American Empire_ Blood And Iron Part 24

"See what you get for starting without me?" Martin said, drawing up a chair.

"Dad wants to throw in this game because he's losing," his sister said. But Sue's grin said she didn't mind throwing it in, either.

"My own flesh and blood insult me," Stephen Douglas Martin said. "If I'd told my my father anything like that-" father anything like that-"

"Gramps would have laughed his head off, and you know it," Martin said. He gathered the cards and fanned them in his hand. "Draw for first deal." He ended up dealing himself. After generously donating the ace of spades and a couple of hearts to his mother, who sat on his left (and receiving a similar load of trash from his sister, who sat on his right), he called, "All right, where's the deuce?"

Out came the two of clubs. As the hand was played, his father asked, "Did you get the whole world settled, there at the Socialist meeting hall?"

"Sure as heck did," Martin said cheerfully. "The revolution of the proletariat starts next Wednesday, seven o'clock in the morning sharp. You'd better step lively, Pop-you don't want to be late." He took a trick with the ace of diamonds, then led the ten of spades. "Let's see where the queen's hiding."

"Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer," his father said. As Chester's mother had done, he ducked the spade. So did Sue. Stephen Douglas Martin went on, "Do people want it to be that rabblerousing fool of a Debs again?"

"Some people do," Martin answered. "I think we'd have a better chance with somebody else." Since the ten of spades had failed to flush out the queen, he led the nine. "Maybe this'll make her show up."

His mother pained and set out the ace of spades. His father grinned and tucked the king under it. His sister grinned even wider and dropped the queen, sticking his mother with thirteen points she didn't want. "There you go, Ma," Sue said sweetly.

"Thank you so much," Louisa Martin said. She turned to her son. "When the revolution comes, will the queen only be worth one point, to make her equal with all the hearts in the deck?"

"Don't know about that one, Ma," Chester said. "I don't think there's a plank that talks about it in the Socialist Party platform."

"Is there a plank that explains why they think we need anybody but bully old Teddy?" Stephen Douglas Martin inquired.

"I can think of two," his son replied. "First one is, n.o.body's ever had three terms. If TR decides to run again, he shouldn't, either. And even if the Democrats run somebody else, they have to explain what we got for all the men who got killed and maimed during the war, and why they've been in the trusts' pocket ever since."

When he was around Albert Bauer, he sounded like a reactionary. When he was around his parents-who were, in his view of things, reactionaries-he sounded as radical as Bauer did. The more he thought about that, the funnier it seemed.

The quitting whistle's scream cut through the din on the floor of the Sloss Works like a wedge splitting a stump. Jefferson Pinkard leaned on his crowbar. "Another day done," he said. "Another million dollars."

He wasn't making a million dollars a day, but he was making better than a million a week. Next month, probably, he'd be up over a million a day. It didn't matter. What the CSA called money was only a joke, one that kept getting funnier as the banknotes sprouted more and more zeros. The bottom line was, he'd lived better before the war than he did now. That was so for almost everybody in the Confederate States.

"See you in the mornin', Mistuh Pinkard," Vespasian said.

"Yeah," Jeff answered. "See you." He didn't make his voice cold on purpose; it just came out that way. The more he went to Freedom Party meetings, the less he cared to work alongside a black man. Vespasian turned away and headed for the time clock to punch out without another word. Pinkard wasn't in the habit of bragging about going out on Freedom Party a.s.sault squadrons, but he wouldn't have been surprised had Vespasian known about it. Blacks had funny ways of finding out things like that.

Too d.a.m.n bad, Jeff thought. Tired and sweaty, he headed toward the time clock himself. Jeff thought. Tired and sweaty, he headed toward the time clock himself.

Going into and out of the Sloss foundry, whites had always hung with whites and Negroes with Negroes. That hadn't changed. What had changed, lately, was how men from one group eyed those from the other. Blacks seemed warier than they had been during the war. Whites seemed less happy about having so many colored men around, doing jobs they wouldn't have been allowed to do before the war started. Pinkard understood that down to the ground. It was how he felt himself.

He didn't stop sweating just because he'd stopped working for the day. Spring had come to Birmingham full of promises about what the summer would be like. If those promises weren't so many lies, summer would be hotter than h.e.l.l, and twice as muggy. Summer in Birmingham was usually like that, so the promises probably held truth.

When he got close to home, Bedford Cunningham waved to him. Bedford was sitting on his own front porch, with a gla.s.s of something unlikely to be water on the rail in front of him. "Come on over after supper, Jeff," he called. "We'll hoist a few." He hoisted the one sitting on the rail.

