He would have to feed and shelter the men till such time as the Unauthorized Regiment really did pass under U.S. control. And not men alone-"We'll be a cavalry regiment, of course," he said, as if he'd known as much all along. "No use pounding along wearing out boot leather."
"That's it, boss," Esau Hunt said. "First class all the way, that's how the Unauthorized Regiment goes."
The nucleus and, at the moment, the entire membership of Roosevelt's Unauthorized Regiment piled into Roosevelt 's Ranch Wagon (he was, he knew, thinking in capital letters). He drove over to the Gazette office, more sedately now than before: the horses hadn't had a chance to cool down fully during his brief, unfortunate visit to the capitol.
At the newspaper, he bought a large advertisement seeking recruits for the unit he was forming. " Roosevelt 's Unauthorized Regiment?" said the printer who took down the text he dictated. "I know they aren't accepting volunteers-I tried-but this here-"
"May light a fire under them," Roosevelt interrupted. "And even if it doesn't, I'll still have the troops to present to the U.S. Army. I'll also want you to print up some handbills with the same information as goes into this advertisement. Can you hire someone to paste them up here in town?"
"Sure can," the printer said, "but it'll cost you two dollars extra per five hundred."
"I'll take a thousand," Roosevelt declared. "I don't want a man to be able to walk down any street in Helena without seeing one of them."
"A thousand should do it," the man in the ink-stained apron said, nodding. "That'll be ten dollars for the advertisement, eight for the handbills-we'll print from the same type, so I'll cut you a break on that; would be ten otherwise-and four more to paper the town with 'em. Comes to twenty-two altogether… Colonel."
Roosevelt had already tossed a double eagle and two big silver cartwheels onto the counter when that registered. "By jingo!" he said softly. If he was raising the regiment, he would be its colonel. That was how things had worked in the War of Secession, and the rules hadn't changed since.
He stood straighter and pushed out his chest. Though he'd never fired a shot at anything more dangerous than a coyote, suddenly he felt as one with Washington and Napoleon and Zachary Taylor: a leader of men, a conqueror. This was what he was meant to do with his life. He could feel it in his marrow.
He'd already felt a couple of other callings-writer, rancher-in his marrow during his twenty-two years on earth, but so what? He'd obviously been mistaken then. He wasn't mistaken now. He couldn't be mistaken now.
"Let's find a saloon, boys," he said. In Helena, that was harder than finding air to breathe, but not much. He had his choice, only a few doors away from the Gazette. He and the farmhands strode into the Silver Spoon. "Drinks on me!" he yelled, which made him friends in a hurry. "Let me tell you about Roosevelt 's Unauthorized Regiment, gents, if you'll be so kind." His new friends listened. Why not? He was buying.
Up in Front Royal, Virginia, far to the northwest of Richmond, General Thomas Jackson felt like a man released from prison. Once real fighting started, he'd taken advantage of it to escape from the capitol to the front line. President Longstreet hadn't liked that decision, not even a little.
Jackson smiled at the memory of how disingenuous he'd been. "But, Your Excellency," he'd said, "surely the telegraph can bring me the same intelligence in the field as it can far behind the lines here. It can also convey to me any instructions you have as to the prosecution of the war. And I shall gain the important advantage of viewing some segments of the action at first hand."
"You don't fool me a bit," Longstreet had answered. "You want to get out from under my thumb, and you want to get back into a camp."
Having been a garrison soldier for more years than he cared to recall, Jackson had picked up a certain measure of guile. "Mr. President, my desires, whatever they may be"-he was not about to admit that Longstreet had hit the nail on the head-"are of no importance. All that matters is the country's need. Can you deny my proposal possesses military merit?"
Try as he would, Old Pete Longstreet hadn't been able to deny it. And so Jackson was encamped just north of Front Royal, in charge of a Confederate force that had fallen back in the face of the larger Yankee army that had come out of West Virginia and Maryland and was now occupying Winchester, near the head of the Shenandoah Valley.
More than the Confederate defenders had fallen back. Half the civilian population-half the white civilian population, at any ratehad fled Winchester before the invaders. Their tents and lean-tos were scattered promiscuously over the ground around the neat rows of gray and butternut canvas that marked the Confederate bivouac.
Jackson did not like having to deal with civilians. They clogged the roads, and they were eating up a good part of the supplies that should have gone to his men. And they possessed not the slightest clue about discipline or order. He feared lest they infect his troops with their chaotic stridency.
He also did not like his position. Front Royal sat at the confluence of two branches of the Shenandoah. An enterprising U.S. commander could move artillery to the high ground on either side of the town, much as Jackson himself had done against the United States during the War of Secession. Fortunately, the Yankees seemed so impressed with having taken Winchester as to have no notion of trying anything more at the moment.
That let Jackson enjoy the luxury of sitting on the top rail of a fence outside Front Royal and sucking on a lemon while he contemplated ways and means of doing unto the Yankees before they did unto him. It also let a plump, middle-aged civilian in a cutaway coat and a stovepipe hat-a gentleman who, if he was half so important as he thought himself to be, was a very important fellow indeed-come up to him and say, "See here, General, you simply must do something about the outrageous, illegal, and immoral way the damnyankees are confiscating our property. The first thing they did, sir, the very first thing, on marching into our fair city, was to proclaim the liberation of every last nigger in Winchester. Outrageous, I say!"
"I agree with you," Jackson said. "They weren't so blatant about it in the last war, but we had much property stolen then in the fashion you describe."
"Well, sir, what do you propose to do about it?" the refugee from Winchester demanded. "I've lost thousands thanks to their thieving ways, thousands, I tell you!"
"How much do you suppose the nation has lost?" Jackson asked. The important-or, at least, self-important-man stared at him. As the general had thought, concern for the nation had never entered his mind. He cared only for himself. Jackson went on, "The best remedy 1 can conceive, sir, is retaking Winchester from the United States. Then their actions are no longer of any consequence to us."
That wasn't strictly true, as he knew. Negroes who had been told they were free would believe it. They might try to escape to the USA — though the Yankees were anything but eager to have them there. If returned to bondage, they would surely prove fractious and unruly. President Longstreet, Jackson reflected unhappily, might well have known what he was about when he proposed manumission.
"What the devil are you doing perched there chawing on that damn thing"-the man in the stovepipe hat pointed to the lemon Jackson was holding-"when you could be liberating the city?"
"Contemplating the best way to liberate it." Deliberately, Jackson began sucking on the lemon again. The plump man went right on expostulating. Jackson used the lemon as an excuse not to say another word. He looked through the fellow from Winchester, not at him. The man took a long time to get the message, but finally did. He went away, muttering dark things under his breath.