Part 15 (1/2)

Only two people got off the train in St. Matthews. Since one of them was a fat colored woman, figuring out who the other one was did not require brilliance. The lanky white man dressed in b.u.t.ternut trousers, a clean white s.h.i.+rt, and a straw hat looked around for people to greet him, as any traveler might have done.

”Mr. Featherston!” Anne called, and the newcomer alertly swung toward her. His features were pinched and not particularly handsome, but when his eyes met hers, she had to brace herself for an instant. Roger Kimball had been right: whatever else he was, Jake Featherston was not a man to take lightly. She stepped toward him. ”I'm Anne Colleton, Mr. Featherston. Pleased to meet you, and thank you for coming down. This is my brother, Tom.”

”Right pleased to meet you both,” Featherston said, his Virginia accent not bespeaking any great education. When he shook hands with Anne, his grip was so businesslike, it revealed nothing. He turned to her brother. ”You were an officer on the Roanoke front, isn't that right?”

”Yes, that's so,” Tom said. I wasn't the only one doing some checking, I wasn't the only one doing some checking, Anne thought. No, Featherston was not a man to be taken lightly, not even a little bit. Anne thought. No, Featherston was not a man to be taken lightly, not even a little bit.

He said, ”I'll try not to hold it against you.” From the lips of most former noncoms, it would have been a joke. Anne and Tom both started to smile. Neither let the smile get very big. Anne wasn't at all sure Featherston was kidding. He asked, ”You have a motorcar here, to take us wherever we're going?”

Anne shook her head. ”I didn't bother. We're only a couple of blocks from my apartment. This isn't a big town-you can see that. It's an easy walk.”

”I'll take your carpetbag there, if you like,” Tom added, reaching out for it.

”Don't bother,” Featherston said, and did not hand it over. ”I've been taking care of myself a long time now. I can go right on doing it.” He nodded to Anne. ”Lead the way, Miss Colleton. Sooner we're there, sooner we can get down to business.”

He was mostly silent as they walked along: not a man with a large store of small talk. As he walked, he studied St. Matthews with military alertness. He studied Anne the same way. His eyes kept coming back to her, but not in the way of a man who looks on a woman with desire. Anne had seen that often enough to be most familiar with it. No, he was trying to size her up. That was interesting. Usually, till they realized she had a brain, men were more interested in trying to feel her up.

Back at the apartment, Featherston accepted coffee and a slice of peach pie. He ate like a man stoking a boiler, emptying his plate very fast. Then he said, ”What can I do for you, Miss Colleton?”

”I don't quite know,” Anne answered. ”What I do know is that I don't like the way the Confederate States have been drifting since the end of the war. I'd like the country to start moving forward again. If the Freedom Party can help us do that, maybe I'd like to help the Freedom Party.”

”I can tell you what I want for the CSA,” Featherston said. ”I want revenge. I want revenge on the d.a.m.nyankees for licking us. I want revenge on the d.a.m.nfool politicians who got us into the war. I want revenge on the d.a.m.nfool generals in the War Department who botched it. I want revenge on the n.i.g.g.e.rs who rose up and stabbed us in the back. And I aim to get it.”

Revenge was a word that struck a chord with Anne. She'd spent most of two years getting even with the blacks of the Congaree Socialist Republic after they'd torched Marshlands, killed her brother Jacob, and almost killed her. She dearly wanted to get even with the United States, though she didn't see how the Confederate States would be able to manage it any time soon. Still... was a word that struck a chord with Anne. She'd spent most of two years getting even with the blacks of the Congaree Socialist Republic after they'd torched Marshlands, killed her brother Jacob, and almost killed her. She dearly wanted to get even with the United States, though she didn't see how the Confederate States would be able to manage it any time soon. Still...

”How do you propose to do all that?” she asked.

”You said it yourself: everything in the country seems dead right now,” Featherston replied. ”The Freedom Party is alive and growing. People see that. They're starting to come over to us. We'll elect Congressmen this year-you just wait and see if we don't. Before too long, we'll elect a president.”

He had all the confidence in the world, that was certain. Tom remarked, ”You're not running for Congress yourself, are you?”

