"Yes, sir," Dowling said in his most placating tones.
That did no good. Custer was off to the races: "Damn it to hell and gone, I should be the one punching into Canada. Roosevelt knows what I owe the goddamn Canucks. They murdered my brother-shot him down like a dog in front of my eyes. I deserve that command, and the chance to take revenge at last. But do I get it? Have I any chance of getting it? No, by jingo! Roosevelt has had it in for me since 1881, and he will not give it to me-not till my dying day, I wager. The one thing I want more than any other in all the world, and I cannot have it. Do you know-have you got any idea-how maddening that is?"
"I'm sure it must be, sir," Dowling said with some sympathy-some, but not much, for he'd been listening to Custer on the same subject for longer than he wanted to. Custer would not let it go. He clung like a bulldog, or, considering the bare natural state of his gums, perhaps more like a leech.
He took a couple of deep breaths, then went on, "We are fighting hard all across the plains. We have invaded western Virginia — so why, the brass hats in Philadelphia demand, don't I move? Idiots! Cretins! Imbeciles! Because Teddy Roosevelt has it in for me, they do, too. To them, Dowling, the Ohio and the Mississippi are little squiggly blue lines on a map, nothing more. I am the one who has to find the way across. Make arrangements at once to transfer headquarters to Vienna, Illinois, as soon as is practicable. Why are you still standing there gaping?"
"I'll attend to it immediately, sir," Dowling promised. Custer had a point-throwing an army into Confederate territory wasn't going to be easy here. But if he thought his presence at the front would help things along, he was probably fooling himself. Whether he understood it or not, war had changed over the past fifty years. Most of the soldiers wouldn't know he arrived, and most of the ones who did know wouldn't care.
"And one more thing," Custer ordered. "Keep it secret. Half these Missourians and more than half the downstate lllinoisans wish they were Rebs. Our scouts may have trouble in Kentucky, but theirs, I have no doubt, enjoy a fine old time here."
"I'll take care of that, too, sir," Dowling said. "If the Germans can keep their plans secret from the damned Frenchmen they rule in Alsace-Lorraine, I expect we can keep the would-be Southerners from getting word of ours."
"We'd better." Custer bared his teeth in what was meant for a fearsome grimace. Since those teeth were far too white and even and perfect to have stayed in his own mouth for three-quarters of a century, the effect was more nearly ludicrous than frightening. Dowling quickly turned his back so the commanding general wouldn't see him giggle, then hurried off to do Custer's bidding.
Baking in the late summer sun, the plains of Kansas didn't look much different from the plains of Sequoyah just to the south. "Hellfire," Corporal Stephen Ramsay said, "once we got past the barbed wire, we ain't had any trouble a-tall."
"Good," Sergeant Bobby Brock answered. "We want to do this quick and get the hell out." He looked around at the two companies of cavalry. "We ain't got the men to stand up to any big bunch o' Yankee soldiers."
Both men-Ramsay little and lithe, Brock taller, thicker through the shoulders, and slower-moving-rode just behind the standard bearer. The Stars and Bars flapped lazily. Pointing to it, Ramsay said, "Maybe the damnyankees up in Kingman'll think that's the United States flag till we're right up on top of 'em. They look enough alike, now don't they?"
"Sure enough do," Brock agreed.
Ramsay liked to talk. "Anything that makes our job easier is all right by me," he said. "I don't expect any trouble here. Not even the Yankees got enough men to cover all the barbed wire on all the frontier. Our boys shoot off some cannon a ways east of us, they all go runnin' over there to find out what we're doin', an' we slip across easy as you please."
"Yeah." Brock let his horse, a big sorrel gelding, trot on for another few paces, then went on, "I wonder how many soldiers the Yanks got into our country the same kind o' way."
"However many there was, only way they'll come out is feet first," Ramsay said confidently. "They're only Yankees, after all. We licked 'em twice running, an' we'll do it again. Hellfire, war'll be over by winter, on account of they'll have done given up."
"That'd be good," Brock said, and let it go, from which Ramsay concluded his sergeant had some doubts. He shrugged. Bobby Brock could be a bit of an old lady sometimes, but you didn't want anybody else along when the fighting got serious.
They rode past a farmhouse. The farmer was out in his fields. He knew right off they were from the Confederate States, and started running like hell back to his farmhouse. "Shall we get rid of him, sir?" Ramsay asked the captain in charge of the raiders.
Captain Hiram Lincoln often made himself out to be the toughest bird around, maybe because he had such an unfortunate last name. But now he shook his head. "Can't waste the time," he said. "Fellow doesn't have any telephone wires goin' into his house, so he's not going to get word to anybody. We keep riding. We'll hit the railroad track pretty soon."
"Remind me again, sir," Ramsay said, bowing to the appeal to military necessity. "We going in west of Kingman or east?"
"West," Captain Lincoln answered. "The blockhouse they built to protect the railroad is on the east side of town. We don't want to tangle with that. Them damn machine guns, they're liable to take all the fun out of war."
The standard-bearer, a kid named Gibbons, pointed ahead to a smudge on the horizon. "Reckon that's Kingman, sir."
"Swing left," Lincoln told him. "We'll want to set ourselves on the track a couple miles away from town."
Up ahead, a church bell began ringing as if announcing the end of the world. A machine gun in the blockhouse began to chatter, but the bullets fell far short of the Confederates. Ramsay nodded to himself. Captain Lincoln had known what he was talking about, all right.
He glanced over to Brock. The sergeant nodded back at him. It was nice to have an officer who knew which end was up.
"There's the track," Lincoln said. "Let's go!"
They knew what to do. Some of them had grandfathers who'd done the same thing in the War of Secession. They had better tools for mischief than their grandfathers had used, though. Under Captain Lincoln's direction, the troopers fanned out to cover the demolition crew. The specialists got to work with their dynamite. One of them hit the plunger on the detonator.
Ramsay's horse shied under him at the flat, harsh bark of the explosion. Clods of dirt came raining down on him and the animal both; he hadn't moved back quite far enough. You could make a hell of a hole with dynamite, a hole that would take a long time to fill by pick-and-shovel work. The explosive also did a good job of twisting rails out of shape. Till the Yanks brought in some fresh iron, they weren't going to be using this line to ship things from one coast to the other.
Dismounting, Ramsay gave the reins to a cavalryman who was already holding two other horses. Then he went over to the pack animals and started pulling crowbars off the panniers they carried to either side. "Come on, boys!" he shouted. "Let's tear up some more track."
The Confederates fell to work with a will, laughing and joking and whooping as they separated the iron rails from the wooden ties that bound them. The demolition men used gasoline to start a fire on the prairie. They didn't worry about its spreading, as they would have back in their own country. If it got out of hand, that was the Yankees' problem.
"Come on!" Ramsay said again. He lugged a cross tie over to the fire and threw it in. The rest of the troopers followed his example. Then, several men to a rail, they hauled the lengths of track over and threw them in, too. They'd slump in the heat and have to be taken to an ironworks to be straightened.