How Few Remain

Chapter 15

Redcoats!" the scouts' cries echoed across the Montana prairie. "The redcoats are coming!"

"Come on, lads!" Theodore Roosevelt called to the men of the Unauthorized Regiment, or those troops of it that had joined him to try to impede the progress of the British column penetrating U.S. territory. "Come on!" he repeated. "The English wore red a hundred years ago, too, when we licked 'em in the Revolution. And the patriotic Continental soldiers wore blue, just as we do. They won against great odds, and so can we. Forward!"

Forward they went, with cheers on their lips. First Lieutenant Karl Jobst said, "Sir, I have to commend you. My opinion of volunteers has gone up immeasurably since we began harassing the British."

Roosevelt noted his adjutant's phrasing. Jobst didn't say, My opinion of volunteers has gone up since I joined the regiment. He'd waited till he saw the Unauthorized troops fight before approving of them. Maybe that made him a hard man to please. Maybe it just made him an old-or rather, a young-stick-in-the-mud.

"They do grow brave men outside the Regular Army, Lieutenant," Roosevelt said. He filled his chest with air, then let it out in a shout like the cry of a bull moose: "Close with 'em, boys, and fill 'em full of lead!"

That got another cheer. As Roosevelt rode north after the scouts, he made sure his own Winchester had a full magazine. Only the firepower his men had at their disposal let them slow down the enemy at all. Most of the British cavalry was armed with single-shot carbines much like the ones the U.S. Regulars carried. Some of the others were lancers, who but for their revolvers might have fought against Napoleon or Louis XIV or, for that matter, against Joan of Arc.

They were brave, too. He'd seen that. He hadn't seen that it helped them much.

He pointed. Bugler's horns cried out a warning. There ahead was the cavalry screen the British used to protect the infantry and baggage train advancing into Montana Territory. "Charge!" Roosevelt roared. He wanted to wave his sword about to help inspire his men, but in the end hung onto his Winchester instead. Knocking a few limeys out of the saddle would be the best inspiration possible.

Rapidly, the British horsemen swelled from little red specks visible across the prairie to an astonishing distance to scarlet-tunicked, whitc-helmcted men. They opened fire at several hundred yards, well beyond the reach of the Unauthorized Regiment's Winchesters. Puffs of dirty gray smoke shot from their carbines. A horse went down. A man slid out of the saddle.

But not enough horses fell, not enough saddles were emptied, to keep the U.S. soldiers from getting close enough for their Winchesters to bite. And when the magazine rifles bit, they bit hard. A man could shoot two or three times as fast with one as with a single-shot breechloader.

As had happened several times before, the British outriders recoiled back onto the rest of the cavalry in General Gordon's force. Before, the larger force had been enough to drive back the volunteers. Now Roosevelt had a couple of more troops than he'd been able to deploy at the last skirmish. "Keep at 'em, boys!" he shouted, and waved his hat.

Bullets sang past him. He'd been delighted to discover, not that he felt no fear in battle, but that he had no trouble keeping under control the fear he did feel. And the savage exultation that filled him almost canceled out even his controlled fear.

He raised the rifle to his shoulder and sent a stream of lead at the Englishmen who had stabbed the United States in the back. A redcoat dropped his carbine and clutched his right arm. Roosevelt whooped. He wasn't sure that was the limey he'd been aiming for, or that his bullet had wounded the foe, but who could prove it hadn't?

With his extra men, with his extra firepower, he drove back even the reinforced British cavalry. They in turn fell back toward the red-coated infantry. The foot soldiers shook themselves out from column into line of battle. They too fired single-shot Martini-Henrys, but there were far more of them than troopers of the Unauthorized Regiment.

One thing coming out West had eventually taught Theodore Roosevelt: when not to raise on a pair of threes. "Back!" he yelled. A bugler always rode close by him. The order to retreat blared forth.

The British cavalry did not pursue his men when they broke off the fight and galloped off to the south. They'd learned from painful experience that they paid a high price if they got too far separated from the infantry they screened. Lancers, Roosevelt thought derisively. We 're nearing the end of the nineteenth century, and the British still have lancers in the line.

"Well done, sir," Karl Jobst said, wiping sweat from his face with his sleeve. "They'll have to go back from line into column, and that will delay them. We bought our country another hour or so there."

"You have a cold-blooded way of looking at war, Lieutenant," Roosevelt said.

"It's the Regular Army way, sir," his adjutant said. "War is your hobby; it's my profession. Our job is not to drive the British back into Canada. We can't, not with one regiment against a much larger force. Our job is simply to slow them down as much as we can, so they don't get the chance to plunder anything important before reinforcements join us."

For him, it was a chess problem. He was interposing a pawn into a rook's threatening path so other pieces would have time to move forward and defend his king. As far as Roosevelt could tell, he would have been as happy deciding the result on a chessboard as on the plains of Montana, too.

Roosevelt said, "Such calculations have their place, but they are not the be-all and end-all of warfare. If strategy seemed to call for a long, continuous retreat, how would the soldiers ordered to make it have the spirit to fight once the time came for action?"

"That is an important point, no doubt about it." Jobst smiled to find his superior so acute. "Men are not steam engines, to perform at the pull of a lever." It wasn't the chessboard analogy Roosevelt had in his own mind, but it wasn't far removed. Jobst went on, "Persuading men to fight bravely under such circumstances as you describe is what makes war an art rather than a science. The Germans believe they can reduce it to a science, but I for one remain unconvinced."

"Good," Roosevelt said. "You do show signs of life after all, Lieutenant." He watched Jobst wonder whether he ought to be insulted. His adjutant finally decided it was a compliment, and smiled instead.

Roosevelt smiled, too. "Stout fellow. Having delayed the British, what do we do next?"

"What we have been doing," Lieutenant Jobst answered. "We break away from them, we fall back to the next stream lying across their line of march, we post dismounted riflemen at the easiest fords to contest their crossing, we do our utmost to ensure that we are not outflanked, and, when we have no other choice, we fall back again. Colonel Welton is moving to our aid, as are the more easterly troops of our regiment, and as are reinforcements from outside the Territory."

"And, if we're lucky, we shan't be all used up by the time all those reinforcements come up," Roosevelt said.

"Yes, if we're lucky," Jobst agreed. His voice was tranquil. If you had to sacrifice a pawn to stave off the other fellow and set up moves of your own later in the game, you did it, and did it with no regrets.

