How Few Remain

Chapter 18

The cab drew to a halt by the edge of the sidewalk. The Chicago street was so narrow, it still blocked traffic. Behind it, the fellow atop a four-horse wagon full of sacks of cement bellowed angrily. So did a man in a houndstooth sack suit whizzing past on an ordinary. The cab driver said, "That's sixty-five cents, pal. Pay up, so I can get the hell out of here."

Abraham Lincoln gave him a half dollar and a quarter and descended without waiting for change. No sooner had his feet touched the ground than the cab rolled off, escaping the abuse that had been raining down on it.

This was a Chicago very different from the elegant, spacious North Side neighborhood in which Robert lived. People packed the streets. Lincoln had the feeling that, were those streets three times wider, they would still have been packed. One shop built from cheap bricks stood jammed by another. All of them were gaudily painted, advertising the cloth or shoes or hats or cheese or dry goods or sausages or pocket watches or eyeglasses sold within. Most had signs in the window proclaiming enormous savings if only the customer laid down his money now. FIRE SALE! GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! SHOP EARLY FOR CHRISTMAS!

Capitalism at its rawest, Lincoln thought unhappily. The weather was raw, too, a wind with winter in it. Hannibal Hamlin, who, being from Maine, knew all about winter, had called a wind like this a lazy wind, because it blew right through you instead of bothering to go around. Lincoln pulled his overcoat tighter about him; he felt the cold more now than he had in his younger days. The wind blew through the coat, too.

He looked around. There, a couple of doors down, advertising itself like all its neighbors, stood the frowzy, soot-stained office of the Chicago Weekly Worker. Lincoln hurried to the doorway and went inside. A blast of heat greeted him. Because the winters in Chicago were so ferocious, the means deployed against them were likewise powerful. He hastily unbuttoned his coat. Sweat started on his forehead.

A bald man in an apron and a visor who was carrying a case of type looked up at the jangle of the bell over the door. "What do you wan-"' he began, his English German-accented. Then he recognized who was visiting the newspaper, and came within an inch of dropping the case and scattering thousands of pieces of type all over the floor. "What do you want, Mr. Lincoln?" he managed on his second try. The type metal rattled in its squares, but did not escape.

"I would like to see Mr. Sorge, if you would be so kind," Lincoln answered, as politely as if he were addressing one of his son's clients rather than a typesetter who hadn't had a bath in several days. "I do understand correctly, do I not, that he heads the Chicago Socialist Alliance?"

"Yes, that is right," the man in the apron said. "Please, you wait here, uh-" He looked confused and angry at himself. He'd probably been about to say sir, and then caught himself because sir was not the sort of thing a Socialist was supposed to say. He set down the type case, grunted in relief at being rid of the weight, and hurried into a back room.

A couple of printers and a fellow who, though he was surely a Socialist, too, looked like most of the other reporters Lincoln had seen over the years stopped what they were doing to gape at him. Then the typesetter came out of the back room with a lean man in his fifties, a fellow whose wary, hunted eyes said he'd made a lot of moves one step ahead of the police in the course of his lifetime.

"You are Abraham Lincoln," he said in some surprise. "I wondered if Ludwig knew what he was talking about." Like the typesetter's, his speech had a guttural undertone to it. "And I, I am Friedrich Sorge. I have had to flee Germany. I have had to flee New York City — Democrats can be as fierce in their reactions as Prussian Junkers. But I will not flee Chicago. 'Hier steh' ich, ich kann nicht anders.' "

"I don't follow that," Lincoln said. "I'm sorry."

"Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise," Sorge translated. "Martin Luther. A progressive in his day, aiding the rising bourgeoisie against the church and the feudal aristocracy that supported it. Now, Mr. Lincoln-why do you stand here?"

"Because it has been made painfully clear to me that the Republican Party is not and cannot be the party that represents the laboring class in the United States," Lincoln answered. "I believe that class deserves representation. I believe this democracy will fail unless that class has representation. If the Republican Party is not up to the job, then the Socialists will have to be."

Friedrich Sorge and Ludwig the typesetter exchanged several excited comments in German. After a minute or so, Sorge returned to English: "This is what we have been doing since founding the party ten years ago."

"I know," Lincoln said. "I've watched you. I've watched your progress with no small interest. I would have watched it with even greater interest had there been more progress to watch."

"Too many American workers are in love with the status quo to make progress quick," Sorge said with a grimace. "It is the same as it is in Europe. No, it is worse than it is in Europe. In the United States, a man who despairs of factory labour will go and start a farm or prospect for gold in the hope of becoming rich at a stroke. This can never be an answer, but it can look like one, and it gives the capitalists a safety valve to drain off revolutionary energy."

"The safety valve will not stay open much longer," Lincoln said. "The prairies are filling up. Failed miners become proletarians in Western towns instead of Eastern cities, or they stay on as miners for the lucky handful who do grow rich, and serve as labour in the mines of the big companies."

"Yes." Sorge nodded emphatically. "So, as I say, though progress is slow, the revolution will come, and will throw down the capitalists and their minions."

"You believe the engine is broken and will explode," Lincoln said. Sorge nodded again. So did Ludwig. The ex-president went on, "I believe the engine is broken but may perhaps be repaired. The Republicans would not hear me because I dared to say something was wrong with the engine. Will you now cast me forth because I dare to say it may be set to rights?"

For a moment, he thought Sorge would tell him yes, and that would be that. Then the Socialist newspaperman said, "Come back into my office, Mr. Lincoln. We do not need to speak of these things standing here at the counter like men choosing pickles from the barrel."

The office was small and cramped and dark and full of bookshelves. Most of the books on them were in German, the rest in English and French. The word Socialist looked much alike in all three languages. Sorge had to clear more books off the chair in front of his desk to give Lincoln room to sit down. The desk itself was a disorderly snarl of papers.

Seeing Lincoln take the measure of the little room, Sorge chuckled wryly. "I, you see, will never be a wealthy capitalist. Luckily for me, I never wanted to be a wealthy capitalist."

"Had you wanted to be one, I should be here, or perhaps somewhere else close by, speaking of this with someone else," Lincoln answered, "for the Socialists in Chicago would have a leader, regardless of whether or not you were he. Now to come back to the question I asked out front: will you condemn me for not being revolutionary enough, as the Republicans condemned me for being too revolutionary?"

"Socialist thought is divided on whether the proletarian revolution is inevitable," Sorge said. "The Marxian Socialists, now, believe it is, and-"

"I am familiar with the division," Lincoln broke in. "Not long ago, in Montana Territory, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt accused me of being a Marxian Socialist, and I told him I had to decline the honor. This was before he became a national hero, you understand." His laugh was as wry as Sorge's. "Now, of course, I could deny him nothing."

