American Front gw-1 Read online

  Off to the west, rifle fire rang out. You lived in the city, you heard guns every so often; you got to know what they sounded like. But, a moment later, Nellie heard a sound she'd never known before. It was something like gunfire, something like a giant ripping a piece of canvas the size of a football field. It made the hair stand up at the back of her neck.

  Mangled and in agony though he was, the machine gunner smiled a little. He knew what the sound was, though Nellie didn't. Seeing his knowledge made her understand, too.

  "So that's the noise a machine gun makes," Nellie murmured. The pale-faced soldier nodded, a single short jerk of his head. "Good," Nellie told him. "That means the Rebs are catching it hot." He nodded again.

  The wheat was turning golden under the warm August sun. From the front porch of his farmhouse, Arthur McGregor surveyed the crop with dour satisfaction. The quick-ripening hybrid Marquis strain he'd put in the ground these past few years beat the old Red Fife all hollow. Here a quarter of the way from the U.S. border to Winnipeg, every day you could shave off the growing season was a good one, especially since half your ground lay fallow each year.

  McGregor-a tall, lean man, his face weathered almost like a sailor's from endless exposure to sun and wind-watched the wheat bow and then straighten, politely acknowledging the breeze. The fields seemed to go on forever. He let out a sour snort. That was partly because he'd had the work of plowing and planting them. But the Manitoba prairie was flat as a sheet of newspaper, flat as if it had been pressed. And so, in a way, it had; from what the geologists said, great sheets of ice had lain here in ancient days, squashing down any irregularities that might once have existed.

  For hundreds of miles, the only blemishes on the surface of the land were the belts of wire and the fortifications on either side of the border between the United States and the Dominion of Canada. McGregor sighed, thinking about that long, thin, porous border. Late rains or early frost could blight his crops. So could war.

  His wife Maude came out of the house to stand beside him. They'd been married fifteen years, ever since he'd got out of the Army and gone into the militia: almost all his adult life, in other words, and all of hers. If they hadn't thought alike back in the days when they were courting-he wasn't quite sure about that, not after so long-they certainly did now.

  And so it was Maude who said, "They've come over the border, eh?"

  "They have." Arthur McGregor sighed. "After Winnipeg, I've no doubt." Only a slight difference in accent, an extra tincture of Scots that made the last word sound like "doat," told him from one of the Americans he despised and feared. "They take the town, they cut the country in half, they do."

  Maude turned and looked southward, as if in fear of locusts, though soldiers from the United States were liable to prove even more destructive. Under her bonnet, she wore her red hair tightly pinned down against her head, but it was so fine, wisps kept escaping the pins and springing out in front of her face. She brushed them back from her gray eyes with work-roughened hands: like her husband, she'd never known an easy day in her life. "The devil's own lot of them down there," she said, her voice worried.

  "Don't I know it? Don't we all know it?" McGregor sighed again. "Sixty, sixty-five million of them, maybe eight million up here." By the way he spoke, he expected everyone in the United States, young or old, man or woman, to parade past the farmhouse in the next few minutes.

  "We're not alone, eh?" Maude said; maybe she was seeing sixty or sixty- five million angry Americans in her mind's eye, too. "We've England with us, and the Confederacy, and the Empire of Mexico."

  " England 's going to be busy close to home," her husband answered with the ingrained pessimism of a man who'd been wrestling with a stubborn Mother Nature for a living since before he needed to shave. " Mexico 's nothing, maybe less, and the Yanks outweigh the Confederates two to one or more, too. They can fight them and have plenty to spare for us."

  Maude peered south again, this time as if looking past the USA to the CSA. "I don't know I much care for having those people on our side, when you get down to it. The way they treat their colored people, they might as well be-"

  "Russians?" Arthur McGregor suggested wryly. "The Czar's on our side, too. The Yanks are no bargain, either; we'd never have had conscription up here if they didn't start it first, and these days down there, from what the newspapers say, you fill out a form for this, you fill out a form for that, you fill out a form for the other thing, same as you would if the Kaiser was running things. Only free land on the continent is where we're standing, seems to me."