Roosevelt understood that attitude, but it didn't come easy to him. The men of the Unauthorized Regiment were a force that might delay the British, yes, but they were more than that to him. They were his comrades, they were his friends, they were-in an odd sort of way, since many of them were older than he-his children. Without him, they would not have been born as a regiment. Without him, they would not be facing danger now. Like a comrade, like a friend-like a father-he felt obligated to keep them as safe as he could.

In thoughtful tones, he said, "We haven't seen much in the way of outflanking moves from this General Gordon of theirs. He seems to think only of going straight for what he wants."

Karl Jobst nodded. "So it would seem, wouldn't it, sir? I daresay it's because of his service in China and the Sudan. With properly disciplined troops, you can go through the heathen Chinese and the bush niggers like a dose of salts. He likely expects to do the same against us."

"Against Americans? Our blood is as fine as his-finer," Roosevelt declared. "When we gain the numbers to make a proper fight of it, I believe we shall give his excellency Mr. Chinese Gordon a proper surprise." He loaded with scorn the titles he had applied to the British soldier.

"Yes, sir," Jobst said. "By what I know of Brigadier General Custer, our new commander, he fights the same way. Once everything is in place, it should be like two locomotives heading down one track toward each other."

"We shall survive the smash," Roosevelt said. "I hold with this attitude myself, as you will have gathered. Admiral Nelson may have been a damned Englishman, but he spoke the truth when he said no captain could do very wrong if he placed his ship alongside that of the enemy."

Having made that vaunting statement, he felt the irony inherent in falling back. But he also felt the need. Having splashed through some small tributary to the Marias, he left behind a couple of dozen of his best sharpshooters. He stayed behind himself, too, to see how they did what they did. So he told himself, at any rate. He kept on telling himself so, too, and almost convinced himself that wanting to take another lick at the British out of sheer personal hatred had nothing to do with why he did not ride on.

Along with his troopers, he concealed himself among the alders and birches and cottonwoods that grew by the river. He might have been hunting canvasbacks instead of redcoats. The only difference was that Englishmen, unlike ducks, were liable to shoot back.

The oncoming British neared the river after he'd been waiting about an hour and a half. They approached with caution; the troopers of the Unauthorized Regiment had stung them at crossings even before Roosevelt came galloping in with his headquarters staff to take charge of resistance. Roosevelt drew a bead on a fellow who, by the way he was waving his comrades about, was probably an officer. The redcoat had courage. He went about his business as if without the slightest notion his foes were liable to be anywhere nearby.

Knowing when to start shooting was an art in itself. Open fire too soon and the British would gallop off and ford the stream a few miles to the east or west, without giving you the chance to hurt them. Wait too long and they'd have enough men forward to overwhelm you even if they couldn't shoot as fast.

One of his men pulled the trigger a little sooner than he would have liked. An Englishman's horse screamed shrilly and fell on him. That made the Englishman cry out, too. Roosevelt fired at the officer, who was a couple of hundred yards off. To his blasphemous disgust, he missed.

He worked the Winchester 's lever. A brass cartridge case flipped up into the air and fell to the damp ground at his feet. He fired again, and cried out in delight as the Englishman clutched at himself.

Along with his troopers, he emptied his magazine as fast as he could, trying to do the enemy the most damage in the shortest stretch of time. Some of the British cavalrymen fired back, though they had almost as small a chance of hurting his men as their ancestors under General Braddock had had against the skulking redskins during the French and Indian War. Most of the Englishmen, having discovered the enemy, sensibly drew out of range.

Twenty minutes passed. The Englishmen rode forward again. One of Roosevelt's troopers knocked a redcoat out of the saddle at better than two hundred yards, a fine bit of shooting with a Winchester. The rest of the British cavalrymen drew back again, to wait for reinforcements. They couldn't be sure how many men Roosevelt had waiting for them. If he'd chosen to defend the line of the river with everything he had, that could make for a large, hard fight.

He hadn't. He hooted like an owl, the signal for his troopers to withdraw to the horses a handful of their comrades were holding for them. Even in retreat, his smile was broad and triumphant. He'd given the tail of the British lion another nasty yank. "Why not?" he said aloud. "I'm a nasty Yank myself."

Sam Clemens had never liked his brother-in-law. As far as he was concerned, his wife's most prominent virtue was that she was nothing like her brother. Vernon Perkins was ideally suited to his bookkeeping job: he was bald, thin, bespectacled, fussily precise, and had as much juice in him as a brick. Save that she wasn't bald, his wife Lucy might have been stamped from the same mold. Their two daughters were insipidly well-mannered. Even their dog behaved himself.

And now Vernon Perkins was not only Sam's brother-in-law but also his landlord. Lying on the uncomfortable divan in the tatty parlor of Perkins' house, knowing he wouldn't go to sleep for a good long while yet, Clemens muttered under his breath. "What's wrong, dear?" asked Alexandra, who lay beside him.

She knew what was wrong. Bless her, she didn't mind giving him the chance to blow off steam. And he didn't mind taking it. "Why in the name of all that's holy and a good many of the things that aren't didn't the Royal Marines pass by without setting fire to our house? And why didn't they come up here by Telegraph Hill and burn out your brother instead? Or why, at least, didn't one of their shells fall on this place? Shockingly bad gunnery, if anyone wants to know what I think."

"You don't mean that," Alexandra said.

"I don't?" In the darkness, Clemens raised an eyebrow. "Thank you for informing me of that, because I didn't know it. And why, pray tell, don't I?"

"Because if Vernon 's house was wrecked and ours wasn't, he and Lucy and Mary and Jane and Rover would have moved in with us instead of the other way round," his wife answered.

"Boring names for their children. Boring name for their blasted dog, too." But Sam sighed. "All right, I don't wish your brother's house was wrecked. I wouldn't want him in my pockets, any more than I want to be in his. Heaven only knows how much I wish our house hadn't been torched, though."

Alexandra reached out and set a hand on his shoulder. "I know, Sam. I feel the same way. But we all came through safe, even Sutro, even the cat. That's what matters. How many people weren't so lucky?"

She was right, of course. She usually was. That she was right failed to lighten Sam's mood. "My soul rejoices every time I think the Royal Marines furnished you with a gentleman arsonist." He did his best, which was none too good, to put on a British accent: " 'Terribly sorry to disturb you, ma'am, but if you'd be so kind as to gather up the tykes and the pets so I can pour out the kerosene and touch a match to it?' Bah!"

From what Alexandra had told him, he wasn't exaggerating much. The British invaders had set a number of fires to cover their withdrawal to the Pacific, and Turk Street was one of the streets down which they'd pulled back. They hadn't actually set fire to his house. They'd set fire to the one next door, and the fire-what a surprise! — had spread. Lots of fires had spread through San Francisco in the wake of the British bombardment and invasion. The sour smell of stale smoke still tainted the fog.

