How Few Remain

Chapter 14

Sam Clemens walked in to the office of the San Francisco Morning Call, hung his straw hat on a branch of the hat tree, and asked, "Well, boys, what's gone wrong since I went home last night?"

A chorus of voices answered him, so loud and vigorous that he had trouble sorting out one piece of bad news from the next. The British army in Montana Territory was still moving south. British gunboats on the Great Lakes were bombarding U.S. lakeside cities again, with apparent impunity. Louisville remained a bloody stalemate.

"President Blaine didn't think he had reason enough to give over the war before," Clemens observed. "Our enemies seem to be giving him reason now, don't they?"

"And Pocahontas, Arkansas, has fallen back into Rebel hands," Clay Herndon added.

"Good God!" Sam staggered, as if taking a mortal wound. "That proves the struggle truly hopeless. How, save by the grace of a thick skull, can Blaine keep from yielding to common sense?"

Edgar Leary delivered the topper: "The wires say British ironclads have appeared off Boston and New York, and they're bombarding the harbors and the towns."

"Good God," Clemens said, this time in earnest. "They are taking the switch to us. You'd think that, if we were going to get into a war with the whole world, we might have made some sort of an effort to be ready for it ahead of time. But the Democrats reckoned saying 'Yes, Massa' to the Rebs once a day and twice on Sundays would get us by without fighting, so they didn't fret much about the Army and Navy.

And Blaine didn't fret about 'em, either; he just up and used 'em, ready or not. And now we know which."

From the back of the office, somebody shouted, "Holy Jesus! Telegraph says the French Navy is shelling Los Angeles harbor."

"That does it!" Sam cried. "That absolutely does it! The Confederates wrestle us to the ground, England jumps on us as soon as we're down, and now France bites us in the ankle. Can't you see her, yapping and panting? Pretty soon, she'll piss on our leg, you mark my word."

Off in the distance, thunder rolled.

Clay Herndon frowned. "It was clear when I got here half an hour ago. Don't usually get thunderstorms this time of year, anyhow. Hell, we don't usually get any rain at all this time of year."

"Fastest thunderstorm 1 ever heard of," Clemens said. "It was clear when I walked in five minutes ago."

"Look out the window," Leary said. "It's still clear."

Sam couldn't see the window. He opened the door. Bright daylight streamed in. Another rumbling roar sounded, though, this one not so far away. "That isn't thunder!" he exclaimed. "It's cannon fire."

"It can't be," Clay Herndon said. "It's not coming from the direction of the forts, and we'd have heard if Colonel Sherman were moving any guns. Most of those big ones don't move, anyhow."

"I didn't say they were our guns, Clay," Clemens answered quietly. "I think somebody's navy has just brought the war to San Francisco."

"That's era-" Herndon began. Then he shook his head. It would have been crazy yesterday. It wasn't crazy today, not with the Royal Navy shelling Boston and New York harbors, not with the French- whose ships, Sam judged, had to be sallying from some port on the west coast of their puppet Mexican empire-bombarding Los Angeles.

And, as if to confirm Clemens' words, more thunderous reports rolled out of the west. But they were not thunder. A few seconds later came another blast, close enough to rattle the front window of the Morning Call offices, through which Edgar Leary was still staring as if expecting rain. A rending crash followed. "That's a building falling down," Herndon whispered.

"No." Clemens shook his head. "That's a building blowing up."

Now, at last, from the northwest came the thunderous reports that had grown familiar through the summer: the cannon in San Francisco 's fortifications opened up, defending the harbor against the foe. "They'll never make it through the Golden Gate!" Leary exclaimed.

"I wonder if they even care to try." Sam was thinking out loud, and not liking any of his own thoughts. "By the sound of their guns, they're standing off the coast-maybe out past the Cliff House-and shooting across the peninsula, either toward the wharves or just toward us. I wonder if they know which themselves, or care."

A shell landed only a couple of blocks away. The floor jerked under Sam's feet from the explosion, as if at a small, sharp earthquake. A moment later, he heard the rumble of collapsing masonry. He'd heard that during earthquakes, too, but not during small ones. Blast and rumble were so loud, he marveled at how faint and distant the following screams seemed.

But, where the roar of the cannons had not, those screams reminded him he was a newspaperman. "Jesus Christ, boys!" he burst out. "We're sitting in the middle of the biggest story that's happened in this town since 1849. We're not going to be able to cover it standing around here or hiding under our desks. Leary! Get over to Fort Point. See what the devil the garrison's doing to drive the enemy away. Sec if they're doing anything to drive the enemy away. See if they know who the devil the enemy is. That'd be a good bit of news to put in a story, don't you think?"

"Right, boss!" Edgar Leary pushed past him and out the door.

"Clay!" Sam snapped. "You go to the Cliff House, fast as you can. Whatever you can see of the enemy fleet, note it down."

"I'll do it," Herndon said. Then he hesitated. "What if they've already blown the Cliff House to hell and gone?"

Clemens' exasperated exhalation puffed out his mustache. "In that case, you chowderhead, don't go inside." Herndon nodded quite seriously, as if that hadn't occurred to him. Maybe it hadn't. More explosions were rocking the city now. How could you blame anybody for having a hard time thinking straight?

Clemens sent someone to the harbor, to see if enemy shells were falling there as well as on San Francisco itself, and also to see what, if anything, the Pacific Squadron was doing about the enemy. He scattered reporters through the city. Whatever happened, he-and the Morning Call — would know about it.

One of the last men out the door asked, "Are you going to stay here and put everything together, boss?"

"That's what I have in mind, yes," Sam answered. "Every one of you will know more about some of this business than I do, but I'll end up knowing more about all of this business than any of you."

"Unless a shell comes down on your head," the reporter said with a nervous chuckle.

"Some people who work for this paper, that would hurt the shell more than the head in question." Clemens fixed the reporter with a glare. "Shall I name names?"

"Oh, no, boss," the fellow said hastily, and departed. Not five seconds after he was out the door, another shell made the building shake. The front window broke in a tinkling shower of glass. Somewhere not too far away, a fire-alarm bell was clanging. Sam grimaced at that. How many gas lines was the bombardment breaking? How many fires had started? How bad would they get? How was the fire department supposed to put them out, with ironclads shelling the men as they worked?

"Those are all good questions," Clemens muttered. "I wonder if any good answers will stick to them."

He stationed himself at his desk. Every time a shell smashed down west of the newspaper office, he scowled and chewed on his cigar. What were Alexandra and Orion and Ophelia doing? This was a nasty way to make war, throwing shells around in the hope of smashing up whatever they hit and not worrying much about what that was.

