"Hurry, sir!" the orderly said when Custer opened the door.

"Hurry I shall." To prove it, Custer dashed past the soldier and beat him to Pope's office by half a dozen strides. He wasn't quite so young as he had been, but kept himself in top shape. Not breathing hard at all, he saluted and said, "Reporting as ordered, sir."

Pope held up several telegrams. "Colonel, within the last half hour, I have learned that British forces have invaded Montana Territory."

"Good God, sir!" As if lightning had struck close by, electricity arced up Custer's spine.

"I can only presume that their goal is to plunder and ravage the mining regions of that Territory, as the Confederates have done to such unfortunate effect in New Mexico," Pope said. "Whatever their purpose, though, we must and shall beat them back, punishing them as they deserve for thus testing our mettle."

"Yes, sir!" Custer said. "We'll lick them. We must lick them, and so we shall." And then, hardly daring to hope, he asked, "What can we here in Utah "-by which he meant, What can I, myself, personally – "do to lend a hand?"

And Pope replied, "As I told you earlier today, I have spoken highly of you in my reports back to Philadelphia. That praise has apparently borne fruit." He picked through the sheaf of telegrams for one in particular. "You and the Fifth Cavalry, and, specifically, the eight Gatling guns attached to your regiment are ordered to Great Falls, Montana, there to join in defending our beloved country. And you, Colonel, are ordered to take overall command of that defense, with the brevet rank of brigadier general." He stood up and shook his hand. "Congratulations, General Custer!"

In a pink-tinged daze, Custer shook the proffered hand. "Thank you very much, sir," he whispered. He'd dreamt of stars on his shoulder straps since the day he entered West Point. Now, at last, they were his. "I shall save our country, sir," he declared, while an interior voice added, In spite of those Gatling guns.

Chapter 14

S am Clemens walked in to the office of the San Francisco Morning Call, hung his straw hat on a branch of the hat tree, and asked, "Well, boys, what's gone wrong since I went home last night?"

A chorus of voices answered him, so loud and vigorous that he had trouble sorting out one piece of bad news from the next. The British army in Montana Territory was still moving south. British gunboats on the Great Lakes were bombarding U.S. lakeside cities again, with apparent impunity. Louisville remained a bloody stalemate.

"President Blaine didn't think he had reason enough to give over the war before," Clemens observed. "Our enemies seem to be giving him reason now, don't they?"

"And Pocahontas, Arkansas, has fallen back into Rebel hands," Clay Herndon added.

"Good God!" Sam staggered, as if taking a mortal wound. "That proves the struggle truly hopeless. How, save by the grace of a thick skull, can Blaine keep from yielding to common sense?"

Edgar Leary delivered the topper: "The wires say British ironclads have appeared off Boston and New York, and they're bombarding the harbors and the towns."

"Good God," Clemens said, this time in earnest. "They are taking the switch to us. You'd think that, if we were going to get into a war with the whole world, we might have made some sort of an effort to be ready for it ahead of time. But the Democrats reckoned saying 'Yes, Massa' to the Rebs once a day and twice on Sundays would get us by without fighting, so they didn't fret much about the Army and Navy.

And Blaine didn't fret about 'em, either; he just up and used 'em, ready or not. And now we know which."

From the back of the office, somebody shouted, "Holy Jesus! Telegraph says the French Navy is shelling Los Angeles harbor."

"That does it!" Sam cried. "That absolutely does it! The Confederates wrestle us to the ground, England jumps on us as soon as we're down, and now France bites us in the ankle. Can't you see her, yapping and panting? Pretty soon, she'll piss on our leg, you mark my word."

Off in the distance, thunder rolled.

Clay Herndon frowned. "It was clear when I got here half an hour ago. Don't usually get thunderstorms this time of year, anyhow. Hell, we don't usually get any rain at all this time of year."

"Fastest thunderstorm 1 ever heard of," Clemens said. "It was clear when I walked in five minutes ago."

"Look out the window," Leary said. "It's still clear."

Sam couldn't see the window. He opened the door. Bright daylight streamed in. Another rumbling roar sounded, though, this one not so far away. "That isn't thunder!" he exclaimed. "It's cannon fire."

"It can't be," Clay Herndon said. "It's not coming from the direction of the forts, and we'd have heard if Colonel Sherman were moving any guns. Most of those big ones don't move, anyhow."

"I didn't say they were our guns, Clay," Clemens answered quietly. "I think somebody's navy has just brought the war to San Francisco."

"That's era-" Herndon began. Then he shook his head. It would have been crazy yesterday. It wasn't crazy today, not with the Royal Navy shelling Boston and New York harbors, not with the French- whose ships, Sam judged, had to be sallying from some port on the west coast of their puppet Mexican empire-bombarding Los Angeles.

And, as if to confirm Clemens' words, more thunderous reports rolled out of the west. But they were not thunder. A few seconds later came another blast, close enough to rattle the front window of the Morning Call offices, through which Edgar Leary was still staring as if expecting rain. A rending crash followed. "That's a building falling down," Herndon whispered.

"No." Clemens shook his head. "That's a building blowing up."

Now, at last, from the northwest came the thunderous reports that had grown familiar through the summer: the cannon in San Francisco 's fortifications opened up, defending the harbor against the foe. "They'll never make it through the Golden Gate!" Leary exclaimed.

"I wonder if they even care to try." Sam was thinking out loud, and not liking any of his own thoughts. "By the sound of their guns, they're standing off the coast-maybe out past the Cliff House-and shooting across the peninsula, either toward the wharves or just toward us. I wonder if they know which themselves, or care."

A shell landed only a couple of blocks away. The floor jerked under Sam's feet from the explosion, as if at a small, sharp earthquake. A moment later, he heard the rumble of collapsing masonry. He'd heard that during earthquakes, too, but not during small ones. Blast and rumble were so loud, he marveled at how faint and distant the following screams seemed.

But, where the roar of the cannons had not, those screams reminded him he was a newspaperman. "Jesus Christ, boys!" he burst out. "We're sitting in the middle of the biggest story that's happened in this town since 1849. We're not going to be able to cover it standing around here or hiding under our desks. Leary! Get over to Fort Point. See what the devil the garrison's doing to drive the enemy away. Sec if they're doing anything to drive the enemy away. See if they know who the devil the enemy is. That'd be a good bit of news to put in a story, don't you think?"

"Right, boss!" Edgar Leary pushed past him and out the door.

"Clay!" Sam snapped. "You go to the Cliff House, fast as you can. Whatever you can see of the enemy fleet, note it down."

"I'll do it," Herndon said. Then he hesitated. "What if they've already blown the Cliff House to hell and gone?"

Clemens' exasperated exhalation puffed out his mustache. "In that case, you chowderhead, don't go inside." Herndon nodded quite seriously, as if that hadn't occurred to him. Maybe it hadn't. More explosions were rocking the city now. How could you blame anybody for having a hard time thinking straight?