warden nodded, too. 'I'll sign-as soon as I see him, so I can make sure he is in one piece.'
'Right.' Ben Chapman turned to his henchmen. 'Bring him on up.' The door to a motorcar at the edge of Camp Dependable's lights opened and then slammed shut. More Freedom Party guards hustled someone forward. Chapman pointed. 'See for yourself,' he told Pinkard.
It was Willy Knight. Jeff had seen him in Birmingham on the campaign trail. He was still tall and blond and still, in a way, handsome. But, where he had been full of piss and vinegar, he was thin to the point of gauntness, and suffering haunted his face-especially the eyes. 'Go ahead and laugh,' he said to Pinkard. 'One of these days, the son of a bitch will turn on you, too.'
'Shut up, you bastard,' Chief Assault Band Leader Chapman told him. Chapman thrust a clipboard and a pen at Jeff. 'You've seen him. Sign.' Jeff did. His men took charge of the fallen Confederate hero and led him into the camp.
XIII
Hipolito Rodriguez had never been a rich man. He was reasonably confident he would never be a rich man. But he was and always had been a proud man. The Confederate States were and always had been a proud nation. And Sonora and Chihuahua were and always had been states where pride counted for even more than it did elsewhere in the CSA. A poor man who could hold his head up often gathered more respect than a rich man who could not meet his neighbors' eyes.
When Rodriguez brought his youngest son into Baroyeca, he strode along with pride unusual even for him. Pedro seemed a good deal more diffident than his father-or maybe his feet hurt. He had on the sturdy shoes he'd got from the Freedom Youth Corps. He hadn't worn them much since getting out of the Corps a few months earlier; sandals were plenty good for farm work. But he didn't want to seem like a peasant when he came into town.
'They will make a man of you,' Rodriguez said as he and Pedro started up the main street toward the alcalde's residence.
'I thought the Freedom Youth Corps already did that,' his son replied. He was taller than Hipolito Rodriguez, and wider through the shoulders, too. Like his brothers, he spoke more English than Spanish these days-except, sometimes, with his mother.
'I have nothing bad to say about the Freedom Youth Corps,' Rodriguez told him. 'But it is what its name says it is: it is a thing for youths. The Army of the Confederate States of America is a thing for men.'
He hadn't thought about it that way when he was conscripted. He remembered as much, remembered very clearly. But times had changed. He'd gone into the Confederate Army in the middle of the Great War and been thrown straight into action, first against Red Negroes in Georgia and then against the USA in west Texas. His son would serve in peacetime. With luck, he would get his hitch out of the way and come back to the farm without ever firing a shot in anger. Rodriguez hoped so, anyhow. When you were shooting in anger, the people on the other side had a nasty habit of shooting back. He didn't know how he'd come through the war unwounded. Luck, no doubt, luck and the Virgin watching over him.
Out of Jaime Diaz's general store came Felipe Rojas. When Pedro saw the Freedom Youth Corps drillmaster, he automatically stiffened to attention right there in the middle of the street. Rojas' smile showed several gold teeth. 'You don't need to do that today, Pedro,' he said. 'I don't give you orders any more.'
'Just as well that he stay in practice,' Hipolito Rodriguez said. 'I've brought him into town to report, because he's been conscripted.'
'Has he?' Rojas' eyes widened. 'How the years do get on. He would be old enough, of course, but still, it hardly seems possible. Not so long since we had rifles in our own hands, is it?'
'No, indeed. I was just thinking that,' Rodriguez said. Of course, they'd both had Tredegars in their hands a lot more recently than they'd been mustered out of the Army. They'd shown the big landowners who'd run things in Sonora for so long that the Freedom Party was the new power in the land, and that anyone who thought otherwise had better think again.
'A soldier.' Rojas slapped Rodriguez's son on the back with a big, hard hand. 'He'll do well. What we showed him in the Youth Corps will help him, and he's a fine young man. Yes, I'm sure he'll do very well indeed.'
