How Few Remain (92 page)

“This is not good,” Schlieffen said, as he had to Rosecrans. “A man without hope will do irrational things. Since Blaine did irrational things even when the situation for himself and his country looked better, who knows how crazy and wild he might become now?”

“We shall see.” Kurd von Schlözer sounded less gloomy than Schlieffen would have. Schlieffen wondered if his superior was deluding himself about how sensible President Blaine could be. From what the German military attaché had seen, expecting common sense from Americans was like looking for water in a desert: you might find some, but, even if you did, it would be only an oasis in a vast stretch of hot, dry, burning sand.

“Napoleon!” he exclaimed suddenly, and felt much better about the world. Hot sand had made him think of Egypt, which had made him think of Bonaparte’s campaign there, which in turn had reminded him of whose adage had crossed his mind during his conversation with Rosecrans.

Kurd von Schlözer gave him a curious look.

A couple of days later, after a cable from Berlin, Schlözer requested an audience with Blaine. When the request was granted, the German minister asked Schlieffen to accompany him. “Of course, Your Excellency,” Schlieffen said, “if you think my being
there will do some good. If not, I have other matters to occupy my time.” He was still refining the plan for movement against France whose basic idea he’d borrowed from Lee’s campaign in Pennsylvania. He’d had wires of his own from Berlin; the General Staff was enthusiastic about the outline he’d sent.

But Schlözer said, “Military affairs are likely to be discussed, so your place is with me.” However much Schlieffen would have liked to go on burrowing through his books—inadequate though his research tools here in Philadelphia were—he could only obey. Hiding a sigh, he set down his pen and, carefully locking the door to his office behind him, followed Schlözer downstairs to the carriage.

Bright sunshine made him blink. The bad weather had blown past Philadelphia the day before; now he could believe spring was at hand. Soon—all too soon—summer would grip the eastern seaboard of the United States in its hot, sweaty fist.

Down from German town the carriage made its way, dodging among others like it, rumbling wagons, men on horseback, men on bicycles with improbably high front wheels, and swarms of men and women on foot. And then, as had happened to Schlieffen coming back from the War Department, a political rally snarled traffic that would have been bad without it. Now red flags rippled in a friendly breeze; now not only the most dedicated Socialists, those fearing neither catarrh nor pneumonia, assembled under the flags. Now nervous-looking soldiers helped police route buggies and horses and pedestrians around the streets the demonstrators clogged.

Schlieffen and Schlözer never came within two blocks of the rally. Even so, the Socialists’ shouts rose above the clatter of horses’ hooves, the rattle of iron tires on paving, and the squeals and groans of axles needing grease. “Can you make out what they are saying, Your Excellency?” Schlieffen asked.

“I believe the cry is, ‘Justice!’ “Schlözer clicked his tongue between his teeth. “If I were petitioning the Almighty, or even my government, I would sooner ask for mercy. But then, I am an old man, and well aware of how much I need it. Waving flags in the street is not an old man’s sport.”

Because of the rally, they got to the Powel House fifteen minutes late. President Blaine brushed aside Kurd von Schlözer’s apologies. “Don’t trouble yourself about it, Your Excellency,” Blaine said. “I want to tell you that I received yesterday a
telegram from the U.S. minister in Berlin informing me that his talks with Chancellor Bismarck continue to go well, and that prospects look bright for increased cooperation in all spheres between our two great countries.”

“I am delighted to hear this, Mr. President,” Schlözer said, and Schlieffen nodded, knowing
all spheres
included the military. But the German minister looked grim as he continued, “I also received yesterday a telegram from Berlin, whose contents I wish to discuss with you now. I must tell you that the governments of Britain, France, and the Confederate States are most dissatisfied with the dilatory pace of negotiations with your government. Since Germany is neutral in this conflict, they have united in asking Chancellor Bismarck to make me the channel through which they express to you their dissatisfaction. If you refuse to meet their demands, I cannot answer for the consequences.”

Blaine flushed. His large, bulbous nose went redder than the rest of his face. “Their demands are outrageous, impossible!” he shouted, as if he were on the rostrum rather than sitting in his office. “How am I to yield so large a portion of my home state to the invaders? How am I to acquiesce in the Confederacy’s acquisition of lands to which that nation has no right?”

