Walk in Hell

"Sergeant's down!" somebody shouted, off to one side of him. He did an awkward, three-limbed crawl back behind the shelter of that boulder. Then he detached his bayonet and cut the trouser leg with it before fumbling for the wound dressing in a pouch on his belt.

His hands didn't want to do what he told them. He'd barely managed to shove the bandage against the hole in his leg when a couple of U.S. soldiers grabbed him. "Got to get you out of here, Sarge," one of them said.

"Got to get us all the hell out of here," the other added. "Damn Mexicans got us pi

"We'll lick 'em," Paul said vaguely. His voice sounded very far away, as if he were listening to himself along a tu

One of the men supporting him grunted just as the Mexican had and crumpled to the ground. A few paces farther on, the other soldier said, "Can you help any, Sarge? We'd move faster if you could do something with your good leg." Getting no reply, he spoke again, louder: "Sarge?"

He stooped, letting his burden down behind another of the strangely shaped rocks that dotted the valley. When he got up again, he ran on alone.

A

That was part of the problem. The Red uprising had shattered patterns of obedience two hundred years old. The field hands still did as she told them. The fields were begi

But only part of her feeling of isolation was spiritual. The rest was physical, and perfectly real. She'd made trips into St. Matthews and into Columbia, trying to get the powers that be to repair the telephone and telegraph lines that co

"God damn those lying bastards to hell," she snarled, staring out along the path, out toward the road, out toward the whole wide world where anything at all might be happening-but if it was happening, how could she find out about it? She'd prided herself on her modernity, but the life she was living had more to do with the eighteenth century than the twentieth.

Beside her, Julia stirred. "Don' fret yourself none, Miss A

A

"Better to be actor than acted upon," A

She looked over toward the ruins of the Marshlands mansion. The cottage in which she was living now had belonged to Cassius the hunter. From what she'd heard, he'd had a high place in the Negroes'Congaree Socialist Republic. He'd been a Red right under her nose, and she'd never suspected. That ate at her, too. She hated being wrong.

Even more galling was having been wrong about Scipio, who was also supposed to have been a revolutionary leader. I gave him everything, she thought: education, fine clothes, the same food I ate-and this is the thanks he gave me in return? He'd vanished when the revolt collapsed. Maybe he was dead. If he wasn't, and she found him, she swore she'd make him wish he were.

And the Ford she was driving these days made as unsatisfactory a replacement for her vanished Vauxhall as the nigger cottage did for her vanished mansion. She hated the balky, farting motorcar. The only thing she would have hated worse was being without one altogether.

An automobile rattled past on the road, kicking up a trail of red dust as it went. It was, she saw, an armored car, with a couple of machine guns mounted in a central turret. Resistance still sputtered in the swamps by the Congaree. Otherwise, that armored car would have been of far more value shooting down damnyankees, its proper task.

Julia's eyes followed the armored car till it disappeared behind a stand of trees. Despite her broad lips, her mouth made a thin, hard line. She swore up and down that she'd never been a rebel, that she hated everything the Reds stood for. A

A couple of minutes later, a party of horsemen turned off the road and onto the path leading up to…the ruins of Marshlands. Two of the three riders had the look of supera

A

He swung down off his horse and touched the brim of his hat with a forefinger. Producing a pencil and a printed form, he said, "Mornin' to you, Miss Colleton. Got a special delivery you got to sign for-and quite a special delivery it is, too. Ah, thank you, ma'am." He passed her the envelope, and then the rest of the day's mail. That done, he gave her another half-salute, remounted, and urged his horse up from walk to canter. The two armed guards rode off with him, their eyes hard and alert.

"Richmond," A