The Queen of the Ohio ran aground with force surely great enough to tear the bottom out of her-not that that mattered at the moment. Douglass had been grasping a pillar. The impact tore his grip loose. He landed on one hand, hard. Scrambling to his feet, he struggled toward the rail. A drop of about ten feet separated the deck from the muddy riverbank.

"May I assist you, ma'am?" he asked the woman closest to him: the sour spinster who'd cursed him for daring to suggest the Confederates might have more guns along the Ohio than this one battery.

She climbed over the rail, nimble despite her long skirt and petticoats, and jumped down on her own without even bothering to give him a no. A woman of strong convictions, he thought. Others were not so fussy about letting him take their pale hands in his dark ones and letting him put his black arms around their waists to help them down to safety. Some of them even thanked him.

After a while, the white man next to him said, "Well, Sambo, I reckon it's about time we light out for the tall timber ourselves." Douglass didn't think the fellow intended to offend; he likely would have called someone from the Emerald Isle Mick or a Jew Abe in the same way- classification, not insult.

Whatever the case there, he was right. Despite the best efforts of the men fighting the flames, they were racing forward. The crackling roar dinned in Douglass' ears; he could feel the heat on his skin and through his clothes. A hot cinder landed on the back of his hand. With an oath, he brushed it away.

He looked around to make sure no women were left on the side-wheeler. He saw none. When he looked back, the man who'd called him Sambo had already gone over the rail. Other men shoved forward, intent on doing the same. Douglass decided he could honorably leave. He swung over the rail, sat on the very edge of the bow, and jumped.

He landed heavily in the mud, going down to one knee and fetching up against someone who'd abandoned the Queen of the Ohio a moment before. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said, picking up his hat.

"Don't mention it," the man said. "God damn those cursed Rebels to hell!" As if to punctuate his words, another cannonball screamed past.

A man landed right behind Douglass, staggered, and trod on his toes. He didn't bother to excuse himself. Douglass said, "Perhaps we should get clear of this vicinity, to let those escaping the steamboat more readily descend in safety."

No one argued with him, which was a pleasant novelty. Limping a little, he walked away from the sidewheeler. He didn't look back. All he had left here were the clothes on his back, and they were muddy and torn. He'd had no more when he fled his master, and then he'd had nothing more anywhere. Now he was comfortably well off, and only a telegram away from being able to draw on his resources.

"Rebs must've thought the boat was a troopship," somebody not far from him said. That made a certain amount of sense; the U.S. and the C.S. both moved soldiers by steamboat.

"Maybe they're just a filthy pack of stinking bastards," somebody else said savagely. To Douglass, that made sense, too, a lot of sense: he was always ready to believe the worst of the Confederate States.

"Whatever they are, the whole Ohio 's gonna be shut down as tight as a man's bowels with an opium plug up his ass," the first man said. That was crude, but true without any doubt whatsoever: if one side started shooting at steamboats, the other surely would.

And one other thing was also true without any doubt whatsoever: he was going to be very, very late to Cincinnati.

The Handbasket rattled toward Helena. "Get up, there!" Theodore Roosevelt called to the horses. They snorted resentfully as he flicked the reins and cracked the whip above their backs. Not only was he making them go faster than they usually did on a trip to town, they were pulling a heavier load.

From the back of the wagon, Esau Hunt said, "Easy, boss, easy. Slow down. We'll get there quick enough, any which way." The other five farmhands who sprawled in the back with him loudly agreed. Only Philander Snow had chosen to stay back at the ranch, and he'd already seen the elephant. The rest of the hands, like Hunt, like Roosevelt himself, were young men one and all.

"I'm not going to slow down for anything-not for one single thing, do you hear me?" Roosevelt declared. "Our country needs us, and I intend to meet the call, and to meet it as quickly as I possibly can."

"Can't meet it if you drive us off the road into a ditch," said Charlie Dunnigan, another hand.

Roosevelt didn't answer. He didn't slow down, either. When he conceived in his own mind that something needed doing, he went and did it, and he didn't waste time about it, either. He came up on another wagon heading toward Helena -but not fast enough to suit him. He didn't have much room between the road and the trees alongside it there, but he pulled out and passed, leaving the other driver to cat his dust. The fellow shouted angrily. Roosevelt waved his hat in a derisive salute.

"That's showing him, boss!" Hunt exclaimed. Roosevelt grinned, though he didn't turn back to show the hand he was pleased. Straightforward action, that was the ticket. People who accomplished anything in this world grabbed with both hands. If you didn't, you got left behind with your face dusty.

This time, Roosevelt steered away from the Gazette office when he got into Helena, heading toward the territorial capitol, farther south and cast. "I only hope they still have slots open for us," he said, for about the dozenth time since setting out. Then he went on, again for the dozenth time, "By thunder, if they haven't got any, we'll make our own, that's what we'll do."

"Doesn't look packed to the rafters, anyway," Dunnigan remarked.

Sure enough, Roosevelt had no trouble hitching the buggy close to the capitol. He saw no line snaking out of the small stone building, either. "Is patriotism dead everywhere in the country, save my ranch alone?" he demanded, not of the farmhands but perhaps of God.

He leaped out of the wagon, tied up the horses, and led his men toward the capitol. As they charged up the steps, a man he knew came out: Jeremiah Paxton, a neighbor. "I know what you're here for, Roosevelt," he said: "the same thing I was, or I'm a Chinaman. You ain't gonna have any better luck'n I did, neither."

"What do you mean?" Roosevelt asked.

All Paxton said after that was "You'll find out." He spat into the dirt, then strode over to his horse, untied it from the rail, swung up onto it, and rode back toward his ranch. His stiff back radiated disgust with the world.

"Follow me!" Theodore Roosevelt said. He led his men up the steps to the capitol as if they were charging to the crest of an enemy-held hill. Stopping the first person he saw inside who looked as if he belonged there, he asked, "Where in blue blazes do I find the volunteer office hereabouts?"

"Third door on the left-hand side," the man answered. "But I have to tell you-"

Roosevelt pushed past him, as he'd pushed past the slow wagon. He opened the third door on the left-hand side, which was indeed emblazoned u.s. MILITIA, with an obviously new addition below: amp; VOL