Most of an hour went by. The local telegraph clicker started to chatter. No one was minding it; Clemens had sent everybody out to cover the story. He got up to see

what the message was. It was from Clay Herndon: ROYAL NAVY SHELLING CITY, CLIFF HOUSE WRECKED AND BURNING. AT NEAREST TELEGRAPH OFFICE TO OCEAN. DAMAGE SEVERE ALREADY. OUR GUNS OF LITTLE EFFECT.

That gave Sam something to write. He wrote it and gave it to the typesetters. Other reports began coming in, some by wire, some by messengers the reporters had paid, some by messengers who loudly demanded to be paid. Sam suspected some of those had already been paid once, but he shelled out. They hadn't had to come here, after all.

A picture began to emerge. The enemy ships did seem to be trying to reach the harbor with their guns, or at least with some of them. Most of the shells were falling short, though. "Thanks," Sam muttered sourly as the Morning Call building rattled again. "I never would have noticed that."

The Pacific Squadron was moving out to engage the foe. He suspected the handful of antiquated gunboats would be sorry in short order, but making the effort was their job. He wished Edgar Leary would send him something, but the cub remained silent. Maybe he'd been hit on the way to Fort Point. Maybe the telegraph lines were down. And maybe Colonel Sherman wasn't inclined to let any news out of the fort and into the city. Considering how little the fort's guns were doing to drive away the British ironclads, the last explanation struck Clemens as most likely.

Men with rifles started running down Market. Other men with rifles started running up Market. "Good to see the Volunteers have everything well in hand," Sam muttered. "Chickens act this way after the hatchet comes down, but chickens aren't in the habit of carrying Springfields." Somebody fired one of those rifles. How many of our own shall we kill? Clemens scribbled. How many of them shall we blame on the British?

The telegraph clicker started up again. He hurried over to it. The message was to the point: MARINES LANDING OCEAN BEACH. HERNDON.

Sam was still carrying his notebook and pen. He looked down at the two sentences he'd just written. They were still true. They were, if anything, truer than ever. With three quick, firm strokes, he scratched them out anyhow. "Who's wearing a hogleg?" he shouted, as loud as he could. "The God-damned Englishmen are landing troops!"

"We'll nail the sons of bitches!" a typesetter yelled. He and two of the men who served the presses dashed out the front door, pistols in their hands. Clemens wondered if the British Marines knew what they were getting into. Apart from the Volunteer companies, a lot of men in San Francisco carried guns for self-protection-not least, for protection from other men carrying guns.

He wondered whether the Regular Army garrison up at Fort Point and the Presidio knew the ironclads out in the Pacific had landed Marines. Anyone with a lick of sense would have posted lookouts-with luck, lookouts with telegraph keys-all along the ocean front opposite the built-up part of San Francisco. "Which means the Army likely hasn't done it," he said. Then he shrugged. "If they don't know about 'em, they'll find out pretty damn quick."

He went back to his desk and started writing up some of the reports he was getting. As soon as he finished one, he carried it back to the typesetters, who set about turning it into something someone besides him and them and perhaps Alexandra could read.

By the time he'd finished a couple, a great rattle of small-arms fire had broken out to the west. It rapidly got louder and closer. People might be shooting at the British Marines, but they were shooting back, too, and evidently to better effect.

Smoke started floating in through what had been the front window. Clemens coughed a couple of times, then called, "Boys, if you want to go out in the street, I won't say a word. This is a fine paper, but it's not worth burning up for."

Most of the printers and typesetters did leave the building. As long as some of them stuck, Sam did, too, figuring the men out there would warn him before advancing flames got too close. He covered page after page of paper, wondering all the while if what he wrote would meet a hotter critic than he'd ever been.

Clay Herndon burst into the offices without his jacket, with his cravat all askew, and with blood running down the side of his face. "My God, Sam!" he cried hoarsely. "They're coming this way! Nobody can stop them. They're coming!"

Clemens pulled a bottle of whiskey out of a desk drawer. "Here," he said. "Drink some of this." Herndon did, and then wheezed and choked. Sam said, "Wipe your face and tell me what happened to you."

Herndon ran a sleeve across his cheek and seemed astonished when it came away red. "Must have been when a bullet took out a window and sprayed me with glass," he said. "It's nothing. Listen, those Royal Marines make the Regulars look sick. Nobody can shift 'em, and they're not far behind me, either."

"What in tarnation are the limeys up to?" Clemens demanded. "I thought they'd do some shooting and burning for show, but if they're on your heels"-and the ever-swelling racket of gunfire made that obviously true-"they must be after something bigger. But what?"

"Damned if I know," the reporter said. "Whatever it is, who's going to stop 'em?"

"City Hall?" Sam mused. He shook his head. "No, too much to hope for-and if they shoot Mayor Sutro, the city gets stronger." And then, almost with the force of divine relation, he knew, or thought he did: "My God! The U.S. Mint!"

"I don't know." Herndon took another slug of whiskey. "You can't imagine what it's like out there. All fire and smoke and chaos and people shooting and people running and people screaming and horses screaming and the only ones who have any notion of what they're doing or where they're going are the Marines."

"You sound like a man talking about the devils in hell," Clemens said.

"You aren't far wrong," Herndon said. "Listen, if they are after the Mint, it's not far from here-down on Mission, by Fifth." He swayed where he stood. Shock? Whiskey? Some of both? Probably the last, Sam guessed. The reporter gathered himself. "They'll be here soon. That's not good."

"Have to get the story," Sam said, and pushed outside past Herndon. People were still dashing every which way, some with weapons, some without. And then, almost without warning, they weren't running every which way. They were all running east, with rifle fire lashing them on. Every so often, someone with a rifle or pistol would pause to send back a shot or two. After that, he'd run some more.

Except one of them didn't run any more. Instead, he fell, clutching his chest. A moment later, a skinny little man in an unfamiliar uniform not far from Confederate butternut dashed up and bayoneted him to make sure he didn't get up again. Then he yanked the long, bloody bayonet free and aimed his rifle at Sam Clemens.

Time stretched endlessly. As if in a dream, Sam raised his hands to show he was unarmed. The Royal Marine's face was sweaty and smoke-stained. His scowl showed very bad teeth. He couldn't have stood more than fifty feet from Sam: point-blank range. After a hundred years in which Sam's heart beat once, the Englishman turned the rifle aside and ran on.

All the starch went out of Clemens' knees. Even though the Marine had not shot him, he sagged to the pavement. Now, instead of once in a hundred years, his heart thudded a thousand times a second. More and more Royal Marines dashed past him. None of them gave him a second glance; no one could have imagined him a danger at that moment.

More gunfire rang out, not far to the east: the Mint, sure enough. He remained too dazed to feel proud of being right. Some of the British fighting men must have brought dynamite, for loud explosions smote the ear. "Move against them!" shouted a fellow in a captain's uniform: surely a volunteer. No one moved against them, no matter how he bellowed and carried on.

