“Well, not precisely, sir, but I would think—”
“Less than seventeen hundred dollars, and bills are coming so fast—largely for those weapons dear to your heart—that it all will soon be gone. Then how are we to feed the fearsomely armed fighters we’ve launched on an invasion?”
There was a pause.
“Fearghus, I’m as sick as you of picnics and speeches and bond sales. I’ve traveled the country without respite. I’d like nothing so much as to fight tomorrow. Remember, it was I who pushed earlier operations when others wavered.”
“I remember, sir,” said O’Donovan. “The courage of John O’Neill is beyond question.”
Ah, Colm’s uncle, I thought, the big Fenian cheese.
“We cannot fall short again,” said O’Neill. “Even another close thing like Ridgway, where we’d have won if reinforced, would finish us with Canada. We must pick our time and targets carefully, strike with coordinated effort, and smash our way to a sure and final victory.”
His voice was rising to an oratorical pitch. I risked a glance. O’Neill was standing now, his booted feet widespread. He was as crazy as O’Donovan, I thought, and pulled back from the window.
“And there’s the South,” O’Neill continued. “You know, Captain, that I’m involved in delicate negotiations with no fewer than eight Confederacy officers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Since the defeat of their last hope, Seymour, and Grant’s ascendancy, they’re finally swinging to us. With Longstreet and others taking up our cause, lured by prospects of resettling in Canada, we’ll be immeasurably strengthened. To act prematurely now, when we are so close, would be fatal.” Another pause. “Caitlin, you’ve never been lovelier, there’s a bloom to you.”
“Thank you, Uncle.” Cait’s voice sounded to the left of O’Donovan. She’d been sitting there all along. I burned with jealousy, wanting to crash through the window.
“Isn’t she the picture of a colleen, Captain?” O’Neill’s voice was suffused with pride.
Tell him to fuck off, Cait.
Her light laughter mingled with O’Donovan’s mumble.
“Isn’t she?” O’Neill insisted, and now there was no mistaking his role: matchmaker.
“Aye, she is,” said O’Donovan, his voice tight.
“Colm and his Caitlin were always quite the display,” O’Neill said expansively, a pronouncement that evoked heavy silence. “Well, Captain, there’s another matter we must discuss. Cait, if you don’t mind . . .”
“Of course, Uncle.”
Why does she call him that? I thought nastily. He wasn’t her uncle and she’d never really married his nephew.
A chair scraped, footsteps, a door closed.
“They’re not made finer than Cait on this earth,” said O’Neill.
“Indeed,” O’Donovan said, and again his voice sounded constricted.
“I understand some fellow has been paying her calls.”
“Yes, damn his soul,” said O’Donovan. “One of those ballists they’re all falling over here. A big cheeky bastard named Fowler, friend of her brother. Caitlin’s silly fancy will pass once this sporting craze ends.”
“Nothing at fault with the game,” said O’Neill. “I encouraged it during the war. Good for the lads. But there’s more to Fowler than a ballist—if our countryman McDermott has his facts straight.”
“It’d be the first thing straight about that one,” O’Donovan said contemptuously. “Why is filth like McDermott allowed to contaminate us?”
“You didn’t sing that song when he delivered the arms at half price,” O’Neill said mildly. “It’s true his morals aren’t the keenest. But he’s proven useful at times. And this may be one. McDermott claims Fowler took our money from Elmira.”
“What?”
I leaned against the wall and listened numbly to O’Neill recite McDermott’s description of me.
“Scar on his cheek!” O’Donovan said with growing excitement. “That’s the giveaway! Wearing a beard now, of course! And he has money. Caitlin said he paid to bury her mother in Ireland. So the rumored treasure does exist! Oh, to steal it from us is a profanity!”
“We’d surely put it to grand use,” O’Neill said. “There’s more on this: He also swears Fowler stole our weapons payment in New York.”
“Tis more likely McDermott lost at wagering, as our reports had it,” said O’Donovan. “But it’s all one. What I don’t understand is how Fowler still walks the earth.”
“Through no want of effort by Red Jim, I’m thinking,” said O’Neill.
“He’s protected, then?”
“That we don’t know.”
“The man’s surely an agent,” O’Donovan said grimly. “A paid Pinkerton informer. Or in the employ of the bastard English!”
“The matter is grave,” O’Neill agreed. “I thought it too serious even to risk using the wire. When I learned that Fowler’d been in this very house, I came straight down from Detroit.”
“Playing up to Caitlin to get information,” O’Donovan added. “I’ll kill him.”
“You’ll obey orders,” O’Neill said. “We have a fine chance to discover useful information and at the same time confuse our enemies.”
“Through Caitlin?” O’Donovan did not echo the other’s enthusiasm. “Does she know about him?”
“No,” said O’Neill. “And for now that’s best. We don’t want her to act differently and alert him. We’ll start her on the money; that is our first need.”
Well, I thought darkly, if our relationship hadn’t been complicated enough, it now promised to bristle with intrigue.
“I suspected something was up with him one morning when we unloaded the guns and suddenly he was standing there looking at us,” said O’Donovan.
“Have you checked the stores?”
“No, he’s out of town; there’s no problem. Still, it might not be a bad idea.”
My mind froze with the abrupt realization that I’d left the candle down there. It would confirm all their suspicions. I pushed through the shrubbery and ran toward the street. At the corner I looked back and saw O’Donovan emerge with a lantern. He moved purposefully toward the basement door. Shit!
We’d trounced the “champion” Brooklyn Eckfords, 24—5, on their home grounds. But they’d found a way to pooh-pooh it, claiming that the earlier game had not been a match contest since several of their top players had been absent. It rankled us. If we beat them again, we would still need to go East for a third victory to claim the coveted pennant. It made us so mad, in fact, that we drubbed them mercilessly, 45—18, behind George’s six hits
