How Few Remain

Chapter 11

Abraham Lincoln watched the soldiers building the gallows out side Fort Douglas. It was a touch of General Pope's, either extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad, depending on how things worked out, for Lincoln was not the only one watching that exercise in practical carpentry. Far from it: the work had to be visible from a goodly part of Salt Lake City, and those of the Latter-Day Saints who could not see it would have heard of it.

As Lincoln watched the men labour, stripped to their shirts, a guard in a blue blouse watched him. He suspected the guard had stretched the truth about his age to get into the Army. The fellow was trying to raise a mustache, but had only a little pale fuzz on his upper lip. His eyes never left Lincoln. It was as if he were tracking a nine-point buck, a resemblance only strengthened by the loaded Springfield he carried. The index finger of his right hand never got far from the trigger.

"You want to be careful with that," Lincoln said mildly, "lest something happen we would both regret afterwards."

"Oh, no, Mr. Lincoln." The guard shook his head. "I wouldn't regret it one bit." His smile was wide and bright and pitiless and about half crazy. "So you're the one who wants to be careful."

"Believe me, I shall," Lincoln said. Shot while trying to escape. How many murders hid behind that stern mask of rectitude? He did not care to add another to the number.

Half a dozen traps on the gallows. Half a dozen nooses, though the ropes were not yet in place. Half a dozen Mormon leaders to dance on air at a time, though they were not yet in place, either. Lincoln knew John Pope wanted to hang him, too. Had Pope had his way, he would soon climb those steps with Orson Pratt and George Cannon and the rest of the high-ranking Mormons the U.S. Army had managed to run down. A Democrat in the White House might have let Pope hang him.

Of course, with a Democrat in the White House, the United States would no doubt have passively acquiesced to the Confederacy's acquisition of Chihuahua and Sonora. The Mormons would not have gained an excuse for showing their disloyalty to the government that loved them so little. Would that have been better? Lincoln shook his head. The United States should have resisted the expansion of the slave power, and should have started resisting long since. His smile reached only one corner of his mouth. The United States should have done a better job of resisting, too.

One of the soldiers up on the multiple gallows tried a trapdoor. It didn't drop. "God damn it," he said, as any workman would have when what he was making didn't perform the way it should. He called to another soldier: "Hey, Jack, bring me over that plane, will you? Got to smooth this old whore down." Yes, it was just work to him. If he thought about what the work would do, he didn't show it.

Lincoln turned away from the gallows and slowly walked back into the fort. The guard followed, finger still near the trigger of his rifle. "Son, I am not going to run away," Lincoln told him. "I am seventy-two years old. The only way I could move faster than you would be for someone to throw me off a cliff yonder." He pointed north and east, toward the brown, sun-baked Wasatch Mountains.

"That'd be good," the guard said, showing his teeth. Lincoln kept quiet.

Inside Fort Douglas, Colonel George Custer was strutting across the parade ground. When he saw Lincoln, he scowled and trotted toward him. For a moment, Lincoln thought the cavalry officer would collide with him. But by what he'd seen, Custer lived his entire life going straight ahead at full throttle. That struck Lincoln as needlessly wearing, but the cavalryman wasn't going to ask his advice.

Custer wanted to go chest-to-chest with him, but wasn't tall enough. He had to content himself with going chest-to-belly and fiercely scowling up into Lincoln 's face, as he'd done several times before. "If it were up to me," he growled, "you'd swing."

"I thank you kindly for the vote of confidence, Colonel," Lincoln said.

Irony to Custer was like a mouse on the tracks to a locomotive: not big enough to notice. He rolled right over it, saying, "You dashed Black Republican, they should have hanged you after we lost the last war, they should have hanged you again for a Communard, and now they should hang you for a traitor. You're luckier than you deserve, do you know that?"

"I'm lucky in all the people who love and admire me, that's plain," Lincoln answered.

Again, it sailed past the cavalry colonel. He paused to kick dust on Lincoln 's shoes, another of his less endearing habits, then jerked a thumb back in the direction of General Pope's office. "The military governor is going to want to see you. You may as well go on over there now."

"I'll do that," Lincoln said, amiably enough. When Custer did not move, he added, "Just as soon as you get out of my way, I mean." With another growl, the commander of the Fifth Cavalry stepped aside.

As Lincoln ambled along in the direction of Pope's office, the young lieutenant who'd arrested him at Gabe Hamilton's house came out of the stockade, spotted him, and came over at a run. "Mr. Lincoln! I was looking for you. General Pope-"

"Wants to invite me to take some tea with him," Lincoln said as the lieutenant gaped. "Yes, so I've been informed." Resisting the urge to pat the youngster on the head, Lincoln walked past him toward the beckoning shade.

General John Pope looked up from the sheet of paper he was reading. "Ah, Mr. Lincoln," he said, taking off his spectacles and setting them on the desk. "I wanted to speak with you."

"So I've been told," Lincoln said. A moment later, he repeated, "So I've been told." It meant nothing to Pope. It probably would have meant nothing to him had he seen both Custer and the young lieutenant come up to Lincoln. The former president started to sit, waited for Pope's brusque nod, and finished setting his backside on a chair.

The military governor of Utah Territory glowered at him. It was probably a glower that put his subordinates in fear. Since Lincoln already knew Pope's opinion of him and was already in his power, it had little effect here. Perhaps sensing that, Pope made his voice heavy with menace: "You know what would happen to you if your fate were in my hands."

"I have had a hint or two along those lines, yes, General," Lincoln answered.

"President Blaine forbids it. You know that, too. It's too damned bad, in my opinion, but I am not a traitor. I obey the lawful orders of my superiors." Pope tried the glare again, not quite for so long this time. "Next best choice, in my view, would be putting convict's stripes on you and letting you spend the rest of your days splitting rocks instead of rails."

"In my present state, I doubt the gravel business would get as great a boost from my labours as you might hope," Lincoln said.

Pope went on as if he had not spoken: "The president forbids that as well. His view is that no one who has held his office deserves such ignominy-no matter how much he deserves such ignominy, if you take my meaning."

"Oh yes, General. You make yourself very plain, I assure you."

"For which I thank you. I am but a poor bluff soldier, unaccustomed to fancy flights of language." Pope was a grandiloquent twit, given to nights of bombast. He didn't know it, cither; he was as blind about himself as he had been about Stonewall Jackson's intentions during the War of Secession.

"If you can't hang me and you can't put me at hard labour for the rest of my days, what do you propose to do with me?" Lincoln asked.

Pope looked even less happy than he had before. "I have been given an order, Mr. Lincoln, for which, to make myself plain once more, I do not care to the extent of one pinch of owl dung. But I am a soldier, and I shall obey regardless of my personal feelings on the matter."

"Commendable, I'm sure," Lincoln said. "What is the order?"