"Can't tonight," Pinkard answered. "Got a meeting."

"Man alive." Cunningham shook his head, back and forth, back and forth. By the way he did it, that one on the rail wasn't the first he'd hoisted. "Never reckoned you'd dive into the Freedom Party like a turtle diving off a rock into a creek."

It was, when you got down to it, a pretty fair figure of speech. Jeff felt a lot happier swimming in the river of the Party than he did out on a rock by his lonesome. He said, "Maybe you ought to come along, give yourself somethin' to do besides gettin' lit up."

"I like getting lit up," Cunningham said. "What the h.e.l.l better have I got to do, anyhow? Can't hardly work, not shy an arm. I'll vote Freedom, sure as h.e.l.l I will, but I don't fancy sitting around and listening to people making speeches."

"It's not like that," Jeff protested, but Bedford Cunningham was hoisting his gla.s.s again. With a shrug, Pinkard went up the walk and into his own house.

"h.e.l.lo, dear," Emily said. She tilted up her face for a kiss. He gave her one, rather a perfunctory job. She didn't try to improve it. "I know you got your meeting tonight," she went on when he let her go, "so supper'll be on the table for you in two shakes of a lamb's tail." She went back into the kitchen to dish it out. She didn't shake her own tail, as she would have not so long before.

Jeff paid no attention to the change. "Good thing you remembered," he told her. "Barney Stevens is back in town from Richmond, and he's going to let us know what those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in Congress are up to. I don't want to be late, not for that."

"You won't be," Emily promised, her voice floating out through the hall. "Come on and set yourself down."

He did, then shoveled chicken and dumplings into his face with the single-minded dedication a stoker might have shown in shoveling coal into a steam engine's firebox. Then, after bestowing another absentminded kiss on his wife, he headed over to the closest trolley stop for the ride to the livery stable where the Freedom Party still met.

He felt at home there, more even than he did in the cottage he'd shared with Emily since the days before the war. Almost all the men who'd joined the Party were veterans, as he was; they'd fought the d.a.m.nyankees in Virginia, in Kentucky, in Arkansas, in Sequoyah, in Texas, in Sonora. And most of them had put on white s.h.i.+rts and b.u.t.ternut pants these past few months and gone charging forth to break up rival parties' rallies and to remind the blacks of Birmingham where in the scheme of things they belonged.

"Freedom!" he said every time he shook somebody's hand or slapped somebody else on the back. And men also reached out to clasp his hand and slap his back and hailed him with the one-word greeting that was also a battle cry. He might have been a Freemason or an Odd Fellow: everyone in the livery stable with him was his brother.

Along with everyone else, he stamped and whistled and clapped when Barney Stevens, ma.s.sive and impressive in a black suit, strode to the front of the open area. "Freedom!" Stevens-now Congressman Stevens-called.

"Freedom!" his audience roared back. Jefferson Pinkard felt different when he used the slogan along with his comrades. It took on a power then that it lacked when it was simply a greeting. It became a promise, and at the same time a warning: anyone who didn't care for the Freedom Party's ideas needed to get out of the way, and in a hurry, too.

"Boys, we've got a power of work to do, and that's a fact," Barney Stevens said. "n.o.body's mucked out that big barn they call the Capitol in a h.e.l.l of a long time. Most of the folks, they've been there since dirt, or else their pappies were there since dirt, and they're taking over after the old man finally upped and dropped dead. d.a.m.n fancy-pants bluebloods." Stevens fluttered his hand on a limp wrist. The Freedom Party men howled laughter. He went on, "But we're starting to get things moving, to h.e.l.l with me if we're not. This business with pa.s.sbooks was just the first sh.e.l.l in the bombardment. Let me tell you some of what I mean..."

After a while, Jeff found himself yawning. Stevens wasn't a bad speaker-far from it. But Jeff hadn't joined the Freedom Party to pay close attention to the nuts and bolts of policy. He'd joined because he'd felt down in his bones that something had gone dreadfully wrong with his country and he thought Jake Featherston could fix it.

Exactly how it got fixed didn't matter so much to him as getting together every week with other people who followed Featherston and going out with them every so often to bust the heads of people who didn't. That brought back the sense of camaraderie he'd known in the trenches: about the only good thing he'd known in the war.

