"You understand what it is," Robert Quinn said at a Freedom Party meeting a couple of weeks after those unfortunate things happened. "It has been a very long time since anyone told a patron, 'No, senor, you may not do this.' They needed a lesson. Now they have had one. I do not think they will need any more."
"What could we have done if they had come after us with everything they have?" Rodriguez asked.
Quinn looked steadily back at him. "It is like this. The rich men around Baroyeca have so much. The Freedom Party has so much." He held his hands first close together, then wide apart. "If you put them in a fight, who do you think is going to win?"
"But suppose they talked to the governor," Rodriguez said stubbornly. "Suppose they said, 'Call out the state militia. We have to put down these Freedom Party men with guns.' "
" Muy bien — suppose they did that." The Freedom Party organizer sounded agreeable. "Suppose they did exactly that. How many soldados in this state, Senor Rodriguez, do you suppose are Freedom Party men?"
"Ahh," Rodriguez said, and his voice was just one in a small, delighted chorus of oohs and ahhs that filled Freedom Party headquarters. He went on, "You mean they cannot trust their own soldiers?"
"Did I say that?" Quinn shook his head. "I did not say that. Would I say anything that would go against the state government? Of course not."
"Of course not," Carlos Ruiz agreed in sly tones. "We don't want to go against the state government. We want to take it over."
"Ahh," Hipolito Rodriguez said again. He found winning a national election easier to imagine than toppling the state government. Richmond was far away, and wouldn't matter so immediately. A Freedom Party administration in Hermosillo would send shock waves rippling through Sonora.
Of course, a Freedom Party defeat in November would send shock waves of a different sort rippling through the state. Quinn said, "Remember, we have to win, or the lesson Don Joaquin learned goes for nothing."
He didn't say who had taught Carlos Ruiz's patron that lesson. He certainly didn't say the men who'd taught that lesson had got their rifles and ammunition from him. Some things were better unadmitted.
Quietly Hipolito Rodriguez said, "That lesson had better not go for nothing, whether we win or lose. If they push us too hard, we can still fight."
"You are a brave man, a bold man," Quinn said. "You are the sort of man we want, the sort of man we need, in the Freedom Party."
Rodriguez shrugged. "If a patron wants to stay a Radical Liberal, that is all right with me. I used to be a Radical Liberal myself. I changed my mind. They have no business telling me I may not change my mind. I would never try to tell them any such thing."
"Yes. You have reason. That is how it should be," Ruiz said. Several other men nodded.
But Robert Quinn said, "Once we win, well, other parties will just have to get used to that. The difference between the Freedom Party and the other parties in the Confederate States is that we have reason and they do not. If they are wrong, why should we let them pretend they are right?"
"They are political parties, too," Ruiz said. "One of these days, they will win an election."
"I do not think so," Quinn said. "I do not think one of them will win an election for a very, very long time once we take over."
"What do you mean?" Ruiz asked. "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. That is how politics works."
"Not always," Rodriguez said. "How many times in a row have Whigs been presidents of the Confederate States? Every single time, that's how many. If the Freedom Party is good enough to win, it will win just as many elections. That's what you meant, isn't it, Senor Quinn?"
"Sure it is, Senor Rodriguez," Quinn said easily, with a small laugh. "That is exactly what I meant."
Rodriguez wondered why he laughed. Because he hadn't meant exactly that? If he hadn't, what had he meant? What could he have meant? Rodriguez shrugged. Whatever it was, he didn't think he needed to worry about it very much.
Someone asked, " Senor Quinn, how do we make certain the Freedom Party wins in Sonora this November?"
"That is a good question. That is a very good question." Now Robert Quinn sounded not only serious but altogether sincere. "We ourselves here can only make sure we win in Baroyeca." He waited for nods to show everyone understood that, then went on, "We have to do a few things. We have to let people know what the Party will do for them once it wins. We have to let them know what it will do for the country once it wins. We have to show them the other parties cannot do the things they promise, and that most of what they promise is not good anyway. And we have to do everything we can to keep them from having the chance to tell their lies."
Hipolito Rodriguez understood all of that but the last. "What do you mean, Senor Quinn?" he asked. "How do we keep them from doing that?"
"However we have to," the Freedom Party man said bluntly. "However we need to. Don Joaquin had a sad accident, verdad?" Again, he waited for nods. Again, he got them. Everybody here knew what kind of accident Don Joaquin had had. Nobody much felt like talking about details-better safe than sorry. Quinn continued, "When they come here to make speeches and stir up their followers, we do not let them. We shout, we heckle, we make enough of a disturbance to keep them from talking to an audience. If they cannot talk, they cannot get their message out, eh?"
"Si, senor." Several men said it together. Rodriguez wasn't one of them, but he nodded. If the Freedom Party got to talk and no one else did, that was surely a large advantage. But…
He held up his hand. Quinn pointed his way. " Senor, how do we keep them from talking on the wireless?" he inquired.
"Ah, Senor Rodriguez, you do ask interesting questions." As always, Quinn was scrupulously polite. He treated the men who'd joined the Freedom Party as if they were dons. Most white men thought of Sonorans and Chihuahuans as nothing but greasers. If Quinn did, he kept it to himself. That was another reason his following grew and grew. He continued, "We cannot stop that, not altogether-not yet. But it does not matter so much here in Sonora, because fewer places here have electricity than is true in most of the Confederate States."
Carlos Ruiz clicked his tongue between his teeth. "That is not fair. That is not right."
"I agree with you, Senor Ruiz," Quinn said. "It is one of the things the Freedom Party will fix once we have power. But, whether we like it or not, it is true, and we have to take it into account." He paused and looked around the room. "Are there any more questions? No? All right, then. This meeting is adjourned."
Rodriguez was the first one to start out of the Freedom Party headquarters. From across the street, a shot rang out. Whoever held that gun didn't really know what to do with it. The bullet cracked past Rodriguez's head and thudded into the planking of the building behind him. Automatic reflex made him throw himself flat. Another bullet sang through the air where he'd stood a moment before. Glass shattered. Chunks rained down on him.
He rolled back into the building. "Blow out the lamps!" he cried. The headquarters plunged into darkness.
"Here." Someone pressed a Tredegar into his hands. "If they want to play such games…"
He crawled up to the shot-out window. One of the men who'd fired at him was running across the street, straight toward the headquarters, a lighted kerosene lantern in hand. That made the fellow an even easier target than he would have been otherwise. He wanted to fight fire with fire, did he? The rifle leaped to Rodriguez's shoulder. He squeezed the trigger. The man with the lantern shrieked, whirled, and crumpled, clutching his belly. The lantern fell on his chest. Burning kerosene poured out and made him into a torch.
Never shoot twice in a row from the same place unless the cover is very good-one more lesson Rodriguez had absorbed during the Great War. Staying low, he wriggled over to the other side of the window. Another Tredegar banged, this one at the back of Party headquarters. No cry of anguish from outside, but a triumphant yell from inside the building: Robert Quinn shouting, in English, "Take that, you fucking son of a bitch!" For good measure, he added, "Chinga tu madre!"