How Few Remain

Chapter 17

"On, men!" George Custer shouted. "are we going to let a pack of damned Volunteers get the better of us?"

That made his men ride harder, which was what he'd had in mind. It also made Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, who was trotting along beside him, display a mouthful of very large teeth in a grin the Cheshire Cat might have envied. "I'm glad you think well of my regiment, General Custer," Roosevelt said.

"I've seen worse," Custer allowed, which only made Roosevelt 's grin wider. After coughing a couple of times, Custer went on, "Colonel Welton, who is an old friend of mine, spoke highly of them, and I do begin to understand why. He spoke highly of you, too, Colonel."

"He's very kind," Roosevelt said. The grin did not diminish. Roosevelt knew others had a good opinion of him. He had a good opinion of himself, too.

Custer wondered if he'd been such an arrogant puppy at the same age. He probably had; as Henry Welton had said, he never would have bulled his way onto General McClellan's staff otherwise. Now, observing the phenomenon from the outside, as it were, he wondered why no one had taken a gun and shot him for the way he'd carried on.

Roosevelt said, "General, didn't I hear that you brought a good many Gatling guns up with you from Utah Territory?"

"I brought them," Custer admitted. "I left them behind with the Seventh Infantry. They slowed down my riders to an intolerable degree." He felt nothing but relief at finally having got rid of the contraptions.

But Roosevelt frowned. "We haven't enough horse here, even with your regiment and mine combined, to halt the damned Englishmen. The mechanized firepower the Gatlings represent would have been most welcome. Don't you agree that war is increasingly a business where the side with more and better weapons hold an advantage mere courage is hard pressed to overcome?"

"I most assuredly do not," Custer snapped. "Put brave men in one army and a rabble of clerks and tinkers in another, and I know which I would favor. Why do you suppose the dashed Rebels licked us in the War of Secession?"

Roosevelt was not one to back down, any more than Custer was. "How do you think Lcc's men would have fared, General, had they gone up against today's rifles and artillery with their muzzle-loaders and Napoleons?"

That question had never crossed Custer's mind. He was not much given to abstract thought. Before he could answer, the need for him to answer went away: a scout came riding up, calling, "General Custer! General Custer! The British are coming!"

Colonel Roosevelt whooped. "Tell me your name's not Paul Revere, soldier."

The scout ignored him. "Sir, their infantry is drawn up in line of battle, they've got cavalry in front and on both wings, and I spotted a couple of field pieces with 'em, too. If we don't get out of their way, they're going to try and bull right through us, you mark my words, sir."

"If they want a fight, they shall have it," Custer declared.

"Sir, I've been dogging that army for a while now," Roosevelt said. "As I told you before, they badly outnumber us: your regiment and mine together, I mean. Should we not find a defensible position and let them move upon us?"

"Colonel, if you wish to withdraw, you have my permission," Custer said icily. "Perhaps you will permit some of your braver soldiers to remain?"

"Sir, I resent that." Roosevelt scowled and went red. "My men, begging your pardon, have done a damn sight more fighting in this war than yours have. You'll not find us backward now."

"Very well, then," Custer said, having insulted the younger man into doing what he wanted. Roosevelt, if he was any judge, would fight his men with no thought for tomorrow to prove his courage and theirs. "I will want your troopers on either flank, to oppose the enemy's cavalry while we Regulars discuss matters with his foot soldiers."

"Yes, sir." Roosevelt 's salute was so precise, Custer wondered if his arm would break. After a moment, he added, "I understand that General Gordon, the British commander, is very much a straight-ahead fighter, too."

"Is he?" Custer shrugged. It mattered little to him. He knew what he was going to do. Past that, he didn't much care. "I intend to send him straight to a warmer clime than this." Roosevelt liked that. The grin came back to his face. He saluted again, this time as if he meant it rather than as a gesture of reproof, and rode off shouting orders for the Unauthorized Regiment.

Custer started shouting orders, too. "Sounds like a big fight brewing, Autie," his brother said.

"I reckon so, Tom," Custer agreed. "Not quite the enemy I wanted-I still owe the Rebs a couple of good licks-but this will do. This will do, by jingo."

"I'll say it will." Tom Custer beamed. "Did I hear right? Have they got a lot more men than we do?"

"That's what Roosevelt says." Custer shrugged. "He's the one who's been skirmishing with the limeys ever since they came down out of Canada. If anybody knows what they've got, he's the man."

"Fair enough." The prospect of going up against long odds didn't bother Tom-quite the reverse. "They won't expect us to hit 'em, then. They'll be looking to have everything their own way. Let's lick 'em, Autie."

"I sure aim to try." Custer reached out and slapped his brother on the back. They grinned at each other. Tom was the only man in the whole U.S. Army who might have relished a good scrap more than he did.

The Regulars deployed from column to line with a nonchalant ease that came from not just weeks but years of endless repetition on the practice field. Roosevelt 's Unauthorized Regiment was nowhere near so smooth. But the Volunteer cavalrymen weren't slow, either. Custer found nothing to complain about on that score. From the right flank, Roosevelt waved his hat to show he was ready to go forward.

Custer waved, too, so Roosevelt would know he'd seen him. The brevet brigadier general turned to the trumpeter beside him. "Signal the advance," he said. As the horn call rang out, the men of the Fifth Cavalry cheered loudly. Not to be outdone, so did the regiment Roosevelt had raised.

When Custer reached the top of a low swell of ground, he pointed ahead and cried out, "There is the enemy. Let us sweep him from our sacred soil, as our forefathers did a hundred years ago in the Revolution." The forefathers of a lot of his troopers had been grubbing potatoes out of the ground of Ireland a hundred years before, but no one complained about the rhetoric. The men raised another cheer.

General Gordon had ordered his army as the scout described: cavalry right and left, a screen of horsemen in front of the infantry, and the thin red line of foot soldiers stretching across the prairie. Off to the right of Custer, Roosevelt 's men shouted. Idly, Custer wondered what their colonel had told them.

The British army disappeared from sight for a while when Custer rode down the far slope of the rise. He wished the Englishmen would vanish as easily when the time for fighting came, as it would in mere minutes. Up another swell of ground he trotted, his men close behind. Thin over a couple of miles of ground, the enemy's cheer reached his hear.

"They've seen us!" he called. A moment later, he spied a flash, and then another one, from behind the line of British infantry. A couple of hundred yards ahead of him, dirt fountained up into the air as two shells landed. Custer laughed out loud. "They can't hit the side of a barn, boys!"

Calmly, methodically, the British artillerymen served their field guns. The cannons flashed and roared again. One of the shells fell short. The other landed behind Custer. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw a horse down and kicking. His troopers cheered once more.

"This is nothing," Tom called to him.

"You're right," he said. "During the War of Secession, a couple of miserable little popguns banging away like this wouldn't even have been enough to wake us up." He pointed toward the British cavalry ahead. "By God, they do still have lancers! I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes."

His own men rode in loose formation. The lancers, mounted on horses that might have carried knights of the Round Table, formed lines that were real lines. All their lances came down at once; sunlight glittered off steel. As one, those big horses began to trot.

