"Oh, you do, do you?" Custer sneered. "Have you forgotten that blackguard Arthur McGregor makes his home just outside this sleepy little town?"

As a matter of fact, Dowling had forgotten that till Custer reminded him of it. "Sir," Dowling answered, taking a firm grip on his patience, "there really is no evidence this McGregor is a blackguard, or anything but a farmer. The experts are all convinced he's an innocent man "

"Experts?" Custer rolled his rheumy eyes. "The experts were all convinced we should use barrels by dribs and drabs, too. What the devil do experts know, except how to impress other experts?" He holstered the revolver again, then took out the report the experts had compiled on Arthur McGregor and flipped through it till he found a photograph of the man. "Here!" He thrust it at Dowling. "If this isn't the face of a villain, what is it?"

Relieved that that miserable pistol wasn't aimed at his brisket any more, Dowling studied the photograph of McGregor for the first time in several months. He reached the same conclusion now as he had then. "Sir, he just looks like a farmer to me."

"Bah!" Custer snatched back the report. "All I can say is, you are no judge of the imprint character makes on physiognomy."

All I can say is, you 're an old fraud starting at shadows, Dowling thought. And he couldn't even say that, not really. Pretty soon, Custer would at last officially step down as the longest-serving soldier in the history of the U.S. Army. And then, perhaps, just perhaps, Abner Dowling would get an assignment where he could use his talents as something other than a nursemaid.

Iron wheels squealed against iron rails as the train began to slow outside of Rosenfeld. Custer pulled out the revolver yet again. He had the fastest draw Dowling had ever seen in an eighty-two-year-old man. Since he was the only eighty-two-year-old man Dowling had ever seen draw a pistol, that proved less than the tubby lieutenant colonel might have liked.

Dowling was convinced that, were an assassin lurking in Rosenfeld, Custer was unlikely to hit him with a pistol shot. The retiring general had a far better chance of nailing an innocent bystander or two, or himself, or Dowling. He had a better chance still of forgetting he wore the revolver. But, since no assassin would be lurking, Dowling didn't have to worry about any of that… too much.

Libbie Custer ignored them both. She lay in her Pullman berth, gently snoring. She was down with a bad cold, or maybe the grippe. Combined with the medicine she'd taken for it-like most such nostrums, almost as potent as brandy-the sickness had knocked her for a loop. She would not be parading today.

And now, evidently, Custer had done all the practicing he intended to do. After putting the pistol back into the holster, he clapped on a black felt cocked hat gleaming with gold braid, adjusted it to a jaunty angle with the help of the mirror atop the walnut sideboard, and then turned back to Dowling to ask, "How do I look?"

"Magnificent," his adjutant answered. Custer was a spectacle, no two ways about it. He'd always worn a uniform as splendid as regulations allowed, and then a little more besides. Now that no one could possibly criticize him for his outfits, he'd stopped even pretending to pay attention to the regulations. He looked something like a South American emperor, something like God on a particularly tasteless afternoon. Dowling found another fancy word: "Refulgent, sir"

"Thank you very much," Custer said, even though Dowling hadn't meant it altogether as a compliment. Dowling glanced out the Pullman car's window. The sun was going in and out behind clouds. With a little luck, the medals and gold cords on Custer's tunic and the gold stripes down each trouser leg wouldn't blind too many of the spectators.

The train pulled into the Rosenfeld station. By this time, the people who formed Custer's procession worked together as smoothly as circus acrobats, and a good deal more smoothly than most of the forces under his command had done during the Great War. "Here comes your motorcar, sir," Dowling said as the limousine descended from the flatcar on which it rode.

"And about time, too," Custer said-nothing ever satisfied him. He looked around. "What a miserable excuse for a town this is. The only reason I can think of for scheduling a parade through it is that it is on the railroad line."

"Do you want to cancel the parade and go on, sir?" Dowling asked. If Custer did that, he'd stop worrying about the bomber who, his adjutant remained sure, was a bomber only in the retiring general's mind.

Custer's mind was certainly full of the fellow. "And let McGregor think he's frightened me away?" he demanded haughtily. "Never!" He looked around again. "We stopped here once before, didn't we? On the way up to Winnipeg, I mean. We drove through the streets then, too, and almost ran over some yahoo who'd probably never seen a motorcar before in his life."

"Why, so we did, sir." Dowling had forgotten that. Custer was an old man, but his memory hadn't slipped. He still vividly recalled slights he'd suffered during the War of Secession, and had never forgotten his quarrels with Teddy Roosevelt during the Second Mexican War-even if TR didn't remember things the way he did.

"I thought as much." Now Custer sounded complacent. He knew his memory still worked, and delighted in showing off. He pulled from a trouser pocket that photograph of Arthur McGregor, which he'd removed from the report. "And if we run into this fellow, I'll be ready, by thunder."

To Dowling's relief, he didn't demonstrate his fast draw. By then, the members of the marching band were forming up in front of the Packard limousine. They wore uniforms far more ornate and colorful than those of the platoon of ordinary soldiers who were taking their places behind the automobile, but were moons beside the sun compared to Custer.

"One good thing," Custer said as his chauffeur got out of the Packard and opened the door so he and Dowling could go up into the back seat: "at least this will be a short procession. Then I'll be able to get back to Libbie."

He really did love her, Dowling realized with some reluctance. He wasn't always faithful to her-or, at least, he did his best to be unfaithful when he saw the chance-but she mattered to him. After almost sixty years of marriage, Dowling supposed that was inevitable.

Dowling sat in the motorcar. Custer stood erect and proud. "Are we ready, Captain?" he called to the bandleader.

"Let me see, sir." The young officer checked his watch. "It still lacks a couple of minutes of one, sir."

"Very well," Custer said. "Commence precisely on the hour. Let the people know they can expect absolute certainty from the rule of the United States."

Absolute certainty Custer had-enough for a regiment, let alone one man, his adjutant thought. Sometimes that had led to great disasters. Sometimes it had led to great triumphs. It always made the retiring general hard to deal with.

At one on the dot-or so Dowling assumed, for he did not take his own watch out of his pocket-the bandleader raised his hands. The musicians in his charge struck up "The Star-Spangled Banner." They began to march. The chauffeur put the limousine in low gear and followed them. Custer's honor guard, in turn, followed the automobile.

Rosenfeld might not have been a big city, but people lined both sides of the short, narrow main street to get a good look at General Custer. Some of them applauded the band. That didn't happen in every Canadian town; sometimes spectators received the U.S. national anthem in stony silence.

Here, though, most of the men and women seemed to accept that they had been conquered and that the United States were here to stay. Dowling saw smiles, he saw waves… and then, beside him, he saw Custer stiffen. "There!" Custer said, his eyes wide. "Right there. That's McGregor!"