Lincoln turned away from the gallows and slowly walked back into the fort. The guard followed, finger still near the trigger of his rifle. "Son, I am not going to run away," Lincoln told him. "I am seventy-two years old. The only way I could move faster than you would be for someone to throw me off a cliff yonder." He pointed north and east, toward the brown, sun-baked Wasatch Mountains.

"That'd be good," the guard said, showing his teeth. Lincoln kept quiet.

Inside Fort Douglas, Colonel George Custer was strutting across the parade ground. When he saw Lincoln, he scowled and trotted toward him. For a moment, Lincoln thought the cavalry officer would collide with him. But by what he'd seen, Custer lived his entire life going straight ahead at full throttle. That struck Lincoln as needlessly wearing, but the cavalryman wasn't going to ask his advice.

Custer wanted to go chest-to-chest with him, but wasn't tall enough. He had to content himself with going chest-to-belly and fiercely scowling up into Lincoln 's face, as he'd done several times before. "If it were up to me," he growled, "you'd swing."

"I thank you kindly for the vote of confidence, Colonel," Lincoln said.

Irony to Custer was like a mouse on the tracks to a locomotive: not big enough to notice. He rolled right over it, saying, "You dashed Black Republican, they should have hanged you after we lost the last war, they should have hanged you again for a Communard, and now they should hang you for a traitor. You're luckier than you deserve, do you know that?"

"I'm lucky in all the people who love and admire me, that's plain," Lincoln answered.

Again, it sailed past the cavalry colonel. He paused to kick dust on Lincoln 's shoes, another of his less endearing habits, then jerked a thumb back in the direction of General Pope's office. "The military governor is going to want to see you. You may as well go on over there now."

"I'll do that," Lincoln said, amiably enough. When Custer did not move, he added, "Just as soon as you get out of my way, I mean." With another growl, the commander of the Fifth Cavalry stepped aside.

As Lincoln ambled along in the direction of Pope's office, the young lieutenant who'd arrested him at Gabe Hamilton's house came out of the stockade, spotted him, and came over at a run. "Mr. Lincoln! I was looking for you. General Pope-"

"Wants to invite me to take some tea with him," Lincoln said as the lieutenant gaped. "Yes, so I've been informed." Resisting the urge to pat the youngster on the head, Lincoln walked past him toward the beckoning shade.

General John Pope looked up from the sheet of paper he was reading. "Ah, Mr. Lincoln," he said, taking off his spectacles and setting them on the desk. "I wanted to speak with you."

"So I've been told," Lincoln said. A moment later, he repeated, "So I've been told." It meant nothing to Pope. It probably would have meant nothing to him had he seen both Custer and the young lieutenant come up to Lincoln. The former president started to sit, waited for Pope's brusque nod, and finished setting his backside on a chair.

The military governor of Utah Territory glowered at him. It was probably a glower that put his subordinates in fear. Since Lincoln already knew Pope's opinion of him and was already in his power, it had little effect here. Perhaps sensing that, Pope made his voice heavy with menace: "You know what would happen to you if your fate were in my hands."

"I have had a hint or two along those lines, yes, General," Lincoln answered.

"President Blaine forbids it. You know that, too. It's too damned bad, in my opinion, but I am not a traitor. I obey the lawful orders of my superiors." Pope tried the glare again, not quite for so long this time. "Next best choice, in my view, would be putting convict's stripes on you and letting you spend the rest of your days splitting rocks instead of rails."

"In my present state, I doubt the gravel business would get as great a boost from my labours as you might hope," Lincoln said.

Pope went on as if he had not spoken: "The president forbids that as well. His view is that no one who has held his office deserves such ignominy-no matter how much he deserves such ignominy, if you take my meaning."

"Oh yes, General. You make yourself very plain, I assure you."

"For which I thank you. I am but a poor bluff soldier, unaccustomed to fancy flights of language." Pope was a grandiloquent twit, given to nights of bombast. He didn't know it, cither; he was as blind about himself as he had been about Stonewall Jackson's intentions during the War of Secession.

"If you can't hang me and you can't put me at hard labour for the rest of my days, what do you propose to do with me?" Lincoln asked.

Pope looked even less happy than he had before. "I have been given an order, Mr. Lincoln, for which, to make myself plain once more, I do not care to the extent of one pinch of owl dung. But I am a soldier, and I shall obey regardless of my personal feelings on the matter."

"Commendable, I'm sure," Lincoln said. "What is the order?"

"To get you out of Utah Territory." Pope truly did sound disgusted. "To put you on a train and see your back and never see your face again. To make sure you interfere no further in the settling of affairs here."

That was better than Lincoln had dared hope. He did his best to conceal how happy he was. "If you must, General. I was bound for San Francisco when matters here became unfortunate. I shall have to set up some new engagements there, having been detained so long, but-"

"No," Pope interrupted. "You are not going to San Francisco. Neither are you going to Denver, nor Chicago, nor St. Louis, nor Boston, nor New York. President Blaine has shown so much sense, if no more."

"Whither am I bound, then?" Lincoln inquired.

"You have a choice. You may go south to Flagstaff, in New Mexico Territory, or north to Pocatello, in Idaho Territory, and points beyond. For the duration of the war, you are to be restricted to the Territories north or south of Utah Territory. I am to advise you that any attempt to evade the said restriction will, upon your recapture, result in punishment far more severe than this internal exile."

"Ah, I see." Lincoln nodded sagely. "I may go wherever I like, provided I go to a place with, for all practical purposes, no people in it."

"Precisely." Pope was almost as deaf to irony as Custer.

"If you wish to muzzle me, why not simply leave me in confinement here in Utah?" Lincoln asked.

"Confining you embarrasses the present administration, you being the only other Republican president besides the incumbent," General Pope replied. "Leaving you to your own devices here in Utah, on the other hand, embarrasses me. You have already proved beyond the slightest fragment of a doubt that you are not to be trusted here, but delight in meddling in affairs properly none of your concern."

"General, nothing that has happened in Utah since the outbreak of the war has delighted me," Lincoln said: "neither the deeds of the Mormon leaders nor those undertaken since U.S. soldiers reoccupied this Territory."

"If you equate the Mormons and the United States Army, we are well shut of you," Pope declared. "Had John Taylor and his henchmen simply remained good citizens, none of what we have had to do would have been necessary."

When phrased thus, that was true. But Lincoln had listened to Taylor and the other Mormons enough to know they thought every effort to abolish polygamy a persecution of beliefs they held dear. From what he had seen, they had a point. But did that matter? To anyone who took the view on polygamy of the vast majority of the American people, it mattered not at all.

Pope went on, "The time for coddling the rebels here is past. We have tried to persuade them to obedience, and failed. Persuasion having failed, we shall force them to obedience. One way or another, however, obedience we shall have."