Blood and Iron (20 page)

He could. He did. “Barrels!” he said. “That’s where I want to be working. Sure as hell, Lieutenant Colonel, the Rebs are plotting ways to make theirs better even as we speak. I know they’re not going to be allowed to have any, but they’re plotting just the same. We’ll fight another round with them, see if we don’t. I may not live till then, but you will, I expect.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me if you were right, sir,” Dowling said. No one in the U.S. Army trusted the Confederate States, no matter how peaceful they tried to make themselves seem.

“They need me on barrels,” Custer said. “Those chowderheads didn’t know what to do with what they had till I showed them. They won’t know how to make barrels better, either, you mark my words.”

“Sir, there I don’t really know if you’re right or not,” Dowling said, by which he meant Custer was talking through his hat. “Colonel Morrell is doing good work out in Kansas. I’ve seen a couple of the analyses he’s sent in. They’re first-rate. I was very impressed.” He meant that. The more he had to do with Morrell, the more he was convinced the former commander of the Barrel Brigade would wear four stars long before his late seventies.

“Oh, Morrell’s a sound lad, no doubt about that,” Custer said, by which he meant Morrell had given him the victories he’d craved. “But he’s only a colonel, and he’s only a lad. Will they read his analyses, or will they just shelve them alongside of mine? They aren’t soldiers here, Dowling; they’re nothing but a pack of clerks in green-gray.”

That held enough truth to be provocative, not enough to be useful. Dowling said, “Colonel Morrell will make himself noticed, one way or another.”

Custer’s thoughts were running down their own track, as they often did. He hardly noticed his adjutant’s words. “Nothing but a pack of clerks in green-gray,” he repeated. “And now they’re making me a clerk, too. How am I supposed to turn into a clerk, Dowling, when I’ve spent the past sixty years as a fighting man?”

“Sir, I know this isn’t your first tour at the War Department,” Dowling said. “How did you manage before?”

“God only knows,” Custer answered gloomily. “I sat behind a desk, the same as I’m sitting behind a desk now. Then, though, I had an Army to help reform. I had wars to look forward to. I had a purpose that helped me forget I was—stuck here. What have I got now? Only the desk, Lieutenant Colonel. Only the desk.” His sigh ruffled his bushy mustache.

Exasperation. Fury. Scorn. Occasional astonished admiration. Horror. Those were the emotions Custer usually roused in Abner Dowling. That he should pity the ancient warrior had never crossed his mind till now. Setting Custer to makework was like harnessing an old, worn-out ex-champion thoroughbred to a brewery wagon. He still wanted to run, even if he couldn’t any more.

Quietly, Dowling asked, “Can I get you anything, sir? Anything at all that might make you more comfortable?” Even if Custer told him he wanted an eighteen-year-old blonde—and Custer’s asking for something along those lines would not have unduly surprised his adjutant, for he still fancied himself a ladies’ man, especially when Libbie wasn’t around—Dowling resolved to do his best to get him one.

But the general asked for nothing of the sort. Instead, he said, “Can you get me the president’s ear? We still have soldiers in action, enforcing our rule on the Canadian backwaters we didn’t overrun during the Great War. Even a command like that would be better than sitting around here waiting to die. And, by God, I still owe the Canucks more than a little. The British bastards who killed my brother Tom rode down out of Canada almost forty years ago. Even so late as this, revenge would be sweet.”

Dowling wished he’d kept his mouth shut. He had no great desire to go traipsing up into the great American Siberia, no matter what Custer wanted. But, seeing the desperate hope on the old man’s face, he said, “I don’t know whether I can get President Roosevelt’s ear or not, sir. Even if he hears me, I don’t know whether he’ll listen to me, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, yes.” Custer nodded and looked shrewd. “It might be interesting to find out whether Teddy would enjoy keeping me here under his eye and useless better than he would knowing he’s sent me to the ends of the earth. Yes, I do wonder how he’d decide there.” Reluctantly, Dowling nodded. Teddy Roosevelt would be making exactly that calculation.

Even more reluctantly, Custer’s adjutant telephoned Powel House, the president’s Philadelphia residence. He was not immediately put through to Theodore Roosevelt. He hadn’t expected to be. He left his name—and Custer’s name, too—and how to reach him. If the president decided to call back, he would. If he decided not to…well, in that case, Dowling had made the effort.