"What a bully show!" Custer cried, nothing but admiration in him for his enemies' horsemanship.

"Yes, and now we're going to smash it all to pieces," Tom replied. Custer nodded, and then felt his face grow hot. What they would smash it with were breech-loading carbines-modern industry set against medieval courage. Maybe Colonel Roosevelt had known what he was talking about after all.

Custer gauged the range. "Fire at will!" he shouted. Behind him and to either side, the Springfields began to bark. He raised his own carbine to his shoulder, picked one of those lancers, and fired at him.

The man did not go down. Custer had not particularly expected him to, though he'd hoped he would. But a lot of troopers were blazing away at the Englishmen. All along the line of lancers, those big horses crashed to the ground. Men slid from the saddle or threw down their steel-shod spears to clutch at wounds. The ones who were not hit kept coming. Riders moved up from the second rank to take the places of those in the first who had fallen.

As the lancers drew nearer, Custer felt… not fear, for he had never known fear on a battlefield, but a certain amount of intimidation. The big, tough men looked ready to ride over the Fifth Cavalry and trample them into the grass and dirt of the prairie as if they had never been.

Then he shot at an Englishman and hit him square in the chest. The luckless fellow dropped his lance, threw up his hands, and slumped dead over his horse's neck. More and more Englishmen were falling as the range narrowed, and they could do nothing to hit back. None of them wavered, though.

"Christ, they're brave!" he shouted.

"Christ, they're stupid," his brother shouted back, reloading his Springfield.

A lancer thundered toward Custer. He fired at the fellow and missed. The lancehead pointed straight at his breastbone. In another couple of seconds, the British soldier would spit him as if he were a prairie chicken roasting over a campfire. He yanked out his Colt revolver and fired three quick rounds. One of them missed, too, but one hit the horse and one the rider. Custer didn't think any of the wounds would kill, but the lancer lost interest in skewering him.

Here and there, British lancers did spear his men out of the saddle. Here and there, too, the Englishmen drew their own revolvers and blazed away at his troopers. But a lot of the horsemen in red tunics were down, and more of them fell every minute. Flesh and blood, even the bravest flesh and blood, could take only so much. After some minutes of desperate, overmatched fighting at close quarters, the lancers broke away from the Fifth Cavalry and galloped for their lives back toward their infantry or away to the wings to shelter among horsemen whose rifles could protect them.

Custer cheered and waved his hat. "Forward, men!" he shouted-the order he always loved best. "Follow me! We've given their horse a good lesson. Now to deal with the foot."

He galloped past a dead redcoat, then past a British horse with a broken back trying to drag itself along with its forelegs. Then he and his troopers thundered toward the British infantry, who waited in a two-deep firing line to receive them. A shell chewed up the prairie off to his right. Fragments of the casing hissed past his head. He shrugged and kept riding.

Every so often, along that firing line, a red-coated soldier would go down. The British held their positions as steadily-indeed, as stolidly-as any troops Custer had seen during the War of Secession. As he rode toward the British line, doubt tried to rise in his bosom. Cavalry had had a devil of a time shifting steady infantry during the last war. True, his men carried breechloaders now, but so did their foes. The British lancers had been as brave as any men he'd ever seen. Would the foot soldiers be any different?

He did what he always did with doubt-he stifled it. "Here we go!" he shouted. "For the United States of America! Chaaarge!"

As if held by a single man, all the rifles along the British firing line leveled on the Fifth. As if held by a single man, all those rifles fired at the same instant. A great cloud of black-powder smoke rose above and around the enemy. Through it, flames thrust like bayonets from the muzzles of the Englishmen's Martini-Henrys.

Three balls snapped past Custer. Not all his men were so lucky as to have bullets miss them. The charge broke up almost as if the troopers had slammed into a wall. Men screamed. Horses screamedlouder, shriller, more terrible cries than could have burst from a human throat.

The British infantry fed more cartridges into their rifles. Precise as so many steam-driven machines, they gave the Fifth Cavalry another volley, and another, and another. The horsemen replied as best they could. Their best was not enough, not nearly. The redcoats not only outnumbered them but were also firing on foot rather than from the bounding backs of beasts. Englishmen, many Englishmen, toppled and writhed and cursed and shrieked. The Americans, though, melted away like snow on a warm spring afternoon.

"We can't do it, Autie!" Tom Custer shouted.

If Tom said a piece of fighting could not be done, no man on earth could do it. "We'll have to fall back," Custer said, and then, to the bugler, "Blow Retreat." But no call rang out. The bugler was dead. "Retreat!" Custer yelled at the top of his lungs. "Fall back!" The words were as bitter as the alkali dust of Utah in his mouth. So far as he could remember, he'd never used them before.

Fewer of his men heard him than would have heard the horn. But they would have fallen back whether he ordered it or not. They now made the same discovery the British lancers had not long before: some fires were too galling to bear.

Then Tom shouted again, wordlessly this time. The shout ended in a choking gurgle. Custer stared at his brother. Blood poured from Tom's mouth, and from a great wound in his chest. Ever so slowly, or so it seemed to Custer, Tom crumpled from his horse. When he hit the ground, he didn't move.

Custer let out one long howl of pain. The worst of it was, that was all he had time for. Even without Tom-and Tom, surely, would never rise again till Judgment Day-he had to save his force. His head swiveled wildly to east and west. Did the Volunteer cavalry know he couldn't maintain the fight? If they didn't, they would have to face the weight of the whole British army by themselves.

But no-they were breaking away from combat, too, falling back to screen the retreat of the Regulars. That was humiliating. Even more humiliating was that the British cavalry showed no great inclination to pursue. Roosevelt 's Unauthorized Regiment had given the limeys all they wanted and then some.

The boy colonel rode over to Custer. "What now, sir?" he asked, as if his superior hadn't just finished feeding his own prized regiment into the meat grinder.

What now, indeed? Custer wondered. Without Tom, he hardly cared. But he had to answer. He knew he had to answer. "We fall back on our infantry and await the British attack as the enemy awaited ours," he mumbled. It was a poor solution-even with Welton's infantry, he didn't have the manpower General Gordon did. But, battered and dazed as he was, it was the only solution he could find.

"Yes, sir!" Roosevelt, by his tone, thought it brilliant. "Don't worry, sir-we'll lick 'em yet."

"Come on, men!" Theodore Roosevelt shouted. "We've got to keep the damn limeys off the Regulars' backs a little bit longer."

First Lieutenant Karl Jobst gave him a reproachful look. "Sir, I wish you would have found a politer way to put that."

"Why?" Roosevelt said. "It's the truth, isn't it? Right now, General Custer's men couldn't fight off a Sunday-school class, let alone the British army. You know it, I know it, and Custer knows it, too."

His adjutant still looked unhappy. "They fought General Gordon's men most valiantly-smashed the lancers all to bits and hurt the infantry, too."

"That they did. They charged home as bravely as you'd like," Roosevelt said. "So did the six hundred at Balaclava. They paid for it, and so did the Regulars. Custer's brother's down, I heard, among too many others. We won our part of the fight. Unfortunately, the result is measured by the whole, which here proves less than the sum of its parts."