And then, quite suddenly, or so it seemed to Sam, the Royal Marines were running west where they had been running east. He went back into the Morning Call offices. "You know what this is?" he said to Clay Herndon. "It's the biggest goddamn bank holdup in the history of the world."

"How much silver and gold do you think however many British Marines there are could carry away?" Herndon asked in an awed voice.

"Don't know the answer to that one, but I'll tell you this: people are going to fight over the bodies of any who got killed the way lions fought over the Christians in the Coliseum," Sam said.

As the sounds of gunfire had once advanced through San Francisco, so now they retreated toward the Pacific. Half an hour after the Royal Marines departed from whatever was left of the U.S. Mint (by the smoke billowing up from it, not much), two natty companies of Regular Army infantry marched past the Morning Call offices in neat formation, sun gleaming from their fixed bayonets. Sam didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He took that bottle out of his desk and got drunk instead.

Brigadier General Orlando Willcox beamed at Frederick Douglass. "How good to have you restored to my table here once more," the commander of the Army of the Ohio said, raising his coffee cup in salute as if it were a goblet of wine. "A pleasure to see you returned to freedom, and a pleasure to enjoy your company again. Your very good health." He drank the unspirituous toast.

So did all the officers at his table, even Captain Richardson. "Thank you very much, General," Douglass said. "Believe me, I feel myself delivered, as were the Israelites from Pharaoh's bondage in the land of Egypt."

"You are a pious man, Mr. Douglass," Colonel Alfred von Schlieffen said. "This is in my judgment good. It will take you through hard times in your life more surely than will anything else."

Douglass eyed the German military attache. What did he know of hard times? In his life, Prussia had gone from triumph to triumph, and now headed a German Empire that was surely the strongest power on the European continent. He had not seen his nation split in two, nor ninety percent of his own people, his own kind, trapped in bondagelike the Israelites indeed, Douglass thought.

But then he recalled having heard that Schlieffen had lost his wife in childbed. That was an anguish Douglass had never had to bear. He nodded judiciously. Schlieffen could know whereof he spoke.

"They brought you before Stonewall himself, didn't they?" someone asked. "What was that like?"

What had that been like? Stonewall was a name with which mothers in the United States, and especially Negro mothers in the United States, had been frightening naughty children for a generation. "When the Rebel soldiers took me into his tent, I told him I thought I had come before the Antichrist."

"As well you might," General Willcox said, and then, "Oh, thank you, Grady." The cook set on a table a large tray piled high with squab.

The succulently roasted birds went from tray to plates in next to nothing flat. Douglass snagged a couple for himself. Baked potatoes followed shortly. He went on, "The very strange thing was that Jackson 's artillery commander-"

"General Alexander," Oliver Richardson put in.

"General Alexander, yes," Douglass agreed. "Shortly before my arrival there, he had likened me to the Antichrist."

Richardson nodded, as if he not only believed Alexander would say such a thing but agreed with it himself. Orlando Willcox asked, "And do you and the Confederate generals still hold this view of each other?"

Cutting up a potato and grinding pepper over it, Douglass paused before answering. Then, slowly, reluctantly, he said, "I, at any rate, do not. General Jackson is a man convinced of his Tightness and of his righteousness, but not the horrific figure of evil I had made of him in my mind."

Captain Richardson looked mischievous. "You'll notice, friends, Douglass says nothing of whether the Rebs changed their minds about him." He spoke lightly, so the words would be taken for a joke, but Douglass did not think he was joking. By the snide laughs that rose around the table, neither did a good many members of Willcox's staff.

"In fact, I believe they did," Douglass answered. "We shall never love one another. We may now know a certain respect previously lacking." He laughed a laugh of his own. "I cannot deny that General Jackson treated me far more respectfully than the Rebel soldiers who first took hold of me." He chuckled again. That rib didn't seem to be broken after all. He didn't know why not.

Down at the far end of the table, someone said, "They didn't worry about the Antichrist, I'll bet. They likely thought they'd nabbed Old Scratch himself." That got another laugh, this time one in which Douglass felt he could join. That major down there wasn't far wrong.

Colonel Schlieffen changed the subject, saying, "These"-he groped for the English word-"these doves are very good eating. And we have them often, so they must common be. Very good." He sucked the meat off a leg bone.

"Not doves, Colonel." Oliver Richardson enjoyed showing off how much he knew, though this was something any American schoolboy could have told the German military attache. "They're passenger pigeons, and yes, they are very common in this part of the country."

"Not so common as they used to be," General Willcox said. "When I was a lad in Michigan, the flocks would darken the sky, as the Persians' arrows are said to have done at Thermopylae against the Greeks. Swarms of that size are no longer seen: fewer forests here in the Midwest where the birds can rear their young than in the old days, 1 suppose. But, as Captain Richardson says, they do remain common."

"And, as Colonel Schlieffen says, they do remain very good eating." Douglass had reduced the two he'd taken to a pile of bones. He hooked another bird off the tray and devoured it, too.

Schlieffen said, "I am glad, Mr. Douglass, you here again to see, and to know that you are safe after being captured. I will not much longer with the Army of the Ohio stay, I think. I have learned much here, and am sorry to have to go, but I think it is for the best."

"I'll miss you, Colonel," Douglass said, and meant it. Like most Europeans he'd met, Schlieffen was far more prepared to accept him simply as a man, and not as a black man, than the common run of Americans. "But, if you're still learning things here, why go?"

"I believe," Schlieffen replied after a perceptible pause for thought, "that what new things I may learn by staying will be small next to the knowledge I have already gained."

Douglass needed a moment to figure out why the German had taken such pains with his answer. Then he saw: Schlieffen was saying he didn't expect the Army of the Ohio to accomplish much more than it had already done. He didn't expect U.S. soldiers to break through the Confederate entrenchments ringing them and to rampage across Kentucky. Had he thought they could manage something like that, he might have stayed to watch them do it.

And, in saying the Army of the Ohio was unlikely to accomplish anything more, he was also saying that army had failed. It still did not hold all of Louisville; its flanking manoeuvre had been costly but had not dislodged the Rebels. Even if it did eventually dislodge the Rebels from Louisville, it surely could not launch any triumphal progress through Kentucky thereafter. Since triumph was what Blaine and Willcox had purposed, anything less meant defeat.

No wonder Schlieffen was so careful not to offend. His departure passed judgment on the campaign and on those who ran it.

Richardson said, "Whether he reckons you're the Antichrist or not, Mr. Douglass"-he was smooth when he wanted to be, smooth enough to use a title in public, no matter how hypocritically-"I'm surprised old Stonewall up and let you go instead of keeping you to trade for a Reb or something."

Douglass shrugged. "Had the decision been his, I do not know what he would have done with me-or to me. Had the decision been his, I gather he did not know what he would have done. He referred it to President Longstreet, however, who ordered my release. Having received the order, Jackson not only obeyed but treated me quite handsomely."