Two days later, the telephone rang. When Dowling answered, a familiar gravelly voice on the other end of the line said, “This is Theodore Roosevelt, Lieutenant Colonel. What can I do for you and what, presumably, can I do for General Custer?”

“Yes, Mr. President, that’s why I called,” Dowling said, and explained.

A long silence followed. “He
wants
me to send him up there?” Roosevelt sounded as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

“Yes, sir,” Dowling answered. “He feels useless here at the War Department. He’d rather be doing something than vegetating. And he wants to rule the Canadians with a rod of iron, you might say, because of what happened to his brother during the Second Mexican War.” Loyally, Dowling refrained from offering his own opinion of a transfer to Canada.

“If Tom Custer hadn’t got killed, we probably would have lost the battle by the Teton River, because our Gatling guns would have been wrongly placed,” Roosevelt said. “But that’s neither here nor there, now, I admit.” The president paused. Dowling could almost hear the wheels going round inside his head. At last, he said, “Well, by jingo, if that’s what General Custer wants, that’s what he shall have. Let no one ever say I put my personal differences with him in the way of fulfilling the reasonable desires of the most distinguished soldier the United States have known since George Washington.”

“Thank you, your Excellency, on General Custer’s behalf,” Dowling said. “You have no idea how pleased he’ll be at going back under the saddle again.”

“Our old warhorse.” Roosevelt chuckled, a sound Dowling wasn’t sure he liked. “Tell him to pack his long johns—and you pack yours, too, Lieutenant Colonel.”

“Yes, sir.” Dowling did his best to sound cheerful. His best, he feared, was far from good enough.

“Lies!” Julia McGregor furiously tossed her head. The flames in the fireplace caught the red highlights of her hair and made it seem about to catch fire, too. “The lies the Americans make the teachers tell!”

“What is it now?” her father asked. Arthur McGregor smiled grimly. The harder the Americans tried to indoctrinate his daughters, the more they shot themselves in the foot.

“They call the Tories traitors! They stayed loyal to their own king when everyone around them was rebelling, and for that the Americans call them traitors!” Julia was furious, all right. “I’d sooner be around people who stay loyal even if it costs them than a pack of fools who blow like weather vanes, whichever way the wind happens to catch them.”

Maude looked up from her knitting. “She’s your daughter,” she remarked to her husband.

“That she is,” McGregor said with no small pride. “My daughter, my country’s daughter—not any American’s daughter.”

“I should say not,” Julia exclaimed indignantly.

Mary shoved aside a piece of scratch paper on which she was practicing multiplication and division. “Pa, do the Yanks lie about nine times eight being seventy-two, too?” she asked, her voice hopeful. “It would work a lot better if it were seventy-one.”

“I’m afraid they’re telling the truth there, chick,” he answered. “Numbers don’t change, no matter which side of the border they’re on.”

“Too bad,” his younger daughter said. “I thought the Americans would lie about everything under the sun.”

“They lie about everything that happened under the sun,” Julia said. “But numbers aren’t exactly things that happen under the sun. They’re real and true all by themselves, no matter how you look at them.”

“How does that make them different than anything else?” Mary asked.

Before Julia could answer, one of the kerosene lamps that helped the fireplace light the front room burned dry. The stink of lamp oil spread through the room. McGregor heaved himself up out of his chair and started over to get some kerosene to refill the lamp.

“Don’t waste your time, Arthur,” Maude said. “We’re as near out as makes no difference.”

“That’s…too bad,” he said; he did his best not to curse in front of his womenfolk. “Have to ride into town tomorrow and buy some more at Gibbon’s general store. Can’t go around wandering in the dark.”

“Why not, Pa?” Mary said with a wicked smile. “The Yanks do it all the time.”

“Hush, you,” McGregor said, snorting. “Tend to your ciphering, not your wisecracks.” Mary dutifully bent her head to the paper. Five minutes later, or ten, or fifteen, she’d come out with something else outrageous. He was as sure of it as of the sun coming up tomorrow morning.

When he drove out in the wagon the next morning, he was only half convinced the sun had come up. A thick layer of dirty gray clouds lay between it and him. In that murky light, the snow covering the ground also looked gray and dirty, though most of it was freshly fallen. Under the wagon’s iron tires, the frozen ground was as hard—though by no means as smooth—as if it were macadamized.