"To get you out of Utah Territory." Pope truly did sound disgusted. "To put you on a train and see your back and never see your face again. To make sure you interfere no further in the settling of affairs here."

That was better than Lincoln had dared hope. He did his best to conceal how happy he was. "If you must, General. I was bound for San Francisco when matters here became unfortunate. I shall have to set up some new engagements there, having been detained so long, but-"

"No," Pope interrupted. "You are not going to San Francisco. Neither are you going to Denver, nor Chicago, nor St. Louis, nor Boston, nor New York. President Blaine has shown so much sense, if no more."

"Whither am I bound, then?" Lincoln inquired.

"You have a choice. You may go south to Flagstaff, in New Mexico Territory, or north to Pocatello, in Idaho Territory, and points beyond. For the duration of the war, you are to be restricted to the Territories north or south of Utah Territory. I am to advise you that any attempt to evade the said restriction will, upon your recapture, result in punishment far more severe than this internal exile."

"Ah, I see." Lincoln nodded sagely. "I may go wherever I like, provided I go to a place with, for all practical purposes, no people in it."

"Precisely." Pope was almost as deaf to irony as Custer.

"If you wish to muzzle me, why not simply leave me in confinement here in Utah?" Lincoln asked.

"Confining you embarrasses the present administration, you being the only other Republican president besides the incumbent," General Pope replied. "Leaving you to your own devices here in Utah, on the other hand, embarrasses me. You have already proved beyond the slightest fragment of a doubt that you are not to be trusted here, but delight in meddling in affairs properly none of your concern."

"General, nothing that has happened in Utah since the outbreak of the war has delighted me," Lincoln said: "neither the deeds of the Mormon leaders nor those undertaken since U.S. soldiers reoccupied this Territory."

"If you equate the Mormons and the United States Army, we are well shut of you," Pope declared. "Had John Taylor and his henchmen simply remained good citizens, none of what we have had to do would have been necessary."

When phrased thus, that was true. But Lincoln had listened to Taylor and the other Mormons enough to know they thought every effort to abolish polygamy a persecution of beliefs they held dear. From what he had seen, they had a point. But did that matter? To anyone who took the view on polygamy of the vast majority of the American people, it mattered not at all.

Pope went on, "The time for coddling the rebels here is past. We have tried to persuade them to obedience, and failed. Persuasion having failed, we shall force them to obedience. One way or another, however, obedience we shall have."

"What you shall have is hatred," Lincoln said.

"I don't care this much"-Pope snapped his fingers-"if every Mormon wakes up in the morning and goes to bed at night and spends all the time between praying that I roast in hell forever, so long as he obeys me while so praying. When you treat with Taylor, when you hold silence after treating with Taylor, you suggest to these poor ignorant folk that they too have some hope of successfully defying me. That 1 cannot tolerate, and that is why I am sending you out of this Territory."

Lincoln sighed. If singleminded ruthlessness could bring the Mormons to heel, Pope was the right man for the job, and Custer a good right hand for him. The question, of course, was whether such ruthlessness could do the job. Lincoln had his doubts. If John Pope had ever had doubts about anything, he'd had them surgically removed at an early age.

"I would sooner send you out of this Territory to your eternal reward," Pope said, "but, as I have noted, that is not among the choices President Blaine has left me. In fact, he has left the choice to you, and a better one than you deserve, too: north, Mr. Lincoln, or south?"

Lincoln wondered if promising to arrange the peaceable surrender of John Taylor would let him stay here and work to avert the tragedy he so plainly saw coming. Had he seen the slightest hope of success in keeping such a promise, he would have made it. But he did not think the Mormon president would surrender. Even had he reckoned Taylor willing, he did not think General Pope would let him make the arrangements. And he did not think that, if Taylor should surrender, Pope would do anything but hang him.

"North or south?" the military governor repeated. "That is the sole choice left you."

He was right. Knowing he was right saddened Lincoln as he had not been saddened since having to recognize the independence of the Confederate States. "North," he said.

Pope clapped his hands together. "And I win an eagle from Colonel Custer. He was ten dollars sure you'd say south. But for that, though, it matters little. During the War of Secession, you exiled me to Minnesota to fight redskins, and then lost the war anyhow. Now I get to return the favor, and, if you think it isn't sweet, you're wrong."

"I hope you don't lose the war here," Lincoln said.

Being in Pope's power, he was not suffered to have the last word. "There is no war here," the military governor said harshly. "There shall be no war here. Your going makes that the more likely. You leave tomorrow."

General Orlando Willcox studied the map of Louisville. "Give me your frank opinion, Colonel Schlieffen," he said. "Might I have been wiser to attempt a flanking movement than a frontal assault?"

Alfred von Schlieffen's frank opinion was that General Willcox would have made an excellent country butcher, but was less than ideally suited to command an important army-or even an unimportant one. He did not think Willcox would appreciate his being so frank as that. Instead, he said, "Perhaps you might have made a small attack here to hold the foe, and a larger one on the flank to beat him."

"That's what I have in mind doing now," the commander of the Army of the Ohio said. "I have reinforcements coming; President Blaine is committing the resources of the entire nation to this fight. Instead of sending them straight into Louisville, I purpose invading Kentucky at another point farther east, whence I can take the Confederates' defenses of the city in the flank. What is your view of the matter?"

Again, Schlieffen could not make himself be so forthright as he might have liked. "What could have at the campaign's beginning been done and what can now be done are different, one from the other," he said.

"Oh, no doubt, no doubt," Willcox said. "But we have the Rebs well and truly pinned down inside of Louisville now, thanks be to God. They won't be able to shift quickly to respond to such a move now."

Some truth lurked at the bottom of that. How much? Schlieffen admitted to himself he did not know. He did not think the world had ever known a battle like this one. Sieges had been fought around cities, yes, but in all history before now had a siege ever been fought in the heart of a city? That, in essence, was what the fight for Louisville had become.

When he said so aloud, Willcox nodded. "That's just what it's turned into," he agreed. "The question is, are we the besiegers or the besieged?"

"Both at the same time," Schlieffen answered. "Each of you thinks you can the other force back, and so you both push forward- and you collide, and neither of you can go ahead or to fall back is willing. Have you ever seen rams bang heads together?"

"Oh, yes," Willcox said. "That's why I aim to try out this flanking manoeuvre. A ram that butted another in the ribs before it was ready to fight would tup a lot of ewes."

"Before it was ready to fight? Yes, in this you have right- are — right." Schlieffen corrected himself with a grimace of annoyance at his imperfect English. Anything imperfect annoyed him. "But if the second ram were already fighting, it would be harder to surprise."

"I don't even know whether this flank move will surprise the Confederates," Willcox said. "My bet is, surprised or not, they'll be too badly beaten up to do anything save ingloriously flee."

"You place on this bet a large stake," Schlieffen said, in lieu of asking Willcox where he was hiding his wits these days.

