the president of the Confederate States said gently. 'I profess myself to be in favor of that which makes their work harder and ours easier.'
'Hmm,' Jackson said. 'There is some truth in what you say.' Longstreet showed a perspective broader than his own. From the viewpoint of the Confederacy as a whole, the ability to conduct a strong, punishing defense was vital. From the viewpoint of a general with the inclination to attack, the ability of the enemy to conduct a strong, punishing defense was constipating.
'Of course there is.' In his own way, Longstreet had a certainty to match Jackson 's. Jackson 's sprang from faith in the Lord, Longstreet's, the general judged, from faith in himself. The Confederate president went on, 'Now that I have seen the outline of our position in Louisville, I will sec the position itself.'
He looked as if he expected Jackson to argue with him. He looked as if he expected to enjoy overruling his general-in-chief. Saluting, Jackson replied, 'Yes, sir. I look forward to accompanying you.'
'What?' Longstreet emphatically shook his head. 'I cannot permit that, General. You are-'
'Indispensable, Your Excellency?' Jackson presumed to break in on his commander-in-chief. 'I think not. The arguments applying to you and Mr. Lamar apply with equal force to me and General Alexander.'
'You arc insubordinate, General,' Longstreet snapped. Jackson inclined his head, as at a compliment. Longstreet glowered at him, then started to laugh. 'Very well-let it be as you say.'
Jackson put E. Porter Alexander in overall command until he should return, then, Longstreet at his side, rode down into Louisville, toward the sound of the guns. He went toward that sound as toward a lover. His wife knew of and forgave him his infidelity, one of the many reasons he loved her.
Even well behind the fighting line, shellfire and flames had taken their toll on Louisville 's houses and offices and warehouses and manufactories. Some were burnt-out skeletons of their former selves, while others had had pieces bitten out of them, as if caught in the grip of monstrous jaws. The air smelled of stale smoke and gunpowder, with the sick-sweet fetor of death under them.
Longstreet drew in a long breath. His mouth tightened. 'I have not smelled that smell since the War of Secession, but it never escapes the mind, does it?'
'No, sir.' Jackson had his head cocked to one side, savoring the sounds of battle at close range. For the moment, the artillery was fairly quiet. After some consideration, though, he said, 'I do not believe I ever heard such a terrific volume of musketry on any field during the War of Secession. Put that together with the increased power of the guns, and no wonder an attack crumples before it is well begun.'
'Yes,' Longstreet said abstractedly. A couple of ambulances rattled past them toward the rear. 'I have not heard the cries and groans of wounded men since the War of Secession, either, but those likewise remain in memory yet green.'
Soldiers coming back from the front, even the unwounded, looked like casualties of war: tattered uniforms, filthy faces, their eyes more full of the horror they had seen than of the debris-strewn paths down which they walked. Soldiers going forward, especially those who had been in the line before, advanced steadily, but without the slightest trace of eagerness. They knew what awaited them.
With every block now, the wreckage of what had been a splendid city grew worse. After a while, a corporal held up a hand. 'Nobody on horseback past here,' he declared, and then looked foolishly astonished at whom he had presumed to halt.
'Corporal, you are doing your duty,' Jackson said. He and Long-street dismounted and went forward on foot, soon moving from one trench to another along zigzags dug into the ground to minimize the damage from any one shellburst and to keep any advancing Yankees who gained one end of a trench from laying down a deadly fire along its entire length. Some of the trench wall was shored up with bricks and timbers from shattered buildings.
Slaves in coarse cotton laboured to strengthen the defenses further. Jackson made a point of looking at them, of speaking with them, of urging them on. Longstreet made a point of taking no notice of Jackson.
Up above the trench, on bare ground, a sharpshooter with a long brass telescope mounted on his Tredegar crouched in the military equivalent of a hunter's blind: rubbish cunningly arranged to conceal him from view from the front and sides while he searched for targets behind the U.S. line. Jackson wondered how many snipers he'd passed without noticing them. He also wondered how many similar sharpshooters in Yankee blue were peering south, looking for unwary Confederates.
In the front-line trenches, the soldiers started to raise a cheer for their general-in-chief and president. Officers in butternut frantically shushed them, lest the damnyankees, getting wind of the arrivals, send a torrent of shells down on Jackson and Longstreet.
The president walked along, examining the trench and pausing now and then to chat with the soldiers defending it. Jackson followed. After a couple of hundred yards, Longstreet turned to him and asked, 'Is it possible that the U.S. Army of the Ohio may bring in enough in the way of guns and men to drive us out of Louisville?'
'Yes, Mr. President, much as it pains me to say so, that is possible,' Jackson answered. 'They would pay a fearsome price, but it is possible.'
'Having taken Louisville at such a price, could they then rapidly overrun the rest of Kentucky?' Longstreet inquired. Jackson laughed out loud, which made the president smile. But he had another question: 'Are the Yankees as aware of these facts as we are ourselves?'
'I hardly see how it could be otherwise,' Jackson said. 'Why do you ask?'
'To see if your conclusions march with mine,' Longstreet said, which, to the general's annoyance, was not an answer at all.
Chapter 10
Colonel George Custer rode back toward Salt Lake City in high good humor. He had not succeeded in running the elusive John Taylor to earth, but he was bringing back to U.S. justice George Q. Cannon, another eminent leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Cannon, his hands manacled and his feet tied together under his horse, glumly rode along behind Custer and his brother.
In splendid spirits himself, Custer said to Tom, 'Did you hear about the Mormon bishop who passed away leaving behind nine widows?'
'Why, no, Autie, I can't say as I did,' Tom Custer answered. 'Why don't you tell me about the poor fellow?' By his expression, he suspected a joke of lurking in there somewhere. Since he couldn't see where, he willingly played straight man.
'It was very sad,' Custer said with a sigh. 'As the preacher put it by the graveside, 'In the midst of wives we are in death.''
Both Custer brothers laughed. So did the other soldiers in earshot. Tom Custer looked over his shoulder at their prisoner and asked, 'How many wives are you in the midst of, Cannon?'
'One,' the Mormon answered tightly. He was a round-faced little man, his hair cut close to his head, cheeks and upper lip clean-shaven, with a short, curly tangle of graying beard under his chin.
'Why lie?' Custer said with something approaching real curiosity. 'We know better. You must know we know better.'
'First, I am not lying.' Cannon had a precise, fussy way of speaking, more like a lawyer than a revolutionary. 'Second, and now speaking purely in a hypothetical sense, if the penalty for polygamy be harsher than the penalty for perjury, would it not profit one in such a predicament to lie?'
'It might, if those were the only charges you were up against,' Custer answered. 'Next to treason, though, they're both small potatoes.'
'I am not a traitor,' George Cannon said, as he'd been saying since Custer's troopers caught him in a hayloft near Farmington. 'I want nothing more for my people than the rights guaranteed them under the Constitution of the United States.'
'Life, liberty, and the pursuit of wives?' Custer suggested, which drew another guffaw from his brother and made the captured Mormon fugitive set his jaw and say no more.
John Pope had established his headquarters at Fort Douglas, north and east of the center of Salt Lake City. The fort sat on a bench of land higher than the town. From it, the artillery Pope had brought with him-and the guns that had come in since government forces reoccupied Utah Territory-could direct a devastating fire on any
