Breakthroughs

VII

Everything squelched. That was Private First Class Reginald Bartlett’s overwhelming impression of the Red River bottomlands. If you put a foot down on the boggy ground, it squelched. If you dug a spade into it, threw away the dirt, and turned your back for a minute, the hole would be half full of water when you turned around again.

“We have to dig in, men,” First Lieutenant Jerome Nicoll said, over and over, as he was in the habit of saying things over and over. “We have to hold on to whatever corners of Sequoyah we can, same as the British and the Belgians are keeping some of Belgium free from the Hun’s boot. They’re entrenched in the muck of Flanders, same as we are here. We have to hold on.”

“Good thing the British and the Belgians are helpin’ us keep the Huns out of Sequoyah, ain’t it?” Napoleon Dibble said.

“Sure as hell is,” Reggie agreed gravely. “And it’s just as much a fact-God damn me to hell if it’s not-that what we’re doing right here, Nap, is keeping the damnyankees from pouring troops into Belgium.”

“For true?” Nap Dibble’s eyes got big and round. “I didn’t know that.” He started digging like a man with a mission, dirt flying from his entrenching tool as if from a steam shovel. “Then this here’s important business, I reckon.”

Sergeant Pete Hairston coughed a couple of times, then pinned Reggie under his gaze as an entomologist might have pinned a butterfly to his specimen board. “God damn you to hell is right,” the veteran grunted in a low voice, so Bartlett would hear and the still furiously digging Dibble wouldn’t.

“Have a heart, Sarge,” Reggie said, also quietly. “I wasn’t telling him anything that wasn’t so, now was I?”

“Maybe not,” Sergeant Hairston answered. “But you sure as hell weren’t telling him anything he could use, neither.” He slapped at himself and cursed. “I’ll tell you what I could use. I could use one of those goddamn flame-throwing gadgets they’re starting to issue, that’s what.”

“You don’t want to just shoot the damnyankees?” Reggie asked. “You want to toast ’em instead?”

“Fuck toasting the damnyankees,” Hairston answered. “You got to be crazy to want to get up close enough to ’em to use one o’ them flamethrowers. Nah, what I want to do is, I want to wave that damn thing around and toast me about a million billion mosquitoes.” He slapped again.

“Ah. Now I get you, Sarge.” Reggie Bartlett was slapping, too, and not having much luck. “And after you toasted that million billion, there’d only be about a jillion million billion of the sons of bitches left, and that doesn’t count the chiggers or the ticks or the leeches.”

“Don’t remind me.” Not only did Hairston slap, he scratched, too. “And fleas and cooties and all the other little bastards.”

“Back in Richmond, I was a druggist’s helper,” Bartlett said wistfully. “Seems like a hundred years ago now. This time of year, we’d sell camphor candles by the dozen, to keep the mosquitoes away, and zinc-oxide ointment, and little bottles of kerosene with perfume in it to kill lice and nits. Some pretty high-class folks would buy that stuff, too.”

“Always knew there was a bunch of lousy bastards runnin’ things in Richmond,” Hairston said. “Just goes and proves things, don’t it?”

Joe Mopope came mooching along. What he was looking to see, Reggie knew, was whether the entrenchments had got big and deep enough for him to scramble down into them without doing any digging of his own. The Kiowa was a hell of a fighting man. He enjoyed fighting. What he didn’t enjoy was the work that went into making sure you stayed alive in between fights.

“Hey, Joe,” Reggie called, “you got any secret Indian tricks for keeping the mosquitoes and things off you?”

“You got to do two things,” the Kiowa answered. His long face was serious to the point of being somber. All the white men in earshot leaned forward to hear his words of wisdom. Seeing that he had everybody’s attention, he gave a dramatic pause as good as anything on a vaudeville stage, then went on, “You got to slap like hell, and you got to scratch like hell.”

“And you got to go to hell, Joe,” Sergeant Hairston said, but he was laughing. Joe Mopope never cracked a smile. Hairston added, “You got us good that time, but I’m gonna get you back. I know just how, too: hop down here, whip out a spade, and set yourself to diggin’.”

“Damnyankees wouldn’t treat me this way,” Mopope said. He did start entrenching, although without much enthusiasm. “Maybe I should have stayed in town and let them come along.”

“Oh, yeah.” Hairston’s nod was venomously sarcastic. “That would have been really great, Joe. The CSA’s let you Indians do pretty much like you please up here in Sequoyah. Ain’t been like that in the USA. After we licked ’em in the War of Secession, they took out after the Sioux, and they been takin’ out after their redskins ever since. They purely don’t fancy your kind of people, and I don’t reckon they’d give you a big kiss now.”

Joe Mopope exhaled through his nose: not quite a snort, but close. “Oh, yeah. The president in Richmond treats us halfway decent ’cause he likes us. Come on. It’s ’cause he can use us against the Yankees, and everybody knows it.”

Hairston stared at him. So did Reggie Bartlett. Little by little, the Kiowa was making him realize a red skin didn’t mean the fellow wearing it was stupid. Reggie glanced over at Nap Dibble, who was still working away like a machine. A white skin didn’t turn somebody into a college professor all by itself, either.

Maybe, if he’d had the chance to think about it, he would have wondered what having a black skin meant. He might even have wondered if it meant anything more than a red one or a white one. But, at that moment, rifle fire broke out to the north: U.S. troops, prodding at the Confederate position. He stuck his entrenching tool in his belt, grabbed his Tredegar off his shoulder, and squatted down on the damp ground to see how bad it would get.

The soldiers in green-gray didn’t come swarming and rampaging toward him. Only mosquitoes swarmed hereabouts. Machine guns started hammering. Reggie watched the Yankees who were on their feet go flat, some wounded, some prudent enough to try to make sure they wouldn’t be. He fired a couple of rounds, but had no idea whether he hit anyone.

One of the U.S. field guns opened up. The shells tore up the swampy bottom country, but not so badly as they would have had the ground been harder and drier. And much of their explosive force went down into the muck or straight up, rather than out in all directions.

All the things that made Reggie glad when the U.S. troops were shelling the Confederates made him sorry when his own gunners returned the fire. They didn’t hurt the damnyankees nearly so much as he thought they should.

But the U.S. soldiers did not press the attack. Instead, they began to dig in where they lay. Maybe that was all they’d intended to do: push their own lines a little farther forward with this attack so they could try pushing the Confederates back with the next one or the one after that.

“If they had a lot of artillery, they’d ruin us or drive us down into Texas,” Pete Hairston said gloomily. “They’d shoot up all the river crossings so we couldn’t move supplies into Sequoyah any more, and that’d be that. But they haven’t got much more in the way of supplies than we do, so we’ll hang on a while longer. Damned if I know how to push ’em back, though.”

“Mebbe they’ll all drown in the mud an’ never be seen no more, Sarge,” Nap Dibble suggested.

