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of rounds cooking off inside the farmhouse. McSweeney dashed toward it. He stuck the nozzle right up against the slit and let loose another tongue of fire.
    Along with the sound of cartridges prematurely ignited came another—the sound of screams. Gordon McSweeney’s face was transfigured with joy, as if he’d just taken Jerusalem from the pagans. And then something happened that Paul had never before seen in Utah: three or four men came stumbling out through a hole in the side of the adobe, their hands lifted high in surrender.
    Joyfully smiling still, McSweeney turned the nozzle of the flamethrower hose on them. “No, Gordon!” Paul yelled. “Let ’em give up. Maybe we can break this rebellion yet.”
    “I suppose it could be so,” McSweeney admitted reluctantly. The Mormons shambled off into captivity. Out from the adobe floated the strong stench of burnt meat. Mantarakis didn’t care. With its linchpin lost, this line wouldn’t hold. One fight fewer, he thought, till Utah was done.

    For this first time since the land was settled in the seventeenth century, a paved road ran between Lucien Galtier’s farm and the town of Rivière-du-Loup on the St. Lawrence. If Lucien had had his way, the road would have disappeared, and with it the American soldiers and engineers who had built it. But, regardless of what he wanted, the Americans maintained their hold on Quebec south of the St. Lawrence, and had pushed across the mighty river at Rivière-du-Loup, intending, no doubt, to sweep southwest toward Quebec City, and then toward Montreal.
    The push across the river and the newly paved road were anything but unrelated. As Lucien trudged in toward the white-painted wood farmhouse with the steep red roof after feeding the horse, he glanced at the much larger wooden building, painted what he thought a most unattractive shade of green-gray, that had gone up not far away, on what had been some of his best wheat land.
    While he watched, a green-gray ambulance bearing on each side panel a large red cross inside a white circle pulled up to the building. The driver leaped out. He and an attendant who emerged from the rear of the vehicle carried a man on a stretcher into the U.S. military hospital. They hurried back and brought in another injured man. Then the ambulance, engine snarling, headed back toward Rivière-du-Loup to pick up more casualties.
    Lucien wiped his feet before he went into the farmhouse. Though not a big man himself, he towered over his wife, Marie. That did not mean he could track muck inside without hearing about it in great detail.
    “Warm in here,” he said approvingly. “It is only October, but the wind outside is ready for January.”
    “May it freeze the Americans,” Marie answered from the kitchen. Like her husband, she spoke in Quebecois French. It was the only language she knew. Lucien had picked up some English during his conscript time in the Canadian Army, just as English-speaking Canadians soaked up a little French there. He’d forgotten most of what he’d learned in the twenty-odd years since he’d served, though having to deal with the Americans had brought some of it back.
    He walked toward the kitchen, drawn not only by the warmth of the stove but also by the delicious smells floating out toward him. He sniffed. He prided himself on an educated nose. “Don’t tell me,” he said, pointing to the covered pot. “Ham baked with prunes. And are there potatoes in the oven, too?”
    Marie Galtier regarded him with mixed affection and exasperation. “How am I supposed to surprise you, Lucien?”
    He spread his hands and shrugged. “As long as we’ve been married, and you still expect to surprise me? You make me happy. That is enough, and more than enough. What do I need of surprises?”
    Also in the kitchen, helping her mother, was their eldest daughter, Nicole. She was slight and dark like Marie, and put Lucien achingly in mind of what her mother had been like when he’d first started