into fists of frustration.
Maude set a consoling hand on his shoulder. 'You went up to Winnipeg, Arthur. You looked around. And then you came home and said the thing couldn't be done.' That was as close as she would come to talking out loud about his bombs. 'If it can't be done, it can't, that's all.'
'Damn the Yanks!' he said fiercely. 'They keep too many soldiers around Custer's headquarters, and around the house he's stolen, too.'
Looking back on it, blowing up Major Hannebrink had been fairly easy. The Yanks' euphoria at winning the war had helped; everyone in Rosenfeld that night had been celebrating as if joy would turn illegal the second the sun came up again. And Hannebrink was only a major, and not nearly so valuable to the Americans as their commander for all of Canada.
They knew General Custer would make a target for Canadians, as Archduke Franz Ferdinand had made a target for the Serbs. A Serb bomber had killed Franz Ferdinand and touched off the Great War. The Americans didn't intend to let Custer go the same way. They kept swarms of soldiers around him. McGregor had had no chance whatever to plant a bomb anyplace where it might do any good.
He might have flung one into Custer's motorcar, as the Serbs had flung one into Franz Ferdinand's carriage. The Serbian nationalist who flung his bomb had been shot dead a moment later. McGregor wanted to live. Even killing Custer was not revenge enough to satisfy him. He wanted more later, if he ever got the chance.
'Maybe he'll come down here to Rosenfeld again,' Maude said.
She sounded consoling, the way she did when one of the girls was sad after breaking a toy. McGregor was sad-and furious, too-because he couldn't break his toy. If you looked at that the right way, it was grimly funny.
'Not likely,' he said. 'It isn't much of a town, when you get right down to it.' He scowled. 'There's just no chance for a man working by himself.'
Maude asked the question that had stymied him over and over again: 'Who can you trust?'
'Nobody.' That was the answer he always reached. 'Too many people up here have their hands in the Yanks' pockets. Too many people spy on their neighbors. Too many people would just as soon turn into Yanks-and you can't always tell who they are, not till you find out the hard way you can't'
His wife nodded. 'I don't know what you can do, then, except get on with things here.'
'I don't, either.' McGregor felt like a lone wolf looking to pull down the biggest bull moose in an enormous herd. That was, when you thought about it, a crazy thing to want to do. Part of him knew as much. No: all of him knew as much. It was just that most of him didn't care. Slowly, he said, 'The trouble is, there are too many hours in the day in the middle of winter-too much time to sit around and think.'
Farm work was harder and made a man keep longer hours than any town job. There were times, especially around the harvest, when he wished he could stay awake for a couple of weeks at a stretch so as not to waste any precious time. When snow lay deep on the ground, though, what a man could do diminished. After he tended the stock and made repairs around the house and barn, what was left but coming inside and sitting around and brooding?
Maude had an answer: 'You might help me with some of my chores. They don't go away when the weather gets cold. Just the opposite, as a matter of fact.'
He stared at her. Did she think he was going to put on an apron and do women's work? If she did, she had another think coming. He intended to let her know as much, too, in great detail.
Then he saw her eyes sparkle. He'd drawn in his breath for an angry shout. He let it out in a gust of laughter instead. 'You're a devil,' he said. 'You really are. You had me going there.'
'I hope so,' his wife answered. 'It's good to see you smile, Arthur. I haven't seen it often enough, not since-' She stopped. No one in the family had smiled much since Alexander got shot. Gamely, she went on, 'We can't stay gloomy all the time. Life is too short for that. In spite of everything, life is too short for that.'
'I suppose not,' he said, nowhere near sure he supposed anything of the sort. To keep from having to decide whether he did or not, he pointed toward the ceiling. 'What are the girls doing?'
'As much schoolwork as they can, I hope,' Maude said. 'If it doesn't snow again, they ought to be able to start going again tomorrow or the day after. They want to go back.' A smile twisted only one corner of her mouth. 'I hope they can. I won't be sorry to have them out of the house for a while. They've been snapping at each other a lot the past few days.'
'I've noticed.' McGregor ruefully shook his head. 'I can still heat up Mary's backside, but that doesn't work with Julia any more.' His older daughter was a woman, which still bemused him. 'Have to talk sense to her, and sometimes she doesn't want to listen to sense.'
'And where do you figure she gets that?' his wife murmured. He pretended not to hear. Knowing when not to hear struck him as not the least important part of a happy marriage.
What he did say was, 'Fix me up a cup of tea, will you? I think I've warmed up enough so that it won't turn into a lump of ice in my belly now.'
He was sipping it when Julia came downstairs dramatically rolling her eyes and demanded, 'Who will do something about my nuisance of a little sister?'
McGregor laughed again-twice in one morning. 'You remind me of Henry II saying 'Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?'-and that was the end of Thomas a Becket,' he said.
Julia looked so angry, he thought for a moment she wanted someone to rid her of Mary. But she was angry about something else: 'They don't teach the history of England in school any more, except how the mother country was so wicked, the Americans had to have a revolution to get away.'
'I'm not surprised,' McGregor said. 'I'm not happy, mind you, but I'm not surprised. The Yanks are doing everything they can to make us the same as they are, and they try to pretend they invented everything they borrowed from the mother country. The less youngsters know about England, the easier it is for the Americans to get away with their lies.'
'That's right.' Julia seemed about to burst into tears. 'And there's nothing we can do about it. either, is there?'
Hearing that, McGregor knew he would have to try again to bomb General Custer. Maybe Custer's death would spark an uprising throughout Canada. Even if it didn't, it would remind his countrymen that they had a country of their own, that they weren't Yanks who happened to live in a cold climate and speak with a slightly strange accent.
And, with her fury against the United States, Julia had forgotten to be furious at her little sister. Or so McGregor thought, till Julia said, 'And Mary keeps humming in my ear until it drives me to distraction. She's being annoying on purpose.'
'If you'd been born a boy, you'd know how to take care of that,' McGregor said. 'You'd tell her to stop. If she didn't, you'd wallop her. If you want to go back upstairs and pretend you're a boy for a bit, that's all right with me.'
Julia went, the light of battle in her eyes. A few minutes later, McGregor heard a thump. He waited for Mary to come down and complain about what a beast Julia was being. Nothing of the sort happened. There were several more thumps, interspersed with shouts and a couple of thuds, as of one body, or perhaps two, suddenly landing on the floor.
He chuckled. 'That sounds cheery, doesn't it?'
'I hope they don't hurt each other,' Maude said worriedly. 'Julia's bigger, but I don't think Mary knows how to quit.'
'If she goes up against somebody who's bigger and who means business, she'll learn how to quit after a little while,' McGregor said.
His wife looked at him-caught and held his eye-without saying anything. For a moment, he wondered why. Then he realized that what he'd said about his younger daughter could apply to Canada's struggle against the United States. His own face showed that realization, but Maude kept staring at him. Again, he wondered why, and started to get angry.
But then he saw that what he'd said about his younger daughter could also apply to his own struggle against the United States. The United States were enormously bigger than he was, and they meant business about holding on to his country. He didn't care whether they meant business or not. He intended to go on fighting them.
'They haven't licked me yet, Maude,' he said. 'I've hit them a few licks, but they haven't licked me.'
'All right,' was the only thing his wife said. She wanted him to be careful in what he was doing, but she didn't