Had anyone else said it, it would have been a joke, and everyone would have laughed. The trouble was, Nap meant it, and that was painfully plain to his comrades. In a more gentle voice than he would have used to speak to most of his soldiers, Hairston said, “Only trouble with that is, Nap, we’re down here in the mud with ’em, and we’d likely drown first.”

“Oh, that’s right, Sarge.” Dibble nodded brightly. “I wonder how come I didn’t think of that.”

“Funny thing about that, ain’t it?” Hairston said. He wasn’t mocking Dibble, not in the least. He got the most he could from a man who was willing without being very bright. Reggie Bartlett admired the way the sergeant handled Nap. He doubted he would have had the patience to match it.

Lieutenant Nicoll came by, inspecting the part of the line his company was digging. He nodded. “This is how you do it, men. Dig in well and the Yankees can never dislodge you.”

“Dig in well, men,” Reggie echoed after Nicoll had gone on his way. “Dig in well and they can’t drive you out of Waurika. Dig in well and they can’t drive you out of Ryan. Dig in well and you’ll have your own grave all nice and ready for those damnyankee sons of bitches to plant you in it.”

Joe Mopope’s grunt was evidently intended for a laugh. “You face this the way one of my people would,” he said. “What will be, will be. Whatever it is, you move toward it. You cannot help moving toward it. It is there. It waits for you. You cannot escape it.”

“I joined up as soon as the war started,” Bartlett answered. “I’ve spent too damn much time in the trenches since. A lot of time when I wasn’t in the trenches, I was in a damnyankee prison camp because the bastards nabbed me when I was up at the front. I’ve seen enough now that nothing I see from here on out is going to surprise me a whole hell of a lot.”

The other soldiers nodded. They were grimy and unshaven and tired and wet and full of bites. Pete Hairston said, “Whatever happens, I reckon I’m ready for it.” The soldiers nodded again.

Joe Mopope studied them. “You are warriors, all of you,” he said at last. “You are not just soldiers. You are warriors.”

“Whatever the hell we are, it isn’t worth gettin’ into an uproar about it,” Bartlett said. More nods. He fished through his pockets and found a scrap of paper that had stayed dry. More fishing revealed a tobacco pouch, but it was empty. “Anybody have some makings? I’m plumb out.”

“I got some,” Sergeant Hairston said. Reggie held out his hand with the paper in it. Hairston poured tobacco onto the paper. Nodding his thanks, Reggie rolled the cigarette. After a couple of drags, he felt better.

Sergeant Chester Martin envied U.S. Army engineers. They always seemed to know exactly what they were doing. He knew that wasn’t always so, but it was so often enough to leave him impressed. His own part in the war, he strongly felt, he was making up as he went along.

He also envied the engineers because they were cleaner than he was. A lot of them wore boots that almost reached their knees-cavalry boots-which kept their trousers from getting as filthy as his. They worked now with fussy precision, laying out lengths of white tape from one stick to another.

“What’s all this about?” David Hamburger asked. “They laying out the route for the Remembrance Day parade?”

“Couple days too early for May Day,” Martin said with a grin, needling the private with a Socialist congresswoman for a sister. “Besides, if it was for that, the tape’d be red, and then you’d get up and march along it and get yourself shot.”

“Funny, Sarge,” the Hamburger kid said. “Funny like a crutch.” But he was grinning, even laughing a little. He hadn’t seen much action-things had been quiet since Martin crossed the Potomac to join B Company of the 91st-but he fit in as well as if he’d been wearing green-gray since 1914.

Tilden Russell said, “If he was paradin’ for May Day, the Rebs wouldn’t shoot at him, not with all the colored troops they’ve got in their trenches. Those smokes are better true-blue Reds than any Socialist from outta New York City, even if he does have his sister in Congress tellin’ Teddy Roosevelt how to run things.”

“I don’t know why you expect Roosevelt to listen to Flora,” David Hamburger said. “He hasn’t listened to anybody else since he got elected.”

Martin laughed. Corporal Reinholdt, on the other hand, scowled. “Shut up,” he said in a flat, hostile voice. “Nobody’s gonna make fun of the president of the United States while I’m here to kick his ass.”

“Hey, take it easy, Bob,” Martin said. “Nobody’s getting in an uproar about this.”

“Oh, now you’re gonna undercut me, are you, Sarge?” Reinholdt growled. “Must be another goddamn Red yourself.”

Had he left off the adjective and smiled, he might have got by with it. As things were, Martin couldn’t ignore it. He’d been waiting for this moment since he got here. It had held off longer than he’d expected, but it wouldn’t hold off any more. His right hand went into a trouser pocket and came out in a fist. “Get up,” he snapped at Reinholdt, who was hunkered down over a tin coffeepot.

“Yeah?” the corporal said as he got to his feet. He was shorter and stockier than Chester Martin; they probably weighed within five pounds of each other. By the way Reinholdt leaned forward, he knew the time was here, too. He took a step toward Martin. “Come in here and take the slot that shoulda been mine, will you?” A season’s worth of resentment boiled in him. “I ought to-”

“Oh, shove it up your ass, or I’ll-” In the middle of the sentence, without warning, Martin threw a left. Reinholdt ducked with a scornful laugh. Martin laughed, too. He hadn’t expected much from that left. The arm still wasn’t so strong as it should have been, not after the wound he’d taken.

His right, though…The uppercut caught Bob Reinholdt square on the point of the chin. Reinholdt didn’t fall over; he was made of stern stuff. But the punch he had on the way ran out of steam before it got near Martin, and was hardly more than a pat when it connected with his ribs. Reinholdt’s eyes stayed open, but they weren’t seeing much.

Martin had the luxury of deciding whether to kick him in the crotch. He kicked him in the belly instead, with precisely measured viciousness. Reinholdt folded up like a sailor’s concertina. Martin hit him in the face again for good measure as he was going down.

“He didn’t need that last one,” Tilden Russell said, sudden respect in his voice over and above that to which Martin’s three stripes entitled him. He studied Reinholdt, who lay unmoving. “He wasn’t going anywhere anyway.”

“Maybe not.” Martin shrugged. “You ever get in a saloon brawl, though, one of the first things you learn is, never let the other guy think he could have licked you if you hadn’t got lucky.”

“Sarge, I don’t think you need to worry about that,” David Hamburger said.

Martin wondered whether the kid was right. When the real fighting started, would he be able to trust Reinholdt behind his back with a rifle? He’d have to do some thinking there. For now, though, he’d taken care of what needed taking care of. “Throw some water in his face,” he told Hamburger. “He’s got no business sleeping on the job.”

His hand went back into his pocket. The short, fat steel cylinder he stashed there was just about as good as a set of brass knuckles, and a hell of a lot less conspicuous. Such toys were commonplace in the saloon fights among steelworkers in Toledo; Martin gave hardly more thought to having one than he would have to a box of matches.

Reinholdt groaned and spat blood when David Hamburger flipped water on him. After a while, the battered corporal sat up. His eyes still didn’t want to focus. He spat again. This time, the red had a couple of white flecks in it. He looked up at Martin. “What the hell you hit me with?”

