kitchen. 'I would be obliged if you kept your sniveling infants silent, ma'am!' Blythe snapped. 'I cannot abide a sniveling child, no sir! Sniveling children should be whipped. Whipped!' The last word was bellowed so loud that both children stopped crying in sheer fright. Blythe smiled at their mother, displaying scraps of apple between his teeth. 'So where's the man of the house, ma'am?'
'He ain't here,' the younger woman said defiantly. 'Is that because he's carrying arms against his lawful government?' Blythe asked in a teasing voice.
'He ain't here,' the woman said again, and then, after a pause, 'There's only us women and children here. You ain't got no quarrel with women and children.'
'My quarrels are my business,' Blythe said, 'and my business is to discover just why one of you two ladies fired a couple of shots at my nice Sergeant here.'
'No one fired at him!' the older woman said scornfully. 'He fired his own revolver. I saw him do it!'
Blythe shook his head disbelievingly. 'That's not what Mr. Kelley says, ma'am, and he wouldn't tell me a lie. Hell, he's a sergeant in the army of the United States of America! Are you telling me that a sergeant of the army of the United States of America would tell a lie?' Blythe asked the question with feigned horror. 'Are you really trying to suggest such a thing?'
'No one fired!' the younger woman insisted. The children were almost buried in her skirts. Blythe took a step closer to the woman, who raised the cleaver threateningly.
'You use that, ma'am,' Blythe said equably, 'and you'll be hanged for murder. What's your name?'
'My name's none of your business.'
'So I'll tell you what is my business, ma'am,' Blythe said, and he reached out for the cleaver and plucked it from the woman's unresisting grasp. He raised it, then slashed it hard down to bury its blade tip in the table. He smiled at the younger woman, then blew cigar smoke toward the bunches of herbs hanging from a beam. 'My business, ma'am,' he said, 'is with General Order Number Five, issued by Major General John Pope of the United States Army, which General Order gives me the legal right and solemn duty to feed and equip my men with any food or goods we find in this house that might be necessary to our well-being. That is an order, given me by the General in command of my army, and like a good Christian soldier, ma'am, I am duty-bound to obey it.' Blythe turned and jabbed a finger toward Sergeant Kelley. 'Start searching, Seth! Outhouses, upstairs, cellars, barns. Give the place a good shaking now! You stay here, Corporal,' he added to one of the other men who had come into the kitchen.
'We ain't got nothing!' the old woman protested.
'We'll be the judge of that, ma'am,' Blythe said. 'Start searching, Seth! Do it thorough now!'
'You damned thieves,' the younger woman said.
'On the contrary, ma'am, on the contrary.' Blythe smiled at her, then sat at the head of the kitchen table and took a preprinted form from a leather pouch at his belt. He found a pencil stub in a pocket. The pencil was blunt, but he tried its lead on the tabletop and was satisfied with the mark it made. 'No, ma'am,' he went on, 'we ain't thieves. We are just trying to put God's own country back into one piece, and we need your help to do it. But it ain't thieving, ma'am, because our Uncle Sam is a kind uncle, a good uncle, and he'll pay you folks real well for everything you give us today.' He smoothed out the form, licked the pencil, and looked up expectantly at the younger woman. 'Your name, honey?'
'I ain't telling you.'
Blythe looked at the older woman. 'Can't pay the family without a name, Grandma. So tell us your name.'
'Don't tell him, Mother!' the younger woman cried.
The older woman hesitated, then decided that giving the family's name would not cause much harm. 'Rothwell,' she said reluctantly.
'A mighty fine name,' Blythe said as he wrote it on the form. 'I knew a family of Rothwells down home in Blytheville. Fine Baptists, they were, and fine neighbors too. Now, ma'am, you happen to know what today's date is?' The house echoed with men's laughter and the heavy sound of boots thumping up the staircase; then a burst of cheering erupted as some treasure was discovered in one of the front rooms. More feet clattered on the stairs. The young woman looked at the ceiling, and a frown of distress crossed her face. 'Today's date, ma'am?' Blythe insisted.
The older woman thought for a second. 'Yesterday was the Lord's Day,' she said, 'so today must be the eleventh.'
