'What can we do, Colonel?' Lieutenant Jenkins asked when the latest unsatisfactory reply came back from the War Department. 'We should have a design ready to build now, and we're not even close.'
'Damned if I know, Lije,' Morrell answered. He tapped the papers with the tip of his index finger. 'I think we would have a design by now, if the budget were what people thought it was going to be when they set up the Barrel Works.'
'Miserable Socialists,' Jenkins said angrily. 'They're trying to take away everything we won on the battlefield.'
'They're not making anything easy for us, that's for sure,' Morrell said. 'I want to make hay while the sun shines, if you know what I mean. You have to figure the Rebs won't stay down forever. The farther ahead of them we are when they do start getting back on their feet, the better I'll like it.'
'Yes, sir,' Jenkins said. 'We'd be a lot better off, sir, if they'd listen to you more. If they don't want to listen to you, why did they send you out here in the first place?'
'To get me out of their hair, for one thing,' Morrell answered. 'To drive me out of my mind, for another. These days, they're so worried about spending money that they're trying to build barrels on the cheap. I don't know how many times I've explained and explained and explained that the engines in our machines aren't strong enough to do the job, but what sort of answer do I get? What it boils down to is, 'They did the job in the last war, so of course they'll do the job in the next one, too.' ' He looked disgusted.
So did Lije Jenkins. 'With that kind of thinking, we'd have gone into the Great War with single-shot black- powder Springfields.'
Morrell nodded. 'You understand that, and I understand that. The War Department understands it can get White truck engines- even the ones built in mirror image to pair with the regular model- in carload lots, cheap as it wants. Coming up with something better won't be anywhere near as cheap. And cheap counts. Right now, cheap counts a lot.'
'Are they going to leave our country's safety hanging on nickels and dimes?' Lieutenant Jenkins demanded indignantly. He was still very young, young enough to believe in the tooth fairy, the common sense of Congress, and a great many other unlikelihoods.
'Probably,' Morrell said, at which the lieutenant looked as if he'd just watched his puppy run over in the street. Trying not to smile, Morrell went on, 'They spent twenty years after the War of Secession tossing the Army nickels and dimes and not much more, remember. They paid for it, too, but that doesn't mean they can't do it again.'
'They'd have to be crazy,' Jenkins exclaimed.
'No, just shortsighted,' Morrell said, shaking his head. 'I think it was President Mahan who noted that the biggest trouble republics have is that, over time, the voters are apt to get tired of paying for what their country needs to defend itself. They'd sooner spend the money on bread and circuses, or else not spend it and keep it in their own pockets.'
'After everything we've gone through, sir, that would be a crime,' Jenkins said.
'You think so, and I think so, and the War Department thinks so, too,' Morrell replied, this time with a shrug. 'The voters don't think so. They've sent a lot of Socialists to Congress this year. We do what we can with what we have, that's all. If we haven't got much, we do what we can with that. Pharaoh made the Israelites make bricks without straw.'
'A crime,' Lieutenant Jenkins repeated. He wasn't old enough to recall the cheeseparing the Army had had to put up with during the dark years after the War of Secession. Neither was Mor-rell, but he'd listened to older soldiers grouse about it ever since he'd put on a green-gray uniform. General Custer, under whom he'd served in Tennessee, had been through it all.
And now, he'd heard, Custer was up in Canada, in charge of the soldiers bringing U.S. authority to a land larger than the United States. He didn't know how the old warhorse would shape in that assignment. It didn't seem to call for the slam-bang drive that characterized Custer's fighting style. On the other hand, Morrell would have preferred it to sitting behind a desk in Philadelphia. No doubt Custer did, too.
Morrell dismissed his former commander from his mind. He glanced over at Lije Jenkins, who still looked unhappy with the world. 'The only thing we can do is our best,' Morrell said. A cuckoo came out of the clock on the wall and announced six o'clock. Morrell grinned. 'The other thing we can do now is head over to the mess hall and get supper. And after that, didn't I hear something about a dance in town tonight?'