  "Pa! Pa!" His son Alexander came running toward the house, his voice cracking in excitement as any fourteen-year-old's was apt to do. "There's soldiers coming, Pa!" He pointed to the north.

  Arthur, his mind focused on the threat from the United States, hadn't looked back toward Winnipeg in a while. Now he did. Sure enough, as his son had said, here came a cavalry troop, small in the distance, down toward the border with Dakota. Alexander jumped up and down, waving frantically at the soldiers. Arthur McGregor waved, too, but in a more measured way. He had a much better idea than his son of what war actually entailed.

  The troopers waved back. Then, to McGregor's surprise, one of them peeled off from the rest and guided his chestnut toward the farmhouse at a fast trot. He reined in just in front of the porch: a little sallow fellow with waxed mustache who lifted his cap to Maude before nodding gravely to Arthur and less gravely to Alexander, who was all but hopping out of his overalls.

  "Good day, my friends," the cavalryman said with a French accent that explained his swarthiness. "I am Pierre Lapin, lieutenant"-his fingers brushed the single pip on his shoulder board-"of the horse. Is it that my men and I could use your well for the purpose of watering ourselves?"

  "Yes, sir, go right ahead, all of you." McGregor had to make a conscious effort not to stiffen to attention. The couple of weeks he spent drilling every year made him give an officer automatic deference.

  "You are gracious. Merci," Lapin said, and waved to his men. They all followed the path he had taken.

  "Dipper's in the bucket," Maude McGregor said, pointing to the well. Lieutenant Lapin tipped his hat to her again, which made her flush and giggle like a schoolgirl.

  Unlike Lapin, who carried a pistol on his officer's Sam Browne belt, his troopers wore carbines slung on their backs and had sabers fixed to the left side of their saddles. They queued up at the well, chattering in the odd mix of English and French McGregor remembered from his own days in the Army. Not so long ago, as such things went, Canadians who used French and those who spoke English had disliked and distrusted one another. But with both groups disliking and distrusting their giant neighbor to the south even more, the older rivalry was less remembered.

  McGregor went up to Lapin, who was waiting for his men to finish before he drank himself. Quietly, so Maude wouldn't hear, the farmer asked, "Will they get this far?" "When the cavalry lieutenant didn't answer, he went on, "I've got a rifle in the house-use it for hunting. I'll hunt things in green-gray if I have to."

  Lapin's shoulders went up and down in a Gallic shrug. "Whether they will come so far I cannot say with certainty. I will say, though, if they do come so far and you have not been called to the colors to resist them, be cautious with that rifle. The Americans, they take their lessons from the Baches'" — his curled lip said what he thought of that-"and the Boches, in the war with France in the last century, were harsh against francstireurs."

  "Thank you, sir. I'll bear that in mind," McGregor said. "But if they invade your country and you're defending your home, shouldn't matter whether you're in uniform or not."

  "What should matter and what does matter, monsieur, are not one and the same thing, I regret to say," Lapin answered with another shrug.

  A muttering in the distance, almost too deep, almost too soft, almost too far to hear. Thunder, a long ways off, McGregor thought. But it wasn't thunder, not on this fine, bright day-he realized that with the thought hard
ly formed. "That's artillery," he said, his voice flat and harsh.

  "Vous avez raison," Lieutenant Lapin agreed. "I could wish you were wrong, but-" Yet another shrug. "And so perhaps it grows more likely the Americans will reach this place. But if they do, they will have paid a stiff price."

  "Good," McGregor said. "What price will you have paid, though?"

  "That is of no consequence, not to my country," Lapin replied. His turn at the well came at last. He drained the dipper dry, refilled it, and drained it again. "It is the price I agreed to pay when I joined the Army." He touched the brim of his cap in half a salute. "I thank you for the water, and I wish you the best of fortune in the hard days that surely lie ahead." He swung up onto his horse, calling on his men to hurry and remount. They soon rode away.

