company whose president has lacked the forethought to cross your mayor's palm with silver; or on your brother-in- law, whom you reckon must surely be right this once, having been wrong so often, 'throw some good after the bad, and you will earn it all back, and more besides.'
This is what they tell you, and once in a blue moon they tell you the truth. The rest of the time, they buy themselves railroad cars-heavens! railroads! — and yachts and shooting boxes in Scotland and Congressmen to shoot from the shooting boxes, and they do it with your bad money and your good impartially.
Yet this appears to be the theory upon which James G. Blaine has chosen to go on with this war, no other theory looking to hold. Not only has he chosen to throw good money after bad, but to throw good men after good. The dead mount up, and the peg-legged, and the hook-handed, and the blind, but never you fear, for we have gained a mile of ground in Kentucky, near enough, and have not lost above forty or fifty miles of New Mexico to make up for it, and have had Washington, D.C., knocked flat besides, and so victory must be right around the corner.
He rubbed his chin, studying what he'd done. 'Will this cause them to make me out to be a Confederate spy again?' he murmured. He read the words once more. 'To hell with that. It's the truth.' He inked his pen and kept on with the editorial.
Chapter 11
Abraham Lincoln watched the soldiers building the gallows out side Fort Douglas. It was a touch of General Pope's, either extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad, depending on how things worked out, for Lincoln was not the only one watching that exercise in practical carpentry. Far from it: the work had to be visible from a goodly part of Salt Lake City, and those of the Latter-Day Saints who could not see it would have heard of it.
As Lincoln watched the men labour, stripped to their shirts, a guard in a blue blouse watched him. He suspected the guard had stretched the truth about his age to get into the Army. The fellow was trying to raise a mustache, but had only a little pale fuzz on his upper lip. His eyes never left Lincoln. It was as if he were tracking a nine-point buck, a resemblance only strengthened by the loaded Springfield he carried. The index finger of his right hand never got far from the trigger.
'You want to be careful with that,' Lincoln said mildly, 'lest something happen we would both regret afterwards.'
'Oh, no, Mr. Lincoln.' The guard shook his head. 'I wouldn't regret it one bit.' His smile was wide and bright and pitiless and about half crazy. 'So you're the one who wants to be careful.'
'Believe me, I shall,' Lincoln said. Shot while trying to escape. How many murders hid behind that stern mask of rectitude? He did not care to add another to the number.
Half a dozen traps on the gallows. Half a dozen nooses, though the ropes were not yet in place. Half a dozen Mormon leaders to dance on air at a time, though they were not yet in place, either. Lincoln knew John Pope wanted to hang him, too. Had Pope had his way, he would soon climb those steps with Orson Pratt and George Cannon and the rest of the high-ranking Mormons the U.S. Army had managed to run down. A Democrat in the White House might have let Pope hang him.
Of course, with a Democrat in the White House, the United States would no doubt have passively acquiesced to the Confederacy's acquisition of Chihuahua and Sonora. The Mormons would not have gained an excuse for showing their disloyalty to the government that loved them so little. Would that have been better? Lincoln shook his head. The United States should have resisted the expansion of the slave power, and should have started resisting long since. His smile reached only one corner of his mouth. The United States should have done a better job of resisting, too.
One of the soldiers up on the multiple gallows tried a trapdoor. It didn't drop. 'God damn it,' he said, as any workman would have when what he was making didn't perform the way it should. He called to another soldier: 'Hey, Jack, bring me over that plane, will you? Got to smooth this old whore down.' Yes, it was just work to him. If he thought about what the work would do, he didn't show it.
Lincoln turned away from the gallows and slowly walked back into the fort. The guard followed, finger still near the trigger of his rifle. 'Son, I am not going to run away,' Lincoln told him. 'I am seventy-two years old. The only way I could move faster than you would be for someone to throw me off a cliff yonder.' He pointed north and east, toward the brown, sun-baked Wasatch Mountains.
'That'd be good,' the guard said, showing his teeth. Lincoln kept quiet.
Inside Fort Douglas, Colonel George Custer was strutting across the parade ground. When he saw Lincoln, he scowled and trotted toward him. For a moment, Lincoln thought the cavalry officer would collide with him. But by what he'd seen, Custer lived his entire life going straight ahead at full throttle. That struck Lincoln as needlessly wearing, but the cavalryman wasn't going to ask his advice.
Custer wanted to go chest-to-chest with him, but wasn't tall enough. He had to content himself with going chest-to-belly and fiercely scowling up into Lincoln 's face, as he'd done several times before. 'If it were up to me,' he growled, 'you'd swing.'
'I thank you kindly for the vote of confidence, Colonel,' Lincoln said.
Irony to Custer was like a mouse on the tracks to a locomotive: not big enough to notice. He rolled right over it, saying, 'You dashed Black Republican, they should have hanged you after we lost the last war, they should have hanged you again for a Communard, and now they should hang you for a traitor. You're luckier than you deserve, do you know that?'
'I'm lucky in all the people who love and admire me, that's plain,' Lincoln answered.
Again, it sailed past the cavalry colonel. He paused to kick dust on Lincoln 's shoes, another of his less endearing habits, then jerked a thumb back in the direction of General Pope's office. 'The military governor is going to want to see you. You may as well go on over there now.'
'I'll do that,' Lincoln said, amiably enough. When Custer did not move, he added, 'Just as soon as you get out of my way, I mean.' With another growl, the commander of the Fifth Cavalry stepped aside.
As Lincoln ambled along in the direction of Pope's office, the young lieutenant who'd arrested him at Gabe Hamilton's house came out of the stockade, spotted him, and came over at a run. 'Mr. Lincoln! I was looking for you. General Pope-'
'Wants to invite me to take some tea with him,' Lincoln said as the lieutenant gaped. 'Yes, so I've been informed.' Resisting the urge to pat the youngster on the head, Lincoln walked past him toward the beckoning shade.
General John Pope looked up from the sheet of paper he was reading. 'Ah, Mr. Lincoln,' he said, taking off his spectacles and setting them on the desk. 'I wanted to speak with you.'
'So I've been told,' Lincoln said. A moment later, he repeated, 'So I've been told.' It meant nothing to Pope. It probably would have meant nothing to him had he seen both Custer and the young lieutenant come up to Lincoln. The former president started to sit, waited for Pope's brusque nod, and finished setting his backside on a chair.
The military governor of Utah Territory glowered at him. It was probably a glower that put his subordinates in fear. Since Lincoln already knew Pope's opinion of him and was already in his power, it had little effect here. Perhaps sensing that, Pope made his voice heavy with menace: 'You know what would happen to you if your fate were in my hands.'
'I have had a hint or two along those lines, yes, General,' Lincoln answered.
'President Blaine forbids it. You know that, too. It's too damned bad, in my opinion, but I am not a traitor. I obey the lawful orders of my superiors.' Pope tried the glare again, not quite for so long this time. 'Next best choice, in my view, would be putting convict's stripes on you and letting you spend the rest of your days splitting rocks instead of rails.'
'In my present state, I doubt the gravel business would get as great a boost from my labours as you might hope,' Lincoln said.
Pope went on as if he had not spoken: 'The president forbids that as well. His view is that no one who has held his office deserves such ignominy-no matter how much he deserves such ignominy, if you take my meaning.'