"Try to sleep," Alexandra urged.

"I am. I do," he said. "I try every night. Sometimes, Lord knows how, I even turn the trick. A Hindu straight from his bed of nails would have trouble sleeping on this divan."

She patted his shoulder again. "It will be all right," she said. "As soon as we have a place of our own, it will be all right." And with that, and without further ado, she rolled over onto her side and did fall asleep.

Orion and Ophelia were sleeping, too, on piles of rugs and blankets. Their steady breathing mingled with Alexandra's in a rhythm that did nothing whatsoever to lull Sam to sleep. He muttered under his breath again and stared up at the ceiling. Eventually, he did doze off, and tossed and turned through the night, his head full of dreams of exploding shells and snarling rifles.

When morning came, he put on the suit he'd been wearing the day the British came. It was, at the moment, the only suit he owned. He downed a bowl of Lucy Perkins' oatmeal, which stuck to his ribs like a cheap grade of cement, declined a cup of her watery coffee, and fled the house as fast as he decently could, or perhaps a little faster.

He was farther from the Morning Call offices than he had been while he still had a home of his own. Trudging down to Market and then along it showed him a sample of what the British had inflicted on San Francisco.

Most of the houses along the narrow streets that led down to Market were fine. No Royal Marine incendiaries had penetrated so far north and east. Here and there, though, where a shell from an ironclad's big gun had landed, rubble took the place of what had been a home. Some gaps, where shells had started fires, were bigger still.

The northern end of Market Street was more of the same. A couple of shells had landed right in the middle of the street, and dug sizable craters. Dirt and rubble filled those craters. Work gangssome made up of white men, including convicts in striped suits; others of pajama-wearing, pigtailed Chinese-were clearing away wreckage one ruined house or shop at a time.

And then, a little north of the Morning Call offices, three or four blocks were nothing but wreckage. Those were the blocks the Royal Marines had passed on their way to and from the Mint. They were also the blocks where some of the hardest, most desperate fighting had gone on. The stench of damp smoke lingered most strongly there. Another stench still lingered, too, the sickly-sweet smell of meat going bad.

A white straw boss was shouting orders to a gang of Chinese. Clemens called out to him: "Hey, Sweeney, find any more bodies in the ruins yesterday?"

"We did that, Sam," the straw boss answered. "Only one, though; better than it has been. Heaven only knows who the poor bastard was, with him so swole up and black and all." He held his nose. "He'll go in one o' the common graves, poor sod, for not even his own mother could be naming him the now."

"Filthy business," Clemens said, and Sweeney nodded. Sam could look west and see some of the swath of devastation the invaders had cut through San Francisco. It ran straight toward the ocean; he would have been able to take in more of it had some of the city's hills not blocked his view.

"Is there any word yet on how much in the way of gold and silver the Sassenachs are after stealing?" Sweeney asked.

"If words were drops of water, Noah would be up at the top of Telegraph Hill right now, building a new Ark," Sam answered, which made the Irishman grin around the stub of his cigar. "Whether there's truth in any of them, heaven only knows. I've heard a quarter of a million dollars, but I've heard fifty million dollars, too."

He tipped his hat and went on his way. Sweeney shouted at the Chinamen. They hadn't slowed down while he was talking with Sam. as a gang of white men would have done. He shouted at them anyhow.

At the Morning Call offices, Sam hung his straw hat on one of the trees in the entry hall, then called out the question uppermost in his mind the past few days: "Has Blaine decided to take the carrot yet, or will they have to hit him a few more licks with the stick?"

"Still no word out of Philadelphia, boss," Edgar Leary answered. "That means the war's still on."

"Give me two synonyms for 'idiots,' " Clemens said, and then gave them himself: " 'Fools' and 'Republicans.' They haven't got any notion of when to start wars but, just to make up for it, they haven't got any notion of when to quit them, either. Well, what's gone wrong since yesterday?"

"British are shelling Erie, Pennsylvania," Leary said with a certain weary relish. "Wires say there are big fires down by the waterfront. We know about that here, don't we?" He turned red and grimaced. "Uh, sorry, boss."

"Sorry I got burned out, or sorry you mentioned it?" Clemens asked. "Never mind. You don't need to answer that. You ought to live with my wife's brother; then you'd really know what sorry was all about. What's the news out of Montana Territory?"

"There is no news out of Montana Territory," Leary said. "The British are over the border, that volunteer outfit with the funny name is skirmishing with them-"

" Roosevelt 's Unauthorized Regiment," Sam supplied. "I like it. Anybody who's unauthorized and proud of it is my kind of fellow. Why, I come from a long line of unauthorized-" Instead of interrupting Edgar Leary, he interrupted himself. " Montana, dammit."

"Nothing else to tell," the young reporter said. "The cavalry is skirmishing with the British soldiers, and Regulars are moving to help."

"Moving where!" Clemens asked irritably. " Montana 's a hell of a big place. Are they all over it like measles, or sort of settled down in one spot in particular? And if they are in one spot, which one is it?"

"Whichever spot it is, it's one that's out of reach of the telegraph lines," Leary replied. "Of course, there aren't very many telegraph lines in Montana, on account of there aren't very many people in Montana."

"One of the biggest stories of the whole war, and it's happening out where nobody can take a proper look at it," Sam said. "Do you know what, Edgar? I'll bet the Army likes that just fine. After the British give us another licking, the donkeys in blue will have an extra couple of days to cipher out how to make it sound like a victory."

Grumbling about the U.S. Army, Vernon Perkins, and other calamities of nature, he went to his desk and lighted a cigar. Spotting three typographical errors in the first paragraph of a story sitting there did nothing to improve his disposition. Neither did the text of the story itself. "Whoever edited this would have done the world a favor if he'd never learned to read." he muttered. Then he remembered he'd edited it himself. He blew out as large and thick a cloud of cigar smoke as he could, to keep everyone else in the office from noticing him turning red.

Edgar Leary said, "Colonel Sherman announced that two men, Diego Reynoso and Michael Fitzpatrick, were shot at sunrise in the Presidio for looting."

"There, that's another victory," Sam exclaimed. "Can't lick the Royal Marines-Christ, can't even find the goddamn Royal Marines- but we're death on looters, no two ways around it. Of course, if we'd done any kind of proper job fighting off the Royal Marines in the first place, the looters wouldn't have had anything to loot. Maybe, just maybe, if we give them enough hell now, this particular brand of idiocy won't happen the next time we find ourselves in a scrape."

