Settling Accounts_ Drive To The East Part 3

Lieutenant-Colonel Tom Colleton knew his regiment helped hold an important position. His soldiers defended Confederate positions east of Sandusky, Ohio, on the southern sh.o.r.e of Lake Erie. As long as the Confederate States held a corridor from the Ohio River to the lake, they cut the United States in half. The d.a.m.nyankees couldn't s.h.i.+p anything or anybody by rail or road from east to west or west to east within their own territory. They had to take the long way around, through occupied Canada-and Canada didn't have nearly so many lines or roads as the USA did.

No matter how true that was, though, Tom Colleton wasn't happy. He didn't like standing on the defensive. He'd reveled in the push north from the border. That was what war was supposed to be about. He'd fought in Virginia the last time, and hated stalemates with the grim and bitter pa.s.sion of a man who'd seen too many of them. Barrels meant soldiers didn't have to huddle in trenches this time around. They didn't have to, no-but too often they did anyway.

Fortunately, the Yankees were as preoccupied with Virginia these days as the Confederates had been with Ohio and Indiana at the start of the war. Even more fortunately, U.S. forces weren't doing as well in Virginia as the Confederates had here farther west. In Sandusky, Tom couldn't help hearing both C.S. and U.S. wireless reports. When both sides told the same story, it was probably true. When they diverged, he had to try to figure out who was lying and who wasn't.

No matter what his sister had thought about Jake Featherston, Tom had no great love or admiration for him. His mouth tightened. Anne had died in the opening days of the war. If she hadn't been down in Charleston when that d.a.m.nyankee carrier raid hit the town . . . But she had, and n.o.body could do anything about it now.

His own wife and boys were safe in St. Matthews, not far from Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. The last of the Colletons, The last of the Colletons, he thought. He'd never felt that way while Anne was alive, even though she'd been childless. She'd bossed the family ever since their parents died. Now everything rode on his shoulders. he thought. He'd never felt that way while Anne was alive, even though she'd been childless. She'd bossed the family ever since their parents died. Now everything rode on his shoulders.

He laughed as he looked east toward the d.a.m.nyankees' lines. The Colletons were a family with a fine future behind them. Before the Great War, Marshlands was one of the leading plantations in South Carolina, with hundreds of colored hands working in the cotton fields. The mansion went up in flames in the Negro uprising in 1915, and not even Anne could make a go of cotton after the war.

Up ahead, the Yankees and some of Tom's men started banging away at one another. Telling which side was which by ear was easy. The U.S. soldiers used bolt-action Springfields, rifles much like the Tredegars C.S. troops had carried in the last war. In this fight, soldiers in b.u.t.ternut had either automatic rifles or submachine guns. The d.a.m.nyankees were always going to outnumber them, so each Confederate soldier needed to have more firepower than his U.S. counterpart.

The only trouble was, rifles and submachine guns weren't the sole weapons involved. U.S. and C.S. machine guns were as near identical as made no difference. So were the two sides' artillery, barrels, and aircraft. Add all that in and what had been a good-sized edge for the Confederate foot soldier shrank considerably.

Sure as h.e.l.l, machine guns from both sides joined the conversation within a couple of minutes. Mortar rounds didn't make much noise leaving their tubes-soldiers on both sides called them stove pipes-but the harsh, flat crump! crump! of the bursting bombs was unmistakable. of the bursting bombs was unmistakable.

Colleton shouted for his wireless man. When the small soldier with the large pack on his back came up, Tom said, "What the h.e.l.l's going on there? This was a pretty quiet sector up until a few minutes ago. Get me one of the forward company command posts."

"Yes, sir." The wireless man did his job without fuss or feathers. "Here's Captain Dinwiddie, sir-A Company, First Battalion."

"Dinwiddie!" Tom called into the mouthpiece. "Who went and pulled on the d.a.m.nyankees' tails?"