“If you had yielded Sonora and Chihuahua before, you would not now the loss of part of Maine face,” Schlieffen said. “You have lost the war.
‘Vae victis,’
as Brennus the Gaul said to the Romans he had beaten.”

Blaine glared at him. “The Romans ended up whipping the Gauls, so that ‘Woe to the conquered’ applied to the conquerors. We can fight on, too.”

Sadly, Schlieffen shook his head. “No, Your Excellency, not in this war. You are defeated.”

Kurd von Schlözer said, “The reason we were tardy, Mr. President, was the large Socialists demonstration that forced traffic to make a detour around it.”

Blaine’s complexion darkened once more. “Socialists!” he said, as if pronouncing an obscenity. “Most of them are traitors to the Republican Party, nothing else.”

“As may be,” Schlözer said. “Would you not agree, though, that they leave your own political future more … uncertain than it was before the schism in your party took place?”

Now Blaine had heard blunt talk from both the German attaché and the German minister. “You tread close to the edge, sir,” he
growled. Schlözer sat impassive, waiting for a more responsive answer. At last, obviously hating every word, Blaine said, “You may be right.”

That was the response for which Schlözer had waited. “Being now without hope and so without fear, Your Excellency, can you not act as a disinterested statesman and serve with a whole heart the needs of your country? You have the chance, Mr. President, and a rare chance it is for an elected official, to do just that without considering your own future political advantage, for you can have none.”

Had Blaine not been in the room, Schlieffen might have smiled. Schlözer could not have urged a more sensible, more logical course on the president of the United States. The only question remaining was whether sense and logic could still reach James G. Blaine.

Schlieffen added a few words of his own: “If you do not do this, Your Excellency, your country will only suffer more. In your heart, you must know this is so.”

Again, Blaine stayed silent a long time. At last, very low, he repeated, “You may be right.” He let out a long, shuddering sigh. “Making peace with the enemies of my country is like looking into my open grave. But, as you say, I am already dead, so what does it matter how I am buried?”

“Think of your country,” Schlözer said.

“Think of the future, and what your country and mine may do there,” Schlieffen said. Slowly, Blaine nodded.

Philander Snow spat a brown stream into a drift of the stuff whose name he bore. Theodore Roosevelt had changed the calendar from March to April a couple of days before. He’d seen spring snow in New York State; seeing it in Montana Territory did not delight him, but it did not surprise him, either.

His mind had a way of running toward what would be. “We’ve got to plant as soon as we can, Phil,” he said. “We shan’t have a long growing season—we never do, not here, but it will be even shorter this year. Everything must be in readiness to move the moment conditions permit.”

Snow spat again. “It will be, Colonel.” He’d taken to calling Roosevelt that since his boss’ return from commanding the Unauthorized Regiment. Having been mustered out of the U.S. Army,
Roosevelt no longer had any formal right to the title. The next time he corrected the ranch hand about it would be the first.

“That’s good, Phil. That’s what I want to hear,” he said, now, adding, for about the hundredth time, “I know I can rely on you. If I’d ever had any doubts—which I haven’t—the way you and the rest of the hands who didn’t join my regiment brought in the harvest last fall would have shot them right between the eyes.”

“That’s white of you, Colonel. We reckoned it was the least we could do, seein’ how you and the Unauthorized Regiment was doin’ everything you could to keep them goddamn English bastards from comin’ down and burnin’ us out.” Snow loosed yet another stream of tobacco juice. “Ask you somethin’?”

“You may ask,” Roosevelt said. “I don’t promise to answer.”

“Fair enough.” Snow nodded. “All kinds of talk been goin’ around about how you’ll up and sell this here ranch and go back to New York to do some politicking there. Is it so, or is it a pile of humbug?”

“I’d love to go back to New York and politic there,” Roosevelt answered. “The only trouble with the notion is that, in order to run for the State Assembly, I must have attained the twenty-fifth year of my age. I am old enough to have fought for my country and to have commanded men in battle, but not old enough to help legislate for my state.”

“Plumb crazy, you ask me,” Philander Snow opined. “’Course, nobody asked me.”

