Mexican War. 'The order comes directly from General Wood, at General Staff headquarters in Philadelphia.'
Custer expressed an opinion of the relationship between Wood and Roosevelt that reflected poorly on the heterosexuality of either man. Like any underling with an ounce of sense, Dowling knew when to feign deafness. 'Why the devil is Wood stealing my men, then?' Custer said, rather more pungently than that.
'Sir, a major Mormon uprising has broken out in Utah,' Dowling said, waving the decipherment of the telegram to show the source of his news. 'They're right on one of our cross-country rail lines; we have to bring them back under the flag as fast as we can.'
'God damn them to hell, and may the U.S. Army send them there,' Custer exclaimed. 'We should have done it before the War of Secession, and we really should have done it during the Second Mexican War, when they tried to sneak out of our beloved Union. If anyone had listened to me then-' He shook his head. 'But no. We had to clasp the viper to our bosom. I was there, by God. I wanted them to hang all the Mormons' leaders, not just a handful of them. I wanted them to hang Abe Lincoln, too, while they had the chance. But would anybody hear a word I said? No. Are we better off because no one would? No again.'
'Sir, I wouldn't call what we did in Utah during the Second Mexican War clasping the Mormons to our bosom, or afterwards, either,' Dowling said; Custer had a selective memory for facts. John Pope and later military governors in Utah had jumped on the Mormons with both feet then, to make sure they didn't try giving the USA any more hard times. He supposed he could see why they'd outlawed polygamy, but suppressing public worship along with all other public meetings had always struck him as far too heavy-handed. Even after Utah joined the Union, public worship by groups larger than ten remained illegal; since the Second Mexican War, the Supreme Court hadn't been much inclined to interfere with claims of military necessity. And so the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City remained empty to this day. No wonder the Mormons didn't love the U.S. government.
Custer coughed rheumily. Still glowering at his adjutant, he asked, 'Are the damned Mormons in bed with the Rebs or the Canucks or both at once?'
'That's-not immediately clear from the reports I have here, sir,' Dowling answered, studying his boss with an emotion he wasn't used to feeling: respect. The sole piece of the military art with which Custer was familiar was the headlong smash, but his red-veined nose had a genuine gift for intrigue. 'There are some foreign agitators in the state, but no details as to who they are.'
'Could be either one,' Custer judged. 'The Mormons don't like niggers much better than the Rebels do, but the Canadians could be seducing them with lies about freedom of religion.' He laughed unpleasantly. 'If they were up in Canada, they'd have gotten the same short shrift the Germans who settled that town called Berlin did, and you can bet your bottom dollar on it.'
'That's probably true, sir,' Dowling said, and for once simple agreement was just that, nothing more. He went on, 'Shall I draft orders implementing this command for your signature, sir?'
'Yes, go ahead,' Custer said with a melodramatic sigh. 'They must have timed their damned uprising with a view to spoiling my offensive and robbing me of the breakthrough I surely would have earned. They'll pay, the scum.'
Dowling sighed as he bent over the situation map to figure out how he'd pull thirty thousand men or so out of the line. That let him turn away from Custer, which in turn let him snigger wickedly. If the Confederates and Canadians didn't have worse threats than First Army to worry about, the war was going better than he'd figured.
A sharp explosion close by made Reggie Bartlett jump and look around for the nearest hole in the ground in which to dive. People in civilian clothes on the streets of Richmond gave him odd looks: why on earth would a soldier be frightened of a backfiring motorcar? The Duryea, plainly having engine trouble, backfired a couple of more times before finally beginning to run a little better.
Another soldier coming his way, though, nodded in complete understanding. 'Just back from the front, are you?' he said.
Bartlett nodded. 'Sure am.' His laugh was self-deprecating. 'You can take the soldier out of the trenches, but it's not so easy taking the trenches out of the soldier. This is my hometown, and I feel like I'm a stranger here.'
