“How many times have you done it, though, Sergeant?” Schneider persisted. “How long can you go on being lucky?”
“As long as God wants me to be,” McSweeney answered. He did get to his feet then, so he could look down at the company commander, whom he overtopped by several inches. “Sir, you must understand: I want to do this. How better can I help the Lord punish the Confederate States for their iniquities?”
Had Schneider had a good response to that, he would have given it at once. When he didn’t, McSweeney smiled at him. McSweeney knew most men did not find his smile delightful. Schneider was no exception; he flinched away from it as from the screech of an incoming Confederate shell. “Have it your way, then, Sergeant,” he muttered, and went walking down the trench in a hurry.
McSweeney’s smile changed to the somewhat softer one any successfully stubborn soldier might have worn. He squatted down and got back to work on the trigger mechanism. By the time Ben Carlton shouted that he had supper ready, the trigger was nearly as smooth as McSweeney wanted it.
He made a horrible face at his first mouthful of stew. “What is it?” he demanded. “Is it donkey or cat?”
“Dammit, it’s beef,” Carlton said, offended.
“Don’t blaspheme,” McSweeney told him. “How is it that you’ve been a cook since the war started and still do no better than this?”
“Because Paul Mantarakis did it till he got killed last summer, and he was a better cook than I’ll be if I live to be ninety-five, which ain’t what you’d call likely,” Carlton retorted. “Stinkin’ shame he’s dead, too.”
“He was a good man, for a Papist,” McSweeney admitted: from him, no small concession.
“He weren’t no Cath-o-lic,” the company cook said. “He was Greek whatever the devil you call it.”
“The Devil has him now, I fear,” McSweeney said. Mantarakis had fiddled with beads, so what else could he have been but a Papist? With grim resolution, McSweeney finished his bowl of stew. With luck, the Confederates he captured would have rations worth taking.
He didn’t crawl out over the parapet of the trench till a little before midnight. Before he went, he blacked his face and hands with mud, so that he looked like a performer in some disastrous minstrel show. He had an officer’s pistol on his belt, but hoped he wouldn’t have to use it; he put more faith in his knife and entrenching tool.
Getting under and through the few strands of barbed wire in front of the U.S. trenches was easier than it should have been. The United States didn’t take the war west of the Mississippi so seriously as he thought they should have. The U.S. advance south from the Missouri line had proceeded at a snail’s pace because too many resources went into the fighting closer to Philadelphia.
A parachute flare went off overhead, bathing the hellish chaos of no-man’s-land with a pure white light that might have come straight from heaven. McSweeney froze. As the light slowly sank and dimmed and reddened, Confederate and U.S. gunners blazed away at what they thought were targets. Bullets whined and occasionally screamed as they ricocheted from rocks. None came close to him.
McSweeney waited till darkness was complete before moving again. When he did move, he moved fast, or as fast as he could, taking advantage of the little while before men’s eyes forgot the light. By the time he flopped down in a shell hole not far from the Confederate wire-which was hardly thicker than that protecting his line-he was filthy and wet. He was also satisfied. He settled down to listen and to wait.
The Rebs were far noisier than he let the men in his charge get. They would have pickets up near the line; he knew about where the foxholes were. If all else failed, he would go in there and bring a couple of those men back through. He didn’t want to do that, being cold-bloodedly aware of the risk it entailed. But he’d been ordered out to return with prisoners, and he would.
He waited a while longer. Maybe the Confederates would send out a wiring party-although they had as much trouble getting supplies as did their U.S. opponents, so they might not have any fresh wire to string up. Wiring parties made easy meat; they were so intent on what they were doing, they paid less attention than they should have to whoever might be sneaking close to them.
Above McSweeney, stars slowly spun, now in plain sight, now hidden by scudding clouds. At about half past two, several Rebs crawled northwest toward the U.S. lines. They passed within twenty feet of him, never knowing he was there.
In a thin thread of whisper, one of them told the others, “Remember, we catch ourselves a damnyankee or three, then we get the hell back home. This ain’t the mission for foolin’ around.”
McSweeney’s smile was enormous, predatory. The Lord hath delivered them into my hands, he thought. They were very quiet as they slid toward the position he’d left. He was silent as he followed them.
Or so he thought, till their rearmost man hissed, “Hush! What’s that?” McSweeney froze, as he had for the parachute flare. After a couple of minutes in which no one seemed to breathe, the Rebel said, “Must have been a rat. Christ, I hate them fat-bellied sons of bitches. I know what they eat.” With a faint rustle of cloth, he crawled on. Again, McSweeney followed, trying to be even more quiet than before.
The Confederate raiders took up a position almost identical to the one he’d used in front of their trenches. Before they could scatter along the line, McSweeney spoke in quiet but conversational tones: “Hold it right there, boys. We’ve got you dead to rights. If you want to keep breathing, throw down your toys, throw up your hands, and go on through the wire.”
That we’ve had the desired effect: it made the Rebels think they were outnumbered by their captors instead of outnumbering their captor. One of them started to whirl. Another one grabbed him and said, “No, you goddamn fool!” Weapons clunked and thudded to the ground.
“Coming in with prisoners!” McSweeney called.
Captain Schneider was awake and waiting for him. He stared when he saw the half-dozen men coming in ahead of McSweeney. “God damn me to hell, Sergeant, but you’ve done it again,” he said. McSweeney nodded, though he disapproved of the blasphemous sentiment. When the Confederates found out one man had taken them, their curses were far fouler than Schneider’s. Gordon McSweeney smiled.
III
“Do you see?” Lucien Galtier asked his horse as he drove the wagon into the town of Riviere-du-Loup on the southern bank of the St. Lawrence. The Quebecois farmer gestured to the macadamized road along which the wagon traveled. “Had this been an earlier year, you would have labored through ice and mud, and you would have complained even more than you do now.”
The horse snorted. A paved road, even a paved road largely free of snow, impressed it very little. One of the reasons the road was largely free of snow was that it was an important highway for the U.S. forces who occupied that part of Quebec south of the St. Lawrence. A big, square, ugly White truck came growling up behind the wagon. The driver squeezed the bulb on his horn. Just enough shoulder-frozen hard here-had been cleared to let Lucien pull off for a moment so the truck and three more in its wake could roll past, kicking up little spatters of ice.
“Hey, Frenchy!” called one of the soldiers huddled under the green-gray canvas top on the last truck. He waved. After a couple of seconds’ hesitation, Galtier touched the brim of the thick wool cap he wore.
He flicked the reins. “Do not think you can rest here all day, you lazy creature,” he told the horse, which flicked its ears to let him know it would think whatever it pleased, and needed no advice from the likes of him.
A green-gray ambulance with red crosses on the sides and roof sped south past Galtier. The military hospital to which it was going was built on land that had been his till the Yankees appropriated it because he’d politely declined to collaborate with them. How fury had burned in him at the injustice! And now…