and surprised at being dismayed. He'd always thought-sometimes despairingly-that George Armstrong Custer was the one unchanging man on the face of the earth.
Here at last, he saw it wasn't so. The retired general was visibly slower, visibly more feeble. Some spark had gone out of him since his retirement, and he seemed to know it.
Libbie Custer, by contrast, remained as she always had. 'Hello, Colonel Dowling,' she said with a smile that showed white false teeth. 'It's good to see you again. Now that Autie and I are civilians, may I call you Abner?'
'Of course,' Dowling answered, though he'd always hated his Christian name.
Meanwhile, General Pershing was shaking hands with Custer and exchanging polite and, no doubt, insincere compliments. During the Great War, Pershing's command had been just to the east of Custer's. Pershing's Second Army had captured Louisville and generally pushed south faster than Custer's First-till Custer decided he knew more about barrels than anyone in the War Department… and, against all odds, turned out to be right. From things Pershing had said since Abner Dowling came to Utah, he still couldn't figure out how Custer had pulled that off.
At the time, Dowling had been sure Custer's lies to Philadelphia would get the general-and, not so incidentally, himself-court-martialed and sent to Leavenworth to do hard labor for the rest of their lives. Instead, his superior had ended up the USA's greatest military hero since George Washington, and Dowling, by reflected glory, had ended up a minor hero himself.
Custer said, 'Are you keeping the Mormons here on a tight rein, General? I hope to heaven you are, because they will cause trouble if they get half a chance.'
'Things have been tolerably quiet, anyway,' Pershing answered. 'They don't shoot at our men any more. Taking hostages worked pretty well for the Germans in Belgium, and for us in Canada and the CSA, and it works here, too. The Mormons may want us dead, but they don't want their friends and neighbors and sweethearts going up against a wall with a blindfold.'
'And a cigarette,' Custer added automatically, but he shook his head before anyone could correct him. 'No, the Mormons don't even have that to console themselves. Poor devils. Nothing wrong with tobacco.'
Libbie sniffed. Custer had been smoking and drinking and cursing ever since the disappointments of the Second Mexican War, and she still hated all three.
'It does work, cigarette or no,' Pershing said. 'We even quelled trouble with polygamists down in Teasdale by taking several hundred hostages and making it ever so clear we'd do what we had to do if trouble broke out.'
Dowling wanted to wipe his forehead with the back of his hand and go, Whew! because of that. He didn't, but he wanted to. Instead, he said, 'General, Mrs. Custer, your limousine is waiting just outside the station. If you'd be kind enough to come with me…'
They came. They didn't remark upon-perhaps they didn't notice-the sharpshooters on the roof of the station. More riflemen were posted in the buildings across the street. Custer had served as General Pope's right arm in the U.S. occupation of restive Utah during the Second Mexican War. Mormons had long memories, as everyone had found out in their uprising during the Great War. Someone might still want to take a potshot or two at Custer for what he'd done more than forty years before, no matter how many hostages' lives it cost his people.
The limousine carried more armor than an armored car. Even the windows were of glass allegedly bulletproof. That was one more thing Dowling didn't want to have to put to the test.
As they drove along the southern perimeter of Temple Square, Custer pointed to the ruins there and said, 'That's a bully sight-their temples to their false gods pulled down around their ears. May they never rise again.'
'Er, yes,' Dowling answered, wondering when he'd last heard anyone-anyone but Custer, that is-say bully. Hardly at all since the Great War ended; he was sure of that. The old slang was dying out with the people who'd used it. Custer still lingered. Now, though, Dowling could see he wouldn't go on forever after all.
As old men will, Custer still dwelt on the past. 'Do you know what my greatest regret is?' he asked.
'No, sir,' Dowling said, as General Pershing shook his head.
'My greatest regret is that we didn't hang Abe Lincoln alongside the Mormon traitors he was consorting with,' Custer said. 'He deserved it just as much as they did, and if we'd stretched his skinny neck the Socialists never would have got off the ground-I'm sure of that.'
