How Few Remain

Chapter 7

Sitting as it did at the corner of Larkin and Mcallister in Yerba Buena Park, the San Francisco City Hall was only a few blocks from the offices of the Morning Call. Samuel Clemens looked up from the sentence he was writing- level of bungling last seen when Lot's wife was turned to a pillar of salt and not a single foolish soul thought to carry her along regardless, to sell for a shekel the half-pound — and spoke to Clay Herndon: "Mayor Sutro's giving a speech in half an hour. Why don't you amble on over there and find out what the old whale's spouting this time?"

"Do I have to, Sam?" Herndon asked in mournful tones. "I've covered him the last three times he's shot off his mouth, and if four in a row isn't cruel and unusual punishment, I don't know what is. Besides, I'm about three-quarters of the way through this story you said you wanted today, and it's going pretty well. I hate to waste a couple of hours listening to His Honor gab, and then come back and find I've forgotten half the good lines I figured on using."

"Which story is that?" Clemens asked. "There were a couple of them, if I recall."

"The one about the defenses of San Francisco Bay," the reporter answered. "I finally talked Colonel Sherman into giving me an interview yesterday, and I went out to Alcatraz and talked with the garrison commander there, too, so I've got the straight dope, all right. 'Muzzle-loading rifled cannon'-it's almost as bad as 'she sells sea shells by the seashore,' isn't it?"

"And their shells may be even more dangerous than sea shells, not that we've seen any proof of that," Clemens said. "Well, you're right-I do want that piece, as fast as you can turn it out, so I won't inflict our magnificent mayor on you this morning." He took another look at the editorial he was working on. It was, by something approaching a miracle, for the day after tomorrow, not tomorrow. He got up from his desk. "I'll cover the speech myself. By the way things are going, I'm bound to have more of our blunders to write about by the time I have to give this to the typesetters."

"I didn't want you to have to go and do that," Clay Herndon exclaimed. "I just meant for you to send Leary or one of the other cubs."

"Don't fret yourself about it." Sam threw on his houndstooth coat. As if he were a gentleman of fashion, he buttoned only the top button. As he set his straw hat at a jaunty angle on his head, he went on, "If I go to City Hall, I'm halfway home. You can't tell me Sutro won't talk till noon, or maybe one o'clock. Whenever he finally decides to shut up, I can walk over for dinner and surprise Alexandra."

"Thanks, Sam," Herndon said. "You're a good boss to work for; you remember what it was like when you were just an ordinary working fellow yourself."

"Get that story about the sea shells on Alcatraz done." Clemens patted his pockets to make sure he had an adequate supply of both pencils and cigars. Satisfied, he grabbed a notebook and headed out the door.

The weather was fine for wearing a mostly unbuttoned coat. The breeze ruffled the flags that, in a display of patriotic fervor, flew from what seemed like every other building and from every trolley and cable-car stop. Despite the admission of several territories as new states since the War of Secession, the flags sported fewer stars than they had before the war. President Tilden had finally ordered the stars representing states now Confederate removed from the banner, which was, Clemens remained convinced, one reason Blaine beat him.

Sam walked southwest down Market to McAllister, and then west along the latter street to the City Hall, a fine building of composite neoclassical style. He waved to a couple of other reporters who were also coming to hear Mayor Sutro's latest pronouncement.

"Good God in the foothills, Sam, the Call must really have its claws out if you're covering this in person," said Monte Jesperson, who wrote for the Aha Californian. His paper was as staunchly pro-Sutro as the Morning Call was anti-.

"Not quite so bad as that, Three-Card," Clemens returned. Regardless of editorial policy, newspapermen got on well with one another. "Only reason I'm here is that Clay's in the middle of a story he needs to get done quick as he can."

"Ah, I've got you." When Jesperson nodded, his flabby jowls and several chins bobbed up and down. His sack suit had to have been cut from the bones of a great many herrings to fit round his bulk. He stood aside to let Sam go into City Hall ahead of him; the doors weren't wide enough to let them go in side by side.

Noting the rich furnishings, the marble floors, the fancy paintings on the walls, the general profusion of velvet and gilt and elabourately carved walnut and mahogany, Sam said, "I wonder how much stuck to whose pockets when they were running up this place."

Monte Jesperson's sniff was like that of a bloodhound taking a scent. "Ah, that'd be worth knowing, wouldn't it?" he said. "If there be any bodies buried, nobody's ever dug 'em up."

"That's the truth." Clemens cocked his head to one side, listening to Jesperson with a reporter's attentive ear. "So you're one of the ones who still say 'if there be,' are you, Three-Card? I know the fancy grammarians like it better, but if there are' has always been good enough for me."

"I'm an old man." Jesperson ran a pudgy finger along the gray walrus mustache he wore. "The things the modern generation does to the English language are a shame and a disgrace, nothing less. Not you, Sam-you've got some bite to you, under that cloak of foolishness you like to wear-but a lot of the pups nowadays wouldn't know a subjunctive if it kicked 'em in the shins. Comes of not learning Latin, I expect."

Sam's own acquaintance with Latin was distinctly of the nodding variety. Not without relief, he let one of Mayor Sutro's flunkies lead him to the hall where Sutro stood poised behind a podium, ready to give forth with deathless prose. It was, in Clemens' opinion, deathless because it had never come to life.

He sometimes thought Sutro looked as if he'd never come to life, either. The mayor of San Francisco was pale and plump, with a brown mustache Jesperson's could have swallowed whole. His eyes, dark lumps in a doughy face, resolutely refused to show any luster. That he wore a suit he might have stolen from an undertaker did not enliven his person.

Along with the reporters, clerks and lawyers helped fill the room. So did some of Adolph Sutro's friends, most of them as dreary as the mayor. Sutro said, "Thank you for coming here today, gentlemen." He looked down at the podium, on which surely reposed his speech, nicely written out. Having grown up with politicians who memorized two-hour addresses and were venomously deadly in repartee, Clemens found that all the more dismaying.

"I have called and gathered you here together today," Sutro droned, "for the purpose of delivering a warning pertaining to spies and to matters relating to espionage." I want to warn you about spies, Sam translated mentally. He'd edited a lot of bad prose in his time, but little to compare to this. A cleaver wasn't enough to cut the fat from the mayor's speeches; a two-man ripsaw might possibly have done the job.

"In particular this morning, I address my remarks to the noble gentlemen belonging to the Fourth Estate, irregardless of whether or not they and I have previous to this time been in agreement with each other on the concerns concerning our city and our state and the United States," Sutro continued. He doubtless thought of that irregardless as a polished touch, and either hadn't noticed concerns concerning or laboured under the delusion that it improved the product. With a distinct effort of will, Clemens lowered the flame under his critical boiler. Taking notes on Sutro's speeches was easier because they were so padded and repetitious.

The mayor said, "It is up to you and your responsibility to disseminate to the many who depend on you the vital necessity of being as alert and aware as it is possible to be to the dangers posed by spying and the measures to be taken in order that those dangers are to be reduced to as small an extent as may be. Now, then, these dangers are-Yes, Mr. Clemens?"