"Of course," the Socialist answered, his voice curdled with irony. "The only confusion the papers have had is whether to fawn more on Roosevelt or on Custer. If something is before their eyes, they will never look farther. Pah!"

"This digression is my fault," Lincoln said. "I do apologize for it. Let me ask my question a third time: am I too soft for you, as I am too hard for the men of what had been my party?"

Sorge frowned in thought. "I have seen little in the behavior of capitalists to cause me to believe they will not create so much outrage among the proletariat as to make revolution inevitable."

"You have never seen the behavior of capitalists reined in by government regulation, either," Lincoln replied.

"No, I have not," Sorge said. "I have not seen the second coming of Jesus Christ, either. I do not expect to see the one thing or the other while I live, and which is less likely I would not even guess."

"Here in the United States, the power of the ballot box gives the labouring classes a power, or the potential for a power, that they lacked in the days when Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto, and in the places he knew best," Lincoln said.

"Marx yet lives. Marx yet writes," Sorge answered in tones of reproof.

"But he does not live here. He does not write here," Lincoln said. "By what I have read of his writings, he does not understand the United States well. You have lived in New York, you say. Now you live in Chicago. Can you tell me I am mistaken?"

He gave Friedrich Sorge credit: the Socialist gave the question serious thought before answering. At last, Sorge said, "No, Marx does not understand this country as well as he might."

"Good. We can go on from there. Will you also agree this is true of many Socialists in the United States?" Lincoln asked, pressing the newspaperman as if he still were a lawyer questioning an opposing witness. "With the labour problems this country has, would you not have enjoyed greater success if you could have figured out how to make the voting man see things your way?"

"It could be. It is not certain, but it could be," Sorge said cautiously. "I think you are now coming to say what it is your aim to say. Say it, then."

"I will say it," Lincoln replied. "Leaving revolution out of the bargain save as a last resort, I feel the Socialists offer the laborers of this country their best chance to reclaim it from the wealthy. If and when I bolt the Republican Party, I can bring some large fraction of its membership-a third, maybe half if I'm lucky-with me into the fold here. That is not enough to elect a president or senators, not yet, but it is enough to elect congressmen, state legislators, mayors, and it is a base from which to build. When Blaine goes down in '84, as you know he will, more people will see the Republicans are doomed and join our ranks. Now, how does that look to you?"

Sorge licked his lips. He was tempted; Lincoln could see as much. The prospect of some actual power hit the newspaperman like a big slug of raw rotgut whiskey. Playing to win was a game very different from playing to agitate. Slowly, Sorge said, "This is not something I can decide at once. Also, this is not something I can decide alone. I shall have to talk with some men here and wire others what you propose." He dug through the rubbish on his desk till he found a pencil.

After licking the point, he scribbled for a minute. Then he said, "If I understand you, what you have in mind is…"

"Yes, that's right, nor near enough," Lincoln said when the Socialist had finished reading back his notes. "Off the record, Mr. Sorge, how does it strike you?"

"I am more revolutionary than you; you are right about that," Sorge answered. "But you are also right in saying we have not done as much as we might have. Maybe-maybe, I say-this will show us the way."

"This is how the Republican Party was born, more than a generation ago," Lincoln said. "Antislavery Whigs, Free-Soilers, Know-Nothings, even a few Northern Democrats who couldn't stomach the extension of slavery-we all joined together to work for a common goal. I think this new coalition may do the same in regard to wage slavery."

"I hope you arc right." Sorge gave him a keen look. "President Blaine will call you a traitor, and, when he loses the next election, he will say it is for no other reason than that you and your followers left the party."

"President Blaine is not in the habit of listening to what I say, no matter how hard a time I have convincing people that that is so," Lincoln said, sadly remembering John Taylor's miscalculation. "I sec no reason why I should be obliged to take notice of what President Blaine says, especially when, from this day forth, we shall no longer be members of the same party."

Friedrich Sorge pulled open a file cabinet behind his desk. When his hand came out of the drawer, it was clutching a whiskey bottle. More rummaging in the cabinet and in his desk produced two tumblers, mismatched and none too clean. He poured a couple of hefty dollops, handed one glass to Lincoln, and raised the other high. "To Socialism!" he said, and drank.

Lincoln drank, too. The whiskey was bad, but it was strong. "To Socialism," he said.

Brigadier General George Custer rode along bare yards south of the forty-ninth parallel of latitude, the border separating Montana Territory from Canada, along with a troop from the Fifth Cavalry. Bare yards north of the border, not quite in rifle range but not far out of it, a troop of red-coated British cavalrymen rode along dogging his trail. Neither side had fired a shot since General Gordon took his mutilated army of invasion back over the border. Both sides were ready. For his part, Custer was eager.

Several reporters rode along with the Fifth Cavalry. One of them, an eager young fellow named Worth, asked, "How does it feel, General, to have your brevet rank made permanent?"

"Well, I'll tell you, Charlie, it beats the hell out of going to the dentist to get a tooth yanked," Custer quipped. Charlie Worth and the rest of the reporters laughed appreciatively. Custer held up a hand to show he wasn't through. The newspapermen fell silent, to hear what other pearls of wisdom might fall from his lips. He went on in a serious, even a bombastic, vein: "My only regret is that the promotion comes as the result of a battle from which we could not seize the full fruits of victory because of the cease-fire's having gone into effect. Absent that, we should have pursued to destruction the ruffians who dared desecrate our sacred soil."

Awkwardly, the reporters scribbled as they rode. "God damn, but he gives good copy," one of them muttered to another in admiring tones. The second man nodded. Custer didn't think he was supposed to hear. His chest swelled with pride. Truly he was the hero of the hour.

He waved to Charlie Worth. The reporter, honored at being shown such a confidence, rode up close to him. Custer said, "Do you mind if I make another foraging run amongst your cigars, Charlie?"

"Why, not at all, General." Worth held out a leather cigar case. Custer took a fat stogie from it and reined in so he could strike a match. He coughed a couple of times after he got the cigar going and sucked smoke into his mouth. Before the battle by the Teton River, the only tobacco he'd smoked had been in a few peace pipes handed him by the leaders of Indian tribes he'd smashed.

A reporter asked, "What is your view of the cease-fire, General?"

"I regret that it came when it did, as it prevented us from punishing the British as they so richly deserved," Custer replied. "I also regret it even more on general principles, for it has humiliated us before the nations of the world for the second time in a space of less than twenty years."

His stomach knotted at the thought. He had loved his country longer and more faithfully than he had loved his wife. Now, as in 1862, the United States were going down to mortifying defeat, and that despite his victory, a victory which, had he learned of the cease-fire in time, would never have happened. When he'd married Libbie after the War of Secession, he'd promised to stop cursing and stop drinking.

