"So would I," Jefferson Pinkard said. "This Featherston, he knows what he's talking about. You can hear it in every word he says."
VI
For perhaps the first time in his professional life, Colonel Irving Morrell wished he were back in Philadelphia. Fighting arguments about barrels by way of letters and telegrams from Leavenworth, Kansas, was not getting the job done in the way he would have hoped. Letters and wires were all too easy to ignore.
"What can we do, Colonel?" Lieutenant Jenkins asked when the latest unsatisfactory reply came back from the War Department. "We should have a design ready to build now, and we're not even close."
"Damned if I know, Lije," Morrell answered. He tapped the papers with the tip of his index finger. "I think we would have a design by now, if the budget were what people thought it was going to be when they set up the Barrel Works."
"Miserable Socialists," Jenkins said angrily. "They're trying to take away everything we won on the battlefield."
"They're not making anything easy for us, that's for sure," Morrell said. "I want to make hay while the sun shines, if you know what I mean. You have to figure the Rebs won't stay down forever. The farther ahead of them we are when they do start getting back on their feet, the better I'll like it."
"Yes, sir," Jenkins said. "We'd be a lot better off, sir, if they'd listen to you more. If they don't want to listen to you, why did they send you out here in the first place?"
"To get me out of their hair, for one thing," Morrell answered. "To drive me out of my mind, for another. These days, they're so worried about spending money that they're trying to build barrels on the cheap. I don't know how many times I've explained and explained and explained that the engines in our machines aren't strong enough to do the job, but what sort of answer do I get? What it boils down to is, 'They did the job in the last war, so of course they'll do the job in the next one, too.' ' He looked disgusted.
So did Lije Jenkins. "With that kind of thinking, we'd have gone into the Great War with single-shot black-powder Springfields."
Morrell nodded. "You understand that, and I understand that. The War Department understands it can get White truck engines- even the ones built in mirror image to pair with the regular model- in carload lots, cheap as it wants. Coming up with something better won't be anywhere near as cheap. And cheap counts. Right now, cheap counts a lot."
"Are they going to leave our country's safety hanging on nickels and dimes?" Lieutenant Jenkins demanded indignantly. He was still very young, young enough to believe in the tooth fairy, the common sense of Congress, and a great many other unlikelihoods.
"Probably," Morrell said, at which the lieutenant looked as if he'd just watched his puppy run over in the street. Trying not to smile, Morrell went on, "They spent twenty years after the War of Secession tossing the Army nickels and dimes and not much more, remember. They paid for it, too, but that doesn't mean they can't do it again."
"They'd have to be crazy," Jenkins exclaimed.
"No, just shortsighted," Morrell said, shaking his head. "I think it was President Mahan who noted that the biggest trouble republics have is that, over time, the voters are apt to get tired of paying for what their country needs to defend itself. They'd sooner spend the money on bread and circuses, or else not spend it and keep it in their own pockets."
"After everything we've gone through, sir, that would be a crime," Jenkins said.
"You think so, and I think so, and the War Department thinks so, too," Morrell replied, this time with a shrug. "The voters don't think so. They've sent a lot of Socialists to Congress this year. We do what we can with what we have, that's all. If we haven't got much, we do what we can with that. Pharaoh made the Israelites make bricks without straw."
"A crime," Lieutenant Jenkins repeated. He wasn't old enough to recall the cheeseparing the Army had had to put up with during the dark years after the War of Secession. Neither was Mor-rell, but he'd listened to older soldiers grouse about it ever since he'd put on a green-gray uniform. General Custer, under whom he'd served in Tennessee, had been through it all.
And now, he'd heard, Custer was up in Canada, in charge of the soldiers bringing U.S. authority to a land larger than the United States. He didn't know how the old warhorse would shape in that assignment. It didn't seem to call for the slam-bang drive that characterized Custer's fighting style. On the other hand, Morrell would have preferred it to sitting behind a desk in Philadelphia. No doubt Custer did, too.