"I hope not, I surely do," Leary said. After brief hesitation, he went on, "Boss, I do hear tell that Colonel Sherman isn't happy about what the paper's been saying since the British hit San Francisco. And if he isn't happy with the Morning Call, he isn't happy with you."

"Well, I have to tell you, Edgar my lad, I'm not very happy about what the Army did when the British hit San Francisco. And if I'm not happy with the Army, I'm not happy with Colonel Sherman." Sam took sardonic pleasure in turning Lcary's warning on its ear.

The young reporter shuffled his feet uncertainly. "I know that. But I thought I ought to tell you anyway, because you can't throw Sherman in the stockade, but he can put you there, and throw away the key once he's done it."

"Throw a newspaperman in the stockade? He wouldn't d-" Clemens began. But he ran down, like a pocket watch that wanted winding. The trouble was, he wasn't just a newspaperman; he was a newspaperman who'd spent a few inglorious weeks as a Marion Ranger, a soldier of sorts on the Confederate side during the War of Secession. If Sherman decided he was lambasting the Army because he sympathized with the Confederate States after all rather than because he was a man who recognized damnfoolery when he saw it… if that happened, the commandant at the Presidio was liable to lock him up on suspicion of general frightfulness.

He threw back his head and laughed till he started to cough. "Are you all right?" Edgar Leary asked anxiously.

"I'll do, no doubt about it," Sam answered. "It just occurred to me that, considering where I'm staying now, the stockade might be a step up-so long as the estimable Colonel Sherman doesn't fling my brother-in-law into the cell next door."

Abraham Lincoln stood on the platform at the Great Falls train station, patiently waiting for disembarking passengers to get off. Then, carrying his carpetbag, he got aboard. He looked around the car, wondering if a couple of unsmiling soldiers would come up, tap him on the shoulder, and order him off. He saw no soldiers, unsmiling or otherwise.

He smiled himself. He'd gauged things about right. When he was the principal menace to law, order, and the peace of mind of the moneyed class in Montana Territory, the Army had watched him like a hawk. As soon as the British came over the border, though, everyone forgot all about him. With the invaders heading south, nobody cared a Continental for John Pope's order limiting him to the Territories.

He would, he supposed, have been even more worried about the future of the country had the military authorities kept right on watching him closely even though the British had invaded Montana.

The conductor walked down the aisle, big gold watch in hand. "Now departing for Bismarck, Fargo, St. Paul, Milwaukee, and Chicago!" he intoned. "All aboard!"

A blast from the steam whistle also announced the train's departure. Cars jolted in their couplings as it began to roll. A vexing thought made Lincoln 's long face grow longer. He wouldn't be altogether free of the Army's grip till he passed Fargo and left Dakota Territory. Maybe no one had tried to keep him from leaving Great Falls because the soldiers who would stop him were waiting in Fargo.

He shook his head. He didn't believe it. No one had tried to keep him from leaving Great Falls because no one knew, or cared, he was leaving. If no one knew he was gone or where he was going, no one could stop him.

No sooner had he settled back in his seat than the young man across the aisle, a fellow who looked like a miner in ill-fitting Sunday best, asked, "Beg your pardon, but ain't you Abe Lincoln?"

"Yes," Lincoln answered, warily and wearily. Had he had a dime for every time he'd had a conversation opened with that gambit, he would have been a plutocrat himself. The only commoner opening was, God damn you, Lincoln, you son of a bitch! — and that one usually came from older men, men who recalled the sorry course of the War of Secession. "Who are you, son?"

"My name's Hosea Blackford, Mr. Lincoln," the youngster said, and stuck out a hand. Lincoln relaxed a little as he shook it; he'd had enough of curses and to spare lately. It was strong and rough-skinned and callused, the hand of a working man. Blackford went on, "Heard you talk in Helena when you was there." He nodded, half to himself. "Sure as hell did."

"Is that a fact?" Lincoln said: a little sentence polite in any context.

"Yes, sir!" Hosea Blackford's green eyes glowed. "Hell of a speech. Made me reckon we ought to get shut of fightin' our neighbors till we finished muckin' out our own barn first. Like you said, we had ourselves one revolution, and now we could use ourselves another one."

"Thank you, Mr. Blackford," Lincoln said. "Every now and again, when I hear a young man like you speak, my hope for the country revives."

"Ain't that somethin'!" Blackford said; after a moment, Lincoln realized it was his equivalent of Is that a fact?

They talked politics on and off till the miner- Lincoln had indeed pegged that one correctly-got off the train at Oriska, a tiny spot in eastern Dakota Territory, where his sister and brother-in-law had a farm. He didn't even carry a carpetbag; his suitcase was made of cardboard. When he rose to leave, he pumped Lincoln 's hand again.

"You don't know what this here's meant to me," he said. "Ever since I started thinkin' about things, I could see they wasn't right, but I never seen how, or how to go about fixin' 'em. You done opened my eyes, and I reckon 1 can go and open some other folks' eyes my own self. You got yourself a-what's the Bible word? — a disciple, that's what it is."

"Good luck to you. Mr. Blackford," Lincoln said. "Be the truth's disciple, not mine. Follow the truth, wherever it may lead you."

The miner bobbed his head in an awkward nod, then hurried away. At a place like Oriska, the train didn't stop long. At a place like Oriska, you were lucky if the train stopped at all.

Lincoln smiled at the miner's stalwart back. He wondered how long Blackford's enthusiasm would last. Young men burned hot, but they burned out fast, too. Lincoln thought of that ridiculously young cavalry colonel back in Great Falls. He was doing something special now, too. How long before he became a lawyer or a banker or something else stuffy and boring and profitable? Profitable. Lincoln 's lip curled. The owners took the profits, and took them from the sweat of the working man.

A few hours and a few stops out of Oriska, the train halted in Fargo. No soldiers waited for Lincoln. Fargo was a fair-sized town, and the train paused there half an hour, long enough for him to get off and wire his son that he was on the way.

Boarding again, he crossed into Minnesota. Out of these flat farmlands John Pope had driven the Sioux when they rose up against white settlers in the hope that the United States would be too distracted by the War of Secession to bring any great force to bear against them. That had been a double miscalculation on the Indians' part. The USA had had soldiers enough to fight them and the Confederates both. And, after the war was lost, soldiers originally recruited for it hurled the Indians west across the plains, using numbers and firepower they could not hope to match.

Farms grew thicker and towns larger and closer together as the train carried Lincoln east. Minneapolis and St. Paul were real cities; some in the East that had been settled a hundred years longer could not compare to them.