He'd held to the promise till he learned his victory counted for nothing. He'd stayed drunk for days after that, and let out all the oaths he had in him. He was still drinking, he was still swearing, and he'd taken up smoking for good measure.

Camp that evening brought everybody up close to everybody else; men stayed near the greasewood fires for warmth. To the north, the campfires of the troop of British cavalry were a constellation of brightly twinkling stars on the horizon.

Custer and his troopers wolfed down salt pork and hardtack. Some of them crumbled the biscuits and fried them in the grease from the pork, of which there was always an adequate supply. "How do you people eat this stuff day after day, week after week, and live to tell the tale?" one of the reporters asked.

"So sorry, boys," Custer said. "Next time you ride along with us, we'll make sure we cater the affair from Denver."

That got a round of laughter, as he'd hoped it would. Then one of the reporters-it was Charlie Worth, damn him-asked, "How did Colonel Roosevelt and the Unauthorized Regiment take to Army rations?"

"I'm afraid I really don't know," Custer answered, his voice all at once as cool as the breeze hissing down from the north. "I never discussed that with Mr. Roosevelt." He laid the tiniest bit of stress on the civilian title.

The reporters, of course, made their living noticing tiny stresses. "Come on, General," one of them said. "What do you really think of Colonel Roosevelt"-he laid the tiniest bit of stress on the military title-"as a soldier? What do you think of the men of the Unauthorized Regiment as soldiers?"

"Have mercy, gentlemen," Custer said. "I've answered those same questions a lot of times over the past weeks." And I'd like it a lot better if you asked them a damned sight less often. Having to share the limelight with the boy colonel gave him worse dyspepsia than salt pork and hardtack gave the reporters.

They wouldn't leave him alone. He might have known they wouldn't leave him alone. "Come on, General," Charlie Worth coaxed. "Give it to us straight. You can do that."

"I can only repeat what I've said a great number of times," Custer answered: "Colonel Roosevelt and his volunteers were gifted, patriotic amateur soldiers, and fought as well as men of that sort could be expected to fight." Every word of that was true. If the reporters judged the tone to be ever so little on the slighting side, was that his fault?

One of the newspapermen said, "General, isn't it a fact that the Unauthorized Regiment performed better against the limeys than the Fifth Cavalry did?"

"Like hell it's a fact," Custer snarled, "and if Roosevelt has been saying that, he's a damned glory-sniffing liar."

"No, General, I never heard it from him," the reporter said hastily. "But didn't the Unauthorized Regiment fight Gordon's cavalry to a draw and then chase the redcoats halfway back to Canada after the what-do-you-call-'ems-the Gatling guns-chewed them to smithereens?"

"The Unauthorized Regiment," Custer said, as if lecturing on strategy at West Point to a class of idiots, "engaged the enemy forces pursuant to my orders. Had I placed them in the center and us on the wings, we would have done as well against the British cavalry, but they would have fared far worse against Gordon's foot. Since my men were fighting dismounted at the battle by the Teton, they were not so well positioned to pursue as were the Volunteers."

All that was true, too. Had Theodore Roosevelt been sitting by the campfire, Custer was sure he would have agreed with every word. (Custer was also sure he would have tried to aggrandize himself one way or another, though; that trait being acutely developed in him, he had an eagle eye for spotting it in others.) But reporters were not after agreement. Agreement didn't sell papers. Argument did. "What about the-Gatterling? — guns, General?" another news hawk asked.

"Gatling guns," Custer corrected. "Gatling." Idiots indeed, he thought. "Well, what about them? Even if we hadn't had a one of them, Gordon's men hadn't a prayer of carrying our position."

He thought that was true, too, but he wasn't quite so sure. Bold as he was, he wouldn't have cared to mount an infantry assault on men in earthworks. Even in the War of Secession, that sort of business had proved hideously expensive. With the right troops, though-good American boys, not those limey bastards-he might have had a go of it.

Charlie Worth said, "I hear tell Roosevelt says those Gatling guns saved your bacon in that fight-chewed the Englishmen up and spit 'em out again."

"This being a free country, Mr. Roosevelt may say whatever he likes," Custer answered. "If you prefer the word of a man who became a soldier only because he was rich enough to buy himself a regiment over that of one who has devoted his entire life to the service of his country, you may do so, but I daresay no one will take you seriously afterwards."

That flattened young Worth, who gulped his coffee down in a hurry so he could get a big tin cup in front of his red face. But one of the other men asked, "Colonel Welton, down at Fort Benton, tells it pretty much the same way, doesn't he?"

"I haven't heard what Henry has to say," Custer replied. "I will note that, while I and many of the officers of my regiment were promoted for our work by the Teton, Colonel Welton remains a colonel. In this you have the War Department's judgment on the value of our respective contributions."

The reporters scrawled furiously. One of them muttered, "When the devil are we going to be able to get to a telegraph clicker?"

Charlie Worth came up with a question no one else had asked Custer: "Andrew Jackson licked the British after the War of 1812 was over, and he ended up president of the United States. Now that you've done the same thing in this war, would you like to end up the same way?"

"Why, Charlie, the notion never entered my mind till this moment," Custer answered truthfully. Also truthfully, he went on, "Now that it is in there, I have to tell you I like it." The reporters laughed.

"You're a Democrat, aren't you, General?" somebody asked.

"What sensible man isn't?" Custer returned. "Did I hear rightly that Lincoln has shown the Republicans' true colors by going Communard?" Several reporters assured him he had heard rightly. Sadly, he shook his head. "If Blaine weren't in the White House, General Pope could have done the country a good turn by hanging old Honest Abe. He'll cause more trouble now, mark my words."

"Lots of Democratic politicians who could run for president," Charlie Worth observed. "We don't have so many soldiers who know how to win battles. What if they want you to stay in the Army?"

"I shall serve the United States wherever that service can lend the greatest aid," Custer declared, his tone grandiloquent and, on the whole, sincere.

Winter was on the way to Sonora and Chihuahua. That was obvious to Jeb Stuart: instead of being hotter than blazes, the weather was all the way down to warm. As for Stuart himself, he was on the way to El Paso, which suited him down to the ground.

He turned in the saddle and spoke to Major Horatio Sellers:

"Won't it be fine, getting to spend Christmas somewhere near the edge of civilization?"

"Yes, sir," his aide-de-camp agreed enthusiastically. "If El Paso isn't civilization, at least it's on the railroad line to it."

"I like that," Stuart said. "It's true both literally and metaphorically. We are going to have to build a line through to the Pacific just as fast as we can scrape together the capital. Until we have one, and the feeder lines down to the city of Chihuahua and to Hermosillo, we aren't going to be able to control these provinces.. Territories… states… whatever we finally call them."