Better than you deserved, Richardson 's face said.

Orlando Willcox sighed. "Longstreet was more astute than I had thought he would be. By releasing you so promptly and with such good treatment, he enabled the Confederate States to escape the odium that would have fallen on them had they sought to punish you for your views and actions over the years."

"Yes," Douglass said, and let it go at that. Martyrdom was easier to contemplate in the abstract than to embrace in the flesh.

From across the Ohio, artillery rumbled. "Confederate guns," Captain Richardson said, and grimaced. "We've done everything we could, but we never have been able to beat them down."

"The long range of modern guns makes this hard," Schlieffen said. "So we learned when we fought the French. When the guns you are shooting at are behind a hill or otherwise hidden out of sight, finding accurately the range is not easy."

"True, true," General Willcox said sadly. "During the War of Secession, you could see what you were shooting at, and what you could see, you could hit. Only twenty years ago, but how much has changed since."

"We do use up a lot of ammunition feeling around for where the other fellow is, and that's a fact," Richardson said. "A good thing he's doing the same with us, or we'd be in the soup."

"Who learns first how to find the range to the enemy's guns will a large advantage have in the war where this happens," Schlieffen said.

Nods went up and down the table. Oliver Richardson said, "When they're in sight, a rangefinder like the ones the Navy uses would do some good. But land isn't flat, the way water is. Guns can hide almost anywhere, and shoot from behind hills, as you say, Colonel. I'd like to see the boys in the ironclads cope with that."

The discussion grew technical. As far as Frederick Douglass was concerned, the discussion grew boring. Changing only the subject of the conversation and not its tone, the soldiers, hashing over the best ways to blow up their foes at enormous distances, might as readily have been steamboat engineers hashing over the best ways to wring a few extra horsepower out of a high-pressure engine.

Stifling a yawn, Douglass shifted in his seat. But before he could rise, General Willcox held up a forefinger. "Something I was meaning to ask you, sir," the commander of the Army of the Ohio said. "What was it, now? Oh, yes, I have it: during your captivity, did you have any occasion to speak with men of your race held in servitude in the Confederate States?"

Douglass settled himself firmly once more. "No, General, I did not. I wish I had had such an occasion, but it was denied me. My captors went to such lengths to prevent me from having any intercourse with my own people that, until I was returned to this side of the fighting line, I had all my meals from the hands of white soldiers detailed for the task. Appreciating the irony of having white servants at my beck and call perhaps more than the Confederate authorities would have done, I refrained from pointing it out to them, although I have every intention of prominently mentioning it in one of my future pieces on the experience."

"They were so afraid you'd corrupt their niggers, eh?" Richardson said. He found himself in a predicament that must have been awkward for him: Douglass had seen how he despised Negroes, but he also despised the Confederate States of America. Juggling those two loathings had to keep him on his toes.

"If, Captain, by corrupting you mean instilling the desire for freedom into the heart of any Negro" — Douglass stressed the proper word-"upon whom I might have chanced, then I should say you are correct. Should you desire to construe the word in any other sense, I must respectfully ask that you choose another instead."

"That is what I meant, close enough," Richardson said. Douglass sighed a small sigh. No point to taking it further. None of the officers at the table, not even General Willcox, had noticed that Richardson had called Douglass' brothers in bondage niggers-had, in effect, called him a nigger, too.

No. Colonel Schlieffen had noticed. The mournful eyes in that nondescript face held sympathy for Douglass. Schlieffen, of course, was a foreigner. None of the U.S. officers at the table had noticed anything out of the ordinary. Frederick Douglass wished that surprised him more. Had he really escaped from captivity after all, or only from the name of it and not from the thing itself?

Brakes squealed, iron grinding against iron. Sparks flew up from the rails, putting General Thomas Jackson in mind of distant muzzle flashes seen by night. The train was a special, laid on by order of President Longstreet. No conductor came down the aisle shouting, " Richmond! All out for Richmond!" Jackson 's was the only Pullman behind the engine and tender.

Gaslights turned the Richmond and Danville Railroad depot bright as day. Under that yellowish light, a captain stood waiting. He sprang to attention when Jackson emerged from his car. "Sir, I have a carriage waiting for you right over yonder. You're in less than half an hour later than you were scheduled to get here; President Longstreet will be waiting up for you."

"Very well-take me to him," Jackson said. Part of him-the frivolous part he'd been fighting all his life-wished the train had been hours late, so Longstreet would have gone to bed and he would have been able to spend the night in the bosom of his family and to see the president in the morning. But duty came first. "The president would not have summoned me had he not reckoned the matter urgent. Let us go without delay."

The captain saluted. "Yes, sir. If you'll just follow me-" As he'd promised, the carriage waited just beyond the glow of the gaslights. He stood aside to let Jackson precede him up into it, then spoke to the old Negro holding the reins: "The president's residence."

"Yes, suh." The driver tipped his top hat, clucked to the horses, and nicked the leather straps. The carriage began to roll. Every so often, Jackson saw men in uniform on the streets of Richmond. But he might well have done that in peacetime, too, here in the capital of his nation. From the spectacle that met his eyes, he could not have proved the Confederate States were at war.

"Did you have a good trip, sir?" the captain escorting him asked.

"Middling," he replied. "As travel goes, it went well enough. I should be lying, however, if I said I was eager to leave Louisville with the fight unsettled." He glared at the young officer as if it were his fault. As he'd hoped, that glare suppressed further questions until the carriage had rattled up Shockoe Hill to the presidential mansion.

"Good to see you, General," G. Moxley Sorrel said, as if Jackson had come round from the War Department rather than from Louisville. "Go right in, sir. The president is waiting for you." That was out of the ordinary. Jackson couldn't remember the last time he hadn't had to cool his heels in the anteroom while Longstreet finished dealing with whoever was in his office ahead of the general-in-chief.

This time, Longstreet was going through papers when Jackson came in. "You made good time," he said, rising to shake Jackson 's hand. "Sit down, sit down. Make yourself comfortable. Can I shout for coffee?"

"Thank you, Your Excellency. Coffee would be most welcome." As usual, Jackson sat rigidly erect, taking no notice of the chair's soft, almost teasing efforts to seduce him into a more relaxed posture. Longstreet didn't shout for coffee; he rang a bell. The steaming brew appeared with commendable promptness. Jackson spooned sugar into his cup, sipped, nodded, and said, "And now, sir, may I inquire what was so urgent as to require removing me from the sight of my command without the battle's end in sight?"

Longstreet drank some coffee, too, before asking, "Do you expect the Yankees to break through while you're away?"