'Know what you mean, pal,' the other soldier said. 'You get away for a while and it doesn't seem like the real world's real, if you know what I mean.' He stuck out a hand. 'Name's Alexander Gribbin-Alec, they call me.' He had swarthy, handsome features and a neat little chin beard that made him look like a Frenchman.
Giving his own name, Reggie shook hands with him. He said, 'Alec, shall we find someplace where the only pops we're likely to hear come from corks going out of bottles?'
'Friend, I like the way you think,' Gribbin said enthusiastically. 'If this is your town, you ought to know about places like that, eh?'
'You just want a drink, we can do that anywhere,' Bartlett said.
'I've seen that,' Gribbin agreed. 'Thank your lucky stars, Reggie my friend, the Drys haven't gotten their way here in Virginia. Down in Mississippi, where I come from, it's a desert, nothin' else but.'
'That's hard. That's cruel hard,' Bartlett said, and his newfound companion nodded, his mournful expression showing just how hard it was. Bartlett went on, 'What we could do, though, if you want the chance of something livelier, is to go to the saloon over at Ford's Hotel, right across the street from Capitol Square. It's only a couple blocks from here. Never know who's liable to show up therecongressmen, foreigners, admirals, who can say? — but they don't turn common soldiers away.'
'They'd better not,' Gribbin said indignantly. 'I'm a white man, by Jesus, and I'm as good as any other white man God ever made.'
'Not only that,' Reggie Bartlett said, 'but I've got money in my pocket- some, anyhow- and it spends as good as any other money the mint ever made.'
Alec Gribbin grinned widely. 'I'm the same way, and so is my money. Let's go.'
Ford's Hotel, on the corner of Broad and Eleventh Streets, was a four-story building of white marble, with a fancy colonnaded entrance. The Negro doorman, who wore a uniform with more gold buttons and ribbons and medals than a French field marshal could have displayed, tipped his hat in salute as the two Confederate soldiers in their plain butternut walked past him.
'Hell of a place,' Gribbin said with a low whistle, gazing around at the rococo splendour of the lobby. He winked and lowered his voice: 'Wouldn't it make the bulliest damn sporting house in the whole wide world?'
'Matter of fact, it would,' Bartlett said, 'but I wouldn't have the money to go into a sporting house tricked out this fancy.' He walked down the hall. His boots sank into the thick pile of the Turkish carpets underfoot. That wasn't so bad; the rugs didn't try to pull the boots off his feet, the way the trench mud had in the Roanoke River valley.
The saloon was a saloon: long bar, brass rail, mirror behind it so the bottles of whiskey and gin and rum looked to be twice as many as they really were, free-lunch counter with a painting of a nude above it. But the place catered to a prosperous crowd. Not only was the free lunch more appetizing than the usual run of sardines and sausage and limp cheese, but the nude, a voluptuous redhead, was a lot more appetizing than the common saloon daub.
'Makes me wish I was an artist,' Gribbin said, eyeing her with genuine respect. 'Get to see girls like that, and in the altogether-I tell you for a fact, Reggie, it just beats the stuffing out of freezing your feet in a trench in Pennsylvania. That country's so cold in the wintertime, the Yanks are welcome to it, far as I can see.'
They strode off to the bar, squeezing in alongside of a couple of portly, middle-aged men in expensive suits. 'Beer,' Bartlett said. Gribbin ordered a whiskey. Reggie put a quarter on the bar. It disappeared. No change came back.
'Not your five-cents-a-shot place,' Gribbin observed. Then he knocked back the whiskey. His eyes got big. 'I see why, too. That's the straight goods there. Those cheap joints, they put in red peppers and stuff, make you think you're getting better'n raw rotgut. You know, real whiskey's good.' He watched Bartlett drink half his schooner of beer, then said, 'Come on, finish that so as I can buy you another one. We can hit the free lunch, too. We drink enough, they won't care how much we dent the profits with what we eat.'
Bartlett drained the schooner. 'Ahh,' he said. His new friend slapped down a quarter. The barkeep, a Negro in a boiled shirt, fixed refills.
The two portly fellows were talking about pension plans for soldiers after the war was over: congressmen, or