Sam's hand had shot into the air. He couldn't help himself. In his most innocent voice, he asked, "Mayor, can you please tell me how a danger, which is abstract, can have an extent, which is physical?"

Sutro coughed. "This danger is not abstract. It is real. Perhaps we can hold the rest of the questions until the completion of my address. Now, then, as I was saying-"

Invincible dunderhead, Clemens scrawled in his notebook. He glanced over at Monte Jesperson, who would not meet his eye. No matter what Jesperson thought, though, the Alta Californian would make Mayor Sutro sound like a statesman when its next edition came out.

To Sam, he sounded like a lunatic. His speech went on for as long as the newspaperman had expected it would, but furnished only a couple of pages' worth of notes. The gist of it was that Sutro had a bee in his bonnet about spies, because Confederates, Canadians, and Englishmen all spoke English-"in the same way and manner that we do ourselves," the mayor said. Sam was confidently certain many of them spoke it better than Adolph Sutro did, not that that made any enormous compliment.

Still… Mayor Sutro has a point, Sam wrote. Then he added, He was not wearing his hat, which let him show the world exactly where he has it. The mayor's idea was that, since enemy spies didn't give themselves away by how they talked, everyone should report everything (that wasn't quite how he phrased it, but it was what he meant) to the police and to the military authorities, so everybody who said anything could be locked up and the keys either thrown away or filed in the mayor's office, which made them even more certain never to be seen again.

When the speech was finally over, Clemens asked, "Once the entire population of the city is incarcerated, Your Honor, from which states do you plan on importing loyal citizens to take its place?"

"I doubt it will come to that," Sutro answered primly. "Next question, please." Sam sighed. He should have known better. He had known better, in fact, but hadn't wanted to admit it to himself. If U.S. Navy ships were armored against shells as the mayor was against sarcasm, they'd prove unsinkable.

Sam did find one serious question to ask: "Have you reviewed this plan with the chief of police and with the military authorities?"

"Why, no," the mayor said, "but I have the utmost confidence they will show themselves to be as zealous in the pursuit of the sneaking spies who have done so much damage to our cause"-another statement, Clemens thought, that would have been all the better for proof-"as I am myself, and will profit from the assistance of our fine and upstanding vigilant citizens."

"I have the utmost confidence," Sam said as the reporters headed out of City Hall, "that every low-down skunk with a grudge against his neighbor is going to call him a Rebel spy."

"We'll catch some real spies, thanks to this," Monte Jesperson said: faint praise for the speech, but praise.

It made Clemens furious. "Oh, no doubt we will-but how the devil will we be able to tell which ones they are, when we've arrested their bartenders and blacksmiths and druggists along with 'em? And what about the Constitution, where it says you can't arrest a man on nothing better than somebody's say-so?"

Jesperson's shoulders moved up and down. "It's wartime. You do what you have to do, then pick up the pieces afterwards."

"Three-Card, the very first war this country ever fought was against people who said things like that," Sam answered.

Jesperson only shrugged again. Instead of staying to make an argument out of it, he waddled off toward the Alta Californian's office on California Street. If he wrote fast enough, the last couple of editions of his paper would have a no doubt carefully polished version of Mayor Sutro's speech in them, along with an editorial giving half a dozen good reasons for treating San Franciscans like Confederate slaves or Russian peasants.

"Because some petty tyrants are tired of being petty," Clemens muttered under his breath.

He went back to his house almost at a run, hoping Alexandra would be able to lift him out of his evil mood. Part of it lifted at the delighted reception his children gave him: he didn't usually come home in the middle of the day. His own delight at seeing them was somewhat tempered when his wife told him Ophelia had broken a vase not fifteen minutes before.

"It wasn't my fault," Ophelia said in tones of virtue impugned. Sam, who had heard such tones before, raised an eyebrow and waited. His daughter went on, "I never would have done it if Orion hadn't ducked when I threw the doll at him."

"Is the world ready?" Sam asked Alexandra.

"I don't know," his wife answered. "If it's not, though, it had better be."

Along with boiled beef and horseradish, that sage comment helped persuade him the world was likely to be able to muddle on a bit longer in spite of Mayor Sutro's aggressive idiocy. He was glad to discover Alexandra disliked Sutro's plan as much as he did.

The dog, hearing everyone saying Sutro over and over, decided people were talking about him. He walked up to Sam and put his head and front paws on his lap. Clemens scratched his ears, which was what he'd had in mind. "Ah, you poor pup," Sam said. "I thought I was insulting the mayor when I gave you your name, and here all the time I was insulting you."

At the Rochester train station, Frederick Douglass embraced his wife and son. "Now don't you worry about me for even a minute," he said. "This will be how I always wanted to enter the Confederate States: With banners flying and guns blazing and a great army leading the way."

"You make sure you let the army lead the way," Anna Douglass said. "Don't go any place where them Rebels can shoot at you."

"Seeing that the invasion is not yet launched, that's hardly a concern," Douglass answered. "I am delighted that General Willcox recalled the plight of the colored man and wanted one of our race present to witness the U.S. return to Kentucky."

His son, Lewis, embraced him. "Don't just be a witness, Father. Bear witness for the world."

"I'll do that. I'll do exactly that." A shouted All aboard! from the conductor punctuated Douglass' promise. He climbed up onto the train and took his seat. If the white man next to him was dismayed to have a Negro traveling companion, he was polite enough not to show it, more than which Douglass could not ask.

Going from Rochester to Louisville (or rather, to the Indiana towns across the Ohio from Louisville) took two days. The polite white man left the train at Fort Wayne, to be replaced by a fellow who stared at Douglass in a marked manner and kept sniffing, as if to say the Negro had not bathed as recently as he might have done. Since no one in the car was fresh by then, and since several people apparently had not bathed since the start of the year, Douglass felt he was being unduly singled out. But, as the man from Fort Wayne took things no further than that, Douglass ignored him. He'd known worse.

New Albany, Clarksville, and Jeffersonville, Indiana, had been trading partners with Louisville. They'd sent U.S. manufactured goods into the Confederate States in exchange for tobacco and whiskey and fine Kentucky horseflesh. With the Ohio closed to shipping, with bridges blown up, with cannon barking at one another, they could have had the look of western mining towns after the veins that spawned them had run dry.

Instead, they boomed as never before. The reason was easy to understand: tent cities bigger than any of them filled the countryside beyond the reach of Confederate guns. The U.S. Army was there in numbers not seen since the War of Secession, and bought everything the Rebels would have and more besides.

A driver was supposed to be waiting for Douglass when he got off the train. He stood on the platform, looking around. No driver was in evidence, and it wasn't likely that the man had gone off with some other elderly colored gentleman by mistake. Douglass sighed. Brigadier General Willcox or one of his officers had managed to make a hash of things.

