"Uh-huh." Stowe nodded. "Truce looks to be holding pretty good. If the Mormons want to make like they're holier'n we are 'cause they proposed it, I don't care."

"Me, neither," Armstrong said. "Amen, in fact."

He could even stick his head up over the wall without worrying about anything more than wind and snow. He could, but he didn't. He knew what the rest of Provo looked like: the same sort of lunar landscape as the part the U.S. Army had already clawed away from the rebellious Mormons.

His old man had talked about how the truce in 1914 almost knocked the war into a cocked hat. At Christmas the next year, both sides had fired endless artillery salvos to make sure it didn't happen again. The truce here wasn't anything like that. As soon as the clock hit 12:01 a.m., both sides were going to start banging away at each other again. The only thing either felt for the other was hatred-that and, possibly, a wary respect.

And then that howling wind brought something strange with it: the sound of men singing carols. When Army chaplains talked about the Mormons at all, they insisted the folk who liked to call this place Deseret weren't really Christians. They tried to make the fight sound like a crusade.

Armstrong had never paid much attention to that. He didn't feel like a knight in shining armor. He was filthy and fleabitten and probably lousy again. If they would have put him on a train and shipped him home, he wouldn't even have turned around to wave good-bye. He was here because the Army told him to be here and would shoot him if he bailed out, not because he thought God willed it. God was bound to have better things to do with His time.

But hearing "Silent Night" and then "O Little Town of Bethlehem" gave him pause. "Reminds me of the days when I was a kid and I'd go caroling in the streets," he said.

"You did that?" Stowe said. "I did, too. I guess there aren't a hell of a lot of people who didn't-except for sheenies, I mean."

"Well, yeah, sure," Armstrong said, thinking of Yossel Reisen. "But I didn't think these Mormon bastards had the same songs ordinary people do."

As if to prove him wrong, the men who'd been trying to kill him sang "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and "Deck the Halls" and "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing." They were pretty good. Armstrong wondered if any of them belonged to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It had come back to life the minute Mormonism turned legal again, even before the Mormon Tabernacle was rebuilt. By now, Armstrong was willing to bet U.S. bombers had knocked the Tabernacle flat again.

How long would it be before the Army fought its way into Salt Lake City for a firsthand look? Armstrong wished he hadn't had that thought. It led to too many others. Chief among them were, How many men will get shot between Provo and Salt Lake? and Will I be one of them? He'd stayed lucky so far. How long could it go on?

Somebody behind Armstrong-a U.S. soldier like him-started singing "Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful." He and Stowe both joined in at the same time. He hadn't sung carols in years, and he'd never had what anybody would call a great voice. He sang out anyhow, for all he was worth. It felt good.

He wondered if the Mormons would try to outshout their enemies. They could do it; they had that howling wind at their backs. Instead, they joined in. Tears stung his eyes and started to freeze his eyelashes together. He rubbed at his eyes with his knuckles. He would have been more embarrassed if the hard-bitten Stowe weren't doing the same thing.

Both sides caroled for half an hour or so. When the singing ended, they gave each other a hand. Armstrong didn't mind clapping for the Mormons. It was Christmas, after all. And he knew it didn't truly mean anything. The war might hold its breath, but it wouldn't go away.

Somebody from the other side of the line called, "You guys sing like you're nice people. Why don't you ever just leave us alone to do what we want?" He didn't even drawl, the way Confederate soldiers did. He sounded like anybody else: he had a vaguely Midwestern accent like half the guys in Armstrong's platoon. That made Mormons deadly dangerous infiltrators. It also made their uprising harder for Armstrong to fathom. They seemed like people no different from anybody else. They seemed like that-but they weren't.

"Why don't you stay here in the USA where you belong?" someone on the U.S. side yelled back.

That brought angry shouts from the Mormons-so angry that Armstrong looked to make sure he could grab his Springfield in a hurry. The truce felt on the edge of falling apart. He also found out a few things he hadn't known before. Nobody'd ever told him the Mormons had come to Utah before the First Mexican War exactly because they'd wanted to escape the USA even back then, only to find themselves under the Stars and Stripes again whether they wanted to be or not.

"Jesus," Stowe said: an appropriate comment on the day. Less appropriately, he went on, "These assholes have wanted to secede even longer than the goddamn Confederates."

"Yeah, well, how can they?" Armstrong asked. "They're right here in the middle of us. You can't make a country like that. Besides, they're a bunch of perverts. They ought to straighten out and fly right."

"Tell me about it," Stowe replied with a filthy leer. But then, as the shouting went back and forth between the lines, he added, "I wish to God they weren't shooting at us. Then we could make a couple of Mormon divisions and throw 'em at Featherston's fuckers. That would use 'em up in a hurry." He chuckled cynically.

"Maybe not. They might just mutiny and go over to the CSA," Armstrong said.

Stowe grunted. "You're right, dammit. They might. Plain as the nose on your face the Confederates are giving 'em as much help as they can."

In the end, nobody on either side started shooting in spite of the curses that flew back and forth. It stayed Christmas to that extent, anyhow. And Armstrong went back to the field kitchen without worrying about Mormon snipers. The cooks served ham and sweet potatoes and something that was alleged to be fruitcake but looked as if it came from a latrine. It did taste all right, and it gave the soldiers the chance to razz the cooks. They always liked that.

Once they returned to their positions at the front line, Stowe pulled a flask from his jacket pocket. He brought it to his mouth, then passed it to Armstrong. "Here. Have a knock of this."

"Thanks." Armstrong swigged, trying not to be too greedy. Brandy ran down his throat, smooth as a pretty girl's kiss. "Where'd you come up with this shit? Damn Mormons aren't supposed to have any."

"Musta been a gentile's house," Stowe said.

"Hope the Mormons didn't poison it and leave it for us," Armstrong remarked.

Stowe gave him the finger. "There's a hell of a thing to go and say. I've had hooch poison me a time or three, but I haven't got enough in here for that."

Armstrong did his best to look worldly-wise. He'd done some drinking in the Army, but hardly any before. His folks would take a drink every now and then, but they didn't make a big thing out of it. His father would have walloped the tar out of him if he ever came home smashed. As for the swig of brandy the sergeant had given him, it sent a little warmth out from his stomach, but otherwise left him unpoisoned.

He rolled himself in a down-filled quilt. That was a bit of his own war booty, and a hell of a lot warmer than an Army-issue wool blanket. He used the folded-up blanket for a pillow. As he fell asleep, he wondered when he'd last lain in a real bed. It had been a while.

Some time in the middle of the night, he woke up. There were occasional flurries of gunfire, nothing to get excited about. If he'd let stuff like this bother him, he wouldn't have been able to sleep at all near the front. Only after he'd wiggled around for a little while did he think, Oh. It must be after midnight. Then he went back to sleep. If the shooting picked up, he knew he'd wake again.