"Our cause being just, God will provide," the general said. "I have prayed over this decision, and I am confident it is the best thing we can do."

"Prayer is good," Schlieffen agreed from the bottom of his heart. "To prepare is also good. If you do not prepare, prayer asks of God a miracle. God will work a miracle when it suits Him, but suit Him it does not often."

"No, indeed," Willcox said. "If miracles were common, they would not be miracles." Schlieffen waited from him to draw the proper lesson from that. He drew… some of it. "We shall get these men into Kentucky and hurl them against the foe as expcditiously as possible."

Schlieffen took expeditiously to mean something like expedition, and had to have that straightened out, which Willcox did with patience and tact. The German military attache admired Orlando Willcox the man, who from all he could see lived an exemplary Christian life. He wished his opinion of Orlando Willcox the commander were higher. The man did not lack courage. He had the ability to inspire his subordinates. Both of those were important parts of the general's art. These days, though, the art entailed more.

"In Germany," Schlieffen said, "we would have done more planning before this battle began. We would have looked at the choices we might make. If so-and-so happened in the fighting in Louisville, we would have known we then needed to do this thing or that. We would have done the thing. We would not have had to think out on the spot what the thing would be to do."

Willcox looked at him with wide eyes. "We haven't got anything like that in the United States."

"I know you have not this thing in your country," Schlieffen said in the pitying tones he would have used to agree with a Turk that railroads were sadly lacking in the Ottoman Empire. "You have not in your country the understanding of a general staff."

"General Rosecrans heads up a staff in the War Department,"

Willcox said, shaking his head. "I have a staff here, and a sizable one, too."

"Yes, I have seen this," Schlieffen said. "It is not the sort of staff I mean. Your staff, when you decide the army will do thus-and-so, take your orders to the commanders of corps and divisions. They to you bring back any troubles these men may have with the orders."

"Yes," Willcox echoed. "What else are they supposed to do, for heaven's sake? Aside from the quartermaster and such, I mean."

"The staff of the War Department should have in peacetime been busy at making plans for how you would fight when you had to fight." Schlieffen remembered the incomprehension with which Rosecrans had greeted the idea of having ready-made plans to roll out in case of war, and his own dismayed astonishment at the U.S. general-in-chief's lack of preparation. "Your staff here should on a smaller scale the same thing do."

What he was trying to say was that Willcox shouldn't have decided on the spur of the moment to try a flanking manoeuvre against Louisville, and only then begun to make plans for such a manoeuvre. It should have been one of the possibilities all along, as thoroughly studied as any of the others. (So it was, zero equaling zero, but that was not what Schlieffen had in mind.) If and when the time came to use it, everything would be in place beforehand: railroad transport, manpower, artillery, supplies, so much of each, to be delivered to the right place at the right time. What the Army of the Ohio had instead was frantic improvisation. Some of it was inspired improvisation, as seemed to be the American way, but not all, not all.

Those thoughts ran through his mind far faster than he could hope to turn them into English. "No, we haven't got anything like that here," General Willcox said in wondering tones, impressed enough by what Schlieffen had managed to bring out. "You Germans really do that? Plan everything out ahead of time, I mean?"

"Aber naturlich, " Schlieffen said, and then went back to English: "Of course."

"Maybe we ought to take some lessons from you, then," Willcox said, after a moment adding, "The Confederates haven't got anything like that, either."

"This I believe, yes," Schlieffen said. "They also-is it that you say in English, they make it up as they go along."

"We say that, all right," Willcox answered. "I say something else, too: I say I'm going to send a couple of telegrams to Philadelphia, one to General Rosecrans and the other to President Blaine. Sounds like the USA ought to know more of what you're talking about."

"The French have adopted this method," Schlieffen said with something less than delight. "They are our neighbors. They have seen what this lets us do. You are not our neighbors, but you have neighbors to north and south who are strong and with whom you fight, as we do to cast and west and south. It may help you better help yourselves."

"If it can make us win wars the way you Germans have won wars, I don't see how it could be better than that," Willcox said. He suddenly looked like what he was: a tired man, not so young as he had been, saddled with an assignment even he might have sensed was too big for him. In a wistful voice, he went on, "Been a long time since we won a real war. Indians don't count; sooner or later, they get worn down. But we haven't trounced anybody since the Mexicans, and losing the War of Secession threw us down in the dumps for years."

"This I believe. We in Prussia were downcast when we lost to Napoleon, but we rose up and were soon again strong." Generously, Schlieffen added, "The United States can also do this."

"I ask the Lord on bended knee every night to make it so," Willcox said. "I am nothing. My country is everything to me."

"You are a good man, General. This is how a soldier must think." Schlieffen turned to go. "I thank you for giving of your time to me. I know you have much to do." Willcox nodded abstractedly. His eyes were back on the map. Of itself, one of his fingers traced the flanking move he was planning. He sighed and plucked at his beard.

As Schlieffen left the army commander's tent, Confederate artillery began tearing at the pontoon bridges U.S. Army engineers had thrown over the Ohio. Every so often, the guns of the South managed to put one span or another out of action for a while, but the U.S. engineers were adept at making repairs. Improvisation again, Schlieffen thought.

Smoke mantled Louisville, as it always did these days. Smoke also rose from the docks on the Indiana side of the river; Confederate gunners did not neglect them, either. In one regard, Orlando Willcox was assuredly correct: a fight on this line would take all summer, and would gain little ground if he kept fighting it the same way.

Schlieffen turned and looked to the north and east. He saw smoke plumes there, too, smoke plumes from the trains bringing in endless streams of reinforcements to be thrown into the fire as children in ancient days had gone into the fire of Moloch.

Maybe Willcox had the right of it after all. What he was doing did not work. That argued some other approach might work better. In the German Army, he would have had a list of such approaches at his fingertips, with similar lists of everything he needed to do to use any one of them. Here, he had to think of them for himself and then figure out their requirements. Poor devil, Schlieffen thought.

If the United States did try a flanking attack, could they conceal it till the time came to loose it? Schlieffen had his doubts, for a couple of reasons. One was that he doubted the ability of the United States to keep secrets as a general principle. Courage, yes. Growing industrial capacity, yes. Discipline? No.

But even with discipline, it wouldn't have been easy. When Prussia had fought the Austrians fifteen years before, each side easily spied on the other. Why not? They both spoke the same language, with only minor differences of dialect. The same applied here. The Confederates could easily sneak men into Indiana to observe their foes' preparations.

Of course, General Willcox and his henchmen could as easily send spies into Kentucky to keep an eye on Confederate troop movements and such. If Willcox was doing that, Schlieffen had seen no evidence of it. Did the commander of the Army of the Ohio know whether his opponents were readying field fortifications to help their men withstand the blow he had in mind?

Schlieffen was tempted to go back and ask General Willcox whether he knew that. The map over which Willcox had been poring had not shown any Confederate field fortifications east of Louisville. Did that mean none were there, or did it mean he didn't know whether any were there?