Off from behind him came a brief crackle of rifle fire. The British cavalry, confident he would not turn on it with the whole Unauthorized Regiment, was dogging the tracks of the U.S. force, keeping an eye on it as it retreated. Every so often, British scouts and his own rear guard would exchange pleasantries.

"Sir, do you happen to know where Colonel Welton has positioned the Seventh Infantry?" This was not the first time Jobst had asked the question. Though normally a cold-blooded fellow, he could not keep concern from his voice. The Seventh Infantry was his regiment, Henry Welton his commander, to whose rule he would return when Roosevelt went back to civilian life.

Now, though, Roosevelt had to shake his head. "I wish I did, but General Custer has not seen fit to entrust that information to me." He rode on for another few strides, then asked a question of his own: "You being a professional at this business, Lieutenant, what is your view of Custer the soldier?"

"I told you before he came up to Montana, sir, that he had a name for impetuous boldness." Karl Jobst started to say something else, stopped, and then began again: "The reputation appears to be well founded."

After a while, Roosevelt realized that was all he'd get from his adjutant. If Jobst said anything more-something on the order of, He took a perfectly good regiment and chopped it into catmeat, for instance-and word of that got back to Custer, it would blight the lieutenant's career. No one could possibly doubt Custer's courage. He'd done everything he could, going straight into the British. But that hadn't been enough, and hadn't come close to being enough, to turn them back.

Roosevelt sighed. "Well, in his shoes I might well have done the same thing. With the enemy in front of him, he could think of nothing but driving them off."

"I do believe, sir, that you might have handled the engagement with rather more finesse," Jobst said. Roosevelt needed a moment to realize that was praise, and another moment to realize how much. If a Regular Army officer felt a colonel of Volunteers could have done better than a Regular brevet brigadier general, that spoke well of the Volunteer indeed-and not so well of George Custer.

A few minutes later, Custer rode back to confer with Roosevelt. Even if Custer had been overeager in the attack, even if the loss of his brother left his face raw with anguish, he was handling the retreat about as well as any man could. He kept a firm rein on both his unit and the Unauthorized Regiment, and made sure he found out whatever Roosevelt 's riders could learn about British dispositions and intentions.

Roosevelt found a moment to say, "I'm sorry about your loss, sir."

"Yes, yes," Custer said impatiently-he was surely doing his poor best not to think of that. "Now we have to see to it that our country's loss does not include the whole of this force."

"Yes, sir. I wish I could tell you more," Roosevelt said. "Their cavalry screen keeps us from finding out as much as we'd like, just as ours does to them."

Custer gnawed at his mustache. "I wish I knew how far ahead of their infantry the cavalry's got. Not far enough to suit me, unless I miss my guess. Infantry pushed hard can almost keep up with horsemen. Once we've joined with Colonel Welton, odds are we shan't have to wait long before they attack us."

"You don't think they'll simply ignore us and go on down toward the mines around Helena, which I presume to be their goal?" Roosevelt said.

"Not a chance of it, Colonel." Custer spoke with decision. "We shall be far too large a force for them to dare to leave us in their flank and rear. We could and would work all sorts of mischief on them."

"That does make sense," Roosevelt said. "And, from what I've heard, their General Gordon is a headlong brawler, as I believe I've mentioned once before."

"Yes, yes," Custer said again. Roosevelt bristled at the tone, even if Custer was not, could not be, quite himself. Had the general commanding U.S. forces in Montana Territory done so well, he could afford to ignore what anyone told him? The answer was only too obvious. Had the general done as well as all that, he and Roosevelt would have been riding north, not south. But then Custer showed he'd heard after all: "If he's so very headlong, maybe he'll run onto our sword, the way bulls do in the arena."

"I do hope so, sir," Roosevelt said. Custer's response let him ask the question in whose answer both he and Karl Jobst were keenly interested: "Where has Colonel Welton set up the position that awaits us?"

"Not far from the Teton River," Custer replied, which told Roosevelt less than he would have liked but more than he'd already known. The brevet brigadier general went on, "He has orders to pick the best possible defensive position. We should be in it, wherever it proves to be, by nightfall."

There was information worth having. "If we are, we'll fight in the morning," Roosevelt said.

"I expect we will," Custer said. He hesitated, gnawing at his mustache once more. That was unlike him. After a moment, he went on, "I am thinking of dismounting my men and having them fight on foot. That would leave your regiment, Colonel, as our sole force on horseback. I shall rely on you to keep the British cavalry off our flanks."

"We'll do it, sir," Roosevelt promised. "That's the sort of job Winchesters were made for." The Unauthorized Regiment would never have got close enough to the British infantry to engage them with the repeating rifles, whose effective range was not great. With Springfields, Custer and the Fifth Cavalry had slugged it out with the foot soldiers in red-and had come out on the short end of the fight.

"I shall rely on you, as I did in the engagement farther north," Custer said. Roosevelt didn't mention that his part of the force had driven back their opponents. Custer already knew that. He nodded absently to Roosevelt and then trotted south, to the regiment he had long commanded.

No sooner had he gone than Karl Jobst rode over to Roosevelt, a questioning look on his face. Roosevelt repeated what Custer had said. Jobst brightened. "Colonel Welton knows how to read a field as well as anyone I've ever seen," he said. "He'll pick the best place he can find for us to make a stand."

"Good," Roosevelt said. A moment later, he wished his adjutant had put it a different way. Making a stand implied that defeat carried disaster in its wake. That was probably true here, but he would sooner not have been reminded of it.

As Brigadier General Custer had said, they met Henry Welton about four that afternoon. And, as Lieutenant Jobst had said, Welton did indeed know how to read a field. He'd chosen to defend the forward slope of a low, gentle rise. No one could possibly approach without being seen and fired upon from as far out as rifles could reach.

And not only had he picked a good position, he'd improved on what nature provided. His men had dug three long trenches and heaped up in front of them the dirt they'd shoveled out. The trenches and breastworks didn't look like much from the front. Roosevelt wondered if they were worth the labour they'd cost.

So did Custer, who was arguing with Welton as Roosevelt rode up. Welton looked stubborn. "Sir," he was saying, "from everything I saw in the War of Secession, any protection is a lot better than just standing out in the open and blazing away at the bastards on the other side."

"All right, all right." Custer threw his hands in the air. "Have it your way, Henry. The dashed things are dug, and you can't very well undig them. But while you've been building like beavers, we've been fighting like fiends."

"Yes, sir, I know that," Henry Welton said. He nodded to Roosevelt. "And was I right about the Unauthorized Regiment?"

"They fought well, I'll not deny it," Custer replied. Theodore Roosevelt drew himself up straight at the praise. He thought his troopers deserved even better than that; they'd outfought the Regulars seven ways from Sunday. But, whatever else Custer might have been about to say, he didn't say it. Instead, he stared and pointed. "Colonel, you've posted all my damned"-he didn't bother with dashed; he was exercised-"coffee mills in the forward trench? Don't you think we'd be better off with riflemen there?"

"Sir, I thought we might as well use the Gatling guns, since we've got them," Welton answered. Roosevelt stared at them with interest; he'd never seen one before. They did look rather like a cross between a cannon and a coffee mill. Welton went on, "If they perform as advertised, they should be well forward, I think. If they don't, we can always bring riflemen in alongside them."

