feels about the USA.'
'Would you let that stand between the two of you if you really love each other?' her mother asked.
'I don't think I could really love anybody who sucks up to the Americans,' Mary answered. 'I just couldn't stand it. So I'll have to find out about that. Then I'll make up my mind.'
Maude McGregor sighed. 'All right, dear. I'm not going to try to tell you any different. You're old enough to know your own mind. But I am going to tell you this: I'm afraid you won't have too many chances, so you'd be smart to think twice before you waste any of them.'
'I never expected to have any,' Mary said. 'We'll see what happens, that's all. I'm going out to the barn now. I want to give the cow a bottle of that drench we got from the vet.'
'I don't know how much good it will do,' her mother said.
'Neither do I.' Mary shrugged. 'But it won't do any good if the cow doesn't drink it, so I'd better try.'
The trick in getting medicine into a cow, she knew, was making sure she thrust the bottle almost down its throat. Otherwise, the drench would slop out the other side of the beast's mouth. It probably tasted nasty-it stank of ammonia, and she wouldn't have wanted to drink it herself. She poured it down the cow, though, and had the satisfaction of pulling the empty bottle from the beast's mouth and seeing only a few drops on the dirt and straw in the stall.
However satisfied Mary was, the cow was anything but. It drank from the trough, no doubt to get rid of the taste of the drench. Mary left the stall. She paused and sat down by the old wagon wheel. She hadn't given up. She didn't intend to give up. She still burned to pay back the Yanks-and the Canadians who collaborated with them.
'I'll take care of it, Father,' she whispered. 'Don't you worry about a thing. I'll take care of it.'
And what would Mort Pomeroy think of that? He hadn't run away from her when he found out she was Arthur McGregor's daughter. That surely meant he had some interest in her-and that he liked the Yanks none too well. What else could it possibly mean?
Cold as Manitoba winter, she answered her silent rhetorical question. It could mean he's head over heels for you and doesn't care about politics one way or the other-or, if he does care, he'll forget about that for the time being because he's head over heels for you.
Or — colder yet- it could mean he's really a collaborator himself, but he's pretending not to be so he can trap you. Mary shook her head. It wasn't so much that she believed Mort incapable of such an outrage, though she did. It was much more that she didn't think the Yanks could be interested in her. Her father, after all, was almost nine years dead. She'd been a girl when he blew himself up. Since then, she hadn't done anything overt against the Americans. Oh, they were bound to know she didn't love them. But if they got rid of every Canadian who didn't love them, this would be a wide and ever so empty land.
She took her weekly bath earlier than usual that Saturday, and dressed in her best calico. Her mother smiled. 'What time is Mort coming for you?' she asked.
'Between six and six-thirty,' Mary answered. 'Do I look all right?' She anxiously patted at her hair.
'You look wonderful,' her mother answered. 'I'm sure you'll have a good time. Talking pictures! Who would have thought of such a thing?'
Mary sniffed. 'They've had them in the USA and the CSA for a couple of years now. We're only the poor relations. We have to wait our turn.'
'That may be part of it, but Rosenfeld's not the big city, either,' Maude McGregor said. 'I'll bet they've had them in places like Winnipeg and Toronto for a while now.'
With another sniff, Mary said, 'Maybe.' She didn't want to give the Americans the benefit of any doubt.
Mort Pomeroy pulled up in his Oldsmobile at six on the dot. Mary didn't, couldn't, hold his driving an American auto against him. After the U.S. conquest, the Canadian automobile industry no longer existed. 'Hello, Mary,' Mort said when she came to the door. 'You look very pretty tonight. Hello, Mrs. McGregor,' he added to her mother, who stood behind her.
'Hello, Mort,' Maude McGregor answered gravely.
'Shall we go?' Mary didn't sound grave-she was eager.
'Have a nice time,' her mother said. She didn't tack on, Don't stay out too late, as she had on Mort's first few visits to the farmhouse.