“This.” Martin showed him his right fist. He didn’t show him the steel cylinder he’d had in it. He went on in a pleasant tone of voice: “You better pay attention to what I’m telling you now, Bob. You try messing around with me again and one of us is liable to end up dead. I’m going to tell you one other thing, too-it won’t be me. Now, you got all that?”

“I got it,” Reinholdt said. Maybe he was even convinced. Martin couldn’t tell. The battered corporal tried to get to his feet. On the second try, he made it. His legs were still wobbly. He rubbed his jaw. “Shit, feels like I got bounced with a rock.” He spoke like a man with considerable knowledge of such things.

“Just remember that next time, is all,” Martin said.

Reinholdt nodded, then winced. Martin had caught a couple on the buzzer in his time, too; he knew Reinholdt had what felt like the world’s worst hangover, without even the fun of getting drunk first. “Oh, yeah,” the corporal said. “I’ll remember. Shit, tomorrow’s Remembrance Day.” He turned and walked down the trench. Privates made a point of getting out of his way as fast as they could.

Later that day, Captain Cremony summoned Martin to the dugout where he was filling out ammunition requisition forms. The company commander looked up from the forms and said, “I hear you and Reinholdt had a little talk about the weather this morning.”

“Sir?” Had Martin looked any more innocent, a halo would have sprung into being above his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”

“Of course you don’t-and if pigs had wings, we’d all carry umbrellas,” Cremony said with heavy irony.

“If pigs had wings, they’d be generals, sir,” Martin answered. “And you’re right, we’d all carry umbrellas.”

Cremony stared at him, then started to laugh. “If you’d said ‘captains,’ you’d be on your way back to the guardhouse this minute.” His eyes narrowed. “But you’re not going to distract me with a joke.” Since that was what Martin had hoped to do, he stood still, a serious expression on his face, as if the idea had never entered his mind. He’d had plenty of practice looking opaque for officers. Captain Cremony grunted. “Dammit, Martin, I understand why this happened, but the timing was very bad.”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir,” Martin said. “I couldn’t really take care of that as well as I might have, though. If a fellow wants to talk about the weather right then and there, sometimes you just have to listen to him.”

“Sergeant, if there’s no more talk of the weather between the two of you, I will forget this discussion,” the company commander said. “If there is, I’ll have to remember it. After all, tomorrow is Remembrance Day, and we’ll have all sorts of things to remember then.”

“Oh, yes, sir,” Martin said. “I know that, sir. In a way, I’m just as glad Bob and I had this little talk now instead of waiting till later. We might have said sharper things to each other later, if you know what I mean.”

“As I said, I’m not remembering any of this. And I’d better not have a reason to remember it. I’m telling that to you, and I’ll tell it to Reinholdt. If I do have reason to remember it, you’ll both be sorry. Dismissed, Sergeant.”

Martin tromped over boards and through mud back to his section. When he got there, he found Bob Reinholdt drinking coffee out of the side of his mouth. He didn’t say anything to Reinholdt about Captain Cremony’s warning; that would have made him into the teacher’s pet. He’d seen that Cremony knew what he was doing. The company commander would get the message across.

Reinholdt didn’t say anything to him, either. That suited him fine.

An engineer came along the trench. Every so often, he would pause, get up on the firing step, and peer through binoculars south toward Round Hill, Virginia, and the Confederate lines in front of it. Then he’d scribble something in a notebook, go on a little farther, and look south again.

“You don’t mind me saying so, sir, that’s a hell of a good way to get yourself shot,” Chester Martin remarked.

“Do tell?” the engineer said, as if the notion had never crossed his mind. “Chance I take, that’s all. Have to hope the niggers in those Rebel trenches over yonder can’t shoot.”

“Haven’t seen any sign of that, sir, have to tell you,” Martin said. “They don’t seem much different than white troops, far as that goes. They throw a lot of lead around, and every so often somebody gets hit. The bullet doesn’t care who shot it, only where it’s going.”

“Chance I take,” the engineer repeated, and worked his way down the trench line, not making a fuss, just doing his job. No cries of alarm rose, nor shouts for stretcher-bearers, so Martin supposed he got away with it.

Dusk fell. Martin rolled himself in a blanket, against the chill and against mosquitoes both. He fell asleep right away. He almost always fell asleep right away. He woke up every bit as fast, too, commonly grabbing for a weapon.

Sometime in the middle of the night, a horrible clatter and rumble had him on his feet with his Springfield halfway to his shoulder before he realized that, whatever else it was, it wasn’t gunfire. It wasn’t C.S. bombing aeroplanes overhead, either. “What the hell?” he said. “What the hell?”

“It’s the barrels coming up, Sarge,” David Hamburger said in the darkness. “Remembrance Day today.”

“That’s right,” Martin breathed. “Remembrance Day today.”

In Philadelphia, Flora Hamburger discovered she’d had only the vaguest notion of what Remembrance Day meant. Up till then, she’d lived her whole life in New York City. Her home town observed Remembrance Day, of course. How could it be otherwise? April 22, the day marking the end of the Second Mexican War, had been a national day of mourning ever since. But New York City did not observe Remembrance Day the way the rest of the United States did.

Oh, there were always military parades and speeches, the same as there were elsewhere in the country. But there were also always Socialist counter-demonstrations and hecklers in New York City; Flora had been caught up in the Remembrance Day riots of 1915. The Socialist Party was not about to let Remembrance Day steal its May Day thunder.

In Philadelphia, though, the Socialist Party maintained a much smaller presence. Philadelphia was a city of government, and therefore, overwhelmingly, a city of Democrats. It was also, far more than New York, a city of soldiers.

No one mocked here. No one heckled here. People crowded along the parade route to cheer the soldiers and the Soldiers’ Circle men of prewar conscription classes-not so many of them left, not with the guns so hungry these past nearly three years-and the graying veterans of the Second Mexican War and the aged veterans of the War of Secession and even, riding along in a motorcar, a pair of ancient veterans of the Mexican War, the last war against a foreign power the United States had won.

Church bells pealed. Flora knew the churches were packed, too, packed with people lamenting past U.S. defeats and praying for future victory. Someone in the crowd on the far side of Chestnut Street from the platform where Flora sat with the rest of Congress and other government dignitaries held up a placard that seemed to sum up the mood as well as anything: IT’S OUR TURN THIS TIME.

Aeroplanes buzzed overhead-U.S. fighting scouts, flying in swarms to make sure the CSA did not interrupt the day’s observances. Flora craned her neck to watch them. They put her in mind of dragonflies, and were far more interesting than the endless parade of soldiers and marching bands and veterans.

As he had a way of doing at functions, Hosea Blackford sat close to her. Seeing her looking up into the sky, he said, “It was even more interesting a couple of years ago, when the Confederates stood on the Susquehanna. Then there were dogfights above the parade, and the C.S. bombers dropped their toys not far from the parade route.”

