Custer said, "I feel as though I can see all the way to the Rockies."

"I wish we could see all the way to the Rockies from here, sir," Dowling said. "It would make our jobs a lot easier-and that's where a lot of our problems lie, anyhow."

"The broom didn't sweep clean," Custer said. "That's what the problem is. That's why they sent me up here to set things to rights."

For as long as Dowling had known him, Custer had had a remarkable gift for revising events so they fit neatly into a scheme of things sometimes existing only in his own mind. The first part of his statement, though, was objectively true. The U.S. broom had not swept clean, nor even come close. The USA had conquered Ontario and Quebec, severed eastern Canada from the vast West by-finally-seizing Winnipeg, and struck north into the Rockies to break the rail links with the Pacific. That had been enough to win the war. But it had also left a couple of million square miles unvisited by U.S. troops.

A lot of those square miles, especially in the far north, didn't have enough people on them to make anyone worry. But the cities of the Canadian prairie-Regina and Saskatoon, Calgary and Edmonton-resented having been handed over to the United States when no soldier in green-gray had got anywhere near them during the war. They seethed with rebellion. So did the farms for which they gave markets. So did the logging and mining towns of British Columbia. So did the fishermen of Newfoundland. So, for that matter, did a great many people in the areas the United States had taken by force.

"Confound it, Lieutenant Colonel, how am I supposed to control half a continent without the soldiers I should have lost during one medium-sized battle in the Great War?" Custer demanded. "Every time there's a new little uprising somewhere, I have to rob Peter of troops to pay Paul so Paul can put it down. And then twenty minutes later Peter needs the men back again "

"We have kept the railroads hopping, haven't we, sir?" Dowling shook his head at the understatement. "The way the budget's going in Congress, we ought to count ourselves lucky that we still have as many soldiers up here as we do. It won't get any better next year, either."

"Socialists!" As Custer usually did, he turned it into a swearword. "I tell you, Dowling, the machine gun's most proper use is for shooting down the Socialist blockheads who want to cut our country off at the knees. Blow enough of them to kingdom come and the rest might come to their senses-if they have any sense to come to, which I am inclined to doubt."

"Yes, sir," Dowling said resignedly. He was a rock-solid Democrat himself, but not, he thought with a certain amount of pride, a political fossil like his superior.

Custer said, "If things get any worse, we'll have to start borrowing soldiers from the Republic of Quebec, damn me to hell if I lie."

Dowling started to laugh: for Custer to make two jokes in one day was well-nigh unprecedented. Then he realized Custer wasn't joking. For a moment, he was inclined to scorn. Then, all at once, he didn't feel scornful any more. Every so often, Custer came up with an interesting notion, sometimes without even realizing he'd done it.

"Do you know, sir, I'd bet the Frenchies over there would lend them to us," Dowling said. "And do you know what else? I'd bet the soldiers from Quebec'd have a high old time clamping down on the Englishmen who sat on them for so long. That really might be worth looking into."

"Take care of it, then," Custer said indifferently. No, he hadn't known that was a good idea. He'd just been talking to hear himself talk, something he was fond of doing.

Dowling scribbled a note to himself "Have to make Quebec pay for the troops they send, too," he said. "That will make Congress happy. It might not make Quebec happy, but I won't lose any sleep over that. If we can't twist Quebec's arm, whose can we twist? If it weren't for the United States, that wouldn't even be a country today." As far as he was concerned, it wasn't much of a country, but nobody in Quebec had gone out looking for his opinion.

"Who cares whether Quebec likes it or not?" Custer said, which meant he'd thought along with Dowling, and which almost set Dowling wondering if he hadn't miscalculated. If Custer agreed with him, he had a good chance of being wrong.

He said, "I think we have managed to put down the latest flare-up outside of Edmonton. That's something, anyhow."

"Putting down flare-ups doesn't get the job done, Lieutenant Colonel," Custer said. "I want to put them down so they don't start again. One of these days, I expect we'll have to raze one of these prairie towns to the ground. It'd serve the bastards right. And after we do that, the other Canucks will get the idea that we mean business."

"Maybe, sir," Dowling said, his tone plainly making that maybe a no. Sometimes you couldn't be too plain for Custer, so he went on, "If we do that without good reason, the rest of the world will raise a big stink."

"To hell with the rest of the world," Custer said grandly: the philosophy of a lifetime, boiled down to eight words. Through the whole of his long span, Custer had done very much as he pleased. He'd had a good many breaks along the way, but no one could deny he'd made the most of them.

"Will there be anything more, General?" Dowling asked.

"As a matter of fact, there is one other thing." Custer hesitated, which was most unlike him. At last, he resumed: "I'm afraid Libbie and I have had to let our housekeeper go. Could you arrange for the hiring of another one?"

"Wouldn't your wife sooner take care of that for you, sir?" Dowling asked warily. When Elizabeth Custer joined her husband at a posting, she ran their household with a whim of iron.

Custer coughed a couple of times. "This once, Lieutenant Colonel, I'd like you to take care of it. Libbie is a marvelous woman-God never made a finer-but she does have a habit of hiring sour, dried-up sticks with whom I have a certain amount of trouble getting on well. I was hoping you might find a capable woman of cheerier disposition."

"I see." And Dowling did. Libbie Custer hired housekeepers in whom her husband could have no possible interest. That was only common sense on her part, for Custer did have an eye for a pretty woman. Whether anything more than an eye still functioned at his age, Dowling did not know. He didn't want to find out, either. Now that Custer had a real command again, he didn't need some pretty young popsy distracting him.

And Dowling didn't want to anger Custer's wife. Libbie made a far more vindictive, far more implacable foe than her husband ever dreamt of being. If Dowling hired Custer a popsy, she would not be pleased with him.

He had his own coughing fit. "Sir," he said, "I really do think that's something best left to Mrs. Custer's judgment."

"Fiddlesticks!" Custer said. "You handled such arrangements for me plenty of times during the war. Once more won't hurt you a bit."

"Whenever your wife was with you, though, sir, she did prefer to keep such matters in her own hands," Dowling said. "I wouldn't care for her to think I was encroaching on her privileges."

"You're not helping, Lieutenant Colonel," Custer said irritably.

Dowling stood mute. If Custer ordered him to choose a housekeeper, he resolved to find the general the homeliest old crone he could. Let's see you ask me to do something like that again, he thought.

But Custer gave no such order. Instead, he let out a long, wheezy sigh. "Here I am, in command of all of Canada," he said, "and I find I'm not even in command of my own household." Dowling wondered how many other famous generals had been defeated by their wives. A good many, was his guess, and he did not think that guess likely to be far wrong.