being fools, and this man stayed rich. And he didn't drink much either. He just liked the taste, you see. He liked his whiskey, and he'd pay a rich man's price for Irish whiskey, but the guzzle he liked most of all was the widow's champagne.
'Yes.'
'Good for you. Be a sad thing to die without tasting the widow's champagne. But sadder still to die without salvation, eh?' Swynyard asked, but he seemed confused by the question. He stared at the bottle and again seemed about to drink from it, then, at the very last second, relented. 'There was a time, Starbuck, when I could afford the widow's champagne morning, noon, and night. Could have watered my horse in it! Could have watered all my horses in it! I was rich.'
Starbuck smiled but said nothing.
'You don't believe me, do you?' Swynyard said. 'But there was a time, Starbuck, when I could have purchased Faulconer.'
'Truly?'
'Truly,' Swynyard said, gently mocking Starbuck's accent with the repetition. 'I wasn't always a soldier. I left West Point, class of '29, forty-sixth in my class. You want to guess how many there were in West Point's class of '29?'
'Forty-six?'
Swynyard extended a pistollike finger at Starbuck and made a clicking noise of affirmation. 'Forty-sixth out of forty-six. I didn't exactly distinguish myself. Fact is, twenty years later I was still no more than a captain, and I knew I wasn't going to rise any higher than a captain, and I wasn't ever going to kill anything more dangerous to the Republic than a Comanche or a Mexican. I always reckoned I might be a good soldier, but the whiskey made sure I never was. Then one night in '50 I got drunk and offered my resignation and that was the end of my career.'
'What did you do?'
'I did what every sensible soldier wanted to do. I went to the Feather River. Ever heard of the Feather?'
'No.'
'California,' Swynyard said. 'The gold fields. Feather River and Goodyear's Bar and Three Snake Run. That's where I struck it rich. I found a lump of gold the size of a dog. Gold,' the Colonel said, staring into the heart of the whiskey, 'real thick gold, soft as butter, pure as love, and big as a coon dog. In just one day, Starbuck, I made thirty thousand bucks, and all of it before breakfast. That was before they made gold-digging mechanical. Nowadays, Starbuck, they sluice that gold out of the gravels with water jets. That water flies so hard you could kill a regiment of Yankees with that hose, except it takes a regiment to build all the flumes and dams, and not even the Yankees are stupid enough to stand still while you construct it. But I was lucky. I got there early when all a man had to do was climb high and start rolling the rocks aside.' He fell silent.
'And you lost it all?'
Swynyard nodded. 'Every last cent of it. It all went down the gullet or across the barrelhead. Poker. Women. Whiskey. Stupidity. I lost these fingers, too.' He held up his left hand with its three missing fingers.
'I thought those went to a Mexican saber cut,' Starbuck said.
'That's what I tell people,' Swynyard said, 'or what I did tell them before I met the Lord Jesus Christ, but it ain't true. The truth is, Starbuck, that I had them blown away when me and a German miner were using black powder up above Shirt Tail Creek. Otto, his name was, and he was mad as a snake. He reckoned there was a load of nuggets at the top of Shirt Tail and it took us a week to carry all our gear up there, and then we blew the thing wide open and there wasn't nothing up there but dirt and quartz. Only Otto blew it early, see, thinking he'd blow me to hell and get to keep all the gold to himself.'
'And what happened to Otto?' Starbuck asked gently.
Swynyard blinked rapidly. His hands were gripping the whiskey bottle so hard that Starbuck feared he might break the glass. 'I have many sins on my conscience,' Swynyard said after a while, 'many. I killed Otto. Took a long time a-dying and I mocked him all that while. God forgive me.'
Starbuck waited a few seconds, praying desperately that the Colonel would not suck on the bottle. 'And when the war started?' Starbuck finally asked.
