not understand the United States well. You have lived in New York, you say. Now you live in Chicago. Can you tell me I am mistaken?'
He gave Friedrich Sorge credit: the Socialist gave the question serious thought before answering. At last, Sorge said, 'No, Marx does not understand this country as well as he might.'
'Good. We can go on from there. Will you also agree this is true of many Socialists in the United States?' Lincoln asked, pressing the newspaperman as if he still were a lawyer questioning an opposing witness. 'With the labour problems this country has, would you not have enjoyed greater success if you could have figured out how to make the voting man see things your way?'
'It could be. It is not certain, but it could be,' Sorge said cautiously. 'I think you are now coming to say what it is your aim to say. Say it, then.'
'I will say it,' Lincoln replied. 'Leaving revolution out of the bargain save as a last resort, I feel the Socialists offer the laborers of this country their best chance to reclaim it from the wealthy. If and when I bolt the Republican Party, I can bring some large fraction of its membership-a third, maybe half if I'm lucky-with me into the fold here. That is not enough to elect a president or senators, not yet, but it is enough to elect congressmen, state legislators, mayors, and it is a base from which to build. When Blaine goes down in '84, as you know he will, more people will see the Republicans are doomed and join our ranks. Now, how does that look to you?'
Sorge licked his lips. He was tempted; Lincoln could see as much. The prospect of some actual power hit the newspaperman like a big slug of raw rotgut whiskey. Playing to win was a game very different from playing to agitate. Slowly, Sorge said, 'This is not something I can decide at once. Also, this is not something I can decide alone. I shall have to talk with some men here and wire others what you propose.' He dug through the rubbish on his desk till he found a pencil.
After licking the point, he scribbled for a minute. Then he said, 'If I understand you, what you have in mind is…'
'Yes, that's right, nor near enough,' Lincoln said when the Socialist had finished reading back his notes. 'Off the record, Mr. Sorge, how does it strike you?'
'I am more revolutionary than you; you are right about that,' Sorge answered. 'But you are also right in saying we have not done as much as we might have. Maybe-maybe, I say-this will show us the way.'
'This is how the Republican Party was born, more than a generation ago,' Lincoln said. 'Antislavery Whigs, Free-Soilers, Know-Nothings, even a few Northern Democrats who couldn't stomach the extension of slavery-we all joined together to work for a common goal. I think this new coalition may do the same in regard to wage slavery.'
'I hope you arc right.' Sorge gave him a keen look. 'President Blaine will call you a traitor, and, when he loses the next election, he will say it is for no other reason than that you and your followers left the party.'
'President Blaine is not in the habit of listening to what I say, no matter how hard a time I have convincing people that that is so,' Lincoln said, sadly remembering John Taylor's miscalculation. 'I sec no reason why I should be obliged to take notice of what President Blaine says, especially when, from this day forth, we shall no longer be members of the same party.'
Friedrich Sorge pulled open a file cabinet behind his desk. When his hand came out of the drawer, it was clutching a whiskey bottle. More rummaging in the cabinet and in his desk produced two tumblers, mismatched and none too clean. He poured a couple of hefty dollops, handed one glass to Lincoln, and raised the other high. 'To Socialism!' he said, and drank.
Lincoln drank, too. The whiskey was bad, but it was strong. 'To Socialism,' he said.
Brigadier General George Custer rode along bare yards south of the forty-ninth parallel of latitude, the border separating Montana Territory from Canada, along with a troop from the Fifth Cavalry. Bare yards north of the border, not quite in rifle range but not far out of it, a troop of red-coated British cavalrymen rode along dogging his trail. Neither side had fired a shot since General Gordon took his mutilated army of invasion back over the border. Both sides were ready. For his part, Custer was eager.
Several reporters rode along with the Fifth Cavalry. One of them, an eager young fellow named Worth, asked, 'How does it feel, General, to have your brevet rank made permanent?'
