after all, did these skinny, somber Negroes have left to lose?
'Yankees go home! Yankees go home! Yankees go home!'
The endless chant worried Irving Morrell. He stood up in the cupola of his barrel, watching the crowd in the park in Lubbock. Trouble was in the air. He could feel it. It made the hair on his arms and at the back of his neck want to stand up, the way lightning did before it struck. Not enough men here, in the restless-hell, the rebellious- state of Houston; not enough barrels, either. They hadn't been able to clamp down on things here and make them stay quiet.
What do you expect? he asked himself. We've got that long, long border with Confederate Texas, and agitators keep slipping over it. They keep sneaking guns across it, too, not that there weren't plenty here already.
As if on cue-and it probably was-the crowd in the park changed their cry: 'Plebiscite! Plebiscite! Plebiscite!' Morrell's worry eased, ever so slightly. Maybe they were less likely to do anything drastic if they were shouting for a chance to vote themselves back into the CSA.
From the gunner's seat, Sergeant Michael Pound said, 'By God, sir, we ought to let Featherston have these bastards back. They'd be just as unruly for him as they are for us.'
'I'm not going to tell you you're wrong, Sergeant, but that's not what our orders are,' Morrell answered. 'We're supposed to hold Houston, and so we will.'
'Yes, sir.' By his tone, Pound would sooner have dropped the place. Morrell had trouble blaming him. As far as he was concerned, the Confederates were welcome to what had been western Texas. But he didn't give orders like that. He only carried them out, or tried.
When trouble started, it started very quickly. The crowd was still chanting, 'Plebiscite! Plebiscite!' Morrell barely heard the pop of a pistol over the chant and over the rumble of the barrel's engine. But he realized what was going on when a soldier in U.S. green-gray slumped to the ground, clutching at his belly.
The rest of the soldiers raised their rifles to their shoulders. The crowd, like most hostile crowds in Houston, had nerve. It surged forward, not back. Rocks and bottles started flying. The soldiers opened fire. So did people in the crowd who'd held back up till then.
Morrell ducked down into the turret. 'It's going to hell,' he told Pound. 'Do what you have to do with the machine gun.'
'Yes, sir,' the gunner answered. 'A couple of rounds of case shot from the main armament, too?'
Before Morrell could answer, three or four bullets spanged off the barrel's armor plate. 'Whatever you think best,' he said. 'But we're going to dismiss this crowd if we have to kill everybody in it.'
'Yes, sir,' Michael Pound said crisply; that was an order he could appreciate. 'Case shot!' he told the loader, and case shot he got. He had never been a man to do things by halves.
Despite the gunfire, Morrell stood up in the cupola again. He wanted to see what was going on. A bullet cracked past his ear. The turret traversed through a few degrees, bringing the main armament to bear on the heart of the crowd. The cannon bellowed at point-blank range. Barrels carried only a few rounds of case shot, for gunners seldom got the chance to use it. Sergeant Pound might have fired an enormous shotgun at the rioting Houstonians. The results weren't pretty, and another round hard on the heels of the first made them even more grisly.
People ran then. Not even trained troops could stand up to that kind of fire. Sergeant Pound and the bow gunner encouraged them with a series of short bursts from their machine guns. The other barrel in the park was firing its machine guns, too, and the soldiers were pouring volley after volley into the dissolving crowd. Such treatment might not make the Houstonians love the U.S. government, but would make them pay attention to it.
They had nerve, even if they had no brains to speak of. Some men lay down behind corpses and kept shooting at the U.S. soldiers. And a whiskey bottle with a smoking wick arced through the air and smashed on the front decking of Morrell's barrel.
It smashed, spilling flaming gasoline across the front of the machine. 'God damn it!' Morrell shouted in furious but futile rage. What soldiers here in Houston called Featherston fizzes had proved surprisingly dangerous to barrels. Flames spread over paint and grease and dripped through every opening, no matter how tiny, in the fighting compartment. 'Out!' Morrell yelled. 'Everybody out!' He ducked back into the turret to scream the same message into the speaking tube, to make sure the driver and bow gunner heard him.
