How Few Remain (great war)

by Harry Turtledove

  "I will not strike them blows that, in my judgment, would cause Britain and France to conclude they are being used as instruments of our aggrandizement rather than protectors of our legitimate rights," Longstreet said. "I will not. If that makes the war more difficult, so be it. My firm view is that, in the long run, we shall be better for it."

  Jackson got to his feet. "If I cannot prosecute the war to the utmost, Your Excellency, I hope you will accept my resignation."

  "Oh, sit down, Tom. Don't be a stiff-necked fool," Longstreet said testily. Surprised, Jackson did sit. The president went on, "Even if I tie one hand behind your back, I need you. You're the best I've got. That's all the more true because I tie one hand behind your back. I'm not the only one who needs you. The country does."

  Jackson saw that Longstreet deserved his place in the executive mansion. The president knew precisely which levers to pull to return a recalcitrant general to obedience. Maybe that meant he knew which levers to pull to keep Britain and France on good terms with the Confederate States, and maybe it meant he correctly gauged how important the alliance was. If all that was so…

  "For the sake of the nation we both serve, I retract what I just said." Jackson spoke firmly. Through his life, he'd seldom had to backtrack. When he found the need, he was as unflinching in meeting it as with any other tactical necessity.

  "Did you say something, General?" Longstreet brought a hand to his ear. "I'm an old man. I must be getting deaf, because I didn't hear a word."

  That drew a chuckle from Jackson. Longstreet was smoother than Jackson had ever wanted to be, and crookeder than Jackson ever wanted to be, too. But he'd found a way out of a situation from which the general-in-chief would have been too stubborn to retreat unaided. He deserved credit for that.

  "Very well, then." Jackson gave him credit by proceeding from the point of their disagreement as if he had in fact agreed. "Recognizing that we cannot hope to conquer the United States, how are we to secure victory over them?"

  "By demonstrating to them that they cannot hope to conquer us," President Longstreet answered. "The way you ran them out of Winchester was first-rate, General. That is how we won the War of Secession, after all."

  "Our armies were in Pennsylvania when we won the War of Secession," Jackson pointed out.

  "True," Longstreet said, "but we were compelled to invade their territory then, for they had gained several lodgments in ours: along the Carolina coast, in Virginia, and in the west. That is not the case now. Our navy is far more able to defend our shores than was so then, and we have our allies to assist us. We stand in firm control on our side of the Potomac, and have punished Washington for the effrontery of the United States. And Kentucky and the line of the Ohio River are now ours, where we had to gain that line by force of arms during the previous war. The United States have not got the initiative, nor shall they gain it."

  "Hard to be assured of that while we stand on the defensive," Jackson said.

  Longstreet shrugged his broad shoulders. "Modern weaponry favors the defensive, at least on land. Having seen the fighting at first hand, do you deny it?"

  "No, sir," Jackson said. "Harder now to break a strongly held defensive position than it was in the War of Secession, and it wasn't easy then. As my written report states, a bare regiment of entrenched Yankees fought manfully against my brigade south of Kernstown, though eventually being overcome by superior force."

  "Well, then," Longstreet said, as if everything were settled, "is it not more profitable to strike where we and our allies are strong, as in the recent bombardments of U.S. towns on the shores of the Great Lakes, and to let the Yankees beat their heads against the wall coming at us?"

  "But the trouble is-" Jackson realized he could not oppose the president of the Confederate States with anything resembling a logical argument. He gave him an emotional one instead: "The trouble is, Your Excellency, I want to hit them a good lick."

  "That should not be impossible, even standing on the defensive." Longstreet looked over to the map again. "As you no doubt know, they appear to be massing troops in Indiana opposite Louisville. Would it make you happy if I sent you to Kentucky to supervise the defense of the city?"

  Jackson knew Longstreet was offering him a bribe. If he did as the president desired, he would in essence forfeit the right to express his disagrement with present Confederate policy- especially as he would be an instrument of making that policy succeed. Longstreet was a subtle man, but not so subtle as to be able to disguise what he was about here. Understanding what Longstreet was about, though, did not make Jackson able to resist the temptation set before him. Leaning forward in his chair, he said, "Yes, Mr. President!"

  Major Horatio Sellers came up to Jeb Stuart while the general commanding the Military District of the Trans-Mississippi was engaged in the unmilitary but nevertheless important task of making sure no scorpions had crawled into his boots during the night. Once satisfied on that score, Stuart said, "And what can I do for you this morning, Major?"

  Sellers' heavy features were not made for expressing joy under the best of circumstances. Since traveling along the border between So-nora and New Mexico Territory was hardly the best of circumstances, Stuart supposed his aide-de-camp could hardly be blamed for looking grim. Sellers said, "Sir, how far are we going to trust these Apache devils, anyhow? I keep having the feeling that one fine morning we're going to wake up with our throats cut, if you know what I mean."

