Because he was looking out toward them, he saw the muzzle flash. The rifle report came a split second later-right on the heels of the bullet that slammed into his shoulder.
"Oh, shit!" he exclaimed, and clapped his other hand to the wound. Blood dripped out through his fingers. For a couple of seconds, he felt only the impact-as if somebody'd belted him with a crowbar. Then the pain followed. He howled like a wolf. The next thing he knew, he was sitting on the muddy ground, with no memory of how he'd got there.
"Holy shit! The colonel's down!" Three people said the same thing at the same time. Another shot rang out. This one cracked past Morrell's ear.
Sergeant Pound ran over to him. The gunner grabbed Morrell and heaved him across his broad back. Morrell howled again, louder this time-getting manhandled like that hurt worse than getting shot had. Michael Pound paid no attention to him. He ran for cover, shouting, "Doc! Hey, Doc! Some son of a bitch shot the colonel!"
One more bullet snarled by, much too close for comfort. That's not just somebody picking off whoever he can get, Morrell thought dazedly. He wants my ass. Christ, I wish that's where he'd shot me.
Morrell hadn't thought about the aid station in a while. The medics and the doctor there hadn't had to worry about anything worse than cuts and burns for a bit, not since the planned U.S. offensive stalled. They'd probably been playing poker in their tent before Pound burst in, still carrying Morrell. "For God's sake, Doc, patch him up," the gunner panted.
The doctor attached to the force was a New Yorker named Sheldon Silverstein. "Get him on the table," he said. The corpsmen obeyed, taking Morrell from Sergeant Pound. Morrell tried to bite down on a shriek as they shoved him around. He succeeded less well than he wished he would have.
Silverstein looked down at him. The doctor settled a gauze mask over his nose and mouth. His eyes were dark and clever. "Morphine," he said, and one of the corpsmen stuck a needle in Morrell. Silverstein went on, "I'm going to have to poke around in there, Colonel. I'm sorry, but I've got to figure out what's going on."
When he did, pieces of broken bone grated. Morrell tried to rise up off the table like Lazarus. The corpsmen and Michael Pound held him down. He called them and Silverstein every name in the book-and a couple he invented specially for the occasion.
"Smashed up your clavicle, sure as hell," Silverstein said, as if he and Morrell were discussing the weather. "Doesn't look too bad after that-bounced off a rib and exited under your arm."
"Hot damn," Morrell said, or perhaps something rather warmer.
Dr. Silverstein smiled a thin smile. "I'll see how we do," he said. An ether cone came down over Morrell's face. He feebly tried to pull it off-it reminded him too much of poison gas. Somebody grabbed his good hand. Then the ether took him away from himself.
When he came back to the real world, things hurt less than they had before he went under. He croaked something even he couldn't understand. A corpsman called, "Hey, Doc! He's awake!" The man gave Morrell a small swig of water.
Silverstein looked down at him from what seemed a great height. "How do you feel?" he asked.
"I was born to hang," Morrell said feebly.
"Wouldn't be a bit surprised." Nothing fazed Silverstein-he worked at it. "Can you move the fingers on your right hand?"
"Don't know." As more cobwebs came off his brain, Morrell realized a good many were still there. He tried to move those fingers. The effort made him grunt. "I-think so." He wasn't sure whether he'd succeeded.
But Dr. Silverstein nodded. "Yeah. That means the bullet didn't tear up the nerve plexus in there. You should do pretty well now, as long as you don't get a wound infection."
Even dopey and doped-up as he was, Morrell winced. "Had one of those in the last war. Damn near lost my leg."
"Well, we can do some things this time around they didn't know about then," the doctor told him. "I think you've got a pretty good chance."
"That's nice." Morrell yawned. Yes, he still felt disconnected from the physical part of himself. Considering what had happened to his physical part, that was just as well. "How long will I be on the shelf?"
"Depends on how you do," Silverstein said, which was no answer at all. He seemed to realize that. "My best guess is a couple of months, maybe a little longer than that. You aren't as young as you used to be."
When Morrell was young, he'd lain in the dust in Sonora wondering if he'd bleed to death. Was this an improvement? "Should be sooner," he said, and yawned again. Whatever Dr. Silverstein told him, he didn't hear it.
He woke later with something closer to his full complement of wits. He also woke in more pain, because the morphine they'd given him was starting to wear off. He was in a different place-a real building with walls and a ceiling, not a tent. A corpsman he'd never seen before asked him, "How do you feel?"
"Hurts," he answered-one word that covered a lot of ground.
"I believe it, buddy. Stopping a bullet's no fun at all." The corpsman gave him a shot. "Here you go. This'll make things better pretty soon."
"Thanks," Morrell said. What was pretty soon to the medic seemed like forever to him. He tried to think, hoping that would distract him from the fire in his shoulder. The fire made thinking hard work, and all he could think about was how he'd got wounded. He was behind the line when he got hit. How had the Confederates sneaked a sniper that far into U.S.-held territory?
After a little while, he realized how might not be the right question. Why had the Confederates sneaked a sniper that deep into U.S.-held territory? The only answer that came to mind was to knock off a certain Irving Morrell. The bastard had been shooting at him-at him and nobody else-even while Sergeant Pound was hauling him to Dr. Silverstein's tent.
It was an honor, of sorts. It was one he would gladly have done without. He tried to move the fingers on his right hand again. When he did, it was as if he'd put a bellows to the fire in his shoulder. The Confederates thought he was dangerous to them, did they? He wondered if the United States were trying to assassinate Confederate officers who'd hurt them. Neither side had fought that way in the Great War. This time, it looked to be no holds barred.
Little by little, the new shot of morphine sneaked up on him. It built a wall between his wound and the part of him that mattered. It also slowed his thinking to a crawl… and that wasn't such a bad thing, either.
Part of Mary Pomeroy was glad to see Alec in kindergarten. It meant she didn't have to keep an eye on him every hour of every day. She'd almost forgotten what having time to herself felt like. Finding some again was even better than she'd thought it would be.
But, however convenient it was for her, it came at a price. What didn't? In kindergarten and all the years of school that followed, Alec's teachers would do their best to turn him into a Yank, or at least into somebody who thought like a Yank. Some of what they taught him would be small and probably harmless. Would it really matter if he spelled in the U.S. style, writing color for colour and check for cheque? Maybe not. As far as Mary was concerned, though, it would matter a lot if he decided the United States had had right on their side in the War of 1812-or, for that matter, in the Great War.
Her own father had pulled her out of school when he saw what the Yanks were up to. She couldn't do that with Alec. The rules were tighter now than they had been a generation before-and she was in town, not on a farm. If she held him out, she'd draw questions. They'd investigate her. They might look harder at what Wilf Rokeby had claimed about her. She couldn't take the chance. And so Alec went off to school every day, and never knew about his mother's misgivings.
He had none of his own. He loved school. He said over and over that he was the biggest boy in his class, and the toughest. He had fights on the schoolyard, and he won them. Every once in a while, his teacher paddled him. He seemed to take that in stride-part of the price of being exuberant. Mary still sometimes had to whack him to get his attention, too.