"That's true, sir." Major Sellers nodded. "I expect we'll end up with a Pacific Squadron in the Navy, too, and we'll also need the railroad to keep that supplied." He chuckled. "The damnyankees will love having us for neighbors, too; you can just bet on it."

"One of the reasons they fought this war was to keep our frontier from touching the Pacific; no doubt about that," Stuart said. "But they lost, and now they'll have to make the best of it."

"Serves them right for starting the fight in the first place," Sellers said. "You ask me, sir, President Longstreet ought to squeeze an indemnity out of them that would make their eyes pop. Paying for a railroad would be a lot easier then."

"Old Pete knows what he's doing-you can doubt a lot of things, Major, but you'd better think twice before you doubt that," Stuart said. "My guess is, he reckons the United States hate us plenty now that we've licked them twice. Piling on an indemnity would be adding insult to injury: that's how he'd see it, I think."

Before Major Sellers could reply, a commotion to the rear made him and Stuart both look over their shoulders. Stuart soon heard men calling out his name. He waved his hat and shouted to show where he was.

A grimy, sweaty rider on a lathered horse came pounding up to him. "General Stuart, sir," the Confederate trooper gasped, "everything's gone to hell back in Cananea, sir."

"Oh, Lord." Stuart did not look at his aide-de-camp. Horatio Sellers had been sure nothing good would come of cooperating with the Apaches, and maybe he'd turned out to be right after all. "I left a troop of cavalry behind there to make sure the Mexicans and the Indians didn't go at each other."

"Yes, sir," the trooper said. "Wasn't enough, sir. You remember that Yahnozha who ran away with the Mexican gal, and she says he drug her off and he says she was beggin' for more?"

"Oh, yes. I remember," Stuart said, a sinking feeling in his mid-section. "What about him? Did he steal another woman?"

"No, sir," the soldier answered. "The gal's father and her brother, they was layin' for him, and one of 'em put about three bullets in his belly, and the other one, he put two, three more in his head. Then they cut off his privates, sir, and left 'cm sittin' by the carcass for the Indians to find. That started the fightin', and it's been a regular war ever since-you'd best believe it has."

"Christ," Stuart said, an exclamation that had nothing to do with the approach of the holiday season. "What the devil have you men been doing to put the lid back on the place?"

The look the trooper sent his way reminded him how insubordinate so many Confederate soldiers had been during the War of Secession. They were men accustomed to speaking their minds regardless of the niceties of rank. This cavalryman was stamped from the same mold. He said, "What we've been doing, sir, is trying to keep from gcttin' ourselves killed. Hell of a lot more Apaches down by Cananea than we-uns, an' every one of 'em totes a Tredegar just like the ones we've got. Hell of a lot more Mexicans than we-uns, too. They got every damn kind of rifle you ever did see. We try and get between the greasers and the redskins, only means we get shot at from both sides at once."

"Who's winning?" Major Sellers asked. His voice was exuberant, almost gleeful. "Whoever gets killed off, long as it isn't our own soldiers, we're well shut of 'em." Stuart glared at him. He stared right back, not so noisily insubordinate as the man who'd ridden in from Cananea, but not backing away from his opinion by even an inch, either.

"Well, sir, that's right hard to say," the Confederate trooper answered. "The Mexicans, they don't get to go out of their houses a whole lot, but they've got plenty of vittles, and any Injun sticks his head up inside of rifle range, he's liable to end up with his brains rearranged, you know what I mean? Every now and again, some of the greasers, the ones with the best guns and the most balls, they'll sneak out of a night and shoot at the Apaches' camp."

"We can't have that," Stuart said. "We can't have any of that sort of nonsense. If we let it go on there, it'll go on all over these two provinces." He heaved a deep, regretful sigh. "So much for Christmas on the edge of civilization. Bugler!"

"Yes, sir!" The trooper produced his polished brass horn.

"Blow Halt," Stuart said. He sighed again. "Then blow About-face. We're going to have to go back there and stamp out that foolishness."

"The whole army, sir?" Major Sellers sounded appalled. He'd been looking forward to Christmas in Texas, too, perhaps even to taking leave and traveling back to Virginia for Christmas with his family.

But Stuart answered, "Yes, the whole army. The Apaches and the Cananeans arc going to think they were strolling along the railroad tracks when a train ran over them. If we smash both sides now, it will save the Confederate States a lot of trouble for years and years to come."

"All right, sir; we'll do that, then." Sellers' laugh held a gravelly rumble of doom. "I've been saying all along that we ought to clean out those Indians. The faster and harder we do it, the better off these provinces will be."

"I knew you'd say, 'I told you so,' Major," Stuart said, and his aide-de-camp grinned, altogether unabashed. The commander of the Department of the Trans-Mississippi stroked his beard, working through the orders he would have to give to make the army reverse its course. "First thing we need to do is send a wire to El Paso, letting people know what's happened. Next thing-" He glowered his discontent at the desert all around. "We're already the other side of Janos, better than two days away from Cananea no matter how hard we push." He shook his head, annoyed at his wits for working slower than they should have. "No, most of us arc better than two days away from Cananea. Colonel Ruggles!"

"Sir!" At that shout, the commanding officer of the Fifth Confederate Cavalry rode up on his camel. Stuart's horse snorted at the other beast's stink and tried to rear. He didn't let it. Calhoun Ruggles went on, "What can I-what can we-do for you, sir?"

Briefly, Stuart explained what had gone wrong in Cananea. He finished, "I want the Fifth Camelry to ride out ahead of the rest of the army and hit the Indians and the Mexicans before either side expects you. If you can, smash 'em up by yourselves. If you can't manage that, do everything you can. You know we won't be far behind you."

"All right, sir, we'll handle it," Colonel Ruggles said. "And if the redskins light out for the mountains, I reckon we'll chase 'em down before they can get there. They say they can go faster on foot than troopers can on horseback. I'd like to see 'em try and outrun my critters." He leaned forward in his peculiar saddle and set an affectionate hand on the side of his mount's neck. The camel twisted and tried to bite. Ruggles laughed as if he'd expected nothing else.

As Stuart had seen for himself, the Camelry was not in the habit of wasting time. Aboard their moaning, snorting, hideously homely mounts, Ruggles' troopers soon headed west. Stuart would have sworn his horse let out a sigh of relief when the camels trotted away.

Major Horatio Sellers gave Stuart a sly look. "I notice you're not riding with the Fifth this time, sir," he said.

