as that of the eventual production machine. If so, these barrels would do tricks their ancestors had never imagined. They still weren't fast enough to suit him.
'Hell of a ride!' Jenkins shouted, sounding as exhilarated as a skilled horseman on a half-broken stallion. 'Hell of a ride! Now we've got the cavalry back again, by Jesus!'
'That's part of the idea,' Morrell said. Men on horseback had been poised throughout the Great War, ready to exploit whatever breakthroughs the infantry could force. But infantry alone hadn't been able to force breakthroughs, and cavalry melted under machine-gun fire like snow in Death Valley summer. The old barrels had broken through Confederate lines, but hadn't always been swift enough to exploit to the fullest the breaches they made.
Maybe these machines would, even in their present state. In his mind's eye, Morrell saw barrels clawing at the flank of a foe in retreat, shooting up his soldiers, wrecking his supply lines, keeping reinforcements from reaching the field, pushing the front forward by leaps and bounds, not plodding steps.
It was a heady vision, so heady it almost made Morrell see with his mind's eye to the exclusion of the pair at the front of his head. Had he not paid attention to the gauges in front of him, he would have missed noting how little fuel the test model carried in its tank. Stranding himself out on the prairie was not what he had in mind when it came to getting acquainted with the new machine. Reluctantly, he steered for the muddy field where half a dozen survivors of the Great War sat.
He turned off the engine, climbed out of the hatch, and got down off the test model. Lije Jenkins came down beside him. The youngster looked from the new barrel to the old ones. 'It's like stacking the first Duryea up against an Oldsmobile, isn't it, sir?' he said.
'Something like that, anyway,' Morrell said. 'Of course, there is one other difference: there really are Oldsmobiles, but this baby'-again, he remembered in the nick of time not to rap his knuckles on the hull-'is just pretend, for now.'
'I hope we don't take twenty years to get the real ones, sir,' Jenkins said.
'So do I, Lieutenant, with all my heart. We may need them sooner than that,' Morrell said. He started off toward the barracks. Jenkins tagged along after him.
As Morrell walked, he wondered what he could tell Agnes Hill about his new toy. She knew, in a general way, what his duties were. Being a soldier's widow, she also knew not to ask too many questions about what exactly he did. But the next time he saw her, he was going to be excited. He wanted to share that excitement. He also needed not to talk too much. He was awfully glad he'd gone to that dance with Jenkins. He wanted to go right on being glad. The only place where taking chances was a good idea was on the battlefield.
IX
A fat man with a nasty cough came up to the counter of the drugstore where Reggie Bartlett worked. 'Help you?' Reggie asked.
'Hope to God you can/' the man answered, hacking again. 'If I don't shake this damn thing, it's going to drive me right up a tree.' He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and tapped one in the palm of his hand.
'Here you go.' Reggie handed him a box of matches with HARMON'S DRUGS printed on the top-good advertising. He waited till the man lit up, then went on, 'I can give you a camphorated salve to rub on your chest and under your nose. And we've got a new cough elixir in. It's got a kind of denatured morphine in it-not nearly as strong, and not habit-forming, but it does the job.'
'Give me some of the salve, and a bottle of that stuff, too,' the sufferer said. He coughed some more and shook his head. 'This is killing me. I can't even enjoy my smokes any more.'
'Another thing you can do is, you can set a pot of water on the stove to boil, put in some of the salve, and breathe in the steam,' Bartlett said. 'That'll help clear out your lungs, too.'
'Good idea,' the fat man answered. His face took on a kind of apprehension that had nothing to do with his ailment. 'Now- what do I owe you?'
'Two thousand for the salve,' Reggie said. The customer nodded in some relief. Reggie continued, 'The elixir, though, it's new stuff, like I said, and it's expensive: $25,000.'
'Could be worse,' the fat man said. He took three $10,000 banknotes from his wallet and shoved them across the counter at Bartlett. Reggie gave him three $1,000 banknotes in change. As the fat man tucked them away, he shook his head in wonder. 'It's like play money, ain't it? Reckon I'm a millionaire, and a whole hell of a lot of good it's doing me.' He coughed again, then picked up the squat blue bottle of salve and the taller one of the elixir. 'Much obliged to you, young fellow, and I hope these here give me some relief.' As he headed for the door, he called a last word over his shoulder: 'Freedom!'
Bartlett started violently. He had all he could do to hold his tongue, and indeed to keep from running after the fat man and screaming curses at him. 'Christ!' he said. His hands were trembling.
Jeremiah Harmon looked up from the tablets he was compounding. 'Something troubling you, Reggie?' He was in his late forties, with a brown mustache beginning to go gray, and so quiet Bartlett was always straining to hear him. That wasn't bad, not so far as Reggie was concerned. He'd walked out on McNally, his previous employer, because the man wouldn't stop riding him.
'Yes, sir,' he answered. 'That fellow who just left used the Freedom Party salute when he went out the door. I don't fancy those people, not even a little I don't.'
'Can't say I do, either,' Harmon said, 'but I doubt they're worth getting very excited about.' As far as he was concerned, nothing was worth getting very excited about.
'Lord, I hope you're right, but I just don't know,' Bartlett said. 'I watched their goons bust up a rally. They almost busted me up, too. That's not the only brawl they've gotten into-not even close. And now Richmond's got a Freedom Party Congressman. Makes me sick to my stomach.'
'Bicarbonate of soda will do the trick there,' Harmon remarked; he was a druggist down to the tips of his toes. After a moment, though, he realized Reggie had used a figure of speech. With a shrug, he went on, 'My guess is, they're a flash in the pan. Having a few of them in Congress is probably a good thing. Once they show they're nothing but a pack of noisy windbags, people will wise up to them pretty fast.'
Bartlett grunted. 'I hadn't thought about it like that. Maybe you've got something there.' He didn't take the Freedom Party seriously even now. When more people had a chance to see it in action, how could they take it seriously, either? 'Sometimes the best thing you can do is let a fool prove he is one.'
'That's right,' Jeremiah Harmon said. A customer came into the store. Harmon bent to his work again. 'Why don't you see to Mrs. Dinwiddie there?'
'All right. Hello, Mrs. Dinwiddie,' Reggie said. 'What can I get for you today?' He thought he knew, but he might have been wrong.
He was right: Mrs. Dinwiddie answered, 'I need a bottle of castor oil. My bowels have been in a terrible state lately, just a terrible state, and if I don't get something to loosen them up, well, I swear to Jesus, I don't know what I'll do. Explode, I reckon.'
She went on in that vein for some time. She bought castor oil every other week; the purchases were regular as clockwork, even if her bowels weren't. Every time she bought it, she gave the same speech. Bartlett was sick of listening to it. So, no doubt, was Jeremiah Harmon. Since Harmon was the boss, he had the privilege of avoiding Mrs. Dinwiddie. Reggie didn't.
By the time she ran down, he was on much more intimate terms with her lower bowel than he'd ever wanted to be. 'Well, I won't keep you any more,' she said, having already kept him too long. She opened her handbag. 'What do I owe you?'
'That's $15,000, ma'am,' Reggie answered.
'It was only ten the last time I came in,' she said sharply. He shrugged. If she didn't like the way prices jumped, she could take that up with Harmon. He figured out how much to charge. But, after grumbling under her breath, Mrs. Dinwiddie gave Bartlett a pair of $10,000 banknotes. He returned her change and the bottle of castor oil.
So the day went. It was something less than exciting, but it put money in his pockets. It put tens of thousands of dollars in his pockets. Those tens of thousands of dollars left him somewhat worse off than he had been before the war started, when he'd been making two dollars a day. Inflation made a bitter joke of everything
