Quigley's hypocrisy.
'I have several excellent reasons, Monsieur Galtier,' Quigley answered. As he spoke, he ticked them off on his fingers, which, with his elegant Parisian accent and his incisive logic, made him seem more a lawyer than a soldier to Galtier: an invidious comparison if ever there was one. 'First, monsieur, your farm is sufficiently far back from the banks of the St. Lawrence as to be be yond artillery range even from the gunboats that try to harass our operations on the river and our crossings. This is an important matter in the placement of a hospital, as I am sure you must agree.' Without waiting to learn whether Galtier agreed or not, he went on, 'Second, the road is already paved to within a couple of miles of your farm. Extending it this much farther is a work of no great trouble.'
'I would not put you to any trouble whatever,' Galtier said, knowing he was righting a losing battle.
'As I say, it is a small matter,' Quigley replied. 'It will even work to your advantage: an all-weather road passing by your farm will enable you to sell your produce ever so much more readily than you do now.'
'I shall have ever so much less produce to sell, however, as you are taking so much of my patrimony for the purpose of building this hospital,' Lucien told him. 'And you appear to be taking the best land I have, that given over to wheat.'
'Only the most convenient,' Major Quigley assured him. 'And you will be compensated for the use.'
'Compensated as I was for my produce last winter?' Galtier shot back. Quigley shrugged, a fine French gesture to go with his fine French tongue. Yes, his hypocrisy was deep indeed. He never once mentioned Lucien's refusal to give names to Father Pascal or to collaborate with the Americans in any other way. But the farmer was as sure as he was of his own name that, had he cho sen to collaborate, the hospital would have gone up on someone else's land.
Quigley said, 'Do not think of this hospital as a permanent structure, Monsieur Galtier. It will serve its purpose for the time being and then pass away and be forgotten. As we establish and enlarge our foothold north of the St. Lawrence, no doubt it will become practical for us to build hospitals in se cure areas there.'
'No doubt,' Lucien agreed tonelessly. Thinking he ought to learn all he could about the American incursion on the far side of the river, he asked, 'And how is the war faring for you there?'
Major Quigley spread his hands. Though not a real Frenchman, he played the role well enough to take it on the stage. 'Not so well as we would like, not so poorly that the enemy will be able to throw us back into the river.'
By the enemy, of course, he meant the forces of Galtier's rightful government and those of Great Britain, which was proving a loyal ally to France. Lu cien did not reply. What could he say? He was just an ordinary farmer. He supposed he should have been grateful that the American's revenge was no worse than this. From what he had heard, people who crossed the U.S. mili tary government sometimes disappeared off the face of the earth. He had a wife and half a dozen children who needed him. He could not afford to let his tongue run as free as he might have liked.
When he didn't say anything, Jedediah Quigley shrugged again. 'There you are, Monsieur Galtier. We should start construction in the next few days.
If you have any objections to the plan as currently constituted, you can offer them to the occupation authorities in Riviere-du-Loup.'
'Thank you so much, Major Quigley,' Galtier said, so smoothly that the American did not notice he was being sardonic. Oh, yes, you could make a trip up to Riviere-du-Loup for the privilege of complaining to the authorities about what they were doing to you. But, since they'd already decided to do it, how much was that likely to accomplish? The short answer was, not much. The longer answer was that it might do harm, because daring to complain would get his name underlined on the list the occupation authorities surely kept of those they did not trust.
'Now that I have given you the news, Monsieur, I must return to town,' Quigley said. He climbed onto an utterly prosaic bicycle and pedaled away.
Off to the north, across the river, artillery rumbled. Galtier wondered whether it belonged to the American invaders or to those who tried to defend Quebec against them. The defenders, he hoped. He glanced up to the sky. The weather was still fine and mild. How much longer it would remain fine and mild, with September heading toward October, remained to be seen. Long enough for him to finish getting in the harvest — that long, certainly, if God was merciful even to the least degree. But the day after the harvest was done…
'Let the snow come then,' he said, half prayer, half threat. The Americans would not have an easy time keeping an army on the far side of the wide river supplied if the winter was harsh. The defenders would not have an easy time, either, but they would not be cut off from their heartland as the invaders would. How well did Americans, used to warm weather, deal with weather that was anything but? Before long, the world would find out.
