He could see only one way to do it: toss a bomb into Custer's motorcar. That was how the Serbs had touched off the Great War. McGregor couldn't see doing it and getting away with it. The prospect of not getting away with it had held him back in the past. He looked deep into himself. No, he really didn't care any more. If he paid with his life, he paid with his life. He'd never have the chance to strike another blow like this against the Yanks. The next commandant they appointed would probably be some faceless functionary whose own mother had never heard of him. If someone like that got blown to smithereens, so what? But Custer had been famous for more than forty years. Killing him would mean something. The USA didn't have an Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but Custer came close.
Murder on his mind, McGregor walked right past the general store. He turned around, shaking his head, and went back. Henry Gibbon nodded from behind the counter. 'Morning, Arthur,' he said. 'What can I do for you today?'
'I've got a list here somewhere,' McGregor said, and went through his pockets till he found it. Handing it to the storekeeper, he went on, 'It's Maude's stuff, mostly: canned goods and sundries and such. We need kerosene, too, and there's a couple of bottles of cattle drench on there for me, but it's mostly for the missus.'
Gibbon ran his finger down the list. 'Reckon I can take care of just about all of this.' He looked up. 'Hear tell your daughter's going to tie the knot. That's a big day, by heaven. Congratulations.'
'Thank you, Henry,' McGregor said. He pointed to Gibbon. 'I bet the Culligans came into town in the last couple of days. Mercy, even Wilf Rokeby's heard the news.'
'You know it's all over creation if Wilf's heard it, and that's a fact,' Henry Gibbon said with a chuckle. He turned to the shelves behind him. 'This'll take a little bit. Why don't you grab a candy cane-or a pickle, if one'd suit you better-and toast yourself by the stove while I rustle up what you need?'
'I don't mind if I do.' McGregor reached into the pickle barrel and pulled a likely one out of the brine. It crunched when he bit into it, the way a proper pickle should.
'I'm going to give you a crate,' Gibbon said. 'Bring it back and I '11 knock a dime off your next bill.'
'All right. I would have brought one with me this time, only I didn't think.'
'I noticed that. It's why I started knocking a dime off the bill,' the storekeeper answered. 'Plenty of people who won't think about anything else will remember money.'
McGregor would have been one of those people before the Great War. He would have been one of those people up until 1916. Now the only thing he remembered was revenge. 'What do I owe you?' he asked when Gibbon set the last can in the crate.
'Well, when you bring in the kerosene can and I fill it, everything put all together comes to $8.51,' Gibbon said. 'You did bring the kerosene can, I reckon?' By his tone, he reckoned no such thing.
'Yeah, I did.' McGregor shook his head in dull embarrassment. 'Lucky I remembered to hitch the horse to the wagon. I'll go get the can.'
'You'd have been a mite longer getting here, Arthur, if you'd forgotten about the horse,' McGregor called after him as he left.
He didn't answer. He would have walked back to the wagon for the kerosene can before going to the general store had Rokeby not given him a copy of the Register. Seeing that Custer was leaving Canada, seeing that Custer was going to celebrate while here, realizing that Custer might come through Rosenfeld, had taken everything else from his mind. He wanted to go back to the farm. He wanted to go back into the barn and get to work on a bomb he could throw.
He would have forgotten the crate of groceries had Henry Gibbon not reminded him of it. The storekeeper laughed as he carried it out toward the wagon. McGregor was glad he didn't own an automobile. He wasn't altogether sure he recalled how to get back to the farmhouse. The horse, thank heaven, would know the way.
When he carried the crate indoors, the Rosenfeld Register was stuck on top of the cans and jars. Naturally, Maude grabbed it; new things to read didn't come to the farm often enough. As naturally, McGregor's wife noticed the story about Custer right away. 'Is he going to parade through Rosenfeld?' she asked.
'I don't know,' McGregor answered.
'If he does parade through Rosenfeld, what will you do?' Sharp fear rode Maude's voice.
'I don't know that, either,' McGregor answered.
Maude set a hand on his arm. His eyes widened a little; the two of them seldom touched, except by accident, outside the marriage bed. 'I don't want to be a widow, Arthur,' she said quietly. 'I've already lost Alexander. I don't know what I'd do if I lost you, too.'
'I've always been careful, haven't I?' he said, coming as close as he ever did to talking about what he did besides farming.
'You go on being careful, do you hear me?' Maude said. 'You've done what you had to do. If you do anything more, it's over and above. You don't need to do it, not for me, not for Alexander.' She wasn't usually so direct, either.
'I hear you,' McGregor said, and said no more. He was the only one who could judge what he had to do. He was the only one who could judge how much revenge was enough for him. Now, he was the only one who could judge how much revenge was enough for Alexander. As far as he was concerned, he might kill every Yank north of the border without it being revenge enough for Alexander.
'Maybe he won't come through Rosenfeld,' Maude said. Did she sound hopeful? Without a doubt, she did.
'Maybe he won't,' McGregor said. 'But maybe he will, too. And even if he doesn't, don't you think the newspapers will print where he's going to be and when he's going to be there? If he's having parades, he'll want people to turn out. I suppose I can go meet him somewhere else if I have to.'
'You don't have to,' Maude said, as she had done before. 'Will you please listen to me? You don't have to, not any more.'
'Do you think Mary would say the same thing?' McGregor asked.
Maude's lips shaped two silent words. McGregor thought they were Damn you. He'd never heard her curse aloud in all the years he'd known her. He still hadn't, but only by the thinnest of margins. When she did speak aloud, she said, 'Mary is a little girl. She doesn't understand that dying is forever.'
'She's not so little any more, and if she doesn't understand that after the Yanks murdered Alexander, when do you suppose she will?' McGregor asked.
Maude spun away from him and covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders shook with sobs. McGregor stamped past her, back out into the cold. When he strode into the barn, the horse snorted, as if surprised to see him again so soon.
He didn't pick up the old wagon wheel and get out the bomb-making tools he hid beneath it. Time enough for that later, when he knew exactly what sort of bomb he needed to build and where he'd have to take it. For now, he just stood there and looked. Even that made him feel better. Slowly, he nodded. In a sense more important than the literal, he knew where he was going again.
Colonel Irving Morrell slammed his fist against the steel side of the test-model barrel. 'It's not right, God damn it,' he ground out. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been in such a temper. When the doctors said his leg wound might keep him from going back to active duty in the early days of the Great War? Maybe not even then.
'What can we do, sir?' Lieutenant Elijah Jenkins said. 'We're only soldiers. We haven't got anything to do with deciding which way the country goes.'
'And I've always thought that was how things should be, too,' Morrell answered. 'But when this chowderhead-no, this custardhead-of a Socialist does something like this… I ask you, Lije, doesn't it stick in your craw, too?'
'Of course it does, sir,' Jenkins said. 'It's not like I voted for the Red son of a bitch-uh, beg pardon.'
'Don't bother,' Morrell said savagely. 'That's what Upton Sinclair is, all right: a Red son of a bitch.' He seldom swore; he was not a man who let his feelings run away with his wits. Today, though, he made an exception. 'That he should have the gall to propose canceling the rest of the reparations the Rebs still owe us-'
'That's pretty low, all right, sir,' Jenkins agreed, 'especially after everything we went through to make the CSA have to cough up.'
But he'd put his finger on only part of Morrell's fury. 'Giving up the reparations is bad enough by itself,' Morrell said. 'But he wants to throw them away-however many millions or billions of dollars that is-and he won't spend the