'My, how this summer is just flying by! August the eleventh already.' Blythe wrote the date as he spoke, 'in the year of Our Lord, eighteen hundred and sixty-two. This danged pencil is scratchy as hell.' He finished the date, then leaned back in the chair. Sweat was pouring down his plump face and staining the collar of his uniform coat. 'Well now, ladies, this here piece of paper confirms that me and my men are about to commandeer just about any gol- darned thing we take a fancy to in this property. Anything at all! And when we've got it, you're going to tell me the value of all that food and all those chattels, and I'm going to write that value down on this piece of paper and then I'm going to sign it with my God-given name. And what you're going to do, ladies, is keep ahold of this piece of paper like it was the sacred word in the good Lord's own handwriting, and at the end of the war, when the rebels are well beaten and kind Uncle Sam is welcoming you all back into the bosom of his family, you're going to present this piece of paper to the government and the government, in its mercy and goodness, is going to give you all the money. Every red cent. There's just one small thing you ought to know first, though.' He paused to draw on his cigar, then smiled at the frightened women. 'When you present this piece of paper you'll have to prove that you've stayed loyal to the United States of America from the date on this form until the day the war ends. Just one little piece of evidence that anyone in the Rothwell family might have borne arms or, God help us, even a grudge against the United States of America will make this piece of paper worthless. And that means you'll get no money, honey!' He laughed.
'You damned thief,' the younger woman said.
'If you're a good girl,' Blythe said mockingly, 'then you'll get the money. That's what General Order Number Five says, and we shall obey General Order Number Five, so help us God.' He stood. He was a tall man, and the feather in his hat brushed the kitchen's beams as he walked toward the frightened family. 'But there's also General Order Number Seven. Have you folks ever heard of General Order Number Seven? No? Well General Order Number Seven decrees what punishment must be given to any household that fires on troops of the United States of America, and a shot was fired at my men from this house!'
'That's a lie!' the older woman insisted, and her vehemence made the three children start to cry again.
'Quiet!' Blythe shouted. The children whimpered and shivered but managed to keep silent. Blythe smiled. 'By orders of Major General Pope, who is duly authorized by the President and by the Congress of the United States of America, it is my duty to burn this house down so that no more shots can be fired from it.'
'No!' the younger woman protested. 'Yes,' Blythe said, still smiling. 'We didn't fire any shots!' the young woman said. 'But I say you did, and when it comes right down to the scratch, ma'am, whose word do you think the President and the Congress will believe? My word, which is the word of a commissioned officer of the United States Army, or your word, which is the caviling whine of a secessionist bitch? Now which of us, ma'am, is going to be believed?' He took a silver case from his pocket and clicked open the lid to reveal the white phosphorus heads of lucifer matches. 'No!' The younger woman had started to cry. 'Corporal Kemble!' Blythe snapped, and Kemble pushed himself off the kitchen wall. 'Take her to the barn,' Blythe ordered, pointing to the younger woman.
The woman lunged for the cleaver that was still stuck in the table, but Blythe was much too fast for her. He knocked the cleaver out of her reach, then drew his revolver and pointed it at the woman's head. 'I'm not a hard- hearted man, ma'am, just a simple horse trader turned soldier, and like any good horse trader I do sure appreciate a bargain. So why don't you and I go and discuss matters in the barn, ma'am, and see if we can't work out an accommodation?'
'You're worse than a thief,' the woman said, 'you're a traitor.'
'Sir?' Kemble was worried by Blythe's order.
'Take her, Kemble,' Blythe insisted. 'But no liberties! She's mine to deal with, not yours.' Blythe smiled at the woman and her children. 'I do so love war, ma'am. I do so love the pursuit of war. I reckon war is in my blood, my hot blood.'
Kemble took the woman away, leaving her children crying while Billy Blythe went to reserve the pick of the house's plunder before snatching the real pleasure of his day.
On the Saturday after the battle Captain Anthony Murphy opened a book on how long it would take for Colonel Swynyard to begin drinking again. It had been a miracle, the whole Legion agreed, that the Colonel had lasted two
