"We're a big country without enough people in it, and our friends are a long way away," McGregor answered. Always dark and cold, December was a good time of year in which to be gloomy. "If the Yankees had chosen to stand on the defensive against the CSA and throw everything they had at us, they would have smashed us in a hurry and then gone on to other things."
"Nahh!" Alexander rejected the idea out of hand.
But Arthur McGregor nodded. "They would have, son. They could have. They're just too big for us. But one thing about Americans is, they always think they can do more than they really can. They tried to smash us and the Confederates and England on the high seas, all at the same time. And I don't care how big they are, I don't care how much they love the Kaiser and the Huns, no country on the face of the earth is big enough and strong enough to do all that at once."
At last, he'd succeeded in troubling his son. "Do you think they're going to win the war, Pa?"
McGregor had lain awake at night from that very fear. "I hope not," he said at last. "It's just that there are so blasted many of them."
That put a sour twist on Alexander's mouth; it was inarguably true. In Arthur McGregor's mind's eye, he saw endless columns of men in green-gray tramping north, endless queues of snarling canvas-topped trucks painted the same shade, endless teams of horses hauling wagons and artillery pieces, endless trains also bringing men and supplies up toward the front. True, there were also endless ambulances and trains marked with the Red Cross, taking wounded Yankees away for treatment, and, no doubt, endless corpses at the front. But somehow the U.S. military machine kept grinding on despite the wastage.
Alexander said, "What can we do?"
"Hope," McGregor answered. "Pray, though God will do as He likes, not as we like." He was as stern a Presbyterian as he looked. "Cooperate with the Americans as little as we can-though if they hadn't bought our grain, however little they paid for it, I can't imagine what we'd do for money."
He scowled. A farm didn't need much in the way of cash, especially when a war knocked deeds and land taxes all topsy-turvy. You could live off your crops and your livestock and you might even make your own cloth from wool and from flax if you'd planted any, but you couldn't make your own coal or your own kerosene or your own glass or books or…a lot of things that made life come close to being worth living.
"It's not enough," Alexander said. "Not going along with the Yanks, I mean-it's not enough. We shouldn't be talking about not doing things with them-that's why you don't send my sister to the school they set up. Like I say, it's good, but it's not enough. We've got to figure out ways to do things to the Americans."
"Like that bomb in Rosenfeld?" Arthur McGregor asked. His son nodded, gray eyes fierce. But McGregor sighed. "It's possible, I suppose, but it's not easy. They almost made me one of the hostages they took after that bomb went off, remember. They would have given me a blindfold, lined me up against a wall, and shot me. This is a war, son, and you can't back out and say you didn't mean it if something goes wrong."
"I know that!" Alexander exclaimed. But the jaunty tone with which he'd replied gave him away. He didn't believe for a moment that anything could go wrong in a scheme to tweak the Yankees' tails. When you were fifteen, you knew everything always turned out fine in the end. Arthur McGregor was a good deal past twice fifteen. He knew how foolish you were at that age.
He addressed his son with great seriousness: "I want you to promise me you won't go off on your own to try to do anything to the Americans. And once you make that promise, I expect you to keep it."
Now Alexander McGregor looked most unhappy. "Aw, Pa, I don't want to have to lie to you."
"I don't want you to have to lie to me, either," his father said. McGregor was at the same time proud of his son for not taking a lie for granted and alarmed at how serious he was in wanting to do something to strike at the American soldiers holding-and holding down-Manitoba.
"Believe me, Pa," Alexander went on, "I'm not the only fellow who wants to-" He stopped. Kerosene light was on the ruddy side, anyhow, but McGregor thought he turned red. "I don't think I should have said that."
"I wish you hadn't, I'll tell you that." McGregor studied Alexander, who did his inadequate best to show nothing on his face. How many boys were there on the scattered farms of Manitoba-and boys they would have to be, for everyone of conscription age before the land was overrun had already been called to the colors-plotting heaven only knew what against the USA?
"Whatever these fellows have in their minds, you will not be a part of it. Do you understand me?" Arthur McGregor knew he sounded like a prophet laying down the Law. He hadn't taken that tone with Alexander for years; he'd had no need. Now he wondered whether his son, who was nearly a man and who thought himself more nearly a man than he was, would still respond to it as he had when he was smaller. And, sure enough, defiance kindled in Alexander's eyes. "I understand you, Pa," he said, but that was a long way from pledging his obedience.
McGregor exhaled heavily. "I'm not just saying this for myself, you know. What do you suppose your mother would do if the Yanks caught you at whatever mischief you have in mind?" He knew that was a low blow, and used it without compunction or hesitation.
It went home, too. Alexander winced. "It wouldn't be like that, Pa," he protested.
"No? Why wouldn't it?" McGregor pressed the advantage: "And how would you keep Julia out of it, once you got in? Or even Mary?"
"Julia's just a girl, and she's only twelve," Alexander said, as if that settled that.
"And she hates the Americans worse than you do, and she's stubborner than you ever dreamt of being," McGregor said. Before Alexander could respond, he went on, "And one of these days you and your pals would decide that the Yanks couldn't think she was dangerous because she's a girl and she's only twelve. And you'd send her out to do something, and she'd be proud to go. And what if she got caught, son? The Yanks are nasty devils, but Lord help you if you think they're stupid."
"We'd never-" Alexander began, but he didn't finish the sentence. When you were in a war, who could say what you might be driven to do?
Neither of them spoke of Mary. That was not because she had but seven years. It had more to do with a certainty father and son shared that the littlest girl in the house would take any chance offered her to hurt the U.S. cause, and an equally shared determination not to offer her any such chance. Mary was very bright for her age, but unacquainted with anything at all related to restraint.
"I asked you once for your promise, and you would not give it," McGregor said. "I'm going to ask you again." He folded his arms across his chest and waited to hear what his son would say. If Alexander said no…He didn't know what he would do if Alexander said no.
His son let out a long, deep sigh, the sigh not of a boy but of a man facing up to the fact that the world doesn't work the way he wished it would. It was the most grown-up noise McGregor had ever heard from him. At last, voice full of regret, he said, "All right, Pa. I promise."
"Promise what, Alexander?" That was Mary, coming out of the kitchen, where she'd been putting away the plates her mother had washed and her big sister dried.
"Promise to tickle you till you scream like there's American soldiers coming down the chimney instead of Santa Claus," Alexander said, and made as if to grab her. That could be dangerous; she fought as ferociously as a half-tame farm cat.
But now she hopped back, laughing. She turned to Arthur McGregor. "What did he promise, Pa?"
"To be a good boy," McGregor said. Mary snorted. That sort of promise meant nothing to her. McGregor had to hope it meant something to her brother.