"They're the only artillery we've got," Custer said worriedly. "That means they belong in the rear." He looked around-probably for his brother, Roosevelt thought. He did not see Tom Custer. He would never see Tom Custer again. Not seeing him, the brevet brigadier general settled for Roosevelt. "What's your opinion in this matter, Colonel?"

"They're already emplaced," Roosevelt answered, "and they're not quite like artillery, are they, sir? If you're asking me, I say we leave them."

Custer yielded, as he likely would not have done with Tom to back him: "Have it your way, then. If they don't work, it doesn't matter where in creation they are. I reckon that likely, myself. As you say, though, Colonel Welton, we can always bring up riflemen."

"Sir, with your permission, I'm going to throw out a wide net of cavalry pickets, to make sure the British don't try anything in the night," Roosevelt said. "When the real fight comes, I'll keep them off your flanks."

"That's what you're here for," Custer agreed. "Go do it." It wasn't quite a summary dismissal, but it was close. Roosevelt saluted and stomped off.

Occasional rifle shots punctuated the night, as American and British scouting parties collided in the darkness. The British weren't trying a night attack; their pickets rode out ahead of their main force to keep the Americans from unexpectedly descending on them. Roosevelt snatched a few hours of fitful sleep, interrupted time and again by riders coming in to report.

He drank hot, strong, vile coffee before sunup as he deployed his men. He commanded the right, as he had in the earlier fight against General Gordon's army. The left wing was largely on its own; he knew he wouldn't be able to keep in touch with it once the fighting started.

And it would start soon. When men found targets they could actually see, cavalry skirmishing picked up in a hurry. On came the British infantry, deployed in line of battle, rolling straight toward the position Custer and Welton were defending. Roosevelt 's men tried without much luck to delay them; their British counterparts held them off.

Behind the British line, the field guns accompanying the men in red opened up on the U.S. entrenchments. Custer and Welton had nothing with which they could reply; the Gatlings couldn't come close to reaching those cannon. In the trenches, the Regulars, infantry and dismounted cavalry alike, took what the enemy dished out. Roosevelt 's respect for them grew. That had to be harder than fighting in a battle where they could strike back at what was tormenting them.

"Once General Gordon has us properly softened up, or thinks he has, he'll send in the infantry," Karl Jobst said.

Gordon let the two field guns pound away at the entrenchments for half an hour, his foot soldiers pausing just outside rifle range. Then the cannon fell silent. Thin in the distance, a bugle rang out. The British infantry lowered their bayoneted rifles, as the cavalry had lowered their lances. The bugle resounded once more. The Englishmen let out a great, wordless shout and marched forward.

"What a bully show!" Roosevelt exclaimed. "Enemies they may be, but they are splendid men." He raised his Winchester to his shoulder and tried at very long range to pot some of those splendid men.

Unlike the luckless lancers, the British infantry fired as they advanced; their breechloaders made reloading on the move, which had been next to impossible during the War of Secession, quick and easy. A cloud of smoke rose above them, thicker and thicker with every forward stride they took.

Smoke rose from the trenches where the bluecoats crouched, too. Englishmen began falling. Their comrades filled their places. No doubt Americans were falling, too, but Roosevelt couldn't sec that. What he could see was the red British wave flowing forward, steady and resistless as the tide. The redcoats drew within four hundred yards of the frontmost entrenchment, within three hundred…

"They're going to break in!" Roosevelt cried in bitter pain.

And then, through the din of the rifles, he heard a sound like none he'd ever known before, a fierce, explosive snarl that might have been a giant clearing his throat, and clearing it, and clearing it.

… Amazing puffs of smoke blossomed in the center of the U.S. front line. "The Gatlings!" Karl Jobst yelled, somewhere between astonishment and ecstasy.

Roosevelt had no words, only awe. In what seemed the twinkling of an eye and was perhaps two or three minutes of actual time, those steadfast British lines abruptly ceased to exist, in much the same way as a slab of ice will rot when hot water pours over it. For the first half of that time, the infantry kept trying to go forward in the face of fire unlike anything they'd ever met or imagined. They dropped and dropped and dropped. Not one of them got within a hundred yards of the trench. After that, the foot soldiers, those of them still on their feet, realized the thing could not be done. They also realized they were dead men if they didn't get out of range of the terrible stream of bullets pouring from the Gatling guns.

It was not a retreat. Custer had led a retreat. It was a rout, a panic-stricken flight, a stampede. The British, surely, were as steady in the face of familiar danger as any men ever born. In the face of the snarling unknown, they broke. Some of them- Roosevelt took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes to be sure he was seeing straightthrew away their rifles to run the faster.

He spent only a little while luxuriating in amazement. Then he started thinking like a soldier again. "After them!" he shouted. "After them, by jingo! They thought they'd run over us like a train, did they? Well, they've just been train-wrecked, boys. Now we haul away the rubbish."

Now his men, cheering as if their throats would burst, pressed hard upon the fleeing foe. The British horse, which had been screening an advance, suddenly had to try to screen a broken army falling back. The enemy's field guns fired a few rounds of canister before the men of the Unauthorized Regiment, coming at them from three directions at once, overran them and killed their crews.

"Captured guns," Lieutenant Jobst said cheerfully. "That's the true measure of victory. Has been as long as cannons have gone to war."

"After them!" Roosevelt shouted. "We don't want to let even a single one get away. No, maybe one, to tell his pals up in Canada what it means to invade the United States." He fired at an English cavalryman and knocked him out of the saddle. "Easy as shooting prong-horns!" he exulted.

North over the prairie went the pursuit, as it had gone south the day before. The troopers of the Unauthorized Regiment took rifles away from slightly wounded or exhausted Englishmen they passed and rode on after the main body. Roosevelt didn't think he had enough men to beat them, but they were so shaken he intended to try if he got the chance. They might all throw down their guns and give up at a show of force.

And then, from behind, he heard not one but several buglers blowing Halt. His men looked at one another in surprise, but most, obedient to the training he'd drilled into them, reined in. "No!" he raged. "God damn it, no! I didn't order that! I'll kill the idiot who ordered that. We've got 'em licked to a faretheewell."

"Halt!" a great voice shouted: George Custer, who must have almost killed his horse catching up to Roosevelt 's men. To Roosevelt 's amazement, tears streaked Custer's cheeks, not just tears of grief but tears of fury. To his further amazement, Custer reeked of whiskey from twenty feet away. "Halt, damn it to fucking hell!" he shouted again.

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

"Wrong? I'll show you what's wrong!" Custer waved a sheet of paper. "What's wrong is, a cease-fire with the English sons of bitches went into effect yesterday, only we didn't know it. We just licked the boots off the shitty limeys, we just got my brother killed, in a battle we never should have fought, and now we have to let what's left of the bastards go home. I haven't had a drink of liquor, save for medicinal purposes, in almost twenty years-not since before I married Libbie. Do you wonder, Roosevelt, do you wonder that I got myself lit up riding after you?"

"No, sir," Roosevelt said, and then, "Hell, no, sir." After a moment, he added, "Is anything left in your bottle, sir?"