After taking a step in the direction of Willcox's tent, Schlieffen turned away once more. He was a neutral here. His duty was to observe and report and analyze the war between the USA and the CSA, not to involve himself in the result of the struggle.

With a shrug, he headed off toward his own tent to write up what Willcox had told him. Even if he did make suggestions to the U.S. commander, he doubted Willcox would comprehend them anyhow.

Colonel George Custer strode slowly down the row of men drawn up outside Fort Douglas. He had on his stern face, the one he always used at inspections. Nothing will escape my eye, that scowl said. You had better be perfect — anything less and you will pay.

It was, to a certain degree, humbug. Custer knew it. Enlisted men had been inventing ways to hoax inspectors since Julius Caesar's day, if not since King David's. Sometimes, though, they got nervous when the commanding officer's glare fell on them. Then they gave away things he might otherwise have missed.

Privately, he doubted that on this inspection. For one thing, he wasn't so sure about what to look for as usual. For another, he had trouble keeping up that stern facade.

About three-quarters of the way down the line, he gave up and let himself grin. "Well, boys," he said, "I expect you'll be able to give the Mormons holy Hades if they step out of line. What do you say to that?"

"Yes, sir!" chorused the soldiers with the red facings on their uniforms.

"And if you do have to open up on them, I expect they'll die laughing," Custer went on. "I declare, you've got the funniest-looking contraptions there in the complete and entire history of war. I've seen them in action, and they're still funny-looking. What do you say to that?"

"Yes, sir!" the Gatling-gun crews chorused once more.

Eight Gatlings now, each one with the brass casing polished till it gleamed like gold. "Do you know what General Pope calls your toys?" he asked the men who served them.

"No, sir," they answered, still in unison.

"Coffee mills," Custer told them, and grins came out on their faces, too. With the big magazines set above those polished casings, with the cranks at the rear of the weapons, they did look as if they'd be suited to turning coffee beans into ground coffee. They could take care of more grinding than that, though. Custer said, "If the Mormons do give us trouble, we'll have them ready for boiling up in the pot in nothing flat, won't we?"

"Yes, sir!" the soldiers in artillerymen's uniforms responded.

Some of them glanced toward the gallows not far away. Custer's eyes traveled in that direction, too. The exercise in carpentry was finished now. Each trap had a noose above it. The ropes twisted in the breeze off the Great Salt Lake. Before long, blindfolded men would twist at the ends of those ropes.

"Traitors," Custer muttered. "Just what they deserve. Pity we couldn't give it to Honest Abe, too." He raised his voice: "If the Mormons riot when we hang the devils who held the United States to ransom, will we do our duty, no matter how harsh it may prove?"

"Yes, sir," the Gatling gunners said.

Custer's grin got wider. The next enlisted man he found with any sympathy for the Mormons would be the first. "Remember, boys," he said, "if we do have to shoot them down, we'll be making an uncommon number of widows." The gun crews laughed out loud. A couple of soldiers clapped their hands with glee.

As far as Custer was concerned, the Mormons were a dirty joke on America. Whatever happened to them, he thought they had it coming. He peered down the row of Gatling guns. As far as he was concerned, they were a joke of a different sort. A couple of them had proved useful against the Kiowas and the Confederates. Eight, now, eight struck him as excessive.

Major Tom Custer came strolling out from Fort Douglas to join his brother. The two of them had matching opinions on the new weapons. In a low voice, Tom asked, "Suppose we really have to go and fight the Rebs, Autie. What in blazes will we do with these ungainly critters?"

"Don't rightly know," Custer admitted, also out of the side of his mouth. He walked a little farther away from the Gatlings so he and Tom could talk more freely. "Best thing I can think of is to do what we did to the Kiowas-put 'em on good ground and let the enemy bang his head against them."

"I suppose so," Tom said. Like his brother, he would have led his men at full tilt against any foe he found. Also like his brother, he assumed any other officer would do the same.

"I just hope we get the chance to try it, or to move against the Rebs without the Gatlings," Custer said. "Frankly, I'd prefer that. What good will eight of the things do us? None I can see, and they'll slow us down as soon as we get away from the railroad line."

"Two didn't, not too much," Tom observed.

"That's so, but with eight there are four times as many things to go wrong," Custer replied, to which his brother had to nod. He went on, "Right now, though, everybody thinks they're a big thing, so we're stuck with them come what may. Sooner or later, my guess is that the War Department will decide they're nothing but a flash in the pan."

"You're likely right," his brother said.

"Of course I am." Custer spoke with his usual sublime confidence. He pulled out his pocket watch, looked at it, and let out a low whistle. "Tom, I'm late in town." He pointed down toward Salt Lake City. "Will you dismiss these fellows and tell them what good boys they are?

If I'm not where I'm supposed to be on time or dashed close to it, I'm going to get skinned."

"Sure, I'll take care of it for you," Tom answered, "but what's so all-tired important down there?"

Custer set a finger in front of his lips for a moment. "I've got a lead that needs following up," he whispered melodramatically. "If it turns out the way I hope it will-well, I don't want to say too much."

Tom's eyes widened. "Don't tell me you've got a line on John Taylor."

"I won't tell you anything," Custer said. "I can't tell you anything. But believe me, I've got to go."

"All right, Autie. If you do bring that scoop back, I'll bet you'll have a brigadier general's stars on your shoulder straps this time tomorrow."

"That would be fine, wouldn't it?" Custer slapped his brother on the shoulder, then hurried off to the stables. The hands in there were supposed to have his horse ready. He was glad they did. He sprang up into the saddle, let the horse walk out of Fort Douglas, and then urged it up into a trot. Tom had the Gatling-gun crews well in hand. Custer had been sure he would. Tom was ready for a regiment of his own. He didn't much want one, fearing higher rank would keep him out of the field more than he fancied.

The road into Salt Lake City ran south and west. The Mormons Custer passed on it cither gave him hate-filled snarls and glares or pretended he didn't exist. He preferred the former: it was honest. Every so often, a man would clap his hands or wave his hat to the commander of the Fifth Cavalry. Custer always waved back, knowing the Army needed backing from Utah 's Gentiles, as it would surely get none from the Latter-Day Saints.

He did admire the way the Mormons had lined their boulevards with trees. That helped make the heat more bearable. Under the Eagle Gate he rode, as he had when first entering Salt Lake City. He kept looking around in all directions while doing his best not to let that be noticed. He wanted nobody, soldier or Mormon, on his trail. The fewer who knew of the business he was on, the better for everyone.

No one was following him when he turned onto a narrow street, really more of an alley, a few blocks southeast of Temple Square — though when the Temple would be completed was anyone's guess now. Probably about the time the Jews rebuild theirs in Jerusalem, Custer thought derisively.