And so, when Barney Stevens went on and on about hearings and taxes and tariffs and labor legislation, Jeff slipped from the middle of the open area in the livery stable toward the back. "Sorry, Grady," he whispered after stepping on another man's toes. He noticed he wasn't the only fellow moving toward the back of the stable, either. Everybody was glad to have Stevens in Congress, but he'd lost part of his audience tonight. He'd been elected to take care of the details, not to bore everybody with them.

Pinkard wasn't the first one to slide out the door. "My wife's a bit poorly," he whispered to the two burly guards as he left. They nodded. Odds were, they knew he was lying. He shrugged. He'd been polite-and he'd thrown half a million dollars into the big bowl by the door. As long as he was both polite and paid up, the guards didn't care if he left early.

Since he was leaving early, Emily would probably still be awake. Maybe they'd make the mattress creak when he got home. For some reason, she'd acted kind of standoffish toward him lately. He'd take care of that, by G.o.d. Horning it out of her was the best way he knew-he'd enjoy it, too.

He took the trolley to the edge of Sloss company housing, then walked to his cottage. A few people still sat on their front porches, enjoying the fine night air. He wondered if he'd see Bedford Cunningham on his, drunk or pa.s.sed out. But Bedford must have gone inside to bed, because he wasn't there.

Pinkard's own house was also dark, so he figured Emily had gone to bed, too. Well, if she had, he'd d.a.m.n well wake her up. He turned his key in the lock. The door didn't squeak as it swung on its hinges. He'd oiled them after he came home from the war, and quietly kept them oiled ever since. He'd caught Emily cheating on him once, and wanted a fair chance to do it again if she stepped out of line. She hadn't, not that he knew of, but....

The hinges didn't squeak, but something in the house was squeaking, squeaking rhythmically. He knew what that noise was. It came from the bedroom. Rage filled him, the same rage he knew when he put on white and b.u.t.ternut and went off to break heads, but focused now, as if with a burning gla.s.s.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n you, Emily, you little wh.o.r.e!" he bellowed, and stomped down the hall toward the bedroom.

Twin cries of horror greeted him, one Emily's, the other a man's. They were closely followed by scrabbling noises, a thump, and the sound of running feet. Whoever'd been in there with Emily hadn't wanted to face Jeff. As Jeff stormed in, his feet caught on something, then kicked something else: a man's tangled trousers and his shoe. Whoever the fellow was, he'd departed too quickly to bother retrieving his clothes.

"Jeff, honey, listen to me-" Emily spoke in a quick, high, desperate voice.

"Shut up," he said, and she did. She hugged the blanket to herself. The moonlight sliding in through the window-the window through which her lover had fled-showed her arms pale and bare against the dark blue wool.

He yanked the blanket off her. She was naked under it. He'd known she would be. Breathing hard, he lashed out and slapped her twice, forehand and backhand, fast as a striking snake. She gasped, but made no other sound. If he killed her on the spot, no jury would convict him. She had to know as much.

When he'd caught her the first time, she'd used all her bodily charms to mollify him. It had worked, too, even if he'd felt filthy and used as he traveled back to the front in west Texas. Now he aimed to use his body to take revenge. He undid his trousers, let them fall to the floor, and flung himself upon her.

She endured everything he did without a whimper, without a protest. In other circ.u.mstances, he might have admired that. Now he just wanted to break her, as if she were a wild horse. When his imagination and stamina ran out at last, he got up from the bed and lit the gas lamp above it. Having spent himself again and again, he was prepared to go easy-and too worn to do anything else.

Or so he thought, till he saw that the s.h.i.+rt on the floor had the left sleeve pinned up. "Bedford," he whispered in a deadly voice. Emily's face went pale as skimmed milk, which only made the bruises he'd given her look darker.

He pulled up his pants, then yanked her out of the bed and slung her over his shoulder. She squealed then, squealed and kicked. Ignoring everything she did, he carried her out of the cottage and dumped her, still naked, on the walk. Then he went back inside and locked the door behind him.

When she came up crying and wailing, he shouted, "Go to h.e.l.l. You made your choice. Now you pay for it." He'd made his choice, too. I'll live with it, I'll live with it, he thought. He went back to the bedroom, lay down, and fell asleep right away. he thought. He went back to the bedroom, lay down, and fell asleep right away.

Arthur McGregor worried every time he left the room he'd taken in the cheap Winnipeg boardinghouse. He worried while he was in the room, too. That wasn't because inside his trunk sat a wooden box containing the largest, finest bomb he'd ever made. He worried about the bomb when he left the room: he worried that someone would discover it, and that he wouldn't be able to use it.

