American Empire_ Blood And Iron Part 20

Chester poured his gla.s.s full of whiskey again. He didn't like to think about things that might have been, either. Most of them were worse than the way things had really turned out. Some of them still made him wake up sweating in the night, even though the war had been over for two and a half years. He drank. If he got numb, he wouldn't have to think about them.

His mother got herself another drink, too. He raised an eyebrow at that; she didn't usually take a second gla.s.s. Maybe she had things she didn't want to think about, too. Maybe he'd given her some of those things. All at once, he felt ashamed.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled.

His father got up and clapped him on the shoulder. "You'll make a man yet," he said. "I think that's the first time I ever heard you say you were sorry and sound like you meant it. Kids say it, too, but they don't say it the same way. 'I'm sorry.'" Stephen Douglas Martin did a good imitation of a nine-year-old apologizing lest something worse happen to him.

Sue said, "Here's hoping we don't need to say we're sorry at all-well, not much-next year."

"I'll drink to that," Chester said, and he did.

Every time he looked at the clock on the mantel, it got a bit later. He found that pretty funny, which was a sign he'd taken a little too much whiskey on board. He'd have a headache in the morning. He was glad he wouldn't have to go in to the steel mill. That would have made his head want to fall off.

A few minutes before midnight, firecrackers started going off. They alarmed Chester; they made him think of gunfire. They alarmed all the dogs in the neighborhood, too. Along with bangs and pops, Toledo ushered in 1920 with a chorus of canine howls and frantic barks and yips.

"Happy New Year!" Chester said when both hands on the clock stood straight up. "Happy New Year!" He wondered if it would be. Then he wondered something else, something perhaps not altogether unrelated: who would be running for president?

Arthur McGregor stood in front of the stove in the kitchen, soaking in warmth as a flower soaked in sunlight. He had no idea why he thought of flowers: they weren't likely to appear in a Manitoba January. He turned so he'd cook on all sides.

Maude said, "When you came inside, you had frost on your eyebrows."

"I believe it," he answered. "If I wore a mustache, I'd have icicles hanging down from it, too. It's that kind of day. But if I don't get out there and take care of the stock, who's going to do it, eh?"

His wife's mouth tightened. Alexander should have been there to help. But Alexander was gone, except in the picture on the wall. McGregor moved away from the stove for a moment to go over and slip an arm around Maude. Her mouth fell open in surprise. Neither of them was greatly given to open displays of affection.

"I'm not doing as much as I should," he said discontentedly.

"You hush," Maude told him. "You've done plenty. You don't need to worry about not doing more. If you want it to be enough, it can be enough."

"But I don't," he said. "I have to do this, don't you see? I have to-and I can't." Of themselves, his hands folded into fists of frustration.

Maude set a consoling hand on his shoulder. "You went up to Winnipeg, Arthur. You looked around. And then you came home and said the thing couldn't be done." That was as close as she would come to talking out loud about his bombs. "If it can't be done, it can't, that's all."

"d.a.m.n the Yanks!" he said fiercely. "They keep too many soldiers around Custer's headquarters, and around the house he's stolen, too." the Yanks!" he said fiercely. "They keep too many soldiers around Custer's headquarters, and around the house he's stolen, too."

Looking back on it, blowing up Major Hannebrink had been fairly easy. The Yanks' euphoria at winning the war had helped; everyone in Rosenfeld that night had been celebrating as if joy would turn illegal the second the sun came up again. And Hannebrink was only a major, and not nearly so valuable to the Americans as their commander for all of Canada.

They knew General Custer would make a target for Canadians, as Archduke Franz Ferdinand had made a target for the Serbs. A Serb bomber had killed Franz Ferdinand and touched off the Great War. The Americans didn't intend to let Custer go the same way. They kept swarms of soldiers around him. McGregor had had no chance whatever to plant a bomb anyplace where it might do any good.

He might have flung one into Custer's motorcar, as the Serbs had flung one into Franz Ferdinand's carriage. The Serbian nationalist who flung his bomb had been shot dead a moment later. McGregor wanted to live. Even killing Custer was not revenge enough to satisfy him. He wanted more later, if he ever got the chance.

"Maybe he'll come down here to Rosenfeld again," Maude said.

She sounded consoling, the way she did when one of the girls was sad after breaking a toy. McGregor was sad-and furious, too-because he couldn't break his toy. If you looked at that the right way, it was grimly funny.

