Koenig stared, then shook his head in rueful admiration. "You never did aim to do anything by halves, did you?"

"Why do you think we are where we're at?" Jake returned. "Anybody who settles for what he reckons is good enough deserves whatever happens to him. I want the whole damn shootin' match. Now I have to wait till 1927 to try again. That's a goddamn long time. What the hell's going to happen to the country from now till then? Christ, we aren't going to hell in a hand-basket, we're already there."

"You can come down off the stump for a few minutes, anyway," Ferdinand Koenig said. "The election's over, even if the reporters are waiting downstairs to hear what you've got to say."

"Goddamn vultures," Featherston muttered. The election's over meant nothing to him. His life was a seamless whole; he could not have told anyone, himself included, where Jake Featherston the man stopped and Jake Featherston the Freedom Party leader began. He wished he had another glass to shatter. "All right, I'll go down. Maybe they'll all be passed out drunk by then, and I won't have to make a speech after all."

Koenig was still trying to look on the bright side of things: "We picked up four, maybe five seats in Congress, not counting the Redemption League. Florida gave us a Senator; looks like we'll pick up the governor's spot in Tennessee, and maybe in Mississippi, too."

"That's all fine and dandy, but it's not enough, either." Even now, worn and half drunk and sorely disappointed, Jake knew he'd be happier in a few days. The Freedom Party had done very well. It just hadn't done well enough to suit him. He'd have to start building on what it had done, and to start looking ahead to see what it could do for 1923. He made a fist and slammed it into his own thigh several times. The pain was oddly welcome. "The reporters are waiting, eh? Let's go, by Jesus. Let's see how they like it."

Now his running mate looked faintly-no, more than faintly- alarmed. "If you want to get a couple hours' sleep, Jake, those bastards won't care one way or the other. Maybe you should grab the chance to freshen up a touch," Koenig said.

"Hell with it," Featherston replied. "Might as well get it over with." He headed for the stairway. Had Koenig not jumped aside, Jake would have pushed him out of the way.

Down in the lobby of the Spottswood, the victory celebration for which the Freedom Party had hoped was a shambles now. A few young men in white shirts and butternut trousers remained on their feet and alert. They'd been detailed to keep order, and keep order they would. The task was easier than Jake had thought it would be when he assigned it. Six more years of waiting. The thought was as bitter as yielding to the damnyankees had been.

More Freedom Party men sprawled snoring on couches and chairs and on the floor, too, some with whiskey bottles close at hand, others simply exhausted. A lot of reporters, by the look of things, were already gone. Watching the Freedom Party lose an election so many thought it might win had been story enough for them. But half a dozen fellows in cheap but snappy suits converged on Jake when he showed himself.

"Do you have a statement, Mr. Featherston?" they cried, as if with a single voice.

"Damn straight I have a statement," Featherston answered.

"Jake-" began Ferdinand Koenig, who had followed him downstairs.

"Don't you worry, Ferd. I'll be fine," Jake said over his shoulder. He turned back to the reporters. "Reckon you boys are waiting for me to say something sweet like how, even though I wish I was the one who'd gotten elected, I'm sure Wade Hampton V will make a fine president and I wish him all the best. That about right? Did I leave anything out?"

A couple of the reporters grinned at him. "Don't reckon so, Sarge," one of them said. "That's what we hear from the Radical Liberals every six years."

"To hell with the Radical Liberals," Featherston said. "And to hell with Wade Hampton V, too." The reporters scribbled. Jake warmed to his theme, despite Koenig's dark mutterings in the background: "To hell with Wade Hampton V, and to hell with the Whig Party. They led us off a cliff in 1914, they don't have the slightest scent of a notion of how to turn things around, and now they've got six more years to prove they don't know what the devil they're doing."

"If they're such a pack of bums, why'd you lose the election?" a reporter called.

"Don't you think you ought to ask, 'How'd you do so well the first time you tried to run anybody for president?' ' Jake returned. No matter how he felt in private, in public he put the best face on things he could. "Christ, boys, in 1915 there was no Freedom Party. We didn't elect anybody to Congress till two years ago. And now, our first time out of the gate, we get more votes than the Radical Liberals, and they've been around forever. And what do you ask? 'Why'd you lose?' " He shook his head. "We'll be back. As long as Hampton and the Whigs leave us any kind of country at all, we'll be back. You wait and see."

"You really have it in for Hampton, don't you?" a man from the Richmond Whig asked.

Jake bared his teeth in what was not a smile. "You bet I do," he said. "He's part of the crowd that's been running the Confederate States since the War of Secession: all the fancy planters, and their sons, and their sons, too. And he's part of the War Department crowd, like Jeb Stuart, Jr., and the other smart folks who helped the damnyankees lick us. When I look at Wade Hampton and the Whigs, I look at 'em over open sights."

He'd let his journal by that name slip when the Freedom Party began to climb; the furious energy that had gone into the writing came out in Party work instead. Now, for the first time in a while, he might have some leisure to put his ideas down in paper. Have to look back over what I did before, he thought. Pick up where I left off

"If you don't work with the other parties, why should they work with you?" the reporter from the Whig asked.

"We'll work with our friends," Jake said. "I don't have any quarrel with folks who want to see this country strong and free. People who want us weak or who try and sell us to the USA had better steer clear, though, or they'll be sorry."

"Sorry how?" Two men asked the question at the same time. The man from the Richmond Whig followed it up: "Sorry the way Tom Brearley's sorry?"

Though half loaded himself, Jake knew a loaded question when he heard one. "I don't know any more about what happened to that Brearley than I read in the papers," he answered. That was true; he'd also made a point of not trying to find out any more. "I do know a jury didn't convict the people the police arrested for burning down his house."

"They were all Freedom Party men." This time, three reporters spoke together.

"They were all acquitted," Jake said. The reporters looked disappointed. Jake smiled to himself. Did they think he was stupid enough to carry ammunition to their guns? Too bad for them if they did. He went on, "A lot of people like the Freedom Party these days-not quite enough to win me the election, but a lot."

"Are you saying you can't be responsible for all the crazy people who follow you?" The fellow from the Whig wouldn't give up.

"There's crazy people in every party. Look in the mirror if you don't believe me," Jake replied. "AndFll say it again, on account of you weren't listening: the jury acquitted those fellows from the Freedom Party. I don't know who burned Brearley's house, and neither do the cops. No way to tell if it was Freedom Party men or a bunch of riled-up Whigs."

"Not likely," the reporter said.

Privately, Featherston thought he was right. Publicly, the Freedom Party leader shrugged. "Anything else, boys?" he asked. None of the reporters said anything. Jake shrugged again. "All right, then. We didn't win, but we don't surrender, either. And that's about all I've got to say." The newspapermen stood scribbling for a bit, then went off one by one to file their stories.