The passengers who boarded at the two rival centers were perhaps more warmly inclined to Lincoln than people from the rest of the United States. In Minnesota, he was remembered as much for being the man who'd driven the Indians out of the state as for being the man who'd lost the War of Secession. With a sort of melancholy pride, he recalled that he'd carried Minnesota in the election of 1864. Recalling that wasn't hard; he hadn't carried many states.

The Republicans hadn't carried many states since, not till public disgust at the Democrats' unending soft line toward the CSA swept Blaine into the White House the autumn before. And now Blaine had taken a hard line, and done no better with it than Lincoln. How long would it be before the Republicans carried many states again?

Lincoln thought he had the answer, or at least an answer, to that question. He'd thought so for ten years and more now, as he'd watched factories boom and capitalists send their spaniels to Europe on holiday and workers live in squalid warrens at which those pampered spaniels would have turned up their noses. He'd been able to make only a handful of party leaders pay any attention to him till now.

Now, he thought, now they no longer have any choice. If they don't heed me now, the party will surely go under.

And then, as the train passed from Minnesota into Wisconsin, he closed his fat Shakespeare, took off his reading glasses and put them in their leather case, and buried his face in his hands. These past ten years, he hadn't even succeeded in persuading his own son he was right. He doubted he would persuade Robert even now. His son, having enriched himself at the practice of law, thought like a rich man these days.

Not that Robert would be anything but glad to see him. In family matters, they were close, as they always had been. Only in politics did a chasm separate them: the chasm that yawned between a man satisfied with his lot and another who could see how many in the country he loved had no reason to be satisfied with theirs.

The tracks beat south and east as they ran through Wisconsin. Lincoln knew no great joy when he left that state and came into Illinois, even though he'd lived more of his life in the latter state than anywhere else. Illinois had repudiated him in 1864, and had not looked on him kindly since, no matter how great a power in the land Robert had become.

Chicago sprawled along the shores of Lake Michigan. Everything came together there: Great Lakes commerce (however damaged that was at the moment because of the war), Mississippi River commerce (with the same caveat), and railroads from east, south, and west. Smoke from its factories darkened the skies. The great stockyards made the air pungent. The other scent in the air, the one Robert breathed day and night, was the scent of money.

Even with five train stations, Chicago seemed undersupplied. Lincoln 's train waited in the yard of the Chicago and Northwestern depot for close to an hour until a platform became available. It inched its way forward, then sighed to a stop.

Robert Lincoln was waiting on the platform. As he embraced his father, he said, "By all accounts, you've had a busy time of it." His tone was no more ironic than he could help.

"Maybe a bit," Lincoln allowed, matching dry for dry. "It's good to see you, son. You look well."

"Thank you, sir." In his late thirties, Robert Lincoln was plainly his father's son; his neat beard only strengthened the resemblance. But, having his mother's blood in him as well, he was several inches shorter than Abraham, a good deal wider through the shoulders and the face, and, by all conventional standards, a good deal handsomer as well.

"So you'll put up-and put up with-your radical old father for a while, will you?" Lincoln asked, a little later, as they made their way toward Robert's carriage.

"You know I don't fancy the direction in which your politics have taken you," his son answered. "You also know that matters not at all to me when it comes to the family. If you're willing enough to put up with a son reactionary enough to believe in earning money and keeping what he earns, we'll get on splendidly, as we always have."

"Good," Lincoln said. He climbed into the carriage.

Robert tipped the porter who had carried the bags, and who now heaved them up behind the seats. The man lifted his cap, murmured thanks, and departed. To his driver, Robert Lincoln said, "Take us home, Kraus."

"Yes, sir." By his accent, Kraus had not been in the United States long. He too tipped his cap, then flicked the reins and got the carriage rolling.

"Quite a nabob you're getting to be, son, everyone bowing and scraping over you as if you were an earl on the way to becoming a duke," Lincoln said, hiding dismay behind facetiousness. Robert, who understood him very well without agreeing with him in the slightest, gave him a sharp look. Lincoln sighed; he hadn't really intended to provoke his son. He tried to smooth it over: "As I told you, it is good to see you-better than setting eyes on anyone else I've seen lately, and that is a fact."

"Unless I'm much mistaken, it's also faint praise." But Robert, fortunately, sounded amused, not angry. He went on, "Being held superior to John Pope, whom I suspect you have in mind, is closely similar to being reckoned taller than a snake, lighter than an elephant, or more in favor of abolition than an Alabama planter." His tone grew more sympathetic: "It was very unlucky for you, Father, that you had to fall foul of a man who bore you a grudge from the War of Secession."

"Few U.S. soldiers from the War of Secession bear me no grudge." Lincoln spoke with sadness but without resentment. "They have their reasons: whom better to resent than a man who led them into a losing war? Suffering in war is hard enough in victory, but ten times harder in defeat."

"Few of them are so resentful as to want to put a rope around your neck," Robert said.

Lincoln thought of Pope. He thought of Colonel-now Brigadier General-Custer. He thought of the bloodthirsty guard he'd been assigned, who would still have been soiling his drawers when the War of Secession ended. He didn't answer.

Robert said, "Now that you're here, Father, how do you aim to amuse yourself and stay out of mischief?"

"Amusing myself should be simple enough," Lincoln replied, "for I intend to get myself into as much mischief as I can: which is to say, I intend to struggle for the soul of the Republican Party. Our main plank can no longer be permanent, unyielding hostility toward the Confederate States. We have tried that twice now, and Blaine is failing with it as badly as I failed. The people will never give us a third chance, and I see no way to blame them for their reluctance. Fighting the Confederate States, England, and France, we are simply overmatched."

"A conclusion I reached myself some time ago," Robert said as they rolled into the fashionable North Side neighborhood he called home. He paused to get his pipe going, then asked the inevitable question: "And what plank would you put in its place?"

"Justice for the working man, and freeing him from oppression at the hands of the capitalist who owns the factory in which he labours," Lincoln said. "We have lost sight of the fact that capital is only the fruit of labour, and could never have existed if labour had not first existed."

"You intend to convene a meeting of Republican leaders and convince them of this doctrine?" Robert said.

"I do," Lincoln answered simply.

"They will eat you up, Father, the way savages in the South Sea Islands eat up missionaries who are sent to convert them to a new faith they do not want."

"Perhaps they will," Lincoln said. "I aim to make the effort regardless. For I tell you this, son: if the Republican Party will not build on this plank, some other party will, and will make a go of it."

General Orlando Willcox held out his hand. "Good-bye, Colonel. I have enjoyed your presence here, and I shall miss you."