"Not likely," he said. "It isn't much of a town, when you get right down to it." He scowled. "There's just no chance for a man working by himself."

Maude asked the question that had stymied him over and over again: "Who can you trust?"

"n.o.body." That was the answer he always reached. "Too many people up here have their hands in the Yanks' pockets. Too many people spy on their neighbors. Too many people would just as soon turn into Yanks-and you can't always tell who they are, not till you find out the hard way you can't."

His wife nodded. "I don't know what you can do, then, except get on with things here."

"I don't, either." McGregor felt like a lone wolf looking to pull down the biggest bull moose in an enormous herd. That was, when you thought about it, a crazy thing to want to do. Part of him knew as much. No: all of him knew as much. It was just that most of him didn't care. Slowly, he said, "The trouble is, there are too many hours in the day in the middle of winter-too much time to sit around and think."

Farm work was harder and made a man keep longer hours than any town job. There were times, especially around the harvest, when he wished he could stay awake for a couple of weeks at a stretch so as not to waste any precious time. When snow lay deep on the ground, though, what a man could do diminished. After he tended the stock and made repairs around the house and barn, what was left but coming inside and sitting around and brooding?

Maude had an answer: "You might help me with some of my ch.o.r.es. They don't go away when the weather gets cold. Just the opposite, as a matter of fact."

He stared at her. Did she think he was going to put on an ap.r.o.n and do women's work? If she did, she had another think coming. He intended to let her know as much, too, in great detail.

Then he saw her eyes sparkle. He'd drawn in his breath for an angry shout. He let it out in a gust of laughter instead. "You're a devil," he said. "You really are. You had me going there."

"I hope so," his wife answered. "It's good to see you smile, Arthur. I haven't seen it often enough, not since-" She stopped. No one in the family had smiled much since Alexander got shot. Gamely, she went on, "We can't stay gloomy all the time. Life is too short for that. In spite of everything, life is too short for that."

"I suppose not," he said, nowhere near sure he supposed anything of the sort. To keep from having to decide whether he did or not, he pointed toward the ceiling. "What are the girls doing?"

"As much schoolwork as they can, I hope," Maude said. "If it doesn't snow again, they ought to be able to start going again tomorrow or the day after. They want to go back." A smile twisted only one corner of her mouth. "I hope they can. I won't be sorry to have them out of the house for a while. They've been snapping at each other a lot the past few days."

"I've noticed." McGregor ruefully shook his head. "I can still heat up Mary's backside, but that doesn't work with Julia any more." His older daughter was a woman, which still bemused him. "Have to talk sense to her, and sometimes she doesn't want to listen to sense."

"And where do you figure she gets that?" his wife murmured. He pretended not to hear. Knowing when not to hear struck him as not the least important part of a happy marriage.

What he did say was, "Fix me up a cup of tea, will you? I think I've warmed up enough so that it won't turn into a lump of ice in my belly now."

He was sipping it when Julia came downstairs dramatically rolling her eyes and demanded, "Who will do something about my nuisance of a little sister?"

McGregor laughed again-twice in one morning. "You remind me of Henry II saying 'Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?'-and that was the end of Thomas a Becket," he said.

Julia looked so angry, he thought for a moment she wanted someone to rid her of Mary. But she was angry about something else: "They don't teach the history of England in school any more, except how the mother country was so wicked, the Americans had to have a revolution to get away."

"I'm not surprised," McGregor said. "I'm not happy, mind you, but I'm not surprised. The Yanks are doing everything they can to make us the same as they are, and they try to pretend they invented everything they borrowed from the mother country. The less youngsters know about England, the easier it is for the Americans to get away with their lies."

"That's right." Julia seemed about to burst into tears. "And there's nothing we can do about it, either, is there?"

Hearing that, McGregor knew he would have to try again to bomb General Custer. Maybe Custer's death would spark an uprising throughout Canada. Even if it didn't, it would remind his countrymen that they had a country of their own, that they weren't Yanks who happened to live in a cold climate and speak with a slightly strange accent.

And, with her fury against the United States, Julia had forgotten to be furious at her little sister. Or so McGregor thought, till Julia said, "And Mary keeps humming in my ear until it drives me to distraction. She's being annoying on purpose."

