"Freedom!' The greeting filled the livery stable. It wasn't a challenge here, nor a shout of defiance: it was what one friend said to another. The men who filled the stable-filled it almost to overflowing; before long, like it or not, the Birmingham chapter would have to find a new place to meet-were friends, colleagues, comrades. Those who'd been in the Party longer got a little more respect than johnny-come-latelys, but only a little. Jeff had joined long enough ago to deserve some of that respect himself

With Barney Stevens up in Richmond, a skinny little dentist named Caleb Briggs led the meetings and led the Party in Birmingham. "Freedom!" he shouted, his voice thin and rasping- he'd been gassed up in Virginia, and wouldn't sound right till they laid him in his grave.

"Freedom!" Pinkard shouted with the rest of the men who'd come together to find, to build, something larger and grander than themselves.

"Boys, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know when I say that Jake Featherston's going to be running for president this year." Briggs paused to suck more air into his ruined lungs-and to let the Party members cheer till they sounded almost as hoarse as he always did. Then he went on, "We've done a little bit of brawling every now and again, but it's not a patch on what we're going to be doing, let me tell you that!"

More cheers erupted. Jeff pumped his fist in the air. Brambles and thorns in his throat, Briggs went on, "The Whigs will be holding rallies here in town. The goddamn Radical Liberals will be holding rallies here in town." He shook his head. Lamplight reflected wetly from his eyes. "That's not right. Those traitor bastards will try and hold rallies here in town. Are we going to let 'em?"

"No!" Jeff shouted, along with most of the Freedom Party men. The rest were shouting "Hell, no!" and other, coarser, variations on the theme instead.

"That's right." Caleb Briggs nodded now, which made his eyeballs glitter in a different way. Jeff could not have said how it was different, but it was. Briggs went on, "That's just right, boys. This is a war we're in, same as the one we fought in the trenches. We would have won that one, only we got stabbed in the back. This time, we hit the traitors first."

Jeff applauded till his hard, horny hands were sore. Somebody not far away pulled out a flask of moonshine and passed it around. Pinkard took a swig. "Son of a bitch!" he said reverently, his vocal cords for the moment nearly as charred as Briggs'. He passed the flask along, half sorry to see it go, half relieved it was gone.

Someone started singing "Dixie." Jeff roared out the words, a fiery fury in him that had surprisingly little to do with the whiskey he'd just drunk. The Freedom Party sang "Dixie" at every meeting. Then someone else began "Louisville Will Be Free." That one dated from just after the Second Mexican War, and recounted the greatest fight of that war. With Louisville forced back into the USA in the Great War, it took on a poignancy now that it hadn't had then.

Tears ran down Jefferson Pinkard's face. They took him by surprise. He wondered if he was weeping for ravaged Louisville or for himself. A great determination filled him. Like his country, he'd paid for doing what he remained convinced was right Sooner or later, everyone else would pay, too.

"Freedom!'' he cried at the top of his lungs. "Freedom! Freedom!"

Reggie Bartlett nodded in some surprise when Tom Brearley came into Harmon's drugstore. He hadn't seen much of Brearley since the ex-Navy man went down to South Carolina to talk with Anne Colleton. Reggie had been waiting for fireworks to spring from that meeting. He was still waiting.

Evidently, Brearley was getting tired of waiting. He said, "All right, Mr. Bartlett, what's your next great idea for blowing the Freedom Party out of the water?"

"I haven't got another one," Reggie admitted. "Wish to heaven I did."

"Well, I've got another one." Brearley looked very determined. Reggie could easily picture him peering through a periscope at a U.S. cruiser. Oddly, he also looked much younger than he had before sticking out his chin. He said, "If I can't get those bastards fighting among themselves, I'll just have to take the story to the newspapers."

"Jesus," Reggie said. "Are you sure you want to do that? I wouldn't, not unless I had my life-insurance premiums all paid up."

"As a matter of fact, I do," Brearley said, doing a determined and pretty good best to sound unconcerned. "I made sure they were before I went down to talk to Tom Colleton's sister, because I wasn't sure I'd be coming back. But by now Kimball has to know I've talked. He has to figure I'll talk more. That means he'll try and kill me sooner or later-likely sooner. I'm kind of surprised he hasn't tried it yet-him or some of the Freedom Party apes up here. I want to make sure the word gets out before he does." He didn't sound unconcerned any more: just matter-of-fact, a man tackling a job he knew was dangerous.

Reggie understood that. He wouldn't have, not before the war. Going through the trenches-coming out of the trenches on command to attack-changed a man forever. He knew he would be afraid again, many times in his life. But fear would never paralyze him, as it might have done before. He had its measure now.

He said, "If you're bound and determined to do it, you'd better think hard about which paper you go to. You don't want to head for the Sentinel, because-"

"Don't teach your grandpa to suck eggs," Brearley said with a wry grin. "Do I look that stupid? Half the time, I reckon Jake Featherston puts that rag out himself. Shame and a disgrace, the garbage it prints."

"Why don't I just shut up?" Reggie said to nobody in particular.

"I don't want you to shut up," Brearley told him. "You go to political rallies for fun. You really think about this stuff, a lot more than I do. So I want your advice: you reckon I should talk to the Whig or the Examiner?"

"Go with the Whigs or the Radical Liberals?" Reggie stroked his chin. After a minute or so of silent thought, he said, "That's an interesting one, isn't it? The Freedom Party's probably giving the Whigs a harder time-they were the ones who ran the country during the war. But I think the Radical Liberals are more afraid of Featherston and his gang, don't you? For one thing, they're farther away from the stand he takes, where some of the right-wing Whigs might as well start yelling 'Freedom!' themselves. And for another, the Rad Libs are running scared. If they don't get a break, the Freedom Party'll be number two in the country after this fall's election. You give them some dirt, they'll run with it."

Tom Brearley looked at him as if he'd never seen him before. "You're wasting your time shoving pills across a counter, Bart-lett. You should have been a lawyer, something like that. You think straight. You think real straight."

"Maybe I do," Reggie said. "You're the one who's not thinking straight now, I'll tell you that. Where the devil am I going to get the money to study law? Where am I going to get the money to get the education I'd need so I could study law? If I'd had a million dollars before the war, it might have been a different story."

Brearley shrugged. "If you want something bad enough, you can generally find a way to get it. What I want right now is to torpedo the Freedom Party. I tried one way. It didn't work. All right-I'll try something else. The Examiner it'll be. Thanks, Bartlett." He sketched a salute and left.

Jeremiah Harmon came up from the back of the drugstore. "I overheard some of that," he said, sounding apologetic- astonishing in a boss. "None of my business, but anybody who goes up against a machine gun without a machine gun of his own is asking for a whole peck of trouble. You ask me, the Examiner's a popgun, not a machine gun. Wish I could say different, but I can't."