Walk in Hell

"This is an outrage!" she exclaimed. The soldiers' faces were implacable. If she didn't get out, they would shoot her. That was quite plain. Quivering with fury, she descended to the ground.

Major Hotchkiss pointed farther up the road. "There's a crossroads general store up there. We've got a fair number of folks in tents already. It's about half a mile. You go on, Miss Colleton. They'll take care of you best they can. We smash this Colored Socialist Republic or whatever the niggers are calling it, then we can get on with the fight against the damnyankees."

"Give me a rifle," A

But the Confederate major shook his head without a word. She knew she was right, but what good did that do her if he wouldn't listen? The answer tolled in her mind: none. Dully, she began walking up the road. When war reached out its hand, what did wealth and power matter? A fool with a gun could take them away. A fool with a gun had just taken them away.

Major Irving Morrell and Captain John Abell took off their caps when they went into Independence Hall to see the Liberty Bell. Philadelphia, being the headquarters of the War Department, was full of U.S. military men of all ranks and branches of service. Only someone very observant would have noted the twisted black-and-gold cords on the caps that marked these two as General Staff officers.

Abell, who had a bookish look to him, fit the common preconception for the appearance of a General Staff man. Morrell, though, was more weathered, his face lined and ta

Intellectually, he knew what a plum this was. It didn't altogether fill him with joy, though. He wanted to be out in the forest or the mountains or tramping through the desert-somewhere away from the city and close to the foe.

"Come on, let's get moving," he said now, and hurried ahead of Abell to get a good look at the Liberty Bell. His thigh pained him when he sped up like that, and would probably go on paining him the rest of his life. He ignored it. You could let something like that rule you, or you could rule it. Morrell did not aim to let anything keep him from doing what he wanted to do.

"It's been here a long time, Major," Abell said. "It's going to be here for a long time yet."

"Yes, but I'm not going to be here for a long time," Morrell answered. When he'd learned enough, or so the promise had gone, they'd promote him and send him back to the field to command a unit bigger than a battalion. "I want to fight with guns, not with maps and dividers and a telegraph clicker."

He looked back over his shoulder as he said that, just in time to catch the sidelong glance Abell gave him. The captain, like most General Staff officers, preferred fighting the war at a distance and in the abstract to the reality of mud and bad food and wounds and terror. Battle always seemed so much cleaner, so much neater, when it was red and blue lines on a chart.

Then such thoughts left Morrell's mind as, with a good many other soldiers, he crowded round the emblem of freedom for the United States. The surface of the bell was surprisingly rough, testimony to the imperfect skill of the founders who had cast it. Around the crown ran the words from Leviticus that had given the bell its name: Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.

He wondered whether Robert E. Lee had seen the Liberty Bell when he occupied Philadelphia in 1862. Lee's victories had given the Confederate States a liberty the USA had not wanted to grant them, but he hadn't taken the bell back south with him. That was something, albeit not much.

Morrell reached out and touched the cool metal. "We're still free," he murmured. "Still free, by God."

"That's right," John Abell said beside him. "The freest nation on the face of the earth." Normally cold-blooded as a lizard in a blizzard, he sounded genuinely moved by the Liberty Bell. Then, almost gloating, he added, "And we're going to pay the Rebs back for all they've done to us these past fifty years, and the English, and the French, and the Canadians, too."

"You'd best believe it," Morrell said, and took his hand away. The metal of the bell had grown warm under his fingers. He smiled, enjoying the idea that he had had a co

Independence Hall also boasted a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence. Facsimiles, though, meant little to Morrell. What was real counted. If you wanted to be theoretical…you belonged on the General Staff. He snorted, amused by the conceit.

"What's fu

They walked up Chestnut, back toward the War Department offices that had swallowed so much of Franklin Square. Philadelphia buzzed with all sorts of Federal activity; especially after the Confederate bombardment of Washington during the Second Mexican War, the Pe

The opening Confederate attack in the war had been aimed at Philadelphia, too, but was stopped at the Susqueha

Abell bought a couple of ci

He and Abell both slowed down to eat as they walked. They hadn't gone far when someone behind them shouted, "Get the hell out of here, you stinking wog! This is a white man's town."

Morrell turned on his heel, Abell imitating him. A beefy, middle-aged civilian was shaking his finger in the Greek foodseller's face. Ignoring the twinge in his bad leg, Morrell walked rapidly back toward them. As he drew near, he saw the beefy man wore a pin in his lapel: a silver circle, with a sword set slantwise across it. Soldiers' Circle members made up a sort of informal militia of men who had served out their terms of conscription. They were perhaps the leading patriotic organization in the country, especially to hear them talk.

A lot of them, of course, the younger ones, had been reconscripted since the war broke out. Others had proved useful in other ways: serving as additions to the New York City police, for instance, after the Mormons and Socialists had touched off the Remembrance Day riots this past spring. And some of them, like this chap, liked to throw their weight around.

"Sir, why don't you just leave this man alone?" Morrell said. The words were polite. The tone was anything but. At his side, Captain Abell nodded.

"He's a damned foreigner," the Soldiers' Circle man exclaimed. "He's almost certainly not a citizen. He doesn't look like he ought to be a citizen, the stinking wog. Are you a citizen?" he demanded of the Greek.