Blood and iron

She was still driving the spavined Ford she'd got after the C.S. Army commandeered her Vauxhall. That told Kimball she hadn't come all the way back from the financial reverses she'd taken during the war. But then, who in the Confederate States had? He wondered what would have become of him had he not had more than usual skill with a deck of cards.

The Charleston Hotel was a large building of white stucco with a colo

Their joining was fierce as usual, as much a struggle for dominance as what a lot of people thought of as lovemaking. When it was good, as it was tonight, they both won. Afterwards, they lay side by side, lazily caressing each other and talking… politics.

"You were right, Roger," A

"I want to meet him myself," Kimball said. He tweaked her nipple, gently enough to be another caress, sharply enough to be a demand and a warning. "You owe me that, seeing as I was right."

She knocked his hand away and answered with more than a hint of malice: "What makes you think he'd want to meet^ou? You were an officer, after all, and he's not what you'd call keen on officers "

"He's not keen on rich officers," Kimball retorted. "You ever saw the farm I grew up on, you'd know I'm not one of those. He'll know it, too."

He saw he'd surprised her by answering seriously. He also saw his answer wasn't something she'd thought of herself. "All right," she said. "I'll see what I can do." She rolled toward him on the broad bed. "And now-"

He took her in his arms. "Now I'll see what I can do "

Cinci

He also wished his rattletrap truck had windshield wipers. Since it didn't-he counted himself lucky it had a motor, let alone any fripperies-he drove from the Ohio to the corner of Emma and Blackwell as slowly and carefully as he could, doing his best to peer between the raindrops spattering his windshield. His best was good enough to keep him from hitting anybody, but he clucked to himself at how long he was taking to drive across Covington.

"And when I finally get there, I get to deal with Joe Conroy," he said. He talked to himself a lot while driving, for lack of anyone else with whom to talk. "Won't that just make my day? Sour old-"

But, when he hauled the first keg of molasses into the general store, he found Conroy in a mood not merely good but jubilant. He stared suspiciously at the fat storekeeper; Conroy wasn't supposed to act like that. Conroy didn't usually sign the shipping receipt till Cinci

Cinci

"Tell you straight out, Mistuh Conroy, I've seen me a whole hell of a lot of days I liked the looks of better," he answered, and went back out into the wet to fetch some more of what Conroy had ordered. The sooner he got it all into the store, the sooner he could get away.

When he came inside again, Joe Conroy said, "Didn't say it was pretty out. I said it was a beautiful mornin', and it damn well is."

"I ain't got the time to play silly games." Cinci

Conroy was in the habit of making noises about what an uppity nigger Cinci

That didn't make it a beautiful morning for Cinci

Then he thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. He might not be crazy, but maybe he was stupid. "That's how come I've seen 'Freedom!' painted on about every other wall this past couple weeks," he said.

"Sure as hell is," Conroy said. "Those folks is go

"How do you figure the USA's go

Joe Conroy looked sly. He might not have been all that smart, but he was one crafty devil: that much Cinci

He looked smug, as if certain Cinci

"Huh," Conroy said. "We'll handle him, too, when the time comes."

Cinci

"Let me get the rest of your stuff," Cinci

The storekeeper wanted to keep on jawing, but Cinci

As he drove back up toward the river, he really noticed how many walls and fences had FREEDOM! painted on them. The word had replaced the blue crosses and red-white-red horizontal stripes as the diehards' chosen scribble.

He didn't like what he'd heard about the Freedom Party. That put it mildly. The local papers said little about the outfit; these days, they did their best to ignore what went on in the Confederate States. But word drifted up out of the CSA even so, word spread on the black grapevine that ran alongside and occasionally overlapped the one the diehards used. None of that word was good. And now the Freedom Party had done better in the elections than anyone expected. That was not good news, either.

When he got home that evening, he told Elizabeth what he'd heard from Conroy. She nodded. "White lady I clean house for, she was talkin' 'bout the same thing on the telephone. She sound happy as a pig in a strawberry patch."