“It was more interesting in New York City, too,” Flora said. “I was there for the riots that year.”

Blackford frowned. “I wish they had never happened. They did the Party a great deal of damage around the country, damage from which it has not entirely recovered even now.”

Flora said, “Nobody knows to this day who threw the bomb that started the riot, whether it was a Socialist or a Mormon who sympathized with the rebellion in Utah.”

“That’s true,” the congressman from Dakota said. “But it’s also true that Socialists did most of the rioting, no matter how the trouble started.”

“What if it is?” Flora said. “What if it is? We were trying to do something to stop this useless, senseless war. It’s more than anyone else in the country was doing. It’s more than anyone else in the Socialist Party was doing, too,” she added pointedly.

“How could anyone stop the war by then?” Hosea Blackford said. “We were fighting the Confederate States from the Gulf of California to the Atlantic, against Canada heavily from Winnipeg east and here and there farther west, too, and against England and France and Japan on the high seas. It was too big to stop. It still is.”

“It should never have started,” Flora said. “A Hapsburg prince wasn’t reason enough to throw the world on the fire.”

“Maybe you’re even right,” Blackford said. “But when Roosevelt called on us to vote for war credits, what would have happened if we had said no? I would not be in Congress now, you would not be in Congress now, none of us would be in Congress now.”

“My brother would not be in Virginia now,” Flora said. “My sister would not be a widow now. My nephew would not be growing up without ever having the chance to know his father now. If you think I would not go back to New York and make that bargain, Mr. Blackford, you are mistaken.”

“You shame me,” he said quietly.

“I think the Party needs shaming,” Flora answered. “I think the Party-especially outside of New York City-has become too bourgeois for its own good, and forgotten the oppressed workers and peasants of the world. If the Socialist Party in the USA goes to war against the Labour Party in England and the Socialist Party in France, where is the international solidarity of Socialism? I’ll tell you where-down in the trenches with a rifle, that’s where.”

Blackford did not reply. Instead, he made a small production out of lighting a cigar. Before he had to say anything more, a rumbling, clanking rattle and ecstatic shouts from the crowd farther up the parade route made Flora forget about the conversation, at least for a little while. Like everyone else, she was staring at the enormous mechanical contraptions lumbering along Chestnut Street.

President Theodore Roosevelt’s voice rose above the racket from the snorting monsters. “Bully!” Roosevelt shouted, as enthusiastic as a small boy over a tin motorcar. “By George, what a bully pack of machines they are!”

They were impressive, if size and noise were the criteria for impressiveness. Each had a cannon at the snout and bristled with machine guns. They were the deadliest-looking things Flora had ever seen. The fighting scouts in the sky were killing machines, too, but graceful and elegant killing machines. The barrels were as graceful and elegant as so many rhinoceri.

Each of them had in it a man standing up so that the top half of his body was outside the square cupola in the middle of the machine’s roof. Each of those soldiers saluted the platform, and Roosevelt in particular, as his barrel waddled past.

“Now go into the fight!” Roosevelt shouted to one barrel after another. “Now go into the fight, and teach all those who dare trifle with the might of the United States the error and folly of their ways!”

He was indeed like a boy playing with tin motorcars and lead soldiers and aeroplanes carved from balsa wood. But his toys really burned and bled and crashed-and made other, similar toys with different markings and colors burn and bleed and crash. He seemed not to understand that.

Flora wondered how such a blind spot was possible. She turned to Hosea Blackford with a question that had, on the surface, little to do with their previous argument: “Roosevelt fought in war. How can he take it so lightly?”

“Because he is what he seems, I suppose,” Blackford answered. “Because he really does believe everything he preaches. And, not least, I suppose, because he enjoyed himself and won glory when he went to war.”

“But he’s been in the trenches now,” Flora persisted. “He knows there is no glory in fighting against cannon and machine guns. My brother’s sergeant helped him take cover when the Confederates shelled the part of the line he was visiting-David has written me about it. How can he not see?”

“He sees the country going forward. He doesn’t see the suffering he’s creating to make it go in the direction he wants,” Blackford said slowly. “That’s the best answer I can give you, and I doubt he could give you a better one.”

Flora wondered about that. Roosevelt was a good deal more eloquent than she’d expected him to be. But he was hardly an introspective man, so perhaps Blackford had a point after all.

The clank and rattle and rumble of the barrels faded in the distance. So, more slowly, the noise of the crowd faded, too. A sort of muted thunder remained. Flora had heard it whenever things grew quiet along the parade route. She wondered what it was. It put her in mind of the roar of the sea by the oceanside, but more by its steadiness than by the sound itself.

Up at the front of the platform, President Roosevelt approached a microphone-which was, Flora thought irreverently, like a fat man approaching a chocolate cake, for the president had no more need of the one than the fat fellow did of the other.

“Listen!” Roosevelt called to the crowd. Pointing to the south, he went on, “Do you know what that is?” Flora realized the low reverberations were coming from that direction.

“Tell us!” somebody-probably a paid shill-called from the crowd.

“I will tell you,” Roosevelt said. “That is the sound of our heavy guns, shelling the forces of the Confederate States still on U.S. soil. We are also shelling them on their own territory, and the Canadians and British opposing us in the north. This is a Remembrance Day they shall remember forever, yes, remember with fear and trembling.”

How the people cheered! Listening to them sent a chill through Flora. The war was not popular in her home district, nor anything about it. The war itself was probably unpopular in Philadelphia, too. But victory, and what victory would bring-those were popular. Flora’s district was full of immigrants, newcomers to the United States, who didn’t bear the full weight of a half century’s resentment and hatred and humiliation on their shoulders.

It was different here. The Army of Northern Virginia had occupied Philadelphia at the end of the War of Secession, as it had come so close to doing in this war. The government had fled here in the Second Mexican War and the present struggle. Philadelphians didn’t merely want peace-they wanted revenge, wanted it with a brooding desire frightening in its intensity.

Lost in her own thoughts, she’d missed some of what Roosevelt was saying. “And if we have suffered,” he thundered now, “our foes have suffered more. If they have overrun some of our sacred soil, we stand in arms on more of theirs. If our cities have suffered from their bombing aeroplanes, their cities have suffered more from our mighty bombers. And we advance, my friends. We advance! Everywhere on the continent of North America, the foe is in retreat.

“So I say to you, stand fast! The enemy’s hope is that our resolve will falter. They pray in Richmond, they pray in Canada, that we shall weary of the struggle. They pray that we shall throw in our hand, our winning hand, and give them at the table what they cannot win on the field of battle. Will we fall into their trap, my fellow citizens of the United States?”

“No!” the crowd cried, a great and angry roar.

Hosea Blackford leaned toward Flora. “Now you see the danger of opposing the war effort too strongly.”

“No, I don’t,” she answered. “I only hear a lot of wind.”