He hitched his horse in front of a battered adobe building with cafe painted in faded letters on the whitewash above the door. Before he went in, he looked around again. Nobody but he was on the street. The nearby shops and houses drowsed in the afternoon sunshine. Satisfied, he went through the door.

Inside, the place was full of the good odors of roasting pork and fresh-baked bread. It was, however, empty of customers. In a way, that was too bad: it deserved better. In another way, though, it was perfect for the meeting Custer had in mind.

Hearing the door open and close, the proprietress came out from the back room: a redheaded woman in her late twenties, the map of Ireland on her saucy face. She walked up to Custer and asked, "And what can I do for you today, sir?"

"Ah, Katie, my very dear, it's what we can do for each other," he replied, and took her in his arms.

The first time he'd tried the cafe, he'd been after nothing more than dinner. He'd got that-and a fine one it was, too-and a deal of friendly banter from Katie Fitzgerald besides. That and the food had brought him back. On his second visit, he'd learned she was a widow, doing her best to make ends meet. On his fourth visit…

Now, their lips clung, their hands clasped, their bodies molded to each other. Custer, exulting in his strength, picked her up and carried her back to the bedroom. She laughed. She'd squealed, the first time he did it.

"Hurry," she said when he set her down. He needed no urging along those lines. Fast as he could, he divested himself of blouse and shirt, of boots and socks, of trousers and drawers. He was fast enough to be ready to help her loosen the stays of her corset and slide it down over her hips before they embraced again, naked this time, and tumbled down onto the bed.

Custer had strayed off the path of perfect rectitude before, sometimes with Indian women, sometimes with whites. When Libbie was close by, he made himself a model of circumspection. When she wasn't, he did what he did, as discreetly as he could, and worried about it very little afterwards.

"I love you," Katie Fitzgerald breathed into his ear. He had never said that to her. He was, in his own fashion, honest. But the way his fingers stroked the softness not quite hidden in the fiery tuft of hair between her legs might almost have been an equivalent. Her soft moan said she took it for one.

She moaned again when he went into her, and shut her eyes tight, lost in her own world of sensation. Custer laughed, deep in his throat. Libbie did the same thing. Then he stopped thinking about Libbie, or about much of anything at all. His hips pistoned, faster and faster. Beneath him, Katie yowled like a catamount. Her nails scored his back.

At the last possible moment, he pulled out of her and spurted his seed over her soft, white belly. He prided himself on his control there as much as he did on his skill with a gun or on horseback.

"It's a sin," Katie whimpered half-heartedly. She was a good Catholic, but she did not want to find herself in a family way. One side of her mouth quirked upward. "It's messy, too. Get off me, so I can clean myself." She did just that, with a rag and some water from the pitcher on the bedside nightstand.

As fast as he'd got out of his uniform, Custer got into it again. As he'd helped Katie undress, he helped her dress, too. When they were both fully clothed once more, he said, "My brother thinks I'm out hunting John Taylor." He found that deliciously funny; a reputation for single-minded devotion to the task at hand was a disguise as effective as false beard and wig. There were tasks, and then there were tasks.

"Well, when you're not here, that's a good thing for you to do," she answered seriously. "The sooner he's on the end of a rope, the better off this place will be." Custer had never yet heard any Gentile with a good word to say about the Mormon president.

"Now I've got to go," he told her. He kissed her and caressed her and pretended he didn't sec the tear slide down her cheek. He'd never told her he was married, not in so many words, but he hadn't pretended to be a bachelor, either. He said, "I'll see you again as soon as I can."

"What if I have a customer?" she asked with a sly little smile.

"I'll be disappointed," he answered, which changed the smile to a different sort. She hugged him one more time, fiercely, then let him go-No one paid any more than the usual attention to him as he rode back up to Fort Douglas. He whistled "Garry Owen," as he might have done going into battle. But he'd fought his battle here, fought it and won it.

When he got back to the fort, his younger brother collared him at once, as he'd known Tom would. "Any luck?"

Yes, but not the sort you 're thinking of. "Not so much as I should have liked," Custer said, and made himself look unhappy with the world.

"They're wily devils, the Mormons," Tom said sympathetically. "But you have more luck than you know, as a matter of fact."

"Do I?" Custer looked up his sleeve, as if hoping to find it lurking there. As his brother laughed, he asked, "Whereabouts?"

To his surprise, Tom turned and pointed across the parade ground. "Here it comes now," he said.

"Hello, Autie, darling!" Libbie Custer waved to her husband. "They finally let me escape from Fort Dodge, so here I am, with all the animals in tow. I expect they're unpacking the trophies even now." She hurried forward to give Custer a hug.

He had faced death more times than he could count, against Confederates and Indians both. What he did now, he thought, took more courage than any of those desperate fights. He threw his arms wide. "Ah, Libbie, my very dear!" he said enthusiastically, and smiled a big, broad smile.

" Tombstone is still ours," Theodore Roosevelt said, the name tolling like a mournful bell in his mouth. "Let's hope plenty of Rebel tombstones will go up there if General Stuart does choose to attack it."

"Hasn't happened yet, like I told you," the courier from Fort Benton said.

"I pray to the Lord it does not happen," Roosevelt declared. "I pray to the Lord that we instead attack the Confederate forces in New Mexico Territory and drive them from our soil."

Lieutenant Karl Jobst had been taking a swig of coffee. When he lowered the tin cup from his lips, he said, "We already tried that, sir, and got licked. That's why Tombstone is in so much trouble now."

"A shame and a disgrace," Roosevelt growled. "Wherever the fighting truly matters-wherever it's bigger than I'll raid your farms and you raid mine-the damned Rebels have the bulge on us."

"There's a reason for that, sir," Jobst said. Roosevelt raised an eyebrow. His adjutant went on, "Wherever the fighting matters, it's fighting between enough men on each side to have a general commanding them. Our generals fought in the War of Secession and lost. Theirs won. Need I say more?"

"That's pretty damned cynical for so early in the morning," Roosevelt said. Lieutenant Jobst grinned at him. His own smile was on the strained side. "It also has the unpleasant ring of truth."

The courier spoke up: "Sir, have your men seen any sign that the British are likely to move soon? Colonel Welton asked me to ask you special."

"Nary a one." Roosevelt sprang to his feet and paced around the cook fire. When he'd recruited the Unauthorized Regiment, his head had been full of the rasping roar of the rifles and the fireworks smell of burnt gunpowder. He'd wanted battle. What he'd got was boredom, and he was beginning to chafe under it. "If he hadn't told me they were in Lethbridge, I'd have guessed they hadn't come any closer than Labrador, or maybe London."

"Yes, sir. That's right good, sir." The soldier chuckled. "Sir, if it's like you say and them bastards are being quiet, Colonel Welton asks if you reckon you can leave your command for a couple-three days, come down to the fort and talk things over: how it's all working out up here and what you'll do if the limeys ever should decide to get off their asses and try something."