'Well, I'll tell you, Charlie, it beats the hell out of going to the dentist to get a tooth yanked,' Custer quipped. Charlie Worth and the rest of the reporters laughed appreciatively. Custer held up a hand to show he wasn't through. The newspapermen fell silent, to hear what other pearls of wisdom might fall from his lips. He went on in a serious, even a bombastic, vein: 'My only regret is that the promotion comes as the result of a battle from which we could not seize the full fruits of victory because of the cease-fire's having gone into effect. Absent that, we should have pursued to destruction the ruffians who dared desecrate our sacred soil.'
Awkwardly, the reporters scribbled as they rode. 'God damn, but he gives good copy,' one of them muttered to another in admiring tones. The second man nodded. Custer didn't think he was supposed to hear. His chest swelled with pride. Truly he was the hero of the hour.
He waved to Charlie Worth. The reporter, honored at being shown such a confidence, rode up close to him. Custer said, 'Do you mind if I make another foraging run amongst your cigars, Charlie?'
'Why, not at all, General.' Worth held out a leather cigar case. Custer took a fat stogie from it and reined in so he could strike a match. He coughed a couple of times after he got the cigar going and sucked smoke into his mouth. Before the battle by the Teton River, the only tobacco he'd smoked had been in a few peace pipes handed him by the leaders of Indian tribes he'd smashed.
A reporter asked, 'What is your view of the cease-fire, General?'
'I regret that it came when it did, as it prevented us from punishing the British as they so richly deserved,' Custer replied. 'I also regret it even more on general principles, for it has humiliated us before the nations of the world for the second time in a space of less than twenty years.'
His stomach knotted at the thought. He had loved his country longer and more faithfully than he had loved his wife. Now, as in 1862, the United States were going down to mortifying defeat, and that despite his victory, a victory which, had he learned of the cease-fire in time, would never have happened. When he'd married Libbie after the War of Secession, he'd promised to stop cursing and stop drinking.
He'd held to the promise till he learned his victory counted for nothing. He'd stayed drunk for days after that, and let out all the oaths he had in him. He was still drinking, he was still swearing, and he'd taken up smoking for good measure.
Camp that evening brought everybody up close to everybody else; men stayed near the greasewood fires for warmth. To the north, the campfires of the troop of British cavalry were a constellation of brightly twinkling stars on the horizon.
Custer and his troopers wolfed down salt pork and hardtack. Some of them crumbled the biscuits and fried them in the grease from the pork, of which there was always an adequate supply. 'How do you people eat this stuff day after day, week after week, and live to tell the tale?' one of the reporters asked.
'So sorry, boys,' Custer said. 'Next time you ride along with us, we'll make sure we cater the affair from Denver.'
That got a round of laughter, as he'd hoped it would. Then one of the reporters-it was Charlie Worth, damn him-asked, 'How did Colonel Roosevelt and the Unauthorized Regiment take to Army rations?'
'I'm afraid I really don't know,' Custer answered, his voice all at once as cool as the breeze hissing down from the north. 'I never discussed that with Mr. Roosevelt.' He laid the tiniest bit of stress on the civilian title.
The reporters, of course, made their living noticing tiny stresses. 'Come on, General,' one of them said. 'What do you really think of Colonel Roosevelt'-he laid the tiniest bit of stress on the military title-'as a soldier? What do you think of the men of the Unauthorized Regiment as soldiers?'
'Have mercy, gentlemen,' Custer said. 'I've answered those same questions a lot of times over the past weeks.' And I'd like it a lot better if you asked them a damned sight less often. Having to share the limelight with the boy colonel gave him worse dyspepsia than salt pork and hardtack gave the reporters.
They wouldn't leave him alone. He might have known they wouldn't leave him alone. 'Come on, General,' Charlie Worth coaxed. 'Give it to us straight. You can do that.'
'I can only repeat what I've said a great number of times,' Custer answered: 'Colonel Roosevelt and his volunteers were gifted, patriotic amateur soldiers, and fought as well as men of that sort could be expected to fight.' Every word of that was true. If the reporters judged the tone to be ever so little on the slighting side, was