Blackford shook his head. “It’s worse than that. Suppose we do everything we can to end the war…and Teddy Roosevelt goes ahead and wins it anyhow? Who would ever take us seriously again? If Lincoln had somehow won the War of Secession, don’t you think the Republicans would have tarred the Democrats with the brush of peace? Don’t you think Roosevelt would do the same to us-and enjoy every minute of it?”

That was a larger political calculation than Flora had ever tried to make. “Do you really imagine a victory like that is possible?” she asked as the president reached another rhetorical crescendo.

Through the bellowed applause of the crowd, Congressman Blackford gave an answer that chilled her though the day was warm and sunny: “I begin to think it may be.”

Lieutenant Colonel Irving Morrell’s barrel rumbled and clattered south across no-man’s-land toward the Confederate defenses east of White House, Tennessee. It bucked and bounced over the broken ground like a toy boat in a stormy sea, or perhaps more as if Morrell were riding a three-legged horse no one had ever bothered breaking for the saddle.

Now he used hand signals almost as automatically as he breathed. Right, then straight, he ordered the driver, and the ungainly vehicle steered around a shell hole that might have made it bog down.

There just ahead stood the first barbed-wire belt in front of the enemy’s trenches: an obstacle as deadly to infantry as flypaper to flies. Straight, Morrell signaled, and the barrel crushed the barbed wire under better than thirty tons of metal.

With a noise like heavy hail on a tin roof, machine-gun bullets started slapping the armored front of the barrel. Some of them ricocheted off the cupola, too. None, fortunately, hit the armored vision louvers. Even with those louvers closed down tight, lead splash was dangerous.

There, straight ahead, was the reinforced-concrete box from which the machine gun was spitting death. Halt, Morrell signaled to the driver, and the barrel stopped. “Take it out!” Morrell screamed to the two artillerymen at the nose cannon. He didn’t know whether they heard him or not. What he wanted, though, was plain enough.

The cannon bellowed. Inside the barrel, the report was hard to hear over the noise of the two White truck engines. The cordite fumes from the explosion made Morrell cough. But, peering through the vision slits, he watched the machine-gun position crumble to rubble. Straight, he signaled to the driver, and the barrel crushed another belt of wire.

By hook or by crook, General Custer had managed to assemble a striking column of more than three hundred barrels. Every one of them-every one of them that hadn’t broken down or bogged down before it got this far-was chewing a path through the wire for the infantry that was following.

Another, last, belt of wire surmounted, ground down into the mud, and nothing more stood between the barrel and the foremost Confederate trench. Here and there, a few brave men who had withstood the short, fierce preliminary bombardment and who were not overwhelmed by fear of the oncoming barrels popped their heads above the parapet and blazed away with their Tredegars.

Morrell needed to give no orders there. The two machine guns on either side of the barrel started chattering. They could not bear straight ahead, but the nose cannon could. And other barrels were advancing side by side with Morrell’s; their machine guns helped sweep out the space in front of his traveling fortress, just as his swept the space in front of them.

As he bore down on the Confederate soldiers, some of them broke and fled. Bullets sent most of those spinning and writhing to the ground. The rest fought on in place till they too were slain.

Over the parapet climbed the barrel. The machine gunners inside pounded enfilading fire up and down the trench, as far as each traverse. The advance had given them a target of which men of their trade could normally but dream.

Then the barrel was over the trench, almost falling into it, crushing the ground underneath the tracks, helping to level its own way down and forward. Shells had damaged the far wall of the trench. Engines screaming, the barrel climbed over onto the ground between the first trench and the second.

One of the machine gunners was holding a hurt wrist from that awkward descent. He kept feeding ammunition into the gun for his partner to fire, though. All six machine guns, even the pair in the rear, were blazing away now, making things lively for any Confederate soldiers unlucky enough to be nearby.

“Keep moving!” Morrell shouted to the driver. “We’ve got to keep moving.” The young fellow at the barrel’s complicated controls raised both eyebrows to show he didn’t understand. Straight, Morrell signaled resignedly. But he couldn’t keep from talking, even if he couldn’t hear himself, let alone make anyone else hear: “We’ve got to keep driving them. If we hit them hard enough now, we can crack this line, and if we crack this line, Nashville isn’t worth anything to them any more, because we’ll shell it flat.”

Left, he signaled the driver, waggling his hand to show he didn’t need a whole lot of left. He saw a way over the next trench line, one not quite so drastic as the barrel had used in its first descent. They went down a ways, they came back up, and the machine guns kept hammering.

He wondered how the rest of the barrels were doing, and the U.S. infantry moving forward with and after them. He couldn’t tell, not stuck inside the way he was. Wireless telegraph, he thought. We need barrels with wireless telegraph sets inside, so we can keep track of what’s going on all over the field. He shrugged. If it didn’t happen in this war, it would in the next, whenever that came along.

Meanwhile, he realized he did have a way to find out what was going on around him. He undogged the roof hatch, threw it open, stood up, and looked ahead and to the rear. “Bully,” he said softly. “Oh, bully.”

A few of the barrels had bogged down in trenches and shell holes. Others had taken hits from artillery or were otherwise disabled, some pouring pillars of greasy black smoke into the sky to mark their pyres. But most, like his, were still rumbling forward-rumbling forward and driving all before them.

The artillerymen fired the barrel’s nose cannon. Out here in the open air, the noise was terrific, like a clap of doom. The high-explosive shell exploded in front of a knot of Confederate soldiers and knocked them flying. Some, Morrell saw, were colored men. That confirmed intelligence reports. The shell didn’t care. It did its damage most impartially.

He took another look over his shoulder, and pumped a fist in the air in delight. In the wake of the barrels, and coming up even with the slower ones, were infantrymen in green-gray, swarming forward and out to the flanks to take possession of the ground the barrels cleared.

Not all the Confederate troops, white or Negro, were breaking. Morrell rapidly discovered that, while standing up so his head and torso were out of the barrel gave him a far better view of the field than he could have had inside the machine, it also made him a far better target. Bullets cracked past his head. Others clanged and ricocheted off the cupola with assorted metallic sounds of fury.

After half a minute or so, he decided he’d be tempting fate if he stayed out there any longer. He ducked back into the infernal gloom and fumes inside the barrel, and slammed the hatch shut after him. The driver and the rest of the crew stared at him as if convinced he’d gone utterly mad. His grin was compounded of excitement and triumph. He stuck up a thumb to show how things were going on the battlefield as a whole, then signaled to the driver. Straight, his hands said. The driver, eyes wide, saluted before pressing on.

The crew cheered loud enough to be heard over the roar and rumble of engines, tracks, and guns.

How far had they come? Morrell was sure they’d made better than a mile, maybe even a mile and a half, and noon was-he checked his watch-still more than an hour away. If they could keep it up, they’d have a hole miles wide and three or four miles deep torn in the Confederate line by the time the sun set on this most spectacular Remembrance Day of all time.

“Keep going,” he muttered. “We’ve got to keep going.”

