"Ah." Sellers nodded. "Yes, sir; that makes good sense."

The men grumbled as they headed back toward Cananea. Some of them had wives in El Paso. Some had sweethearts. All of them, by now, had had a bellyful of Chihuahua and Sonora. But, aside from that grumbling, without which they would hardly have been soldiers, they went where they were ordered.

When they came into Janos just before sundown, they found the town in an uproar. The camels of the Fifth Cavalry had gone through and past the town two or three hours earlier. A couple of companies of Confederate soldiers occupied the adobe fortress that was Janos' principal reason for being, and from which Mexican troops had withdrawn when Maximilian sold his northern provinces to the CSA. They were as indignant and almost as upset as everyone else in town; the Camelry had passed by so swiftly, the men of the garrison had hardly had the chance to learn why they were on the move.

"Something in Cananea, ain't it?" one of the Confederates asked as the force Stuart led got ready to camp for the night.

Bugles roused the soldiers well before dawn. Stuart drank cup after cup of strong black coffee, and was still yawning when he swung aboard his horse. His bones ached. He wondered if he was getting too old for much more campaigning. If he was, he wouldn't admit it, not even to himself-perhaps especially not to himself.

He and his troopers kept to a moderate pace on the road between Janos and Cananea, the road they were getting to know altogether too well. Not much water lay between the two towns, and pushing too hard would have killed horses even at this season of the year. Major Sellers remarked, "The Apaches aren't worth a single good cavalry horse, you ask me, and the same goes for the Mexicans."

"We wouldn't have had nearly so much fun up in New Mexico Territory if it hadn't been for the Apaches," Stuart remarked. Since Sellers could hardly disagree with that, he grunted and did his best to pretend he hadn't heard it.

Stuart waited to see if he would get more reports from Confederate troopers forced out of Cananea, but none came back to him. "Either they aren't coming," he said to Major Sellers, "or Colonel Ruggles is keeping them for himself. If I had to bet, I'd go the second way."

His aide-de-camp nodded. "I think so, too. He's ahead of us, so he needs to know worse than we do."

"Which doesn't mean we don't have to know at all," Stuart said fretfully.

A couple of hours later, a camel rider did come back to Stuart's force with news that fighting in and around Cananea still was going on, or still had been going on when the troopers who brought word to Colonel Rugglcs left the town. "By what everybody says, sir," the messenger reported, "they're going at it hammer and tongs." He paused to spit a stream of dark brown tobacco juice into the light brown dirt. "Reckon they purely don't like each other."

Stuart got another short night and woke too soon to the blare of the horns. Walk, canter, trot-instead of the ambling pace they'd set on the way east, when they saw no need to hurry, his troopers used the alternating gaits that kept their horses freshest while eating up the ground. As morning passed into afternoon, he heard one of the men say to another, "I hope the damn camel boys kill all the lousy sons of bitches on both sides, so when we get there tomorrow we've got nothin' to do but spit on their graves."

Toward evening, a thick column of smoke rose in the west, silhouetted against the light sky there. The troopers cheered. "I expect that's the Camelry, cleaning up the fight," Horatio Sellers said.

"Hope you're right," Stuart said, and rolled himself in a blanket on his folding cot as soon as he had seen to his horse.

Sometime in the middle of the night, a sentry shook him awake. "Sorry to bother you, sir," the man said, "but Colonel Ruggles just rode in."

That was plenty to make Stuart open his eyes. He pulled on his boots and ducked out of the tent. Calhoun Ruggles stood by the embers of a campfire perhaps twenty feet away. "I saw the smoke, Colonel," Stuart said around a yawn. "Was that us, putting down Apaches and Mexicans alike?"

He expected Ruggles to nod, but the commander of the Fifth Confederate Cavalry shook his head. "No, sir. That was the damned Apaches, burning damn near all of Cananea to hell and gone just before we got there. Not much of the place left standing, and a hell of a lot of Mexicans dead."

"Jesus," Stuart said, yawning again. Ruggles joined him. He went on, "How in blazes did that happen?"

"In blazes is right," Colonel Ruggles answered. "A couple of the Mexicans who lived-Salazar the alcalde is one of 'em-says the Indians got hold of some kerosene some kind of way, and that clever one called Batsinas poured it in front of doors and such. Then they shot fire arrows into it, and the wind did the rest of the job for 'em."

"Jesus," Stuart said again. "I bet it was Batsinas' scheme, too." The Apache had been so eager to learn from the white man, and had figured out a way to use some of the white man's products to deadly effect, too. Stuart went on, "I hope you licked the redskins once you got to Cananea, anyway."

Glumly, Calhoun Ruggles shook his head again. "No, sir. Time we got there, they'd all hightailed it toward the mountains." Even more glumly, he pointed southwards. "I put men to chasing 'em, but they had a better than decent start on us-and they can move, too. I tell you, sir, they can really move, a hell of a lot faster than I ever thought they could. I reckon they're holed up in the Sierra Madre some-wheres, and I'll be damned if I look forward to digging 'em out."

Rain pattered down on San Francisco. Having grown up and lived for much of his life in a place where rain was liable to fall any old time, Sam Clemens took it in stride. His wife, a native San Franciscan, did not approve. "It has no business doing this," she said. "It's nothing but a nuisance, especially on a day when you have to go to work."

"Not that big a nuisance," Clemens answered. "If there's one thing about your brother we can count on, it's that he has more than one umbrella. He may even be willing to let me borrow one, provided I post a bond not to stab anyone with it or use it as a swimming hole for sea gulls."

Sure enough, from an ugly ceramic vase in the front hall sprouted the handles of four or five umbrellas. And, sure enough, Vernon Perkins did not complain about Sam's borrowing one-nor did he ask for the bond Sam had predicted. He was so glad to see his brother-in-law leave his house, he would help in any way he could.

Clemens strode carefully along wet sidewalks and picked his way through puddles in the streets. No matter how careful he was, his feet were wet by the time he got to the Morning Call offices. If he'd been a reporter, he wouldn't have been too proud to take off his shoes and put his stockinged feet close by the fire till they dried out. As an editor, he felt that beneath his dignity. That left him with dignity unimpaired and wet feet.

"Thank God for good coffee," he said, pulling the pot off the stove and filling a cup. "I never knew this horrible muddy slop was good coffee till my sister-in-law broadened my horizons. Bath water with cream is what she makes." He sipped and nodded. "This, now, this'll grow hair on a man's chest-maybe even on my brother-in-law's. If it weren't that Vern's daughters look like him, poor things, I'd say he was the likeliest man in this town to make his next position harem guard for the Turkish sultan." His voice rose to a screechy falsetto.

"For some reason or other, Sam, I get the feeling you don't like your brother-in-law," Clay Herndon drawled. "Why on earth is that?"

"Why on earth is which?" Clemens asked. "Why do you get that feeling, or why don't I like the whey-faced, self-righteous, prissy, tight-fisted little horse's ass? I swear to Jesus, Clay, if brains were stream pressure, he couldn't blow his own nose."