Gideon sighed grouchily. “But we’remissing as much information as they are. We don’t know how many men they have any more than they know the reverse.”
“True, but we know what they want. We know they’re near the house, but lurking in the shadows—which means they fear us. Otherwise they’d charge, storm the place, and call their mission a success. We know who sent them, or we can make a good enough guess to predict their future course of action.”
“And what might that be?” Gideon asked. He was confident he wouldn’t care for whatever came next, but he wanted to hear Grant’s assessment.
“Violence, and plenty of it. Haymes will kill me if she thinks she needs to, and leave William to run the show from under her thumb—which is how she prefers things, you know. Everything would take place under her thumb if she got her way.”
Gideon didn’t know much about the vice president, so he didn’t know how likely this was. “Can she do that? Is Wheeler so ethically flexible?”
Grant shrugged, a gesture Gideon barely saw through the gloom. “He has a reputation for trustworthiness, and I’ve trusted him this long. But he’s a politician, and the more time I spend in Washington, the less I know about such men. I’ve trusted plenty who proved me a fool. Given the present situation, I’d rather rely on soldiers. And I have goodsoldiers tonight, don’t I? You and Wellers, both smart men who know their way around guns. And since Wellers is a Pink, I know he has some experience with danger, despite what a frail-looking fellow he is. All height and no weight, do you know what I mean?”
Gideon nodded. He’d had the same thought himself.
“But you can’t put anything past him, so I don’t mind what he looks like. And what of you?” Grant wanted to know, as if it only just dawned on him that he ought to ask.
“What ofme?” Gideon responded in the rhetorical. “Can I fight, you mean? I’ve never fought in battle, but I escaped the South, and I’ve survived more than one attempt on my life. I’ve protected my family and served my benefactors as I was able, to the point of violence if necessary.”
“That’s good enough for me. And you’re no coward, which is worth more than any formal service, in my experience,” he said politely.
Gideon was almost touched. He hid it well. “My father fought in the Mexican War—for Texas, as you might expect, if not approve. My grandfather served in the Revolution. He died before my father was born.”
In the dark, he could barely see Grant’s eyes, but he saw them flicker. “Is that his coat? The one you wear all the time?”
“Yes. Old-fashioned, I know. But it suits me. My father left it to me, and I … I prefer it.”
“I recognized the old army cut,” he said. “No business of mine, and so I never asked, but a man can be curious, can’t he?”
Outside, the invaders tried again with their untrustworthy shouted compromises. “You send out Wellers, and we’ll all go away! Call it a night!”
Grant and Gideon went to opposite windows and looked outside cautiously.
“This is good,” Grant murmured. “They want to make a deal. Men who are confident of victory don’t seek to make deals.”
“Maybe they can’t get reinforcements after all.”
“That’s possible. It’s also possible that Haymes doesn’t want the deaths of two presidents on her hands, and she’s told them to withdraw. Don’t forget: The advantage is ours, though we do not know its extent.”
“Forgive me if I don’t get too excited while they’re out there holding us hostage.”
“Absolutely.” Grant lifted the quilt an inch farther, holding it away from the broken glass with the barrel of his ’58. He raised his voice to project it, and hollered out into the night. “Forget it! Wellers is innocent!”
“You can’t hide him forever!”
“We don’t have to, and you know it!”
Gideon frowned. “What do you mean by that?” he whispered.
Grant whispered in return. “Confused? Good. They’ll be confused too. Let ’em think we’re up to something. Right now, they’ll assume we mean to dig in our heels, but we could also have a plan to sneak him away, or call in reinforcements of our own. Lincoln has many friends, and someone will come calling eventually—or, for that matter, someone will notice that the president is missing.”
“Good. If we can hold on until dawn, they may decide this is more dangerous than they’d prefer and try a different approach. But,” Gideon warned, “they’ll come again. For him. For me.”
“Son,” Grant said. It was precisely the sort of voice that usually felt like nails on a chalkboard to Gideon, but for some reason, he didn’t mind it now. “All I can do is buy you time. But I doubt you need much more than that to think your way out of this.”
“Your vote of confidence is … meaningful to me.”
“You’re welcome.”
Someone outside disturbed the moment with a threat: “Don’t make us set fire to the house!”
Gideon and Grant paused and looked at each other across the door—each one trying to read the other, and gauge what they thought about that. Grant shook his head first. “If they could, they’d have done it already,” he said. “Haymes is a gambling woman, but she wouldn’t push them that far.”
“How do you know she’s a gambler?”
“She spends all her time with politicians. Name me a bigger risk if you can.”
“Are you going to answer them?”
Both men sat on the floor, watching from behind the swaying blankets. The wind had calmed, but only a bit. The night was still full of treacherous gusts, and threatening, broiling black clouds that hid all the stars.
“Yes, I’ll answer them. Like this,” Grant said. Then he shouted, “Light up a flare, and we’ll shoot any man who holds it!”
Silence in response.
After a few seconds of what must have been conferraclass="underline" “Our offer stands!”
Quietly, Grant said, “Oh does it, now? Well, good for them.”
Nelson Wellers came tiptoeing around the corner, and announced himself by saying, “They’ll do it, if they’re Haymes’s men. She’s done worse than cook a family alive.”
“Sit down, doctor.”
“I can’t let them harm the Lincolns. I won’t have that on my conscience, not when I prevent it just by being less of a coward.”
“Thinking beyond the first option isn’t cowardice. If we beat this, you stay alive, and Gideon stays alive, his credibility intact. His editorial finishes taking the nation by storm—we all know the story is wellon its way around the globe, so maybe, if we’re very lucky, it takes the South by storm as well. The war ends. The walking dead are vanquished. Stepping stones, doctor. Stepping stones.”
“Send him out, or we’re coming in!”
Grant said, “See? They’re backtracking. They aren’t threatening to burn the place down anymore. First blood was ours, and the first retreat is theirs.”
“Maybe they couldn’t reach Haymes?” Wellers suggested, but he put a question mark on the end.
“That would make sense,” Gideon mused. “They’re rather marvelously disorganized out there.”
The president peered out once more. “You could be right. And if you are, that’s one more advantage. We’re racking them up, over here!”
“Until they actually try to come inside.” Polly stood at the edge of the foyer. She spoke from the shadows behind the staircase, where no one could see her very well. “ Thenwhat do we do, Mr. Grant?”
“Then, my dear, when they try to come inside, we forcibly keep them out.Wellers, now that we’ve gotten the house as secure as possible, it’s time to ask: Does Abe have any other guns on the premises?”
“I’m sure he must.”
Polly answered. “There’s a cabinet in the cellar.”
“There’s a cellar?” Grant hesitated. “Oh that’s right. And it opens to the outside?”