Riding in a motorcar was something Mary hadn't done very often before she got to know Mort Pomeroy, though she tried not to let on. It was ever so much faster and smoother than traveling by wagon. Almost before she knew it, they were back in Rosenfeld.
Mort laid down two quarters at the cinema as if he'd never had to worry about money in his life. That Mary doubted; his father might make a living from his diner, but nobody got rich running a business in Rosenfeld.
Inside the theater, he bought them a tub of popcorn and some sweet, fizzy stuff called Yankee Cola. The bubbles tickled as they went up Mary's nose. She laughed in spite of the fizzy water's name. Music blared from the screen as the newsreel started. Then there were pictures of a damaged warship that, with its flat deck and asymmetrical smokestack and superstructure, was as funny-looking as anything Mary had every imagined. 'Jap treachery almost sank the USS Remembrance,' the announcer boomed, 'but quick work by her damage-control team saved her.'
On the screen, a very fair officer looked out at the audience. 'We got her back to port,' he said. 'She'll be in action again before long, and then the enemy's going to pay.'
Mary leaned toward Mort Pomeroy. 'Too bad the Japs didn't sink her,' she whispered, and waited to see how he'd respond.
He nodded. He didn't make a fuss about it or get excited, but he nodded. Mary didn't think she could have stood it if he'd said he would rather see the USA win than Japan. As things were, she smiled and leaned her head on his shoulder in the dark theater and enjoyed the film. Sound did add to the story: more than it did to the newsreel, where most of it had been martial music and an announcer reading what would have been shown before in print on the screen. Hearing characters talk and sing made her feel as if she lived in New York City with them-and made her feel as if she wanted to, which was even more startling.
Afterwards, Mort drove her back toward the farmhouse. Voice elaborately casual, he said, 'We could stop for a little while.'
There were only the two of them, and the motorcar, and the vast Canadian prairie. Who would know if they did stop for a little while? No one at all. 'Yes,' Mary said, also casually, 'we could.'
He parked on the soft shoulder and turned off the engine and the headlights. It was very quiet and very dark. They slid towards each other on the front seat. His arms went around her. They kissed for a long time. He squeezed her breasts through the thin cotton fabric of her dress. The heat that filled her had nothing to do with the warm summer evening. But when he set a hand high on her thigh and tried to slide it higher yet, she twisted away. 'I'm not that kind of girl, Mort,' she said, and hoped her breathless voice didn't give away her lie.
Evidently not. He just nodded and said, 'Kiss me again, then, sweetheart, and I'll take you home.' She did, happily. He fired up the Oldsmobile's engine and put the auto in gear. Off toward the farm it went. Mary didn't know when she'd been so happy. Looking at Mort Pomeroy there beside her, she was almost sorry she wasn't that kind of girl.
'O ccupation duty!' Colonel Abner Dowling made the words into a curse. 'My country's at war, and what do I get? Occupation duty. There's no justice in the world, none at all.'
'As General Custer's adjutant, sir, you were right at the heart of things during the Great War,' Captain Toricelli said.
'I wanted to be at the front, not at First Army headquarters,' Dowling said. That was nothing but the truth. It wasn't the whole truth, of course. The whole truth was, he would have sold his soul for seventeen cents to escape the company of General Custer, provided the Devil or anyone else had offered him the spare change for it.
And yet Custer unquestionably was a hero, a hero many times over. How did that square with the other? Dowling cast a suspicious eye in the direction of Captain Toricelli. What did Toricelli think of him? Some things, perhaps, were better left unknown.
'If you must do occupation duty, sir,' his adjutant persisted, 'there are worse places than Salt Lake City. If the Mormons rise up again with all their might, they don't just tie down men we might use fighting the Japs-'
'Not likely they could,' Dowling said. 'Damned few battleships and cruisers and submersibles in the Great Salt Lake.'
'Er-yes, sir,' Captain Toricelli said. 'But the railroads still run through Utah. An uprising could keep
