"Hot water, yes." Henry Welton nodded. "You do miss it in the field."
But Roosevelt hadn't finished. "As I say, sir, those are the usual pleasures, the commonplace pleasures. Hearing Abe Lincoln speak, though: that I had not looked for, and I expect I'll remember it all my days."
"After he finished, you and he were going at it hammer and tongs there for a while," Henry Welton said. "You made him stop and be thoughtful once or twice, too." He chuckled. "You make everybody you meet stop and be thoughtful, seems to me. Twenty-two-you ought to be illegal."
"Twenty-three soon, sir," Roosevelt said with a grin, which made Welton grimace and mime pathetic decrepitude. Roosevelt went on, "Plainly, Lincoln has a faction that will heed him in all he says. As plainly, there is a large faction that will not heed him in anything he says." He laughed. "He has me speaking like him, even yet-he is a demon on the stump. But both those factions I mentioned have their homes in the Republican Party. It could split on account of him."
"It could split if we lose this war, too," Welton replied, which was plain common sense. "Of course, if we lose this war, not enough men will admit to being Republicans for it to matter much whether the party splits or not."
"These things do matter, sir-they always matter," Roosevelt said seriously. "Look what happened when the Democrats, like Gaul, were divided in partes tres in 1860. Had that not happened, the United States might well be the only nation lying between Canada and the Empire of Mexico."
"Maybe you're right. I'm just a soldier, and soldiers are better off not meddling in politics," Welton said. "If we hadn't already learned that lesson, the War of Secession would have driven it home like a schoolmaster with a hickory switch." He slapped Roosevelt on the back. "Here come the stablehands with your horse, Colonel. Have a safe trip back to the Unauthorized Regiment, and I hope to see you again before too long."
"Likewise, whether here or in the field," Roosevelt said. "And, thanks to your generous permission, I will be sending A Troop here for rest and recreation as soon as I can draft the orders."
"That will be fine," Colonel Welton said. "I do very much approve of an officer who looks out for the well-being of his men."
Roosevelt mounted and rode out of Fort Benton, pausing in the gateway to wave back at Welton. His mount, which had done next to nothing since he'd come down to Fort Benton, felt lively, almost electric, under him. He had to hold the animal under tight rein to keep its trot from exploding into a gallop.
"Easy, old fellow, easy," he said, patting the horse on the neck. "We've got a long road ahead. If you go too fast now, you'll wear yourself down to a nub long before we get there."
The horse didn't want to listen to him. It wanted to run. Roosevelt laughed as the fort disappeared behind a swell of prairie. He was the same way. When anyone told him to slow down, he generally went faster. And not a man in the world had the right to rein him in.
He checked himself. That wasn't quite true. Military discipline did for him what reins did for the horse. Without it, he would have charged into Canada by now. But the cases weren't identical. He'd submitted to military discipline of his own free will. The horse didn't have a choice.
Jackrabbits bounded over the plains, sensibly taking no chances on whether he might try to shoot them if they stayed around to watch him ride by. He didn't need to bother with jackrabbits, not today, not with fresh-baked bread and several chunks of fried chicken in his saddlebag. If he spied a herd of pronghorns on his way north, though. ..
He saw some antelope off in the distance, but too far off for him to bother chasing them. Welton had sent a courier up to the headquarters of the Unauthorized Regiment, letting Lieutenant Jobst and the rest of the men know he would be spending some time at Fort Benton. He couldn't help feeling he'd been away too long. One thing he emphatically did not want was for his regiment to discover it could get along just as well without him.
Walk, canter, trot. Walk, canter, trot. Mile after mile of prairie unrolled behind him. More miles lay ahead. The horse was still willing, but no longer eager. Roosevelt rode north by the sun and by his compass; not nearly enough horsemen had traveled back and forth between Fort Benton and his headquarters to wear even the beginnings of a trail into the grass. Walk, canter, trot.
Every hour or so, he gave his mount a few minutes' rest and let it snatch at clumps of grass. The grass was still green. It wouldn't stay green forever, nor even much longer. Winter came early to Montana Territory, just as it left late. Blaine had rejected the Confederates' peace offer: well and good. Despite that, though, Roosevelt still hadn't been able to do any fighting. If the damned British didn't get moving, or if his own orders didn't change, he wouldn't be able to start till spring.
When he came to the Marias River, he stowed the compass in his saddlebag. He wouldn't need it any more. He rode northwest along the southern bank of the river till he came to a ford. With the water so low in summer, that didn't take long. His boots stayed dry while his horse splashed across. No steamboat had ever made it up the Marias. "And I know steamboats," he told the horse, "that can pour a barrel of beer into a dry riverbed and make fifty miles on the suds."
The horse snorted. He couldn't tell whether it was derision or appreciation.
He rode up the northern fork of the Marias, which was the Willow. "Almost there now," he told the horse as the sun sank toward the Rockies. The horse didn't answer, not this time. It had worked hard all day. He patted its neck. "Come on-not much farther."
He strayed away from the riverbank after dark, and almost rode past the camp. The night was mild-milder than the past few had been-and the men had let the fires die back to embers. He spied their red glow off to his left only a moment before a challenge came out of the night: "Halt! Who goes there?"
"Hello, Johnny," he answered, recognizing the sentry's voice. "It's Colonel Roosevelt, back from Fort Benton."
"Advance and be recognized, Colonel," Johnny Unger said, playing the game by the rules. His voice held a grin, though. As Roosevelt rode slowly forward, he whistled to the next nearest sentry and called, "Hey, Sean-the Old Man's come back from town."
"Bully!" Sean said. Neither of their voices would have disturbed the men sleeping back at regimental headquarters.
A booted foot crunched a twig. Johnny Unger materialized, one moment invisible, the next standing right beside Roosevelt. "Yes, sir, it's you, all right," he said, and chuckled. "Go on in. Did you do the trip in one day, or stretch it out over two?"
"Started this morning," Roosevelt answered. "Never waste time, Johnny. It's the one thing in the whole wide world you can't get back."
"Yes, sir," the sentry said. "If you've been riding that horse all day, I was just thinking, he'll need more seeing to than if you'd done it the easy way."
"I'll tend to him, never fear," Roosevelt said. He asked for very few of the privileges to which his rank might have entitled him. When the sentry vanished once more, Roosevelt rode the beast into camp.
He poked and fed one of the fires up to brighter life so he could see what he was doing as he brushed down the horse and checked its hooves. One of them had a pebble caught in the horseshoe. He dug it out with a curved steel pick. The beast couldn't have had it long, or it would have started favoring that leg.
Roosevelt tried to be as quiet as he could, but a couple of men sat up in their bedrolls to see what was going on. "Good to have you back, Colonel," one of them said softly. Roosevelt waved and went back to work.