As Roosevelt had seen, the fleshpots of Fort Benton were nothing to threaten New York City, or even Great Falls. But Welton was right-the little town by the fort seemed positively sybaritic when set beside a regimental headquarters out in the middle of the empty Montana prairie.
Still… "Sir, if you're generous enough to give me a few days of ease like this-and I do thank you for them; don't mistake me-might I give the troops in the regiment leave to come into Fort Benton one at a time, to blow off their steam? The troops adjacent to that coming in on furlough could spread themselves thinner to cover its ground. I should hate to take advantage of a privilege my men cannot enjoy."
"Well, I hadn't thought of it, but I don't see why not," Welton said. He stared across the desk at Roosevelt. "Colonel, have your troopers any conception of how fortunate they are in their commanding officer?"
"Sir, in this request I am only seeking to apply the Golden Rule."
"You are a young man," Henry Welton said. He raised a hand. "No, I mean nothing by that but praise. We need young men, their energy and their enthusiasm and their idealism. Without them, this part of the country will never come to its full growth."
Had Welton meant nothing by the remark but praise, he wouldn't have felt the need to amplify and justify it so. Roosevelt was not so young as to fail to understand that. But, even with whiskey burning through him, he refused to take offense. Instead, he answered, "Some few men are fortunate enough to retain their youthful energy and enthusiasm and idealism throughout the whole span of their lives. They are the ones the history books written a hundred years after they are dead call great. I cannot judge the course of my life before I run it, but that is the goal to which I aspire."
Henry Welton didn't say anything for fully five minutes after that. One of the lamps burned out, filling the room with the sharp stink of kerosene and throwing new dark shadows across his face. When at last he spoke, it was from out of those shadows and in a meditative tone suited to them: "I wonder, Colonel, what the old generals and captains who had fought so long and so well under Philip of Macedon thought when Alexander gathered them together and told them they were going to go off and conquer the world. Alexander would have been about the age you are now, I expect."
Roosevelt stared. Nothing he could say or do sitting down seemed thanks enough. Forgetting his aches and pains, he sprang to his feet and bowed from the waist. "I can't possibly live up to that." Now he felt the whiskey; it put him at risk of sounding maudlin. "God made only one Alexander the Great, and then He broke the mold. But a man might do much worse than trying to walk as far as he can in his footsteps."
"Yes. So a man might." Welton paused again, this time to light a cigar. When he had it going, he chuckled self-consciously. "In vino veritas, or so they say. Lord only knows what they say about whiskey from a Fort Benton saloon." He suddenly seemed to notice the lamp had gone out. "Heavens, what time has it gotten to be?"
"It's a little past ten, sir," Roosevelt said after looking at his watch.
"I didn't mean to keep you gabbing here till all hours," Colonel Welton said. "You must be about ready to fall over dead. Let me gather you up and take you off to the bachelor officers' quarters for the night."
"As a matter of fact, I'm fine," Roosevelt said, and, to his surprise, it was true. "Much better than I was when I first rode into the fort. Must be the excellent company and the equally excellent restorative."
"If you don't get some rest now, you won't be fine in the-" A knock on the office door interrupted Welton before he could finish the sentence. "Come in," he called, and a soldier did, telegram in hand. Welton raised an eyebrow. "It must be after midnight back in Philadelphia. What's so important that it won't keep till daybreak?"
"It's not from Philadelphia, sir," the soldier answered. "It's from Helena, from the Territorial governor."
"All right, what's so important in Helena that it won't keep till daybreak?" Welton took the wire, read it, growled something vile under his breath, crumpled up the paper, and flung it across the room. "God damn that lazy bastard!"
"What's wrong, sir?" Roosevelt asked.
"You may have heard they booted Abe Lincoln out of Utah Territory for interfering with the military governor? No? Well, they did. He turned up in Helena preaching the power of labour, and started a riot down there. Now he's on his way up to Great Falls, probably to preach on the same text. I'm supposed to help keep order there, and I'd have had a hell of a lot better chance of doing it if His idiotic Excellency hadn't waited till the day before Lincoln was getting into Great Falls before bothering to tell me he was on his way. He's talking there tomorrow night."
"Sir, whomever you send, send me, too!" Roosevelt exclaimed. "I've always wanted to hear Lincoln."
"I'm not sending anyone," Welton said. "I'm going myself. You're welcome to ride along if you like." He waited for Roosevelt 's eager nod, then went on, "And now I will put you to bed, and put myself to bed, too. We have a busy day ahead of us tomorrow, and likely a busier night."
"Good!" Roosevelt said, which made Henry Welton laugh.
As far as Frederick Douglass knew, he was by at least twenty-five years the oldest correspondent crossing the Ohio with the second wave of invaders-no, of liberators-entering Kentucky. He'd wondered how much trouble he would have in getting permission to see the action at first hand.
He'd had no trouble at all. The officer in charge of granting such permissions was Captain Oliver Richardson. Instead of being difficult, General Willcox's adjutant had proved the soul of cooperation. When the process was done, Douglass had said, "Thank you very much, Captain," with a certain amount of suspicion in his voice, hardly believing Richardson wanted to be helpful.
And then the captain had smiled at him. "It's my pleasure, Mr. Douglass, believe me," he'd said, and the smile had got wider. That wasn't pleasure; it was gloating anticipation.
He thinks he's sending me off to be killed, Douglass had realized. He hopes he's sending me off to be killed. Worst of all, the Negro journalist couldn't say a word. Richardson had only done what he'd asked him to do.
And now, along with a raft-actually, a barge-full of nervous young white men in blue uniforms, a nervous elderly black man in a sack suit set out across the Ohio to go into the Confederate States of America for the first time in his life. On his hip was the comforting weight of a pistol. He didn't expect to do much damage to the Rebels with it. It would, however, keep them from ever returning him to the life of bondage he had been fortunate enough to escape.
U.S. artillery opened up, thunderous in its might. As had happened before the direct assault on Louisville, the southern bank of the Ohio disappeared from view, engulfed in smoke. If all went according to plan, the bombardment would leave the Confederates too stunned to reply.
If all had gone according to plan, Louisville would have fallen weeks before, and this second assault would have been unnecessary. Douglass did his best not to dwell on that.
At the rear of the barge, the steam engine began hissing like a whole nestful of snakes. "Here we go, boys!" shouted Major Algernon van Nuys, who commanded that part of the Sixth New York Volunteer Infantry crammed aboard the awkward, ugly vessel. The soldiers cheered. Douglass wondered whether they were outstandingly brave or outstandingly naive.
No matter what sort of noises the engine made, the barge wasn't going anywhere in a hurry. It crawled away from the wharf and waddled south toward the Kentucky shore of the Ohio, one of many boats and barges in the water. As soon as they started moving, shells started falling among them. "We've been hoaxed!" somebody near Douglass exclaimed. "They said they were gonna knock all these Rebel guns to kingdom come. They lied to us, lied!" He sounded comically aggrieved.