"I do not expect them to break through at all," Jackson snapped. Longstreet only smiled at him. After a moment, he had the grace to look sheepish. "Very well, Your Excellency: I take your point. Perhaps my absence will not unduly imperil the front. Nevertheless-"

"Nevertheless, I wanted you here, General." Longstreet took a president's privilege and overrode him. "Conferring by telegraph is far too cumbersome. Were the telephone improved to the point where I could remain in Richmond and you in Louisville, that might serve, but we must deal with life as it is, not with life as we wish it were or as it may be ten years or fifty years from now."

"I do take the point, Mr. President, I assure you," Jackson said. When Longstreet said conferring, he often meant lecturing. Like a lot of clever men, he enjoyed hearing himself talk. Jackson had not seen him anywhere near so happy when listening to someone else.

And the president kept right on talking. What came from his lips, though, was praise for Jackson, to which the Confederate general-in-chief was not averse to listening: "You did exactly the right thing when you wired me after Frederick Douglass fell into your hands. Next to holding the Yankees' first assault at Louisville, sending that telegram may well prove your most important action in the entire campaign."

"That's very kind of you, Your Excellency, but surely you exaggerate," Jackson said.

"I do not! In no particular do I overstate the case." Longstreet began ticking off possibilities on his fingers. "Had the soldiers who captured him shot him on realizing who and what he was, we might have claimed he was killed in the fighting. Had they lynched him after realizing who and what he was-"

"A fate he nearly suffered," Jackson broke in.

"I believe that." Longstreet shuddered. "Had they done it, I should have had to punish them and publish to the world that they had done the infamous act without authorization from anyone higher in rank. And had you hanged him, General"-the president of the CSA frowned most severely-"that would have been very bad. I don't know how I could have repaired it."

"Mr. President, you are starting at shadows," Jackson said. "Douglass"-he'd forgotten about saying Mister Douglass-"is a prominent figure in the United States, but his prominence does not translate into popularity."

"What you say is true, so far as it goes," Longstreet agreed, nodding his majestic head. "It does not go far enough. You see over the hill to the battle just ahead, but not to the larger fight three weeks later and half a state away."

"Enlighten me, then," Jackson said, more than a little testily. He knew he was no match for Longstreet as a politician, but did not enjoy having his nose rubbed in the fact.

Almost to his disappointment, Longstreet did enlighten him: "As you say, Douglass is not nearly so popular as he would wish in the USA. He embarrasses his countrymen by reminding them they lost the War of Secession, an unpalatable fact on which they would sooner not dwell. But Douglass is popular in France, and he is extremely popular in England, and has been for upwards of thirty years. We would have had an easier time explaining to the United States how we had killed one of their citizens than explaining to our allies how we had come to kill a man they revere."

"Ah. Now I see it plain." Jackson dipped his head to the president. "I humbly beg your pardon, Your Excellency: in such matters your mind does cast a wider net than mine."

"Each cat his own rat," Longstreet said. That was not quite the same as admitting Jackson made a better soldier than he, but it came close enough to keep the general-in-chief from being offended. Then the president of the CSA leaned forward and asked, "And how did you find Douglass, General?"

He might almost have taken that curiously avid tone had he asked Jackson about a lewd photograph or something else at the same time illicit and attractive. After meeting the Negro agitator, Jackson understood why. "He is a… formidable man, Your Excellency," he answered after a pause spent groping for a word that fit.

"That I believe," Longstreet said.

But Jackson, once begun with his judgment, would not give over until he had completed it: "Were all men of his race endowed with gifts even approaching those he possesses, we should never have succeeded in holding them in bondage."

"I believe that, too, but they are not so endowed. I have read much of his work," Longstreet said. Jackson blinked, startled. The president saw the blink and laughed. "Do you not favor knowing the enemy, General?"

"Mm," Jackson said. "Put that way, yes, sir."

"Having done so, I will say, within the confines of these four walls and these four ears, that few white men are endowed with gifts even approaching his. In any public setting, of course, I should say nothing of the sort."

"I understand, Your Excellency," Jackson said. And he did. The Confederate Constitution mandated free speech, but no one used that mandate to proclaim the Negro's equality to the white man, let alone his superiority over him.

"As I say, you did the nation a good turn by your forbearance," Longstreet said. "I have received cables from both London and Paris thanking and congratulating us for our prompt release of Douglass. I am convinced it has made our allies more willing to play an active part in the fight against the USA."

"They certainly have done that of late," Jackson said with a smile. Now he told of the blows on his fingers: " Boston, New York, the Great Lakes, Los Angeles — nice to find the French doing somethingSan Francisco, that town up in Washington Territory — "

" Seattle." Longstreet supplied the name.

"Thank you, Mr. President. And this invasion of Montana Territory is one more stroke against which the Yankees will be hard pressed to find an effective response."

"Ah. I see you have not heard the latest." A smile broke through Longstreet's beard like the sun breaking through clouds. "No fault of yours, General-you've been on the train. But this morning British and Canadian troops crossed over the border from New Brunswick into Maine."

" Maine?" Jackson shivered theatrically. "Brr! Why would anyone want it? Give me Mexico any day. Or, seen from Canada, does Maine look warm?"

"There's a-chilling thought," Longstreet said with a smile. "But there are two excellent reasons for invading it. One is that the border, which was not settled until the 1840s, was not settled altogether to England 's satisfaction. And the other"-the smile got wider, as if the president was inviting Jackson to share the joke-"the other is that Maine is President Blaine's home state, which makes the invasion doubly humiliating to him."

"Ah," Jackson said, appreciating the beauty of it.

With a certain savage satisfaction, Longstreet went on, "When I last offered President Blaine peace on the status quo ante helium, he refused not least on the grounds that the United States were undefeated. If I make him the same offer again, he will have a harder time putting forward that claim."

"He certainly would," Jackson said with a chuckle. Then he checked himself and studied the president of the Confederate States. "Your Excellency, are you thinking of renewing that offer?"

Longstreet's big, leonine head went up and down. "I am. Along with the matter of Douglass, gaining your opinion of such a move was the other reason I asked you to come here. My view is that at this time no one in the USA or anywhere else in the world could possibly believe we would offer peace because we are weak rather than because we are strong. How say you?"

"Our Lord did say, 'Blessed are the peacemakers,' " Jackson answered, "but I must tell you that I would prefer to see the United States pay a high price for starting a war over something that was none of their proper concern in the first place."

"Having to give up the war while gaining nothing, and having to recognize our right to Chihuahua and Sonora, to prevent which acquisitions they went to war in the first place, should be price enough, don't you think?" Longstreet asked. "The United States have now twice elected Republican presidents, twice gone to war with us almost immediately thereafter, and twice failed in mortifying fashion to achieve their purpose. Based on that, General, how long do you reckon it will be before they elect a third Republican president?"

"Sooner than you think, perhaps, Mr. President, if you let them down too gently," Jackson said.