"That's right, I'm not, and I'll give you two good reasons why," Stuart answered. "The first one is that anybody who gets on a camel more than once proves to the world he's a damned fool." He waited for his aide-de-camp to grunt laughter, then went on, "And the second one is that Colonel Ruggles and his regiment are perfectly able to handle the size of the trouble they've got in Cananea without me, and I don't want them thinking that I think they can't."

"Ah." Sellers nodded. "Yes, sir; that makes good sense."

The men grumbled as they headed back toward Cananea. Some of them had wives in El Paso. Some had sweethearts. All of them, by now, had had a bellyful of Chihuahua and Sonora. But, aside from that grumbling, without which they would hardly have been soldiers, they went where they were ordered.

When they came into Janos just before sundown, they found the town in an uproar. The camels of the Fifth Cavalry had gone through and past the town two or three hours earlier. A couple of companies of Confederate soldiers occupied the adobe fortress that was Janos' principal reason for being, and from which Mexican troops had withdrawn when Maximilian sold his northern provinces to the CSA. They were as indignant and almost as upset as everyone else in town; the Camelry had passed by so swiftly, the men of the garrison had hardly had the chance to learn why they were on the move.

"Something in Cananea, ain't it?" one of the Confederates asked as the force Stuart led got ready to camp for the night.

Bugles roused the soldiers well before dawn. Stuart drank cup after cup of strong black coffee, and was still yawning when he swung aboard his horse. His bones ached. He wondered if he was getting too old for much more campaigning. If he was, he wouldn't admit it, not even to himself-perhaps especially not to himself.

He and his troopers kept to a moderate pace on the road between Janos and Cananea, the road they were getting to know altogether too well. Not much water lay between the two towns, and pushing too hard would have killed horses even at this season of the year. Major Sellers remarked, "The Apaches aren't worth a single good cavalry horse, you ask me, and the same goes for the Mexicans."

"We wouldn't have had nearly so much fun up in New Mexico Territory if it hadn't been for the Apaches," Stuart remarked. Since Sellers could hardly disagree with that, he grunted and did his best to pretend he hadn't heard it.

Stuart waited to see if he would get more reports from Confederate troopers forced out of Cananea, but none came back to him. "Either they aren't coming," he said to Major Sellers, "or Colonel Ruggles is keeping them for himself. If I had to bet, I'd go the second way."

His aide-de-camp nodded. "I think so, too. He's ahead of us, so he needs to know worse than we do."

"Which doesn't mean we don't have to know at all," Stuart said fretfully.

A couple of hours later, a camel rider did come back to Stuart's force with news that fighting in and around Cananea still was going on, or still had been going on when the troopers who brought word to Colonel Rugglcs left the town. "By what everybody says, sir," the messenger reported, "they're going at it hammer and tongs." He paused to spit a stream of dark brown tobacco juice into the light brown dirt. "Reckon they purely don't like each other."

Stuart got another short night and woke too soon to the blare of the horns. Walk, canter, trot-instead of the ambling pace they'd set on the way east, when they saw no need to hurry, his troopers used the alternating gaits that kept their horses freshest while eating up the ground. As morning passed into afternoon, he heard one of the men say to another, "I hope the damn camel boys kill all the lousy sons of bitches on both sides, so when we get there tomorrow we've got nothin' to do but spit on their graves."

Toward evening, a thick column of smoke rose in the west, silhouetted against the light sky there. The troopers cheered. "I expect that's the Camelry, cleaning up the fight," Horatio Sellers said.

"Hope you're right," Stuart said, and rolled himself in a blanket on his folding cot as soon as he had seen to his horse.

Sometime in the middle of the night, a sentry shook him awake. "Sorry to bother you, sir," the man said, "but Colonel Ruggles just rode in."

That was plenty to make Stuart open his eyes. He pulled on his boots and ducked out of the tent. Calhoun Ruggles stood by the embers of a campfire perhaps twenty feet away. "I saw the smoke, Colonel," Stuart said around a yawn. "Was that us, putting down Apaches and Mexicans alike?"

He expected Ruggles to nod, but the commander of the Fifth Confederate Cavalry shook his head. "No, sir. That was the damned Apaches, burning damn near all of Cananea to hell and gone just before we got there. Not much of the place left standing, and a hell of a lot of Mexicans dead."

"Jesus," Stuart said, yawning again. Ruggles joined him. He went on, "How in blazes did that happen?"

"In blazes is right," Colonel Ruggles answered. "A couple of the Mexicans who lived-Salazar the alcalde is one of 'em-says the Indians got hold of some kerosene some kind of way, and that clever one called Batsinas poured it in front of doors and such. Then they shot fire arrows into it, and the wind did the rest of the job for 'em."

"Jesus," Stuart said again. "I bet it was Batsinas' scheme, too." The Apache had been so eager to learn from the white man, and had figured out a way to use some of the white man's products to deadly effect, too. Stuart went on, "I hope you licked the redskins once you got to Cananea, anyway."

Glumly, Calhoun Ruggles shook his head again. "No, sir. Time we got there, they'd all hightailed it toward the mountains." Even more glumly, he pointed southwards. "I put men to chasing 'em, but they had a better than decent start on us-and they can move, too. I tell you, sir, they can really move, a hell of a lot faster than I ever thought they could. I reckon they're holed up in the Sierra Madre some-wheres, and I'll be damned if I look forward to digging 'em out."

Rain pattered down on San Francisco. Having grown up and lived for much of his life in a place where rain was liable to fall any old time, Sam Clemens took it in stride. His wife, a native San Franciscan, did not approve. "It has no business doing this," she said. "It's nothing but a nuisance, especially on a day when you have to go to work."

"Not that big a nuisance," Clemens answered. "If there's one thing about your brother we can count on, it's that he has more than one umbrella. He may even be willing to let me borrow one, provided I post a bond not to stab anyone with it or use it as a swimming hole for sea gulls."

Sure enough, from an ugly ceramic vase in the front hall sprouted the handles of four or five umbrellas. And, sure enough, Vernon Perkins did not complain about Sam's borrowing one-nor did he ask for the bond Sam had predicted. He was so glad to see his brother-in-law leave his house, he would help in any way he could.

Clemens strode carefully along wet sidewalks and picked his way through puddles in the streets. No matter how careful he was, his feet were wet by the time he got to the Morning Call offices. If he'd been a reporter, he wouldn't have been too proud to take off his shoes and put his stockinged feet close by the fire till they dried out. As an editor, he felt that beneath his dignity. That left him with dignity unimpaired and wet feet.

"Thank God for good coffee," he said, pulling the pot off the stove and filling a cup. "I never knew this horrible muddy slop was good coffee till my sister-in-law broadened my horizons. Bath water with cream is what she makes." He sipped and nodded. "This, now, this'll grow hair on a man's chest-maybe even on my brother-in-law's. If it weren't that Vern's daughters look like him, poor things, I'd say he was the likeliest man in this town to make his next position harem guard for the Turkish sultan." His voice rose to a screechy falsetto.

