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head down and never look authority in the eye, or it will notice you and strike up a conversation. Haller knows that and would rather be a sergeant than a lieutenant. And these niggers we have around now. Nobody can tell them apart and they are safe that way. So the Martin boy looked somebody in the eye and now he is noticed and they are about to strike up a conversation. Unnecessary and worrisome.”
    â€œGarrison life disagrees with you,” Phelan said. “It was you he looked in the eye, just before he pulled the trigger. The hell, man, the army has a certain honor and dignity, and cannot allow children to snipe freely at its officers.”
    â€œThen they ought to ask me before they go complicating matters.”
    â€œYou miss the point. He wasn’t shooting at you. He was shooting at a uniform.”
    â€œAnd? He was on the other side.”
    â€œSo he was.” Phelan prinked, smoothing both wings of his belligerent mustache. “But I wish he had worn, or had about him, some article of regular Johnny equipment.”
    â€œMe too,” Catto said. He gloomed, then cheered. “Oh well. I’ll speak up for him.”
    â€œDo that,” Phelan said. “Tell them you were running away at the time. It’s unsporting to shoot a sitting lieutenant. One may, however, take them on the rise.”
    â€œI think I’ll tell them,” Catto said tentatively, “that I was about to shoot the boy myself.”
    â€œNo. Don’t lie. Whatever you do don’t lie. Because if you lie and he tells the truth then they will call him the liar. Whatever the stories. You understand?”
    â€œThat’s right. Fair enough: no lies.”
    â€œGood. Let’s eat.”
    â€œYours to command. By the bye, I want to get Routledge out of the army. He’s too old for this, and more trouble than use. Can you help?”
    â€œThere you go again,” said Phelan, “looking authority in the eye. I will not lie for Routledge. But I know a pretty young thing who could give him the pox.”
    â€œGod Almighty,” Catto said. “Surgeons.”
    Silliman was scarlet.
    Catto was also offended by Cincinnati, by a populous garrison, by company streets, by reeking latrines, by idle men. He had not become a soldier to suffer stinks, to bestow groceries, to rebuke country boys for relieving themselves on public thoroughfares, to inspect for lice and order boilings. Even bayonets had retired, to become furniture, jabbed deep into earth or wood, a candle wedged within the ring: soldiers’ lamps. “They were never any use,” Phelan said. “Maybe one wound in two hundred was a bayonet wound. You are all cowards.”
    â€œDamn right,” Catto said. “A line of them coming at you, and it takes you fifteen seconds to load. If you miss, you do not loiter. You run away.”
    â€œAh, yes, of course.” Phelan’s brows bounced; his eyes brightened, jolly. “It reminds me of an old story.”
    Catto waited respectfully.
    â€œA famous battle,” Phelan went on, “between the English and the French, long since. They were all in those lunatic lines of battle that no one had the sense to improve upon, everybody standing up straight right next to everybody else, and the English tipped their hats, or their gold bonnets or whatever, and said, ‘Gentlemen of the French guard, please fire first.’”
    â€œGood God. That’s more manners than I have.”
    â€œThat’s what most people say. But it was not manners at all. Whoever fired first was helpless for half a minute afterward, what with reloading, and blinking their eyes, and wiping their noses, and coughing out the smoke, and the young ones changing their trousers. The English were being sly.”
    â€œAnd the French fell for it, and the English whipped them.”
    â€œNot at all. Practically anybody is smarter than an Englishman. The French declined the