"I'd be happy to, sir," Hamilton said. "What's your son do, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Robert? He's a lawyer in Chicago -a lawyer for the Pullman Company, as a matter of fact." Lincoln 's long, lugubrious face got longer and glummer. "And he doesn't approve of his old pa's politics, not even a little he doesn't." His expression lightened, just a bit. "We don't let that come between us, though, not for family things. We aren't so foolish as USA and CSA, you see."

Hamilton chuckled appreciatively. "I like that-though the Rebs wouldn't. To hear them talk, they're as old as we are, and the only tie is that they decided to stay in the same house with us for a while before they moved on to a place of their own."

"I prefer to think of it as knocking down half our house, and using its floors and walls to build their own." A rueful smile creased Lincoln 's face. "Of course, the Confederate States don't care what I think." As he rose from the table, he stuck up a forefinger in self-correction. "No, that's not quite so."

"Really?" Gabriel Hamilton raised an eyebrow. "I didn't reckon you'd have to qualify that statement in any way, shape, form, color, or size."

"Color is the proper term," Lincoln said. "I have heard that certain of my writings are popular with the handful of educated Negroes in the Confederacy, their race's labour being exploited even more ruthlessly-or perhaps just more openly-than any in the United States."

"Isn't that interesting?" Hamilton said. "How do they get hold of your speeches and articles and books, do you suppose?"

"Unofficially," Lincoln answered, picking up his stovepipe hat and going outside. "I am given to understand that my works are on the Index Expurgatorum for Negroes in the CSA, along with those of Marx and Engels and other European Socialists. I hope you will forgive my taking a certain amount of pride in the company in which they place me." He climbed up into Hamilton 's carriage.

"You deserve to be there." Hamilton unhitched the horses and got into the carriage himself. "Won't be but a couple of minutes," he said, flicking the reins. "We're just four or five blocks away."

Lincoln coughed a couple of times at the dust the carriage-and all the other buggies and wagons and horses on the street-kicked up. It tasted of alkali on his tongue. Dust was the biggest nuisance Salt Lake City had.

"You can drop me off, if you want to go on about your own business," he told Hamilton when they got to the telegraph office. "I expect I can find my way back to the hotel without too much trouble."

"It's no bother for me, Mr. Lincoln." Hamilton guided the horses toward a hitching post. As he got down to tie them, he frowned. "The doors to the office should be open. Maybe they've got them shut to try and keep the dust out, but that's a fight they lose before it's started."

"Is that a notice tacked to the door frame?" Lincoln walked over to the Western Union office and read the handwritten words: " 'All lines out of Utah Territory are down at the present time. We hope to be able to start sending telegrams to the rest of the USA again soon. We regret any inconvenience this may cause.' " The former president took off his hat and scratched his head. "What in the dickens could make all the telegraph lines from here-north, south, east, and westgo haywire at the same time?"

"Not what, Mr. Lincoln." Gabriel Hamilton sounded thoroughly grim. "The right question is who: who could make all those telegraph lines go haywire at the same time?" He looked around as he had back in the hotel dining room, as if expecting to find Hebcr the waiter lurking behind a cottonwood tree. "As for what the right answer is, I give you one guess."

Lincoln turned his head in the direction of the enormous granite bulk of the rising Temple. "Why would John Taylor-why would the Mormons-want to shut down telegraphy between Utah and the rest of the country?"

"Because they're up to something that won't stand the light of day," Hamilton suggested at once. "I couldn't begin to tell you what that might be, but I'll bet it's nothing I want."

"They'd be very foolish to try that," Lincoln said. "The United States may be distracted by this war, but not so distracted as to be incapable of dealing with a rebellion here." He clicked his tongue between his teeth. "Like South Carolina, Utah is too large to be an insane asylum and too small to make a nation, and, unlike South Carolina, lacks other nearby states full of zanies to join her in her madness."

A man on a horse came trotting up. He dismounted and hurried toward the closed door in front of which Lincoln was standing. "Sorry, pal," Gabe Hamilton called to him. "Office is closed. You can't send a wire."

"But I have to," the man exclaimed. "I was supposed to be on the train for San Francisco, and it couldn't leave the station. There's some sort of break in the tracks west of here-and, from what I heard people talking about, there's one to the east, too."

"Uh-huh," Hamilton said, as if the fellow had proved an obscure point. "And one to the north and one to the south somewhere, too. What a surprise, eh, Mr. Lincoln?"

All at once, Lincoln didn't feel stranded in Salt Lake City any more. He felt trapped.

Chapter 5

J eb Stuart led his troopers north out of Sonora and into New Mexico Territory. Now that the United States and Confederate States were at war, his opinion was that the best way to keep the USA from invading the new Confederate acquisitions was to make U.S. forces defend their own land.

He'd managed to stay in touch with Richmond through a spiderweb of telegraph wires across the Sonoran and Chihuahuan desert back to Texas . He reckoned that a mixed blessing, as it deprived him of fully independent command. But he had heard not a word of reproof from the War Department on his plan to move into the United States.

"Not likely that you would, is it, sir?" Major Horatio Sellers said.

"With Stonewall Jackson heading up the Army, do you mean?" Stuart said with a grin. "You're right about that, Major, no doubt about it. Stonewall will never quarrel with a man who goes toward the enemy."

"That's what I meant, all right." Stuart's aide-de-camp checked his map. "Sir, are we going to strike Tombstone or Contention City?"

" Contention City," Stuart said at once. "That's where the stamping mills and refineries are for the ore, and that's what we want. Where the mines are doesn't matter; what comes out of them is what counts. You think we won't get a pat on the back if we bring home a few tons of refined gold and silver ore?"

"Just might," Sellers said dryly.

It wasn't might. Both men knew as much. The Confederate States were shorter than they cared to be on precious metals. The United States had far more in the way of mineral wealth, which helped keep their currency sound. The CSA relied on commerce to bring in most of their gold and silver. Well, this was commerce, too, commerce of a different and ancient sort.

A scout came galloping back to Stuart. "Sir, looks like the damn-yankees have some soldiers in that there Contention City," he reported. "Can't rightly tell how many-don't look like a whole lot, but they won't be showin' all the cards they've got, neither."

The way he spoke gave Stuart an idea. He turned to his aide-de-camp. "Major Sellers, will you be so kind as to ride into Contention City under flag of truce and ask the Yankee commander to ride back here for a parley with me? You won't get back before nightfall, I expect, but that's all right. It's better than all right, as a matter of fact. Tell him I desire to prevent any useless bloodshed on his part, and so will not fall upon him with the overwhelming force at my disposal."

"Yes, sir; I'll tell him," Major Sellers said obediently. He looked around at the cavalry riding with Stuart; they'd left the infantry behind for the dash up into the United States. "Begging your pardon, if he's got more than a couple of companies entrenched around that town, this isn't an overwhelming force."