Then he scrambled out the cupola and down the side of the barrel. Escape hatches at the bow and on either side of the turret flew open. The rest of the crew got out through them, closely followed by growing clouds of black smoke. 'Move away!' Sergeant Pound shouted. 'When the ammo starts cooking off-'
Morrell needed no more encouragement. Neither did any of the other crewmen. They put as much ground between them and the doomed machine as they could. Morrell looked back over his shoulder. Smoke was pouring out of the cupola now, too. A moment later, the most spectacular fireworks display this side of the Fourth of July in Philadelphia finished the barrel.
'Do you know what we need, sir?' Pound said. 'We need a good fire extinguisher in there. Could make a lot of difference.'
'I'm not going to tell you you're wrong, because you're-' Morrell knew he was repeating himself. A bullet thudded into a tree trunk behind his head. He threw himself flat. So did the rest of the barrel crew. Lying on his belly, he finished with such aplomb as he could muster: '-not. But do you think you could remind me about it when I haven't got other things to worry about, like getting my ass shot off?'
'That was your ass, sir?' Michael Pound asked innocently, and Morrell snorted. Pound said, 'I will, sir; I promise.' Morrell believed him; he wouldn't forget something like that. The sergeant went on, 'It did cross my mind just now for some reason or other.'
'Really? Can't imagine why.' Still prone, Morrell watched another Houstonian get ready to fling a Featherston fizz at the second barrel in the park. A U.S. soldier shot him in the arm before he could let fly. The incendiary dropped at his feet, broke, and engulfed him in flames. A shrieking torch, he ran every which way until at last, mercifully, he fell and did not rise.
'Serves him right,' Sergeant Pound said savagely. Morrell would have been hard pressed to argue, and so didn't try.
What happened to the fizz-flinger sufficed to scare even the Houstonians. Still shouting, 'Freedom!' they fled the park. Soldiers in green-gray moved among the wounded. They weren't helping them; they were methodically finishing them off, with single gunshots or with the bayonet.
'Grim work,' Pound said, getting to his feet, 'but necessary. Those people won't see reason, and so we might as well be rid of them.'
'You kill everybody who doesn't want to see reason, people will get mighty thin on the ground mighty fast,' Morrell remarked as he too got up and brushed off his coveralls.
'Oh, yes, sir,' the sergeant agreed. 'But if I kill everybody who won't see reason and who's trying to kill me, I'll sleep better of nights and I'm a lot likelier to live to get old and gray.'
Sometimes perfect bloodthirstiness made perfect sense. This did seem to be one of those times. Morrell mournfully eyed the burning barrel, which still sent a thick column of black, stinking smoke up into the brassy sky.
Sergeant Pound looked toward the barrel, too. His thoughts, as usual, were completely practical: 'I wonder how long they'll take to ship a replacement machine down here.'
'Depends,' Morrell said judiciously. 'If Hoover wins the election come November, it'll be business as usual. But if it's Al Smith, and the Socialists get back in…' He shrugged.
Sergeant Pound made a sour face. So did the rest of the barrel crew. Pound said, 'I'm going to vote for Hoover, too. What sane man wouldn't? And yet, you know, it's a funny thing. Charlie La Follette makes a ten times better vice president than what's-his-name running with Hoover-Borah, that's it.'
'Bill Borah's got no brains to speak of. I won't argue that,' Morrell said. 'Still, you have to vote the party, and the man at the top of the ticket. Odds two presidents in a row would drop dead are pretty slim.'
'Oh, yes, sir. Certainly. I said the same thing.' Pound wasn't currying favor. Morrell didn't think such a ploy had ever occurred to the gunner. If it had, he would have become an officer years ago. He had said that, and was just reminding Morrell of it.
A lieutenant with a.45 still in his hand strode up to the barrel crew. Seeing Morrell's eagles, he started to