Plenty of men in butternut were inclined to disagree with him. The C.S. soldiers defending the line above Nashville understood its importance every bit as well as did the U.S. attackers. The roar off to his left was a barrel taking a direct hit from a shell. Another shell struck in front of his own machine, showering the armored chassis with fragments and lumps of earth.

Speed up, he signaled the driver, and the barrel rattled forward. As if he were in an aeroplane, he went through random right and left turns to throw off the enemy gunners’ aim. Hitting a moving, dodging target was not something the crews of field pieces practiced. Shells burst near the barrel, but none hit. This was not like shelling infantrymen: a miss, here, was as good as a mile.

One of the two artillerymen at the nose cannon waved to him and pointed. He nodded, then signaled the driver to halt. They fired their gun once, twice in quick succession. Peering through his louvers, Morrell watched men tumble away from the carriage of one of the CSA’s nasty three-inch guns. They did not get up again. Straight, he signaled the driver.

A moment later, he caught sight of another barrel, a little off to the right and several hundred yards ahead. He snarled something he was glad no one else could hear. He thought he’d been one of the leaders of this assault. How had that other bastard got so far ahead of him? He was green with jealousy, greener than his uniform.

Then he took another, longer, look. Jealousy faded, replaced by hot anticipation. That wasn’t a U.S. barrel-it was one of the rhomboids the CSA built, copying the design from the British. Barrels had seldom met other barrels in combat. His mouth stretched wide in a grin. A new encounter was going onto the list.

He got the driver’s attention, then pointed southwest till the fellow spotted the Confederate barrel-tanks, the Rebels sometimes called them, which struck Morrell as a silly name. He clenched his fist to show the driver he wanted to engage the enemy machine. The youngster nodded and turned toward it.

The Confederate barrel had spotted him, too, and began making a ponderous turn of its own to bring both its sponson-mounted cannon to bear on him. Since neither machine could move at anything much above a walking pace, the engagement developed with the leisure, though hardly with the grace, of two sailing ships of the line.

Flame burst from the muzzle of one of the Confederate barrel’s guns. Uselessly, Morrell braced himself for the impact of the shell. It missed. The artillerymen waved to him. He signaled the driver to halt. They fired. They missed, too. Straight, he signaled the driver. Speed up.

Perhaps unnerved by his lumbering charge, the crew of the Confederate barrel’s other cannon also missed their shot. His own gunners waved again. The barrel halted. They fired. Smoke and flame spurted from the enemy. “Hit!” Morrell screamed. “We got him!” Hatches on the sides and top of the Confederate machine flew open. The crew began bailing out. Morrell swung his own barrel sideways, so his machine gunners could give them a broadside.

And then the command was Straight again. He stood up once more to look around, this time for only a moment. Fewer U.S. barrels were near than before. More had been hit or bogged down or broken down. But the survivors-and there were many-still advanced, and the U.S. infantry with them.

Maybe they would go on all the way to the Cumberland. Maybe the Confederates, with the advantage of moving on un-wrecked ground, would patch together some kind of line and halt them short of the river. In a way, it hardly mattered. The big U.S. guns would move forward, miles forward. From their new position, they’d pound Nashville to pieces.

“Breakthrough,” Irving Morrell said, and ducked down into the barrel again.

Gas shells didn’t sound quite like shrapnel or high explosive. They gurgled as they flew through the air, and burst with a report different from those of other rounds. “Get your gas helmets on!” Sergeant Jake Featherston screamed as the shells began raining down around the guns of his battery.

He threw on his own rubberized-burlap gas helmet and stared through its murky glass windows toward the line above Round Hill, Virginia, the line that had been quiet for so long but was quiet no more. Here came barrels, a few, widely spaced, rumbling toward and then through the belts of barbed wire in front of the trenches of the Army of Northern Virginia. Yankee machine guns blazed away, making the soldiers in those trenches, black and white, keep their heads down. Men in green-gray swarmed like ants in the barrels’ wake, and between them as well.

“Range is 4,500 yards, boys,” Featherston shouted, the gas helmet muffling his voice. “Now we make ’em pay their dues.”

Normally, the three-inch field guns fired half a dozen rounds a minute. In an emergency, they could triple that for a little while. They could triple it for a little while with the gun crews unencumbered, anyhow. In the stifling gas helmets, they didn’t come close. Even keeping up the normal rate of fire was a strain while wearing the helmets. Featherston felt he couldn’t breathe. His head pounded. Sweat fogged the glass portholes through which he had to watch the world.

All the guns in the battery were firing, though. Jake got a blurrier view than he wanted, but he shouted with glee to watch shells rain down on the damnyankees now that they’d come out of their trenches. The range was too long for him to be able to see individual U.S. soldiers ripped and torn and thrown aside like rag dolls, but he could watch the shells burst and imagine the butchery they were meting out. He had seen enough battlefields to know all too well what artillery did to soft human flesh.

He could also see that his battery and the rest of the Confederate guns on Round Hill and farther to the rear were not going to be able to keep the damnyankees from going forward. Already, barrels were in among the trenches of the Army of Northern Virginia, lashing them with machine-gun fire at close range. Hitting something as small as a barrel at a range of two and a half miles wasn’t a matter of precise aiming. Dumb luck had a lot more to do with it.

Reserves started going forward to help stem the tide. But Yankee artillery was chewing up the ground behind the trenches, too. Reinforcements took casualties long before they got close enough to the front to do any good. Featherston couldn’t tell whether they were white troops or colored. Whoever they were, they suffered.

And the U.S. artillery hadn’t forgotten about Round Hill, either. Along with the gas shells, the Yankees flung around high explosive and shrapnel as if they’d have to pay for what they didn’t use up. One of Jake’s shell-jerkers collapsed with a shriek, clutching at his belly.

The leftmost piece of the six-gun battery fell silent. Featherston dashed over to its emplacement to find out why. If a hit had taken out the crew but left the gun intact, he’d yank a man or two off the rest of the guns in the battery and keep all of them in action.

He discovered the crew was down, but so was the gun. The carriage was wrecked; it had taken a direct hit from what, by the size of the crater, had to be a six- or eight-inch shell. Cursing fate-and the U.S. heavy artillery that overmatched its Confederate counterpart-he dashed back to his own gun.

Stretcher-bearers had carried away the wounded crewman. Jake had to stop and rest before he could do anything else. His heart pounded like a sledgehammer in his chest. He wanted to yank off the gas helmet, but didn’t dare; gas shells were still falling, releasing their deadly contents in bursts of oily vapor.

Like furious machines, the gun crews of his battery kept hitting the Yankees as hard as they could. They shortened the range again and again, as the green-gray infantry forced its way into and past one trench line after another.

“Bastards are going to be coming up the hill at us,” Jake snarled, trying to suck enough air into his lungs to satisfy him.

“We’ll give ’em shrapnel, Sarge,” Michael Scott said, slamming home another shell. “Hell, we’ve got a few rounds of case shot. We’ll give ’em that.” The thin-walled shells of case shot were filled with lead balls. In effect, they converted a field piece to a giant shotgun.