"For some reason or other, Sam, I get the feeling you don't like your brother-in-law," Clay Herndon drawled. "Why on earth is that?"

"Why on earth is which?" Clemens asked. "Why do you get that feeling, or why don't I like the whey-faced, self-righteous, prissy, tight-fisted little horse's ass? I swear to Jesus, Clay, if brains were stream pressure, he couldn't blow his own nose."

"I'll bet he loves you, too," Herndon said, laughing.

"Doesn't everyone?" Sam said blandly, which made Herndon and all the other newspapermen in earshot laugh even louder. Sam took another sip of snarling coffee, then asked, "Has anyone got a Christmas present for me?"

"More sandpaper to keep your tongue sharp, maybe?" Herndon suggested.

"And it's coal in the stocking for the distinguished correspondent of the Morning Call," Clemens said, at which Herndon made as if to throw his cup at the editor. Sam went on, "What I'd really like is something closer to peace than this miserable cease-fire we've been enduring. Sooner or later, the CSA will get tired of it, or England will, and then some poor town on the border will catch hell-or maybe catch hell again, depending."

Edgar Leary spoke up: "If you look at things the right way, San Francisco is a town on the border."

"No, Edgar," Sam said gently. "If you look at things the wrong way, San Francisco is a town on the border. That's what worries me more than anything else: I can see some British admiral down in the Sandwich Islands making sure his fleet has enough coal to get from yon to hither, so he can leave a calling card in President Blame's-uh, Blaine's-front hall, just to remind him that England doesn't care to leave her business lying around unfinished."

"Trouble is, the calling card would be aimed at Blaine, but it would land on us," Clay Herndon said.

"That's what war is about," Clemens agreed. "The people on top are stupid-you have to be stupid, to want to be on top-so you have to kill a lot of ordinary folks before you get their notice. Till you've done that, they keep on the way they always have. Why not? They aren't the ones who are bleeding."

He finished the coffee, poured more into the cup-not quite so much this time, to leave room in case he felt like fortifying it from the whiskey bottle in his desk drawer-and carried it away to get some work done. Edgar Leary followed him. He didn't look on that as a good sign; Leary sometimes put him in mind of a puppy slobbering on his shoes-which, he thought, were damp enough already. Hoping to forestall the young reporter, he made a production out of getting one of his nasty cigars going.

Leary showed no signs of disappearing, not even when Sam (close enough to accidentally, he could say it was and sound as if he meant it) blew smoke in his face. Sighing, Clemens gave up and asked, "Well, what have you got for me today, Edgar?"

"Sir, you remember how you told me to nose around and see what I could come up with about where the rebuilding money here was going?" the youngster asked.

"Oh, yes, I remember that," Clemens agreed. It's kept you out of my hair for weeks. I'd hoped for longer, but this isn 't bad.

"I've found a few interesting things," Leary said. "May I show them to you? I hope you're not too busy."

Sam's desk was disappointingly uncluttered. If he claimed excessive work, he'd make himself a liar so blatant, even Leary could see right through him. "Yes, show me what you've got, Edgar," he said, doing his best to sound enthusiastic about whatever trivial nonsense the cub would lay before him.

Beaming, Leary hurried away. He unlocked a drawer in his desk, took from it a fat manila envelope, and hurried back to Clemens, who manfully suppressed a groan: if Leary was going to show him nonsense, why did there have to be so blasted much of it? The young reporter pulled a stack of papers about half an inch thick from the envelope. "Here you are," he said. "Why don't you start with these? They'll give you a general idea of what I've dug up. I've arranged them chronologically, so you can start at the beginning and work right through."

"Thanks," Sam said tightly. He started flipping sheets of paper. The first few were invoices: construction firms billing their patrons for amounts that didn't seem too far out of line, considering how urgent all the repairs were and how far a lot of things had to be freighted to San Francisco. Sam was about to start asking rude and pointed questions when the invoices gave way to letters. With an editor's eye, he first noted the bad grammar in the topmost one. Then he saw it was about sharing the profits on a substandard piece of construction. Once he'd spotted that, his eyes flew down to the signature. They widened.

"My God!" he breathed. "Crocker is one of Sutro's right-hand men." He shook his head. "No, that's not right. Sutro is a finger or two on Crocker's right hand." He looked up at Edgar Leary. "Where in blazes did you come up with this?"

"Which one are you talking about?" Leary looked over his shoulder. "Oh, that. That's not even a good one." He waved his hand in disparaging fashion. "Why don't you keep going a little longer?"

"I don't know. Why don't I?" Sam murmured. Keep going he did, now with interest kindled. By the time he was halfway through the stack of papers, he kept pausing every so often to stare at Leary. When he was all the way through, he let out a long, shrill whistle. "You realize what you've got here means the penitentiary for about half the city government of San Francisco?"

"Only if the other half has the best lawyers in the country," Leary answered, and patted the manila envelope. "There's still a lot in here you haven't seen, don't forget. The only thing missing"-he looked disappointed-"is anything directly tying His Honor to the graft."

"It doesn't matter," Clemens answered. "I never thought I'd say that, but it's true. It doesn't matter. The only question left about our magnificent Mayor Sutro is whether he'll poll even fewer votes in San Francisco in his next election than Blaine will in his. I wouldn't have figured such a prodigy possible, but now I see I may be wrong."

"Oh, I don't know," Leary answered. "If all the building-firm bosses and all their labourers vote for Sutro, he's liable to be re-elected."

Sam shuddered. "That's a horrible thought, Edgar." He paused to light another cigar, then pointed at Leary with it. "1 want you to write this all up for me. I think you've got a week's worth of stories here, and every one of them on the front page-hell, every one of them the lead story of the day, unless we get a peace or go back to war or Blaine drops dead or does something else useful. All under your byline, of course."

Leary's eyes glowed. "Thanks," he whispered. He might be young, but he wasn't a cub any more, or he wouldn't be after these stories ran. He'd just put his name on the map in big letters.

"You've earned it," Clemens answered. He could think of editors who would have taken Leary's work and written their own stories from it. He knew what he thought of those editors, too. "Now-before you go and write it up, where in heaven's name did you get your hands on all these papers?"

Edgar Leary's face tightened. Clemens knew what that meant. Sure enough, the youngster said, "From people who don't want their names in the newspaper. When you look at what they've passed to me, can you blame them?"

