How Few Remain (21 page)

He didn’t care whether or not Heber took his words to John Taylor. He rather hoped the waiter would, to let the Mormon president know someone wondered about his intentions. He did not mention that he also found Blaine shortsighted for involving the USA with England and France. In his administration, he’d done everything he could to keep the European powers out of the struggle against the Confederacy.
Everything he could
had not included enough victories to keep the Confederate States from bludgeoning their way to independence.

“I’d be glad to have some bluecoats around myself, I’ll tell you that,” Gabe Hamilton said. “Sometimes I thought they were the only thing keeping the Mormons from riding roughshod over us.”

“They’ve behaved themselves well thus far,” Lincoln said. Later—not much later—he would remember the optimistic sound of that.

“So they have,” Hamilton said grudgingly, as if he were talking about a spell of good weather in late fall: something pleasant but unlikely to last. Remembering Brigham Young’s loyalty during the War of Secession, Lincoln dared hope the Gentile was worrying over nothing.

After breakfast, Lincoln said, “Mr. Hamilton, would you be kind enough to drive me to the Western Union office? I want to send my son a wire.”

“I’d be happy to, sir,” Hamilton said. “What’s your son do, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Robert? He’s a lawyer in Chicago—a lawyer for the Pullman Company, as a matter of fact.” Lincoln’s long, lugubrious face got longer and glummer. “And he doesn’t approve of his old pa’s politics, not even a little he doesn’t.” His expression lightened, just a bit. “We don’t let that come between us, though, not for family things. We aren’t so foolish as USA and CSA, you see.”

Hamilton chuckled appreciatively. “I like that—though the Rebs wouldn’t. To hear them talk, they’re as old as we are, and the only tie is that they decided to stay in the same house with us for a while before they moved on to a place of their own.”

“I prefer to think of it as knocking down half our house, and using its floors and walls to build their own.” A rueful smile creased Lincoln’s face. “Of course, the Confederate States don’t care what I think.” As he rose from the table, he stuck up a forefinger in self-correction. “No, that’s not quite so.”

“Really?” Gabriel Hamilton raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t reckon you’d have to qualify that statement in any way, shape, form, color, or size.”

“Color is the proper term,” Lincoln said. “I have heard that certain of my writings are popular with the handful of educated Negroes in the Confederacy, their race’s labor being exploited even more ruthlessly—or perhaps just more openly—than any in the United States.”

“Isn’t that interesting?” Hamilton said. “How do they get hold of your speeches and articles and books, do you suppose?”

“Unofficially,” Lincoln answered, picking up his stovepipe hat and going outside. “I am given to understand that my works are on the
Index Expurgatorum
for Negroes in the CSA, along with those of Marx and Engels and other European Socialists. I hope you will forgive my taking a certain amount of pride in the company in which they place me.” He climbed up into Hamilton’s carriage.

“You deserve to be there.” Hamilton unhitched the horses and got into the carriage himself. “Won’t be but a couple of minutes,” he said, flicking the reins. “We’re just four or five blocks away.”

Lincoln coughed a couple of times at the dust the carriage—
and all the other buggies and wagons and horses on the street—kicked up. It tasted of alkali on his tongue. Dust was the biggest nuisance Salt Lake City had.

“You can drop me off, if you want to go on about your own business,” he told Hamilton when they got to the telegraph office. “I expect I can find my way back to the hotel without too much trouble.”

“It’s no bother for me, Mr. Lincoln.” Hamilton guided the horses toward a hitching post. As he got down to tie them, he frowned. “The doors to the office should be open. Maybe they’ve got them shut to try and keep the dust out, but that’s a fight they lose before it’s started.”

“Is that a notice tacked to the door frame?” Lincoln walked over to the Western Union office and read the handwritten words: “‘ All lines out of Utah Territory are down at the present time. We hope to be able to start sending telegrams to the rest of the USA again soon. We regret any inconvenience this may cause.’ “The former president took off his hat and scratched his head. “What in the dickens could make all the telegraph lines from here—north, south, east, and west—go haywire at the same time?”

“Not
what
, Mr. Lincoln.” Gabriel Hamilton sounded thoroughly grim. “The right question is
who: who
could make all those telegraph lines go haywire at the same time?” He looked around as he had back in the hotel dining room, as if expecting to find Heber the waiter lurking behind a cottonwood tree. “As for what the right answer is, I give you one guess.”

Lincoln turned his head in the direction of the enormous granite bulk of the rising Temple. “Why would John Taylor—why would the Mormons—want to shut down telegraphy between Utah and the rest of the country?”

“Because they’re up to something that won’t stand the light of day,” Hamilton suggested at once. “I couldn’t begin to tell you what that might be, but I’ll bet it’s nothing I want.”

“They’d be very foolish to try that,” Lincoln said. “The United States may be distracted by this war, but not so distracted as to be incapable of dealing with a rebellion here.” He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “Like South Carolina, Utah is too large to be an insane asylum and too small to make a nation, and, unlike South Carolina, lacks other nearby states full of zanies to join her in her madness.”

A man on a horse came trotting up. He dismounted and hurried
toward the closed door in front of which Lincoln was standing. “Sorry, pal,” Gabe Hamilton called to him. “Office is closed. You can’t send a wire.”

“But I have to,” the man exclaimed. “I was supposed to be on the train for San Francisco, and it couldn’t leave the station. There’s some sort of break in the tracks west of here—and, from what I heard people talking about, there’s one to the east, too.”

