'I was in Kentucky at the time. I was certainly surprised, Mr. Young,' Dowling answered. Custer had been more than surprised. He'd been furious. A couple of divisions had been detached from First Army and sent west to deal with the Mormon revolt. That had scotched an offensive he'd planned. The offensive probably would have failed, and certainly would have caused a gruesome casualty list. Of course, fighting the Mormons had caused a gruesome casualty list, too.
Young said, 'My grandfather came to Utah to go beyond the reach of the United States. All we ever asked was to be left alone.'
'That was Jefferson Davis' war cry, too,' Dowling said. 'Things are never so simple as slogans make them sound. If you live at the heart of the continent, you cannot pretend that no one will notice you are here. For better or worse, Utah is part of the United States. It will go on being part of the United States. People who live here had better get used to it.'
'Then treat us like any other part of the United States,' Young said. 'Send your soldiers home. Open the borders. Let us practice our religion.'
How many wives did Brigham Young have? Which one of them was your grandmother? Dowling wondered. Aloud, he said, 'Mr. Young, I am a soldier. I do not make policy. I only carry it out. In my opinion, though, your people were well on the way to getting what you ask for… until that assassin murdered General Pershing. After your revolt in 1881, after the uprising in 1915, that set back your cause more than I can say.'
'I understand as much,' Young said. 'Do you understand the desperation that made that assassin pick up a rifle?'
'I don't know.' Dowling had no interest in understanding the assassin. He suddenly shook his head. That wasn't quite true. Understanding the Mormon might make him easier to catch, and might make other murderers easier to thwart. Dowling doubted that was what Heber Young had in mind.
The Mormon leader said, 'The worse the conditions in this state get, the more widespread that desperation becomes. We may see another explosion, Colonel.'
'You are in a poor position to threaten me, Mr. Young,' Dowling said.
'I am not threatening you. I am trying to warn you,' Young said earnestly. 'I do not want another uprising. It would be a disaster beyond compare. But if the people of Utah see no hope, what can you expect? They are all too likely to lash out at what they feel to be the cause of their troubles.'
'If they do, they will only bring more trouble down on their heads. They had better understand that,' Dowling said.
'I think they do understand it,' Heber Young replied. 'What I wonder about is how much they care. If all choices are bad, the worst one no longer seems so very dreadful. I beg you, Colonel-do what you can to show there are better choices than pointless revolt.'
With genuine regret, Dowling said, 'You credit me with more power than I have.'
'I credit you with goodwill,' Young said. 'If you can find something to do for us, something you may do for us, I think you will.'
'The things you've asked for are not things I may do,' Dowling said.
Impasse. They looked at each other in silent near-sympathy. Young got to his feet. So did Dowling. Dowling put out his hand. Young shook it. He also shook his head. And, shaking it, he strode out of Abner Dowling's office without looking back.
'Come on, Mort!' Mary Pomeroy exclaimed, sounding as excitable as her red hair said she ought to be. 'Do you want to make us late?'
Her husband laughed. 'For one thing, we won't be late. For another thing, your mother will be so glad to see us, she won't care anyhow.'
He was right. Mary knew as much, but she didn't care. 'Come on!' she said again, tugging at his arm. 'We'll all be there at the farm-Ma and Julia and Ken and their children and Beth-that's Ken's ma-'
'I know who Beth Marble is,' Mort broke in. 'Hasn't she been coming to the diner for years whenever she's in Rosenfeld to buy things?'
'And us,' Mary finished, as if he hadn't spoken. 'And us.' They'd been married less than a year. A lot of the glow was still left on her-left on both of them, which made life much more pleasant. She gave him a playful shove. 'Let's go.'
'All right. All right. See? I'm not arguing with you.' He put on a straw boater-a city fellow's hat, almost too much of a city fellow's hat for a town as small as Rosenfeld, Manitoba-and went downstairs. He carried the picnic basket, though Mary had cooked the food inside. They went downstairs together.
Their apartment stood across the street from the diner Mort ran with his father. Mort's rather elderly Oldsmobile waited at the curb in front of the building. Mary wished he didn't drive an American auto, but there were no Canadian autos, and hadn't been since before the Great War. As he opened the trunk to put the picnic basket inside, a couple of occupiers-U.S. soldiers in green-gray uniforms-went into the diner. They both eyed Mary before the door closed behind them.
She slammed down the trunk lid with needless violence. All she said, though, was, 'I wish Pa and Alexander could come to the picnic, too.'
'I know, honey,' Mort said gently. 'I wish they could, too.'
The Yanks had shot Alexander McGregor-her older brother-in 1916, claiming he'd been a saboteur. Mary still didn't believe that. Her father, Arthur McGregor, hadn't believed it, either. He'd carried on a one-man bombing campaign against the Americans for years, till a bomb he'd intended for General George Custer blew him up instead.
One of these days… Mary clamped down on that thought, hard. Smiling, she turned to her husband and said, 'Let me drive, please.'
'All right.' He'd taught her after they got married. Before that, she'd never driven anything but a wagon. Mort grinned. 'Try to have a little mercy on the clutch, will you?'
'I'm doing the best I can,' Mary said.
'I know you are, sweetie.' Her husband handed her the keys.
She did clash the gears shifting from first up to second. Before Mort could even wince, she said, 'See? You made me nervous.' He just shrugged. She drove smoothly the rest of the way out to the farm where she'd grown up. She turned down the lane that led to the farmhouse, stopped alongside of Kenneth Marble's Model T (which made the Olds seem factory-new by comparison), and shut off the motor. 'See?' Triumph in her voice, she took the key from the ignition and stuck the key ring in her handbag.
'You did fine,' Mort said. 'But you put the keys away too soon. We've got to get the hamper out of the trunk.'
'Oh.' Mary felt foolish. 'You're right.'
Mort carried it up onto the porch. She remembered how he'd stood there the first time he came to take her out. But then she'd seen him from inside the house, and as a near stranger. Now she stood beside him, and the house in which she'd lived most of her life seemed the strange place.
Her mother opened the door. 'Hello, my dear-my dears!' Maude McGregor said, smiling. Mary had got her red hair from her mother; Maude's, these days, was mostly gray. She looked tired, too. But then, what woman on a farm didn't?
Mary knew she'd had no idea how much work she did every day till she went from the farm into Rosenfeld. Keeping an apartment clean and cooking were as nothing beside what she'd done here. With her father and brother dead, she'd worked even harder than most women had to. But in town… There, keeping up would have been easy even without electricity. With it, she felt as if she lived in the lap of luxury.
Now, coming back, she might have fallen into the nineteenth century, or maybe even the fifteenth. She shook her head. That last wasn't right. Kerosene lamps gave light here, and her mother cooked on a coal-burning stove. They hadn't had those in the Middle Ages. But water came from a well, and an outhouse added its pungency to the barn's. Mary hadn't needed any time at all to get used to the delights of running water and indoor plumbing.
Even so, she had no trouble saying, 'It's so good to be back!' after hugging her mother. She meant it, too. No matter how hard things had been here, the farm was the standard by which she would measure everything else for the rest of her life.
As soon as she stepped inside, two tornadoes hit her, both shouting, 'Aunt Mary!' Her sister Julia's son