"I thank you," Alfred von Schlieffen said.

"And I shall miss you as well," Frederick Douglass said, his voice as deep and pure as a tone from the lower register of an organ. "You always treat me as a man first, and as a black man after that if at all."

"You are a man: so I have seen," Schlieffen said, as he might have to a soldier who had fought well. Captain Oliver Richardson scowled at him. He took no notice of Willcox's adjutant, but climbed up behind the private who would take him to the train on which he'd return to Philadelphia.

South of the Ohio, cannon still bellowed and rifles still rattled. Schlieffen's driver let out a wistful sigh. "Colonel, you reckon the president's going to take the Rebs up on that call for peace this time?"

"I am not the man to ask," Schlieffen told him. "Your own officers will a better idea have of what your president wills- wants — to do." Had he worn Blaine 's shoes, he would have made peace on the instant, and then got down on his knees to thank the Lord for letting him off on such easy terms. But that was not the question the soldier had asked him.

After spitting a brown stream of what the Americans called tobacco juice into the road, the driver said, "My officers won't give me the time of day. Hellfire, they won't tell me whether it's day or night. I was hopin' you might be different."

A German officer would not give one of his common soldiers the time of day, either. A German common soldier would not expect to get the time of day from one of his officers. The American private sounded aggrieved that he was not made privy to all his superiors' opinions and secrets. Americans, Schlieffen thought, sometimes let the notion of equality run away with them.

He and a couple of U.S. officers-one with his arm in a sling, the other walking with the aid of a crutch-had a first-class car to themselves. One of the Americans produced a bottle. They were both drunk by the time the train left Indiana for Ohio.

They offered to share the whiskey with Schlieffen, and seemed surprised when he said no. Once they'd passed it back and forth a few times, they forgot he was there. That suited him fine till they started to sing. From them on, work got much harder.

He persevered. Minister von Schlozer would need a full report on the Battle of Louisville to send to Bismarck. Schlieffen himself would need an even fuller one to send to the General Staff.

The report did not go so well as he would have liked, and the music-for lack of a suitably malodorous word-was not the only reason. Parts flowed smoothly; as long as he was talking about matters tactical-the effects of breech-loading rifles and breech-loading artillery on the battlefield-he wrote with confidence. That was part of what the Chancellery and the General Staff had to have. But it was only part.

He sighed. He wished the strategic implications of the Louisville campaign were as easy to grasp as those pertaining to tactics. That breechloaders and improved artillery gave the defensive a great advantage was obvious. So strategists had been sure before the outbreak of the war, and so it proved, perhaps to a degree even greater than they had envisioned.

What remained unclear, while at the same time remaining vitally important, was what, if anything, an army taking the offensive could do to reduce the defenders' advantages. Unfortunately, he wrote, the U.S. forces did not conduct the campaign in such a way as to make such analysis easy, as they took little notice of the principles of surprise and misdirection. Based on what I observed, I can state with authority that headlong assaults against previously readied positions, even with artillery preparation by no means to be despised, is foredoomed to failure, regardless of the quality of the attacking troops, which was also high.

He sighed again. Every U.S. campaign he had studied, both here and in the War of Secession, had a ponderous obviousness to it. Like McClellan before him, Willcox seemed to have taken the elephant as his model. If he smashed to pieces everything between him and his goal, he could knock down the tree, reach out with his trunk, and pluck off the sweet fruit.

No U.S. general seemed to have figured out that, if he went around the tree instead of straight at it, the terrain might be easier than that right in front of it, and the fruit might fall of its own accord. The Confederates understood as much, even if their opponents didn't. Robert E. Lee hadn't gone straight for Washington, D.C., in 1862. No, he'd moved up into Pennsylvania and forced the USA to respond to his moves in a fluid situation. Lee seemed to have been blessed with an imagination. The only hint of such a feature U.S. commanders displayed was in their fond belief that they could batter their way through anything, and that had proved more nearly a madman's delusion than healthy imagination.

Schlieffen wrestled with his reports till evening, and then after dark by gaslight. By that time, the American officers had stopped singing. Having drunk themselves into a stupor, they were snoring instead. That racket was, if anything, even worse than the other had been, which Schlieffen hadn't reckoned possible.

They were monstrously hung over the next morning, an indication to Schlieffen that God did indeed mete out justice in the world. In short order, they put his faith to the test. One of them pulled a new bottle of whiskey from his carpetbag, and they got drunk all over again. This time, Schlieffen was tempted to get drunk with them, if for no other reason than to blot out their raucous voices. Satan sent temptations to be mastered. He mastered this one.

He sent up a hearty prayer of thanksgiving when, late that second night, the train pulled into Philadelphia. Gloating at the sad state of the two U.S. officers was something less than perfectly Christian. No man, he told himself, was perfect. Gloat he did.

A driver waited to take him back to the sausage manufacturer's establishment. When the fellow greeted him in German, he automatically replied in English. Then, feeling foolish, he thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Please excuse me," he said in his native tongue. "Not only have I used nothing but English lately, I am so tired I can hardly put one foot in front of the other."

"lch verstehe, Hen Oberst," the driver answered reassuringly. "Bitte, kommen Sie mit mir."

Schlieffen did come with the driver. He fell asleep in the carriage, and then, once back in a proper bed for the first time since his departure, did as good an imitation of a dead man as was likely to be found this side of the grave. When he awoke, a glance at his pocket watch sent him leaping from that soft, inviting bed in something close to horror: it was nearly eleven.

Kurd von Schlozer waved aside his mortified apologies. "Think nothing of it. Colonel," the German minister to the United States said. "I understand that a man returning from arduous service on his country's behalf is entitled to a night in which to recover himself."

Reminding Schlieffen he had done his duty was the best way to restore him to good humor. "Thank you for your patience with me, Your Excellency," he said. "Now I have been away from newspapers and the telegraph for two days. Has President Blaine yet answered the new Confederate call for peace?"

Schlozer shook his head, a slow, mournful motion. "He has not said yes; he has not said no. I spoke with him yesterday, urging him- as I have urged him before-to accept these terms before he finds himself forced to accept terms far worse."

"And what did he say? What could he say?" Schlieffen asked.

"He actually said little," the German minister replied. "I do not think he believes any longer he can win this war. But I do not think he believes he and his party can afford the embarrassment of admitting they are defeated in a war they began, either."

"Their coasts arc bombarded and sacked. Their lakeside cities are shelled. They are beaten on the border of the provinces whose annexation they are trying to prevent. They are invaded from the north. Their own invasion of the enemy's territory is one of the bloodiest failures in all the history of war. If this is not defeat, God keep me from it!"