"Are you saying I should not do this?" Longstreet looked unhappy, as he did when anyone disagreed with him. "They are there, General." He pointed north. "They will be there. We cannot subdue and occupy them. Now they see they cannot subdue and occupy us. Is it not enough?"

Air hissed out between Jackson 's teeth. "Put that way-" He was not happy himself, nor anywhere close, but the president had a point. Grudgingly, he said, "Perhaps it could be tried."

"1 knew you'd see it my way." Now Longstreet was all smiles. Why not? Jackson thought. He's got what he wanted.

Brakes squealed, iron grinding against iron. Sparks flew up from the rails. Brevet Brigadier General George Custer turned to his brother and said, "Reminds you of muzzle flashes in a night battle, doesn't it, Tom?"

Major Tom Custer shrugged. "Nobody's trying to kill us, not yet, unless it's the railroad line."

The conductor stuck his head into the car that carried the Fifth Cavalry's officers. " Great Falls!" he shouted. "All out for Great Falls!"

Custer shifted in the scat he'd occupied far too long. Something in his back gave a sharp click. He let out a sigh of relief. "That's a little better, anyhow. The railroads," he muttered. "Ah, the railroads. How I do love it when the faster way to go from hither to yon is around three sides of a square."

He stretched again. Despite that welcome click, his back remained unhappy. To get from Salt Lake City to Great Falls, his regiment had had to travel back past Denver, then up through Nebraska, into the Black Hills country of Dakota Territory, clipping a corner of Wyoming Territory before they finally entered Montana. And that had been a while ago; Montana itself was a big place.

"God's own luck it's not General Gordon and the British army meeting us here," he grumbled. "Wouldn't that be fine? — to get shelled and shot up as we were trying to leave the train, I mean."

"Happened a couple of times during the last war, didn't it, Autie?" his brother said. "But you're right-it's not what I'd want to do for fun. We're blasted lucky the Mormons didn't greet us that way when we got to Utah."

"Oh, don't I know it." Custer got to his feet as the train slowed to a stop. "Well, let's get ourselves disembarked and on the move. The sooner we set to marching, the sooner we can send the damned-the dashed-Englishmen back over the border with their tails between their legs."

He was the first one out of the car. Back in the days when he was a mere colonel, others might have tried to leave ahead of him-more likely Tom than anyone else. But those shiny stars on his shoulder straps froze the rest of the officers in their seat till he had gone by. A general, he thought, and walked straighter. I'm a general.

Down to the ground he sprang, boots scuffing on gravel. An infantry colonel stood there waiting to greet him, a blond man a few years older than he was and weathered leathery by sun and wind and snow. "Welcome to Montana, General Custer," he said, saluting.

His voice was familiar, even if his face hadn't been at first glance. Custer looked again and did a double take. "Henry Welton, you son of a gun!" he exclaimed, and clasped the other man's hand. "I'd heard you were up in these parts, but it went clean out of my head in the rush to get here from Salt Lake City. By thunder, it's grand to see you again. Been a long time, hasn't it?"

"Since we were a couple of McClellan's bright young men? Almost twenty years," Welton said. "That one didn't turn out the way we wanted it to. Here's hoping we do better this time around."

"Amen, and we'd better," Custer said. He grabbed his brother by the arm. "Henry, did you ever met Tom here?" When Welton shook his head, Custer went on more formally: "Colonel Welton, I'd like to present to you my younger brother, Major Tom Custer. Tom, Henry Welton and I both served together at Little Mac's headquarters in our Army of the Potomac days."

"Very pleased to meet you, sir," Tom said.

"And you, Major." Welton lowered his voice as he spoke to George Custer once more: "And after all that Army of the Potomac duty, how did you find serving under Brigadier General John Pope?"

"As a matter of fact, that went better than I'd thought it would," Custer answered. "We differed, naturally, in our views of General McClellan, but discovered a common aversion to the Latter-Day Saints and another to the abilities and characters, such as they are, of Abraham Lincoln." He stiffened. "Speak of the devil! There he is on the platform. I thought I'd never set eyes on that God-damned old undertaker again"-he forgot about dashed and other euphemisms- "after we sent him packing from Salt Lake City."

"He's been up here most of the time since, trying to raise trouble," Welton answered. "He managed it in Helena, but he hasn't had such good luck in Great Falls… Christ, here he comes. What does he want with us?"

Lincoln towered over Henry Welton and both Custers. Tipping his hat to George, he said, "I know you find my good wishes superfluous, Colonel Cus-" He caught himself. He was an observant man. "Excuse meGeneral Custer. Congratulations. In any case, I do hope you enjoy all good fortune in driving the invader back from our soil."

"I aim to do exactly that, Mr. Lincoln," Custer said. "And when I have done it, and when our great nation is once more free to turn to the things of peace, I expect you, sir, will go right on setting class against class and preaching hatred and strife until they plant you in the ground."

"I preach neither of those things," Lincoln said quietly. "I preach justice and equality for all men in the United States."

"Yes, for the Mormons," Custer jeered. "We gave them justice and equality, all right-they were plenty equal at the end of a rope."

Lincoln 's long, sad face grew longer and sadder. "I had already heard of that. May it not come back to haunt us."

"Pah! You care for the Mormons more than for the decent citizens of the United States." With a fine show of contempt, Custer turned his back. "I've wasted enough time. Now to get this regiment moving." Behind him, he heard Lincoln walk away. The ex-president's step was that of a much younger man, firm and regular. As long as he was leaving, Custer didn't care what he sounded like.

Cavalry troopers filed out of the cars behind the one housing the regimental officers. They hurried back to the freight cars that held their mounts. From one freight car emerged not horses but the regiment's Gatling guns and limbers, carefully guided down special, extra-wide ramps by their crews.

"Heavens!" Henry Welton's eyebrows rose in surprise. "You've got enough of those contraptions, don't you?"

"Enough and to spare," Custer answered, not altogether happily. "I had two in Kansas, and went down into Indian Territory and did good work with them. After my regiment got sent to Utah to help overawe the Mormons, the other half dozen were attached to me, for no better reason than that the first two had done good work. And when I was ordered here, I was ordered here with the Gatling guns specifically included."

Welton asked the first question that would have entered any good soldier's mind: "Can they keep up?"

"The first two did well enough in Kansas," Custer said. "I made sure the gun carriages had good horses, not screws. I've been doing the same with all of them, but now, with eight guns and eight limbers, we have four times as many things that can go wrong." He affected a tone of ruthless pragmatism: "If they cause trouble on campaign, I'll leave them behind, that's all."

"That makes good sense, sure enough," Welton said. "Well, we'll have a chance to see how well they travel from here up to join with the Seventh Infantry. From that point on, we'll be moving against the British, so if they can't keep up, they will have to fall back."