That meant hiring a cab. The first driver Douglass approached shifted a wad of tobacco deep into his cheek so he could growl, "I don't take niggers." Southern Indiana had never been territory friendly to the cause of abolition, and till the war began the locals had probably associated more with the Confederates across the river than with their more enlightened countrymen from other regions of the USA. The second cab driver Douglass approached dismissed him as curtly as had the first.

He finally found a man willing to take him-for a ten-dollar fare. "That's robbery!" he burst out.

"That's business," the fellow returned. "Uncle, ain't many folks round here who'd drive you for any money."

Douglass had already seen as much. Uncle was one of the less malicious things whites called blacks: not a compliment, certainly, but an improvement over a lot of choices the driver might have made. "Ten dollars it is," the Negro said, and hoped the man wouldn't try to hold him up for twenty when they got to Willcox's headquarters.

The cab had to pick its way down little paths that had never been meant to take much traffic but were now choked with wagon trains bringing the army the munitions it would need to fight and the food it needed till such time as it did go into battle. The dust was overpowering. Above the rattle of wagon wheels, the driver said, "By the time we get there, pal, we'll be the same color."

If he was exaggerating, he wasn't exaggerating by much. Was that the solution to the problem of white and black in the USA — and, for that matter, in the CSA? Put everybody behind a dozen wagons on a dusty road on a dry summer's day? Douglass wished things could have been so simple.

He soon discovered he could tell which regiments were Regular Army and which volunteers before he saw the banners identifying them. The regulars knew what they were doing. Everything was neat, everything just so. Even the dust around regular regiments seemed less, as if it were afraid to come up lest some officer give it fatigue duty for untidiness.

Volunteer encampments straggled more. The men themselves straggled more, too, and slouched more, as if some of the iron in regulars' backbones had been omitted from theirs. They looked like what they were: men unsure how to be soldiers but called upon to play the role. A lot of them had been called upon; their regiments far outnumbered those of the long-service professionals who filled the ranks in time of peace. A large part of the volunteer strength of the Army was concentrated here for the blow against Louisville.

"All right, Uncle." The driver halted the cab. "Ten dollars, like I said." Douglass paid without a murmur, relieved he'd kept to the price he'd set at the station. The driver hauled his trunk down from the roof of the cab, nodded in a friendly enough way, and headed back to town. Douglass guessed he would have gouged a white man almost as badly. That made the orator and writer feel a little better.

General Willcox was supposed to know he was coming. When he strode up to the tent with the general's one-star flag flying in front of it, he discovered the sentries had not been informed. "You want to see the general'?'^ 1 one of them said, gray eyes widening. He turned to his companion. "Eb, this here dusty old nigger wants to see the general."

Both soldiers guffawed. Eb said, "Yeah, but does the general want to see this here dusty old nigger?" They thought that was funny, too.

"I am Frederick Douglass," Douglass ground out in icy fury. "I was asked to come here to write the story of this army and its assault on Louisville. The story I have in mind to write at the moment will not cast the two of you in the best of light, of that you have my assurance."

His tone worked the wonder his appearance had failed to effect: the sentries began to treat him like a man, not like a Negro. The one who wasn't Eb disappeared into the tent, to return with a spruce young captain. "Mr. Douglass!" the officer said with a broad smile. "So good to meet you. I'm Oliver Richardson, General Willcox's adjutant." He shook hands with Douglass with every sign of pleasure. "I trust you had no difficulty finding the headquarters?"

"Finding them-no," Douglass said. Whatever else he might have added, he kept to himself. For all he knew, his difficulties might lie at Richardson 's feet. He'd met plenty of white men who were friendly to his face and called him a nigger the minute he turned his back.

"Let me take you in to see the general, Mr. Douglass," Richardson said. "I'm sure the men will carry your trunk there to the tent where you are to be quartered."

"Sir, there ain't no such tent," the sentry who wasn't Eb said, "on account of we didn't know this here… fellow was a-comin'."

"Set one up, then," Richardson snapped. An instant later, he was all affability again. "Come with me, Mr. Douglass."

Douglass came. He found Brigadier General Orlando Willcox slogging down a mountain of papers, a scene he remembered from visiting head-quarters during the War of Secession. He wondered how generals ever got to fight; they seemed too busy filling out forms and writing reports to have the time for it.

Willcox was a roly-poly man six or eight years younger than Douglass, with a high forehead that looked higher because his hair had retreated from so much of it. "Mr. Douglass!" he exclaimed, putting down his pen with every sign of delight. "God be praised that you have been able to join us before the commencement of the great struggle."

"I had worried about that, yes," Douglass said, "knowing how celerity is so vital a constituent of the military art."

"We are less hasty than we might have been under other circumstances, there being so many volunteers to weave into the fabric of the Regular Army," Willcox said. "But the mingling of warp and weft proceeds well, and I still have every confidence that the good Lord will grant our arms and our righteous cause the victory they deserve."

"May it be so," Douglass agreed. "If, however, you will forgive my speaking on a matter where I am the rankest amateur and you learned in every aspect, much the same sort of talk was heard in General McClellan's headquarters during the War of Secession. The Lord is, as the saying has it, in the habit of helping them that help themselves."

Captain Richardson sent Douglass a venomous glance that made him suddenly surer than he had been where his difficulties in making arrangements had arisen. General Willcox did not see that glance; he was answering, "I forgive you readily, as it is my Christian duty to do. But if you knew how many hours I have spent on my knees in prayer, beseeching God to grant me the answers to the riddles of this campaign, you would be more certain I am acting rightly."

Douglass had nothing against the power of prayer: on the contrary. He did wish, though, that General Willcox also spoke of how many hours he'd spent studying maps, examining the enemy's positions on the far side of the Ohio, and sending over spies to examine them close up.

"The event will prove my strategy," Willcox declared.

"Very well, sir," Douglass replied. As he'd said, he was no soldier himself. And Orlando Willcox was certain to be right… one way or the other.

Philander Snow leaned out to spit over the side of the Handbasket. "Six days on the road!" he said. "Reckon my backside's as petrified as some of the bones them perfessers dig out of the ground."

"If my hindquarters were that petrified," Theodore Roosevelt said, "I wouldn't be able to feel them, and I most assuredly can. But six days of hard riding would have left us just as worn, and we can carry more supplies in the wagon. Besides, Fort Benton can't be much farther, not when we passed through Great Falls day before yesterday."

"If it was much further, I expect I'd be too crippled-up to walk a- tall by the time we got there," Snow said.

"If the mountain won't come to Mohammed, Mohammed has to go to the mountain," Roosevelt said. He saw at once that his traveling companion had not the slightest idea what he was talking about. Suppressing a sigh, he made himself what he thought was remorselessly clear: "If forts are the only places in Montana Territory where volunteers may be enrolled into the U.S. Army, then I needs must go to a fort to remove the unfortunate adjective from Roosevelt's Unauthorized Regiment."

"Yeah, and all your toy soldiers'll be a real part of the Army then, too," Snow said, which made Roosevelt swallow another sigh. The ranch hands were good men, honest men, true men: he'd seen as much many times. Just as many times, though, he'd tried to hold any sort of intelligent conversation with one of them, and just as many times he'd failed.