"Edgar, after this business breaks, you're going to wonder why you ever wanted your name in the newspaper." Sam held up a hand to show Leary he wasn't through. "I mean it. These stories will yank the tails of some of the richest, most important people in San Francisco. They'll come gunning for you, and that's liable not to be a figure of speech."

"If the Royal Marines couldn't get me, I don't reckon the nobs on Nob Hill are up to the job, either," Leary said.

"Ah, the blithe confidence of youth," Sam murmured. It was the same sort of confidence that made soldiers charge enemy lines, sure the bullets would miss them. Youth also had another type of confidence, though. "You're certain-absolutely certain-all your toys here are the genuine article?"

"Could anybody put together a sheaf that thick just to set us up for a fall?" Leary demanded.

"I wouldn't think so, but I was surprised the day I found out babies didn't come from the cabbage patch, too," Clemens said.

Leary blushed bright pink. He said, "Besides, I've compared the handwriting on some of these papers to ones I know are genuine, and I haven't seen a one that doesn't match."

"Now you're talking!" Sam exclaimed. "That's what I wanted to hear from you. One day a year from now, a lot of rich men's lawyers are going to call you every sort of liar in the book, and they'll stick in a few new pages and draw your face on every one of 'em. Radicals hire bomb-throwing maniacs. Rich men hire lawyers. They're more expensive, but they ought to be, because they do more damage."

"Does that make you a Socialist, then?" Leary asked, his voice sly. "Are you going to follow Abe Lincoln under the red flag?"

"Edgar, if you'll recollect, I didn't follow Abe Lincoln twenty years ago." For the first time since his brief affiliation with the Marion Rangers landed him in hot water, Sam spoke of it without self-consciousness. "I haven't seen any reason to change my mind since. Bomb-throwing maniacs aren't good for a country, for heaven's sake- they're not as bad as lawyers, that's all. And talk about damning with faint praise; it's about like saying prettier than camels or wetter than the Sahara or more interesting than my wife's brother."

Still sly, Leary asked, "And what would he say about you?"

"I haven't the foggiest notion," Clemens answered. "I always nod off before I get the chance to find out." Leary laughed. "Think I'm joking, do you?" Sam said severely. "Only shows you've never met dear Vern-or maybe just that you don't remember it. Here." He handed the papers back to the young reporter. "Get to work. Don't waste another minute. You've got a whole city government waiting to be embarrassed."

Leary went back to his own desk and began to write. Sam rose, stretched, and walked to the doorway. It was still raining, the sky gray as cement. "What a beautiful day." he said.

A church bell in the town of Fort Benton solemnly intoned the hour. A moment later, a much smaller clock in the office of Colonel Henry Welton also began to chime. Theodore Roosevelt counted with it: "… ten, eleven, twelve." He looked around the office in blurry surprise. "Midnight already. Doesn't- hie! — seem like midnight. Merry Christmas to you, Colonel."

"And a merry Christmas to you, Colonel." Henry Welton's voice wasn't so clear as it might have been, either. The bottle on the desk between the two men was nearly full. It was not, however, the bottle with which they had begun the evening. Welton poured whiskey first into his glass, then into Roosevelt 's. "And what shall we drink to now?"

Roosevelt answered without hesitation: "To the true hero of the battle by the Teton!" He drank. The whiskey hardly burned as it slid down his gullet. He'd had a lot already.

Welton drank, too. "You're kind to an old man," he said. "The reporters don't reckon you're right. The War Department doesn't reckon you're right. And you're just a damned officer of Volunteers, the nearest thing to an honorary colonel as makes no difference. So what the devil do you know? What the devil can you know?"

"I know that if you hadn't posted those Gatling guns in the front trench line, General Gordon's men probably would have overrun the position," Roosevelt answered. "I know that General Custer tried his damnedest to talk you into moving them, and you wouldn't do it. I know that Custer's taken all the credit for winning the battle, and left you not a crumb."

"No, Custer hasn't got all the credit," Welton said. "You've managed to lay your hands on a good-sized chunk yourself. And do you know what, Colonel? I don't think Brigadier General Custer likes that for hell. And do you know what else? I don't give a copper-plated damn what Brigadier General Custer likes or doesn't like." He sipped more whiskey.

"You've known him a long time," Roosevelt said, to which Welton nodded without saying anything. Roosevelt took another drink, too. As if to be fair, he said, "He is a brave man."

"I've seen very few braver," Welton agreed. "But I'll tell you something else, too: I've seen very few who love themselves more, or who work harder to make sure other people love them. There's an old saying that if you don't toot your own horn, nobody will toot it for you. Custer's got himself bigger cheeks than a chipmunk coming out of a corncrib."

Roosevelt would have found that funny had he been sober. Drunk, he laughed till the tears rolled down his own cheeks. "I'll miss you, Colonel, by God I will," he said with the deep sentiment of the whiskey bottle. "They can't hold off much longer on releasing the Unauthorized Regiment from service, and then I go back to being a rancher outside of Helena."

Welton yawned against the hour and the liquor. "Won't be the same, will it, Teddy?" He'd never before called Roosevelt that. "You're not only an old man of twenty-three now, you're a real live hero to boot."

"I'm-I'm-" Roosevelt yawned, too. Suddenly, figuring out what he was seemed like too much trouble. "I'm going to bed, Colonel."

"Good night," Welton said vaguely. By the look of things, he was going to fall asleep where he sat. Roosevelt rose and went outside. It had snowed the day before; the cold slapped Roosevelt in the face, sobering him a little. No snow now-the night was brilliantly clear.

The moon had set a couple of hours before. Jupiter and Saturn shone in the southwest; Mars was brilliant, and red as blood, high in the south.

Slowly, methodically, Roosevelt made his way out to the gate. The camp of the Unauthorized Regiment was only a few yards away. "Here's the old man back," his own sentries called, one to another. He found his tent, wrapped himself in a blanket and a buffalo robe, and either passed out or fell asleep very, very quickly.

Come morning, his head pounded like a locomotive going up a steep grade. The dazzle of sun off snow only made him hurt worse. Every one of his soldiers who spotted him greeted him with "Merry Christmas. Colonel!" — greeted him loudly and piercingly, or so he thought in his fragile state. He had to answer the men, too, which meant he had to listen to his own voice. It sounded as loud and unpleasant as anyone else's.

After a breakfast of coffee, two raw eggs, and half a tumbler of brandy begged from the regimental physician on the grounds that easing a hangover was surely a medicinal use for the stuff, he felt like a human being, although perhaps one whose parts were not perfectly interchangeable. A cigar helped steady him further. He smoked it down to a tiny butt, flipped that into the snow, lighted another, and headed into town.