'We'd better go on to the alcalde's residence,' Rodriguez said. 'I wouldn't want him to get in trouble for reporting late.'
'No, that wouldn't be the right way to start,' Felipe Rojas agreed. He clapped Pedro on the back again. 'Go with God, and God go with you. You'll be fine. I know you will. Show them what we taught you. They'll build on that.'
'Sн, seсor. Gracias, seсor,' Pedro said proudly.
Another youth and his father were also at the alcalde's residence. He and Pedro started chattering. They'd gone to school together and served in the Freedom Youth Corps together, and now they were going into the Army together. Rodriguez shook his head. It hardly seems possible, Rojas had said, and wasn't that the truth? No matter how it seemed, though, it was the truth. The years had a way of piling on whether you looked at them or not.
His son had to fill out most of the inevitable paperwork, but there was plenty for Hipolito, too, because Pedro was of course under twenty-one. He signed his name a dozen times, mostly without bothering to look at what he was signing. More than half the forms were in English, anyhow, and he read it less well than he spoke it.
At last, it was done. Essentially, he'd deeded his son to the Confederate States. He hugged Pedro and kissed him on both cheeks. 'Be strong,' he said. 'Do what they tell you and be strong.' Then he left the alcalde's residence in a hurry, so neither the clerk there nor his son would see him cry.
He headed for La Culebra Verde. If he wasn't entitled to drown some sorrows after giving his son to the Army, when could he? Not even Magdalena would complain about that… he hoped.
Before he got to the Green Snake, though, a couple of young men he'd never seen before came up to him. They were both dirty and ragged and weary-looking. One was barefoot; the other wore a pair of sandals that had more patches than original shoe leather. 'Buenos dнas, seсor,' the barefoot man said in Spanish. 'Do you by any chance need someone to help you with your work?'
'No, for I have three strong sons, thank God,' Rodriguez answered in the same tongue. Out of curiosity, he switched to English: 'Do you know this language?'
'No, seсor. Lo siento mucho,' the stranger said. 'Solamente espaсol.'
Rodriguez had expected nothing different. Dropping back into Spanish himself, he asked, 'From which province in the Empire of Mexico do you come?'
Both newcomers in Baroyeca looked alarmed. The man with the patched sandals, who was older and stockier than his friend, replied, 'You have made a mistake, seсor. Like you, we are citizens of los Estados Confederados.'
'Bullshit,' Rodriguez said in English. They couldn't even understand that, and he couldn't imagine a Sonoran or Chihuahuan who didn't. He returned to Spanish: 'Don't tell me lies. Do you think I'm too stupid to know the difference? Times are hard here, but I know they're worse south of the border.'
The ragged men sighed in equally ragged unison. That older fellow said, 'Very well, seсor. Usted tiene razуn. We have come from near Mocorito in Sinaloa province.' Rodriguez nodded, unsurprised; Sinaloa lay just south of Sonora. The other man went on, 'We have to have work, or we will starve. So will our families, if we cannot send them money.'
'It is as I told you-I have no work for you to do,' Rodriguez said. 'If you keep looking, though, maybe you will find someone who does.'
He waited to see what would happen next. If the Sinaloans were hungry enough, desperate enough, or maybe just stupid enough, they might try to get his money without working. If they did, he aimed to fight back. But their shoulders slumped and they went on down the street. As they went, they exclaimed about how fine and fancy everything was. If that didn't prove they weren't from the CSA, Rodriguez couldn't think of what would.
He wondered if they would find someone who'd pay them. They weren't the first men from the Empire of Mexico he'd seen passing through Baroyeca. He was sure they wouldn't be the last. Even though the town now boasted electricity, it was a backwater in Sonora, and Sonora was a backwater in the CSA. By the standards prevailing farther south, though, even a Confederate backwater seemed rich and bustling.