  "I may," Stuart answered. "I just may. But before I answer that, let me ask you a few questions of my own." Since he was the general, the major inclined his head in agreement. Stuart began: "Are these Apache devils the best guides and scouts we could have, or not?"

  "Oh, yes, sir," Sellers said. "Not a doubt about that. They know every cactus in this whole damn desert by its first name. They know where the Yankees are, where they were, and where they'll turn up day after tomorrow. If I hadn't seen it so often by now, I wouldn't believe it. It's almost uncanny, like a nigger gris-gris woman down in New Orleans."

  "If Geronimo understood that, he'd thank you for it-from everything I've been able to figure out, he's as much a medicine man as a chief," Stuart said. "It's neither here nor there, though." The general paused to pull on one of his scorpion-free boots before continuing the catechism: "Do these Apache devils hate the Yankees and the Mexicans both?"

  "I hope to spit, they do," Major Sellers exclaimed. "Can't say I much blame 'em, either, if you look at things from their side of the mirror. The only reason they can't figure out which bunch to hate worse is that the damnyankees and the Mexicans have both been doing their damnedest to massacre 'em."

  "Which means they've got good, solid reasons to be loyal to the Confederate States, doesn't it, Major?" Stuart said.

  "When you put it like that, yes, sir, I suppose it does." Major Sellers neither looked nor sounded happy. "The only thing I hope, sir, is that we don't end up sorry we ever trusted them."

  Jeb Stuart was pulling on the other boot when his aide-de-camp said that. He stopped with it halfway up his calf. Both eyebrows rose. "Good God, Major, you'd have to send me to an idiots' asylum if I trusted them once they were out of my sight. They're as dangerous as

  … as scorpions." He finished putting on the boot. "If they weren't, how could so few of them have given so many U.S. soldiers and so many Mexicans so much trouble for so long?"

  "Sir?" Now Sellers wore a new expression: confusion. "In that case, why have we given them all Tredegars?"

  "So they can shoot them at the Yankees, of course," Stuart replied. "They will do that. As you said yourself, they have good reason to do that."

  "Well, yes, sir," Major Sellers said. "But once Sonora is ours, won't they find reasons to shoot them at us?"

  "I hope not. I hope that, once Sonora is ours, they'll go shoot up New Mexico when they're feeling frisky," Stuart said. "But it's a chance I'm willing to take, for now. If they decided to start raiding our supply line instead of working with us, life could get l
ively faster than we really wanted, couldn't it?"

  He watched Sellers think that over. He watched Sellers look as unhappy as he had while making the same consideration. "Sir, we need that railroad from El Paso," his aide-de-camp said.

  "So we do," Stuart said. "Unfortunately, it's not built yet. If the war with the United States isn't over by the time it is built, things will have gone a great deal worse than I hope. Once the war is over and the railroad built, I expect we'll be able to deal with any trouble a few hundred redskins cause. Until then, we'll use them to our best advantage. Since that's also to their advantage, I don't see how they can fail to make us useful tools for the time being."

  His aide-de-camp's face cleared. "Well, that's all right, then," Major Sellers said with some relief. "As long as you're thinking of them as cat's-paws and not as genuine allies, everything's fine. After all, sir, it's not as if they're white men."

  "No, it's not," Stuart agreed. "Of course, even if we are white men, that doesn't stop our allies from using us as cat's-paws against the USA. After all, it's not as if we were Europeans."

  That sailed past Horatio Sellers. Sellers was a detail man, which made him a devil of an aide-de-camp. He wasn't so good at fitting details inside the frame of a larger picture. Some aides-de-camp used their posts at the side of high-ranking officers to gain high rank themselves. Sellers would likely be a major till he retired, if he lived to retirement.

  Every man is good at — and good for — something, Stuart thought. Without Major Sellers, the thin Confederate force operating on the U.S. border would have been far less effective than it was. Without him, too, Stuart would have overlooked any number of things to worry about, some of which probably would have proved important. If Horatio Sellers didn't think something was worth worrying about, it wasn't.

  Stuart pulled aside the tent flap and went outside. The day was bright and clear and hot. But for occasional storms that blew up from the south, every summer's day hereabouts was bright and clear and hot. Stuart thought he could see forever. Water seemed to shimmer in the middle distance. He'd warned his men about chasing mirages.

  A roadrunner skittered past with a horned toad's tail sticking out of its beak. It gave Stuart a wary glance, as if afraid he might try to steal its breakfast. When he just stood there, it ran off to where it could dine in privacy.

  Geronimo and the young son who translated for him approached Stuart. "Good day to you, General," said the young man, whose name was Chappo. His accent might almost have come from New England. Stuart didn't know if the sounds of the Apache language made it seem that way, or if Chappo had learned the language from somebody from the northeastern United States. Either way, he found it funny. Also funny was the spectacle of a couple of Indians carrying Confederate Army-issue tin plates full of beans (they carefully picked out the salt pork, which they didn't like) and tin cups full of coffee, both of which (except for the pork) they thought highly.

