He eyed the streams coming down from the mountains. If they dried up, his crops would dry up with them. They seemed all right. He worried anyhow. He'd never known a farmer who didn't worry. Even the white men beside whom he'd fought had worried about what was happening to their farms while they went to war.

He'd plowed. He'd planted his corn and beans and squashes. Now he and the rest of his family watched them grow-and weeded to make sure they would grow. Work on a farm was never done. Even so, he sent his children into Baroyeca for schooling as often as they could go. He wanted them to have a chance at a life that wasn't work, work, work every minute of every day. He didn't know how much of a chance they would have, but any chance was better than none.

Teachers taught in English, of course. Rodriguez worried about that only every now and again-would the children forget their heritage? More often, he thought it good that they learn as much of the dominant language of the CSA as they could.

Magdalena knew very little English. With his wife, Rodriguez stuck to Spanish. Because of that, his sons and daughters-especially his sons-thought he understood less English than he really did. They started using it among themselves to say things they didn't want him to follow.

"Silly old fool," Miguel called him one day, smiling as if it were a compliment.

Rodriguez boxed his son's ears. He smiled, too, though he doubted whether Miguel appreciated it. "Silly young fool," he said, also in English.

After that, his children were a lot more careful when they had something to say either to him or about him. He went on about his business, more amused than otherwise. Life taught all sorts of lessons, and only some of them came from school.

No matter how tired he was at the end of a day, he tried to go into Baroyeca one evening a week for the Freedom Party meeting. Magdalena had given up complaining about that when she saw he came back neither drunk nor smelling of a puta 's cheap perfume.

As far as Rodriguez was concerned, the scent of victory in the air was headier than liquor, sweeter than the dubious charms of Baroyeca's handful of women of easy virtue. (With the closing of the silver mines, a lot of the whores had moved to other towns, towns where they hoped to do better for themselves. The business collapse had had all sorts of unexpected, unfortunate consequences.)

Robert Quinn did his best to fan that scent all over the countryside. Baroyeca still had no electricity. Quinn couldn't call people together to listen to Jake Featherston's weekly speeches on the wireless. He did the next best thing: he got the text of the speeches by telegram and translated them into Spanish himself. Even though it wasn't his native tongue, he spoke well, and plainly believed every word he said.

Those speeches gave Hipolito Rodriguez a window on a wider world, a world beyond Baroyeca. After one of them, he said, " Senor Quinn, you are a traveled man. Is it true what Senor Featherston says, that these politicians in Richmond are nothing but criminals?"

"If Jake Featherston says it, you can take it to the bank," Quinn answered-he would sometimes translate English idioms literally into Spanish. Considering the sad state of banking in the CSA these days, this one lost something in the translation. Even so, Rodriguez understood it. Quinn went on, "How can you trust the Party if you don't trust what Jake Featherston says? You can't. It's as simple as that. You do trust the Party, don't you?"

"Of course I do," Rodriguez answered quickly; he knew a dangerous question when he heard one. That didn't mean he wasn't telling the truth, though. "Without the Party, what would we be?"

"Bad off, that's what," Quinn replied. "But as long as we follow what Jake says, we'll be fine. He's the leader. He knows what's what. All we have to do is back him up. That's our job. Comprende? "

"Si, senor," Rodriguez said as the other men at the meeting nodded.

"Bueno." Quinn grinned. "If Jake was wrong, he couldn't have come as far as he has, now could he? He couldn't see what all was wrong with los Estados Confederados, either, eh? We've got a lot of work to do to win this election, and we'll have even more to do after we win it."

Carlos Ruiz asked a question that had also been in Rodriguez's mind: "After Senor Featherston wins the election, what will the Confederate States be like?"

"That's easy, Carlos," Robert Quinn answered. "That's real easy, to tell you the truth. Once Jake Featherston gets to be president, we will fix everything that's wrong with the Confederate States of America. Everything, by God. And once we fix everything that's wrong inside the country, then we start thinking about getting even with los Estados Unidos, too. How does that sound?"

"I like it," Ruiz said simply. Rodriguez nodded. So did the rest of the local men at the Freedom Party headquarters. How could anyone not like such a program? The United States were a long way off, yes, but they deserved vengeance. The room was full of veterans. They'd all fought the USA during the war.

Someone behind Rodriguez said, "I don't want to go back into the Army, but I will if I have to." That drew more nods. To his own surprise, Rodriguez found himself contributing one. He'd had all the war he wanted, and then some. But if it was a matter of turning the tables on the USA, he knew he would redon the color the Confederates called butternut.

"You are all good, patriotic men. I knew you were," Quinn said in his deliberate Spanish. "But I have a question for you. I know your patron is not such a big man as he was in your grandfather's day. How many of you, though, have a patron who tries to keep you from voting for the Freedom Party?"

Two or three men raised their hands. Carlos Ruiz was one of them. He said, "Don Joaquin says the Freedom Party is nothing but a pack of bandidos, and must be stopped."

"Does he? Well, well, well." Robert Quinn grinned again, a grin that was all sharp teeth. "We have a saying in English: who will bell the cat? Does Don Joaquin think he can put the bell on the Partido de la Libertad?"

"I don't know what you mean, Senor Quinn," Ruiz answered. "He thinks he can tell people how to vote. Of that I am certain."

"And you do not think he ought to?" Quinn asked. Ruiz shook his head. The local Freedom Party leader said, "Perhaps he should change his mind."

"Don Joaquin is a stubborn man," Ruiz warned. Quinn showed his teeth again, but didn't say a word, not then.

As the meeting was breaking up, he asked Ruiz and Rodriguez and three or four other men to stay behind. "It would be a shame if anything happened to Don Joaquin's barn," he remarked. "It would be an even bigger shame if anything happened to his house."

"He has guards," Carlos said. "They carry pistols."

Quinn opened a closet. Inside were neatly stacked Tredegar rifles. "Do you think the guards would listen to reason?" he asked. "If they decide not to listen to reason, do you think you could persuade them?"

The locals looked at one another. No, a patron wasn't what his grandfather had been. Still, the idea of attacking his grounds, of attacking his buildings, hadn't crossed their minds up till now. "If we do this," Hipolito Rodriguez said slowly, "we have to win, and Senor Featherston has to win in November. If either of those things fails, we are dead men. You understand this, I hope."

"Oh, yes." Quinn nodded. "This is not the Army. This is not even the way it is in some of the other Confederate states. I am not going to give you orders. But if you want to teach this fellow a lesson, I can help you." He pointed to the Tredegars. "The question is, how badly do you want to be free?"

A few nights later, Rodriguez slid quietly through the darkness, a military rifle in his hands. He hadn't carried a Tredegar since 1917, but the weight felt familiar. So did the crouch in which he moved.