The Grapple

His earnestness must have got through to her. Her voice was hard and flat when she said, “You’re going to have to explain that,” but she didn’t sound as if she would poison a rattlesnake when she bit it.

Glad she didn’t, Dowling said, “I will. I used to think different, but it’s simple, when you get down to it. The best way to put Camp Determination out of business is to lick the CSA. That’s what General Morrell is doing over in Te

She didn’t answer for a long time. At last, she said, “I never thought I’d want to punch a man in the nose for being right.”

“It happens,” Dowling said. “Look at George Custer, for instance.”

“A point,” she admitted. “I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to punch him, but he won the Great War, didn’t he?”

“Oh, not all by himself, but more than anybody else, I think,” Dowling answered. “He saw what barrels could do, and he made sure they did it no matter what the War Department said. General Morrell was in on that, too, remember, though he wasn’t a general then, of course.”

She pointed at him. “So were you.”

“Maybe a little.” Dowling’s main role had been to lie through his teeth to the big wigs in Philadelphia. Had Custer’s brutal simplicity failed-as it was known to do-Dowling would have lied away his own career along with his superior’s. But for once Custer was right, and success, as usual, excused everything else.

“Modest at your age?” Ophelia Clemens jeered. “How quaint. How positively Victorian.”

“You say the sweetest things,” Dowling told her. “Just don’t say I want more men, because honest to God I don’t. I’m keeping the Confederates busy. They can’t send reinforcements east from this front. They’ve had to reinforce it, in fact, to keep me away from Camp Determination. And every man they send out here to the far end of Texas is a man they don’t have in Te

“‘They also serve who only stand and wait,’” she quoted.

“Is that Shakespeare?” To Dowling, anything that sounded old had to be Shakespeare.

But she shook her head. “Milton, I think.”

“If you say so. It’s true here, though. Except I’m not standing. I’m staying busy with what I’ve got. I think I can go another forty miles.”

“If you go thirty, you can shell the camp,” she said.

“We haven’t bombed it because we don’t want to go into the Negro-killing business ourselves,” Dowling said. “Same problem with shelling. The people in the camp would be on our side if they got guns. They are on our side. They just can’t do anything about it.”

“Any way to change that?” Ophelia Clemens asked.

“I don’t see one,” Dowling said regretfully. “I wish I did.”

XVI

Artillery was coming down not far from the supply dump where soldiers unloaded Cinci

“You need me to, I take this shit right up to the fellas doin’ the fighting,” Cinci

“That’s awright, buddy,” the noncom said in a big-city accent. “We’ll move it forward-that ain’t no skin off your nose. What you gotta do is, you gotta go back, get some more shit, and bring it down to us here.”

“I’ll do that, then,” Cinci

As soon as the big trucks were empty, the convoy did start north to fill up again. Armored cars and half-tracks escorted it. By now, U.S. forces had a pretty good grip on the roads leading down to Chattanooga. But pretty good wasn’t perfect. Holdouts or civilians fired at the convoy. They knocked out two windows and gave a truck a flat. Cinci

When the convoy got to the supply dump, soldiers in green-gray surrounded it. Something’s up, Cinci

“What the hell?” Hal Williamson shouted from the cab of his deuce-and-a-half. Cinci

“This is a special transport mission,” the colonel shouted. “You are not to talk to anybody about what you’re going to see. Do you understand that? Anyone who doesn’t care to go along can withdraw now without prejudice.”

Nobody withdrew. After that buildup, Cinci

“All right!” the colonel said. “The other thing I need to warn you about is, don’t panic and don’t reach for your weapons when you see what’s going on. These men are on our side, the side of the United States of America.”

If he hadn’t said so, Cinci

“The fuck?” Cinci

“They’re on our side,” the colonel repeated. “This is the 133rd Special Reco

Cinci

Were they going to cross the Te

Even so, Cinci

“Don’t worry, pal,” one of them said through the little window between the rear and the cab. “We don’t bite, honest.” He sounded like an Alabaman, which didn’t help.

After the 133rd Special Reco

He must have been wiggling on his seat, because that counterfeit Confederate spoke up again: “Don’t flabble, man. It’s better if we get there after dark. If those fuckers don’t see us coming, we can surprise ’em better.”

“I guess,” Cinci