"My ass," Charlie Satcher said succinctly.
"Now that you mention it, yes," Morrell agreed, and the driver laughed. But Morrell went on, "You know it's crap, I know it's crap, and Jake goddamn Featherston knows it's crap, too, but how do you go about proving it's crap?"
"Screw proving it," Satcher said. "Blow the bastards to hell and gone anyway."
"I do like the way you think," Morrell said.
Brigadier General Abner Dowling remembered George Armstrong Custer. There had been times-a great many times-when Dowling's dearest wish would have been to forget entirely the officer whose adjutant he'd been for so long. Things didn't seem to work that way, though. All those years with Custer had marked him for life. Scarred him for life, he would have been inclined to say in his less charitable moments. This was one of those days.
When Dowling thought of Custer nowadays, he thought of the general after the Great War, when Custer had come back to Philadelphia to fill an office and count corks and write elaborate reports on the best deployment of paper clips in the U.S. Army. With nothing real, nothing important, to do, Custer had wanted to jump out of a window. Dowling often thought the only thing that stopped him was his office's being on the ground floor.
And now Dowling knew exactly how his superior had felt. Since coming back from Salt Lake City after the occupation of Utah ended, he'd filled an office and written elaborate reports on the best way to transport rubber bands to combat units. That was how it seemed, anyhow. He was on the shelf, and he was damned if he knew how to get off again.
If he was going to be stuck in Philadelphia, he'd hoped the War Department might at least channel reports of what was going on in Utah through him. He'd spent a lot of years-a lot of thankless years-in the state. He wondered if Winthrop W. Webb was still in business, or if the Mormons had figured out who Webb's real bosses were and arranged an accident for him.
Try as Dowling would, he couldn't find out. Somebody in the War Department was surely tending to affairs in Utah. Whoever it was, it wasn't Dowling. He couldn't even find out who it was. The only thing his efforts to find out got him was a visit from Lieutenant Colonel John Abell.
The more Dowling saw the General Staff officer, the less he liked him, even though Abell had been the one who'd told him he'd made general-officer grade. The man was slim and pale-downright bloodless, in fact. Had the U.S. Army been made up of ghosts rather than men, he would have been one of the handsomest ones in it. As things were, he made Dowling want to turn up the heat in the office even though the day was warm.
"Sir, you have been poking your nose into matters that do not concern you," Abell said. "We discourage that."
We? You have a tapeworm? Dowling wondered. He remembered Irving Morrell talking about Abell during the war. At the time, he'd been sure Morrell was exaggerating. Now he found the other man had been speaking the gospel truth. He eyed the General Staff lieutenant colonel's lean, pallid countenance and picked his words with care: "I don't believe Utah's affairs can fail to concern me, not when I was there so long."
"If the War Department feels otherwise, why should you disagree?" Lieutenant Colonel Abell inquired.
"Because if I had anything to do with Utah, I could be useful to the Department," Dowling answered. "With what people have me doing now-I mean, not doing now-I'm useless. Useful is better."
"Don't you trust the judgment of your superiors as to what is useful and what is not?" Abell asked silkily.
By the way spoke, he might have been one of those superiors, even if Dowling outranked him. General Staff officers, Dowling thought scornfully, and tried not to let his annoyance show. Even if Abell had a lower grade, he enjoyed much better connections. And so, still speaking carefully, Dowling said, "A quartermaster sergeant could do most of what I've been doing since I came back here, whereas I've got some specialized knowledge no sergeant can match. Using me without using that knowledge is inefficient."
"Possibly," Abell said, which meant he wasn't about to admit it. "A pleasure talking to you." He got to his feet and started for the door. With a hand on the knob, he turned back. "You know Colonel Morrell, don't you?"
"Oh, yes." Dowling nodded. "We worked together on the breakthrough that took Nashville." That might have been impolitic, since the breakthrough had violated War Department doctrine on how to use barrels. Dowling didn't much care, since it had also gone a long way toward making the Confederates throw in the towel.
"How interesting," Lieutenant Colonel Abell said with a smile that displayed a lot of expensive dentistry. And then, silent as a specter, he was gone. Dowling wondered if he ought to have his office exorcised.
He'd hoped Abell's questions would lead to something better in the way of work. For the next couple of weeks, his hopes were disappointed. He read about Irving Morrell's encounter with gun runners on the border between Texas and Houston in the newspapers. Nobody in the War Department asked him about it in any official way. He wondered why Abell had bothered confirming that they were acquainted. The better to blackball me, he thought.
But, somewhat to his surprise, he did see the General Staff officer again. When John Abell next appeared-materialized?-in his office, the lieutenant colonel's face bore a smile that seemed less than perfectly friendly. "So you are friends with Colonel Morrell, are you?" Abell said, a note of challenge in his voice. "And you've done the same sort of work, have you?"
Dowling hadn't said he was friends with Morrell. He admired Morrell's talent; what Morrell thought of him he wasn't nearly so sure. But, sensing that a yes would annoy Lieutenant Colonel Abell more than a no, he nodded defiantly and said, "That's right."
"Very well, Brigadier General Dowling. In that case, I have some orders for you." Abell spoke as if washing his hands of him.
To Dowling, anything would have been better than what he was doing now. "And those orders are…?" he asked eagerly.
Abell heard that eagerness. It made him blink. By the fruit salad on his chest, he'd stayed in Philadelphia through the Great War. He no doubt thought his role more important than those of soldiers who actually went out and fought the enemy, too. He might even have been right, but Dowling didn't care to dwell on that. "Sir, you will be sent to Kentucky," he said now. "Your duty there will be similar to Colonel Morrell's in Houston: you will help control agitation against the government of the United States. This does also relate to your experience in Utah, would you not agree?"
"Yes, I'd say that's true," Dowling answered cautiously. "You're coming as close as you can without a real war to sending me into combat, aren't you?"
"Isn't that what you wanted?" Abell asked with sardonic satisfaction.
But that satisfaction slipped when Dowling gave him another yes instead of a no, saying, "You bet it is. I've wanted to get into the field for years. They wouldn't take me away from Utah when we fought the Japs, dammit."
"Well, you're going to get your wish." Lieutenant Colonel Abell plainly thought he was out of his mind.
"When do I leave?" Dowling asked. "Where exactly do I go? All over Kentucky, or somewhere in particular?"
"I don't have the precise details yet," Abell said. "I assure you, they will be passed on in good time. In the meanwhile, you are to continue with the duties you have already been assigned."
"Thank you so much," Dowling said sourly. The General Staff officer took no notice of his tone, which might have been just as well. Abell departed with a salute that mocked military courtesy instead of reinforcing it. Now Dowling was the one who ignored the slight. He would have ignored not only a slight but a large if that meant escaping from Philadelphia.