Morrell dismissed his former commander from his mind. He glanced over at Lije Jenkins, who still looked unhappy with the world. "The only thing we can do is our best," Morrell said. A cuckoo came out of the clock on the wall and announced six o'clock. Morrell grinned. "The other thing we can do now is head over to the mess hall and get supper. And after that, didn't I hear something about a dance in town tonight?"
"Yes, sir." Jenkins' eyes sparkled. "I'm going over there. You feel like cutting a rug, too, sir?" He eyed Morrell with a certain bemused curiosity.
Morrell had all he could do to keep from laughing out loud. "I'm not a great-grandfather ready for the boneyard yet, Lieutenant," he said. "There's still some juice left in here." He set a hand over his chest and grinned wickedly. "After supper, shall we race over to the dance hall?"
"Uh, no, sir," Jenkins said. "You ran me into the mud out on the practice range. I figure you can probably do the same thing on sidewalks." His grin had a wicked touch, too. "But, sir, there'll be girls there, you know."
"I should hope so," Morrell said. "You don't think I'd want to waltz or foxtrot with an ugly customer like you, do you?" As a matter of fact, Lieutenant Jenkins was a handsome young man. That still didn't mean Morrell wanted to dance with him.
Morrell was heading toward thirty now, and had never come close to acquiring a wife. His eye had always been on the war ahead, as the eyes of the United States had been. But now the war was over and won, and single-minded devotion to duty was looking harder and less desirable not only to the country but also to Irving Morrell.
He did not head for the dance with Lieutenant Jenkins seriously expecting to find a wife the minute he stepped out onto the floor. That would have been unreasonable in the extreme, and he knew it. But if he did find a young lady, a lady he found attractive, he was ready and more than ready to pursue the matter and see where it led. He nodded as he left Fort Leavenworth. He'd never had that kind of determination before, not about anything except the battlefield.
Leavenworth, Kansas, was a town of about twenty thousand people. Not all of them served the fort, by any means. Many mined the large coal deposits in the area, while others worked in flour and lumber mills. But, regardless of whether the locals worked for the Army or not, soldiers got solid respect in Leavenworth. It had been an antislavery settlement back in the days before the War of Secession, when the South tried to make Kansas a slave state. Only the oldest of the old-timers recalled those days now, but the tradition of hatred for the Confederacy ran strong here, as it did in much of Kansas.
Morrell and Jenkins strode past a large bronze statue of John Brown the citizens of Leavenworth had erected after the Second Mexican War. Brown was and always had been a hero to many Kansans. He'd become a national hero during the 1880s, when people in the United States began to see that he'd known what he was doing when he'd attacked the Southerners not only here but also in their own lair down in Virginia.
The dance was at a social hall next to a white-painted Baptist church with a tall steeple, a spare building that might have been transported bodily from New England to the prairie. Sounds of piano and fiddle music drifted out into the night. 'That's not the best playing I've ever heard," Morrell said, which was, if anything, a generous assessment, "but they do go right after a tune."
"Yes, sir," Jenkins answered. "Now we just have to hope it's not one of the dances where they've got maybe half a dozen girls and five hundred guys waiting to dance with them. A little bit of that kind goes a long way."
I
t was chilly outside; a coal stove and the dancers' exertions heated the social hall, so that a blast of warm air greeted Morrell when he opened the door. After looking around, he nodded approval: men did not hopelessly outnumber women. Not all the men were soldiers-close to half wore civilian clothes. Morrell had never feared competition of any sort.
A punch bowl sat on a table at the far end of the hall. He went over to it, got himself a glass, and leaned against the wall, watching couples spin and dip more or less in time to the music. Scouting the terrain before advancing was a good idea in other things besides warfare.
Lije Jenkins, on the other hand, plunged straight into the fray, cutting in on a civilian in a sharp suit. The fellow gave him a sour look as he retired toward the sidelines. Leavenworth might have liked soldiers pretty well, but cutting in like that was liable to start a brawl anywhere.