'I came back east. Reckoned I could have a new beginning. I kind of persuaded myself I could do without the whiskey so long as I could be a proper soldier again. I wanted to redeem myself, you see? A new country, a new army, a new beginning. But I was wrong.'
'No,' Starbuck said, 'you weren't. You've been off the whiskey for days now.'
Swynyard did not answer but just stared into the golden depths of the expensive Kentucky whiskey.
'You don't want it, Colonel,' Starbuck said.
'But I do, Starbuck, and that's the plain hard truth of it. I want a drink so bad that it hurts.'
'Put the bottle down,' Starbuck said.
Swynyard ignored him. 'I never thought I could give up the drink, never, and then God helps me to do it at last and just as things are starting to be all right again, Faulconer does this to us. What was I supposed to do? Leave the ford unguarded?'
'Colonel,' Starbuck said, reaching for the whiskey bottle.
'You did the right thing. You know that. And do you know why Faulconer gave you that bottle tonight?'
Swynyard would not relinquish the whiskey, but instead held the bottle just beyond Starbuck's reach. 'He gave it to me,' the Colonel said, 'because he wants to humiliate me. That's why.'
'No,' Starbuck said. 'He did it so you won't be in a fit state to testify at a court-martial. He wants you drunk, Colonel, because the son of a bitch knows he's in the wrong, but he also knows that no court will exonerate a staggering drunkard. But if you stay sober, Colonel, he's going to back down and there won't be any court- martial.'
Swynyard thought about Starbuck's words, then shook his head. 'But I did disobey his orders. Not that it matters, because Faulconer don't care one way or another about Dead Mary's Ford. He just wants to be rid of me. Don't you understand? It isn't what I did or didn't do, it's because I made an enemy. You too. We're being purse- whipped by a rich man, Starbuck, and there ain't nothing we can do about it.'
'Goddamn it, there is!' Starbuck insisted. 'Faulconer doesn't run this damned army, Jackson does, and if Jackson says you're right and Faulconer's wrong then it won't matter if you and I disobeyed George Washington's orders. Not all of Faulconer's money can change that, but I tell you one thing: If you go in front of Old Mad Jack with a hangover, or with whiskey on your breath, or looking like you used to look before you let Christ into your heart, then Old Mad Jack will have you out of this army faster than you can spit.' Starbuck paused and held out his hand. 'Now goddamn it, Colonel, give me the whiskey.'
Swynyard frowned. 'Why would Jackson care what happens to us?'
'Because we'll make him care. We'll tell him the truth.
So give me the bottle.' He still held his hand outstretched. 'Come on! I'm thirsty!'
Swynyard held the bottle out, but instead of handing it to Starbuck he tipped it upside down so that the liquor gurgled and slurped onto the tent's pine floorboards and there trickled between the cracks into the dirt. When the bottle was empty, Swynyard let it fall. 'We've got a battle to fight, Starbuck,' the Colonel said, 'so let's both be sober.'
'Son of a bitch,' Starbuck said. The smell of the whiskey was tantalizing in the tent. 'I was thirsty.'
'And tomorrow you'll be sober,' Swynyard said. Far in the distance the thunder grumbled. The sentry sneezed, and the Colonel closed his eyes in prayer. He had resisted temptation and endured despair. And now, like the soldier he knew he could be, he would fight.
Mad Silas began pulling the felled trees off the road that led north through the woods. It was hard work, especially as he had his darling Mary's skull in a sack hanging from his neck and he did not like to bump the skull too hard in case it hurt her. He talked to her as he worked, saying how he was keeping the road clear because the man in the blue coat had asked him to, and the man in the blue coat had said as how all the black folk would be better off if the blue ones beat the gray ones, and even though the white men in the gray coats had been polite to Mad Silas and had even given him some cigars, he still believed the blue horse soldier because the blue man had been young Master Harlan Kemp, the son of old Master Kemp who had given Silas his freedom.
By first light Silas had cleared the whole path. Then, very cautiously, he crept down to the riverbank and saw to