Featherston shook his head. ”That's right-I'm not. Don't want to sit there, for one thing, on account of I can't stand too many who're already in. And for another, I want to be able to go where I want to go when I want to go there. If I had to stay in Richmond too much of the time, I wouldn't be able to do that. So, no, I'm not going to the dance.”

”You're going to stay on the sidelines and call the tune,” Anne said.

”You might put it that way,” Jake Featherston agreed. He had a pretty good poker face, but it wasn't perfect. Anne saw his attention focus on her. It still wasn't the look a man gave an attractive woman: more like the look a sniper gave a target. Now he's realized I'm no fool, Now he's realized I'm no fool, she thought. she thought. I wonder if I should have let him know so soon. I wonder if I should have let him know at all. I wonder if I should have let him know so soon. I wonder if I should have let him know at all.

She also realized Featherston was no fool. Not running for Congress let him pick and choose his issues and what he did about them. It also protected him from the risk of running and losing. She had no feel yet for how smart he was, but he was plenty shrewd.

”What tune are you going to call?” she asked.

”I already told you,” he answered. ”I don't hide anything I aim to do; I just come right out and say it.” An alarm whistle went off in Anne's head: any man who said something like that was almost bound to be lying. She kept her face quite still. Featherston continued, ”Platform's pretty simple, like I said. Pay back the USA as soon as we can. Clean out the House and Senate. Clean out the War Department. Put the n.i.g.g.e.rs back in their place. Best place for 'em, you ask me, is six feet under, but I'll settle for less for now. Still and all, this is a white man's country, and I aim to keep it that way.”

”What do you propose to do about the black men who got the vote by fighting in the Army?” Tom Colleton asked.

”Most of 'em don't deserve it,” Featherston said at once. ”Most of 'em ran instead of fighting. I was there. I saw 'em do it. I fired into 'em, too, to make 'em more afraid of me than they were of the d.a.m.nyankees.”

”Some did run,” Tom agreed. ”I saw that myself. Toward the end of the war, I saw white troops break and run, too.” He waited. Slowly, Featherston nodded, looking unhappy about having to do it. Tom went on, ”I saw some n.i.g.g.e.rs fight pretty well. They're the ones I'm talking about. How do you take their vote away?”

”Wouldn't be hard, once we got around to it,” Featherston replied with breathtaking and, Anne thought, accurate cynicism. ”Most decent white folks can't stand 'em anyway. Besides, chances are the ones who fought hard against the USA learned how by fighting against the Confederate States. Pin that on 'em, call it treason, and hang the lousy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.”

”What do we do if the United States try to stop us from getting strong again?” Anne asked. ”That's my biggest worry.”

”We walk small as long as we have to,” Featherston said. ”I hate it, but I don't know what else to tell you. We build up our strength every chance we get, though, and before too long we get to tell the d.a.m.nyankees to leave us alone unless they want a sock in the nose.”

That made sense to Anne. She couldn't see what else the CSA could do, in fact, except become a supine U.S. puppet. She said, ”So you want to get the Negroes out of the towns and factories and back to the fields, do you?” Would keeping Marshlands be worthwhile? No, she judged. Featherston had more on the ball than she'd expected, but the Freedom Party remained very new and raw. It sought power; it wasn't about to lay claim to much yet.

Featherston answered, ”That's about right, Miss Colleton.” He eyed her again. Did he guess the calculation she was making? She wouldn't have been surprised.

Her gaze flicked over to Tom. That did surprise her; she rarely relied on anyone to help her decide. Her brother shrugged, ever so slightly. He was leaving it up to her. He did that more often than not. She wished he wouldn't have, not here. Featherston waited. He had more patience than she would have thought.

He had more of quite a few things than she'd thought. She wasn't easy to impress, but he'd impressed her. She said, ”I think we're traveling in the same direction, Mr. Featherston. I suspect you could use some help along the road, too.”

”We sure could,” he said. ”We sure could. When I joined the Freedom Party, it operated out of a cigar box. We're better off than that now, but not a whole lot.” Contempt washed over him, as if poured from a bucket. ”Most rich folks don't dare change what made 'em rich. They'll go on sucking up to the Whigs and the Radical Liberals while the country goes down the drain. Always good to find somebody who zigs when most folks zag.”