Custer's face crinkled into a frown. "I haven't been so well briefed as I would have liked," he said, which would do for an understatement till a bigger one came along. He exulted at having the command in Montana, but with command went responsibility. "You're not in contact with the enemy?" He didn't care for the sound of that.

"My infantry Regulars aren't, no, sir," Welton replied, which made Custer like it even less. Then the infantry officer went on, "But the First Montana Volunteer Cavalry are skirmishing with the limeys-that's the Unauthorized Regiment, you know."

"Volunteer cavalry?" Custer said scornfully-he didn't know, and had no way of knowing. "Unauthorized volunteer cavalry?"

"They're good men, sir-as good as a lot of the troopers you have," Welton said. Custer didn't believe that last for a minute, but, if the commander of the Seventh Infantry thought it was true, they might prove better than their name suggested. Welton next addressed that very point: "They started calling themselves the Unauthorized Regiment because they had a devil of a time getting into U.S. service after their colonel recruited them. They still wear the name with pride-a finger in the eye of the War Department, you might say."

"All right, Colonel-for the time being, I have to take your word about such things, not having seen them myself." Custer's tone remained dismissive.

Henry Welton held up a warning hand. "Sir, they truly are a fine-looking unit. And their colonel, the fellow who recruited them and organized them, is a lad to watch out for. One way or another, you mark my words, he will make the world notice him."

"Their colonel-a lad?" Custer wasn't sure he'd heard right.

"Theodore Roosevelt is twenty-two… though he will be twenty-three soon." Welton spoke with a certain somber relish.

"By Godfrey!" Custer exploded.

"That's right, one of those." Welton nodded. "He will run rings around any three ordinary men you could name. He's run rings around me more than once, I'll tell you that. Do you know what he puts me in mind of? He puts me in mind of you, sir, the day you got yourself onto General McClellan's staff. Do you remember?"

"I'm not likely to forget," Custer said with a smile.

Welton went on as if he hadn't spoken: "There we were, on the banks of the Chickahominy, and Little Mac wondered how deep it was. And what did you do? You spurred your horse into the river, got to the other side-God knows how, because it wasn't shallow-and then came back across and said, 'Thai's how deep it is, General.' Roosevelt would have done the same thing there. I can't think of anyone else I've ever seen who would."

"Hmm." Custer wasn't sure he liked that; he preferred to think of his headlong bravado as unique. "Well, we shall see. A man who goes hard at the foe will find a place for himself, sure enough."

"Yes, sir." Welton looked around. "Your regiment is shaping with remarkable speed. Won't be long before you're ready to move out, will it?"

"We're not Volunteers, unauthorized or otherwise," Custer said with more than a hint of smugness. "By God, it will be good to get out in the clean air on a horse's back, instead of sitting cooped up in a rolling box breathing the fumes of other men's tobacco until it was as if I were doing the smoking myself."

Welton chuckled. "Well, then, sir, I shan't offer you a cigar, as I was about to." He got one out, lighted it, and puffed up a happy cloud of smoke.

"Never took the habit," Custer said, "though I really am thinking of starting now, having made such a good beginning at it."

"Here's a habit I know you have." Henry Welton took a flask off his belt. It gurgled suggestively.

But Custer shook his head again. "I was a man who'd raise Hades, sure enough. But I haven't touched spirits and I haven't cursedmuch-since I married Libbie right after the War of Secession."

"Well, well," Welton said. "Should I congratulate you or commiserate with you?"

"One of those should do it," Custer answered. "But I'll tell you this, Henry-if we don't lick the British, we may as well get drunk, because the whole country will be up the smokestack." Henry Welton solemnly nodded.

Jeb Stuart took off his hat and fanned himself with it. " El Paso was hot," he said to Major Horatio Sellers. "Cananea's hotter. Don't know whether I'd have believed that if someone told it to me last spring, but it's so."

His aide-de-camp nodded rueful agreement. With his chunky build, the heat told harder on him. When he spoke, he spoke of a different sort of warmth: "Latest wagon train from El Paso is overdue, too. If the Yankees hit us now, they could make things hot. We still haven't caught up with all the munitions we used against them in New Mexico Territory."

"I sent a wire off yesterday, asking where the wagons were," Stuart said. "Haven't had an answer yet. Maybe the line's down again; heaven knows how it stays up, strung from cactus to fence post the way it is. Maybe a cow tripped over a wire. And maybe the Yankees are up to something farther east. If I don't hear anything from El Paso by this time tomorrow, I'm going to send out a troop of cavalry and see what's up."

"Railroad line might be broken east of El Paso, too," Sellers said. "It's not as if we haven't worried about that."

"No, it's not." Stuart kicked up dust as he paced along Cananea's main street, which would scarcely have made an alley in a proper town, a town that had some life to it. " El Paso 's on the end of a long supply line from the rest of the CSA, and we're on the end of a long supply line from El Paso. I suppose I ought to get down on my knees and thank God our ammunition has come in as well as it has."

"Embarrassing to try and fight a battle without it," agreed Major Sellers, who had a sardonic cast of mind. "We almost found that out, to our cost, at Tombstone. If the Yankees had had a couple of companies of Regulars there along with the Tombstone Rangers, we might have found ourselves biting down hard on a cherry pit."

"That's so." Of itself, Stuart's tongue ran over a broken tooth on the left side of his lower jaw. He hadn't done it on a cherry pit, but on a bit of chicken bone. The comparison struck a nerve even so. He went on, "We've taught the Yankees a lesson, though. Since we licked them in that last fight, they haven't even tried moving soldiers into the stretch of their own country we overran, let alone down into Sonora."

But counting on the United States to stay quiet was a mistake, as Stuart learned that afternoon when a half-dead Confederate cavalry trooper rode a foundering horse into Cananea. A bucket of water poured over his head, another poured down him, and a tumbler of mescal poured after it did wonders to revive the soldier. "Drench me again," he said, whether seeking more water on him or more mescal in him Stuart did not know.

"What news?" the commander of the Trans-Mississippi demanded.

"Sir, the damnyankees bushwhacked our wagon train, maybe twenty miles west of this Janos place," the trooper answered. "Wasn't like they came ridin' down on us, neither. They was waitin' there, right in the road, like they got there a while ago and they was a-fixin' to stay."

"Oh, they were, were they?" Stuart's eyes lit up. "That's what they think. How many men have they?"

"Looked like a couple troops of cavalry, mebbe some infantry with 'em," the soldier answered. "I was ridin' rear guard, but I reckoned you needed to know what they was up to worse'n the folks back in El Paso, so I went wide around the ambuscade and managed to get on by them bastards without 'em spottin' me. They was too busy foragin' 'mongst the wagons to pay much heed to one rider off on his lonesome. You reckon my horse'll live, sir? That's powerful dry country I rode him over, and I didn't do much in the way of stoppin', you know what I mean?"

