Blood and iron

"He's got something," Bedford Cu

Pinkard nodded, hardly noticing he was doing it. "Yeah, he does." He waved a hand. "Now hush up, Bedford. I want to hear what he has to say for himself."

"Do they remember, up there in Richmond, up there in the Capitol, up there in that whited sepulcher, do they remember we fought a war with the United States not so long ago?" the ski

"Hell, no!" Jeff heard himself shout. His was far from the only voice raised from the crowd. Beside him, Cu

"Up there in Richmond, do they care if we're weak?" the ski

He could give the same speech in Chattanooga and just drop in the different place-name and a couple of details. Jeff knew that. Somehow, it didn't matter. It didn't matter at all. He felt the ski

"I don't blame the United States for doing what they're doing to us," the ski

"But we've got more reasons than just that. They sat there sleeping while the niggers plotted and then rose up. And what did they do after that? They said, fine, from here on out niggers are just as good as white men. Tell me, friends, you reckon niggers are just as good as white men?"

"No!" roared the crowd, Jefferson Pinkard loud among them. Vespasian wasn't a bad fellow, and he did his job pretty well, but working alongside a white man didn't make him as good as a white man.

"Well, now, you see, you're smarter than they are up in Richmond," the Freedom Party speaker said. "Niggers aren't as good as white men, never were, never will be. Never can be, and the liars up in Richmond can't make 'em that way, even if they did give 'em the vote. The vote!" His voice rose to a furious, contemptuous howl. "I've got a donkey back in Richmond. I can whip him from now till doomsday, and he won't ever win a horse race. You can say a nigger's as good as a white man, but that doesn't make it so. Never has. Never will. Can't.

"We've got to give those fools up in Richmond the heave-ho and elect some people who can stand up to the United States and stand up for the white man here. That's what the Freedom Party is all about. We've got Congressional elections coming up this fall. I hope you'll remember us. I'm Jake Featherston. I'll be by again if the money holds out. You'll have somebody on the ballot here who thinks the way I do. Get on over to your polling place and vote for him." He waved to show he was done.

While the applause still thundered, a hat came through the crowd, as if to underscore that if the money holds out. Jeff pulled a hundred-dollar banknote out of his pocket and stuck it in the hat. He imagined doing such a thing back in 1914, or tried. He couldn't imagine having a hundred-dollar banknote in his pocket back then.

"There's a man who knows what we need," Bedford Cu

"Sure as hell is. Sure as hell does," Pinkard said. His voice was awed, almost as if he'd gone to church and been born again. He felt born again. Listening to Featherston made him believe the Confederate States could pull themselves together again. "I'd follow him a long way."

"Me, too," Cu

"Featherston," Jeff corrected; he'd listened with great attention to every word the ski

"Featherston," Cu

"So would I," Jefferson Pinkard said. "This Featherston, he knows what he's talking about. You can hear it in every word he says."

VI

For perhaps the first time in his professional life, Colonel Irving Morrell wished he were back in Philadelphia. Fighting arguments about barrels by way of letters and telegrams from Leavenworth, Kansas, was not getting the job done in the way he would have hoped. Letters and wires were all too easy to ignore.

"What can we do, Colonel?" Lieutenant Jenkins asked when the latest unsatisfactory reply came back from the War Department. "We should have a design ready to build now, and we're not even close."

"Damned if I know, Lije," Morrell answered. He tapped the papers with the tip of his index finger. "I think we would have a design by now, if the budget were what people thought it was going to be when they set up the Barrel Works."

"Miserable Socialists," Jenkins said angrily. "They're trying to take away everything we won on the battlefield."

"They're not making anything easy for us, that's for sure," Morrell said. "I want to make hay while the sun shines, if you know what I mean. You have to figure the Rebs won't stay down forever. The farther ahead of them we are when they do start getting back on their feet, the better I'll like it."

"Yes, sir," Jenkins said. "We'd be a lot better off, sir, if they'd listen to you more. If they don't want to listen to you, why did they send you out here in the first place?"

"To get me out of their hair, for one thing," Morrell answered. "To drive me out of my mind, for another. These days, they're so worried about spending money that they're trying to build barrels on the cheap. I don't know how many times I've explained and explained and explained that the engines in our machines aren't strong enough to do the job, but what sort of answer do I get? What it boils down to is, 'They did the job in the last war, so of course they'll do the job in the next one, too.' ' He looked disgusted.

So did Lije Jenkins. "With that kind of thinking, we'd have gone into the Great War with single-shot black-powder Springfields."

Morrell nodded. "You understand that, and I understand that. The War Department understands it can get White truck engines- even the ones built in mirror image to pair with the regular model- in carload lots, cheap as it wants. Coming up with something better won't be anywhere near as cheap. And cheap counts. Right now, cheap counts a lot."

"Are they going to leave our country's safety hanging on nickels and dimes?" Lieutenant Jenkins demanded indignantly. He was still very young, young enough to believe in the tooth fairy, the common sense of Congress, and a great many other unlikelihoods.

"Probably," Morrell said, at which the lieutenant looked as if he'd just watched his puppy run over in the street. Trying not to smile, Morrell went on, "They spent twenty years after the War of Secession tossing the Army nickels and dimes and not much more, remember. They paid for it, too, but that doesn't mean they can't do it again."

"They'd have to be crazy," Jenkins exclaimed.