"Colonel, did I think you mistaken, be sure I would say as much," Schlozer answered.

"What docs Blaine say? How does he justify going on with a war he cannot win?" Schlieffen asked.

"He says the United States, because they are still standing, are not beaten," Kurd von Schlozer said. "How to turn this into anything anyone might recognize as a victory is beyond me. It is also beyond him, although he will not admit as much."

"What can be done to make him see what is so?" Schlieffen asked. "The only reason he has not had to pay fully for his folly is that the United States are too large to be devoured at a gulp."

"I understand this, believe me," Schlozer said. " Blaine understands it, too; he is not altogether a fool. But he reckons that size is an advantage and a reason to keep fighting. And he is so full of hate for Great Britain and for France for aiding his enemies that he has let his hatred cloud his mind and keep him from thinking clearly."

"Being so large has helped Russia many times," Schlieffen said. "It is indeed a factor to be reckoned with. But the Russians use it by letting invaders plunge deep into their land, and by fighting them only when and where they choose: thus did Napoleon come to grief, and the Swedes before him. It is our own greatest concern, should we ever have to fight the Russian Empire."

"But invasion here is no more than a minor issue, and was under-taken only after the United States rejected President Longstreet's peace offer the first time he made it," Schlozer said.

"Yes, the Confederates have adopted a strategy of the defensive, which suits what the new weapons can do," Schlieffen agreed. "Full details will appear in my report. Longstreet is clever, to hold to this strategy even when he could gain more for the moment by abandoning it."

"Longstreet is clever," the German minister to the USA repeated. "I have heard-you need not ask where-that some Confederate generals strongly advocate imposing a more punishing peace on the United States, and a large invasion of the USA to force its acceptance. Longstreet resists this proposal, and imposes his policy on government and Army both."

"This is what the head of a government is supposed to do," Schlieffen said. "For that matter, Your Excellency, President Blaine has imposed his policy on the government and Army of the United States."

"So he has, Colonel," Kurd von Schlozer said. "So he has. The other thing a head of government is supposed to do, however, is choose a wise policy to impose. Both concerns are important, for, if the policy itself is misconceived, it will fail no matter how vigorously it is imposed. Sometimes, in fact, a misconceived policy will fail more spectacularly the more vigorously it is imposed."

Schlieffen considered that. His main concern was devising policy, not seeing that it was carried out. After a bit of thought, he inclined his head to the German minister to the United States. "Your Excellency, I think you may be right."

On one side of Jeb Stuart stood Senor Salazar, the alcalde of Cananea. He had forgotten his English, and was screaming at the commander of the Department of the Trans-Mississippi in rapid-fire Spanish. At Stuart's other side stood Geronimo and Chappo. Geronimo was shouting in the Apache language, far too fast for Chappo to hope to translate. Every so often, the old Indian, who understood and spoke Spanish, would break into that language to respond to something Salazar had said.

Surrounded by unintelligible cacophony, Stuart turned to Major Horatio Sellers and said, "Good God-I think I'd sooner deal with camels." After his wild ride in the direction of Janos and back again, that was a statement of profound distress indeed.

His aide-de-camp nodded. "At least camels don't form factions, sir. Nice to think there's something you can say for the brutes."

Stuart raised a hand. "Gentlemen, please-" he began. Neither the Apaches nor the alcalde paid any attention to him. He drew his pistol and fired it into the air. While the report still echoed, he shouted "Shut up, all of you!" at the top of his lungs.

That did the trick, at least for the moment. Into the sudden silence, Major Sellers said, "We've been trying to sort out just what the devil happened here since the day you rode out of town, sir. The only thing I can tell you, even now, is that the Indians and the Mexicans would have had a battle of their own if our own boys hadn't been keeping 'em apart ever since." He shook his head. "You listen to one story and then you listen to the other story and it's as though they're talking about gunpowder and grits-you wouldn't believe both yarns started from the same place."

"You try to listen to both stories at the same time and all you get is a headache worse than the one mescal gives you," Stuart said.

Salazar followed that. He nodded. After Chappo translated it for Geronimo, the ghost of a smile appeared on the medicine man's face-but only the ghost, and only for a moment.

Stuart went on, "The people of Cananea-all the people of Sonora and Chihuahua — are now the subjects of the Confederate States of America. We will protect them from anyone who troubles them in any way." Senor Salazar looked smug. Before he could say anything, though, Stuart continued, "The Apaches arc our allies, who have fought alongside us and bled alongside us. We will also protect them from anyone who troubles them in any way."

"How in blazes we're going to do both those things at once-" Major Sellers muttered under his breath.

Resolutely, Stuart pretended not to hear that. At the moment, he didn't know how the Confederate States were going to do both those things at once, either. He did know they would have to do both of them if they were going to administer Chihuahua and Sonora. Feeling rather like King Solomon listening to the two women claiming the same baby, he said, "Let's see if we can sort this out and keep the peace here. I want to hear these stories one at a time." Digging in his pocket, he produced a fifty-cent piece, tossed it in the air, and caught it. "It's tails. Senor Salazar, you go first."

The alcalde glared venomously at Geronimo and Chappo. He was bolder around them than he had been when they and the Confederates first came to Cananea, no doubt because he'd seen that the Confederates would not let the Apaches harm him or his people. "They are animals," he hissed. "Why should we live at peace with them? They do not know what peace means."

"You are the ones who break oaths," Chappo shouted, not waiting for any response from his father.

"One at a time." Stuart held up his hand again. "No insults from either side. Just tell me what you say happened. Senor Salazar, go on."

"Gracias," Salazar said with dignity. "Here, I will tell you the precise truth, so you will know the lies of the Indios when you hear them." Jeb Stuart coughed. The alcalde sent him a look almost as venomous as the one he was aiming at the Apaches, but then went on, "These… Indios" — he visibly swallowed something harsher-"invaded my village drunk on mescal, stole away three of its finest and loveliest virgins, and ravaged them over and over, like the-" He checked himself again. "One is now dead of what they did to her, and the other two have both tried to hang themselves since. Is it any wonder we are outraged?"

"If that's what happened, no." Stuart turned to Chappo and Geronimo. "That is a hard charge against you. What have you got to say about it?"

Chappo had been translating the alcalde'? remarks for his father. Now, when Geronimo spoke, he did the same for Stuart: "My father says Cananea has never had three virgins in it, not here, not here, and not here, either." He pointed in turn to his crotch, his mouth, and his backside.

Senor Salazar gobbled in fury, and looked about ready to explode. "No insults," Stuart said sternly. If he felt like guffawing, his face never found out about it. "Go on."

