That didn't last long. The Americans swung round behind the buildings. Firing around them-firing inside them-grew to a crescendo before abruptly falling silent.
A couple of soldiers came up to the McGregors. They held their rifles at the ready. By the way they panted, by the way their eyes glittered, they would open fire at any excuse or none. Arthur McGregor was careful to keep his hands in plain sight and to make no sudden moves. He was glad he didn't have the rifle on his shoulder, too.
"That there your house?" asked one of the Yanks, a fellow with corporal's stripes on his sleeves. He and his companion smelled the way McGregor did before Maude heated up water for a Saturday night bath, only more so.
"It's mine," McGregor said shortly.
The American corporal gestured with his rifle. "Go on back to it. Put your critters in the barn again. We cleaned out your soldiers, and we ain't got nothin' against civilians. Go on back." He scratched his cheek. Maybe the upswept wings of the Kaiser Bill mustache tickled.
"Ever think maybe civilians have something against you?" Alexander said, his voice hot.
"You got a mouthy kid," the corporal said to Arthur. "He gets too mouthy, maybe the house and the barn catch on fire-just by accident, understand?"
"I understand," McGregor said. He didn't know whether, in the end, Canada could win the war. He did know he and his family had just lost it.
"Dowling!" The general's voice, cracking and full of phlegm, echoed through the St. Louis headquarters of the U.S. First Army. "God damn it to hell, Dowling, have you gone and died while I wasn't looking? Get yourself in here this instant, or you'll be sorry you were ever born!"
"Yes, sir. Coming, sir." Major Abner Dowling hastily finished buttoning his fly. At the moment, he was sorry he'd ever been born. Of all the men to whom he could have been adjutant "Dowling!" Wheezing thunder-the general hadn't heard him. The general was hard of hearing: not surprising, since he was heading toward seventy-five. Even when he did hear, he was confounded hard of listening.
"Here, sir." Dowling rushed into the office. He wanted to wipe off his face; he was built like a rolltop desk, and moving quickly in hot, muggy weather made sweat pour down his ruddy cheeks. But that would have been a violation of military decorum, and his commander-the First Army's commander-made men pay for such trifling lapses.
"About time, Major," the general grumbled, but let it go at that. Dowling knew some relief; the old fool was just as likely to have kept riding him all day. "Get me a cup of coffee, man, and put something in it to open my eyes up. You know what I mean."
"Yes, sir," Dowling said. The coffeepot sat on top of an alcohol lamp to keep what was inside hot. More alcohol rested in the sideboard drawer- brandy of a finer grade than the Army used for medicinal purposes. The general liked his medicine, though. His adjutant poured a hefty nip into the coffee cup, then handed it to him.
"Thank you very much." Now that he'd got exactly what he wanted, the general was gracious. Absurdly, he preened, as well as a fat old man shoe- horned into a uniform three sizes too small could preen. Peroxided locks spilled out from under the hat he wore indoors and out to hide the bald crown of his head. He'd dyed his drooping mustachios, too- the color of piss, Dowling thought uncharitably. When the general sipped the coffee, his rheumy blue eyes did open wider. "That is the straight goods, Major."
"Glad you like it, General Custer," Dowling said. "With your permission-" He waited for Custer's nod before filling his own cup. Not without regret, he substituted cream and sugar for the commanding general's brandy.
Custer drank his coffee almost as fast as he would have had the cup contained nothing bur firewater. He held it out in an imperious, liver-spotted hand for a refill. Dowling didn't lace it with as much brandy this time: if the commander fell asleep over his maps, the First Army would do even less than it had up till now, and it hadn't done much.
"I'm not satisfied with the reports the cavalry is bringing us from western Kentucky," Custer declared, "not satisfied at all. By God, Major, they call that scouting? They call that gathering intelligence? Why, when I was in a blue uniform instead of this moss-colored monstrosity-"
Dowling inserted a couple of mental earplugs as his commander ranted on. Most of the men who'd fought in the War of Secession were dead, and just about all the ones who weren't dead had long since been put out to pasture. Custer should have been, as far as Dowling was concerned, but he hadn't. He'd flourished, albeit more on account of persistence and luck than any military virtue past blind aggressiveness.
He'd been on the plains when the Second Mexican War broke out, and spent that conflict, the graveyard of so many U.S. military reputations, using Gatling guns on the Kiowas and then on a division of Canadians led over the border by a British general even more blindly aggressive than he was. Having made himself a hero in two wars conspicuously lacking such-and having made sure the newspapers let the world know just what a hero he was-he'd assured his rise to lieutenant general's rank and his tenure in the Army for as long as his bloated body would endure. It hadn't given out yet.
The real problem was that he'd had only a couple of new thoughts since the 1860s, and none since the 1880s. Gently, Dowling tried to bring him up toward modern times: "Much harder for cavalry to move now, sir, than it used to be. Machine guns have been hard on horses, you know. Our aeroplanes have brought back excellent sketches of Confederate defenses, though, and with them-"
"Machine guns are all very well for mowing down savages, but properly trained and disciplined troops shouldn't be so leery of them," Custer said. "Our troops are shying from them like so many virgins at the touch of a man. And as for aeroplanes-" He snapped his fingers. "They're all very fine for impressing yahoos at county fairs, but you can't take them seriously as weapons of war. Mark my words, Major: in five years' time the newfangled contraptions will be as forgotten as Ozymandias."
"Yes, sir," Dowling said, that seeming a safer course than asking who Ozymandias was and having to sit through a lecture that had nothing to do with the war. Still trying valiantly to remind Custer that they had reached the twentieth century, he went on, "The couple of armored automobiles we've been able to deploy have also given good service."
"Newfangled contraptions," Custer repeated, as if scoring a point. "I know what we need to do, Major. I merely need to ensure the Navy's cooperation before we undertake it. If we can throw a strong force of infantry into Kentucky, they'll beat down the Confederates' defenses there, allowing our cavalry to get into the enemy's rear and complete his destruction as he flees. If the sailors can hold off the Rebel river monitors-"
"Yes, sir-if," Dowling said. If, on the other hand, one of those heavily armed, heavily armored craft got loose among the barges and such shipping Americans across the river, the slaughter would be horrendous. And, since the monitors were so heavily armored, holding them away from the landing force would be anything but easy-no wonder the Navy was shilly-shallying about that.
"I shall go to the front," Custer said suddenly, catching Dowling off guard. "Yes, that's what I'll do. My presence there will surely inspire the men to give the utmost effort. And," he added with an angry snort, "I am sick to death of being bombarded with telegrams demanding that I move faster.
Roosevelt delights in having the War Department nag me. He has delighted in making my life difficult for more than thirty years." The general commanding First Army and the president had fought the British together during the Second Mexican War. By all the signs, neither had enjoyed the experience. Custer went on, "We are punching into Canada, I hear-but that is all Roosevelt will let me do: hear about it, I mean."