"Yes!" Roosevelt sprang into the air. This was action. If not the action against the British his heart wanted as much as his body craved a woman-which was no small yearning-it was something different from what he was doing now. After sameness that seemed unending, that drew him like a magnet. "Let's be off. I can leave as soon as I saddle my horse. We'll get you a fresh animal, so you won't slow the journey with your worn one. Aren't you done with that coffee yet? Good heavens, man, hurry!"

That was pushing things somewhat, but when any idea bit Roosevelt, it bit him hard. Inside half an hour, he and the courier, him with a Winchester on his back, the other man with a Springfield, were riding south toward Fort Benton. Roosevelt pounded a fist down onto his thigh in anticipation of his first return to the civilized world since taking the field. Then he laughed at himself. If Fort Benton counted for civilization, he'd been out in the wilderness too long.

Walk, trot, canter, walk, trot, canter. The two men kept their horses as fresh as they could by varying their gaits. Roosevelt held his mount to a canter longer than usual: as long as his kidneys could stand the jarring. No matter how rough it was, it ate up the miles.

He got into Fort Benton a little past sundown, riding along the Missouri the last few miles. When he dismounted, he discovered his own gait resembled nothing so much as that of a bear with the rheumatism. As a couple of enlisted men took the horse away to be seen to, he stumped across the parade ground to Colonel Welton's office.

"My dear fellow!" Welton exclaimed. "You look as if you could use a good brush-down and a blanket across your back, and to the devil with your horse." He reached into a desk drawer. The kerosene lamps that lighted the chamber sent shadows swooping in every direction. Welton pulled out a corked bottle full of tawny liquid. "Can't give you that, I'm afraid, but what do you say to a small restorative?"

"I say, 'Yes, sir!' I say, 'Thank you, sir!' " Roosevelt sank into a chair. Sitting hurt as much as moving did. "Oof! I say, 'Good God, sir!' "

"Don't blame you a bit." Welton poured him a restorative that might have been small for a rhinoceros. "I didn't expect you till tomorrow morning some time. That's a long ride for one day, but you are a chap who takes the bull by the horns. Wouldn't have eagles on your shoulder straps if you didn't, eh?"

"That's about the way I see it, sir." Roosevelt drank. Fire ran down his throat and exploded into contentment in his belly. "Ahh. I say, 'God bless you, sir!' You're right. A man without pluck goes nowhere."

Henry Welton sipped at his own glass of whiskey. "If that's the measure of success, you'll go far-and heaven help anyone who stands in your way." He took another sip. He was still behind Roosevelt, but he didn't need the drink so badly and was wise enough to remember he carried twice his guest's years. "So the British are quiet, are they?"

"Yes, sir-quiet as the tomb." Roosevelt did not even try to keep the regret from his own voice.

"I know how tempted you've been to go over the border and take a whack at 'em, the way a boy whacks a hornets' nest with a stick." Welton chuckled. "Be glad you've restrained yourself. Were you foolish enough to try anything of the sort, you'd get what the hornets would give the boy-if not from the British, then from your own side for disobeying orders."

"I understand that, sir. I'm switched if I like it, but I understand it." Roosevelt stared at his glass. Where had the whiskey gone? "When President Blaine told Longstreet we weren't whipped yet, I thought the Englishmen would come down over the border, to try and make us change our minds. Er-I say, 'Thank you again, sir!' " Welton had restored the restorative.

Setting the bottle back on the desk, the commander of the Seventh Infantry studied Roosevelt with considerable respect. "I looked for the very same thing, as a matter of fact," he said slowly. "You may be an amateur strategist, Colonel, but you're a long way from the worst one I've ever seen. If you can lead your men in action, too- well, in that case, you'll make a first-rate soldier."

"And I thank you yet one more time for that, sir." Roosevelt made himself be deliberate with his second glass of whiskey. After getting such a compliment, the last thing he wanted was to act the drunken fool-the young drunken fool-before his superior. "You called me down-that is, you said I might come down-so we could confer on how best to resist the British should they happen to recall they are men."

"Your men delay them and concentrate against them, mine join you, we pick the best ground we can, and we fight them," Henry Welton said, ticking the points off on his fingers. "How does that sound to you?"

"It sounds bully," Roosevelt said, "but, begging the colonel's pardon, I don't sec how it's any different from what we'd planned before the Unauthorized Regiment went up to watch the border."

"It's not," Welton admitted cheerfully, "but 1 figured a few days in town-even so small a town as Fort Bcnton-would do you a world of good. You're not used to going off on your lonesome for long stretches. Blowing off steam while everything's quiet won't hurt the war, and it'll help you."

As Roosevelt had seen, the fleshpots of Fort Benton were nothing to threaten New York City, or even Great Falls. But Welton was right-the little town by the fort seemed positively sybaritic when set beside a regimental headquarters out in the middle of the empty Montana prairie.

Still… "Sir, if you're generous enough to give me a few days of ease like this-and I do thank you for them; don't mistake me-might I give the troops in the regiment leave to come into Fort Benton one at a time, to blow off their steam? The troops adjacent to that coming in on furlough could spread themselves thinner to cover its ground. I should hate to take advantage of a privilege my men cannot enjoy."

"Well, I hadn't thought of it, but I don't see why not," Welton said. He stared across the desk at Roosevelt. "Colonel, have your troopers any conception of how fortunate they are in their commanding officer?"

"Sir, in this request I am only seeking to apply the Golden Rule."

"You are a young man," Henry Welton said. He raised a hand. "No, I mean nothing by that but praise. We need young men, their energy and their enthusiasm and their idealism. Without them, this part of the country will never come to its full growth."

Had Welton meant nothing by the remark but praise, he wouldn't have felt the need to amplify and justify it so. Roosevelt was not so young as to fail to understand that. But, even with whiskey burning through him, he refused to take offense. Instead, he answered, "Some few men are fortunate enough to retain their youthful energy and enthusiasm and idealism throughout the whole span of their lives. They are the ones the history books written a hundred years after they are dead call great. I cannot judge the course of my life before I run it, but that is the goal to which I aspire."

Henry Welton didn't say anything for fully five minutes after that. One of the lamps burned out, filling the room with the sharp stink of kerosene and throwing new dark shadows across his face. When at last he spoke, it was from out of those shadows and in a meditative tone suited to them: "I wonder, Colonel, what the old generals and captains who had fought so long and so well under Philip of Macedon thought when Alexander gathered them together and told them they were going to go off and conquer the world. Alexander would have been about the age you are now, I expect."

Roosevelt stared. Nothing he could say or do sitting down seemed thanks enough. Forgetting his aches and pains, he sprang to his feet and bowed from the waist. "I can't possibly live up to that." Now he felt the whiskey; it put him at risk of sounding maudlin. "God made only one Alexander the Great, and then He broke the mold. But a man might do much worse than trying to walk as far as he can in his footsteps."