"Other way round, sir," the captain answered. "Yankee sniper potted Lieutenant Jenks. He's not dead, but he's hurt pretty bad. Some of our boys spotted the muzzle flash up in a tree. They started shooting at him, and some of those green-gray f.u.c.kers shot back, and now it's h.e.l.l's half acre up here."

"You want artillery? You want gas?" Tom asked. He hated gas, as every Great War veteran did, which didn't mean he wouldn't use it in a red-hot minute. G.o.d only knew the d.a.m.nyankees weren't shy about throwing it around.

"Not right now, sir," Dinwiddie said. "They're just shooting. There's no real attack coming in. If we stir 'em up, though, Lord only knows what they might try."

"All right." Colleton wasn't particularly sorry about the response. His job now was to keep the USA out of Sandusky, no matter what. If that meant not stirring up the enemy, he didn't mind. He didn't much feel like getting stirred up himself. It was a cold, miserable day, and he would sooner have stayed inside by a nice, hot fire.

The firefight lasted about half an hour. Well before then, Confederate medics with Red Cross armbands and Red Crosses on their helmets went up to the front to bring back the wounded. A couple of medics came back on stretchers themselves. Tom swore, but without particular fury. He'd never yet seen the Yankees make a habit of picking off medics, any more than the Confederates did. But neither machine-gun bursts nor mortar bombs were fussy about whom they maimed.

After the shooting eased, a U.S. captain came across the line under flag of truce. An officer at the front sent him back to Tom. The Yankee gave him a stiff little nod. "I'd like to ask you for a two-hour truce, Lieutenant-Colonel, so the corpsmen on both sides can bring in the dead and wounded."

"Do you think they'll need that long?" Tom asked.

"Been a lot of shooting going on up there," the U.S. captain answered. He had a flat, harsh Midwestern accent, far removed from Colleton's South Carolina drawl. They spoke the same language-they had no trouble understanding each other-but they plainly weren't from the same country.

Tom considered, then nodded. "All right, Captain. Two hours, commencing at"-he looked at his watch-"at 0945. That gives you half an hour to get back to your own line and pa.s.s the word that we've agreed. Suit you all right?"

"Down to the ground. Two hours, starting at 0945. Thank you, Lieutenant-Colonel. You're a gentleman." The captain stuck out his hand. Tom hesitated, but shook it. The man was an enemy, but he was playing by the rules-was, in fact, making a point of playing by the rules.

As the U.S. officer left, Tom had his wireless man tell the forward positions that the truce was coming. He sent runners up to the front, too, to make sure no platoon with a busted wireless set failed to get the word. Once the truce started, his men would probably swap cigarettes with the d.a.m.nyankees for some of the ration cans the U.S. Army issued. Tom didn't intend to issue an order forbidding it: less than no point in issuing an order bound to be ignored. Like everybody on both sides of the front, he knew the USA made horses.h.i.+t cigarettes but had rations better than their C.S. counterparts.

It won't make a dime's worth of difference who wins the war, he consoled himself. That same sort of illicit trading had gone on in the Great War and in the War of Secession, too. Then it was tobacco for coffee. That wasn't a problem these days, not with the Caribbean a Confederate lake. he consoled himself. That same sort of illicit trading had gone on in the Great War and in the War of Secession, too. Then it was tobacco for coffee. That wasn't a problem these days, not with the Caribbean a Confederate lake.

At 0945, the guns on both sides fell silent. The sudden quiet made Tom jumpy. He didn't feel he could trust it. But the truce held. Confederate medics brought back more bodies and pieces of bodies than wounded men, though they did save a couple of soldiers who might have died if they'd been stuck where they were. Graves Registration-usually called the ghouls-took charge of the remains. Colleton was d.a.m.ned if he knew how they would figure out just whose leg came back in a stretcher, especially since it had no foot attached. That, thank G.o.d, wasn't his worry.

Sure as h.e.l.l, he saw men in b.u.t.ternut chowing down on corned-beef hash and creamed beef and something tomatoey called goulash, all from cans labeled with the U.S. eagle in front of crossed swords. The only thing he wished was that he had some of those cans for himself.