Geronimo spoke again. Again, Chappo translated: "My father says three putas came to our tents. I do not know how to say putas in English: women who give you their bodies if you give them something."

"Whores," Major Sellers said succinctly.

"Whores-thank you," Chappo said. He collected English words the way his cousin Batsinas collected artisans' tricks. Batsinas had made himself a pretty fair blacksmith in a few months' time, and was always trying to trade for new tools. Stuart took that as a good sign, a sign that the Apaches could, with patience, be civilized. Perhaps with the patience of Job, he thought.

Before Chappo could apply his new vocabulary, Salazar erupted again, shouting, "Lies! Lies! All lies!"

"He let you speak," Stuart told him. "You will let him speak, or I will decide this case for him on the spot. Do you understand?" Ever so reluctantly, the alcalde composed himself. Stuart nodded to Chappo and Geronimo again.

Through his son, Geronimo said, "Like I say, these three whores"-Chappo pronounced the word with care it did not usually get-"came to our tents. They had mescal with them. Some of my warriors enjoyed them, yes, and gave them silver, it could be even gold, for their bodies and for the mescal." After a bit, the old medicine man added, "Our women do not make free of themselves like this, and, if they do, we cut off the tip of their nose."

"Ought to do that in New York City," Major Sellers said with a coarse laugh. "Sure would be a lot of ugly women there, in that case." The biggest city in the USA had in the Confederate States the name of being the world's chiefest center of depravity.

However much Stuart agreed with his aide-de-camp, he waved him to silence. Then he asked Geronimo, "How did the woman of Cananea come to die during all this?"

"She is not dead," the Apache leader answered. "She fell in love with one of my men, and they ran off together."

"Bring them back," Stuart said. "Send men after them. If you can prove this, you had better do it."

Chappo translated for Geronimo but then, sounding worried, spoke for himself: "The woman will say the man took her away by force, whether it is true or not. She will try to take the blame off herself."

"It could be," Stuart said in neutral tones. In fact, he thought it likely. No one-Confederate, Yankee, Mexican, Indian-was fond of accepting blame. He turned to Senor Salazar. "Who are the two women who did come back to Cananea, and where do they live?"

"One is Guadalupe Lopez; her family's house is by the plaza," the alcalde answered. "The other poor victim of the Indios desires is Carmelita Fuentes. She lives on the edge of the town, by the road toward Janos."

"Thank you, sir." Stuart tugged at his beard as he thought. After a few seconds, he said to Major Sellers, "Send men to both these houses. See if there are any unusual amounts of U.S. gold and silver coins in them. The Apaches have been doing a lot of looting up in New Mexico Territory. If they have silver and gold to spend on women, that's the money they'll be spending."

"Yes, sir." His aide-de-camp beamed. "That's very clever, sir."

Now Salazar was the one who spoke in tones of alarm: "I must remind you, General, Cananea has since a long time traded with los Estados Unidos. Much money of that country is in this town. You must not be surprised to find it in many homes."

"It could be," Stuart said, as neutrally as he had toward Chappo. "We'll find out any which way, the same as we'll find out whether the Apaches bring in this other girl of yours and what she says when they do."

The alcalde bowed. "I will go with your soldiers to the houses of these two poor women and aid them in any way I have the power to do."

"You will do nothing of the sort. You will stay here with me." Stuart put the snap of command in his voice. The last thing he wanted was Salazar telling the women and their families what to do and what to say. He let the alcalde save face by adding, "I have men who speak Spanish. Doing this will be good practice for them."

Under the circumstances, Salazar could only acquiesce. He looked very unhappy doing it. Geronimo and Chappo looked unhappy, too. Seeing that, Stuart realized nobody knew exactly what had passed between the women of Cananea and the Apaches, and Indians and Mexicans both feared finding out exactly what had passed would show them in a bad light.

Horatio Sellers had been thinking along the same lines. When he came back from sending soldiers into Cananea, he spoke to Stuart in a low voice: "What do you want to bet we find out the greasers were whores and the redskins did ravage 'em?"

"Wouldn't surprise me one bit," Stuart answered, also almost whispering. "They aren't sure who did what, but they were sure they were ready to kill each other on account of it. We're going to need more Regulars in the Army than we used to, just because of these two provinces. We'll need to patrol the border with the Yankees, we'll need to patrol the new border with the Empire of Mexico, and we'll need to patrol every foot of ground in between unless we want fights like this one almost was to break out three times a week."

"God help the secretary of war when he tries to explain that to Congress," Sellers said.

"God help Congress if they don't listen," Stuart returned. Whether the congressmen in distant Richmond would listen was anyone's guess. If they didn't, the noise would get louder soon. Stuart was sure of that.

After a couple of hours, the soldiers who had searched the Lopez and Fuentes houses reported to Stuart. "We found five U.S. silver dollars at one place, sir, and two U.S. quarter-eagles at the other, sir," said the lieutenant who'd led them. "Five dollars at each place-"

"More than those Mexican sluts are worth," Major Sellers muttered.

As if by accident, Stuart trod on his toe. "Doesn't prove anything, not really," the commander of the Trans-Mississippi said. "We are close to the U.S. border. The women still insist they were violated?" At the lieutenant's nod, Stuart sighed. "All right. Let's see if the other one turns up. If she doesn't, then I reckon we have to believe the alcalde.'"

But she-Maria Guerrero was her name-did indeed turn up, four days later. Once back in Cananea, she loudly proclaimed the outrages the Apache in whose company she was found had inflicted on her. The warrior in question, a stalwart brave named Yahnozha, as loudly insisted on her willingness. She wasn't bruised and battered and beaten, but she declared she'd been too terrified to resist. Yahnozha said she hadn't wanted to resist.

Impasse. Stuart hated impasses. He hated ambiguity of any kind. The older he got, the more ambiguity he saw in the world. He hated that, too. "In a battle, by God, you know who's won and who's lost," he complained to his aide-de-camp. "That's what war is good for."

"Yes, sir," Sellers agreed. "But what do we do now, since nobody here knows anything and nobody much wants to find out?"

"Convince the Apaches and the Mexicans to forget this time, since nobody is sure about it," Stuart said. "That's all I can think of now. Next time they quarrel, maybe who did what to whom will be a little clearer. I hope to heaven it is, I tell you that."

He did his best to keep the peace between allies and subjects. Time helped, too. When they hadn't flown at each other's throats for a while, he decided they probably wouldn't, not over this. He wished he could believe either side would really forget it. Try as he would, he had no luck with that.