information leading to the capture of the statue, or of any significant part of it. No one had ever collected. No one had ever tried to collect.
At the corner of Temple and Main, Captain Toricelli said, 'You want to be careful crossing, sir. For some reason or other, Mormons in motorcars have a devil of a time seeing soldiers.'
'Yes, I've noticed that,' Dowling agreed. His hand fell to the grip of the. 45 on his hip. Most places, an officer's pistol was a formality almost as archaic as a sword. Even more than in occupied Canada, Dowling felt the need for a weapon here.
Soldiers in machine-gun emplacements protected by reinforced concrete and barbed wire surrounded U.S. Army headquarters in Salt Lake City. Sentries carefully checked Dowling and Toricelli's identification cards. They'd discovered the unfortunate consequences of not checking such things. The Mormons had Army uniforms they'd taken during the Great War, and some of them would kill even at the cost of their own lives. Not much news of such assassinations had got out of Utah, but that made them no less real.
'Oh-Colonel Dowling,' a soldier said as Dowling walked down the hall to his office. 'General Pershing is looking for you, sir.'
'Is he? Well, he's just about to find me, then.' Dowling turned to his adjutant. 'I'll see you in a while, Captain.'
'Of course, sir,' Angelo Toricelli said. 'I have a couple of reports to keep me busy.'
'If you can't stay busy in Utah, something's wrong with you,' Dowling agreed. And off he went to see the commanding general.
John J. Pershing was in his mid-sixties. He didn't look younger than his years so much as tough and well- preserved for them. His jaw jutted. His gray Kaiser Bill mustache-the style was now falling out of favor with younger men-added to his bulldog appearance. His icy blue eyes seized and held Dowling. 'Hello, Colonel. Take a seat. There's coffee in the pot, if you care for some.'
'No, thank you, sir. I'm just back from lunch,' Dowling answered.
General Custer would have been even money or better to make some snide crack about his weight. Pershing simply nodded and got down to business: 'I'm worried, Colonel Dowling. This place is like a powder keg, and I'm afraid the fuse is lit.'
'Really, sir?' Dowling said in surprise. 'I know Utah's been a powder keg for more than forty years, but why do you think it'll go off now? If the Mormons were going to rise against us, wouldn't they have tried it when the Canucks did?'
'Strategically, that makes good sense,' Pershing agreed. 'But the trouble that may come here hasn't got anything to do with what happened up in Canada. You are of course aware how we hold this state?'
'Yes, sir: by the railroads, and by the fertile belt from Provo up to Ogden,' Dowling answered. 'Past that, there's a lot of land and not a lot of people, so we don't worry very much.'
'Exactly.' Pershing nodded. 'We just send patrols through the desert now and again to make sure people aren't plotting too openly.' He sighed. 'Out in the desert, maybe a hundred and seventy-five miles south of here, there's a little no-account village called Teasdale. A troop of cavalry rode through it a couple of weeks ago. The captain in command discovered several families that were pretty obviously polygamous.'
'Uh-oh,' Dowling said.
'I couldn't have put it better myself,' Pershing replied.
Polygamy had been formally illegal in Utah since the Army occupation during the Second Mexican War. It hadn't disappeared, though. Dowling wished it had, because, more than anything else, it got people exercised. Fearing he already knew the answer, he asked, 'What did the cavalry captain do, sir?'
'He applied the law,' Pershing said. 'He arrested everyone he could catch, and he burned the offending houses to the ground.'
'And he came out of this place alive? I'm impressed.'
'Teasdale's a very small town-smaller still, after he seized the polygamists,' Pershing replied. 'And he is an able young man. Or he would be, if he had any sense to go with his tactical expertise. Naturally, even though this happened in the middle of nowhere, news got out right away. And, just as naturally, even a lot of Mormons who aren't ardent polygamists are up in arms about it.'
'Not literally, I hope,' Dowling said.
