The Yanks hadn't rebuilt the sheriff's station after he bombed it. All they'd done was clear away the wreckage. He smiled as he jounced slowly past the bare, snow-covered stretch of ground. It was not enough. Nothing could ever be enough to make up for losing Alexander. But it was something. It was more than most Canadians had, a lot more.

Rosenfeld was a far cry from the big city. It didn't hold even a thousand people. If two railroad lines hadn't met there, it might not have existed at all. Throughout the war, though, Americans had packed it to the bursting point, as it became a staging area and recuperation center for the long, hard campaign against Winnipeg.

Now, with just a small occupation garrison, it seemed much more nearly its old self than it had during the war years. People on the street nodded to McGregor. Why not? No need to bother avoiding his eyes. Alexander was two and a half years dead now: old news, to everyone but his family. No one knew McGregor had had his revenge. Had anyone known, the Yanks would have found out. They would have stood him against a wall, as they'd stood his son, and shot him down, too.

He hitched the horse on the main street in front of the post office. He couldn't have done that during the war; the Yanks had reserved the street for themselves. Digging in his pockets for some change, he went into the post office.

"Hello, Arthur," said Wilfred Rokeby, the postmaster. He was a small, fussily precise man who wore his hair parted in the middle and plastered down to either side with some spicy-smelling oil. "Didn't expect to see you coming into town quite so soon."

"Ran out of kerosene sooner than I thought I would." McGregor set a couple of dimes on the counter. "Long as I'm here, let me have some stamps, too, Wilf."

"I can do that," Rokeby said. He peeled ten red two-cent stamps from a sheet and handed them to McGregor. They were ordinary U.S. stamps, adorned with Benjamin Franklin's fleshy portrait, but had the word MANITOBA overprinted on them in black.

"At least we don't have to pay double any more, to help the singers and dancing girls come up here and perform for the Yankee soldiers," McGregor said, pocketing the stamps. "That was nothing but highway robbery."

"Things are settling down a mite," the postmaster said. "I hear some fellow's going to come up from Minnesota and start us a new weekly paper when the weather gets better. Been a long time since that bomb in front of Malachi Stubing's place shut down the old Register T

That bomb had not been one of McGregor's. He hadn't been in the bombing business back then. He had been in Henry Gibbon's general store when the bomb went off. The Americans had almost taken him hostage after the blast. Frowning, he said, "One more way for the Yanks to peddle their lies."

"That's so," Rokeby admitted, "but it'll be good to have the town news, too, and all the advertising. We've missed it. You can't say we haven't, Arthur."

"Well, maybe," McGregor said, but then, as if to rebut himself, he added, "Minnesota." Shaking his head, he turned and walked out of the post office.

The general store was half a block up the street, and on the other side. Henry Gibbon was wiping his hands on his apron when McGregor came inside carrying a large sheet-iron can. A hot stove gave relief from the chill outside. "Didn't expect to see you for another week or ten days, Arthur," the storekeeper said. He raised an eyebrow almost to what would have been his hairline had his hair not long since retreated to higher ground.

"Ran out of kerosene." McGregor set the can on the counter with a clank. "Want to fill me up again?"

"Sure will," Gibbon said, and did so with a large tin dipper. When he was through, he put the top securely back in place and held out his right hand, palm up. "Five gallons makes sixty-five cents."

"Would only have been half a dollar before the war," McGregor said. The fifty-cent piece and dime he gave Gibbon were U.S. coins, the five-cent piece Canadian. More and more of the money in circulation came from the USA these days.

"During the war, you'd have been out of luck if you didn't have your ration book," Gibbon said with a massive shrug. "It's not as good as it was, but it's not as bad as it was, either."

He hadn't had a son killed. He could afford to say things like that. McGregor had, and couldn't. He started to head out the door, then checked himself. Gibbon might not know good and bad from the man in the moon, but he heard all the gossip there was to hear in Rosenfeld. "Has Wilf Rokeby got it straight? Is some fellow coming up from the United States to put out a paper here?"

"That's what I've heard, anyway," Gibbon answered. "Be right good to let folks know every week that I'm still alive and still in business."

"But a Yank," McGregor said. The storekeeper shrugged again. The notion didn't bother him. As long as he got his advertisements in the newspaper, he couldn't have cared less what else went in.

With a grunt, McGregor picked up the can of kerosene and went back out into the cold. He started across the street. A motorcar's horn blared at him. He froze like a deer-he hadn't paid the least attention to traffic. If the automobile hadn't been able to stop in time, it would have run him down.

It halted with its front bumper inches from him. It was a big open touring car, with a U.S. soldier who looked very cold driving and two men in buffalo robes and fur hats in the back seat. One of them looked older than God, with a beaky nose projecting from a wrinkled face. "Jesus Christ, I wanted to see what one of these little towns looked like," he said, his voice American-accented. "I didn't aim to kill anybody while I was doing it."

"Sorry, General Custer, sir," the driver said. His greatcoat didn't offer him nearly the protection from the bitter winter chill that a buffalo robe would have done.

"1 think your wife had the right idea, sir," the younger man in back said. He was a porky fellow, porky enough that his blubber probably helped keep him warm. "You might have done better to stay on the train till we got up to Winnipeg."

"I'm supposed to be in charge of things," the old man said querulously. "How can I be in charge of things if I don't see for myself what the hell I'm in charge of?" He shook a mittened fist at McGregor. "What are you standing there for, you damn fool? Get out of the way!"

McGregor unfroze and took a few steps forward. The motorcar shot past him with a clash of gears; its tires spat snow up into his face. He stared after it. He'd learned about General Custer in school. During the Second Mexican War, he'd beaten General Gordon's British and Canadian army down in Montana, beaten it after the USA had agreed to a cease-fire. McGregor had assumed he was long dead till his name started cropping up in war news.

And now he was coming to Canada to be in charge of things? And not just to Canada but to Winnipeg, only a couple of days to the north even by wagon? McGregor hurried back to the wagon. Purpose had indeed leaked out of his life after he'd avenged himself on Major Hannebrink. Now, suddenly, it was back. This time, he wouldn't just be avenging himself. He'd be avenging his whole country.

Nellie Jacobs yawned, right in the middle of business hours. Edna laughed at her. "This is a coffeehouse, Ma," Nellie's daughter said. "If you're sleepy, pour yourself a cup."

"I've been drinking it all day long." Nellie punctuated her reply with another yawn. "I don't want another cup right now." She hesitated and lowered her voice so the couple of customers in the place wouldn't hear: "It hasn't tasted quite right, anyway. Did we get a bad batch of beans?"

"I don't think so," Edna Semphroch answered, also quietly. "Tastes fine to me. Nobody's said anything about it, either, unless somebody went and complained to you."