At 1130, both sides started shouting warnings to their opposite numbers. At 1145, firing picked up again. Neither side shot as ferociously as it had earlier in the morning, though. Tom thought the gunfire was as much an announcement that the truce was over as anything else.

That didn't turn out to be quite right. At about 1205, the Yankees started sh.e.l.ling his front-not just with the mortars they'd been using before but with real artillery, too. Shouts of, "Gas!" rang out through the chilly air. Dismayed wireless calls came in from the front and from his reserves. The U.S. guns seemed to know just where to hit.

Tom started swearing horribly enough to startle his wireless man, who asked, "What's the matter, sir?"

"I'll tell you what's the matter, G.o.ddammit," Colleton ground out, furious at himself. "I'm an idiot, that's what. That Yankee son of a b.i.t.c.h who came back here to d.i.c.ker the truce-to h.e.l.l with me if the b.a.s.t.a.r.d didn't spy out our dispositions on the way here and back. Nothing in the rules against it, of course, but f.u.c.k me if I like getting played for a sucker."

U.S. forces followed the bombardment with an infantry push, and drove Tom's regiment from several of the positions it had been holding. He got on the field telephone with division HQ in Sandusky, warning them what had happened and how.

"Sneaky b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," was the comment he got from the major to whom he talked. "How much ground have they gained?"

"Looks like about a mile," Tom said ruefully. He'd be kicking himself for weeks over this one. He hadn't thought he was a trusting soul, but that Yankee captain had sure made a monkey out of him.

The major back in Sandusky didn't seem all that upset. "Don't get your b.a.l.l.s in an uproar, Lieutenant-Colonel," he said. "We'll see what we can do about it."

Later that afternoon, eight or ten b.u.t.ternut-painted barrels came rumbling up the road and across the fields to either side of it. Confederate foot soldiers loped along with them. The armored fighting vehicles started sh.e.l.ling the ground the U.S. forces had gained. Just seeing and hearing them was enough to make soldiers who'd been huddling in foxholes ready to get out and fight some more. The Confederates still sometimes called their battle cry the Rebel yell, though they'd been their own country, not rebels at all, for eighty years. The shrill ululation resounded now, way up here in Yankeeland. The surge that had gone west reversed course once more.

But nothing came cheap today. The Yankees had brought a couple of antibarrel cannons to the front. The sound of an armor-piercing round smas.h.i.+ng into steel plate reminded Tom of an accident in a smithy. The stricken barrel burst into flames. A couple of men managed to get out. The other three didn't. The blazing barrel sent up a plume of greasy black smoke. Some of what burned in there had been alive moments before.

Colleton cursed softly. "See if I give those sons of b.i.t.c.hes another truce," he muttered. "Just see if I do, ever."

Mary Pomeroy always liked driving out from Rosenfeld and visiting the farm where she'd grown up. Her mother was all alone on the Manitoba prairie these days. Maude McGregor still had her health, but she wasn't getting any younger. Mary felt good checking up on her every so often.

The visits did remind her how much time had pa.s.sed by. Mary's mother had had hair as red as her own. No more; it was almost all gray now. As Mary neared thirty-five, the first silver threads were running through her copper, too.

She and her mother sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee and eating sweet rolls her mother had baked. "Oh, Ma," Mary said, "the smells in here take me back to when I was a little girl. The oilcloth on the table, the coal fire, the kerosene lamps, all the cooking . . ." She shook her head, lost in a world that would never come back again, a world where her father and older brother were alive, a world where the Yanks hadn't occupied Canada for a generation.

"It does smell different in your apartment," her mother agreed. Quickly, she added, "Not bad-not bad at all-but not the same, either."

"No, not the same," Mary said. She had a gas stove and electricity; the one didn't smell like coal, while the other didn't smell like anything. And what she cooked just wasn't the same as what her mother made. She couldn't put her finger on the difference, but she knew it was there.

