"I like it," Ruiz said simply. Rodriguez nodded. So did the rest of the local men at the Freedom Party headquarters. How could anyone not like such a program? The United States were a long way off, yes, but they deserved vengeance. The room was full of veterans. They'd all fought the USA during the war.
Someone behind Rodriguez said, "I don't want to go back into the Army, but I will if I have to." That drew more nods. To his own surprise, Rodriguez found himself contributing one. He'd had all the war he wanted, and then some. But if it was a matter of turning the tables on the USA, he knew he would redon the color the Confederates called butternut.
"You are all good, patriotic men. I knew you were," Quinn said in his deliberate Spanish. "But I have a question for you. I know your patron is not such a big man as he was in your grandfather's day. How many of you, though, have a patron who tries to keep you from voting for the Freedom Party?"
Two or three men raised their hands. Carlos Ruiz was one of them. He said, "Don Joaquin says the Freedom Party is nothing but a pack of bandidos, and must be stopped."
"Does he? Well, well, well." Robert Quinn grinned again, a grin that was all sharp teeth. "We have a saying in English: who will bell the cat? Does Don Joaquin think he can put the bell on the Partido de la Libertad?"
"I don't know what you mean, Senor Quinn," Ruiz answered. "He thinks he can tell people how to vote. Of that I am certain."
"And you do not think he ought to?" Quinn asked. Ruiz shook his head. The local Freedom Party leader said, "Perhaps he should change his mind."
"Don Joaquin is a stubborn man," Ruiz warned. Quinn showed his teeth again, but didn't say a word, not then.
As the meeting was breaking up, he asked Ruiz and Rodriguez and three or four other men to stay behind. "It would be a shame if anything happened to Don Joaquin's barn," he remarked. "It would be an even bigger shame if anything happened to his house."
"He has guards," Carlos said. "They carry pistols."
Quinn opened a closet. Inside were neatly stacked Tredegar rifles. "Do you think the guards would listen to reason?" he asked. "If they decide not to listen to reason, do you think you could persuade them?"
The locals looked at one another. No, a patron wasn't what his grandfather had been. Still, the idea of attacking his grounds, of attacking his buildings, hadn't crossed their minds up till now. "If we do this," Hipolito Rodriguez said slowly, "we have to win, and Senor Featherston has to win in November. If either of those things fails, we are dead men. You understand this, I hope."
"Oh, yes." Quinn nodded. "This is not the Army. This is not even the way it is in some of the other Confederate states. I am not going to give you orders. But if you want to teach this fellow a lesson, I can help you." He pointed to the Tredegars. "The question is, how badly do you want to be free?"
A few nights later, Rodriguez slid quietly through the darkness, a military rifle in his hands. He hadn't carried a Tredegar since 1917, but the weight felt familiar. So did the crouch in which he moved.
A dog barked. Somebody called, "Who's there?" Silence, except for the barking. A moment later, a yelp punctuated it, along with the sound of a kick. "Stupid dog," Don Joaquin's sentry muttered. Rodriguez waited. One of his friends was going forward.
The brief sound of a scuffle. No shouts-only bodies thrashing. A fresh voice called, "Come on." The Freedom Party men hurried past a body.
There stood Don Joaquin's house. The grandee had only two sons and a daughter, but his dwelling was four or five times the size of Hipolito Rodriguez's. And the stable and barn not far away were even bigger. How much livestock did he have? How much did any one man need? A guard paced around the barn. He paced, yes, but he wasn't looking for trouble. It found him all the same. Silent as a serpent, a raider sneaked up behind him and clapped a hand over his mouth. He let out only a brief, horrified gurgle as the knife went home.
When the raider let the body sag to the ground, another man ran forward with gasoline. He splashed it on the wooden doors and the wall of the barn, then stepped back, lit a cigarette, and flipped it into the pool of gas that had run down from the doors. Yet another Freedom Party man gave the stables the same treatment.
Flames leaped and roared. Through their growing din, Rodriguez heard horses and mules and cattle and sheep neighing and braying and bellowing in terror. He also heard Don Joaquin's guards shouting in alarm. Their booted feet pounded on gravel and dirt as they ran to see what they could do.
He'd been waiting for that, waiting behind a boulder that gave him splendid cover. Almost of itself, the Tredegar leaped to his shoulder. He hadn't fired one in a long time, but he still knew what to do. The range was ridiculously short, and the flames lit up his targets for him. If only things were so easy during the Great War, he thought, and squeezed the trigger.
One of the targets fell. He tried to think of them like that, as he had during the war. He wasn't the only Freedom Party man shooting. Another guard toppled, and another, and another. The guards had fought against the USA, too. They dove for whatever hiding places they could find, and started shooting back. The cracks of their pistols seemed feeble beside the Tredegars' roars. But, when one of their bullets pinged off the stone behind which Rodriguez crouched, he reminded himself any gun could kill.
"Away!" Carlos Ruiz called. No shouts of Freedom! here. Don Joaquin might suspect who'd done this, but what could he do, what would he dare do, without proof? He had to know the raiders could as easily have burned his house, with him and his family in it.
Rodriguez slipped back to another sheltering boulder, and then to one behind that. Then he was far enough from the blazing buildings to stop worrying about the flames giving him away. Before too long, people would be scouring the countryside, looking for him and his friends. He intended to be back in bed by then. Magdalena and his children would say he'd been there all night. And Don Joaquin would know better than to tell people with guns of their own how to vote.
AmericanEmpire: TheCenterCannotHold
XVIII
S pring in Dakota was a riot of burgeoning green and of glorious birdsong. It was one of the most beautiful things Flora Blackford had ever seen. She would have given a great deal not to be seeing it now. If Hosea had won the election… But he hadn't. He'd got trounced. How badly he'd got trounced still ate at Flora.
The shock of President-elect Coolidge's death, less than a month before he was to take office, had jolted her no less than the rest of the American political world. After that, though, the pain returned. Her husband had to go down to Washington to hand over the reins of power to a man who hadn't even beaten him in November-one more humiliation piled on all the rest.
As soon as Herbert Hoover took the oath of office, the Blackfords had gone on what the papers called an extended holiday. The papers, for once, were polite. Hosea Blackford had gone back to his home state to lick his wounds, and taken his family with him.
Flora turned away from the farm window that showed Great Plains spring to such good advantage. "When do you think we should go back East?" she asked.
Her husband set down his coffee cup. He managed a crooked smile. "Are the wide open spaces starting to get on your nerves?"
"Yes!" Flora's vehemence startled even her. Hosea had put it better than she'd managed to, even in her own mind. "I grew up in New York City, remember, on the Lower East Side. Even Philadelphia seems roomy."
"I'm so sorry for you." Hosea Blackford sighed. "And I'm sorry, but I really don't feel like going back yet. People here leave me alone. Nobody in Philadelphia or Washington leaves you alone. I think it's against the law there."