"Not a drop," Custer answered. "Not a single fucking drop." "Too bad," Roosevelt said. "In that case, I'll just have to find my own."

Frederick Douglass got off the train in Rochester. His wife and son were the only black faces on the platform. Anna Douglass burst into tears when she saw him. Lewis folded him into a hard, muscular embrace. "Good to have you home, Father," he said. "Let me take your bag there."

"Thank you, my boy," Douglass said. "Believe you me, it is very, very good to be home again." He gave Anna a gentle kiss, then stood up tall and straight before her. "As you see, my dear, I have come through all of it unscathed."

"Don't sound so proud of yourself," she said sharply. "I reckon that was the Lord's doin', a whole lot more'n it was yours."

He looked down at the planks of the platform floor. "Since I cannot possibly argue with you, I shall not even try. The Lord took me through the valley of the shadow of death, but He chose to let me walk out the other side safe. For that, I can only praise His name."

Anna nodded, satisfied. Lewis Douglass asked the question his father had known he would ask: "What was it like, sir, coming up before Stonewall Jackson?" A frown twisted his strong features; he laughed ruefully. "If working with you on the newspaper hasn't yet taught me the futility of asking what something is like and then expecting to feel the answer as did the man who had the experience, I don't suppose it ever will."

"If it hasn't yet taught me that futility, why should it have done so with you?" Douglass returned. "What was it like? It was frightening." He held up a hand before his son or wife could speak. "Not in the way you think, either. It was frightening because I found myself in the presence of a man both formidable and, I judge, good, but one who believes deep in his heart in things utterly antithetical to those in which I believe, and who reasons with unfailing logic from his false premises." He shivered. "It was, in every sense of the word, alarming."

They all walked out toward the carriage, Anna on Frederick 's arm. As Lewis put the last suitcase behind the seat, he remarked, "You have said before that it is possible for a slaveholder to be a good man."

"Yes." Douglass helped his wife up, then climbed aboard himself and sat beside her. "It is possible," he went on as Lewis took the reins. "It is possible, but it is not easy. Jackson… surprised me."

"1 reckon you surprised him, too." Anna patted her husband's arm.

"I hope I did. I rather think I did," Douglass said. "And I have what may be great news: in Chicago, I heard that the Confederates are-no, may be-planning to manumit their bondsmen once the war, now suspended, is truly ended, this being a quid pro quo in return for their allies' assistance against the United States."

"Wonderful news, if true," Lewis said. "We've heard the like now and again down through the years, though, and nothing ever came of it. Who told you this time, Father? Lincoln?"

"No, John Hay," Douglass answered. "Since he was minister to the Confederate States, he should know whereof he speaks. Lincoln had other concerns." He let out a bitter sigh. " Lincoln has had other concerns than the Negro before, which I say though he is and has always been my friend. In the summer of 1862, he drafted a proclamation emancipating all slaves within the territory of the Confederate States, then waited for a U.S. victory to issue it, lest it be seen as a measure of desperation rather than one of policy. The victory never came, and, when our straits indeed grew desperate, he let that paper languish, having been convinced it was by then too late to do any good. I shall go to my grave convinced he was mistaken."

"Of course he was, Father," Lewis said angrily. He looked back over his shoulder. "In all the years since, you have never spoken of this, nor has anyone else I ever heard."

"The proclamation was never widely known, for obvious reasons," Douglass answered. "Once the Confederate States succeeded in breaking away, it became moot, and what would have been the point to mentioning it? As you'll remember, the fight to emancipate the Negro slaves remaining within U.S. territory after the War of Secession was quite hard enough."

"That is so, and you may be right about the rest, too," Lewis said, "but it galls me to think the United States went down to defeat when we still had a weapon we could loose against the enemy."

Frederick Douglass let out a hoarse whoop of laughter. "You say that, after the ignominious cease-fire to which President Blaine has agreed? We have an army's worth-no, a nation's worth-of weapons we have not loosed against our enemies in this fight, and now we shall not loose them."

"And that's a right good thing, too," Anna Douglass said, "on account of the only thing we would do with 'cm is shoot our own selves in the leg."

Lewis pointed north, toward Lake Ontario. "Two ironclads flying the Union Jack steam back and forth out there. We arc under their guns, as we have been since they first bombarded us. We are helpless against them. The problem is not only poor use of the weapons we have, but also weapons we lack."

"We have now twice gone unprepared to war," Douglass said. "May God grant that, where we did not learn our lesson the first time, we shall do so the second. I hope that, in years to come, smoke will billow from the stacks of the factories producing every manner of gun and munition so that, should another war ever come, we shall at last be ready for it."

When the carriage reached the street on which Douglass lived, Lewis had to rein in sharply to keep the horses from running down Daniel, who was pedaling his bicycle along without the slightest care for where he was going. The boy handled the high-wheeled ordinary with far more confidence than he'd shown before Douglass left for Louisville: too much confidence, perhaps.

Seeing Douglass, he whizzed close to the carriage. "Welcome back!" he shouted. "Welcome home!"

"Thank you, son," Douglass answered. By then, Daniel was speeding away again. Douglass wondered whether he heard. Even so, the journalist softly repeated the words: "Thank you." To Daniel, he wasn't a Negro, or, at least, wasn't first and foremost a Negro. Before that, he was a neighbor and a man. To Douglass, that was as it should be.

Lewis reined in again, in front of the house where Douglass and Anna had lived so long. "Here we are, Father." He grinned and tipped his cap. "Cab fare, fifty cents."

Douglass gave him two quarters, and a dime tip to boot. He would not let Lewis return the money, either, saying, "It's the best ride I've had since I left home, and one of the cheaper ones, too."

"All right, since you put it that way." Lewis shoved the coins into his pocket. "Good to know I have a trade I can fall back on at need. Heaven knows the newspaper business isn't so steady as I wish it were."

"See what you get for not pandering to the most popular opinions?" Frederick Douglass kept his tone light, but the words were serious, and he and his son both knew it. He got down, then helped Anna. She felt fragile, bony, in his arms. Anxious, he asked, "My dear, how are you?"

"As the good Lord meant me to be," she answered, to which he found no response. She went on, "Pretty soon I'll see Him face-to-face, and I intend to have a good long talk with Him about the way things do go on in this here world."

"Good," Douglass said. "I'm sure He could have made a much better job of things had He had you to advise Him."

Anna glared, then poked him in the ribs. They both laughed. Together, they walked into the house. Douglass stopped in the front hall. The feel of the throw rug under his feet, the rows of framed pictures on the walls, the infinitely familiar view of the parlor on one side and the dining room on the other, the faint smell of paper and tobacco and food-all told him he was home, and nowhere else. A long, happy sigh escaped him.

"Are you glad to be back?" Anna asked slyly.

"Oh, maybe just a bit," he answered. They laughed again.

Lewis came downstairs, brisk and quick and sure of himself. "I've put your bags in the bedroom, Father. That's settled for you." He was a young man still, and certain that things were easily settled. A small problem solved, he moved on to a greater one: "Where do we go from here?"

