Cassius nodded. "It's right, but we make dis revolution fo' our ownselves, not fo' you Yankees. Like I tol' you' sergeant here, one fine day you gits yo' own revolution."

"Yes, when pigs have wings," Wyatt said crisply. The two men glared at each other in the gloom, neither yielding in the least. Then the captain said, "But it's the CSA we're both worried about now, eh?" and Cassius nodded. Wyatt went on, "I still don't know if it was them or the Canucks who set Utah on its ear, but your people will do worse to them than Utah ever did to us." He pointed to Martin. "Take him back to the support trenches and tell them to pass him on to divisional headquarters. They'll see he gets what he needs."

"Yes, sir," Martin said. He headed for the closest communications trench, Cassius following. As they made their way back through the zigzag trench connecting the first line to the second, Martin remarked, "I sure as hell hope you give those Rebs a hard time."

"Oh, we do dat," Cassius said. With a dark skin, wearing a muddy Con federate laborer's uniform, he might almost have been an invisible voice in the night. "We do dat. We been waitin' fo' dis day a long rime, pay they back fo' what dey do to we all dese years."

Chester Martin tried to think of it as an officer would, weighing everything he knew about the situation. "Even with the Rebs' having to fight us, too, you, uh, Negroes are going to have the devil's own time making the revo lution stick. A lot more whites with a lot more guns than you've got."

"You Yankees gwine help wid de guns -I here fo' dat," Cassius said. "An' dis ain't no uprisin' o' jus de niggers o' de CSA. Dis an uprisin' o' de proletariat, like I done say befo'. De po' buckra-"

"The what?" Martin asked.

"White folks," Cassius said impatiently. "Like I say, de po' buckra, he 'pressed, too, workin' in de factory an' de mill fo' de boss wid de motorcar an' de diamond on he pinky an' de fancy seegar in he mouf. Come de revolution, all de proletariat rise up togedder." He walked on a couple of steps. "What you do 'fo' you go in de Army?"

"Worked in a steel mill back in Toledo," Martin answered. "That's where I'm from."

"You in de proletariat, too, den," Cassius said. "The boss you got, he throw you out in de street whenever he take a mind to do it. An' what kin you do about it? Cain't do nothin', on account of he kin hire ten men what kin do jus' de same job you was doin'. You call dat fair? You call dat right? Ought to point you' gun at dey fat-bellied parasites suckin' de blood from yo' labour."

"Telling a soldier to rise up against his own country is treason," Martin said. "Don't do that again."

Cassius laughed softly. "Tellin' de proletariat to rise up fo' dey class ain't no treason, Sergeant. De day come soon, you see dat fo' your own self."

A sergeant in the secondary trenches called a challenge that was more than half a yawn. Had Martin and Cassius been Confederate raiders, the fel low probably would have died before he finished. As things were, he woke up in a hurry when Martin identified his companion. "Oh, yes, Sergeant," he said. "We've been told to expect him."

Martin surrendered the Negro with more than a little relief and hurried back up toward the front line. Some of the things Cassius had said worried him more than a little, too. So did the Red's calm assumption that revolution would break out, come what may, not only in the Confederate States but in the United States as well.

Could it? Would it? Maybe it had tried to start in New York City on Remembrance Day, but it had been beaten down then. Would it stay beaten down? Capital and labour hadn't gotten on well in the years before the war. Plenty of strikes had turned bloody. If a wave of them came, all across the country…

After the war, something new would go into the mix, too. A lot of men who'd seen fighting far worse than strikers against goons would be coming back to the factories. If the bosses tried to ignore their demands -what then? The night was fine and mild, but Martin shivered.

Captain Stephen Ramsay remained convinced that his Creek Army rank badges were stupid and, with their gaudiness, were more likely to make him a sniper's target. He also remained convinced that entrenching in -or, more accurately, in front of-a town was a hell of a thing for a cavalryman to be doing.

Not that Nuyaka, Sequoyah, was much of a town-a sleepy hamlet a few miles west of Okmulgee. But, with the damnyankees shifting forces in this direction, it had to be defended to keep them from getting around behind Okmulgee and forcing the Confederates out of the Creek capital.

Where the blacks had run off, everybody had to do nigger work. Ramsay used an entrenching tool just as if he still was the sergeant he'd been not so long before. Alongside him, Moty Tiger also made the dirt fly. Pausing for a moment, the Creek non-com grinned at Ramsay and said, "Welcome to New York."

"Huh?" Ramsay answered. He paused, too; he was glad for a blow. The heat and humidity made it feel like Mobile. "What are you talking about?"

" New York," Moty Tiger repeated, pronouncing the name with exaggerated care, almost as if he came from the USA. Then he said it again, pronouncing it as a Creek normally would have. Sure as hell, it sounded a lot like Nuyaka.

"This… little town"-Ramsay picked his words with care, not wanting to offend the Creek sergeant-"is named after New York City?" Moty Tiger nodded. Ramsay asked, "How come?"

"Back in Washington 's time, when the Creeks still lived in Alabama and Georgia, he invited our chiefs to New York to make a treaty with him," the sergeant told him. "They were impressed at how big and fine it was, and took the name home with them. We took it here, too, when the government of the USA made us leave our rightful homes and travel the Trail of Tears." His face clouded. " Richmond has been honest with us. The USA never was. Being at war with the USA feels right."

"Sure does," Ramsay said. But the Creeks had been fighting the USA back when his ancestors were U.S. citizens. That made him feel strange whenever he thought about it. The Confederate States had been part of the United States longer than they'd been free. If they'd lost the War of Secession the damnyankees had forced on them, they'd still be part of the USA. He scowled, thinking, Christ, what an awful idea.

Perhaps luckily, he didn't have time to do much in the way of pondering.

When you were digging like a gopher trying to get underground before a hawk swooped down and carried you away, worries about what might have been didn't clog your mind.

Colonel Lincoln, whose two-jewel insigne was twice as absurd as Ramsay's, came up to look over the progress the Creek regiment had made. He nodded his approval. "Good job," he told Ramsay. "You've got foxholes back toward town dug, so you can fall back if you need to, you've got the machine guns well sited, you've done everything I can think of that you should have."

"Thank you, sir," Ramsay said. "And this isn't any ordinary town, either." He told Lincoln the story of how Nuyaka had got its name.

"Is that a fact?" Lincoln said.

"Yes, sir," Moty Tiger answered when Ramsay glanced his way. Colonel Lincoln shook his head in bemusement. Like Ramsay, he was careful to do or say nothing that might offend the Indians he commanded. But Nuyaka, any way you looked at it, was pretty damn funny.

Lincoln peered back toward Okmulgee. Smoke and dust were rising up above the hills rimming the valley in which the town sat. The rumble of artillery carried across the miles. "They're pounding each other again," he said.

"Sure sounds that way, sir," Ramsay agreed. "I'm glad to be out of there, you want to know the truth. This here"-he waved at the Creeks preparing the position in front of Nuyaka-"it ain't cavalry fighting, but it's better than what it was back there. For now it's better, anyways."