Kimball pulled his watch out of his pocket. Good-he wasn't late yet. He frowned, then set the watch on a table by the door. Some of the Radical Liberals were liable to have clubs, too, and that could be hard on a timepiece.
He passed a policeman on his way to Freedom Party headquarters. The gray-clad cop inspected him. He wondered if the man would give him trouble. But the cop called 'Freedom!' and waved him on his way. Kimball raised the club in salute as he hurried along.
Freedom Party stalwarts spilled out onto the sidewalk and into the street around the headquarters. They'd drawn a few policemen on account of that. 'Come on, fellows, you don't want to block traffic,' one of the policemen said. The men in white and butternut took no special notice of him. Yes, he had a six-shooter, but there were more than a hundred times six of them, combat veterans all, and some no doubt with pistols of their own tucked into pockets or trouser waistbands.
'Form ranks, boys,' Kimball called. The Freedom Party men did. They didn't just spill into the street then: they took it over, in a long, sinewy column that put Kimball in mind of the endless close-order drill he'd gone through down at the Naval Academy in Mobile. The comparison was fitting, because the stalwarts- mostly ex-soldiers, with a handful of Navy men-had surely done their fair share of close-order drill, too.
'You can't do that!' a cop exclaimed. 'You haven't got a parade permit!'
'We are doing it,' Kimball answered. 'We're out for a stroll together-isn't that right, boys?' The men in butternut and white howled approval. Kimball waited to see if the policeman would have the nerve to try arresting him. The cop didn't. Grinning, Kimball said, 'On to Hampton Park! Forward-march!''
The column moved out, the stalwarts raising a rhythmic cry of 'Freedom!' Kimball had all he could do not to break into snickers. Here he was, leading Freedom Party men to attack Radical Liberals in a park named for the family of the Whigs' presidential candidate. If that wasn't funny, what was?
Hampton Park lay in the northwestern part of Charleston, across town from Freedom Party headquarters. The column of stalwarts was ten men wide and a hundred yards long; it snarled traffic to a fare-thee-well. Some automobilists frantically blew their horns at the men who presumed to march past them regardless of rules of the road. More than a few, though, shouted 'Freedom!' and waved and cheered.
'What do you aim to do?' a nervous policeman asked Kimball as the stalwarts strode up Ashley toward Hampton Park. By then, a couple of dozen cops were tagging along with the Freedom Party men. Tagging along was all they were doing; they seemed shocked to find themselves such a small, shadowy presence.
In Hampton Park, a couple of searchlights hurled spears of light into the sky. The Rad Libs hadn't adopted the glowing cathedral Anne Colleton had come up with, but they were doing their best to keep pace. Kimball pointed toward the searchlights. 'We aim to have a talk with those folks yonder.' The cop spluttered and fumed. He knew the Freedom Party aimed to do a hell of a lot more than that. But knowing it and being able to prove it were two different critters.
Ainsworth Layne had provided himself with a microphone, too. His amplified voice boomed out from the park. '-And so I say to you, people of the Confederate States, that with goodwill we can be reconciled to those with whom we have known conflict in the past: with our American brethren in the United States and with the colored men and women in our own country.' He sounded earnest and bland.
'Are you listening to that crap, boys?' Roger Kimball asked. 'Sounds like treason to me. How about you?' A low rumble of agreement rose from the men marching behind him. He asked another question: 'What does this country really need?'
'Freedom!'' The thunderous answer put Layne's microphone to shame. The Freedom Party men advanced into the park.
Dark shapes rushed out of the night to meet them. The Radical Liberals had a cry of their own: 'Layne and liberty!'
'Freedom!' Kimball shouted, and swung his club. It struck flesh. A Rad Lib howled like a kicked dog. Kimball laughed. If the other side felt like mixing it up, he and his comrades were ready.
Dozens of searchlights marked Freedom Party rallies these days. The Radical Liberals used only a couple. The Radical Liberals incompletely imitated the Freedom Party when it came to assembling a strong-arm force, too. They'd recruited a few dozen bullyboys: enough to blunt the first charge of the men in white and butternut, but nowhere near enough to halt them or drive them back.