Marie came out of the farmhouse and looked down the road toward Riviere-du-Loup. Major Quigley, a rapidly disappearing speck, was still visi ble. Lucien wished Quigley would disappear for good. His wife asked, 'What did the Boche americain want of you?'
'He was generous enough to inform me'-Lucien rolled his eyes-'the Americans are taking some of our land for the purpose of building a hospital on it. It is a safe place to do so, Major Quigley says.'
Marie stamped her foot. 'If he wants to build it in a safe place, why does he not put it in Father Pascal's church? No one would bring war to holy ground, is it not so?'
'That is an excellent thought,' Galtier said. 'Even the pious father could not disagree with it, good and Christian man that he is.' He shook his head. The war was making him more cynical than he'd ever dreamt of being before it began.
'But no,' Marie went on. 'It must be on our good cropland. Well, I have a hope for this hospital of theirs.'
'I have the same hope, I think,' Lucien said. His wife looked a question his way. 'I hope it is very full of Americans,' he told her. She nodded, satis fied. They'd been married a long time, and thought a lot alike.
Stephen Ramsay used a makeshift periscope to look up over the parapet at the Yankee lines between Nuyaka and Beggs. If he'd stuck his head up to have a look around, some damnyankee sniper would have blown off the top of it. The Creek regiment in which Ramsay was a captain had pushed U.S. troops a few miles back from Nuyaka, but then the lines had set like concrete.
He turned the periscope this way and that. What he saw remained pretty much the same, regardless of the angle: barbed wire, some shiny and new, some rusting; firing pits for Yankee scouts; and then another trench line just like his.
Lowering the periscope — a couple of little hand mirrors mounted at the proper angles on a board-he turned to Moty Tiger and said, 'Far as I can see, those damnyankee sons of bitches are here to stay.'
'That's not good, sir,' the Creek sergeant answered seriously. 'This is our land, Creek land. If we can, we have to throw them off here. You Confeder ates have the right to be here. You are our friends. You are our allies. But we have been enemies of the United States for many generations. The Yankees do not belong here.'
'I'm not going to argue with you, Sergeant,' Ramsay said. 'All I'm going to do is give you this here periscope and let you take a look for yourself. If that looks like a position we can rush, you tell me straight out. Go on — take a look.'
Moty Tiger looked. He looked carefully — or as carefully as he could, given the limitations of the instrument. As Ramsay had before him, he lowered it. His coppery face was glum. 'Doesn't look easy, Captain,' he admitted.
'I didn't think so, either,' Ramsay said, with more than a little relief. He'd been afraid Moty Tiger would think like a Creek before he thought like a soldier, and would feel duty-bound to try to recover every scrap of Creek terri tory regardless of the cost. He outranked his sergeant, of course, but Moty Tiger was a Creek and he wasn't. In a contest for the hearts and minds of the soldiers in the Creek Nation Army, that counted more than rank did. For that matter, Moty Tiger didn't just influence the opinions of his fellow Indians: he also reflected those opinions.
There the matter rested till late that afternoon, when Colonel Lincoln came up to the front-line trench. When Ramsay saw the regimental C.O.'s face, his heart sank. Lincoln looked thoroughly grim. He didn't say anything. Ramsay got the idea that wasn't because he didn't know anything — more likely because he knew too much, and didn't like any of it.
When Lincoln stayed quiet for more than five minutes, Ramsay, who favored the direct approach, asked him, 'What's gone wrong now, sir?'
Colonel Lincoln gestured for Ramsay to walk with him. Once they got out of earshot of the men, Lincoln said,
