"One of the biggest stories of the whole war, and it's happening out where nobody can take a proper look at it," Sam said. "Do you know what, Edgar? I'll bet the Army likes that just fine. After the British give us another licking, the donkeys in blue will have an extra couple of days to cipher out how to make it sound like a victory."
Grumbling about the U.S. Army, Vernon Perkins, and other calamities of nature, he went to his desk and lighted a cigar. Spotting three typographical errors in the first paragraph of a story sitting there did nothing to improve his disposition. Neither did the text of the story itself. "Whoever edited this would have done the world a favor if he'd never learned to read." he muttered. Then he remembered he'd edited it himself. He blew out as large and thick a cloud of cigar smoke as he could, to keep everyone else in the office from noticing him turning red.
Edgar Leary said, "Colonel Sherman announced that two men, Diego Reynoso and Michael Fitzpatrick, were shot at sunrise in the Presidio for looting."
"There, that's another victory," Sam exclaimed. "Can't lick the Royal Marines-Christ, can't even find the goddamn Royal Marines- but we're death on looters, no two ways around it. Of course, if we'd done any kind of proper job fighting off the Royal Marines in the first place, the looters wouldn't have had anything to loot. Maybe, just maybe, if we give them enough hell now, this particular brand of idiocy won't happen the next time we find ourselves in a scrape."
"I hope not, I surely do," Leary said. After brief hesitation, he went on, "Boss, I do hear tell that Colonel Sherman isn't happy about what the paper's been saying since the British hit San Francisco. And if he isn't happy with the Morning Call, he isn't happy with you."
"Well, I have to tell you, Edgar my lad, I'm not very happy about what the Army did when the British hit San Francisco. And if I'm not happy with the Army, I'm not happy with Colonel Sherman." Sam took sardonic pleasure in turning Lcary's warning on its ear.
The young reporter shuffled his feet uncertainly. "I know that. But I thought I ought to tell you anyway, because you can't throw Sherman in the stockade, but he can put you there, and throw away the key once he's done it."
"Throw a newspaperman in the stockade? He wouldn't d-" Clemens began. But he ran down, like a pocket watch that wanted winding. The trouble was, he wasn't just a newspaperman; he was a newspaperman who'd spent a few inglorious weeks as a Marion Ranger, a soldier of sorts on the Confederate side during the War of Secession. If Sherman decided he was lambasting the Army because he sympathized with the Confederate States after all rather than because he was a man who recognized damnfoolery when he saw it… if that happened, the commandant at the Presidio was liable to lock him up on suspicion of general frightfulness.
He threw back his head and laughed till he started to cough. "Are you all right?" Edgar Leary asked anxiously.
"I'll do, no doubt about it," Sam answered. "It just occurred to me that, considering where I'm staying now, the stockade might be a step up-so long as the estimable Colonel Sherman doesn't fling my brother-in-law into the cell next door."
Abraham Lincoln stood on the platform at the Great Falls train station, patiently waiting for disembarking passengers to get off. Then, carrying his carpetbag, he got aboard. He looked around the car, wondering if a couple of unsmiling soldiers would come up, tap him on the shoulder, and order him off. He saw no soldiers, unsmiling or otherwise.
He smiled himself. He'd gauged things about right. When he was the principal menace to law, order, and the peace of mind of the moneyed class in Montana Territory, the Army had watched him like a hawk. As soon as the British came over the border, though, everyone forgot all about him. With the invaders heading south, nobody cared a Continental for John Pope's order limiting him to the Territories.
He would, he supposed, have been even more worried about the future of the country had the military authorities kept right on watching him closely even though the British had invaded Montana.
The conductor walked down the aisle, big gold watch in hand. "Now departing for Bismarck, Fargo, St. Paul, Milwaukee, and Chicago!" he intoned. "All aboard!"
A blast from the steam whistle also announced the train's departure. Cars jolted in their couplings as it began to roll. A vexing thought made Lincoln 's long face grow longer. He wouldn't be altogether free of the Army's grip till he passed Fargo and left Dakota Territory. Maybe no one had tried to keep him from leaving Great Falls because the soldiers who would stop him were waiting in Fargo.
He shook his head. He didn't believe it. No one had tried to keep him from leaving Great Falls because no one knew, or cared, he was leaving. If no one knew he was gone or where he was going, no one could stop him.
No sooner had he settled back in his seat than the young man across the aisle, a fellow who looked like a miner in ill-fitting Sunday best, asked, "Beg your pardon, but ain't you Abe Lincoln?"
"Yes," Lincoln answered, warily and wearily. Had he had a dime for every time he'd had a conversation opened with that gambit, he would have been a plutocrat himself. The only commoner opening was, God damn you, Lincoln, you son of a bitch! -and that one usually came from older men, men who recalled the sorry course of the War of Secession. "Who are you, son?"
"My name's Hosea Blackford, Mr. Lincoln," the youngster said, and stuck out a hand. Lincoln relaxed a little as he shook it; he'd had enough of curses and to spare lately. It was strong and rough-skinned and callused, the hand of a working man. Blackford went on, "Heard you talk in Helena when you was there." He nodded, half to himself. "Sure as hell did."
"Is that a fact?" Lincoln said: a little sentence polite in any context.
"Yes, sir!" Hosea Blackford's green eyes glowed. "Hell of a speech. Made me reckon we ought to get shut of fightin' our neighbors till we finished muckin' out our own barn first. Like you said, we had ourselves one revolution, and now we could use ourselves another one."
"Thank you, Mr. Blackford," Lincoln said. "Every now and again, when I hear a young man like you speak, my hope for the country revives."
"Ain't that somethin'!" Blackford said; after a moment, Lincoln realized it was his equivalent of Is that a fact?
They talked politics on and off till the miner- Lincoln had indeed pegged that one correctly-got off the train at Oriska, a tiny spot in eastern Dakota Territory, where his sister and brother-in-law had a farm. He didn't even carry a carpetbag; his suitcase was made of cardboard. When he rose to leave, he pumped Lincoln 's hand again.
"You don't know what this here's meant to me," he said. "Ever since I started thinkin' about things, I could see they wasn't right, but I never seen how, or how to go about fixin' 'em. You done opened my eyes, and I reckon 1 can go and open some other folks' eyes my own self. You got yourself a-what's the Bible word?-a disciple, that's what it is."
"Good luck to you. Mr. Blackford," Lincoln said. "Be the truth's disciple, not mine. Follow the truth, wherever it may lead you."
The miner bobbed his head in an awkward nod, then hurried away. At a place like Oriska, the train didn't stop long. At a place like Oriska, you were lucky if the train stopped at all.
Lincoln smiled at the miner's stalwart back. He wondered how long Blackford's enthusiasm would last. Young men burned hot, but they burned out fast, too. Lincoln thought of that ridiculously young cavalry colonel back in Great Falls. He was doing something special now, too. How long before he became a lawyer or a banker or something else stuffy and boring and profitable? Profitable. Lincoln 's lip curled. The owners took the profits, and took them from the sweat of the working man.