return that this is not merely my opinion. It is the opinion of the expert on the spot. If we pay no attention to the opinion of the expert on the spot, where are we?"

He'd meant it for a rhetorical question. Custer answered as if it were literal: "In the General Staff offices in Philadelphia." That jerked a startled snort of laughter out of Dowling. Custer went on, "But if we fall down and worship the expert on the spot, where are we then? With the Israelites who fell down and worshiped the Golden Calf, that's where."

Dowling thought the second comparison far-fetched. What Custer meant was that he wanted the liberty to do as he damn well pleased. That was all Custer had ever wanted. Since he was eighty-one years old and still hadn't learned the difference between liberty and license, he wasn't likely to gain that knowledge in however much time he had left.

"I do think you're doing the right thing by letting this McGregor alone," Dowling said. "The whole country has been noticeably calmer lately than it was when you first took over."

"I put the fear of God in the Canucks, that's why, and I had my own good reasons for doing it," Custer said. There might even have been some truth in his words, though Dowling thought the Canadians' despair over a cause obviously lost had more to do with it. "We will make a desert if we have to, and we shall call it peace."

"Yes, sir," his adjutant said resignedly. No use expecting Custer to become a decent Latin scholar at his age, either (more hope that he might become a scholar of indecent Latin). When Tacitus had said the Romans made a desert and called it peace, he was condemning them. Custer took it for praise.

"I don't care if they hate us," Custer added, "as long as they're afraid of us." That was another Latin tag. Custer probably knew as much; having thought of the one, coming up with the other would have been easier for him. But did he remember the phrase came from Caligula's lips? Not likely, Dowling judged. He glanced over at Custer. Would Caligula have been like this if he'd lasted to eighty-one? Dowling's shiver had nothing to do with the subzero cold outside. He couldn't recall the last time he'd had such a frightening thought.

He said, "Now that they are quiet, sir, I really do think it's best not to stir them up."

"So you've said-over and over and over," Custer said. "So everyone says. Well, I have something to say to you, too: you and everyone else had better be right, or the United States are going to end up with egg on their face. And what do you think of that?"

"I think you're right, sir." Dowling didn't see what good pointing out Custer's unfailing gift for the obvious would do.