When he was in the spa.r.s.ely furnished room, he worried about the farm. He worried about whether Maude and Julia and Mary could do everything that needed doing without his being there. He also occasionally worried about whether the story he and his family had put about-that he'd gone to visit cousins back in Ontario-would hold up under close scrutiny. If some bright Yank added two and two and happened to come up with four...

But the Yank likeliest to do that, Major Hannebrink, was dead. McGregor had made sure of that, and he'd got away with it. Now he was going to make sure of General Custer's demise, too, and he thought he could get away with that. And, if he couldn't, he was willing if not eager to pay the price.

"Strike a blow for freedom," he muttered under his breath as he went downstairs for breakfast.

He wasn't used to eating anyone's cooking but Maude's. The eggs here were fried too hard, while the bacon felt rubbery between his teeth. Morning chatter flowed around him. Apart from a "Good day" or two and a couple of polite nods, he added nothing to it.

Off he went, for all the world as if he had a job to which he didn't want to be late. His landlady thought he did have a regular job. He'd made certain she thought that. If she thought anything different, the Yanks were liable to hear about it. That was the last thing he wanted.

Almost three years after the end of the Great War, Winnipeg presented an odd mixture of rubble and s.h.i.+ny new buildings, as if a phoenix had risen halfway from the ashes. In another few years, McGregor thought, it might turn into a handsome city again. The rubble would be forgotten. So would the buildings and the hopes from which that rubble had been made. The new Winnipeg would be an American city, not a Canadian one.

HORNE'S HOUSE PAINTS, said a sign on Donald Street. 37 COLORS AVAILABLE. COLORS AVAILABLE. If Horne had been in business before 1914, if he wasn't a johnny-come-lately Yank, his sign would have advertised 37 If Horne had been in business before 1914, if he wasn't a johnny-come-lately Yank, his sign would have advertised 37 COLOURS COLOURS then. Even spelling changed under U.S. rule. then. Even spelling changed under U.S. rule.

McGregor scowled. To him, COLORS COLORS looked clipped, unnatural...American. He stepped off the curb-and almost got clipped himself, by an American motorcar. An angry blast from the Ford's horn sent him leaping back onto the sidewalk. "Watch out, you G.o.dd.a.m.n hayseed!" the driver screamed, in an accent unmistakably from the USA. "Ain't you never seen an automobile before?" He stepped on the gas and whizzed away before McGregor could say a single word. looked clipped, unnatural...American. He stepped off the curb-and almost got clipped himself, by an American motorcar. An angry blast from the Ford's horn sent him leaping back onto the sidewalk. "Watch out, you G.o.dd.a.m.n hayseed!" the driver screamed, in an accent unmistakably from the USA. "Ain't you never seen an automobile before?" He stepped on the gas and whizzed away before McGregor could say a single word.

"Christ!" McGregor wiped his forehead on his sleeve. "That'd be all I need, stepping out in front of one of those d.a.m.n things when I'm carrying..." He let his voice trail away. He did not intend to mention out loud what he might be carrying. He wouldn't have come so close had he not just come close to getting killed.

Had so many motorcars scurried through the streets of Winnipeg before the Great War? McGregor had come up to the city only a couple of times in those days, so he couldn't be sure, but he didn't think so. It might end up prosperous as well as handsome.

He didn't care. He would sooner have been poor under King George than rich under the Stars and Stripes. The Yanks had taken his country away from him. If they expected him to be happy about it, they were in for a disappointment.

As a matter of fact, if they expected him to be happy about it, they were in for a big big disappointment. He chuckled grimly-so grimly that a fellow in a business suit edged away from him. He didn't notice. He wanted to make sure their disappointment was as big as possible. disappointment. He chuckled grimly-so grimly that a fellow in a business suit edged away from him. He didn't notice. He wanted to make sure their disappointment was as big as possible.

He crossed the Donald Street bridge over the a.s.siniboine and strolled past a three-story building that had somehow come through the war intact. Soldiers in green-gray with pot-shaped helmets stood guard around the building in sandbagged machine-gun nests that gave it a formidable defensive perimeter. He didn't linger. The U.S. guards asked pointed-or sometimes blunt-questions of people naive enough to linger around General Custer's headquarters.

They would, without a doubt, ask even more pointed-or perhaps blunt-questions of anyone foolhardy enough to try to leave a wooden box anywhere in the neighborhood. McGregor had seen as much on his last trip to Winnipeg.

