"We knows," Cassius said, just as softly. "So they kills we fast 'stead of slow. So what? White folks, they in this big war. They ain't got time to pay no attention to we, we who is doin' they work fo' they. One fine day, they ain't 'spectin' it nohow, the revolution come. It a whole new world then."
"Come the revolution," one of the women- Cherry, her name wassaid with a longing croon in her voice, the way a lot of women sounded in the clapboard Baptist church of a Sunday morning, praying for Jesus' second coming. "Come the revolution, this here gwine be a different country, it sho' will."
Something glittered in Island 's hand- a knife. Scipio watched it with horrified fascination. He gathered himself to fight, knowing how bad his chances were. Island glanced over at Cassius. "We got to shut he up. He a house nigger, tell everything he know to the mistress."
Somehow- perhaps by magic- Cassius had produced a knife, too. Al most meditatively, he said, "Kip here, he have the chance to do me wrong plenty times. He never do it oncet, not even. He even take the blame hisself when huntin' go bad. Maybe he keep a secret here, too. Kip, what you think o' that book you holdin'?"
"I think niggers rise up against white folks, we get licked," Scipio answered truthfully. "I think I wish I wasn't so curious." How long had Karl Marx been here at Marshlands? The mistress didn't have the first notion Red revolution was simmering under her nose. Scipio hadn't the first notion, either. What was that white poet's line? Ignorance is bliss, that was it. That white folks had known what he was talking about.
Cassius said, "Mos' times, sho', we get licked. Ain't so many guns away from the border, now. Ain't so many white folks to tote 'em, neither. We rise up, they gonna use they army 'gainst we? Damnyankees tromp they into the mud, they try that." He wasn't arguing; he'd already made up his mind, and might have been a preacher talking about the Gospel. His gaze sharpened. "Now, tell me true, Kip- you gwine say about this to the mistress?"
"Not a word," Scipio declared. He thought about adding some strong oath to that, but in the end held his tongue. It was likelier to make Cassius and the others think he was lying than to make them believe him.
"I still say we stick he," Island said.
But Cassius shook his head. "I don' think he talk. He pay if he do, on account of we ain't the onliest ones here, an' he don' know who all we is. An' mistress, she don' know 'bout, she don' care 'bout no revolution. All she care about them crazy paintings, look like 'splosion in a shingle factory. She don' sniff roun', way some masters do. She start changin' she mind 'bout that, Kip, he tell us. Ain't that so, Kip?"
"That so," Scipio agreed through dry lips. Too much had happened too fast today. Having President Wilson come to Marshlands was a surprise. Knowing Karl Marx had come to Marshlands was a shock. Finding out Marx had come to Marshlands had almost proved deadly.
But he would live. His legs swayed under him in reaction and relief. Then he realized how he would be living from here on out. Playing both ends against the middle didn't begin to describe it. A phrase a preacher had used a few weeks before fit better. Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea: that was how he felt, all right.
Corporal Chester Martin paused behind an oak to spy out the ground ahead. Somewhere not far ahead was the Confederate strongpoint his squad had been sent out to find. In this miserable country, they were liable to find it by blundering onto it, in which case none of them would be able to bring the news back to the artillery so the boys with the red piping on their hats could give it a good walloping.
"I think God had His mind on something else when He was making this part of Virginia," he muttered under his breath.
One of his privates sprawled beneath a bush close enough to let him hear that mutter. Roger Hodges chuckled, almost inaudibly. "You ought to know better'n that," he answered in an upcountry twang that said he'd been born not far away. "God ain't had nothin' to do with it. This here part of the world is the Devil's business, and no mistake."
"Won't get any arguments from me," Martin answered. "Nothin' but up-and-down mountains and trees and brush and little creeks that don't go anywhere. The couple-three farms we found, they look like they're right out of Daniel Boone. And the people talk even funnier than you do, Roger. Hell of a place to try and fight a war, that's all I got to say."
"Captain said do it, so we do it." Hodges sighed.
With a chuckle, Chester slapped him on the back. "You've got the right attitude, that's for damn sure." He wasn't supposed to let a soldier know he liked him- that was bad for discipline. But he had a hard time hiding it when he was around Roger Hodges. The West Virginian took to the business of war the way a duck took to water. He was always ready, always resourceful, and groused as if he'd been in the Army for thirty years: when he complained, it was about things that mattered, not the little stuff that couldn't be helped or didn't count anyhow.
Smiling still, Martin grunted and slid forward another few feet toward the top of Catawba Mountain. He wasn't a mountain man himself-he'd been working in a steel mill in Toledo when his regiment was mobilized-but even these early days of the war had impressed on him the need to be careful with every move you made. The Confederates didn't have anywhere near the numbers of the U.S. force that had entered enemy territory from West Virginia, but the men they did have in the Alleghenies might all have been born there by the way they used the rough country to bushwhack one unit after another, then fell back to the next high ground and did it all over again.
"This here's the last piece of high ground they got to play with for a while, though," he muttered to himself, wiping his face with a sleeve. He wasn't altogether sorry so much of the fighting had been under the trees. He had the pale, freckled skin that went with green eyes and sandy hair, and sunburned easy as you please.
His wasn't the only squad looking for Rebel positions on Catawba Mountain. When the U.S. forces found those positions, they found them all at once. A rifle shot or two rang out, and then the deadly hammering of machine guns. Martin threw himself flat as bullets stitched through the trees, clipping leaves and twigs and men. The smell of mud and mold was thick in his nostrils. Better that, he thought, than the latrine stink of somebody with a belly wound. He'd been watching friends die ever since the Army crossed the border. He didn't want to do it again. He didn't want anybody watching him die, either. He didn't want that at all.
"See any of the bastards?" he called to Hodges.
"Nope," the West Virginian answered. Martin smacked a fist into the ground in frustration. Hodges lived in country like this. If he couldn't tell what was going on, how was a city boy supposed to manage? Hodges went on, "Reckon they dug themselves holes to hide in, make it harder for we-uns to find 'em."
"You're probably right," Martin said, scowling. "They probably had niggers up here, too, diggin' those holes for 'em. Probably took 'em out of the iron mines around Big Lick, brought 'em to work while we were fighting our way up this far, then took 'em back down again."
"I expect that's how it went, all right," Hodges agreed. "They don't give niggers guns, but they're worth almost as much as soldiers, way they free up white men to fight."
Messengers from the squad that had first developed the Confederate position must have got back to the artillery, because shells began whistling down on the enemy line. Some of them fell short; one burst only a dozen yards or so from Martin, showering him with clods of dirt and sending shrapnel balls whistling malignantly above his head.
"Sons of bitches!" Hodges shouted through the din. "They're more dangerous to us than they are to the damned Rebels!"
The barrage went on for half an hour. More shells fell short. Not far away, somebody screamed like a lost soul. You got hurt just as bad if your own side nailed you as you did from an enemy shell.