'I suppose we'd have Republicans instead,' Pershing said. 'They'd be just about as bad, or I miss my guess.' He was twenty years younger than Custer, which meant he'd been a young man the last time the Republican Party had amounted to anything much. It was a sad shadow of its former self, and had been ever since Abraham Lincoln took a large part of its membership left into the Socialist camp at the end of the Second Mexican War.
Custer sniffed and coughed and rolled his eyes. Plainly, he disagreed with General Pershing. For a wonder, though, he didn't come right out and say so. Abner Dowling scratched his head in bemusement. Had Custer learned tact, or some semblance of it, at the age of eighty-six? There might have been less likely things, but Dowling couldn't think of any offhand.
Odds were that Libbie had poked him in the ribs with her elbow when Dowling didn't notice. As the great man's longtime adjutant, Dowling had long since concluded Libbie Custer was the brains of the outfit. George put on a better show-Libbie, in public, was self-effacing as could be-but she was the one who thought straight.
Outside General Pershing's headquarters, guards meticulously checked the limousine, front to back, top to bottom. At last, one of them told the driver, 'You're all right. Go on through.'
'Thanks, Jonesy,' the driver said, and put the motorcar back into gear.
'Still as bad as that?' Custer asked. 'Will they blow us to kingdom come if we give them half a chance?'
'We hope not,' Pershing said. 'Still and all, we'd rather not find out.'
'They don't love us, and that's a fact,' Dowling added.
'Good,' Custer said. 'If they loved us, that would mean we were soft on them, and we'd better not be soft. If we let them up for even a minute, the Mormons will start conspiring with the limeys or the Rebs, same as they did in the last war and same as they did forty-odd years ago, too.'
There was another obsolete word. Only men of Custer's generation still called the Confederates Rebels, and men of Custer's generation, these days, were thin on the ground. The armored limousine stopped once more, this time inside the secure compound. A company stood at stiff attention, awaiting Custer's inspection.
The retired general didn't notice them till a soldier held the door for him and he got out of the automobile. When he did, he tried to straighten up as he made his slow way over to them. He reminded Dowling of a fire horse put out to pasture that heard the alarm bell once more and wanted to pull the engine again. Around soldiers, he came alive.
Most of the men there in the courtyard were conscripts, too young to have served in the Great War. They still responded to Custer, though, grinning at his bad jokes and telling him their home towns when he asked.
In a low voice, General Pershing said, 'He looks like he wishes he were still in uniform.'
'I'm sure he does, sir,' Dowling answered, also quietly. 'The Socialists practically had to drag him out of it.' He clicked his tongue between his teeth, remembering. 'That was an ugly scene.'
'Those people…' Pershing shook his head. 'It's not for us to meddle in politics, and I know that's a good rule, but there are times when I'm tempted to say exactly what's on my mind.'
'Yes, sir,' Dowling said.
At the banquet that evening, Custer ate with good appetite and drank perhaps two glasses of white wine too many. Afterwards, Libbie told him, 'Time to get to bed, Autie.' She might have been talking to a child that had stayed up too late.
'In a moment, my dear,' Custer answered. Before struggling to his feet once more, he turned to Dowling and said, 'Do you know, Major, there are times since they took the uniform off me when I simply feel adrift on the seas of fate. Once upon a time, I mastered the helm. But no more, Major, no more. This is what the years have done.'
Dowling couldn't blame Custer for forgetting his present rank and using the one he'd had when they served together during the war. 'Yes, sir,' he said, and then, 'I'm sorry, sir.' To his amazement, tears stung his eyes. Custer had lived too long, and knew it. Could any man suffer a worse fate? Dowling shook his head. He doubted it.
'God bless you, Major,' Custer said. He let his wife, still competent as always, lead him out of the dining hall. One of those tears slid down Dowling's cheek. He would have been more embarrassed-he would have been mortified-if he hadn't seen that General Pershing's face was wet, too.
