“You get no arguments from me,” Wood said. “But back to the matter at hand. In your view, we allow the Rebs enough in the way of guns to keep order inside their borders and put up a halfway decent fight in case Mexico decides to invade them?”
Morrell let out a wry snort. “If Mexico invades them, sir, they can shout for help, as far as I’m concerned.”
As he spoke, he worried at the thought General Wood had put in his mind. How long could any country, especially a republic like the USA, keep watch on a neighbor? Sooner or later, the voters would tire of the effort vigilance took. When they did, or maybe even before they did, the one-time enemy would begin to rebuild and become an enemy once more.
“We have to do the best we can,” he said at last. “We have to do the best we can for as long as we can. If we drop the ball later on, or if our kids do, that’s one thing. But if we drop the ball now, we don’t deserve to have won the war.”
“That’s the way it looks to me, too,” Mason Patrick said. “The day the Confederate States start building aeroplanes with machine guns in them again, you’ll be able to see the next war from there.”
“Very well. Thank you for your thoughts, General, Colonel. They will go into our recommendations to President Roosevelt, I assure you,” Wood said. Morrell and Patrick stood up to go. Casually, Wood went on, “Colonel, could you give me another minute or so of your time?”
“Of course,” Morrell answered. He waited till the aviation officer had gone, then asked, “What’s up, sir?”
“Colonel, President Roosevelt has asked me to give you a choice of assignments, in recognition of your outstanding service to your country,” Wood said. “You may, if you like, remain in the field; the president is keenly aware of how much you enjoy the strenuous life, as he does himself.”
“Yes, sir, I do,” Morrell said. “I can’t imagine a choice that would be preferable to staying in the field.”
“Let me see if I can give you one,” Wood said with a smile. “How would you like to have charge of what we might as well call the Barrel Works? It’s plain the machines aren’t everything they ought to be. It’s just as plain nobody has a sounder notion of doctrine for them or more experience with them in the field than you do. What do you say to a free hand at making them better?”
“What do I say?” Morrell asked the question as much of himself as of Leonard Wood. He glared at the chief of the General Staff. “Sir, with all due respect, I say damn. That’s a job that needs doing. It’s a job I can do. It’s a job I should do, because, as you say, I can do it well.” He hesitated, grasping at a straw. “Unless you’d rather have Colonel Sherrard?”
“He recommended you,” Wood said. “His opinion was that you had a better feel for all the issues involved than he did. He said he never could have conceived, much less brought off, the crossing of the Cumberland. You did, and that makes you the man for the slot.”
“He’s extraordinarily generous.” Morrell scowled; he’d never known this mix of elation and disappointment. When would he ever get away to the woods and the mountains again? “Sir, you’re right. It’s such an important position that, if you believe I’m the best man to fill it, I don’t see how I can possibly decline.”
“I was hoping you would say that, Colonel,” General Wood replied. “The more work we do on barrels while we’re holding the Confederate States down-holding them down as best we can, I should say-the further ahead of them we’ll be, and the harder the time they’ll have catching up with us.”
“Yes, sir,” Morrell said enthusiastically. “I’ve got some ideas I want to try. And if we get far enough ahead of them, maybe they’ll never be able to catch up again.”
“You’re reading my mind,” Leonard Wood said. “That’s just what I’m hoping for.” Solemnly, the two men shook hands.
Every train that pulled into St. Matthews, South Carolina, brought a few more soldiers home, some from Virginia, some from Tennessee, some from the distant battlefields west of the Mississippi. The men in beat-up butternut tunics and trousers got off the trains and looked around the station, looked around the slowly rebuilding town, in worn wonder, as if amazed even so much peace as St. Matthews provided was left in the world.
Anne Colleton saw a lot of the returning soldiers, for she spent much of her time at the station waiting for her brother to get off one of those trains: she didn’t trust Tom to wire ahead, letting her know he was coming. And, sure enough, one morning he stopped down from a passenger car looking about as battered, about as bewildered, as any other soldier Anne had seen.
He looked even more bewildered when she threw herself into his arms. “What the devil are you doing here?” he demanded. “I wanted to surprise you.”
“Didn’t work this time,” Anne said. “I wanted to surprise you, and I got what I wanted.” She kissed him on the cheek. Some of the whiskers in the scar that seamed it were coming in white.
“You generally do,” Tom said after a moment, with more of an edge to his voice than would have been there before the war. Then he sighed and shrugged. “We-the CSA, I mean-generally got what we wanted, too. Not this time.”
“Come back to my rooms with me,” Anne said. “There’s one more thing I want, and you can help me get it.”
“Can I?” Her brother shrugged again. “I’ll come with you, though. Why not? With Marshlands burned, I haven’t got anywhere else to stay.”
He walked through the streets of St. Matthews with his shoulders slumped but his eyes darting now here, now there, ever alert, waiting and watching for shooting to start. “It’s not that bad,” Anne said quietly. “We hit the niggers a good lick not so long ago. One more good lick and they’re done, I think.”
“Wasn’t worrying about Reds,” Tom Colleton answered with an embarrassed chuckle. “I was worrying about damnyankees.” When they got back to her apartment, Anne poured him some whiskey, hoping to ease him. He drank it down, but still seemed nervous as a cat. Pointing at her, he asked, “What’s this other thing you want, Sis?”
“Another good lick against the Reds,” Anne said at once. “When we hit them from this side, they go deeper into the swamp, over by Gadsden. The militia on the other side of the Congaree are worthless. The Reds-Cassius and his pals, mind-whip them every time they bump together.”
“Get me another drink, will you?” Tom said, and Anne rose. While she was pouring, her brother went on, “How do I help you get it? I figure I do, or you wouldn’t have mentioned it to me.”
“Why, Lieutenant Colonel Colleton, of course you do,” she said, handing him the drink. “And it’s because you’re Lieutenant Colonel Colleton that you do. I want you to recruit as many veterans as you can, arm them, and take most of them across to the north side of the Congaree. Don’t you think they’d be able to clean out the nest of Reds that’s been in the swamp the past year and a half?”
“If they can’t, the Confederate States are in even more trouble than I reckoned they were.” Whiskey hadn’t fuzzed Tom’s wits; he asked, “What happens to the soldiers I don’t take over to Gadsden?”
“They stay on this side of the swamp,” Anne answered. “You drive the niggers into them, and they finish off any you don’t get.”
Tom considered, then slowly nodded. “And who commands the stay-at-homes?”
“I do,” his sister told him.
She waited for him to pitch a fit. He didn’t. “Odds are you’d be better at the job than any man I can think of,” he said slowly. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have the post you just assigned me?-driving, I mean, instead of catching.”
Anne shook her head. “You have much more real combat experience than I do,” she answered, “and you’ll be leading men who won’t know so much about what I’ve done since the uprising, because they haven’t been here to see it. I’ll keep a lot of militiamen, too. They’re used to doing what I tell them, and it should rub off on the soldiers.”