  More of what wasn't thunder came from the south. It didn't sound closer, but it was louder: more guns in action, or bigger guns. Both, most likely, McGregor judged. Now that the fight had started, the Americans, the Canadians, and the men of the mother country would throw everything they had into it.

  With that growing rumble in the background, McGregor's satisfaction in his fields of amber grain evaporated. With his country and the United States harvesting the fruits of longtime enmity, any chance he'd have to bring in his own harvest seemed small and dim.

  Instead of watching the waving wheat, he kept gazing southward, after the cavalrymen. Before long, he saw motion on the road coming up from the south. Without turning his head, he said, "Fetch me the rifle, Alexander."

  "Yes, Pa," his son answered. The boy thundered up the stairs two at a time and returned a moment later holding the pump-action Winchester with the careful confidence of someone long used to guns. Arthur McGregor checked to make sure he had a cartridge in the chamber, then stood and waited to see what sort of onslaught was coming.

  Before he could raise the rifle to his shoulder, he realized he wasn't seeing the imminent arrival of the Americans, only people fleeing from them. Fear had almost made him fire on his own countrymen. Thin across the wheat-fields, their shouts reached him, urging him to join them.

  He had a buggy in the barn. If he hitched up the horses to it and loaded Maude and Alexander and his two little daughters into it, he could be on the road to Winnipeg inside an hour, and there the day after tomorrow.

  "Will we go, Pa?" Alexander asked. The sight of other folks fleeing seemed to have given him the idea that war was something more than a game. McGregor thanked God something this side of getting shot at-or maybe this side of getting shot-had done that.

  He shook his head. "No, we won't go. We'll stick it out a bit longer, see what happens." Alexander looked proud.

  More soldiers went down the road, a long column of marching infantry, some Canadian, some British, then trucks painted khaki, then more marching men. A plume of coal smoke rose from the stack of a distant southbound train. McGregor would have bet all the acres he had that every compartment on every car was full to overflowing with men in tunics and puttees. Some of them would be gay, some frightened. That wouldn't matter, and wouldn't say anything about what sort of soldiers they'd make once they got to the fighting.

  The rumble of artillery went on and on. He went on, too: on about his chores. When you were forking hay or pulling weeds or shoveling manure, for long stretches of time you could forget about what your ears were telling you. Then, as you paused to wipe your face on your sleeve, you'd notice the noise again: in absurd surprise, almost as if it had snuck up behind you and tapped you on the shoulder to make you jump.

  It was getting louder-and, unquestionably, getting closer. He hadn't wanted to believe that at first. When you noticed the thunder only every so often, you didn't think to compare it from then till now, or think your hearing was telling you the enemy was drawing nearer, which meant your own men were falling back.

  But that was true. By the time evening came-the sun didn't set quite so late as it had at the height of summer-there could be no doubt left. The family sat down to chicken stew with dumplings and carrots in a grim mood. No one, not even Julia and Mary, who usually prattled on in spite of children should be seen but not heard, said much. The girls helped their mother wash the dishes while Arthur McGregor smoked a pipe. He checked the tin from which he filled it: Virginia tobacco, an import from the Confederate States, not the USA. That made him feel better.

  He woke several times in the night, not something he usually did-if God had invented anything more exhausting than farm labor, McGregor hadn't heard of it. But when he sat up in the blackness, he heard the crash of guns, not so steady as they had been during the day, but not stopping, either.

  And whenever he sat up, the guns were closer.

  He woke for good in the pale gray of false dawn. One arm flopped across the other side of the bed, which was empty. He sniffed, and smelled tea steeping. Maude was up before him, then.

  He put on his overalls and boots and went downstairs. A couple of cups of strong tea heavy with milk and sugar gave back some of what he'd lost in sleep. "A lot of work to do today," he said, as if that were the only thing on his mind. Maude nodded, as if she believed him.

  He was working when the sun came up, hammering a fresh board onto the side of the chicken coop. Something moving in the fields caught his eye. It was a man: a soldier, he saw after a moment, heading north without the slightest thought for road or anything else, trampling down the nearly ripe wheat and not caring at all.

