How Few Remain

Snow said, "Good shootin' the breeze with you, boss. I'm headin' off to check on the stock." He trudged down toward the barn, his boots crunching as each step broke the crust on the latest snowfall.

Roosevelt went inside to catch up on the bookkeeping. No sooner had he got to work than dark clouds rolled across the sun. He lighted a lamp in the study. A few minutes later, it went dry, filling the room with the stink of kerosene. When he went to put more into it, he discovered the ranch house was almost out.

He went to the door and shouted for Philander Snow. Eventually, Snow stuck his head out of the barn. When Roosevelt asked him if there was any kerosene in there, the ranch hand answered, "Sure as hell ain't. We should have bought some the last time the Handbasket went down to Helena, only we forgot."

"Damnation," Roosevelt muttered. "None in the hands' quarter, either?"

"Sure as hell ain't," Snow repeated. "Oh, maybe enough for a day or two, you spread it out amongst there and the barn and the ranch house. But maybe not even that much, neither."

"Damnation," Roosevelt said again. Then he brightened. "Well, hitch up the horses to the Handbasket. We'll just have to go down to Helena again and get some." Any excuse to get into town, even his own absentmindedness, was a good one as far as he was concerned. Here on the ranch, he was feeling isolated again. The year before, he'd been part of great events. Now, unless he went down to Helena, he didn't even know about them till long after they happened-not till someone chanced to bring word up to the ranch.

Thinking along with him, Snow said, "We got the chance to find out what in hell's gone wrong the past few days. Swear to Jesus, sometimes I laugh till I'm like to bust, listenin' to you cuss old Blaine and the Socialists and whoever else you ain't feelin' happy about of a mornin'."

"I'm so glad I amuse you," Roosevelt said. "I wish I amused myself. You do know that what you're laughing about is the humiliation of the United States?"

"Oh, no, Colonel-what I'm laughin' about is you cussin' the humiliation of the United States," Snow said, a distinction a Jesuit might have envied. Before Roosevelt could remark on it, the hand went back into the barn, presumably to hitch the horses to the farm wagon. When he brought the wagon out, he gave Roosevelt a wistful look. "Don't suppose you'd want some company on the way down to Helena?"

"I alone committed the sin of omission," Roosevelt answered. "I alone shall atone for it." Philander Snow let out a gusty sigh. He'd done his best to get out of several hours' work: done his best and failed, in which he resembled his country. Having failed, he went back to the unending chores that bulked so large in farm life.

Roosevelt rattled down the road by himself. In the back of the wagon, the five-gallon milk cans in which he'd bring back the lamp oil did considerable rattling of their own. They had kerosene painted on them in big red letters, to make sure no milk went into them by mistake.

With snow on it, the ground was still hard. Before long, the snow would melt, and everything would turn to mud. Getting to Helena through the resulting morass was liable to be an all-day job, as opposed to a couple of hours each way.

A horseman came up the road toward Roosevelt. As the fellow trotted past, he took off his hat and waved it, saying, "Good day to you. Colonel."

"And to you, Magnussen," Roosevelt answered. "You look well. How's that leg of yours feeling? I remember your captain saying you fought bravely."

"Oh, thank you, Colonel." The former trooper of the Unauthorized Regiment blushed like a girl. "The leg is good. How do you recall all your men, and who got hit in the leg, and who in the arm, and so on?"

"How? You just do it." Roosevelt saw nothing out of the ordinary in carrying a flock of details in his head. "It's no harder than memorizing the multiplication table-easier, for men have faces and voices, and numbers don't."

Magnusscn laughed. "Easier for you, maybe, Colonel, but not for the likes of me." He lifted his hat again, then rode on.

"A man can do anything he sets his mind on doing," Roosevelt called after him. Magnussen gave no sign that he'd heard, though he wasn't out of earshot. Roosevelt shrugged. Too many men would not set their minds on anything worth doing. That, to him, was why they did not succeed. He loosed an angry snort at the absurdity of Abraham Lincoln's Socialist notions.

When he got to Helena, he took some little while reaching the general store. Men who'd served in the Unauthorized Regiment were thick on the ground in the territorial capital. If Roosevelt had taken all of them up on the drinks they wanted to buy him, he would have forgotten his name, let alone such minutiae as where he lived and what he'd come into town to buy.

He filled the milk cans from the big wooden barrel behind the counter at the store. The proprietor, a big redhead named McNa-mara, said, "I reckoned you was ru

"Even Jove nods," Roosevelt said, which meant nothing to the storekeeper. Grunting, Roosevelt carried the full milk cans out to the wagon. He turned down another drink while he was doing that.

Virtue unalloyed would have sent him straight back to the ranch. His virtue turned out not to be quite free of admixture. Instead of riding out of town with the kerosene, he went over to the offices of the Helena Gazette. As usual, a crowd had gathered in front of the building to read the newspaper on display under glass.

Roosevelt hitched the wagon and started working his way through the crowd toward the paper. He didn't worry about the kerosene; nobody could inconspicuously amble off with a five-gallon milk can full of the stuff. Men made way for him, so he got to the Gazette far sooner than he would have before he'd recruited the Unauthorized Regiment. They reached out to shake his hand or slap him on the back. If Helena had anything to say about it, he could have been elected president tomorrow.

What he read, though, made him grind his teeth. "The arrogance of our enemies!" he burst out. "But for Maine, they hold not a single square inch of our sacred soil, yet they presume to order us around as if we were beasts of burden."

"What are we going to do to them?" somebody asked. "What can we do to them? We're too busy squabbling among ourselves to hurt anybody else." He pointed to a story about a Socialist parade in Boston that had got out of hand. The police had opened fire, and four were dead, including one policeman. Red is the color of the blood of martyrs, a Socialist spokesman was quoted as saying.

"To hell with Abraham Lincoln," Roosevelt ground out. "Custer was right-Pope should have hanged him while he had him under lock and key in Utah Territory. He's ten times as much trouble as all the Mormons and all their wives put together." He heard himself in some surprise; he hadn't thought he might agree with Custer on anything.

About half the crowd in front of the copy of the Gazette loudly approved his words. The other half-miners, mostly-as loudly told him where to go and how to get there. Helena, he remembered, had broken out in riots after one of Lincoln 's speeches, while Great Falls had stayed calm. To a man who had nothing to offer but the sweat of his brow, class warfare was a seductive strumpet indeed.

"I don't think Lincoln 's is the best way for the working men of this country to get a square deal," he said, sticking out his chin. "And besides, if we fight one another, who wins? Do the capitalists win? Do the workers win? Not a chance in hell, either way. I'll tell you who wins: the British and the French and the Confederates. Nobody else."

That got him a thoughtful silence. He was happy enough to gain even so much; he'd been wondering whether Helena would erupt again on account of him. He knew where the Gatling guns were. Colonel Welton had kept most of them even after Custer returned to Kansas. They were the most telling argument yet prepared against the rise of Socialism.