Harry Turtledove: How Few Remain

"Oh, no, Colonel-what I'm laughin' about is you cussin' the humiliation of the United States," Snow said, a distinction a Jesuit might have envied. Before Roosevelt could remark on it, the hand went back into the barn, presumably to hitch the horses to the farm wagon. When he brought the wagon out, he gave Roosevelt a wistful look. "Don't suppose you'd want some company on the way down to Helena?"

"I alone committed the sin of omission," Roosevelt answered. "I alone shall atone for it." Philander Snow let out a gusty sigh. He'd done his best to get out of several hours' work: done his best and failed, in which he resembled his country. Having failed, he went back to the unending chores that bulked so large in farm life.

Roosevelt rattled down the road by himself. In the back of the wagon, the five-gallon milk cans in which he'd bring back the lamp oil did considerable rattling of their own. They had kerosene painted on them in big red letters, to make sure no milk went into them by mistake.

With snow on it, the ground was still hard. Before long, the snow would melt, and everything would turn to mud. Getting to Helena through the resulting morass was liable to be an all-day job, as opposed to a couple of hours each way.

A horseman came up the road toward Roosevelt. As the fellow trotted past, he took off his hat and waved it, saying, "Good day to you. Colonel."

"And to you, Magnussen," Roosevelt answered. "You look well. How's that leg of yours feeling? I remember your captain saying you fought bravely."

"Oh, thank you, Colonel." The former trooper of the Unauthorized Regiment blushed like a girl. "The leg is good. How do you recall all your men, and who got hit in the leg, and who in the arm, and so on?"

"How? You just do it." Roosevelt saw nothing out of the ordinary in carrying a flock of details in his head. "It's no harder than memorizing the multiplication table-easier, for men have faces and voices, and numbers don't."

Magnusscn laughed. "Easier for you, maybe, Colonel, but not for the likes of me." He lifted his hat again, then rode on.

"A man can do anything he sets his mind on doing," Roosevelt called after him. Magnussen gave no sign that he'd heard, though he wasn't out of earshot. Roosevelt shrugged. Too many men would not set their minds on anything worth doing. That, to him, was why they did not succeed. He loosed an angry snort at the absurdity of Abraham Lincoln's Socialist notions.

When he got to Helena, he took some little while reaching the general store. Men who'd served in the Unauthorized Regiment were thick on the ground in the territorial capital. If Roosevelt had taken all of them up on the drinks they wanted to buy him, he would have forgotten his name, let alone such minutiae as where he lived and what he'd come into town to buy.

He filled the milk cans from the big wooden barrel behind the counter at the store. The proprietor, a big redhead named McNa-mara, said, "I reckoned you was runnin' low last time you was in, Colonel, but you always know your own business so good, figured I was crazy myself."

"Even Jove nods," Roosevelt said, which meant nothing to the storekeeper. Grunting, Roosevelt carried the full milk cans out to the wagon. He turned down another drink while he was doing that.

Virtue unalloyed would have sent him straight back to the ranch. His virtue turned out not to be quite free of admixture. Instead of riding out of town with the kerosene, he went over to the offices of the Helena Gazette. As usual, a crowd had gathered in front of the building to read the newspaper on display under glass.

Roosevelt hitched the wagon and started working his way through the crowd toward the paper. He didn't worry about the kerosene; nobody could inconspicuously amble off with a five-gallon milk can full of the stuff. Men made way for him, so he got to the Gazette far sooner than he would have before he'd recruited the Unauthorized Regiment. They reached out to shake his hand or slap him on the back. If Helena had anything to say about it, he could have been elected president tomorrow.

What he read, though, made him grind his teeth. "The arrogance of our enemies!" he burst out. "But for Maine, they hold not a single square inch of our sacred soil, yet they presume to order us around as if we were beasts of burden."

"What are we going to do to them?" somebody asked. "What can we do to them? We're too busy squabbling among ourselves to hurt anybody else." He pointed to a story about a Socialist parade in Boston that had got out of hand. The police had opened fire, and four were dead, including one policeman. Red is the color of the blood of martyrs, a Socialist spokesman was quoted as saying.

"To hell with Abraham Lincoln," Roosevelt ground out. "Custer was right-Pope should have hanged him while he had him under lock and key in Utah Territory. He's ten times as much trouble as all the Mormons and all their wives put together." He heard himself in some surprise; he hadn't thought he might agree with Custer on anything.

About half the crowd in front of the copy of the Gazette loudly approved his words. The other half-miners, mostly-as loudly told him where to go and how to get there. Helena, he remembered, had broken out in riots after one of Lincoln 's speeches, while Great Falls had stayed calm. To a man who had nothing to offer but the sweat of his brow, class warfare was a seductive strumpet indeed.

"I don't think Lincoln 's is the best way for the working men of this country to get a square deal," he said, sticking out his chin. "And besides, if we fight one another, who wins? Do the capitalists win? Do the workers win? Not a chance in hell, either way. I'll tell you who wins: the British and the French and the Confederates. Nobody else."

That got him a thoughtful silence. He was happy enough to gain even so much; he'd been wondering whether Helena would erupt again on account of him. He knew where the Gatling guns were. Colonel Welton had kept most of them even after Custer returned to Kansas. They were the most telling argument yet prepared against the rise of Socialism.

But then a miner said, "Colonel, you can talk about winners and losers as much as you like-when you're one of the winners. When you're putting in twelve, fourteen hours underground six days a week and you don't make enough to feed yourself, let alone your wife and children, well, hell, you've already lost. How are you worse off then if you try and do something different? What can you throw away that ain't already gone?"

The miner drew applause from people who had booed Roosevelt; those who had agreed with him stood silent, waiting to hear what he would say. He picked his words with care: "Do you want to burn down the timbers that arc holding up the roof of the tunnel? That's what Red revolution means. If you want to shore up the roof so it doesn't come down on your head, peaceably petition the government for redress of grievances."

"And a hell of a lot of good that'll do," the miner said. "They only listen to the bastards with money."

"No," Roosevelt said. "They listen to the bastards with votes. And you mark my words, sir: they will go a hell of a long way to keep the revolution from coming. A man will do a great many startling things if all his other choices look worse. On that you may rely."

" Lincoln said the same damn thing, and you were going on about hanging him," the miner said.

" Lincoln pays lip service to peaceable redress, but he doesn't believe in it," Roosevelt said. "I do."

The miner looked him up and down. "You don't mind me saying so, there's a hell of a lot of difference between what some pup who was a cavalry colonel for a little while thinks and what goes through the head of a fellow who was president of the United States and who's been trying to help the little fellow, the labouring man, his whole life long."