Stuart thought it wiser not to mention that Stonewall Jackson and some other veterans in Confederate service had fought for the USA during the Mexican War. "Thank you," seemed safer. Colonel Gutierrez snapped off a salute, spun on his heel, and walked back toward the fort he would control for another day and a half.

That Tuesday morning, like most June days in El Paso, dawned bright and clear and hot. As soon as the sun rose, Jeb Stuart led his infantry and cavalry and rumbling cannons toward and then onto the bridge. He did not stop at the midpoint, but kept going till his horse's hooves thudded on the gray-brown dirt at the southern end: Chihuahua was now as much Confederate soil as was Texas.

A red, white, and green Mexican flag still flew on a pole at the southern end of the bridge. Colonel Gutierrez waited there with a last squad of soldiers in ornate uniforms. Politely, Stuart took off his hat and saluted the Mexican flag. Honor satisfied, Gutierrez barked orders in Spanish. Two of his men ran the flag down the pole for the last time and reverently folded it.

At Stuart's command, a couple of Confederate soldiers raised the Stars and Bars over Paso del Norte and, by extension, over all of Chihuahua and Sonora. Polite as a priest, Colonel Gutierrez saluted the new flag as General Stuart had saluted the old. If the Mexican colonel's eyes were unusually bright and moist, Stuart had no intention of remarking on it.

From Paso del Norte, the road ran almost due west, bending only slightly toward the south as it took advantage of the break in the mountains. That meant it stayed close to the border with the United States. Stuart didn't care for the course the geography dictated. Neither did Major Sellers. "All I can say, sir," he remarked, "is that it's a good thing New Mexico Territory is just about as empty as Chihuahua here."

"I agree, Major," Stuart said. "The logistics are poor for both sides in this part of the world." As he had when first learning he would have to move troops into this newly Confederate territory, he sighed. "If General Sibley had been able to keep his men in food and munitions during the war, New Mexico would be ours now, and our worries would be gone-or, at least, farther north."

The country west of the mountains was even more unabashedly desert than that to the east. Saguaro cactuses stood close by the road and far away, their cigar-shaped bodies and angular, sometimes up-thrust arms putting Stuart in mind of giant green men surprised by bandits. The Fifth Cavalry Regiment seemed peculiarly at home in that harsh terrain, even if it did have to travel a bit apart from the rest. It was most often known as the Fifth Camelry, being mounted on ships of the desert rather than horses. Jefferson Davis had introduced camels to the Southwest as U.S. secretary of war before the War of Secession. The Fifth, at first stocked with beasts captured wild in the desert, had done good work against the Comanches, showing up in places its troopers could never have reached on horseback.

Here and there, wherever there was water, tiny towns punctuated the route: Janos; Agua Prieta right across the border from the equally sleepy hamlet of Douglas, New Mexico; Cananea; Imuris. At Imuris, Stuart detached one regiment of infantry and one of cavalry and ordered them south to Hermosillo. To the cavalry commander, Colonel L. Tiernan Brien, who was senior to the infantry regiment's colonel, he said, "The occupation being peaceful thus far, I am not sending so large a force to the interior of this province as originally contemplated. I expect you to split off what part of it you deem necessary for garrisoning Guaymas on the coast and send that portion of your forces there."

"Yes, sir," Brien said. He had served under Stuart since the war, having led a regiment of state troops in the Pennsylvania campaign. "If the Mexicans do choose to give us trouble, though, we probably won't be able to do much about it, especially if you're keeping all the artillery for yourself."

"I understand that, Colonel," Stuart answered. "It is, I believe, a good gamble. Colonel Gutierrez may not have loved what his government did, but he accepted it like a soldier and a man. By all the signs, the same will hold true in Hermosillo and Guaymas as well. The Mexicans in these little villages haven't tried to resist us in any way; all they've done is stare."

"Well, the camels likely have something to do with that, but it's true enough, heaven knows," Brien said. He waved out over the barren landscape. "If you keep most of your men so far forward, sir, will you be able to provision them?"

"I certainly hope so," Stuart said. "I'm given to understand Hermosillo is in the center of a farming district. Whatever supplies you can send north will be welcome, the more so if the route west from El Paso is… interrupted."

"Yes, sir," Tiernan Brien said again. Most of two decades of garrison duty had laid a heavy patina of routine over the dashing young trooper he'd once been, but, like a lot of the other veteran officers in Stuart's force, he was starting to shine up once more. "By your dispositions, sir, you really do think the Yankees will try to make good on their bluster."

"No, Colonel, truth to tell, I don't," Stuart answered. "But I am going to act as if I did. If the United States are foolish enough to contest this annexation, my judgment is that they pose a greater threat to us than any disaffected Mexicans. That being so, I intend to keep the bulk of my forces where they can best respond to any moves by the USA." He grinned. "My dispositions reflect my disposition, which is cautious."

Colonel Brien smiled, showing teeth stained brown by the plug of tobacco that swelled one cheek. "Beg your pardon, sir, but we've been soldiering together for a long time, and I don't reckon cautious is a word I'd put together with your name up till now."

"Maybe I'm getting old," Stuart said. Then he grinned again, and barked a couple of times. "Or maybe I'm learning a new trick."

"Now you're talking, sir," Tiernan Brien said enthusiastically.

"Wake up, Sam." Alexandra Clemens nudged her husband, then nudged him harder when he didn't move. "It's half past seven."

Reluctantly, Samuel Clemens pried his eyes open. His nostrils twitched. "You're an angel in human form, my dear. I say that, you understand, only because you've already got the coffee boiling."

"You'd throw me in the street if I didn't." Alexandra owned-and honed-a wit that could rival her husband's, and wasn't shy about using it. It was all the more effective because she looked so mild and innocent: wide, fair face; blue eyes mild as milk till the devil came out in them; golden hair that, let down for the night, spilled over her shoulders and onto her white nightdress so that, but for wings, she really did have something of an angelic aspect at the moment.

When Sam, still in his own nightshirt, came downstairs for that coffee, his son Orion leaped into his lap and almost made the cup and contents end up there, too. Not a thing angelic about Orion; sometimes all that kept Sam from strangling him was remembering he'd been even worse at the same age. "Why aren't you busy getting ready for school?" Sam demanded.

Orion withered him with a glance. " 'Cause it's closed for the summer," he said triumphantly.

"I know that," his father answered. "But if you were, you'd be out of my hair." With six-year-old gusto, Orion stuck out his tongue.

Ophelia, who was four, came into the dining room a little later: of the family, she was fondest of sleeping late. She looked like her mother, with a child's sweetness thrown in for good measure. Walking up to her father, she took his big hands in her little ones and said, "Hello, you old goat."