“Crazy it may be,” Roosevelt said. “The law of the state it is. And so I shall stay here in Montana Territory, here on the ranch, a while longer, at any rate.” He did his best to speak lightly, as if that mattered to him only a little. Inside, he seethed with worry lest the fickle populace forget him before he reached the age where he could offer himself for approval.

“Well, I’m powerful glad to hear that,” Snow said. “Powerful glad. I’ve been pleased with my situation here, and I’d hate to have to go looking for another one on account of you was sellin’ the place for no better reason than to go back East and tell lies to people the rest of your days.”

“Is that what politics means to you?” Roosevelt demanded. The ranch hand nodded without hesitation. Roosevelt’s sigh loosed a cloud of steam into the chilly air. “I give you my solemn word: I shall always tell the truth to the people.”

“I’ve heard a lot of people say that.” Snow spoke in ruminative
tones. “Maybe you’re telling the truth, Colonel. I hope to Jesus you are, matter of fact. But it wouldn’t startle me out of my stockings if I found out you wasn’t.”

“I shall always tell the truth to the people,” Roosevelt repeated. “Always. Do not doubt me on this, Phil; I mean every word I say. You are right when you assert that the American people have already heard too many lies.”

Snow cocked his head to one side and studied Roosevelt for a while before saying, “It’s a young man’s promise, Colonel. Maybe there’s a reason a fellow has got to be twenty-five before he can run after all. You get older, you figure out there’s a deal of gray between black and white.”

“A man who will see gray once will see gray all the time.” Theodore Roosevelt scornfully tossed his head. “A man who sees gray will never see black, nor white either, even when they are there. That, I think, defines your run-of-the-mill politician to a T. I may be a politician one day—I
would
be lying if I said I didn’t fancy the notion—but, whatever else history may record of me, it shall never say I was run-of-the-mill.”

Philander Snow gave him another measuring appraisal, punctuating it by putting another brown spot in the white by his feet. “I don’t reckon anyone will call you that. Some other things, maybe, but not that one there.”

“I hope no one does,” Roosevelt said. “Even those who were great in their time are so easily forgotten. Who now recalls the deeds of Lysander the Spartan or Frederick Barbarossa?”

“Not me, that’s for damn sure,” Snow said at once.

“Just so,” Roosevelt said. “Just so. I want my name to
live
, to be a possession for all time.” Phil wouldn’t have heard of Thucydides, either, so Roosevelt didn’t bother explaining where he’d got that last phrase. But, even if the ranch hand hadn’t heard of him, a lot of what the Greek historian had to say about the war between Athens and Sparta in the fifth century before Christ could as readily have been written about the modern struggles between the USA and the CSA. Just as Sparta had got aid from rich Persia against Athens, which otherwise was probably the stronger, so the Confederate States had used help from England and France to put down the United States, which alone was the larger, richer, and more populous of the two.

Snow said, “Good shootin’ the breeze with you, boss. I’m headin’ off to check on the stock.” He trudged down toward the
barn, his boots crunching as each step broke the crust on the latest snowfall.

Roosevelt went inside to catch up on the bookkeeping. No sooner had he got to work than dark clouds rolled across the sun. He lighted a lamp in the study. A few minutes later, it went dry, filling the room with the stink of kerosene. When he went to put more into it, he discovered the ranch house was almost out.

He went to the door and shouted for Philander Snow. Eventually, Snow stuck his head out of the barn. When Roosevelt asked him if there was any kerosene in there, the ranch hand answered, “Sure as hell ain’t. We should have bought some the last time the Handbasket went down to Helena, only we forgot.”

“Damnation,” Roosevelt muttered. “None in the hands’ quarter, either?”

“Sure as hell ain’t,” Snow repeated. “Oh, maybe enough for a day or two, you spread it out amongst there and the barn and the ranch house. But maybe not even that much, neither.”

“Damnation,” Roosevelt said again. Then he brightened. “Well, hitch up the horses to the Handbasket. We’ll just have to go down to Helena again and get some.” Any excuse to get into town, even his own absentmindedness, was a good one as far as he was concerned. Here on the ranch, he was feeling isolated again. The year before, he’d been part of great events. Now, unless he went down to Helena, he didn’t even know about them till long after they happened—not till someone chanced to bring word up to the ranch.