With or without intelligent conversation, he and Phil Snow rattled north east close by the north bank of the Missouri River, on toward Fort Benton. They'd followed the river all the way from the farm; except for enormously overdeveloping the buttocks and every single circumadjacent nerve, the trip was easy.

Snow pointed ahead. "Smoke on the horizon, boss. If that don't mean we're about there, I'll swallow my chaw."

"What would happen if you did?" Roosevelt asked, as usual curious about everything.

"I'd sick my guts up, and pretty damn quick, too," Snow said, expecto rating for emphasis. "I done it once, when I got throwed off a horse." His tone turned mournful: "It ain't somethin' you want to do twice."

As he must have known, he didn't have to make good on his promise. Inside of half an hour, the Handbasket rolled into Fort Benton. A considerable town had grown up around the fort, which lay as far west along the Missouri as even the shallowest-draft steamboat could reach. The same thing happened around the legionary camps in the days of the Roman Empire, Roosevelt thought. He glanced over to Philander Snow and shook his head. Snow's many admirable qualities did not include an interest in ancient history. Roosevelt kept the thought to himself.

Snow was glancing around, too, into the back of the wagon. "You gonna put on your fancy uniform, boss?" he asked. "Hope it ain't got too wrinkled from sittin' there bundled up this past week."

"I think I'll be smarter leaving it bundled up," Roosevelt answered. "By what I heard in Great Falls, this Henry Welton in command of the Seventh Infantry is only a lieutenant colonel himself. I don't want to go in there looking as if I'm claiming to be his superior officer."

"That's clever. That's right clever." Philander Snow shifted the reins to his left hand so he could slap the other down on his thigh. "You don't mind my sayin' so, you're wasting your time runnin' a ranch. You ought to be in politics."

"The thought has crossed my mind," Roosevelt admitted. "If I hadn't decided to come out here, I might have run for the Assembly back in New York. I'll tell you this much-we need to see some changes made, and that's a fact. If the people who are running things now won't make 'em, we need to throw the rascals out and put in some people who will."

Snow brought the wagon to a stop across the street from the timber gate and adobe walls of Fort Benton. Perhaps not coinciden-tally, he brought it to a stop directly in front of a saloon. "You won't need me to go in and talk with this lieutenant colonel, whatever his name was, will you, boss?"

"No, I don't suppose I will." Roosevelt stuck out his lower jaw and looked fierce. "But I will need you in some sort of state to travel when I come out again. Have a few drinks. Enjoy yourself. But if I have to pour you into the wagon, you will regret it, and not only on account of your hangover."

"I'll be good," Snow said. "Don't really fancy the notion of heading back toward the ranch with my head poundin' like a stamping mill." Next to that prospect, nothing Roosevelt threatened could put fear in him.

But he hurried into the saloon with such alacrity that Roosevelt clicked his tongue between his teeth. Then he shrugged. He'd see when he came out of Fort Benton.

"Mornin' to you," the sentry at the gate said when he approached. "State your business, if you please." The soldier did not stand aside.

"I wish to speak with Lieutenant Colonel Welton," Roosevelt answered. "I have assembled a body of volunteer troops to offer to the U.S. Army."

"How big a body of troops?" the sentry asked, unimpressed. "You got five men? Ten? Fifteen, even? Dribs and drabs is what we're get-tin', and they're hell to put together."

Roosevelt 's chest inflated with pride. "My friend," he boomed, "I have a complete and entire regiment of cavalry, ready for action. Your colonel has only to give us our orders, and we shall ride!"

He had the satisfaction of watching the sentry drop his rifle and catch it before it hit the ground. He had the further satisfaction of watching everyone within earshot-and he hadn't tried to keep his voice down: far from it-turn and stare at him. Had the sentry had a plug of tobacco rather than a pipe in his mouth, he might have swallowed it. As things were, he needed a couple of tries before he managed to say, "You're that Roseyfclt fellow down by Helena, fry me for bacon if you ain't. Heard about you a couple-three days ago, but I didn't believe a word of it."

"Believe it," Roosevelt said proudly. "It's true."

The sentry did. "Bert!" he called to a soldier within. "Hey, you, Bert! Come take Mr. Roseyfelt here to the old man's office. He's the one that's fitted out a cavalry regiment by his lonesome." Bert exclaimed in astonishment. The sentry now seemed to believe he'd invented Roosevelt, saying, "It's a fact. You go right on in, Mr. Roseyfelt. I can't leave my post, but Bert there'll take care of you."

"Thank you." Roosevelt strode into Fort Benton. He wouldn't have wanted to try bombarding the place; the walls had to be thirty feet thick. Two bastions at diagonal corners further strengthened the fort. All the buildings faced inward, having the outer wall as their back.

Bert led Roosevelt across the parade ground to the regimental commandant's office. Through the window, Roosevelt saw a man busily wading through paperwork. He understood that more vividly than he would have a few weeks before; regimental command, even of the as yet Unauthorized Regiment, involved more attention to detail and less glory than he would have dreamt.

When Bert announced him, Lieutenant Colonel Welton set down his pen and stared in astonishment. "You're the Roosevelt we heard about?" The officer rose from behind his battered desk. "Good God, sir, I mean no offense, but I believe my son is older than you are."

"It's possible, Lieutenant Colonel," Roosevelt admitted. Henry Welton was about forty-five-twice his own age, more or less-with red-gold hair going gray and a formidable mustache. His grip as they shook hands was odd; he was missing the last two joints of his right middle finger. Once the polite greetings were out of the way, Roosevelt went on, "No one else down toward Helena was doing the job, sir, so I resolved to undertake it myself."

"That's-most commendable, Mr. Roosevelt. A whole regiment? By God, that's amazing." Welton still sounded flummoxed. "Please, sir, sit down." His gray gaze speared Roosevelt as he grew more alert. "I'll bet you call yourself a colonel, too, don't you?"

"Well-yes." Roosevelt was suddenly very glad he'd left the uniform in the wagon. The man with whom he was speaking looked to be a veteran of the War of Secession, and had earned regimental command with years of patient service. Next to that, having the wealth to outfit a unit all at once seemed a tawdry way to gain such a post. Unwontedly humble, Roosevelt went on, "I would not presume to claim rank superior to yours if and when we are accepted into the service of the United States."

"Ah, that. Yes." Welton shook his head. "I never thought I'd have to worry about taking in a whole regiment at a gulp. You've had 'em gathered together for a bit now, too, if what I hear is anywhere close to straight. I bet they're eating you out of house and home."

"As a matter of fact, they are." Roosevelt leaned forward in his chair. "That's not the reason I ask you to accept them, though." He pointed north, toward Canada. "What lies between this fortress and the Canadian border but miles of empty land? Would you not like to have a regiment of mounted men patrolling that land, guarding against attack from the treacherous British Empire and perhaps taking the war into Canadian soil?"