'So do I, Colonel. But we must be ready, just in case,' Pershing said. 'I've asked Philadelphia to send us some barrels to use against them at need. If the War Department decides to do it instead of reprimanding me for asking for something that costs money, I'm going to put you in charge of them. You became something of an expert on barrels, didn't you, serving under General Custer and with Colonel Morrell during the war?'
I became an expert on not getting myself court-martialed on account of barrels, is what I became, Dowling thought. Custer wanted to use them against War Department doctrine, and I had to cover for him. Does that make me an expert? Aloud, he answered, 'I'll do whatever I can, sir.'
'I'm sure of it,' Pershing said. 'This may all turn out to be so much moonshine, you understand. The War Department may need a real rising from the Mormons before they send in the weapons that would have overawed them and stopped the rising in its tracks. And the powers that be may not send us anything even in case of rebellion. They're in a cheese-paring mood back there, sure enough. They've stopped spending any money on improving barrels, you know.'
'Yes, I do know that,' Dowling replied. 'I don't like it.'
'Who would, with a brain in his head?' Pershing said. 'But soldiers don't make policy. We only carry it out, and get blamed when it goes wrong. I wonder how fast and how well the Confederate States are rearming.'
'They aren't supposed to be doing anything of the sort, sir,' Dowling said.
Pershing tossed his head, like a horse bedeviled by flies. 'I know that, Colonel. I wonder anyway.'
A bullet cracked past Jefferson Pinkard's head. He ducked, not that that would do him any good if the bullet had his name on it. Somewhere not far off, rebel Mexican machine gunners started firing at something they imagined they saw. A field gun banged away, flinging shells into the uplands town of San Luis Potosi.
Like most Confederates, Pinkard had thought of the Empire of Mexico as his country's feebleminded little brother-when he'd bothered thinking of it at all, which wasn't very often. In the comfortable days before the war, the Empire did as the Confederacy asked. The Confederates, after all, shielded Mexico from the wrath of the USA, which had hated the Empire since its creation during the War of Secession.
The truth, nowadays, was more complicated. The USA backed the rebels against the Empire. The CSA couldn't officially back Maximilian III, but Freedom Party volunteers like Pinkard numbered in the thousands-and the Freedom Party wasn't the only outfit sending volunteers south to fight the Yankees and their proxies.
That all seemed straightforward enough. What Jeff hadn't counted on was that there would have been-hell, there had been-rebels even without U.S. backing. Maximilian III would never land on anybody's list for sainthood.
Pinkard shrugged. 'He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch, by God,' he muttered. Behind him, another field gun, this one on his side, started answering the rebels' piece. It seemed to be firing as much at random as the enemy gun.
Stupid bastards, he thought, not sure whether he meant the enemy or his own side. None of them would have lasted long during the Great War; he was sure of that. Both sides were brave enough, but neither seemed to know just what it was supposed to do. They lacked the experience C.S. and U.S. forces had so painfully accumulated.
Another machine gun started rattling. Ammunition was tight. Both sides imported most of it. That didn't keep gunners from shooting it off for the hell of it. Who was going to tell 'em they couldn't? They had the weapons, after all.
A Mexican private came up to Jeff. Like Pinkard's, his cotton uniform was dyed a particularly nasty shade of yellow-brown. It looked more like something from a dog with bad digestion than a proper butternut, but all the greasers and the Confederate volunteers wore it, so Jeff could only grouse when he got the chance. He couldn't change a thing. The Mexican said, ' Buenos dias, Sergeant Jeff.' It came out of his mouth sounding like Heff. 'The teniente, he wants to see you.'
'All right, Manuel. I'm coming.' Pinkard pronounced the Spanish name Man-you-well. He took that for granted, though what the locals did to his never ceased to annoy him. He walked bent over. The Mexicans built trenches for men of their size, and he overtopped most of them by half a head. The rebel snipers weren't nearly so good as the