  "Good day to you, Chappo," Stuart answered gravely, "and to your father."

  Chappo spoke in the Apache language. Gcronimo answered. His voice was on the mushy side, for he was missing quite a few teeth, which also gave the lower part of his face the pinched-in look often thought of as characteristic of witches. Stuart wondered if that had helped give him reputation among the Apaches. That story they told about his making the daylight hold off for two or three hours so they could escape from a raid… No Christian man would believe it, but they did.

  "I think you can take Tucson, if you want it," he said now, through his son.

  "Do you?" If the old Indian had been looking for a way to grab Stuart's attention, he'd found one. With Tucson in Confederate hands, Yankee control over all of western New Mexico Territory south of it would wither. The catch, of course, was that taking it would be anything but easy. Keeping it would be harder still, since it lay on the Southern Pacific line. Stuart had thought it beyond his slender means.

  He studied Geronimo with the same sort of cautious gaze the roadrunner had given him. Geronimo might be a savage, but he was a long, long way from a fool. He might well hope U.S. and C.S. troops would engage in a struggle that depleted forces from both sides, leaving no white soldiers to protect the area from the Apaches.

  With something approaching the truth, the general commanding the Trans-Mississippi said, "I don't think we are strong enough to do that, even with the help of the brave Apaches. I wish I did, but I don't."

  When Geronimo had that translated for him, he spoke for some time. Chappo had to hold up a hand so he would stop and let the interpreter do his job. "My father says he would not tell this plan to any other man. He thinks you can make it go, though. He says that, if you fooled the bluecoats so well once, you can do it again, and he will help."

  "Tell him to go on." Stuart did his best to keep his voice and face impassive. He could read nothing on Geronimo's weathered features. He might have been back in one of the endless card games with which U.S. Army soldiers out West had made time pass before the War of Secession. How big a bluff was Geronimo running? Stuart realized he'd have to see more of the Indian's hand to tell.

  Through Chappo, the Apache chief did go on: "With these new rifles you gave us, we will go on the warpath. We will go up toward Tucson. We will be loud. We will be noisy. The bluecoats will have to see us."

  Stuart had no trouble understanding what that meant. The Apaches would hit farmers and herders and miners between the international border and Tucson. Livestock would vanish. Men the Indians caught would die. Women would probably suffer a fate worse than death, and then die, too.

  He'd been talking with Major Sellers about how good it would be for the redskins to keep the USA too busy chasing them to trouble Sonora and Chihuahua. Now he had to contemplate what those coldblooded words meant. He hadn't fought like that during the War of Secession. Not even the damn-yankees had fought like that then.

  But he hadn't given the Apaches Bible tracts. He'd given them guns, lots of guns. "Ask your father what happens then," he told Chappo.

  Geronimo answered in detail. He'd thought this through. Stuart had seen how the fellow who proposed an idea usually had the edge on the fellow who was hearing it for the first time. That still held true, he discovered, when the fellow doing the proposing was an Indian who didn't know how to write his name.

  Chappo said, "My father says we can do one thing or the other thing. One thing is, when the bluecoats chase us, we can go up into the mountains and pretend to be rocks and trees. While they look for us, you go behind them and into Tucson."

  Stuart studied Geronimo with surprise and considerable admiration. Had the Apache had a proper military education, he might have been sitting in General Jackson 's office in Richmond. But Stuart said, "For that plan to work, we have to depend on the Yankees' commander in Tucson being stupid. By now, he's probably heard the Apaches and the Confederates are friends. He will not forget about us while he goes chasing after you."

  Once Chappo translated that, Geronimo looked at Stuart for a moment before going on. His expression didn't change, but Stuart had the strong feeling that he'd just impressed Geronimo the same way Geronimo had impressed him. He should have been angry that a savage presumed to judge him in that fashion. He wasn't. Geronimo had earned his respect. He was glad he'd managed to earn Geronimo's.

  The Apache chieftain said, "The other plan is, we war toward Tucson. The bluecoats chase us. We do not go into the mountains. We lead them to an ambush you set with your men and your guns. This does not give you Tucson. It gives you the men who hold Tucson. Is it enough?"

  "Hmm," Stuart said, and then again: "Hmm." He hadn't expected a savage to presume to propose a plan of campaign. Nor had he expected the plan to be so tempting once the savage did presume to propose it.

  Geronimo said, "For a long time, I have fought the bluecoats and the Mexicans hard, even when I had little. Now you Confederates are on my side, and, with you to help, I can strike a great blow."

  "All right-we'll try it," Stuart sa
id, coming to an abrupt decision. Even before Chappo translated, Geronimo caught the tone of his answer and smiled the broadest smile Stuart had seen from him. Stuart smiled back, and clasped his hand. Once the damnyankees were licked and the CSA got Sonora and Chihuahua fully under control, the Confederates would have much, and the Apaches little. One step at a time, Stuart thought.

  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?"