"How do you mean that?" Frederick Douglass asked. "I myself am going upstairs before long, to find out if I still remember what sleeping in my own bed feels like. If, however you mean Where does the colored man go from here? or Where do the United States go from here? — well, those questions require a little more thought. Only a little, you understand."

"I had suspected they might." Lewis chuckled without much mirth. "Any quick answers, before I see to the horses and the carriage?"

"You let your father rest," Anna said with a touch of asperity. "He hasn't had hisself an easy time of it."

Nothing could have been better calculated to make Douglass say, "I will answer-a horseback guess, before Lewis goes back to the horses. As I said before, the lot of the colored man in the Confederate States may improve, though to what degree I cannot now guess. The lot of the colored man in our own country? I see no great change on the horizon, though I wish I did. We shall have to go on working state by state for laws asserting our rights, for the national government, having finally broken our chains, can go no further without another Constitutional amendment, and you know as well as I how likely that is."

"Un-," Lewis said wryly. "All right, that's not a bad summation for us. Can you do as well for the country?"

"No one can guess where the country goes from here," Douglass said, shaking his massive head. "We shall have to see what the full effect upon us is of this defeat. Lincoln believes the white labourer will be pressed down until he is no better off than the Negro-but Lincoln, being white, cannot fully grasp all the vicissitudes of being black. Ben Butler, if I understand him rightly, feels the national government needs to organize us down to our shoelaces, to make certain we are never again caught short by our enemies. Whether the national government can do that, whether it will do that, whether it should do that-if I could read a crystal ball, I would wear a turban on my head, not a derby."

"What does President Blaine think?" Lewis asked. "Did you get any hint of that in Chicago?"

"No," Douglass answered. "Surprisingly little was said of him at that meeting. Perhaps that was because he is sure to fail of reelection when his term is up, perhaps because he has not clearly shown he has any thoughts to speak of past unwavering hostility toward the Confederate States, and he has bought only disrepute on that policy."

"More Democrats," Lewis said with a sigh.

"More Democrats," Frederick Douglass agreed, as mournfully.

Anna said, "You was right the first time, Frederick. Now go on upstairs and get yourself some rest. You can do that your own self, and do it this here minute. The rest of it'll still be here when you get up."

"She's right, Father," Lewis said.

"She generally is," Douglass answered. He headed for the stairway.

Under flag of truce, General Thomas Jackson approached the line where his men had halted the Army of Ohio's push into Louisville.

His guards looked jumpy, even though no guns had barked for several days. "Do you really trust the damnyankees, sir?" one of them asked.

"They fought honorably," Jackson answered. "If I was not afraid to come up here while the fighting raged, why should I fear doing so with the cease-fire in place?"

"I don't like it," the guard said, stubborn still. His eyes flicked now here, now there. "Lordy, they made a hell of a mess out of this here place, didn't they?" He paused a moment in thought. " 'Course, we helped, I reckon."

A call came from within the U.S. lines: "That you, General Jackson?"

"Yes, it is I," Jackson replied. To his ear, the U.S. accent was sharp and harsh and unpleasant.

"Come ahead, General," the Yankee said. "General Willcox is here waiting for you."

"Come I shall," Jackson said. He picked his way over broken bricks and charred boards. Here in the center of Louisville, nothing but rubble remained. The only walls to be seen were those U.S. and C.S. soldiers had erected from bits of that rubble. None of the graceful architecture that had made Louisville such a pleasant place before the war survived.

And President Longstreet, Jackson thought, is willing to let the United States off without a half-dime's indemnity. His mouth tightened. Christian charity was all very well, but what point to charity toward those who deserved it not?

A couple of men in blue uniforms showed themselves. They stood up a little warily; for a long time, showing any part of your body was an invitation to a sharpshooter to drive a hole through it. One of them said, "If you'd been here a few days ago, Stonewall-"

"No doubt my men would say the same to you, young fellow," Jackson answered. He wasn't so severe as he might have been; that was soldier's banter from the Yankee, not out-and-out hatred.

A trim young captain in tunic and trousers far too clean and neat for him to have served at the front line came up out of a trench and nodded. "I'm Oliver Richardson, General Jackson — General Willcox's adjutant. If you'll be so good as to come with me, sir…"

When Jackson saw Willcox, he stabbed out a forefinger at him. "I remember you, sir!" he exclaimed. "Unless I'm much mistaken, you were in the West Point class of the year following mine-class of '47, are you not?"

"That's it, sure enough," Orlando Willcox answered. "And I went into the Artillery, just as you did." He let out a rheumy chuckle. "We were all on the same side once, we old-timers. Another few years, sir, and no men in your country or mine who served with one another before the War of Secession will be left."

"You're right, General," Jackson said. "We are now separate, and grow more separate every day-despite, I might add, the ill-advised efforts of the United States to exert a nonexistent influence upon our peaceful domestic affairs." Remembering the cease-fire, he held up a hand. "But let that go. It is behind us, God grant forever. Your men here fought most valiantly. You have every reason to be proud of them."

"The same holds of yours," Willcox said.

He paused, perhaps waiting for Jackson to praise his generalship so he could again return the compliment. Jackson had not so much diplomacy in him. "To business," he said. "I am charged by President Longstreet to inquire of you when you intend to abandon these lines and withdraw all forces of the Army of the Ohio from the soil of the Confederate States."

"I cannot answer that at the present time, General Jackson," Willcox replied. "I have as yet been given no orders on the subject. Absent such orders, what choice have I but to hold the men in place?"

"Sir, I mean no disrespect to you or to your government, but this is not entirely satisfactory." If that wasn't an understatement, Jackson had never uttered one. "The United States requested the present cease-fire, presumably because you felt yourselves to be at a disadvantage. This being so, I must tell you that we shall not indefinitely tolerate your occupying territory that has belonged to our nation since the close of the War of Secession."

"Come with me, General," Orlando Willcox said, and began to walk away from the gathered men of both sides. When his adjutant started to come, too, he waved the young captain back.

Taking that as a hint, Jackson also motioned for the soldiers who had accompanied him inside the U.S. lines to hold their places. He followed the commander of the Army of the Ohio till they were out of earshot of their subordinates. Willcox stopped then, his boots scrunching on broken bricks. Jackson halted beside him. Quietly, the Confederate general-in-chief asked, "How now, sir?"

"How now?" Willcox said, also in a low voice but with unmistakable anger. "How now? I shall tell you how now, General. Getting any orders out of Washington City — excuse me, out of Philadelphia; 1 spoke from force of habit-is a miracle comparable to that which our Savior worked with the loaves and fishes. Getting orders in a timely fashion would be a miracle comparable to the Resurrection. I say would be rather than is, for I have seen no timely orders."

"This is not as it should be," Jackson said, and tried to decide whether that was a bigger understatement than the one he'd made a moment before.

"Some such conception had already formed in my mind, yes," Willcox said. Jackson did not remember any sardonic streak in him, but they'd had little to do with each other for more than thirty years, and nothing to do with each other for more than twenty. Maybe Willcox had changed. Maybe, on the other hand, he'd just been tried beyond endurance.