"If the regiment is worth having, I'd like that very much," Welton answered. "If they're a pack of cutthroats, or if they're fair-weather soldiers who look pretty on parade but won't fight, I want no part of 'em." He leaned forward in turn. "What precisely have you got down there by Helena, Mr. Roosevelt?"

For the next hour, the Regular Army officer subjected Roosevelt to a searching interrogation on every aspect of the Unauthorized Regiment, from recruitment to sanitation to discipline to weapons to medicine to tactics. Roosevelt thanked his lucky stars he had done such a careful job of keeping records. Without them, he would never have been able to respond to the barrage of questions.

"Why Winchesters?" Henry Welton snapped at one point.

"Two reasons," Roosevelt answered. "One, I could gain uniformity of weapons for my men with them but not with Springfields, which are far less common among the volunteers. And two, mounted men being widely spaced in combat, rapidity of fire struck me as a vitally important consideration."

He waited to see how Welton would respond to that. The officer's next question was about something else altogether, which, Roosevelt hoped, meant the reply had satisfied him.

At last, the commander of the Seventh Infantry set both hands down flat on the desk. After staring down at them for a few seconds, he said, "Well, Mr. Roosevelt, I had trouble believing it when I heard about it, and I had a damn sight lot more trouble believing it when I saw you're still wet behind the ears. But, unless you've got P. T. Bar-num for your adjutant, I'd say you've done a hell of a job-a hell of a job, sir. I saw damn few volunteer regiments twenty years ago that could hold a candle to yours. And you're telling me you had no soldierly experience before you decided to organize this regiment?"

"That's right," Roosevelt said. "I've always strongly believed, though, that a man can do whatever he sets his mind to do."

"I already told you once, I wouldn't have believed it," Welton said. "Where did you learn what you need to know about being a colonel?"

"From books-where else? I am a quick study."

"Quick study be damned." Henry Welton gave Roosevelt a very odd look. "Do you have any notion how rare it is for any man, let alone a pup like you, to read something and then up and do it, just like that?" He held up the hand with the mutilated finger. "Never mind. You don't need to answer that. You've answered enough of my questions. Bring your regiment-the Unauthorized Regiment"- amusement glinted in his eyes-"up here, and I'll swear 'em in. If they're half as good as they sound, Colonel Roosevelt, Uncle Sam's getting himself a bargain."

"Yes, sir!" Theodore Roosevelt sprang to his feet and saluted as crisply as he knew how. As soon as he did it, he realized he shouldn't have, not while he was wearing civilian clothes. He felt ready to burst with pride when the Regular Army officer returned the salute: even if it wasn't proper, Welton accepted it in the spirit with which it was offered. Roosevelt hardly remembered the polite words they exchanged in parting. He was amazed the soles of his boots kicked up dust as he left Fort Benton: he thought he was walking on air.

No one had absquatulated with the wagon while he was in the fort talking with Lieutenant Colonel Welton. He didn't see Philander Snow's body stretched out on the planks of the sidewalk, either bloodied or just stupefied from too much whiskey downed too fast. It was, in fact, in his judgment, as near a perfect day as the Lord had ever created.

A woman in a basque so tight-fitting it might have been painted on her torso and a cotton skirt thin almost to translucence came strolling up the street twirling a parasol for dramatic effect. She paused in front of Roosevelt. "Stranger in town," she remarked, and set the hand that wasn't holding the parasol on her hip. "Lonely, stranger?"

He studied the soiled dove. She had to be ten years older than he was, maybe fifteen. The curls under her battered bonnet surely got their color from a henna bottle. Despite inviting words, her face was cold and hard as the snow-covered granite of the Rockies. Roosevelt had broken an understanding of sorts with Alice Lee when he came out West, and was far from immune to animal urges. He sometimes slaked them down in Helena, but tried to pick friendlier partners than this walking cashbox who smelled of sweat and cheap scent.

Besides, the exultation filling him now was in its way nearly as satisfying as a thrashing tussle between the sheets. As politely as he could, he shook his head. "Maybe another time."

"Tightwad," the harlot sneered, and strutted off.

Roosevelt almost called after her to let her know a new cavalry regiment was coming to town. That would put fresh fire under her business. But no; Philander Snow deserved to know first. Roosevelt strolled through the swinging doors of the saloon. There sat Phil, still upright but showing a list. "We're Authorized!" Roosevelt shouted in a great voice.

"Hot damn!" Snow said when the news penetrated, which took a bit.

"Drinks are on me!" Roosevelt said. Such open-handed generosity had won him friends in Helena, and it did the same in Fort Benton. Good, he thought. I'll be coming back here soon.

Colonel Alfred von Schlieffen had hoped that, by traveling to Jeffersonville, Indiana, to observe the U.S. attack on Louisville, he would escape the ghastly summer weather of Washington and Philadelphia. In that hope, he rapidly discovered, he was doomed to disappointment. Along the eastern seaboard, the Atlantic exerted at least some small moderating effect on the climate.

Deep in the interior of the continent, as Schlieffen was now, nothing exerted any moderating effect whatever. The air simply hung and clung, so hot and moist and still that pushing through it required a distinct physical effort. His uniform stuck greasily to his body, as if someone had taken a bucketful of water from the Ohio and splashed it over him. Almost every house in Jeffersonville, even the poorest shanty, had a porch draped with mosquito netting or metal-mesh screen on which people slept in summer to escape the furnace like heat inside the buildings. Even the porches, though, offered but small relief.

All the Americans insisted the climate in the Confederate States was even hotter and muggier. Schlieffen wondered if they were pulling his leg, as their slang expression put it. This side of the Amazon or equatorial Africa, a worse climate seemed unimaginable.

Under canvas in among General Willcox's headquarters staff (not that, to his mind, it was a proper staff for a general: the men around Willcox were more messengers than the specialists and experts who could have offered him advice worth having), Schlieffen was as comfortable as he could be. He also found himself happy, which puzzled him till, with characteristic thoroughness, he dug out the reason. The last time he'd been under canvas, during the Franco-Prussian War, had been the most active, most useful stretch in his entire career, the time when he'd felt most alive. He could hardly hope to equal that feeling now, but the back of his mind had recalled it before his intellect could.

Accompanied sometimes by Captain Richardson (who, like General Rosecrans' adjutant, had a smattering of German he wanted to improve), sometimes by another of General Willcox's staff officers, Schlieffen explored the dispositions of the building U.S. army. "You have indeed assembled a formidable force," he said to Richardson as they headed back toward headquarters from another tour. "I would not have thought it possible, not when a large part of your numbers is made up-are made up? — of volunteers."

"Is made up." Richardson helped his English as he helped the American's German. "Danke schon, Heir Oberst." He fell back into his own language: "We fought the War of Secession the same way."

"Yes." Schlieffen let it go at that. The results of the war did not seem to him to recommend the method, but his guide would have found such a comment in poor taste.

Nevertheless, the U.S. achievement here was not to be despised. Kurd von Schlozer was right: Americans had a gift for improvisation. He did not think Germany could have come so far so fast from nearly a standing start (whether the USA should have begun from nearly a standing start was a different question). Fifty thousand men, more or less, had been gathered in and around Jeffersonville and the towns nearby, with the supplies they needed and with a truly impressive concentration of artillery.