With a final raucous flourish, the little three-piece band stopped its racket. People clapped their hands, not so much to applaud the musicians as to show they were having a good time. Men and women headed over to the punch bowl. Morrell quickly drained his own glass and, with the empty glass as an excuse, contrived to get to the bowl at the same time as a woman in a ruffled shirtwaist and maroon wool skirt.
He filled the ladle, then, after catching her eye to make sure the liberty would not be unwelcome, poured punch into her glass before dealing with his own. "Thank you," she said. She was within a couple of years of thirty herself, with hair black as coal, brown eyes, and warm brown skin with a hint of blush beneath it. When she took a longer look at Morrell, one eyebrow rose. "Thank you very much, Colonel."
He was, he suddenly realized, a catch: glancing around, he saw a couple of captains, but no soldiers of higher rank. Men were not the only ones playing this game. Well, on with it: "My pleasure," he said. "If you like, you can pay me back by giving me the next dance."
"I'll do that," she said at once. "My name is Hill, Agnes Hill"
"Very pleased to meet you." Morrell gave his own name. The musicians struck up what was no doubt intended to be a waltz. He guided her out onto the dance floor. He danced with academic precision. His partner didn't, but it mattered little; the floor was so crowded, couples kept bumping into one another. Everyone laughed when it happened: it was expected.
They talked under and through the semimusical racket. "My husband was killed in the first few weeks of the war," Agnes Hill said. "He was up on the Niagara front, and the Canadians had lots of machine guns, and-" She shrugged in MorrelPs arms.
"I'm sorry," he answered. She shrugged again. Morrell said, "I got shot myself about that time, in Sonora. Only reason I'm here is luck."
His dancing partner nodded. "I've thought about luck a lot the past few years, Colonel. That's all you can do, isn't it? — think, I mean." She whirled on with him for another few steps, then said, "I'm glad you were lucky. I'm glad you are here." As the music ended, Morrell was glad he was there, too.
Lucien Galtier did not converse with his horse while driving up to Riviere-du-Loup, as he usually did. The horse, a heartless beast, seemed to feel no lack. And Galtier had conversation aplenty, for, instead of going up to the town by the St. Lawrence alone, he had along Marie, his two sons, and the three daughters still living at home with them.
"I can't wait to see the baby," Denise said. She'd been saying that since word came from Leonard O'Doull that Nicole had had a baby boy the evening before.
"I want to see Nicole," Marie said. "Not for nothing do they call childbirth labor." She glared at Lucien, as if to say it was his fault Nicole had endured what she'd endured. Or maybe she was just thinking it was the fault of men that women endured what they endured.
Soothingly, Galtier said, "All is well with Nicole, and all is well with the baby, too, for which I give thanks to the holy Mother of God." He crossed himself. "And I also give thanks that Nicole gave birth with a doctor attending her who was so intimately concerned with her well-being."
"Intimately!" Marie sniffed and slapped him on the leg. Then she sniffed again, on a slightly different note. "A midwife was plenty good for me."
"A midwife is good," Lucien agreed, not wanting to quarrel with his wife. But he did not abandon his own opinion, either. "A doctor, I believe, is better."
Marie didn't argue with him, for which he was duly grateful. She kept looking around, as if she didn't want to miss anything her sharp eyes might pick up. She didn't get off the farm so often as he did, and wanted to make the most of the excursion in every way. After a bit, she said, "Traveling on a paved road all the way to town is very nice. It is so smooth, the wagon hardly seems to be moving."
"Traveling on a paved road all the way to town is even better when it rains," Galtier said. The road had not been paved for his benefit. Paving had been extended as far out from Riviere-du-Loup as his farm only because the Americans then occupying Quebec south of the St. Lawrence had built their hospital on land they'd taken from his patrimony, not least because he hadn't cared to collaborate with them.
And now his daughter had collaborated on a half-American child. He shook his head. He had not expected that. He had not expected it, but he welcomed it now that it was here.
Clouds drifted across the sky, hiding the sun more often than they let it show through. Snow still lay on the ground to either side of the road. More might fall at any time in the next month. The calendar said it was April, and therefore spring, but the calendar did not understand how far winter could stretch in this part of the world. Lucien and his wife and children were as well muffled as they would have been going out in January, and needed to be.