There was a park not far away. It didn't even boast children's swings. All it had were gra.s.s and a few benches. McGregor sat down on the gra.s.s and waited for noon. He'd done that a good many times by now, and come to know the park well. The earth here was not smooth, but full of round depressions of different sizes and depths. A narrow zigzag strip of low ground, partly obliterated by the depressions, ran across the park from east to west. The troops defending Winnipeg had made a stand here. McGregor grunted. They'd failed, d.a.m.n them.

He wasn't the only one out on this fine, mild day. Boys and girls frolicked where sh.e.l.ls had burst and men had bled. An unshaven man in a filthy Canadian Army greatcoat and tattered khaki trousers lifted a bottle to his lips. He set it down slowly and reluctantly, as if its opening were the mouth of his beloved. In a drunken way, that was bound to be so.

McGregor killed time till the bells of the St. Boniface Cathedral, across the Red River, chimed twelve. He got up and ambled back by Custer's headquarters. He'd timed it perfectly. He'd just gone past the building when a chauffeur-driven Packard-the motorcar that had almost run him down in Rosenfeld when Custer was on his way up to Winnipeg-pulled away from the front of the place. He kept on walking, hardly looking at the automobile, and turned west, away from the Red River.

After a little while, he went up Kennedy. Sure as the devil, there in front of a chophouse called Hy's sat the Packard. The chauffeur remained on the front seat, eating a sandwich. General Custer and his aide, a tubby officer who seemed to accompany him everywhere, had gone inside.

McGregor smiled to himself. Custer dined at Hy's every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. He was reliable as clockwork. He ate his dinner somewhere else-McGregor hadn't been able to find out where-on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So far as McGregor could tell, no swarm of guards surrounded him here.

Luck had had very little to do with McGregor's discovering his weekday routine, or at least three-fifths of it. The embittered farmer had taken to tramping the streets of Winnipeg during the dinner hour, looking for that Packard. Patience paid, as patience has a way of doing. McGregor walked past the motorcar on the other side of the street. The driver paid him no attention whatever. Had he suddenly turned around and gone back the way he'd come, that might have drawn the fellow's notice to him.

He couldn't have that, not when he was so close. He made his way back to the park, though he didn't go past Custer's headquarters this time. "Now they shouldn't see me at all," he said as he sat down on the gra.s.s once more. No one heard him. The children were gone. The ex-soldier had pa.s.sed out. His bottle lay empty beside him.

A little past five, McGregor returned to the boardinghouse. He ate the landlady's frugal supper without complaint. Afterwards, he went up to his room and read Quentin Durward Quentin Durward till he grew sleepy. Then he turned off the electric lamp and, so far as he knew, didn't stir till morning. till he grew sleepy. Then he turned off the electric lamp and, so far as he knew, didn't stir till morning.

Since the next day was Thursday, Custer wouldn't be dining at Hy's. McGregor walked in, went over to the bar, and ordered himself a Moosehead. As he drank the beer, he studied the place. He couldn't very well plant the bomb among the seats; he had nowhere to conceal it there. But a lot of tables were close to the bar, and he'd packed a lot of dynamite and a lot of tenpenny nails for shrapnel into the wooden case he'd brought up from the farm. If he could hide it under the bar somewhere, that stood a good chance of doing the trick. The blast might even bring down the whole building...if the detonation worked as it should.

He worried about that, too. He'd known from his earlier trip to Winnipeg that he'd have to set this bomb and leave it. To make it go off when he wanted it to, he'd brought up an alarm clock, which he would set while he was planting the bomb. When it rang, the vibrating hammer and bells would set off the blasting caps he'd pack around them, which would in turn set off the dynamite. So he hoped, at any rate. But he knew the method was less reliable than a tripwire or a fuse.

"It will work," he whispered fiercely. "It has has to work." to work."

He got out of bed at two the next morning and sneaked out of the boardinghouse. He carried the bomb on his back with straps, as if it were a soldier's pack. In one pocket of his coat were caps, in the other a small electric torch and a pry bar.

Winnipeg remained under curfew. If a patrolling U.S. soldier spotted him, he was liable to be shot then and there. If he got shot, he was liable to go straight to the moon then and there, in fragments of various sizes. He was taking any number of mad chances with this venture, and knew it. He didn't care, not any more. Like a soldier about to go over the top, he was irrevocably committed.

An alley ran behind Hy's. Motion there made his heart spring into his mouth, but it was only a cat leaping out of a garbage can. He wondered if the restaurant had a burglar alarm. He would find out by experiment. He let out a long, happy sigh when the back door yielded to the pry bar almost at once.