A great roar off to the right meant a Yankee shell had found the limber that carried ammunition for one of the guns there. Jake was a stickler for making sure his crews didn’t park the limbers too close to the guns, and also that they built sandbag barricades between the ones and the others. In case the shells went up, such precautions did only so much good.

He hurried over, panting like a dog. The gun remained intact. So did the loader and the assistant gun layer. The rest of the crew was down, dead or wounded. “We’ve still got enough men to fight this piece, even if we have to haul ammo from the dump.” He looked around. “Where’s the niggers who take care of the horses and do your cookin’? They can carry shells.”

“Titus!” the gun layer shouted. “Sulla!” No black men emerged. He shook his head. “Maybe they got it, too, or maybe they’re hidin’ somewheres and they ain’t comin’ out, or else they took off runnin’ when the shelling started.”

“Worthless bastards,” Featherston snarled, ignoring the possibility that the black men might be hurt or dead. He pointed north, toward the front. “Niggers up there’ll run, too. You wait.”

He would have elaborated-it was a theme on which he was always ready to elaborate-but more gas shells came in just then. He smelled something horrible. Whatever it was, the absorbent cartridge in his gas helmet did absolutely nothing to keep it out. His guts knotted. He gulped. A moment later, he tore off the gas helmet and was down on his hands and knees heaving as if he’d drunk too much bad whiskey.

He wasn’t the only one, either-both the loader and the gun layer from the shattered crew vomited beside him. “Puke gas,” the loader moaned between spasms. “Damnyankees are shootin’ puke gas at us.”

Featherston’s reply meant, Really? I hadn’t noticed, but was rather more pungently phrased.

Another salvo of gas shells burst on Round Hill. Jake spat foul-tasting slime from his mouth, then sucked in a long, painful breath. The breath proved painful not only because he’d just puked his guts up and felt as if he’d heave some more. His lungs burned. He coughed and gagged and started to choke.

“That’s phosgene!” he wheezed, and yanked the gas helmet over his head again. But then he did have to vomit again. He couldn’t do it inside the gas helmet, so he took it off. If he inhaled enough phosgene to kill him while he was heaving…well, he felt like dying, anyhow.

He might have smoked a hundred packs of cigarettes in a minute and a half. He gasped and choked and wondered if he would fall over right there. The gun layer had. His eyes were wide and staring; his face went from purple toward black as he fought for air his lungs couldn’t give him.

Jake threw on the gas helmet. He started to puke again, but made himself keep things down even though he thought he would explode. The gas helmet did hold out the phosgene, and the Yankees didn’t send over any more shells full of vomiting gas, or none that hit near him.

The loader on the gun with the wrecked limber was also down, choking. He wasn’t so bad off as the gun layer, but he was in no shape to fight, either. Slowly, staggering as he walked, Jake went back to his own piece.

A couple of its crewmen were heaving and choking, too, but the rest, no matter what sort of anguish in which they found themselves, kept on fighting the gun. The range had shortened again, too; if the Yankees hadn’t gained a mile of ground since the attack started, Featherston would have been astonished.

And they were still coming on, too. Some of their barrels had bogged down. Some were on fire. But the ones that survived still moved like broad-shouldered behemoths among the advancing infantry, hunting out pockets of resistance and blasting them out of existence. U.S. artillery kept on pounding not only Confederate guns but also the ground across which C.S. reserves had to come.

Here and there along the line, men in butternut were moving back, not forward. Flesh and blood could bear only so much. As the Confederate troops retreated, they entered the zone the U.S. artillery was pounding behind the line. They took casualties there. “Serves you right, you bastards,” Featherston growled. But the disorder and fear spreading through the retreating soldiers also infected the reserves who had been going forward. Whatever chance there might have been for a counterattack dissolved.

In growing horror and fury, Jake realized the front was not going to hold. The Army of Northern Virginia wouldn’t lose a few hundred yards of ground, to be regained later with bayonet and grenade. This was going to be a bad defeat, so bad, probably, that the battery would not be able to stay on Round Hill.

He went over to the two guns that were out of action and removed their sights and breech blocks, which he threw into the limber for his own gun. The Yanks would get no use from the weapons they captured. Then he checked the horses that would have to pull away the four surviving cannon. They’d come through everything better than he’d dared hope. If they’d gone down, he would have had to disable all six field guns in the battery before withdrawing.

Up Round Hill came the Confederates who’d run farthest and fastest. Most of those faces, close enough now for him to see the fright on them, were black. Behind the shield of the gas helmet, his own face twisted into a savage grin. “Canister!” he shouted.

Scott loaded the round into the gun. Jake twisted the elevation screw to lower the piece as far as it would go. He peered over open sights at the men in butternut heading his way.

“What are you doing, Sarge?” Scott asked.

“Fire!” Featherston screamed, and the loader obediently yanked the lanyard. Jake whooped to watch the colored cowards blown to bits. “Another round of the same!” he cried, and then, “Fire!” He shook his fist at the black soldiers still on their feet in front of him. “You won’t fight the damnyankees, you shitty coons, you got to deal with me!”

He brought out the four surviving guns from the battery, brought them out and brought them back to the new line the Army of Northern Virginia was piecing together behind Round Hill. As the day ended, he shelled the first Yankees coming over the hill. He set two barrels on fire. The U.S. infantry drew back. When fighting ebbed with the light, he sat by a little fire, too keyed up to sleep, writing and writing in the Gray Eagle notebook.

Lieutenant General George Custer stood at the top of the ridge in front of White House, Tennessee, the ridge the Confederates had defended so long and so tenaciously. Back in the distant days of peace, the ridge had been wooded. Now…now God might have intended it as a toothpick and splinter farm. Custer struck dramatic poses as automatically as his heart beat. He struck one now, for the benefit of the military correspondents who hovered close to hear what pearls of wisdom might drop from his lips.

“From here, gentlemen, I can see the waters of the Cumberland, and Nashville across the river from them,” he declared bombastically. “From here, gentlemen, I can see-victory.”

The correspondents scribbled like men possessed. Major Abner Dowling turned away so no one would have to see his face. From here, gentlemen, he thought, I can see a fat, pompous old fraud who’s ever so much luckier than he deserves and who hasn’t the faintest inkling how lucky he is.

He turned back toward the general commanding First Army. He still felt little but scorn for Custer’s generalship, but he was having a certain amount of trouble holding on to that scorn. For the sake of his own peace of mind, he worked at it, but it wasn’t easy.

Truth was, Custer had gone far out on a limb-and taken Dowling with him-backing a doctrine directly contrary to the one coming out of the War Department. Truth was, he had won a sizable victory here by going his own way. Truth was, he could see Nashville from where he stood, and the guns of First Army could hit Nashville from near where he stood. Truth was, the CSA had left on this side of the Cumberland only battered units falling back toward their crossings.

Truth was, Custer, as he had done in the War of Secession and the Second Mexican War, had somehow managed to make himself into a hero.

