When This Cruel War Is Over by Thomas Fleming Page B

eager to go upstairs and charm the ladies. But there’s some business we ought to discuss first.”
    â€œI’m feeling a bit derelict toward Miss Todd—”
    â€œBy coincidence, Miss Todd is the business I want to discuss with you.”
    Stapleton looked wary. He probably assumed that Gentry was in cahoots with his in-laws to snare an heir to the Stapleton fortune for darling Janet. “As a mere observer, I begin to think Janet has some affection for you,” Gentry said.
    â€œWe’ve never discussed that idea in a serious way. Mostly we play a game of polite antagonism about the war.”
    â€œI’m aware of that. I do the same thing with two-thirds of the people in Keyport. But there’s more to Janet Todd than meets the eye, Major. Behind her polite, cheerful antagonism lurks a Confederate agent.”
    â€œYou’re joking.”
    â€œI have incontrovertible evidence. She’s part of a plot to revolutionize Kentucky and Indiana and take both states out of the war. With them might go Illinois and Michigan and Wisconsin and Ohio. She’s been a courier, connecting Confederate agents in Canada to gunrunners in New York and the Confederate secret service in Richmond.”
    â€œRemarkable,” Major Stapleton said. “I have new respect for her.”
    â€œMajor—this is a very serious matter. They plan to launch their revolution sometime this summer or early
in the fall, before the presidential election. With Lincoln already in trouble with the voters, this thing could have a terrific impact on the outcome of the war.”
    â€œWhat am I supposed to do about it?” Major Stapleton asked.
    â€œI want you to become a Union secret agent, Major. I want you to pretend to lose your enthusiasm for the federal cause. I want you to convince Janet you’re in love with her and persuade her to share the details of this plot, especially the date when they plan to launch their armed uprising.”
    â€œColonel Gentry—what you’re suggesting is more than a little dishonorable.”
    â€œWhen it comes to winning a war, Major, honor must be sacrificed occasionally, like everything else.”
    â€œI’m not sure I agree with that, sir.”
    â€œI don’t give a damn whether you agree with it, Major. I’m issuing you an order!”
    â€œI’m an officer in the regular army of the United States,” Major Stapleton said, his West Point pride vibrating in his voice. “I have severe doubts as to whether I’m required to obey such an extraordinary order from a volunteer officer who is at best on detached duty.”
    â€œWhy don’t you say it? Who’s a one-armed cripple.”
    â€œI will not say it because I did not think it, Colonel.”
    Gentry leaned forward in his chair. The major’s face dissolved in the dim light into a generic identity. He was all the proud confident young men Henry Gentry had never been able to match.
    â€œDo you want an order from the President of the United States, Major? Your constitutional commander in chief? I can get it. I write Abe Lincoln a letter a week, telling him what’s happening in Indiana.”
    â€œIf he issued such an order, Colonel Gentry, I would think even less of him than I do now.”
    Gentry glanced at the large framed photograph of Lincoln on the wall. It was taken before he grew his
beard. His hair was rumpled; it looked as if he were standing in a prairie wind. The photographer had combed Abe’s hair, and he had deliberately mussed it. “I told him otherwise my friends wouldn’t recognize me,” Lincoln had said.
    â€œWhy does everyone in the country think so little of this man? I’ve known him since we were boys together on Pigeon Creek. I’ve seen the loathsome cabin he lived in, eighteen to twenty Lincolns sleeping like hogs on the dirt floor. I saw his father, the meanest, stupidest Kentucky dirt farmer this side of