"What am I to tell my president, then?" Jackson asked. "He will suspect your government of having asked for this cease-fire so you could strengthen your position here, not as a prelude to abandoning it." Longstreet would certainly suspect that. Longstreet and suspicion were made for each other.

General Willcox spread his hands. "This is not the case. The cease-fire requested was on all fronts, against all enemies. What point to making such a request for the purpose of fortifying one relatively small position from which, you must be able to see as well as I, we have no prospect for large or rapid advance?"

"That is so," Jackson admitted. But then he felt he had to qualify his words: "I say it is so in my own person, you understand. How the president will view the matter when I report to him remains to be seen."

"Of course, General." Willcox's laughter was bitter. "The responsibility for war and peace and, in the broad sense, for the conduct of the war lies with the civilian branches of government. Who, though, who takes the blame when their plans go awry? Do they blame themselves? Have you ever seen them blame themselves?"

Jackson did not answer. In the main, he agreed with Willcox. Most professional soldiers, in the USA and CSA both, would have agreed with Willcox. But not all the blunders in the U.S. campaign in Kentucky lay with the civilians. Willcox could not have more plainly advertised what he purposed doing had he telegraphed Jackson ahead of time, and his flanking attack had been woefully late.

Willcox went on, "I do not desire any more fighting here. Not a man in my command wants any more fighting here. If, however, we are ordered to resume the struggle"-he spread his hands again-"we shall do so. What is the soldier's lot but to obey?"

"What do you judge President Blaine's likely response would be to an ultimatum demanding withdrawal from Louisville on pain of renewed war?" Jackson asked.

"I cannot answer that question," Willcox said. It was the proper response, but disappointed Jackson all the same; he had hoped Will-cox's anger might lead him into a revealing indiscretion. The commander of the Army of the Ohio went on, "The only one who knows Blainc's mind for certain is Blainc, and, by all we've seen, he is none too sure of it, either."

That was indiscreet. It might have been revealing, had recent events not shown it to be a simple statement of fact. Jackson said, "President Longstreet is not pleased that you remain here, and will grow less pleased by the day."

"I wish I could tell you more," Willcox answered. "I am, however, not a free agent, any more than you are, sir. Probably less than you are, for I doubt the apron strings holding you to your government are as tight as the ones I am compelled to wear."

"I doubt that-but then, I would, wouldn't I?" Jackson said. He and Willcox looked at each other with wry sympathy. Soldiers from one side often had more in common with soldiers from the other than with the civilians who told them what to do. "You have no better word to give me, General? Nothing I can send to Richmond to help ensure that we remain untroubled here?"

"If I had it, I would gladly give it: I assure you of that," Willcox said. "But I cannot give what I do not have."

"Very well." Jackson 's nod was almost a bow. "I thank you for your time, sir, and I thank you for your courtesy. Please do take it as given that, should you at any time desire to visit me at my headquarters, you shall have no difficulty in passing through the lines and you will be most welcome there."

"You are very kind, sir." Willcox did bow. After further protestations of mutual esteem, the two men parted. Jackson made his way back into Confederate-held territory. He got aboard his horse there; entering the U.S. lines mounted might have made him seem like a man who judged himself a conqueror, and so he had refrained (even if he did so judge himself).

As he rode south, devastation gradually diminished. Single buildings and then whole blocks appeared, as if they were growing out of the rubble. His headquarters, being beyond the range of U.S. artillery, were set among unharmed trees and houses on the outskirts of town, and were quite pleasant. Taken as a whole, though, Louisville would be a long time recovering.

He wired Longstreet the results, or rather lack of results, of his meeting with General Willcox. The answer came back within a few minutes: WILL ANOTHER BLOW

AID IN SHIFTING THE YANKEES? IF SO, CAN YOU LAY IT ON?

I CAN, he replied by telegraph, WILLCOX JUDGES BLAINE DOES NOT KNOW HIS OWN MIND. A BLOW MAY RESTART THE WAR.

He paced back and forth, awaiting the president's judgment. Longstreet was right; telegraphic conferences were not all they might be. After a while, the clicker

brought the president's response, HAMMERING FULMINATE OF MERCURY UNWISE, Longstreet Said. WE CAN WAIT. WAITING HURTS USA WORSE.

ALL IN READINESS HERE AT NEED, Jackson wired.

I ASSUMED NOTHING LESS, Longstreet eventually answered, I RELY ON YOU. KEEP ME APPRISED OF YOUR SITUATION.

That last wire made Jackson feel good. He knew Longstreet had sent it for no other reason than making him feel good. Knowing why Longstreet had sent it should have lessened the effect. Somehow, it didn't. Jackson took that to mean Longstreet was a formidable politician indeed.

He chuckled, which made the telegrapher waiting for his reply give him a startled look. "Never mind, son," Jackson told him. "It's nothing I didn't already know."

Alfred von Schlieffen's office in Philadelphia was neither so comfortable nor so quiet as the one he had enjoyed down in Washington. Nor did the German military attache have here the reference volumes he'd used there. That Philadelphia did not lie under Confederate guns was at the moment, in his view, less of an advantage than the other factors were annoyances.

He had-he hoped he had-the books he needed here. He looked from an account of Lee's advance up into Pennsylvania, the advance that had won the War of Secession for the CSA, to an atlas of the world. Tracing Lee's movements day by day, fight by fight, gave him a fresh appreciation not only of what Lee had accomplished but also of precisely how he had accomplished it.

Indirect approach, Schlieffen scribbled on a sheet of foolscap. He had been studying Lee's campaigns since he came to the United States; they were not so well known to the General Staff as they should have been. When he traced on the map the Army of Northern Virginia's movements, he saw strategic insight of the highest order. He had seen some of that all along. Now he saw more. He also saw, or thought he saw, how to apply that insight to his own country's situation. Up till now, he had been blind to that.

Had Beethoven had this inspired feeling, this dazzling burst of insight, when the theme for a symphony struck him? For his sake, Schlieffen hoped so. The German military attache felt like a god, noting the movements on the map as if he were looking down on a world he had just made and finding it good.

He underlined indirect approach. Then he underlined the words again-for him, an almost unprecedented show of emotion. Lee's goal all along had been Washington, D.C., yet he'd never once moved on the capital of the United States. He'd swung up past it and then around behind it, smashing McClellan's army and ending up here in Philadelphia before Britain and France forced mediation on the USA.

But Washington had been the Schwerpunkt of the entire campaign. Not only had Lee taken advantage of the U.S. government's urgent need to protect its capital, he had also used the great wheel around the city to gain the Confederacy the largest possible moral and political advantages.

Schlieffen flipped pages in the atlas. Since it was printed in the USA, the states of the United States and Confederate States came before the nations of Europe, and were shown in more detail. Provincialism, Schlieffen thought scornfully. But the maps he needed were there, even if toward the back of the book.

"Ach, gut," he muttered: the map of France also showed the Low Countries and a fair-sized chunk of the western part of the German Empire. In the Franco-Prussian War, the armies of Prussia and her lesser allies had moved straight into France and, after smashing French forces near the border, straight toward Paris. That coup would not be so easy to repeat in a new war; he had seen for himself how stubborn good artillery and good rifles could make a defense.