“Uh-huh,” Hamilton said, as if the fellow had proved an obscure point. “And one to the north and one to the south somewhere, too. What a surprise, eh, Mr. Lincoln?”

All at once, Lincoln didn’t feel stranded in Salt Lake City any more. He felt trapped.

V

Jeb Stuart led his troopers north out of Sonora and into New Mexico Territory. Now that the United States and Confederate States were at war, his opinion was that the best way to keep the USA from invading the new Confederate acquisitions was to make U.S. forces defend their own land.

He’d managed to stay in touch with Richmond through a spider-web of telegraph wires across the Sonoran and Chihuahuan desert back to Texas. He reckoned that a mixed blessing, as it deprived him of fully independent command. But he had heard not a word of reproof from the War Department on his plan to move into the United States.

“Not likely that you would, is it, sir?” Major Horatio Sellers said.

“With Stonewall Jackson heading up the Army, do you mean?” Stuart said with a grin. “You’re right about that, Major, no doubt about it. Stonewall will never quarrel with a man who goes toward the enemy.”

“That’s what I meant, all right.” Stuart’s aide-de-camp checked his map. “Sir, are we going to strike Tombstone or Contention City?”

“Contention City,” Stuart said at once. “That’s where the stamping mills and refineries are for the ore, and that’s what we want. Where the mines are doesn’t matter; what comes out of them is what counts. You think we won’t get a pat on the back if we bring home a few tons of refined gold and silver ore?”

“Just might,” Sellers said dryly.

It wasn’t
might
. Both men knew as much. The Confederate States were shorter than they cared to be on precious metals. The United States had far more in the way of mineral wealth, which helped keep their currency sound. The CSA relied on commerce
to bring in most of their gold and silver. Well, this was commerce, too, commerce of a different and ancient sort.

A scout came galloping back to Stuart. “Sir, looks like the damnyankees have some soldiers in that there Contention City,” he reported. “Can’t rightly tell how many—don’t look like a whole lot, but they won’t be showin’ all the cards they’ve got, neither.”

The way he spoke gave Stuart an idea. He turned to his aide-de-camp. “Major Sellers, will you be so kind as to ride into Contention City under flag of truce and ask the Yankee commander to ride back here for a parley with me? You won’t get back before nightfall, I expect, but that’s all right. It’s better than all right, as a matter of fact. Tell him I desire to prevent any useless bloodshed on his part, and so will not fall upon him with the overwhelming force at my disposal.”

“Yes, sir; I’ll tell him,” Major Sellers said obediently. He looked around at the cavalry riding with Stuart; they’d left the infantry behind for the dash up into the United States. “Begging your pardon, if he’s got more than a couple of companies entrenched around that town, this
isn’t
an overwhelming force.”

“Not now, it isn’t.” Stuart’s voice was light and gay. “It will be by tonight, when everyone joins us. Just you make certain you don’t bring the Yankee commander back here till after full dark. Ten o’clock will be perfect.”

“Yes, sir,” Sellers said again, still obedient but very puzzled. He knew as well as Stuart—maybe better than Stuart—no other Confederate soldiers would or could join them, not for the next several days. He was scratching his head as he rode north after the scout.

Stuart shouted orders to his trumpeter, who blew Halt. The cavalry troopers reined in, as bemused as Major Sellers: they’d been pushing hard toward their goal, and couldn’t imagine why their commander was stopping them in the middle of this godforsaken desert. Their confusion only increased when Stuart said, “We’ll make camp here, boys.”

He gave more orders after that. By the time he was through, the troopers, confused no more, fell to with a will. One of them said, “Any day we get to knock off early is a good day by me.” As the work progressed, they discovered they hadn’t knocked off early after all. They kept at it, though, fired by the same enthusiasm as had filled Stuart when the idea came to him.

He sent scouts out well in front of his force, so they could intercept Major Sellers and the U.S. commander (if he chose to come; if he didn’t, a lot of work was being wasted) well before they reached the camp. Instead of pitching his own tent near the center of the encampment, as he usually did, he had it set at the northern edge, and made sure the scouts knew as much.

As the sun went down, the men lighted their fires. Sagebrush and greasewood, the staples of campfires farther north, weren’t so common here, but the troopers had scoured the desert roundabout for what they could find, and had also cut down a good many of the cottonwoods and mesquite trees growing alongside the San Pedro River. At this season of the year, the San Pedro was as thin and lethargic a stream as the Rio Grande, but it kept the trees alive.

Firelight gleamed off cannons, reflected palely from tent canvas, and showed row on row of tethered horses and camels, the latter being closer to Stuart’s shelter. Men lined up to get their tin plates filled from the pots hanging over cookfires, and carried beans and salt pork and hardtack back toward their tents with every sign of satisfaction. Halting in mid-afternoon had let the cooks do a proper job of boiling the beans, instead of serving them up as hard little bullets as they so often did.

At five past ten, a scout led Major Horatio Sellers and an officer dressed in the dark blue wool of the U.S. Army up to Jeb Stuart. “General,” Sellers said, “allow me to present to you Lieutenant Colonel Theron Winship, commander of the U.S. forces in Contention City.”

“Very pleased to make your acquaintance,” Stuart said politely, shaking hands with the U.S. officer, a sun-browned fellow in his early forties with a neat blond beard. Stuart waved to the fires and tents behind him. “I have no doubt of the courage of your soldiers, sir, but, as you see, we are present in such force as to make any resistance on your part not only foolish but suicidal.”