"How is the health of the men?" Schlieffen asked. The hellish climate hereabouts only added to the problems involved in keeping large armies from dissolving due to disease before they could fight.

"Ganz gut." Richardson waggled a hand back and forth to echo that. "About what you'd expect. We've had some typhoid. No cholera, thank God, or we'd be in trouble. And a lot of the volunteers are country boys. They won't have had measles when they were little, not living out on farms in the middle of nowhere. You come down with measles when you're a man grown, you're liable to die of 'em. Same goes for smallpox, only more so."

"Yes," Schlieffen said, this time without any intention of evading the issue. The German Army faced similar problems. He wondered whether relatively more German or American soldiers had been vaccinated against smallpox. Then he wondered if anyone knew, or could know. So many things he might have liked to learn were things about which no one else bothered to worry.

"One thing," Oliver Richardson said: "I know the Rebs won't be in any better shape than we are."

Schlieffen nodded. That was, from everything he'd been able to gather, a truth of wider application than Richardson suspected or would have cared to admit. The two American nations, rival sections even before the Confederacy broke away from the United States, thought of themselves as opposites in every way, as enemies and rivals were wont to do. They might indeed have been head and tail, but they were head and tail of the same coin.

"Oh, Christ," Captain Richardson muttered under his breath. "Here comes that damn nigger again."

The Negro walking toward them was an impressive man, tall and well made, with sternly handsome features accentuated by his graying, nearly white beard and head of hair. His eyes glittered with intelligence; he dressed like a gentleman. Schlieffen had thought nigger a term of disapproval, but perhaps his mediocre English had let him down. "This is Mr. Douglass, yes?" he asked, and Richardson nodded. "You will please introduce me to him?"

"Certainly," Richardson replied. Now that the black man had come within earshot, the adjutant was cordial enough. "Mr. Douglass," he said, "I should like to introduce you to Colonel von Schlieffen, the German military attache to the United States. Colonel, this is Mr. Frederick Douglass, the famous speaker and journalist."

"I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Colonel." Douglass' deep, rich voice left no doubt why he was a famous speaker. He held out his hand.

Schlieffen shook it without hesitation. "And I am also pleased to meet you," he said. He'd asked Captain Richardson to introduce him to Douglass, not the other way round. Had the captain assumed Schlieffen was of higher rank because he was a soldier or because he was a white man? On the other side of the Ohio, in the CSA, the answer would have been obvious. Maybe it was obvious on this side of the river, too.

Douglass said, "It is good to see, Colonel, that Germany maintains a friendly neutrality with my country despite the affiliation of the other leading European powers with our foes who set freedom at nought and whose very land groans with the clanking chains of oppression."

Germany also remained neutral toward the Confederate States, a fact Schlieffen thought it wiser to pass over in silence. Instead, he asked, "And when you speak and write of this campaign, what will you tell your… your"-he paused for a brief colloquy in German with Captain Richardson-"your readers, that is the word?"

"What shall I tell them about this campaign?" Douglass repeated the question and so gained time to think, a trick Schlieffen had seen other practiced orators use. His answer, when it came, surprised the German officer: "I shall tell them it should have started sooner."

Oliver Richardson scowled angrily. "General Willcox will have overwhelming force in place when he strikes the Rebels," he said.

"And what force will the Rebels have-when he finally strikes them?" Douglass asked, which did nothing to improve Richardson 's temper.

"Knowing when to strike is an important part of the art of war," Schlieffen said, in lieu of agreeing out loud with Douglass. A few sentences from the man had convinced him that Negroes, of whom he knew little, were not necessarily fools.

"As I happen to know, the general commanding the Army of the Ohio has informed Mr. Douglass that he has conceived his own understanding of when that time is," Captain Richardson said, "and I am willing to presume that a career soldier knows more of such things than one who has never gone to war."

"The United States have refused to let men of my color go to war, though we would be their staunchest supporters," Douglass rumbled, his temper rising to match that of Willcox's adjutant. Then he shook his massive head. "No, I am mistaken. The United States permits Negroes to serve in the Navy, but not in the Army." He held out his hands, pale palms up, toward Schlieffen in appeal. "Colonel, can you see the slightest shred of reason or logic in such a policy?"

Schlieffen said, "1 have not come to the United States to pass judgment on my hosts." Certainly not in front of my colleagues in U.S. uniform, he added to himself. What goes back to Berlin is another matter.

"When the attack goes in, we shall see who had the right of it," Richardson said. "After the attack succeeds, I trust Mr. Douglass will be generous enough to acknowledge his mistake."

"I have acknowledged my errors many times," Douglass said, "which is a good deal more than many of our career soldiers have done, judging by the memoirs that have seen print since the War of Secession. As for career soldiers' knowing when to strike, was it not President Lincoln who said that, if General McClellan was not using the Army of the Potomac at the moment, he would like to borrow it for a while?"

Richardson rolled his eyes. "If you're going to hold up Lincoln as a paragon of military brilliance-" His expression said what he thought of that.

But he'd misjudged-and underestimated-Douglass. "By no means, Captain." The Negro took obvious pleasure in demolishing his foe's argument: "But he seemed to have a better notion of when to fight than the career soldier in charge of that army, wouldn't you say?"

Oliver Richardson stared. He turned even redder than heat and humidity could have accounted for. But when he found his tongue, he spoke in chilly tones: "If you will excuse me, Mister Douglass, I am going to take Colonel Schlieffen back to his accommodations."

"I'm so sorry, Captain. I didn't mean to keep you." Douglass tipped his bowler, as if to apologize. His courtesy was more wounding than spite would have been. He tipped the hat to Schlieffen, too, this time, the German officer thought, with genuine goodwill. "Colonel, a pleasure to meet you."

"Very interesting also to meet you," Schlieffen replied. They shook hands again.

Douglass went on his way, his step jaunty despite age and imposing bulk. He knew he'd won the exchange. So did Captain Richardson.

"Come on, Colonel," he said sharply. A moment later, he muttered something to himself. Schleiffen thought it was God damn that nigger, but couldn't be sure.

After a few steps, the military attache asked, "If the United States let blacks into the Navy, why do they not let them into the Army as well?"

"In the Navy, they're cooks and fuel-heavers in the engine room," Richardson answered patiently. "Mr. Douglass is glib as all get-out, I grant you that, Colonel, but you can't expect a Negro to have the courage to advance into the fire of the foe with a rifle in his hands."

If glib meant what Schlieffen thought it did, it was about the last word he would have applied to Frederick Douglass. Richardson 's other point perplexed him, too. "Why can you not expect this?" he asked.

Patient still, Richardson explained, "Because most Negroes haven't got the necessities-the spirit, the courage-to lay their lives on the line like that."

"I think perhaps the Englishmen fighting the-Zulus, I believe to be the name of the tribe-in the south of Africa would about this something different say," Schlieffen observed.