As if of itself, the index finger of his right hand moved in a wide arc, from Germany around behind Paris. He smiled and scribbled more notes. That sort of manoeuvre would make the French come out and fight in places they had never intended to defend and hadn't spent years fortifying. And what Frenchman, even in his wildest nightmares, could imagine Paris attacked from the rear?

The finger traced that arc again. Schlieffen noticed it ran through not only France but also through Luxembourg, Belgium, and perhaps Holland as well. In case of war between Germany and France, all three of the Low Countries were likely to be neutral. Would this manoeuvre be valuable enough to justify violating that neutrality and bringing opprobrium down on Germany 's head?

"Ja," Schlieffen said decisively. Whether the General Staff would agree with him, he did not know. He did know his colleagues back in Berlin had to see this notion, and had to see it soon. Even if they did not accept it, it would give them a new point of departure for their own thinking.

He was writing furiously, moving back and forth between the maps of France and Pennsylvania, when he noticed someone knocking on the door. The knocking was loud and insistent. He wondered how long it had been going on before he noticed it.

"How is a man to get any work done?" he muttered, and gave the door a resentful stare. When that failed to stop the knocking, he sighed, rose, and opened the door. Kurd von Schlozer stood in the hallway, looking less than happy himself. "Oh. Your Excellency. Excuse me," Schlieffen said. "How may I serve you?"

Seeing Schlieffen contrite, the German minister to the United States made his own frown vanish. "You must come with me to President Blaine's residence," he said. "Perhaps between the two of us, we can convince him not to resume this idiotic war."

"Must I?" Schlieffen asked, casting a longing glance back toward the maps and papers.

"You must," Schlozer said. Sighing again, Schlieffen obeyed.

While in Philadelphia, President Blaine resided at the Powel House, a three-story red brick building on Third Street, about halfway between Washington Square and the Delaware River. The reception hall was full of rich, ruddy mahogany. Schlieffen noticed it only peripherally. He paid closer attention to James G. Blaine, whom he had never before met.

Blaine was about fifty, with graying brown hair and beard, and would have been most handsome had his nose not borne some small resemblance to a potato. He gave an impression of strength and vigor. Married to good sense, those were valuable traits in a leader. A vigorous leader without good sense was liable to be more dangerous to his country than an indolent one similarly constituted.

"Minister Schlozer, Colonel Schlieffen-say your say." Blaine sounded abrupt, as if nothing the two Germans might say had any hope of changing his mind.

Kurd von Schlozer affected not to notice. "I thank you, Mr. President," he answered in English more fluent than Schlieffen's. "My attache and I are here to try to persuade you that, since you have wisely chosen peace, you would do your country a disservice if you allowed the talks between your representatives and those of your opponents to fail."

"I would do my country a worse disservice if I let my enemies ride roughshod over the United States," Blaine growled.

"But, Your Excellency, how by weapons can you keep them from doing this?" Schlieffen asked. "They have on every front defeated you."

"Not in Montana, by jingo!" Blaine exclaimed with savage pleasure.

"Oh, yes-the battle after the cease-fire," Schlieffen said. The U.S. press shouted that fight to the skies. Putting what the U.S. papers said together with what came from Canada and London by way of Berlin, the military attache gathered that the U.S. and British had tried to impale themselves on each other's guns, and the British had succeeded.

"That shows what we can do when we set our minds to it," Blaine declared.

"Yes, Your Excellency-but what of all the fights before the cease-fire? What of all the fights that made you for the cease-fire ask?" Schlieffen said.

Blaine looked as if he hated him. He probably did. Schlieffen bore the hatred of an American with indifference only slightly tinged by regret; it was not as if that could matter to him in any important way. The president of the United States said, "I did what I had to do to still public outcry. That having been accomplished, I am now obliged to seek the best possible peace for my country."

Schlieffen thought of Talleyrand, battling for France at the Congress of Vienna after Napoleon's overthrow-and gaining concessions, too, despite the weakness of his position. Then he thought again. Talleyrand was a gifted diplomat, something the Americans, despite their many abilities, had yet to produce.

"If only we were not so alone in the world," Blaine said querulously. "If only every nation's hand were not raised against us."

"That is not so," Kurd von Schlozer said. "Throughout this unfortunate time, Mr. President, the hand of Germany has been outstretched in friendship and in the search for peace."

"Sir, you are right about that, and I beg your pardon," Blaine replied. " Germany has done everything a good neighbor can do. But Germany, though she is a good neighbor, is not a near neighbor. All the nearest neighbors of the United States have joined together in oppressing us."

As you should have anticipated, Schlieffen thought. As you should have prepared for. But that was water over the dam now. Aloud, he said, "Your Excellency, General Rosecrans and I have about this talked. Germany is not your near neighbor, no. But Germany is to France a near neighbor, a nearest neighbor. France is now your enemy. France has our enemy been, and is likely our enemy again to be. Two lands with the same enemy can find it good to be friends."

He watched Blaine. Slowly, the president of the United States nodded. "Rosecrans has mentioned these conversations to me," he said. "For all their history, the United States have steered clear of entangling foreign alliances." Rosecrans had used that phrase, too; it seemed deeply engrained in the minds of all U.S. leaders. Blaine might almost have been quoting Scripture.

"Your Excellency, the Confederate States have had foreign allies," Kurd von Schlozer said. "The United States have not. When you and they have quarreled, who has had the better of it?"

Blaine 's mouth puckered. His cheeks tautened against the bone on which they lay. "I do take the point, Your Excellency." And then, instead of merely saying he took it, he looked to take it in truth. "When you fought the French, you beat them like a drum. The last time we beat anyone like a drum, it was the Mexicans: not much of a foe, and a long time ago."

"Perhaps, then, you will to Berlin send officers to learn our ways," Schlieffen said. "Perhaps also your minister to my country will speak with Chancellor Bismarck to see in what other ways we can work together to help us both."

"Perhaps we will," Blaine said. "Perhaps he can. It might be worth exploring, at any rate. If nothing comes of it, we are no worse off."

Schlieffen and Schlozer glanced at each other. Schlieffen knew fellow officers who were avid fishermen. They would go on at endless, boring length about the feel of a trout or a pike nibbling the hook as it decided whether to take the bait. There sat James G. Blaine, closely examining a wiggling worm.

"The enemy of my enemy is-or can be-my friend," Schlieffen murmured. Blaine nodded again. He might not bite here and now, but Schlieffen thought he would bite. Nothing else in the pool in which the United States swam looked like food, that was certain.

"May we now return to the matter of the cease-fire and the peace which is to come after it?" Schlozer said. Schlieffen wished the German minister had not been so direct; he was liable to make Blaine swim away.

And, sure enough, the president of the United States scowled. "The Confederates hold us in contempt," he said sullenly, "and the British aim to rob us of land they yielded by treaty forty years ago. How can I surrender part of my own home state to those arrogant robbers and pirates?"

"Your Excellency, I feel your pain," Schlozer said. "But, for now, what choice have you?"

"Even Prussia, for a time, yielded against Napoleon," Schlieffen added.

Blaine did not answer. After a couple of silent minutes, the two Germans rose and left the reception hall.