  McGregor opened his mouth for an angry shout. It died unspoken. That first soldier he'd seen was but one of many. Trotting through the wheat, their bodies hidden, only heads and shoulders showing, they looked like nothing so much as shipwreck survivors bobbing in the sea. Here, though, what might have been wrecked was Canada.

  Before long, horsemen joined the retreat. They were in better order than the infantry, stopping every so often to fire shots in the direction of an enemy Arthur McGregor could not yet see. A cavalry officer leading a couple of packhorses and a squad of soldiers who seemed to be under his command rode up to McGregor.

  "Lieutenant Lapin!" he said in surprise.

  "Oui, monsieur, we meet again," the French-Canadian officer answered wearily. If he'd slept at all since riding south the previous day, he didn't show it. But he still had fight in him. Pointing to the packhorses, he went on, "I have here a pair of machine guns, ammunition, and soldiers who know how to use them. I desire to make strongpoints of your house and your barn. We have, as you see, been thrown back. We may yet damage the invader, though."

  "Go ahead," McGregor said at once. He knew his permission was irrelevant. Lapin had disguised a firm statement of intent with politeness, but the intent remained. The farmer went on, "Can your men drive the livestock out of the barn first, and give me and mine a chance to get clear of the house?" Strongpoints drew fire; he knew that all too well. I'd better hide the rifle, he thought. Secrecy came easy to him, and fear made it come easier.

  "That is but a matter of common decency, though I fear in war decency is anything but common." Lapin gave the orders. More men, seeing him not in headlong retreat, rallied around him. A firing line stretched across the wheatfield.

  McGregor got Maude and Alexander, Julia and Mary, and took them off away from the house. They led the family cows and horses. No time to hitch the horses to the buggy, not now. McGregor didn't know where to go with his family and the animals. Toward the road was the only idea he had: to join the stream of refugees trudging toward Winnipeg.

  He was about halfway to the dirt track when Alexander exclaimed, "Here come the Americans!"

  You could tell them from the Canadian defenders by their green-gray uniforms, by the shouts of "Hurrah!" that burst from their throats every few paces, by the fact that they weren't looking back over their shoulders, and by how many of them there were. They came in a great wave, close together as far as the eye could see. Again McGregor had the horrible mental picture of everybody in the United States grabbing a gun and heading for Winnipeg. Now, though, the so
ldiers were heading for him.

  Then the machine guns began to hammer, back in the buildings the neighbors had helped his father run up. Their hideous racket made his head snap back toward the house and barn. When he looked back in the direction of the American soldiers once more, it was as if his fields had had a thresher go over them: where the soldiers had been wheat, they were mowed into stubble. More of them came forward, and more of them went down as the machine guns spat fire through their ranks. They were too far away for McGregor to see how they died, only that they died. Not all of them died at once, of course; a great chorus of agony rose from the fields, even above the racket of machine guns and rifle.

  Julia clamped her hands over her ears. "Make them stop it, Papa!" she screamed. "Make them stop!"

  McGregor couldn't make them stop. If he could have, he wouldn't. He exulted to see the Americans fall and writhe and die. What business did they have, invading his country? Like their German allies, they seemed to specialize in attacking small, defenseless nations that had done them no harm. One way or another, he vowed to himself, he would make them pay.

  They were paying now, but they were also still moving forward. A bullet kicked up dust, not far from McGregor's feet. He heard more bullets smacking into the timbers of the house and the barn, where Pierre Lapin was holed up. The machine guns kept working a fearful slaughter, but the skirmish line Lapin had set up was thin, and did not, could not, hold. To east and west, Yanks in green-gray bypassed the strongpoint, as if it were high ground still above water in the middle of a flood.

  That didn't last long. The Americans swung round behind the buildings. Firing around them-firing inside them-grew to a crescendo before abruptly falling silent.

  A couple of soldiers came up to the McGregors. They held their rifles at the ready. By the way they panted, by the way their eyes glittered, they would open fire at any excuse or none. Arthur McGregor was careful to keep his hands in plain sight and to make no sudden moves. He was glad he didn't have the rifle on his shoulder, too.