Walk in Hell

"And call that peace," Joseph Shook murmured. It sounded like a quotation, but Paul didn't know what it was from.

General Kent evidently did: "If you like, Mr. Shook. But you Mormons will not joggle our elbows again while we are fighting this bigger war, and you will not disturb the peace in the USA once we have won the war." He opened an attache case and took out a sheet of fancy paper. "Here is the formal instrument of surrender. Before we affix our signatures to it, I am going to summarize its provisions one last time, so that we have no unfortunate misunderstandings. Is that agreeable to you?"

"Hard terms," Heber Jackson said softly.

"Having fought us tooth and nail for a year, you ca

"'Item: all firearms in Utah to be surrendered within two weeks. Penalty for possession after that time is death.

"'Item: any act of violence against soldiers of the United States shall be punished by the taking and execution of hostages, not to exceed ten for each soldier wounded or fifty for each soldier killed.

"'Item: all public gatherings of more than three persons are ba

"'Item: all property of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is forfeit to the government of the United States in reparation for the cost of suppressing this rebellion.

"'Item: gatherings in private homes to worship in the fashion of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Days Saints shall be construed as public gatherings under the meaning of the previous item, and shall be dealt with like any other public gatherings under the terms of that item.

"'Item…'" He droned on and on. After a while, Paul stopped paying close attention. The Mormons had tried to break away from the USA, and they were paying a heavy price for it. In effect, they had broken away, and were being treated not as a state returning to the Union but as a conquered province. As far as he was concerned, they'd earned it. He'd been in Utah most of a year, and nasty strangers had been trying to kill him the whole time.

One of General Kent's aides unfolded a portable table and produced a pen and bottle of ink with which to sign the instrument of surrender. "May I say something before I set my name there?" Wendell Schmitt asked.

"Go ahead," General Kent told him. "If you think anything you say will change matters, though-"

"Not likely," the Mormon military commander broke in. "No, what I want to tell you is that terms like these will come back to haunt you, years from now. You're sowing the seeds of hatred and bloodshed that will grow up in the days of our grandchildren, and of their grandchildren, too."

"Do you know what?" General Kent said. "I don't care. Teddy Roosevelt doesn't care, either. And if they have to, Mr. Schmitt, my grandchildren will come in here to Utah and blow your grandchildren sky-high all over again. If more damn fools like you come to power here, that's just what will happen. If you people are smart enough to realize you're fighting out of your weight, it won't." He folded his arms across his chest.

Biting his lip, Wendell Schmitt signed the surrender document. So did the three men who made up the first presidency of the Mormon Church. Last of all, so did General Kent. His aides took the Mormon leaders into custody. The Mormon standard-bearer handed the beehive ba

"It's over," Ben Carlton said.

"Yeah," Paul agreed. "Now we either get to stay here for occupation duty, with everybody hating us like rat poison, or else they ship us back to fighting the Rebs or the Canucks." He laughed ruefully. "Sounds like a bully time either way, doesn't it?"

A

She didn't complain, not any more. She'd had to move heaven and earth to pry the Ford out of Confederate officialdom. It would, with luck, get her back to Marshlands, which was all she wanted for the time being. God only knew where the Vauxhall Major Hotchkiss had confiscated was now. That might well have been literally true; Hotchkiss himself, she was given to understand, was dead, killed along with so many others in the death throes of the Congaree Socialist Republic.

"Anyone want to ride with me?" A

"The officers say you're asking to get yourself killed-or else somethin' even worse-if y'all go into that country now," the fat woman named Melissa declared. By her tone, she looked forward to that prospect for A

"I'll risk it," A

Going was slow, as she'd known it would be. The Robert E. Lee Highway had been one of the main lines of Confederate advance, which meant the Red Negro rebels had defended it as well as they could, which in turn meant the artillery had gone to work, which meant what was called a road was in many places anything but. A

Not many trees along the road were standing; most had been blasted to tinder. Those that did stand often held ghastly fruit: rebels captured and then summarily hanged. Ravens and buzzards flew up from them as the noisy Ford rattled past. The stench of death was everywhere, and far stronger than the hanged bodies could have accounted for by themselves. A

In a field by the side of the road, Negroes were digging trenches that would probably serve as mass graves. From a distance, the scene looked almost as it would have before the Red uprising began. Almost, for the couple of whites who supervised the laborers carried rifles: the spring sun glinted off the sharp edge of a bayonet.

A

Reaching St. Matthews took her more than twice as long as she'd thought it would, and she hadn't been optimistic setting out from the refugee camp. By the time she got to the town nearest Marshlands, she found herself astonished she'd made it at all. She was also filthy from head to foot, having repaired three punctures along the way.

St. Matthews shocked her again. It wasn't so badly smashed up as some of the territory through which she'd driven; the rebellion had been dying on its feet by the time Confederate forces reached the town, and the Reds hadn't fought house to house here. But St. Matthews was the town she knew best: in the back of her mind, she expected to see it as it always had been, with whitewashed picket fences, neatly painted storefronts and even warehouses, and streets lined with live oaks shaggy with moss.