"Not very," Stuart answered. "President Longstrcct has made it all too plain that our mission is to protect Chihuahua and Sonora, not to try to annex any of New Mexico Territory. A pity, but there you are. After this licking, I don't think the Yankees will be panting to invade our new provinces any time soon."

"I think you're right about that," Sellers said. "And I also have to say that you were right about the Apaches. They served us very handsomely here." He looked around and lowered his voice. "And I hope a lot of them bit the dust, too. What they helped us do to the Yankees, they could do to us one fine day."

"They could," Stuart agreed. "We have to persuade them that it's not in their interest. As I've said, being neither Yankees nor Mexicans, we have a leg up on that game." He pointed toward the mouth of the canyon, where the artillery, lengthening its range, was paying the retreating U.S. soldiers a final farewell. "And we have a leg up on this game, too."

On what had been the main battlefield, gunfire ebbed toward silence. More and more Confederates broke cover to round up prisoners, do what they could for the U.S. wounded, and plunder the dead. The Apaches emerged from their places of concealment, too. Some of those seemed incapable of concealing a man until an Indian, or sometimes two or three, came forth from them.

A fair number of the Confederates-especially members of the Fifth Cavalry, who had done a lot of Comanche fighting-took U.S. scalps as souvenirs of victory. To Stuart's surprise, the Apaches didn't.

"No, that is not our way," Chappo said when the general asked him about it. He frowned in thought, then qualified that: "Some of the wildest of us will sometimes take one scalp"-he held up his forefinger-"only one, for a special…" He and Stuart hunted for a word. "… a special ceremony, yes. The one who does this spends four days making clean. Not like-" He pointed to the cavalry troopers, who were busy with their knives.

Stuart suffered a timely coughing fit. He was used to whites' being disgusted at Indians' brutality. Here he had an Indian unhappy with the brutality of his own men. When worn on the other foot, the shoe pinched.

To keep himself from dwelling on that, he walked over to have a look at the prisoners. He found that the U.S. Regular Army troopers his men had captured wanted nothing to do with the volunteers who had ridden into battle with them. "You better keep us separate from those sons of bitches," said one blue-coated cavalryman, a dirty bandage wrapped around a bloody crease to his scalp. "God damn the Tombstone Rangers to hell, and then stoke the fire afterwards. 'Got to get them Injuns,' they said. 'Them Injuns is runnin' on account of they's a pack of cowards,' they said. And God damn Colonel Hains for listening to 'em, the stupid fool."

Colonel Hains was not in evidence among either the dead or the captured. The commander of the Tombstone Rangers, however, had had his horse shot under him; the beast had pinned him when it crashed to earth. When Stuart came up to him, he was cursing a blue streak as a Confederate medical steward put splints on his ankle. "If I knew who the shitepoke was that killed my horse, I'd cut the balls off the asshole," he greeted Stuart. "I'm going to hobble around on a stick the rest of my born days, goddamn it."

"Sorry to hear it," Stuart said, a polite fiction. "Your men fought courageously, Colonel…?" They'd charged into a trap-by what the Regular had said, they'd ignored the possibility that it might be a trap, too-so they hadn't fought very cleverly, but they had indeed been brave.

"Earp," the colonel of Volunteers said. Stuart thought it was a nauseated noise, perhaps from the pain of his injury, till he amplified it: "Virgil Earp." He was about thirty, with a dark mustache and a complexion, at the moment, on the grayish side. "You damn Rebs went and slickered us."

"There's nothing in the rules that says we can't," Stuart answered.

"Wish my brother'd come out West with me," the captured Colonel Earp said. "He's the best poker player I ever knew. You wouldn't have fooled him. Careful there, you son of a whore!" That last was directed at the man tending to his ankle. He gave his attention back to Stuart. "We wanted to wipe out the dirty redskins, but it didn't quite come off."

"No, it didn't." Stuart knew he sounded smug. He didn't care. He'd earned the right.

Virgil Earp surprised him by starting to laugh. "That's all right, Reb. You go ahead and gloat. Those bastards are your trouble now."

Abruptly, Stuart turned away. The Volunteer might not have been much of a soldier, but he'd put his finger right on the Confederate commander's biggest worry. If the need to worry was so obvious even an arrogant fool could see it at a glance… Stuart didn't care for anything that implied.

Across the Ohio, the guns had fallen silent. Frederick Douglass peered suspiciously over the river toward the wreckage of what had been Louisville. The Confederates had asked for an eight-hour truce so they could send a representative to Governor Willcox's headquarters, and Willcox, after consulting by telegraph with President Blaine, had granted the cease-fire.

Here came the Confederate now: a major carrying a square of white cloth on a stick as his laissez-passer. Seeing Douglass standing close to Willcox's tent, he snapped, "You, boy! What business do you have hanging around here? Speak up, and be quick about it."

He might have been speaking to a slave on a plantation. To Douglass' hidden fury, a couple of the U.S. soldiers escorting the messenger chuckled. With ice in his own voice, Douglass replied, "What business have I? The business of a citizen of the United States, sir." He spoke with as much pride as St. Paul had when declaring himself a Roman citizen.

"Any country that'd make citizens out of niggers-" The Confederate emissary shook his head and walked into General Willcox's tent.

Douglass was shaking all over, shaking with rage. He turned to one of the U.S. soldiers who had not joined in the amusement at his expense and asked, "Why is that-that individual here, do you know?"

"I'm not supposed to say anything," the bluecoat answered.

Douglass stood as quietly as he could and waited. In his years as a newspaper reporter, he'd seen how proud most people were of knowing things their friends and neighbors didn't, and how important that made them feel. He'd also seen how bad most of them were at keeping their secrets. And, sure enough, after half a minute or so, the soldier resumed: "What I hear, though, is that there Reb is going to put terms to us for ending the war."

"Terms?" Douglass' ears stood to attention. "What kind of terms?"

"Don't know," the soldier said. His obvious disappointment convinced Douglass he was telling the truth. "Tell you this much, Uncle: after what I've been through over on the other side of the river, any terms at all'd look pretty damn good to me, and you can take that to the bank."

His companions nodded, every one of them. Douglass made as if to write something in his notebook, to keep the white men from seeing how they had wounded him. Where he'd envisioned a crusade- literally a holy war-to sweep the curse of slavery from the face of the earth forever, they, having fought a bit and seen that the enemy would not fall over at the first blow, were ready to give up and go home.

No feeling among the soldiery for the plight of the Negro in Confederate bondage, Douglass scrawled. The plight of the Negro, in fact, was not what had engendered the war. He reminded himself of that, grimly. Not even Lincoln had sent men off to battle for the express purpose of freeing the bondsman. Blaine hated the Confederate States because they were a rival, not because they were tyrants. Had they been exemplars of purest democracy, rivals they would have remained, and he would have hated them no less.