Here and there, bomb craters showed up as dimples under the snow. British and Canadian aeroplanes had done what they could to harm the Americans after their soldiers were driven north across the river. But now the wounds in the land were healing. The antiaircraft guns that had stood outside of Riviere-du-Loup- guns manned at the end of the war by soldiers in the blue-gray of the new Republic of Quebec-were gone now, stored away heaven only knew where. Lucien hoped they would never come out of storage.
Riviere-du-Loup itself perched on a spur of rock jutting out into the St. Lawrence. Inside its bounds, a waterfall plunged ninety feet from the small river that gave the town its name into the greater one. In the late seventeenth century, when Riviere-du-Loup was founded, it would have been a formidable defensive position. In these days of aeroplanes and giant cannons, Galtier wondered if there were any such thing as a formidable defensive position.
His daughter and son-in-law lived only a couple of blocks from Bishop Pascal's church, not far from the market square. Galtier reckoned that a mixed blessing; the bishop-who had been simply Father Pascal when the war began-had jumped into bed with the Americans so quickly, he had surely endangered his vows of celibacy. There were still times when Lucien had mixed feelings about the way the war had gone. He suspected he would have those times as long as he lived.
The houses on either side pressed close to that of Dr. Leonard O'Doull. "How cramped things are here in the city," Marie said, and clucked in distress. Lucien was inclined to agree with her. Coming into town on market day was all very well, but he would not have cared to live here.
As he was tying the horse to an apple tree in front of the house, Dr. O'Doull opened the door and waved. "Come in, all of you," he called in his evermore Quebecois French. "Nicole can't wait to see you, and of course you will want to see little Lucien."
Galtier froze in his tracks. Slowly, he said, "When you sent word, you said nothing of naming the baby after me."
"When I sent word, we had not yet decided what we would name the baby," his son-in-law returned. "But Lucien O'Doull he shall be." He reached into his pocket and held out cigars. "Come on. Smoke with me. It's the custom in the United States when a man has a son."
If the cigars were anything like the ones O'Doull usually had, Galtier would have been glad to smoke one regardless of whether he had a grandson or not. Shaken out of his startled paralysis, he hurried
toward the house.
A coal fire in the fireplace held the chill at bay. Nicole sat in a rocking chair in front of the fire. She was nursing the baby, and did not get up when her family came in. She looked as if she'd been through a long spell of trench warfare: pale and battered and worn. Had Galtier not seen Marie look the same way after her children were born, he would have been alarmed. His other children, who did not remember such things so well, were alarmed. Even Georges had no snide comments ready.
Marie spoke in tones of command: "When he is finished there, hand him to me."
"Yes, Mother. It shouldn't be long." Nicole sounded battered and worn, too.
Lucien Galtier stared at Lucien O'Doull as he nursed. The baby looked very red and wrinkled, its head somewhat misshapen from its passage out into the world. His children exclaimed about that, too. He said, "Every one of you looked the same way when you were born."
Georges said, "Surely I was much more handsome."
"What a pity it hasn't lasted, then," Denise said. She and her sisters laughed. So did Charles. Georges looked something less than amused.
Presently, Nicole lifted the baby from her breast to her shoulder. She patted him on the back. Lucien would have patted harder, but he'd had more practice than his daughter; he realized babies didn't break. After a while, his grandson gave forth with a belch a grown man would not have been ashamed to own.
"Good," Marie said. "Very good. Now he is settled. Now you will give him to me." Nicole held the baby out with great care. Marie took him with an automatic competence she would never lose, supporting his head in her right hand as she shifted him into the crook of her left arm. "He is so small," she murmured, as little Lucien flailed his arms at random. "When you have not had one in the house for a while, you forget how small a newborn baby is."
"He's a good-sized fellow," Leonard O'Doull said. "Almost eight pounds."
"He felt like an elephant when I was having him," Nicole added.
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