"If you'd been born a boy, you'd know how to take care of that," McGregor said. "You'd tell her to stop. If she didn't, you'd wallop her. If you want to go back upstairs and pretend you're a boy for a bit, that's all right with me."

Julia went, the light of battle in her eyes. A few minutes later, McGregor heard a thump. He waited for Mary to come down and complain about what a beast Julia was being. Nothing of the sort happened. There were several more thumps, interspersed with shouts and a couple of thuds, as of one body, or perhaps two, suddenly landing on the floor.

He chuckled. "That sounds cheery, doesn't it?"

"I hope they don't hurt each other," Maude said worriedly. "Julia's bigger, but I don't think Mary knows how to quit."

"If she goes up against somebody who's bigger and who means business, she'll learn how to quit after a little while," McGregor said.

His wife looked at him-caught and held his eye-without saying anything. For a moment, he wondered why. Then he realized that what he'd said about his younger daughter could apply to Canada's struggle against the United States. His own face showed that realization, but Maude kept staring at him. Again, he wondered why, and started to get angry.

But then he saw that what he'd said about his younger daughter could also apply to his own struggle against the United States. The United States were enormously bigger than he was, and they meant business about holding on to his country. He didn't care whether they meant business or not. He intended to go on fighting them.

"They haven't licked me yet, Maude," he said. "I've hit them a few licks, but they haven't licked me."

"All right," was the only thing his wife said. She wanted him to be careful in what he was doing, but she didn't want him to stop. Or, if she did want him to stop, she didn't let him know it, which amounted to the same thing.

Somebody was coming downstairs: Mary, by the sound of the footsteps. McGregor waited to console her. But, when his younger daughter came into the kitchen, triumph glowed on her face. "Julia got mean," Mary said. "I guess she won't try that that again in a hurry." again in a hurry."

Maude gaped in astonishment. So did McGregor. This time, he caught and held his wife's eye. If Mary could triumph against long odds, why couldn't he? That bomb still lay in the barn, hidden below the old wagon wheel. In spite of everything, he might find the chance to place it. He didn't need to do that right this minute. He had time.

Colonel Irving Morrell stood in the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, train station, waiting for the special from Pontiac, Michigan, to come in. His green-gray overcoat held the worst of the cold at bay, though he wished he'd put on a fur hat instead of an ordinary service cap. Soot-streaked snow covered the ground. By the look of the ma.s.s of dirty-gray clouds building in the northwest, more would be coming before too long.

Beside him, Lieutenant Lije Jenkins stirred restlessly. "Everything's gone slower than it should have, sir, I know," he said, "but we're finally going to get the prototype for the new model."

"No, not the prototype." Morrell shook his head. "Just a test model, to see how some of the ideas we sent the War Department work out. Most of the parts come from the barrels we used in the Great War, so the test model will run maybe half as fast as it ought to." He sighed, blowing out a small cloud of vapor. "Getting the real McCoy built will run half as fast as it ought to, too."

"When I think what we could have had-" Jenkins angrily shook his head. "When I think what we should have had by now-the war will have been over three years this summer, and the new model still isn't anywhere near ready to go into production."

"We're living on borrowed time," Morrell said. "Ask any soldier, and he'll tell you the same thing. You can live on borrowed time for a while, but then you have to pay it back-with interest."

Jenkins stared north and east, across the Missouri. He pointed. "Don't I see exhaust there, sir? Time's right for that to be the special."

"So it is," Morrell agreed. "We'll know pretty soon, I expect." He glanced around, then nodded in satisfaction. "Ah, good. The station boys are on the ball. They've got the heavy ramp ready to unload the barrel from its flatcar. They've helped take barrels off trains before, so they'll know the drill."

Coal smoke billowing from the stack, the special crossed the Missouri, rolled through Leavenworth, and came north again to the Fort Leavenworth station. It was about the shortest train Morrell had ever seen, consisting of a locomotive, a tender, and one flatcar, on which perched a large shape covered by green-gray tarpaulins to s.h.i.+eld it from the weather and from prying eyes.

When the train stopped, an officer jumped out of the locomotive and came up to Morrell. "Colonel Irving Morrell?" he asked. Morrell admitted he was himself. The officer nodded briskly, then saluted. "Very pleased to meet you, sir. I'm Major Wilkinson; I've ridden down with this beast from Pontiac. As soon as I get your John Hanc.o.c.k on about sixty-eleven different forms here, I can put it into your hands and let you start finding out what it can do."