As usual, U.S. soldiers meticulously checked the wagon before letting McGregor go on into Rosenfeld. He had nothing to hide, not here: all his bomb-making paraphernalia remained hidden in his barn. After he’d taken his revenge on Major Hannebrink, who’d ordered his son executed, the urge to make his deadly toys had eased.

The Yanks hadn’t rebuilt the sheriff’s station after he bombed it. All they’d done was clear away the wreckage. He smiled as he jounced slowly past the bare, snow-covered stretch of ground. It was not enough. Nothing could ever be enough to make up for losing Alexander. But it was something. It was more than most Canadians had, a lot more.

Rosenfeld was a far cry from the big city. It didn’t hold even a thousand people. If two railroad lines hadn’t met there, it might not have existed at all. Throughout the war, though, Americans had packed it to the bursting point, as it became a staging area and recuperation center for the long, hard campaign against Winnipeg.

Now, with just a small occupation garrison, it seemed much more nearly its old self than it had during the war years. People on the street nodded to McGregor. Why not? No need to bother avoiding his eyes. Alexander was two and a half years dead now: old news, to everyone but his family. No one knew McGregor had had his revenge. Had anyone known, the Yanks would have found out. They would have stood him against a wall, as they’d stood his son, and shot him down, too.

He hitched the horse on the main street in front of the post office. He couldn’t have done that during the war; the Yanks had reserved the street for themselves. Digging in his pockets for some change, he went into the post office.

“Hello, Arthur,” said Wilfred Rokeby, the postmaster. He was a small, fussily precise man who wore his hair parted in the middle and plastered down to either side with some spicy-smelling oil. “Didn’t expect to see you coming into town quite so soon.”

“Ran out of kerosene sooner than I thought I would.” McGregor set a couple of dimes on the counter. “Long as I’m here, let me have some stamps, too, Wilf.”

“I can do that,” Rokeby said. He peeled ten red two-cent stamps from a sheet and handed them to McGregor. They were ordinary U.S. stamps, adorned with Benjamin Franklin’s fleshy portrait, but had the word
MANITOBA
overprinted on them in black.

“At least we don’t have to pay double any more, to help the singers and dancing girls come up here and perform for the Yankee soldiers,” McGregor said, pocketing the stamps. “That was nothing but highway robbery.”

“Things
are
settling down a mite,” the postmaster said. “I hear some fellow’s going to come up from Minnesota and start us a new weekly paper when the weather gets better. Been a long time since that bomb in front of Malachi Stubing’s place shut down the old
Register
.”

That bomb had not been one of McGregor’s. He hadn’t been in the bombing business back then. He had been in Henry Gibbon’s general store when the bomb went off. The Americans had almost taken him hostage after the blast. Frowning, he said, “One more way for the Yanks to peddle their lies.”

“That’s so,” Rokeby admitted, “but it’ll be good to have the town news, too, and all the advertising. We’ve missed it. You can’t say we haven’t, Arthur.”

“Well, maybe,” McGregor said, but then, as if to rebut himself, he added, “Minnesota.” Shaking his head, he turned and walked out of the post office.

The general store was half a block up the street, and on the other side. Henry Gibbon was wiping his hands on his apron when McGregor came inside carrying a large sheet-iron can. A hot stove gave relief from the chill outside. “Didn’t expect to see you for another week or ten days, Arthur,” the storekeeper said. He raised an eyebrow almost to what would have been his hairline had his hair not long since retreated to higher ground.

“Ran out of kerosene.” McGregor set the can on the counter with a clank. “Want to fill me up again?”

“Sure will,” Gibbon said, and did so with a large tin dipper. When he was through, he put the top securely back in place and held out his right hand, palm up. “Five gallons makes sixty-five cents.”

“Would only have been half a dollar before the war,” McGregor said. The fifty-cent piece and dime he gave Gibbon were U.S. coins, the five-cent piece Canadian. More and more of the money in circulation came from the USA these days.

“During the war, you’d have been out of luck if you didn’t have your ration book,” Gibbon said with a massive shrug. “It’s not as good as it was, but it’s not as bad as it was, either.”

He hadn’t had a son killed. He could afford to say things like that. McGregor had, and couldn’t. He started to head out the door, then checked himself. Gibbon might not know good and bad from the man in the moon, but he heard all the gossip there was to hear in Rosenfeld. “Has Wilf Rokeby got it straight? Is some fellow coming up from the United States to put out a paper here?”