'Layne and liberty!' A Radical Liberal swung at Roger Kimball's head. Kimball got his left arm up in time to block the blow, but let out a yip of anguish all the same. He shook the arm. It didn't hurt any worse when he did that, so he supposed the Rad Lib hadn't broken any bones-not from lack of effort, though. Kimball swung his own club. His foe blocked the blow with an ease that bespoke plenty of bayonet practice. But the Radical Liberal couldn't take on two at once. Another Freedom Party man walloped him from behind. He fell with a groan. Kimball kicked him, hard as he could, then ran on. 'Freedom!' he cried.
Ainsworth Layne must have caught the commotion at the back of the park. 'And now, I see, the forces of unreason seek to disrupt our peaceable assembly,' he boomed through the microphone. 'They pay no heed to the rights enumerated in the Confederate Constitution, yet they feel they have the right to govern. We must reject their violence, their radicalism, for we-'
'Freedom!' Kimball shouted again. Only a few of the Radical Liberals' muscle boys remained on their feet. Kimball smashed one of them down. Blood ran dark along his club. He guessed he'd fractured a skull or two in the fight. He hoped he had.
'Freedom!' the Party stalwarts roared as they crashed into the rear of the crowd. Some people tried to fight back. Others tried to run. They had a devil of a time doing it, with Layne's partisans so tightly packed together. Men and women started screaming.
'Freedom!' It was not only a war cry for Kimball and his comrades, it was also a password. They did their best to maim anyone who wasn't yelling their slogan.
They had fury on their side. They had discipline on their side, too. As they'd done in the trenches, they supported one another and fought as parts of a force with a common goal. The men in the crowd of Radical Liberals might have been their matches individually, but never got the chance to fight as individuals. The Freedom Party men mobbed them, rolled over them, and plunged deep into the heart of the crowd, aiming straight for the platform from which Ainsworth Layne still sent forth unheeded calls for peace.
Kimball stepped on someone. When she cried out, he realized her sex. He refrained from kicking her while she was down. Thus far his chivalry ran: thus far and no further. Swinging his club, he pressed on toward the platform.
Through the red heat of battle, he wondered what he and the rest of the Freedom Party men ought to do if they actually got there. Pull Layne off it and stomp him to death? A lot of the stalwarts would want to do that. Even with his blood up, Kimball didn't think it would help the Party. Some people would cheer. More would be horrified.
When the shooting started, it sounded like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. Roger Kimball didn't know whether a stalwart or a man in the crowd first pulled out a pistol, aimed it at somebody he didn't like, and squeezed the trigger. No sooner did one gun come out, though, than a dozen or more on each side were barking and spitting furious tongues of fire.
What had been chaos turned to a panicked stampede. All the people in the crowd tried to get away from the Freedom Party men-and from the gunfire-as fast as they could. If they trampled wives, husbands, children… then they did, and they'd worry about it later. The only thing they worried about now was escape.
'Let us have peace!' Ainsworth Layne cried, but there was no peace.
Kimball saw a Freedom Party man taking aim at Layne. 'No, dammit!' he shouted, and whacked the revolver out of the stalwart's hand with his club. The fellow snarled at him. He snarled back. 'We've got to get out of here!' he yelled. 'We've done what we came to do, but every cop in Charleston's going to be heading this way now. Time to go home, boys.'
He thought the stalwarts might be able to take on the whole Charleston police force and have some chance of winning. He didn't want to find out, though. If the Freedom Party won here, the governor would have to call out the militia. Either the citizen-soldiers would slaughter the stalwarts or they'd mutiny and go over to them, in which case South Carolina would have a revolution on its hands less than a month before the election.
Jake Featherston would kill him if that happened. It was no figure of speech, and Kimball knew as much. 'Out!' he yelled again. 'Away! We've done what we came for!' Discipline held. The Freedom Party men began