"How are the Frenchies?" Maude McGregor asked.

"They're there." Mary made a sour face. These days, the United States needed all the soldiers they could sc.r.a.pe up to fight the Confederate States. The men now occupying Rosenfeld and a lot of other Canadian towns came from the Republic of Quebec. They wore blue-gray uniforms, not U.S. green-gray. Mary couldn't stand them. They should have been Canadians, too, but instead they helped the Yanks oppress their countrymen. Most of them-almost all of the young ones who'd grown up in the so-called Republic-spoke nothing but French, and jibber-jabbered in it all the time. As far as she was concerned, that added insult to injury.

"Any trouble with them?" her mother asked.

"No," Mary said tonelessly. "No trouble at all."

She wondered where her mother would go with that, but Maude McGregor didn't go anywhere at all. She only nodded and got the teapot and filled her own cup. She held the pot out to Mary, who nodded. Her mother refilled it. The milk Mary added came from one of the cows in the barn.

"How's Alec?" her mother asked.

Mary smiled. She didn't have to consider her answers and watch every word about her son. "He's fine, Ma. He's growing like a weed, he raises trouble every chance he gets, and he's doing good in kindergarten. Of course, he already pretty much knew how to read and write before he started."

"I should hope so," her mother said. "You and Julia and Alexander did, too."

Alec was named for Mary's dead older brother. Remembering him took the smile off her face. She said, "You know what the bad thing is about school these days?"

"Of course I do," Maude McGregor said. "The Yanks pound their lies into the heads of children who aren't old enough to know malarkey when they hear it."

"That's it. That's just it." Mary didn't know what to do about it, either. Her mother and father had pulled her out of school when the Americans started throwing propaganda around instead of teaching about what had really happened-that was how Canadians saw it, anyhow. No one had raised a fuss back then, but rules were stricter now. And Mary didn't want the Yanks paying attention to her for any reason.

Her mother said, "And Mort? How's the diner doing?"

"Pretty well," Mary answered. "One of the cooks burned his hand, so he'll be out a few days. Mort's filling in behind the stove."

"Must be strange, having a man who knows how to cook," her mother remarked.

"It is. It keeps me on my toes all the time," Mary said. "But it's all right. I'm glad I found anybody, and Mort and I get along real good."

She'd had a young man courting her when her father was killed by his own bomb trying to blow up General Custer as he pa.s.sed through Rosenfeld. Afterwards, the young man dropped her as if she were explosive herself. n.o.body looked at her for years after that, not till Mort Pomeroy did. Was it any wonder she'd promptly fallen in love?

Her mother said, "I'm glad you do. It's nice. Your father and I, we hardly had a harsh word between us."

"I know, Ma." Mary also knew why. Her mother noticed everything and said nothing. If she didn't complain, how could Pa have found fault with her? Mary wasn't like that. She'd never believed in suffering in silence. If something was wrong, she let the world know about it. She didn't always restrict herself to words, either, any more than her father had. She asked, "How are things here?"

"Oh, I get along," Maude McGregor answered. "I've been getting along for years and years now. I expect I'm good for a little while longer."

The farm lacked not only electricity but also running water and indoor plumbing. Mary had never noticed what was missing when she was growing up. She'd taken the pungency of the outhouse as much for granted as the different pungency of the barn. Kerosene lamps had always seemed good enough. So had the pot-bellied coal-burning stove. Now the stinks and the inconveniences, though still familiar, jolted her when she visited. Little by little, she'd got used to an easier life in town.

Even so, she said, "I'm going out to the barn for some ch.o.r.es."

"Oh, you don't need to do that," her mother said quickly.

"It's all right. I don't mind." Mary did intend to gather eggs and feed the animals while she was out there; she wasn't dressed for mucking out the place. That wasn't all she would do, though. Her mother knew as much, knew and worried. But, being who and what she was, she couldn't bring herself to say much.