The saloons were open. As far as he could tell, the saloons in Fort Benton never closed. Somebody was playing a piano, not very well, in the first one past which he walked. Several people were singing. The words had nothing to do with the holiday season. Even so, the saloon boasted a Christmas tree, with candles gaily burning on all the branches and a red glass star at the top. Why the tree didn't catch fire and burn down the saloon and half the town was beyond him, but it didn't.

Two doors down stood another saloon, also tricked out with a Christmas tree full of candles. Inside, people were singing carols in the same loud, drunken tones the folks in the first place had used for their bawdy song. Would God be happy to hear carols sung like that? Roosevelt chewed on the question as he made his way toward church.

Before he got to the white clapboard building, a man came out, spotted him, and extended a forefinger in his direction. "Colonel Roosevelt!" the fellow called. "Merry Christmas! May I speak with you for a moment?"

"And a merry Christmas to you, Zeke," Roosevelt replied. Zeke Preston wasn't the preacher. He was a reporter. Most of the men who had swarmed into Montana Territory to cover the British invasion were gone now. Of the handful still in Fort Benton, Preston was probably the best. Not only that, a lot of papers back in New York State printed what he wrote. Thus Roosevelt knew it behooved him to stay on the reporter's good side. "What can I do for you today?"

Preston came down the steps and kicked his way through the snow. "Can I trouble you with a couple of questions before you go in?" He was a lean man in his thirties who wore a walrus mustache that didn't go with his pale, narrow face; Roosevelt wondered if he was consumptive.

"Go ahead," Roosevelt said. "You've caught me fair and square."

"Good." The reporter reached into an overcoat pocket and drew out a notebook and pencil. "Lucky I don't have a pen," he remarked. "Weather like this, the ink'd freeze solid as Blaine 's head." He waited for Roosevelt 's chuckle, then said, "The more time passes after the battle by the Teton, the more credit General Custer takes for himself. What do you think of that?"

He'd told Colonel Henry Welton exactly what he thought of it. Welton was his friend. He knew reporters well enough to know they had their own axes to grind. "He was the overall commander, Zeke. If we'd lost, who would have ended up with the blame?"

"He says your men fought well-for Volunteers." Sure as hell, Preston was trying to goad him into saying something that would make a lively story.

"It's Christmas. I'm not going to pick a quarrel on Christmas." But Roosevelt couldn't quite leave that one alone. "I will say that the Unauthorized Regiment was the force running Gordon and his men back toward Canada when word of the cease-fire reached us and made us hold in place."

Preston scribbled, coughed, scribbled again. "What's your opinion of Gatling guns, Colonel?"

Roosevelt had been over that one with Henry Welton, too. For the reporter, he put on a toothy grin and answered, "My opinion is that I would much rather be behind them than in front of them. If you ask General Gordon, I expect you will find his opinion the same."

"I've heard some argument about how those guns should have been positioned," Preston remarked after an appreciative chuckle at Roosevelt 's comment. "Where do you stand on that?"

"They did well where they were," Roosevelt said. "I saw no point to moving them from the front line-and they were not moved, if you'll recall. General Custer was persuaded they belonged there."

He waited for Zeke Preston to ask him about that persuading. Maybe, belatedly, Colonel Welton wouldn't be an unsung hero after all. But Preston flipped the notebook shut and stuck it and the pencil back in his pocket. "Thanks very much, Colonel. I won't bother you any more, not today I won't. Merry Christmas to you." Off he went, breath smoking in the chilly air.

Roosevelt sighed and went up into the church. It was Methodist, which would have to do; that faith certainly came closer to his own than the one preached in the two Catholic churches Fort Benton also boasted. When he walked in, the congregation was singing "Away in the Manger," a good deal more tunefully than the same carol would have been managed in the saloon.

He added his own booming baritone to the song. His voice, his uniform, and his upright carriage drew the notice of the folk who crowded the little church, almost all of them in their holiday best. Roosevelt gave notice as well as drawing it; some of the women were worth noticing. A blonde in a deep blue princess dress with a satin jabot and laced, pleated cuffs-it would have been the height of style in New York City five years earlier-caught his eye and held it.

When he'd had enough of caroling-and more than enough of the prune-faced Methodist preacher-he made his way toward the door. The pretty young woman contrived to leave the church at the same time. They walked down the narrow stairway side by side. She smelled of rosewater.

"Merry Christmas to you, miss," Roosevelt said when they were down on the tracked, snowy ground once more.

"The same to you, Colonel." She kept walking along beside him. His hopes rose. In a casual tone of voice, she went on, "If you care for some mince pie, I baked one yesterday. I'd be days and days eating it all by my lonesome."

"Why, that's very kind of you-very kind of you indeed." He smiled. "If your family won't mind sharing, I'd be delighted."

"I am a widow," she answered.

Sometimes that was a euphemism for a streetwalker. Sometimes it wasn't. If she was a woman of easy virtue, she was cleaner and, by all appearances, better-natured than most of her fallen sisters. "Mince pie, then," Roosevelt said-and if she felt like giving him more than mince pie, that would be fine, too.

She lived in a tiny, astringently neat cabin next door to a saloon- not that anything in Fort Benton was far from a saloon. Sure enough, a mince pie sat on the table. She cut Roosevelt a slice. It was good. He said so, loudly, adding, "Thank you for making a soldier far from home happy."

"How happy would you like to be?" she asked, and walked around the table and sat down on his lap.

The bed was close to the stove. Everything in the cabin was close to the stove, which helped keep the place tolerably warm. Roosevelt had had a couple of other women throw themselves at him since he rode down to Fort Benton a hero, or as much of a hero as this hash of a war offered. The experience had been both new and delightful. He wasn't sure whether this was another hero's reward or a business transaction. As he fumbled with the buttons of his trousers, he resolved to worry about it later.

"Oh," she said when, presently, he went into her. She was quiet after that, working intently beneath him, till she stiffened again and quivered and cried out, "Oh, Joe! Oh, God, Joe!" He didn't think she knew what she was saying; he hardly knew what she was saying himself then. His own ecstasy came less than a minute later. Afterwards, he decided she probably was a widow after all.

Being twenty-three, he would have been ready for a second round in short order, but she got off the bed and started dressing again, so he did, too. He was left with a puzzling problem in etiquette after that. If she was a streetwalker as well as a widow, he'd anger her if he didn't offer to pay. If she wasn't, he'd offend her if he did.

He stood irresolute, a rare posture for him. Without answering the question behind it, she solved the problem for him: "Merry Christmas, Colonel Roosevelt."

"Thank you very much," he said, and kissed her. "I don't think I've ever had a nicer present, or one more charmingly wrapped." She smiled at that. He opened the door, and grunted at the cold outside. He'd gone several steps back toward the Unauthorized Regiment's encampment before he realized he'd never learned her name.