He couldn't have paid her a compliment she appreciated more if he'd tried for a week. ”I think I may be able to help some,” she said. ”How much depends on any number of things.”

Featherston got to his feet, as if getting up on the stump. ”Put those n.i.g.g.e.rs back in the fields where they belong!” His voice filled the apartment with a raspy thunder that didn't enter it when he was speaking in ordinary tones. That took Anne by surprise again, and for a moment almost took her breath away. She nodded, recognizing the good bargain she'd made. She held out her hand. Jake Featherston shook it. You give the speeches, You give the speeches, she thought. she thought. Yes, you call the tune-after I whistle it to you. Yes, you call the tune-after I whistle it to you.

Lieutenant Colonel Abner Dowling stared out across the prairie from General Custer's third-story offices in Winnipeg. He'd been there with the general since winter, and the view on a clear day never ceased to astonish him. Today, he managed to put that astonishment into words: ”My G.o.d, sir, it's flatter than Kansas!”

”It is, isn't it?” Custer agreed. ”You can see forever, or if you can't, it certainly seems as though you can. Makes you think G.o.d pressed an iron to the countryside hereabouts, doesn't it?”

”Yes, sir.” Dowling nodded. ”Although, from what I've read, it wasn't an iron at all. It was a great whacking sheet of ice that pressed the land down flat and didn't pull back or melt or whatever it did till not so very long ago.”

”I can believe that that.” Custer s.h.i.+vered melodramatically. ”By the way the weather felt when we got to this place, I'd say the glacier had been gone about a day and a half-two days, tops.”

Dowling laughed. Custer rarely joked. Here, he might well have been kidding on the square. During several days that winter, the temperature never had managed to creep above zero, nor even get very close to it. There was a word for a place more than three hundred miles north of Minneapolis: Siberia.

But people lived here. Before the war, something like 150,000 of them had lived here. In Abner Dowling's considered opinion, they'd been out of their minds. Oh, from May to September the weather was good enough, but that left a lot of time out of the bargain.

Nowhere near so many people were left in Winnipeg now. A lot had fled during the two and a half years in which Canadian and British forces had held the U.S. Army away from the critical rail junctions here. A lot more had fled when they realized the Canucks and limeys could hold the Americans no more. And a lot had died when the city finally fell.

One of the reasons Dowling could see so far was that the building housing Custer's headquarters was one of the few in town to come through the war intact. Had it ever had any taller neighbors, they were rubble now. Nothing got in the way of the view.

A lot of the new houses that were starting to go up in Winnipeg these days were made from the wreckage of older structures. One construction outfit even advertised itself as BEST BEST REBUILDERS IN TOWN REBUILDERS IN TOWN. The company had plenty of material with which to work.

Custer said, ”I feel as though I can see all the way to the Rockies.”

”I wish we could see all the way to the Rockies from here, sir,” Dowling said. ”It would make our jobs a lot easier-and that's where a lot of our problems lie, anyhow.”

”The broom didn't sweep clean,” Custer said. ”That's what the problem is. That's why they sent me up here to set things to rights.”

For as long as Dowling had known him, Custer had had a remarkable gift for revising events so they fit neatly into a scheme of things sometimes existing only in his own mind. The first part of his statement, though, was objectively true. The U.S. broom had not not swept clean, nor even come close. The USA had conquered Ontario and Quebec, severed eastern Canada from the vast West by-finally-seizing Winnipeg, and struck north into the Rockies to break the rail links with the Pacific. That had been enough to win the war. But it had also left a couple of million square miles unvisited by U.S. troops. swept clean, nor even come close. The USA had conquered Ontario and Quebec, severed eastern Canada from the vast West by-finally-seizing Winnipeg, and struck north into the Rockies to break the rail links with the Pacific. That had been enough to win the war. But it had also left a couple of million square miles unvisited by U.S. troops.

A lot of those square miles, especially in the far north, didn't have enough people on them to make anyone worry. But the cities of the Canadian prairie-Regina and Saskatoon, Calgary and Edmonton-resented having been handed over to the United States when no soldier in green-gray had got anywhere near them during the war. They seethed with rebellion. So did the farms for which they gave markets. So did the logging and mining towns of British Columbia. So did the fishermen of Newfoundland. So, for that matter, did a great many people in the areas the United States had taken by force.