'Yes, sir.' Jenkins' eyes sparkled. 'I'm going over there. You feel like cutting a rug, too, sir?' He eyed Morrell with a certain bemused curiosity.
Morrell had all he could do to keep from laughing out loud. 'I'm not a great-grandfather ready for the boneyard yet, Lieutenant,' he said. 'There's still some juice left in here.' He set a hand over his chest and grinned wickedly. 'After supper, shall we race over to the dance hall?'
'Uh, no, sir,' Jenkins said. 'You ran me into the mud out on the practice range. I figure you can probably do the same thing on sidewalks.' His grin had a wicked touch, too. 'But, sir, there'll be girls there, you know.'
'I should hope so,' Morrell said. 'You don't think I'd want to waltz or foxtrot with an ugly customer like you, do you?' As a matter of fact, Lieutenant Jenkins was a handsome young man. That still didn't mean Morrell wanted to dance with him.
Morrell was heading toward thirty now, and had never come close to acquiring a wife. His eye had always been on the war ahead, as the eyes of the United States had been. But now the war was over and won, and single-minded devotion to duty was looking harder and less desirable not only to the country but also to Irving Morrell.
He did not head for the dance with Lieutenant Jenkins seriously expecting to find a wife the minute he stepped out onto the floor. That would have been unreasonable in the extreme, and he knew it. But if he did find a young lady, a lady he found attractive, he was ready and more than ready to pursue the matter and see where it led. He nodded as he left Fort Leavenworth. He'd never had that kind of determination before, not about anything except the battlefield.
Leavenworth, Kansas, was a town of about twenty thousand people. Not all of them served the fort, by any means. Many mined the large coal deposits in the area, while others worked in flour and lumber mills. But, regardless of whether the locals worked for the Army or not, soldiers got solid respect in Leavenworth. It had been an antislavery settlement back in the days before the War of Secession, when the South tried to make Kansas a slave state. Only the oldest of the old-timers recalled those days now, but the tradition of hatred for the Confederacy ran strong here, as it did in much of Kansas.
Morrell and Jenkins strode past a large bronze statue of John Brown the citizens of Leavenworth had erected after the Second Mexican War. Brown was and always had been a hero to many Kansans. He'd become a national hero during the 1880s, when people in the United States began to see that he'd known what he was doing when he'd attacked the Southerners not only here but also in their own lair down in Virginia.
The dance was at a social hall next to a white-painted Baptist church with a tall steeple, a spare building that might have been transported bodily from New England to the prairie. Sounds of piano and fiddle music drifted out into the night. 'That's not the best playing I've ever heard,' Morrell said, which was, if anything, a generous assessment, 'but they do go right after a tune.'
'Yes, sir,' Jenkins answered. 'Now we just have to hope it's not one of the dances where they've got maybe half a dozen girls and five hundred guys waiting to dance with them. A little bit of that kind goes a long way.'
It was chilly outside; a coal stove and the dancers' exertions heated the social hall, so that a blast of warm air greeted Morrell when he opened the door. After looking around, he nodded approval: men did not hopelessly outnumber women. Not all the men were soldiers-close to half wore civilian clothes. Morrell had never feared competition of any sort.
A punch bowl sat on a table at the far end of the hall. He went over to it, got himself a glass, and leaned against the wall, watching couples spin and dip more or less in time to the music. Scouting the terrain before advancing was a good idea in other things besides warfare.
Lije Jenkins, on the other hand, plunged straight into the fray, cutting in on a civilian in a sharp suit. The fellow gave him a sour look as he retired toward the sidelines. Leavenworth might have liked soldiers pretty well, but cutting in like that was liable to start a brawl anywhere.
With a final raucous flourish, the little three-piece band stopped its racket. People clapped their hands, not so much to applaud the musicians as to show they were having a good time. Men and women headed over to the