Richardson gave him the same stony stare he'd sent toward Douglass. General Willcox's adjutant walked along without another word till they came to Schlieffen's tent. "Here are your quarters, Colonel," he said then, and stalked off without a backwards glance. As Schlieffen ducked his way into the tent, he realized he might as well have challenged Captain Richardson's faith in God as his faith in the inferiority of the Negro.

Though coarse canvas hid the land on the other side of the river, the German military attache glanced south, toward it. The men of the Confederate States held similar opinions. Did that make them right, or merely similar? With his limited experience, Schlieffen could not say.

He wanted to get another chance to talk with Douglass at supper that evening, but the Negro must have chosen a different time to eat or eaten away from the headquarters staff. If Captain Richardson's attitude toward him was typical, Schleiffcn didn't blame him for that. After supper, he decided not seeing Douglass might have been just as well. He himself still had to remain in the good graces of the staff, or he would not learn everything he wanted to know about the U.S. plan to cross the Ohio and invade the CSA.

He wondered if General Willcox was coming to regret having chosen to concentrate against Louisville rather than, say, Covington farther east. Bringing invasion barges down to Cincinnati would have been easy, since the Little Miami River ran by the town. The streams that flowed into the Ohio opposite Louisville — the Middle, the Falling Run, the Silver, the Mill-were small and feeble. Most of the barges came to them by rail. That that could be done impressed Schlieffen; that it had to be done impressed him in a different way.

The next morning, the Confederates started shelling the barges and boats that were being gathered. U.S. artillery promptly opened up on the Confederate guns. Schlieffen had already noted how many cannon the United States had brought to support their attack. Now the USA used the guns to keep the Confederates from disrupting it.

A considerable artillery duel developed. The C.S. gunners had to take on the U.S. cannon bombarding them, lest they be put out of action without means to reply. That meant they had to stop hammering away at the barges, so the U.S. shelling served its purpose. Schlieffen judged the United States had more guns here than did their foes. They did not put the Rebels out of action, though.

Schlieffen shook his head. The Confederate States were bringing men and materiel to Louisville, as the United States were on this side of the river. He didn't think the CSA had as much, but defenders didn't need as much, either. Had Willcox struck fast and hard two weeks before, even a week before, he might have had a better chance of carrying the town by main force. That wouldn't be so easy now.

Men and guns and barges kept pouring into Jeffersonville and Clarksville and New Albany, though. When all else failed, numbers worked wonders. Orlando Willcox had numbers on his side. If only, Schlieffen thought, he would get around to using them.

Abraham Lincoln watched in fascinated wonder as U.S. troops marched into Salt Lake City from the north. The soldiers, some mounted, others afoot, tipped their hats and grinned widely at the flag-waving crowds who cheered their arrival. Down State Street they came, under the Eagle Gate at the corner of State and Temple. The wooden eagle, its wingspan more than twice as broad as a man was tall, perched on a beehive supported by curved iron supports mounted on pale stone posts. Though the Latter-Day Saints had erected it, and though the beehive was their symbol, its fierce beak and talons now seemed to symbolize the power of the United States.

Leaning over toward Gabe Hamilton, who was cheering as loudly as anybody else, Lincoln asked, "In all these people on the street, do you see a single, solitary Mormon?"

"Not a one," Hamilton answered at once. "Not many Gentiles who're missing, though, I'll tell you that."

Surveying the soldiers in their natty blue jackets, the metalwork of their rifles bright and shiny, the sun glaring off the steel barrels of the field guns that rolled along after a troop of cavalry, Lincoln was moved to quote Byron:

"The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee."

Gabe Hamilton clapped his hands together. "That's first-rate stuff. And remember how it ends?

"And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

I think that's how it goes. I know damn well that's how the Mormons hope it goes."

"True enough," Lincoln said. "I am of the opinion that they are doomed to disappointment in those hopes, however. President Blaine, whatever else may be said of him, is not a man to take half measures, as we have seen in his recent conduct of foreign affairs. Having decided not to suffer the semisecession of Utah, he will aim to make certain such a mischance cannot occur again."

A tall, handsome man with a fine gray beard came riding down the street on a gray gelding that was a splendid piece of horseflesh. The fellow's coat was endowed with a superabundance of brass buttons; as he got closer, Lincoln saw that each of his shoulder straps bore a single silver star.

Though they had not set eyes on each other for almost twenty years, Lincoln and Brigadier General John Pope recognized each other at about the same time. Pope broke out of the parade and rode over toward Lincoln, the horse's hooves kicking up dust at every step. "I heard you were in Salt Lake City, sir," the general said, nodding. "Are you well?"

"Very well, thank you," Lincoln replied. "I am glad to see the power of the United States return to Utah. It has been sorely missed."

"Glad to see it even under my command, eh?" Pope might not have seen Lincoln since the War of Secession, but his glare made it plain he had forgotten nothing in all that time.

"Yes, very glad," Lincoln said simply.

"You shipped me away from the real war," Pope said. "You sent me off to fight redskins and gave my men back to the Young Napoleon, that lazy, pompous fraud-and look how much better than I he did with them." No, Pope hadn't forgotten a thing. His sarcasm was meant to wound, and it did. "But my duty is to serve my country in whatever place I am given, Mr. Lincoln, and I have done that duty. And so now I find myself able to liberate you along with the rest of this rebellious Territory. Strange how things come full circle, is it not?"

"General, you made errors during the War of Secession. I likewise made errors, and those far worse than yours, else the war should have been won," Lincoln said. "If you believe a day has passed from that time to this when those errors were not uppermost in my mind, I must tell you, sir, that you are mistaken."

Pope grunted. The soft answer, giving him nothing against which to strike, seemed to discomfit him. "Well," he said at last, roughly, "I aim to make no mistakes here. I intend putting the fear of God-the proper Christian God, mind you, the God of wrath and vengeance-in these Mormons. They shall obey me or suffer the consequences. No- they shall obey me and suffer the consequences." He gave a stiff nod, then kicked his horse up into a canter so he could resume his place in the military procession.

"Well!" Juliette Hamilton said, in a tone altogether different from General Pope's. "Did I hear that man call General McClellan pompous? Has he looked in a mirror any time lately?"

Lincoln smiled at that. He thought she spoke to vent her own feelings, not to make him feel better. Paradoxically, that did make him feel better. His relief, however, was short-lived. A cavalry colonel with long golden locks and a fierce mustache gave him a look that made Pope's seem mild and benevolent. The horseman kept scowling back over his shoulder at Lincoln till he was out of sight.

"Fellow doesn't seem fond of you," Gabe Hamilton remarked.

"No," Lincoln said. Resignedly, he went on, "Not many who served during the War of Secession are, for which who can blame them? I can't remember that man's name, but he was one of McClel-lan's staff officers. I wonder how he likes serving under McClellan's rival now."

"What are his choices? He can like it or lump it." Hamilton leaned forward like a hunting dog going on point. "What the devil are those funny-looking things on the gun carriages? Haven't seen anything like them before."