Morrell signed and signed and signed. By the time he was through, the signatures on the forms hardly looked like his any more. After he gave the last sheet of paper back to Major Wilkinson, he said, "Why don't you take the wrapping off so I can see what's in the package?"

"I'll be glad to, sir. If you and Lieutenant-Jenkins, was it?-will come along with me, you can see just what's in there." Nimble as a monkey, he swung himself up onto the flatcar and untied the ropes that held the tarps in place. Morrell and Jenkins ascended more sedately. They helped him pull away the heavy cloth covering the new barrel.

"Bully," Lije Jenkins said softly when he got his first look. "If that's not a machine for the 1920s, I'll be darned if I know what is. Compared to what we had in the Great War, that's a machine from out of the 1930s, by G.o.d."

"Yeah, it's pretty on the outside," Morrell said, "but what it reminds me of is a homely girl with a lot of paint and powder on." He started to rap the barrel's hull with his knuckles, but checked himself; it was cold enough that he'd lose skin on the metal. He contented himself with pointing. "That's just mild steel, not armor plate, and it's thin mild steel to boot. That makes the barrel lighter, so the one White engine they threw in there can give it even a halfway decent turn of speed. But you couldn't take it into combat; it's not even proof against rifle fire, let alone anything else."

But even as he spoke, his eyes caressed the test barrel's lines as they did Agnes Hill's whenever he saw her. Here, in metal, was the shape he'd sketched not long after coming to the Barrel Works. The turret cannon and machine gun stared at him. So did the machine gun mounted in the front of the hull.

"It doesn't look as...as busy as one of our regular barrels," Lieutenant Jenkins said.

"No, I suppose not," Morrell said, "but I hope it'll keep the enemy busier than one of the regular sort. And we won't need to put a whole regiment of soldiers inside here when we go into action, either." He strode to the rear of the flatcar. "Hurry up with that ramp, if you please, gentlemen."

"We're just about ready, Colonel," one of the soldiers replied. A couple of minutes later, he said, "All right, sir, everything's in place."

"Do you want to back it off the car, Major?" Morrell asked.

"I will if you want me to, sir," Wilkinson answered, "but go right ahead if you'd rather do the honors."

Morrell needed no more urging. He opened the hatch in the top of the hull that led down into the driver's compartment, then wriggled inside. The controls were identical to those of the older barrels. He'd learned the driver's art since coming to the Barrel Works, but had applied himself to it as he applied himself to everything that caught his interest. His finger stabbed the electric-starter b.u.t.ton.

Behind him, the White engine grunted, coughed, and came to life. It was loud. It was not, however, deafening, as the engines in old-style barrels were. That wasn't because the test model had only one, where normal machines needed two. It was because, instead of sitting right there in the middle of the barrel's interior, the engine had a compartment of its own, separated from the crew by a steel bulkhead.

He wished he didn't have to back the barrel down the ramp to get it off the flatcar. Even with his head out of the hatch, even with the rearview mirror the manufacturer had thoughtfully provided (a little bonus that might possibly last thirty seconds in combat), he couldn't see behind himself for beans. That was something he hadn't thought about when he decided on a turret-mounted cannon.

Well, that was what the test model was for: to discover all the things he hadn't thought of, and n.o.body else had, either. With luck, he'd be able to get rid of them before the new model went into production. He knew perfectly well that he wouldn't find them all; he was human, and therefore fallible. But he'd do the best job he could.

He'd do the best job he could of getting this beast off the flatcar, too. All he had to do was back straight. If he looked ahead, he ought to be able to judge how well he was doing that. And he couldn't keep sitting up here forever. His left foot came down on the clutch. He threw the s.h.i.+ft lever into reverse and gave the barrel a little gas.

It was peppier than the ones in which he'd fought the Great War: not peppy like a fancy motorcar, not peppy enough to suit him, but peppier. It went down the ramp faster than he'd expected. Almost before he knew it, he was on the ground. From the flatcar, Major Wilkinson waved and Lieutenant Jenkins gave him a thumbs-up.

"Come on!" he shouted to Jenkins over the rumble of the engine-which seemed a lot louder with his head out the hatch. The lieutenant jumped down from the train, clambered up the side of the barrel, and scrambled into the turret through a hatch on the roof.