"Yes," Stuart said. "I don't know about your horse." He did know about foraging in a captured wagon train; he'd done plenty of that during the War of Secession. He also knew the trooper was right about how dry the land between Cananea and Janos was. If he galloped out at the head of a column of horsemen, he'd get to the Yankees a day and a half later with all the mounts at death's door, as this trooper's was now. The U.S. cavalrymen would ride rings around him.

If he galloped out at the head of a column of horsemen…

He hunted up Colonel Calhoun Ruggles, commander of the Fifth Cavalry, and outlined his difficulty. "Oh, yes, sir, we can do that," Colonel Ruggles said confidently. "Those Yankee sons of bitches won't reckon we can drop on 'em anywhere near so quick as we'll do it."

"That's what I hoped I'd hear you say," Stuart answered. "Get your regiment in order, Colonel; we leave as soon as may be."

Colonel Ruggles erected one of his bushy eyebrows like a signal flag. " 'We,' sir?" he asked. "Are you certain?"

"Good heavens, yes," Stuart answered. "Did you think I'd miss the chance to ride with the Fifth Camelry if it ever came up? Or do you deny that a threat to our supply line is business important enough to demand the attention of the army commander in person?"

"No, sir, and no, sir, again. It's only that-" Ruggles' eyes took on a wicked gleam. "It's only that, if you ride a camel the way you dance a quadrille, sir, you'll be yanking cactus spines out of your backside with pliers before we've made a mile. Meaning no disrespect, of course."

"Oh, of course. Heaven forbid you should mean disrespect," Stuart said. Both officers laughed. Stuart went on, "I have been aboard the mangy critters your regiment fancies, Colonel, but I've never seen them in this kind of action, striking across the desert from a distance horses can't hope to match."

"That's what they're for, sir," Ruggles said. "We've hit the Co-manches a few licks over the years that they never expected to get, after they raided west Texas from out of New Mexico. And now we can hit the Yankees who paid 'em to do it. This'll be purely a pleasure, sir. We'll be ready to ride in an hour at the outside."

He proved as good as his word. Stuart spent most of that hour convincing Major Horatio Sellers that he wasn't just indulging himself by riding off with the Fifth Camelry. He was indulging himself, and he knew it. But a U.S. force athwart his supply line was serious business, too. "This is what we were talking about before the trooper rode in, if you'll recollect," he said. After he'd said it several times, Major Sellers, both outranked and outargued, threw his hands in the air and gave up.

Despite what Stuart had said to Colonel Ruggles, he hadn't ridden a camel in several years. He quickly discovered several things he'd forgotten: the rank smell of the beast, the strange feel of the saddle under him and the even stranger grip his legs had on the animal, and how high up he was when it reluctantly rose after reluctantly kneeling to let him mount.

Its gait was strange, too, when it set out east across the desert with the rest of the Fifth Confederate Cavalry. It had much more side-to-side sway than a good, honest horse did. Stuart began to suspect they called camels ships of the desert not only because they could travel long distances on little water but also because a man might easily get seasick atop one.

Despite that sway, in another way the camel's trot was smoother than a horse's. Along with the hard hooves on the ends of its toes, it also struck the ground with padded feet. No jolts flowed up its legs to him. Its strides were slow, but they were so much longer than a horse's that Stuart found himself astonished when he realized how quickly the barren countryside was flowing past to his left and right.

And, while the countryside might have seemed barren to him, the camels reckoned it flowing with milk and honey-or at least with cacti and thorn bushes, which they found an adequate substitute. Whenever Colonel Ruggles halted the regiment to let men and animals rest, the camels would forage. Thorns seemed to bother them not in the least. Some of the cacti they bit into dripped with juice, so they were getting something in the way of water to go along with their food.

The sun dropped toward the horizon behind the Fifth Camelry.

Colonel Ruggles called out to Stuart: "I presume we go on through the night, sir?"

"I should say so." Stuart pointed ahead, where a fat, nearly full moon hung low in the southeast. "That'll light our way. We won't go so fast as we would in daylight, but we'll get some good work done- and we've done amazingly good work so far, if anyone wants to know. We should come down on the Yankees before noon tomorrow, wouldn't you say?"

"You'd best believe it, sir," Ruggles answered. "When you want to get somewhere a long way away in a hurry, camels are the best thing this side of a railroad."

They were also the noisiest things this side of a railroad. They moaned and complained when they started up, they moaned and complained when they stopped, and they moaned and complained in between times to keep from getting bored. Stuart began to see why it took a special sort of trooper to want to have anything to do with them: they were easier to hate than to love. But how their long strides ate up the ground!

On through the night the Fifth Camelry rode. Maybe some of the troopers, long used to their beasts, were able to sleep in the saddle. By the time the sun turned the eastern horizon gray and the moon sank behind Stuart in the west, he was yawning, but he and the rest of the men kept on. As dawn stretched the distance a man could see, Colonel Ruggles sent scouts out ahead of the main body of the regiment to search out the Yankee position.

They found the U.S. force a little past nine o'clock, better than an hour earlier than Stuart would have expected. "Did the damnyankees spy you?" he asked.

"Don't reckon so, sir," one of the scouts answered, and the rest nodded.

Stuart glanced over to Ruggles. "We outnumber 'em. If we spread out and hit 'em from three sides at once, the way the whole army did with the Yanks at Tombstone, they shouldn't be able to stand against us."

"Expect you're right, sir," Ruggles said. "I wouldn't say this if we were riding horses, but I think we ought to go in mounted. The stink of camels panics horses that aren't used to them-you'll have seen that-and the sight of them ought to panic Yankees who never set eyes on the like before."

"Good," Stuart said. "We'll do it."

He swung north with three troops from the regiment. Firing had already broken out from the west when his men came into sight of the Yankee position. It was a roadblock with an encampment beyond it, fine for ambushing a supply column but not intended to hold against a serious assault.

The Fifth Camelry howled Rebel yells as their ungainly mounts bore down on the horrified U.S. forces. A few Yankees got into the saddle, but their horses wanted nothing to do with the Confederate camels. More U.S. soldiers fought as infantry, but, taken in the flank and caught by surprise, they didn't hold out long.

A couple of rounds snarled past and over Stuart. He fired his Tredegar carbine four or five times, and thought he might have wounded one running Yankee. Then white handkerchiefs and shirts began fluttering in lieu of flags of truce. The fighting couldn't have lasted more than half an hour.

"You damn Rebs don't fight like you should ought to," a disgruntled U.S. sergeant complained.

"Wouldn't have had to fight at all if it weren't for you people," Stuart said, borrowing Robert E. Lee's scornful name for the Yankees. He found himself in an expansive mood — the U.S. forces hadn't yet sent all the captured supply wagons up into New Mexico and out of his reach. That made him add, "The way we fight is to win-and I reckon we're going to do it." The sorrowful sergeant did not disagree.