"Neither have I. They don't look like cannon, do they?" Lincoln 's curiosity was piqued. During the War of Secession, he'd taken a keen interest in military inventions of all sort. He was something of an inventor himself, and held a riverboat patent, though nothing had ever come of it. "Rifle barrels sticking out of a brass case…" He shrugged. "My chief hope is that we need not see what destruction they can reap."

A last company of infantry marched past. Following them came a mounted sergeant who called out in a great voice: "Brigadier General Pope, the military governor of Utah Territory, will speak in Temple Square at three this afternoon. Everyone should hear him, Mormons and Gentiles alike." He rode on a few yards, then repeated the announcement.

"Military governor, is it?" Lincoln thoughtfully clicked his tongue between his teeth. "No, President Blaine isn't doing things by half. With that title, General Pope will have the power to bind and to loose, sure enough." Pope was not the first man to whom he would have entrusted such power, but President Blaine could not have asked his opinion, and would not have if he could.

Juliette Hamilton said, "Someone needs to bring the Mormons into line." Since that was also true, Lincoln held his peace.

He would have gone to Temple Square alone, but Gabe Hamilton also wanted to hear what Pope had to say. Lincoln hadn't thought the square could be any more crowded than it had been on the Sunday when he'd gone to the Tabernacle, but discovered he was wrong. Both Mormons and Gentiles were thronging to it to hear John Pope lay down the law.

Pope was ready for any trouble the Mormons might cause, which was likely the best way to keep them from causing trouble. He himself stood on one of the granite blocks that would eventually be raised to the Mormon Temple. The men on the Temple now were not Mormon masons, however; they were bluecoats with Springfields. More riflemen were atop the Tabernacle. Behind Pope, a couple of field guns, probably loaded with case shot, bore on the crowd. In front of him stood one of the unfamiliar brass-cased contraptions.

Hamilton took his watch out of his vest pocket and looked at it. Either it was a little slow or the one Pope was using ran fast, for it showed a couple of minutes before the hour when the military governor of Utah Territory held up his hands for silence. He got it, faster and more completely than he would have anywhere else in the USA: except in matters bearing on their faith (a large exception, Lincoln thought), the Mormons obeyed authority.

"Fellow citizens," Pope boomed, the dusty breeze carrying his words out across Temple Square, "with my arrival here, the government of the United States resumes control over this Territory after the illegal and outrageous attempt on the part of the authorities of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints to extort acquiescence to its immoral creed by impeding the flow of men and goods and messages across the continent. No government sensitive to its right could possibly yield in the face of the threats and intimidation proffered by these so-called authorities."

Telling Mormons and Gentiles apart by looks or dress was usually impossible. Lincoln had no trouble seeing who was who now. Gentiles cheered and waved their hats. Some of them waved the flags with which they'd greeted the soldiers, too. Mormons stood silent, listening, hardly moving, almost as if they'd been turned to stone.

Pope went on, "Fellow citizens, we are at war: against the Confederate States, against England and lickspittle Canada, against France. In time of war, the leaders of the Mormon Church, through their deliberate actions, offered aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States by blocking the rail lines and by cutting the telegraph wires. Offering aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war is treason, nothing less."

"Oh, my," Gabe Hamilton whispered. "He's going to hit them hard."

"He surely is," Lincoln whispered back.

"By order of President Blaine," Pope continued, "the former civilian government of Utah Territory is dissolved, it having proved unable to maintain the authority of the U.S. Constitution in this area. Utah being a territory in rebellion against the United States and now returned to the authority there-of by military might"-he gestured up at the riflemen and back toward the cannon-"it is considered to be under military occupation. As military governor, I-"

"Am the new dictator," Hamilton murmured. Lincoln nodded.

Pope proceeded to prove them both right: "-hereby declare the suspension of the right to obtain a writ of habeas corpus. I declare the suspension of the right to trial by jury, Mormons having corrupted the process by repeated false and outrageous verdicts. Justice henceforward shall be by military tribunal."

"Can he do that?" Hamilton asked.

"Legally, do you mean? Maybe the Supreme Court will say he can't-years from now," Lincoln answered. "If this Territory is denned as hostile soil under occupation, though, he may well be able to do as he pleases."

"Every male citizen of Utah Territory shall be required within the next sixty days to take an oath of loyalty to the government of the United States," Pope declared. "The oath shall also include a denial that the said male citizen is or shall henceforth be wed to more than one woman at any one time. Perjury pertaining to this section shall be punished with the utmost severity by the aforesaid military tribunals. Polygamy within the boundaries of Utah Territory is from this time forward abolished and prohibited."

Again, the Gentiles applauded. Again, the Mormons revealed themselves by stonelike silence. Being taller than almost everyone around him, Lincoln could see a considerable part of the crowd. Here and there, two or three or four women, sometimes with children in their arms, stood grouped around one man. What was going through their minds?

Pope said, "Because of its role in instigating and carrying out the rebellion of Utah Territory against the United States, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints is declared not to be a religion liable to protection under the First Amendment, but a political organization subject to sanctions for its acts. Until further notice, construction of the so-called Mormon Temple is suspended. Public worship at the Mormon Tabernacle and other so-called Mormon churches is also suspended, as are all other public meetings of more than ten persons.

"One last point: any resistance to military authority will be crushed without mercy. Shooting at soldiers and destroying trains, tracks, telegraph lines, or other public necessities of any sort will result in hostages' being taken. If the guilty parties be not promptly surrendered, the hostages shall be hanged by the neck until dead. Anyone doubting my ability or will to fulfill that promise mistakes me." General Pope looked out over Temple Square. "Return peaceably to your homes, people of Utah. Obey the legally constituted authority of the military government and all will be well. Disobey only at your peril."

As Lincoln and Hamilton walked back to the carriage in which they'd come to Temple Square, the Salt Lake City man asked, "Does he mean what he says?"

"1 should not care to try to find out the contrary by experiment," Lincoln answered. "John Pope had a name as a hard man during the War of Secession, and I've heard nothing of how he has conducted himself here in the West in the years since to make me believe he's changed."

That evening, Lincoln was about to sit down to supper at the Hamilton 's table when someone knocked on the door. Gabe Hamilton went to open it. He called, "An officer to see you, Mr. Lincoln."

"I'm coming." Lincoln walked to the door, to find himself facing the short, energetic blond cavalry officer he'd noted in the parade. "What can I do for you, Colonel?"

"George Custer, Fifth Cavalry," the man said briskly. "I am told, Mr. Lincoln, that you had conversations with Mr. John Taylor, the Mormons' president." When Lincoln didn't deny it, Custer went on, "Do you know his present whereabouts?"

"No," Lincoln said. "If he's not at home, or perhaps at the Tabernacle, I have no idea where he might be. Why, if you don't mind my asking?"

"He is to be arrested for treason, along with the rest of the Mormon leaders," Custer answered. "We can't lay hands on him, though. He's run off, God knows where-I was hoping you might, too. When we catch him, General Pope aims to hang him higher than Haman."