"Yes. So a man might." Welton paused again, this time to light a cigar. When he had it going, he chuckled self-consciously. "In vino veritas, or so they say. Lord only knows what they say about whiskey from a Fort Benton saloon." He suddenly seemed to notice the lamp had gone out. "Heavens, what time has it gotten to be?"

"It's a little past ten, sir," Roosevelt said after looking at his watch.

"I didn't mean to keep you gabbing here till all hours," Colonel Welton said. "You must be about ready to fall over dead. Let me gather you up and take you off to the bachelor officers' quarters for the night."

"As a matter of fact, I'm fine," Roosevelt said, and, to his surprise, it was true. "Much better than I was when I first rode into the fort. Must be the excellent company and the equally excellent restorative."

"If you don't get some rest now, you won't be fine in the-" A knock on the office door interrupted Welton before he could finish the sentence. "Come in," he called, and a soldier did, telegram in hand. Welton raised an eyebrow. "It must be after midnight back in Philadelphia. What's so important that it won't keep till daybreak?"

"It's not from Philadelphia, sir," the soldier answered. "It's from Helena, from the Territorial governor."

"All right, what's so important in Helena that it won't keep till daybreak?" Welton took the wire, read it, growled something vile under his breath, crumpled up the paper, and flung it across the room. "God damn that lazy bastard!"

"What's wrong, sir?" Roosevelt asked.

"You may have heard they booted Abe Lincoln out of Utah Territory for interfering with the military governor? No? Well, they did. He turned up in Helena preaching the power of labour, and started a riot down there. Now he's on his way up to Great Falls, probably to preach on the same text. I'm supposed to help keep order there, and I'd have had a hell of a lot better chance of doing it if His idiotic Excellency hadn't waited till the day before Lincoln was getting into Great Falls before bothering to tell me he was on his way. He's talking there tomorrow night."

"Sir, whomever you send, send me, too!" Roosevelt exclaimed. "I've always wanted to hear Lincoln."

"I'm not sending anyone," Welton said. "I'm going myself. You're welcome to ride along if you like." He waited for Roosevelt 's eager nod, then went on, "And now I will put you to bed, and put myself to bed, too. We have a busy day ahead of us tomorrow, and likely a busier night."

"Good!" Roosevelt said, which made Henry Welton laugh.

As far as Frederick Douglass knew, he was by at least twenty-five years the oldest correspondent crossing the Ohio with the second wave of invaders-no, of liberators-entering Kentucky. He'd wondered how much trouble he would have in getting permission to see the action at first hand.

He'd had no trouble at all. The officer in charge of granting such permissions was Captain Oliver Richardson. Instead of being difficult, General Willcox's adjutant had proved the soul of cooperation. When the process was done, Douglass had said, "Thank you very much, Captain," with a certain amount of suspicion in his voice, hardly believing Richardson wanted to be helpful.

And then the captain had smiled at him. "It's my pleasure, Mr. Douglass, believe me," he'd said, and the smile had got wider. That wasn't pleasure; it was gloating anticipation.

He thinks he's sending me off to be killed, Douglass had realized. He hopes he's sending me off to be killed. Worst of all, the Negro journalist couldn't say a word. Richardson had only done what he'd asked him to do.

And now, along with a raft-actually, a barge-full of nervous young white men in blue uniforms, a nervous elderly black man in a sack suit set out across the Ohio to go into the Confederate States of America for the first time in his life. On his hip was the comforting weight of a pistol. He didn't expect to do much damage to the Rebels with it. It would, however, keep them from ever returning him to the life of bondage he had been fortunate enough to escape.

U.S. artillery opened up, thunderous in its might. As had happened before the direct assault on Louisville, the southern bank of the Ohio disappeared from view, engulfed in smoke. If all went according to plan, the bombardment would leave the Confederates too stunned to reply.

If all had gone according to plan, Louisville would have fallen weeks before, and this second assault would have been unnecessary. Douglass did his best not to dwell on that.

At the rear of the barge, the steam engine began hissing like a whole nestful of snakes. "Here we go, boys!" shouted Major Algernon van Nuys, who commanded that part of the Sixth New York Volunteer Infantry crammed aboard the awkward, ugly vessel. The soldiers cheered. Douglass wondered whether they were outstandingly brave or outstandingly naive.

No matter what sort of noises the engine made, the barge wasn't going anywhere in a hurry. It crawled away from the wharf and waddled south toward the Kentucky shore of the Ohio, one of many boats and barges in the water. As soon as they started moving, shells started falling among them. "We've been hoaxed!" somebody near Douglass exclaimed. "They said they were gonna knock all these Rebel guns to kingdom come. They lied to us, lied!" He sounded comically aggrieved.

One of his friends, a youngster with a more realistic view of the world, replied, "Likely they said that to the fellows who went over the Ohio the first time, too. You think they were right then, Ned?"

Ned didn't answer; a shell that came down very close to the barge drenched everyone and set all the men cursing and trying to dry off.

Douglass decided, too late, that the occasion was probably informal enough for him to have escaped criticism even if he hadn't worn a cravat and wing-collared shirt.

How slowly Kentucky drew near! He felt he'd been on the barge forever, with every cannon in the Confederate States of America taking dead aim at him and him alone. The logical faculty he so prized told him that was an impossibility: it had been bare minutes since he'd set out from the northern bank of the river. With death in the air, though, logic cowered and time stretched like saltwater taffy.

"Once we land, we'll have to step lively," Major van Nuys called, cool as if his men were going onto the parade ground for drill, not into enemy territory to fight for their lives. "We'll form columns of fours and advance southwest in column till we meet the enemy, then deploy into loose order and sweep him aside. Our shout will be 'Revenge!' "

His men raised another cheer for that. Only a handful of them were old enough to remember the War of Secession, but the scars from that defeat had twisted the national countenance ever since. Even the young soldiers knew why they wanted revenge. Douglass would have preferred Libeity! for a shout, or perhaps Justice! — but Revenge! would do the job.

The Queen of the Ohio had gone aground far harder than the invasion barge did. The steamboat had been going far faster when she grounded, too. Yelling fit to burst their throats, the soldiers of the Sixth New York swarmed off the barge. They swept Douglass along, catching him up in their resistless tide. He counted himself lucky not to be knocked down and trampled underfoot.

"Get the devil out of the way, you damned old nigger!" somebody bawled in his ear. The soldier, whoever he was, didn't sound angry at him for being a Negro so much as for being an obstruction. Whichever his reason, Douglass could do nothing to accommodate it. He had no more control over his own movement than a scrap of bark borne downstream by a flood on the Mississippi.

And then, suddenly, he spun out of the main torrent of men and realized the muddy ground on which he was standing was not just any muddy ground but the muddy ground of Kentucky, of the Confederate States of America. He had carefully planned what he would do when at last he bestrode enemy soil. Shaking his fist toward Stonewall Jackson in Louisville, he cried out, "Sic semper tyrannis!"