Tiptoeing through the kitchen, he came out in back of the bar, as if he were the greasy-haired gent who tended it. Only when he crouched behind it did he turn on the torch. He felt like cheering on seeing not only plenty of room under the bar to stash the bomb but also a burlap bag with which to hide it.

He wound the alarm clock and set it for one, then pried up the lid to the bomb, set the clock in place, and, handling them very carefully, packed the blasting caps by the bells. Then he replaced the lid, covered the box with the burlap sack, and left by the route he'd used to come. He closed the door behind him, risking the torch once more to see if the pry marks were too visible. He grinned: he could hardly see them at all. Odds were, no one else would even notice he'd come and gone.

He reentered the boardinghouse as stealthily as he'd left. Going back to sleep was hard. Getting up to appear to go to work was even harder. When he departed after breakfast, he didn't pa.s.s by Custer's headquarters, but used the next street over to head for the park. He settled himself on the gra.s.s to wait.

St. Boniface's bells chimed the hours. After they rang twelve times, he began to fidget. Time seemed to crawl on hands and knees. How long till one o'clock? Forever? No. Before the bells chimed one, a far greater and more discordant blast of sound echoed through Winnipeg. Arthur McGregor sprang to his feet, shouting in delight. He frightened a few pigeons near him. Other than the pigeons, no one paid him the least attention.

Lieutenant Colonel Abner Dowling eyed General Custer with a sort of sad certainty. The old boy was having altogether too much fun for his own good. When his wife noticed how much fun he'd been having-and Libbie would; oh yes, she would-she would have some sharp things to say about it.

For the moment, though, Custer was doing the talking. He liked nothing better. "All in the line of duty," he boomed, like a courting prairie chicken. "All in the line of duty, my dear."

The reporter's pencil scratched across the notebook page, filling it with shorthand pothooks and squiggles. "Tell me more," Ophelia Clemens said. "Tell me how you happened to decide the War Department was using barrels the wrong way and how you came up with one that proved more effective."

"I'd be glad to," Custer said with a smile broad enough to show off all the coffee-stained splendor of his store-bought teeth.

I'll bet you would, Dowling thought. He wouldn't have minded having Ophelia Clemens interview him, either. She was a fine-looking woman-somewhere between forty and forty-five, Dowling guessed-with red-gold hair very lightly streaked with gray, and with an hourgla.s.s figure that had yielded nothing (well, next to nothing) to time. Dowling thought. He wouldn't have minded having Ophelia Clemens interview him, either. She was a fine-looking woman-somewhere between forty and forty-five, Dowling guessed-with red-gold hair very lightly streaked with gray, and with an hourgla.s.s figure that had yielded nothing (well, next to nothing) to time.

Instead of answering her question, as he'd said he would, Custer asked one of his own: "How'd a pretty lady like you get into the newspaper business, anyhow? Most reporters I know have mustaches and smoke cigars."

Miss Clemens-she wore no wedding band-shrugged. "My father was in the business for fifty years, till he died ten years ago. He taught me everything I know. For whatever it may be worth to you, he wore a mustache and smoked cigars. Now, then-" She repeated the question about barrels.

She's sharp as a tack behind that pretty smile, Abner Dowling judged. Custer hadn't figured that out yet; the pretty smile was all he noticed. His answer proved as much. He didn't quite say G.o.d and a choir of angels had delivered the new doctrine for barrels to him from on high, but he certainly implied it. Abner Dowling judged. Custer hadn't figured that out yet; the pretty smile was all he noticed. His answer proved as much. He didn't quite say G.o.d and a choir of angels had delivered the new doctrine for barrels to him from on high, but he certainly implied it.

Ophelia Clemens tapped the unsharpened end of her pencil against the spiral wire that held her notebook together. "Isn't another reason the fact that you've been known for headlong attacks straight at the foe ever since the days of the War of Secession, and that barrels offered you the chance to do that again, except in a new way?"

Dowling wanted to kiss her for reasons that had nothing to do with the way she looked. She was was sharp as a tack, by G.o.d. Custer had done nothing but go straight at the enemy all through the Great War. First Army had suffered gruesomely, too, sending attack after attack straight into the teeth of the Rebs' defensive positions. If not for barrels, Custer would probably still be banging heads with his Confederate opposite numbers down in Tennessee. sharp as a tack, by G.o.d. Custer had done nothing but go straight at the enemy all through the Great War. First Army had suffered gruesomely, too, sending attack after attack straight into the teeth of the Rebs' defensive positions. If not for barrels, Custer would probably still be banging heads with his Confederate opposite numbers down in Tennessee.