"There's no ammunition in here," he said indignantly. Morrell snorted-as if anyone would be crazy enough to put ammunition in a barrel that would be traveling by train. Accidents didn't happen very often, but who would take the chance on sending an expensive test model up in smoke? Then Jenkins went on, "I wanted to shoot up the landscape as we drove along," and Morrell snorted again, this time on a different note. His subordinate was just acting like a kid again.

Morrell put the barrel into the lowest of its four forward speeds. It rattled over the railroad tracks and off toward the muddy prairie northwest of Fort Leavenworth. He built up to full speed as fast as he could. If the speedometer wasn't lying, he was doing better than ten miles an hour, more than twice as fast as a Great War barrel could manage on similar ground. The power-to-weight ratio of the test model was supposed to be the same as that of the eventual production machine. If so, these barrels would do tricks their ancestors had never imagined. They still weren't fast enough to suit him.

"h.e.l.l of a ride!" Jenkins shouted, sounding as exhilarated as a skilled horseman on a half-broken stallion. "h.e.l.l of a ride! Now we've got the cavalry back again, by Jesus!" of a ride! Now we've got the cavalry back again, by Jesus!"

"That's part of the idea," Morrell said. Men on horseback had been poised throughout the Great War, ready to exploit whatever breakthroughs the infantry could force. But infantry alone hadn't been able to force breakthroughs, and cavalry melted under machine-gun fire like snow in Death Valley summer. The old barrels had had broken through Confederate lines, but hadn't always been swift enough to exploit to the fullest the breaches they made. broken through Confederate lines, but hadn't always been swift enough to exploit to the fullest the breaches they made.

Maybe these machines would, even in their present state. In his mind's eye, Morrell saw barrels clawing at the flank of a foe in retreat, shooting up his soldiers, wrecking his supply lines, keeping reinforcements from reaching the field, pus.h.i.+ng the front forward by leaps and bounds, not plodding steps.

It was a heady vision, so heady it almost made Morrell see with his mind's eye to the exclusion of the pair at the front of his head. Had he not paid attention to the gauges in front of him, he would have missed noting how little fuel the test model carried in its tank. Stranding himself out on the prairie was not what he had in mind when it came to getting acquainted with the new machine. Reluctantly, he steered for the muddy field where half a dozen survivors of the Great War sat.

He turned off the engine, climbed out of the hatch, and got down off the test model. Lije Jenkins came down beside him. The youngster looked from the new barrel to the old ones. "It's like stacking the first Duryea up against an Oldsmobile, isn't it, sir?" he said.

"Something like that, anyway," Morrell said. "Of course, there is one other difference: there really are Oldsmobiles, but this baby"-again, he remembered in the nick of time not to rap his knuckles on the hull-"is just pretend, for now."

"I hope we don't take twenty years to get the real ones, sir," Jenkins said.

"So do I, Lieutenant, with all my heart. We may need them sooner than that," Morrell said. He started off toward the barracks. Jenkins tagged along after him.

As Morrell walked, he wondered what he could tell Agnes Hill about his new toy. She knew, in a general way, what his duties were. Being a soldier's widow, she also knew not to ask too many questions about what exactly he did. But the next time he saw her, he was going to be excited. He wanted to share that excitement. He also needed not to talk too much. He was awfully glad he'd gone to that dance with Jenkins. He wanted to go right on being glad. The only place where taking chances was a good idea was on the battlefield.

A fat man with a nasty cough came up to the counter of the drugstore where Reggie Bartlett worked. "Help you?" Reggie asked.

"Hope to G.o.d you can," the man answered, hacking again. "If I don't shake this d.a.m.n thing, it's going to drive me right up a tree." He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and tapped one in the palm of his hand.

"Here you go." Reggie handed him a box of matches with HARMON HARMON'S DRUGS printed on the top-good advertising. He waited till the man lit up, then went on, "I can give you a camphorated salve to rub on your chest and under your nose. And we've got a new cough elixir in. It's got a kind of denatured morphine in it-not nearly as strong, and not habit-forming, but it does the job." printed on the top-good advertising. He waited till the man lit up, then went on, "I can give you a camphorated salve to rub on your chest and under your nose. And we've got a new cough elixir in. It's got a kind of denatured morphine in it-not nearly as strong, and not habit-forming, but it does the job."