“General, we’ve been using barrels for a year now,” a reporter said. “Why haven’t they done so well for us up till this latest battle?”

“They are a new thing in the world,” Custer answered. “As with any new thing, figuring out how best to employ them took a bit of doing.” He strutted and preened, like a rooster displaying before hens. “I came up with the notion of using them as a mass rather than in driblets, tried it out, and the results were as you have seen.”

Dowling turned away again. The really infuriating thing was that, in boasting thus, Custer was for once telling the exact and literal truth. From the minute he’d first set eyes on barrels, he’d wanted to line them up in a great column and send them plowing straight into the enemy. Everyone had told him he couldn’t do that-doctrine forbade it. He’d gone ahead and done it anyhow-and he’d forced a breakthrough where there had been no such creature in going on three years of war.

There would be considerable wailing and gnashing of teeth in Philadelphia on account of what he’d done. There already had been, in fact. Custer had rubbed the War Department’s nose in the fact that it hadn’t had the faintest idea what to do with barrels once it got them. The only way a man got away with committing such a sin was to be proved extravagantly right. Custer had done that, too.

Another reporter spoke up: “Having beaten the Rebels once in this way, General, can we lick them again?”

“We are licking them,” Custer said. “Not only did First Army smash them here in Tennessee, but I understand the fighting also goes well in Virginia, and that our forces may soon regain our nation’s capital from the enemy’s hands.” He struck another pose. “This was a Remembrance Day we and our enemies shall long remember.”

Dowling listened to that in something close to amazement. Custer must indeed have had a surfeit of glory if he was willing to share some with generals operating on other fronts. He was, in his own way, a patriot. Maybe that accounted for it. Dowling couldn’t think of anything else that would.

“Not quite what I meant, sir,” the reporter said. “Can we here in western Tennessee strike the Confederates another blow as strong as the one we just dealt them?”

“Well, why the devil not?” Custer said grandly. The correspondents laughed and clapped their hands.

Without trying hard, Dowling could come up with half a dozen reasons why the devil not, starting with the need to refit and reinforce the barrels and ending with the geography. Breaking through on the other side of the Cumberland would be anything but easy. It wasn’t so great a river as the St. Lawrence, which had bedeviled U.S. strategy throughout the war, but it was by no means inconsiderable, either. Dowling wished Custer wouldn’t be so damned blithe and breezy. Custer’s adjutant wished any number of things about him, none of which looked like coming true.

With a sigh, Dowling turned away from Custer. In doing so, he bumped into a U.S. officer of less exalted rank. “Beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “Didn’t see you were there till too late.”

“No damage done, Major,” Lieutenant Colonel Irving Morrell said. Dowling nodded his thanks. Having led the column of barrels that made the breakthrough, Morrell was in very good odor at First Army headquarters. “I’m glad I found you,” he went on now. “I have an idea I want to put to you.”

“Yes, sir. I’m listening,” Dowling said. Even though Morrell stood perfectly still before him, the man seemed to quiver slightly, as if he were a telegraph wire with a great many messages speeding back and forth on it. Dowling suspected he didn’t have an idea-odds were he had a whole great flock of them, each struggling against the others to be born.

“Major,” Morrell said, “I think I know how we can secure a bridgehead on the far side of the Cumberland.”

“You have my attention, sir,” Dowling said. That was surely the problem Custer would face when he was done celebrating the victory he’d just achieved. “Tell me how you would go about it.” Dowling did not say he would give Morrell Custer’s ear if he liked the idea. A man full of so many ideas would be able to figure that out for himself.

And Morrell started to talk. He wasn’t a particularly fluent talker, but he was extraordinarily lucid. He had no bluster in him. After years at General Custer’s side, that in itself made listening to him a pleasure for Dowling. It was no wonder, the adjutant thought, that Custer and bluster rhymed.

Morrell also knew what he was talking about. Again, Dowling suppressed any invidious comparisons with the general commanding First Army. Morrell knew what resources First Army had, and what reinforcements it was likely to receive. He knew what part of those could be committed to his scheme, and he had as good a notion as a U.S. soldier could of what the CSA could bring to bear against them.

When he was through, Dowling paid him a high compliment: “This is no humbug.” He followed it with one he reckoned even higher: “Anyone would think you were still on the General Staff.”

But Morrell pursed his lips and shook his head. “I enjoy serving in the field too much to be happy in Philadelphia, Major.”

That he had in common with Custer, at least before Custer had got old and plump and fragile. Dowling had questioned a great many things about Custer, but never his courage. That courage was one of the things that led him to go after the enemy piledriver fashion. It had led Lieutenant Colonel Morrell in a different direction.

Abner Dowling glanced back toward Custer. His illustrious superior had begun to run out of bombast; some of the correspondents were drifting off to write up their stories and wire them to their newspapers or magazines. Dowling didn’t feel any great compunction about leading Morrell through the knot of men around Custer and saying, “Excuse me, General, but this officer would like your opinion on something.”

Custer looked miffed; he hadn’t been completely finished. But then he recognized the man at Dowling’s side. “Ah-Lieutenant Colonel Morrell, who so valiantly headed the column of barrels.” Again, he shared glory: no matter how brightly a lieutenant colonel might be burnished, he would never outshine a lieutenant general. Custer waved to the reporters. “Go on, boys. Business calls. Any time so gallant a soldier as this brave officer seeks my ear, you may rest assured I am pleased to give it to him.”

That made the gentlemen of the Fourth Estate pay more attention to Morrell than they would have otherwise. A photographer snapped his picture. A sketch artist worked on a likeness till Custer waved again, imperiously this time. The fellow closed the notebook and went off with Morrell only half immortalized.

“Now, then,” Custer said, “what can I do for you, Lieutenant Colonel? I trust it is a matter of some importance, or Major Dowling would not have interrupted me in the course of my remarks.” He gave his adjutant a veiled stare to let him know that was not forgotten.

Dowling had no trouble bearing up under Custer’s stares, veiled or not. Sometimes he did have trouble not laughing in Custer’s face, but that was a different story. Anyhow, veiled stare notwithstanding, he thought Custer would forget his pique this time. With a nod to Morrell, he said, “Go ahead, sir.”

Morrell went ahead. Even more precisely than he had for Dowling, he set forth his idea for Custer. Dowling intently watched the general commanding First Army, wondering how the old boy would take it-it wasn’t his usual cup of tea, nor anything close.

Custer didn’t show much while Morrell was talking. How many hours on garrison duty here and there in the West had he spent behind a pile of poker chips? Enough to learn to hold his face still, anyway.

When Morrell was done, Custer stroked his peroxided mustache. “I shall have to give this further consideration, Lieutenant Colonel, but I can say now that you have plainly done some hard thinking here. Some solid thinking, too, unless I am much mistaken.”

“Thank you, sir.” Morrell had the sense to stop there, not to push Custer for a greater commitment.

“Shall I begin converting this to a plan of operation, sir?” Dowling asked.

“Yes, why not?” Custer said, artfully careless.