He moaned and covered his face with his hands.

“Sweet God in Heaven, forgive me. The women made me do it.”

Gordon blinked in amazement. Amidst the pelting raindrops, tears flowed down the last augment’s craggy, careworn face. George Powhatan shuddered and sobbed ach-ingly aloud.

Gordon slumped down to the rough log next to him, a heaviness filling him like the nearby Coquille, swollen from winter’s snows. In another minute, his own lips were trembling.

Lightning flashed. The nearby river roared. And they wept together under the rain — mourning as men can only mourn themselves.

A new legend swept Oregon, from Roseburg all the way north to the Columbia, from the mountains to the sea. It traveled by letter and by word of mouth, growing with each telling.

It was a sadder story than the two that had come before it — those speaking of a wise, benevolent machine and of a reborn nation. It was more disturbing than those. And yet this new fable had one important element its predecessors lacked.

It was true.

The story told of a band of forty women — crazy-women, many contended — who had shared among themselves a secret vow: to do anything and everything to end a terrible war, and end it before all the good men died trying to save them.

They acted out of love, some explained. Others said that they did it for their country.

There was even a rumor that the women had looked on their odyssey to Hell as a form of penance, in order to make up for some past failing of womankind.

Interpretations varied, but the overall moral was always the same, whether spread by word of mouth or by US. Mail. From hamlet to village to farmstead, mothers and daughters and wives read the letters and listened to the words — and passed them on.

Men can be brilliant and strong, they whispered to one another. But men can be mad, as well. And the mad ones can ruin the world.

Women, you must judge them…

Never again can things be allowed to reach this pass, they said to one another as they thought of the sacrifice the Scouts had made.

Never again can we let the age-old fight go on between good and bad men alone.

Women, you must share responsibility… and bring your own talents into the struggle…

And always remember, the moral concluded: Even the best men — the heroes — will sometimes neglect to do their jobs.

Women, you must remind them, from time to time…

Gordon sat on a bench just outside the Corvallis Post Office. He rested his back against the rough wall, catching the rays of the morning sun, and thought about things he could not write of in his letter to Mrs. Thompson… things for which he could not find words.

Until they had recaptured the villages of Chesire and Franklin, all the people of the Willamette had to go on were rumors, for not one of the Scouts had ever come home again from that unauthorized, midwinter foray. After the first counterattacks, though, newly released slaves began relating parts of the story. Slowly, the pieces fell together,

One winter day — in fact only two days after Gordon had left Corvallis on his long trek south — the women Scouts started deserting from their army of farmers and townsmen. A few at a time, they slipped away south and west, and gave themselves up, unarmed, to the enemy.

A few were killed on the spot. Others were raped and tortured by laughing madmen who would not even hear their carefully rehearsed declarations.

Most, though, were taken in — as they had hoped — welcomed by the Holnists’ insatiable appetite for women.

Those who could pass it off believably explained that they were sick of living as fanners’ wives, and wanted the touch of “real men.” It was a tale the followers of Nathan Holn were disposed to accept, or so those who had dreamed up the plan imagined.

What followed must have been hard, perhaps beyond imagining. For the women had to pretend, and pretend believably, until the scheduled red night of knives — the night when they were supposed to save the frail remnant of civilization from the monsters who were bringing it down.

What exactly went wrong wasn’t yet clear, as the spring counteroffensive pushed through the first recaptured towns. Perhaps an invader grew suspicious and tortured some poor girl until she talked. Or maybe one of the women fell in love with her fierce barbarian, and spilled her heart in a betraying confession. Dena was correct that history told of such things occurring. It might have happened here.

Or perhaps some simply could not lie well enough, or hide the shivers when their new lords touched them.

Whatever went wrong, the scheduled night was red, indeed. Where the warning did not arrive in time, women stole kitchen knives, that midnight, and slipped from room to room, killing and killing again until they themselves went down struggling.

Elsewhere, they merely went down, cursing and spitting into their enemies’ eyes to the last.

Of course it was a failure. Anyone could have predicted it. Even where the plan “succeeded,” too few of the invaders died to make any real difference. The women soldiers’ sacrifice accomplished nothing at all in any military sense.

The gesture was a tragic fiasco.

Word spread though, across the lines and up the valleys. Men listened, dumbfounded, and shook their heads in disbelief. Women heard also, and spoke together urgently, privately. They argued, frowned, and thought.