" 'Thus always to tyrants,' " Major van Nuys echoed. "Well said. But do you know what, Mr. Douglass? That is the motto of the Confederate state of Virginia."

"Oh, they are great ones for taking a high moral tone, the Confederate States," Douglass said. "Taking a high moral tone costs them nothing. Living up to it is something else again."

Van Nuys did not linger to argue the point. He waved his sword to draw the attention of the men under his command-about the only use a sword had on a battlefield dominated by breechloaders and artillery. Disembarking from the barge had mixed the soldiers promiscuously. Officers, sergeants, and corporals screamed like madmen to get them into some kind, any kind, of order and moving forward against the foe.

A few bullets cut the air. Even as the Sixth New York began its part of the U.S. flanking assault against Louisville, a man fell with a dreadful shriek, clutching at his belly and wailing for his mother and someone named Annie. Sister? Sweetheart? Wife? Whoever she was, Douglass feared she would never set eyes on her young hero again. He hoped his own Anna would sec him once more.

When the soldiers began to march, the Negro journalist discovered that, with the best will in the world, a man in his sixties had a hard time keeping up with fellows a third his age. He did his best, stumping along heavily and managing to keep the tail of the column in sight.

Panting, he muttered, "The faster they go, the better I like it." If the men of the Sixth New York and all the other regiments thrown into the fight moved swiftly, they did so because the Confederate defenders had not the strength to withstand them. No one going straight into Louisville had moved swiftly.

Two shells burst up ahead. A man flew up into the air, limp and boneless as a cloth doll tossed away by a girl who didn't feel like playing with it any more. Others were simply flung aside. Still others screamed when shell fragments sawed into their tender flesh.

"Come on, lads! Keep it up. Come on!" Major van Nuys called. "We can't play these games without paying a little every now and then. Believe you me, whatever it costs us, the Rebs will pay more."

More cheers rose from the Sixth New York. Van Nuys then ordered them into open echelon, which suggested to Douglass not only that they were already in the zone of combat but that they were liable to pay more than a little. How much the Confederates were paying was anyone's guess.

One thing was plain: the CSA had not resisted this thrust as they had the one aimed straight at Louisville. That the U.S. soldiers were advancing and not entrenching to save their lives from devastating Confederate fire proved as much. Douglass hoped that meant the Rebels were at full stretch to contain the USA in Louisville itself, and had little left to resist elsewhere.

The countryside was pretty: farms with belts of oaks and elms between them. After a moment, Douglass revised his first impression. The countryside had been pretty, and might one day be pretty again. War was rapidly doing what war did-making ugly everything it touched. Shell craters scarred meadows and fields. A couple of farmhouses and barns were already burning, smoke from their pyres staining the morning air. Several small cabins near a farmhouse also burned. For a moment, Douglass simply noted that, as any reporter would. Then he realized what those smaller buildings were.

"Slave shanties," he said through clenched teeth. "Even here, so close to the Ohio and freedom, they had slave shanties. May they all burn, and all the big houses with them."

A few minutes later, a couple of U.S. soldiers with long bayonets on their Springfields led half a dozen or so Confederate prisoners back past him toward the river. A couple of the Rebs were wounded, one with his arm in a sling made from a tunic, the other wearing a bloody bandage wrapped round his head. All of them were skinny and dirty and surprisingly short: rumor made six-foot Confederate soldiers out to be runts. They did not look like invincible conquerors-petty vagrants was more like it.

"May I speak to these men?" Douglass asked their guards.

"Sure, Snowball, go right ahead," one of the men in blue replied. "Can't think of anything liable to make 'em feel worse, not off the top of my head I can't."

Douglass ignored that less than ringing endorsement. "You prisoners," he said sharply, to remind them of their status, "how many of you are slaveowners?"

Two men in gray nodded. The fellow with the bandaged head said, "You wouldn't bring me fifty dollars. You're too damn old and too damn uppity."

"I can't help being old, and I'm proud to be uppity," Douglass said. "How dare you presume to own, to buy and to sell and to ravish, your fellow human beings?"

The captured Confederate laughed hoarsely. "You damn crazy nigger, I'd sooner ravish my mule than ugly old Nero who helps me farm." He spat a stream of tobacco juice. "And you got a lot of damn nerve tellin' me what I can and can't do with my property, which ain't none o' your business to begin with."

"Men and women are not property," Douglass thundered, as if to an audience of twenty thousand. "They are your brothers and sisters in the eyes of God."

"Not where I come from, they ain't," the prisoner said, and spat again. He turned to the U.S. soldiers guarding him. "You done caught us. Ain't that bad enough? We got to put up with this damn mouthy nigger, too? Take us away and put us somewheres, why don't you?"

"You're damn lucky you're breathin', Reb," one of the soldiers in blue answered. "You want to stay lucky, you'll do like you're told."

Douglass had often anticipated interviews with ordinary Confederates. This one wasn't going the way he'd anticipated. The other Rebel who admitted to being a slaveholder said, "What in blazes are the y^w-nited States invadin' us for, anyways? We ain't done nothin' personal to you, nigger. We ain't done nothin' to nobody in the USA. All we done is buy up a chunk o' Mexico wasn't doin' nobody no good nohow. An' you-all start shootin' at us an' blowin' us up on account of that" My pappy always told me they was funny up in Boston and Massachusetts and them places, and] reckon he was right."

"The existence of a nation built on bondage is a stench in the nostrils of the entire civilized world," Douglass said.

"It ain't your business." Both Confederate soldiers spoke as one.

"It is the business of every man who loves liberty," Douglass declared. He threw his hands in the air; he and the slaveholders might have been speaking two different languages. He asked them, "How were you captured?"

The uninjured one said, "Three Yankees yelled at me to throw down my rifle at the same time. Right about then, I reckoned that'd be a plumb good idea."

"What about you?" Douglass asked the other one.

"You really want to know, nigger?" the Reb with the bandaged head answered. "I was squattin' in the bushes with my pants around my ankles, doin' my business, when this motherfucker in a blue coat says he'll blow me out a new asshole to shit through if n I don't put my hands high. So I done it." He gave Douglass a sour stare. "An' looky here-I got me the new asshole anyways."

That set not only the Confederate prisoners but also their guards braying like donkeys. Douglass stomped off. The Rebels' jeers pursued him. He paused to scribble in his notebook: They are now, as they have long been, ignorant, uncouth, and stubbornly indifferent to the sentiments of their fellow men and to the appeals of simple human justice.

Only a brute-like hardiness-ironically, the very trait they impute to their enslaved Negroes-enables them to persist in their infamous course.

A second look told him that was hardly objective. He grunted. "So what?" he said aloud. He put the notebook in his pocket and tramped off toward the southwest.