A motorcar rolled along the dirt track that ran in front of the McGregor farm as Mary went from the farmhouse to the barn. The dirt road didn't see much traffic these days, though Mary remembered endless columns of soldiers in green-gray marching along it when she was a little girl: U.S. soldiers heading for the front that had stalled between Rosenfeld and Winnipeg. Then the front wasn't stalled anymore, the Yanks got what they'd always wanted, and hard times descended on Canada. They weren't gone yet.

The barnyard stink wasn't as sharp and oppressive as the one from the privy. It made Mary smile instead of wrinkling her nose. Her shoes scrunched on straw as she walked back toward the chickens. She proved to herself that she still knew how to get eggs out of nests without ruffling feathers and without getting pecked. A few hens clucked complaints, but that was all. Smiling a self-satisfied smile, she put the eggs in a basket.

That done, she fed all the livestock. She could still handle a pitchfork, too. She didn't have much need to do that in the apartment in Rosenfeld. Come to think of it, though, sometimes a pitchfork would come in handy for prodding Alec along in the right direction.

Off in one corner of the front of the barn lay an old wagon wheel. Its iron tire was red with rust. It had been lying there for at least twenty years, probably longer. Anyone who saw it would figure it was just a piece of junk n.o.body'd bothered getting rid of. Mary had thought the same thing for years.

Now, grunting, she shoved it off to one side and sc.r.a.ped away at the straw and dirt under it. Before long, her fingernails rasped against a board. She got the board free and looked down into the neat, rectangular hole in the ground it and the wagon wheel concealed.

Her father had dug out that hole to hide his bomb-making tools. The U.S. occupiers had long suspected him. They'd searched the farmhouse and the barn again and again. Despite their suspicions, they'd never found a thing. Arthur McGregor had known what he was doing, in explosives as in everything else.

These days, the bomb-making tools belonged to Mary. She hadn't used them as often as her father had. But she'd bombed the general store in town (owned by a Yank), killed a traitor in Ontario (she thought of it that way, not as blowing up a woman and a little girl), and derailed a train not far from Coulee, the next town west of Rosenfeld. With Ohio lost, the United States depended on rail traffic through Canada. Doing the train had proved easier than she'd expected. She thought she would go in some other direction when she planted her next bomb.

She was so intent on her work, she didn't hear the running feet till they were just outside the barn. She looked up in horror as half a dozen men in green-gray, some with pistols in their hands, others with rifles, burst in shouting, "Hold it right there! You're under arrest, in the name of the United States of America!"

It was over. After all these years, it was over. Mary lifted one of the sticks of dynamite that had sat in her lap. "If you want to take the chance of shooting this instead of me-" she began. If the dynamite went up, the Yanks would go up with it-a good enough last exchange, as far as she was concerned.

But one of the riflemen said, "Ma'am, I've been on the national rifle team at ranges a lot longer than this-they didn't know if they'd need a sharpshooter to take you. If I shoot, I won't miss, and I won't hit the explosives."

He sounded coldly confident, confident enough to make Mary believe him. She set down the dynamite and slowly got to her feet. "Raise your hands!" two Americans shouted at the same time. She obeyed. Why not? Nothing mattered anymore. One of the Yanks said, "Out of the barn now. Slow and easy. Don't do anything cute, or you won't last long enough to stand trial."

"Oh, yes. I'm sure you're worried about that," Mary said. They didn't answer her. Why should they? They'd won.

When she got outside, she saw two more Yanks holding her mother back. They'd slapped a gag on her so she couldn't scream and warn Mary. Two motorcars were parked by the side of the house. She thought one was the auto she'd seen driving along the dirt road. They must have been keeping an eye on her all along, then.

"Leave my mother alone," she said dully. "She never had anything to do with this. It was all me."

"We'll see about that," one of the Yanks said. But he turned to the men holding Maude McGregor. "Take the gag off her, Jack. She can yell her head off now. It won't make any difference."

