Roosevelt looked out over the crowd. 'Well, let them say whatever they please. It's a free country. Thanks to the Democratic Party, it's stayed a free country-and, I might add, a victorious country as well. And now I am going to tell you what I say. Ladies and gentlemen, I say that, if you elect a Socialist president in 1920, the mischief he will do the United States will make Lincoln and Blaine's mischief look like what a couple of skylarking boys might do.'
'That's right!' Morrell shouted at the top of his lungs. The whole enormous crowd was shouting, but Roosevelt caught Morrell's voice and then caught his eye. They'd met several times in Philadelphia, and had always got on well: two aggressive men who both believed in taking the fight to the enemy.
'Here in Leavenworth, you've already seen how the Socialists have gone after the War Department budget with a meat axe,' Roosevelt said. 'They've done the same thing to the Navy Department, too. If they control the presidency as well as Congress, we'll be lucky to have a War Department and a Navy Department by the time we can vote them out of office. Here in front of me, I see one of our nation's most distinguished soldiers, Colonel Irving Morrell, the leading exponent of barrel warfare in this country. I know the pittance on which Colonel Morrell has had to operate since the election of 1918. Like a good patriot, he soldiers on as best he can with what he is allotted, but I know, as you must know, he could do far more if only he had more with which to do it. Isn't that the truth, Colonel?'
'Yes, sir, that is the truth,' Morrell said loudly. Agnes stared at him with sparkling eyes. She might have imagined a great many things when coming to hear Roosevelt, but surely she hadn't imagined the president would praise Morrell for everyone to hear. Morrell hadn't looked for any such thing himself.
Roosevelt said, 'There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, straight from the horse's mouth. If you want to keep the United States strong, vote for me. If you don't care, vote for Sinclair. I thank you.'
He got another ovation as he stepped down from the platform. Then, to Morrell's further surprise, Roosevelt beckoned to him. 'How's that test model doing, Colonel?' the president asked.
'Sir, it's a great improvement over the barrels we used to fight the war,' Morrell answered. 'It would have been better still if we'd been able to build a real barrel to that design, not a lightweight machine armored in thin, mild steel.'
'You will have such a machine, Colonel,' Roosevelt boomed. 'If I have anything to say after this November about how the War Department spends its money, you will have it.'
'That would be wonderful, Mr. President,' Morrell said, and then, 'Sir, I'd like to introduce to you my fiancee, Agnes Hill.'
'I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Hill.' Roosevelt bowed over her hand. 'I want you to take good care of this man. The country will need him for a long time to come.'
'I'll do my best, your Excellency,' she said. 'It's a great honor to meet you.'
'Fine, fine.' The president smiled at her, then turned away to talk to someone else.
Agnes had stars in her eyes. 'How about that?' Morrell said, grinning. He hadn't really expected to get a chance to talk with Roosevelt, nor to be able to introduce Agnes to him. Because of his previous acquaintance with the president, he'd hoped something along those lines might happen, but he'd spent enough time playing poker to understand the difference between hope and likelihood. Every so often, though, you got lucky.
'How about that?' Agnes echoed. 'I didn't know you were such an important fellow.' She studied Morrell. 'But even the most important fellows, from everything I've heard, ask a woman if she'd like to be their fiancee before they introduce her that way.'
'Oops,' Morrell said, which made Agnes burst into laughter. Gulping a little, he went on, 'I guess the only way I can make amends is by asking later instead of sooner: would you like to be my fiancee, Agnes?'
'Of course I would,' she answered. 'You've taken your own sweet time getting around to finding out, but I didn't worry about it too much, because I always figured you would.'
'Always?' Morrell asked, still nervous but happy, too. 'How long is always?'
'Ever since we met at that first dance,' Agnes Hill said. 'I thought you were a catch, and I figured I ought to be the one who caught you.' She raised an eyebrow. 'Now what are you snickering about?'
'Only that I've had my eye on you since that dance where we met, too,' he said. 'That comes out fair and square, doesn't it?'
'It sure does,' Agnes said. 'I think everything will work out fine.'
'You know what?' Morrell said, and she shook her head. 'I do, too,' he told her. He meant every word of it. She knew what being a soldier's wife was like, and knew it the best possible way: she'd been one. She'd been through the worst that could happen to a soldier's wife-she'd been through it, she'd come out the other side, and she was willing to try it again. What more could he ask for?
Only after all that went through his mind did he stop to wonder what sort of husband he was liable to make. Agnes might know what she was doing heading into this marriage, but he didn't. He had no clue; marriage wasn't part of the curriculum at West Point. Maybe it should be, he thought. It might not produce better officers, but was very likely to produce happier ones.
XII
Lucien Galtier looked up into the heavens. He got a glimpse of the sun, which he rarely did these days. It scurried along, low in the south, and soon ducked behind the thick gray clouds that were the dominant feature of the sky as October gave way to November.
Drizzle started spattering down. Soon, he judged, it would be turning to sleet, and then to snow. 'Do your worst,' he said. 'Do your worst, or even a little worse than that. You did not do it during the harvest, and you cannot hurt me now. Go ahead. I could not care in the least.'
'Do you always talk to the clouds, Papa?' asked Georges, who must have come out of the barn while Lucien was mocking the weather for missing its chance.
'Always,' Lucien replied solemnly. 'It is, I am convinced, my best hope of getting an intelligent answer around these parts.'
'Truly?' Georges glanced toward the farmhouse. 'Could it be that I should tell my chere maman of your view in this matter? I am sure she would be most interested to learn.'
'I am sure that, if you breathe even a word of it to her, I will break open your head to see if it is altogether empty or just almost,' Lucien said. 'If I had to guess, I would say you have nothing at all in there, but I could be wrong: you might have some rocks. No sense, certainly'
''Mais non, certainementpas' Georges said. 'And do I take after you or after my mother in my senselessness?'
'I will take after you in a moment-with a hatchet, by choice,' Galtier said. 'Have you done everything with the livestock that wants doing?'
'Oh, no, not at all,' his son answered. 'I am always in the habit of quitting work when it is but half done.'
'What you are in the habit of is driving me mad,' Lucien said. Georges bowed, as if at a considerable compliment. Just then, a motorcar came to a halt beside the farmhouse. Lucien laughed. 'Look-here is your brother- in-law. See if you can drive him mad. You have not done it yet, and not from lack of trying.'
Dr. Leonard O'Doull seemed to unfold like a carpenter's rule as he got out of the Ford. Seeing Lucien and Georges, he waved to them and came sauntering over. If the cold, nasty drizzle bothered him, he gave not a sign. 'How does it go?' he called around the cigar in his mouth.
'It goes well,' Lucien answered. 'And with you, how does it go?'
'Well enough,' his son-in-law said. 'Today is Saturday, so I have only a half day to put in at the hospital. I thought I would stop by and say good day before I drove up to town, to Nicole and little Lucien.'
'And I am glad to give you good day as well,' Lucien said. He glanced toward Georges. They both nodded, ever so slightly. No day on the farm was a half day. Leonard O'Doull was a first-rate fellow. The longer Galtier knew him, the more he thought of him. But one thing O'Doull was not and could never be: a farmer. He did not understand-by the nature of things, he could not understand-how hard the folk of his family by marriage worked.
Georges obliquely referred to that: 'With but a half-day's work today, how can it go only 'well enough' for