As soon as Jack removed the gag, Mary's mother said, "She's lying to save me. I was the one who set the bombs."

"That isn't so!" Mary exclaimed. "How about that one the other side of Coulee, Ma? You don't even drive."

"I took the wagon," her mother said with stubborn, hopeless defiance.

"And that's how come we caught your daughter in there with dynamite in her lap, right?" said the Yank who seemed to be in charge of things. He waved to his men. "Get her into the auto. We'll take her up to Winnipeg and tend to business there."

As the other Americans obeyed, one of them asked, "How about the old broad?" Both Mary and her mother squawked irately. The Yanks ignored them.

"Leave her alone for now," their boss said. "Looks to me like we've got the one we want." They shoved Mary into a Chevrolet. As it sped off down the dirt road, she knew how right he was.

Chester Martin had known rejoining the U.S. Army would make his wife furious. He hadn't known how how furious. Rita had lost her first husband in the Great War, and seemed sure she would lose her second in this one. When Chester reupped, he'd asked for a month to get his affairs in order before he went in. The Army gave it to him; they weren't conscripting middle-aged retreads, even if they were glad to have them, and so they'd acted accommodating as all get-out. furious. Rita had lost her first husband in the Great War, and seemed sure she would lose her second in this one. When Chester reupped, he'd asked for a month to get his affairs in order before he went in. The Army gave it to him; they weren't conscripting middle-aged retreads, even if they were glad to have them, and so they'd acted accommodating as all get-out.

Now he wished he hadn't asked for so long. It was the longest month of his life. "You said they'd shot you last time, and that was plenty for you!" Rita said over and over again. "You lied!" She might have accused him of falling off the wagon-or maybe falling into the arms of an old girlfriend came closer to the mark.

And maybe he was. He had no romantic illusions about war. n.o.body who'd been a noncom in the trenches all the way through the Great War could possibly have any illusions about it. But he kept saying, "The country needs me," and that was no illusion. The United States needed all the help they could get from anywhere.

"Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?" Rita would ask. That stung, not least because he had. His hair, once sandy-brown, was graying and thinning at the temples. There were lines on his forehead, and more beside his pointed nose. He had a double chin and something of a belly. He still had muscles, though; n.o.body could hold a construction job without them.

His son, Carl, who was six, didn't know whether to be proud of him or worried about him. Carl knew people could get shot. "You won't let that happen to you, will you, Dad?" he would ask.

"Not me," Chester would answer gravely. "That kind of stuff always happens to the other guy." Carl accepted that. Chester knew better, but didn't want to burden the boy with worries he couldn't do anything about. Rita knew better, too, and wasted no time pointing out to Chester what a liar he was.

With all that going on, then, he wasn't altogether unhappy escaping the little rented house in East Los Angeles and heading to the recruiting station a few blocks away when the time finally came. He took the oath there, which officially put him back in uniform. They gave him just enough of a physical to make sure he had a pulse and could see out of both eyes. If he'd flunked the second half, he suspected they would have worked something out.

They gave him a uniform, too. The tunic was too tight and the trousers were baggy; the tailoring hadn't changed a bit since the Great War. They gave him a first sergeant's stripes on his left sleeve. He knew what that meant. "You're going to have me nursemaid some officer who was still spitting up sour milk when the Confederates tossed in the sponge the last time."

He got exactly no sympathy, which was exactly what he'd expected. The sergeant who'd talked him into rejoining said, "Well, Martin? What about it? Are you going to tell me you're not qualified for the job? I'll say bulls.h.i.+t to your face if you've got the bra.s.s to try it."

Martin didn't have that kind of bra.s.s. Maybe he could keep a kid from getting some good men killed. He might even save the kid's neck-and, with luck, his own in the process.

His orders were to report to a replacement depot in Virginia. Accompanying them was a travel voucher for rail transportation from Los Angeles to Milwaukee. He asked the noncom who gave him the voucher, "How the devil do I get from Milwaukee to where I'm supposed to go? Stick out my thumb?"