ists can endure. “Second only to—Robert E. Lee!”
The name of his general trembled on his lips. It trembles to this day, on the lips of those who remember. But Teague only snickered, and combed his beard with fingers like skinny sticks.
“Ye don’t ketch on yet. Second man, not to Lee, but to—me, Teague! Fer I’d be a-runnin’ things!”
Paradine, who had seen and heard so much to amaze him during the past hour, had yet the capacity to gasp. His saber was between his knees, and his hands tightened on the hilt until the knuckles turned pale. Teague gave no sign. He went on:
“I hain’t never got no respect here in Channow. Happen it’s time I showed ’em what I can do.” His eyes studied the windrows of men he had caused to drop down like sickled wheat. Creases of proud triumph deepened around his eyes. “We’ll do all the Yanks this way, son. Yore gen’rals hain’t never done nothing like it, have they?”
His generals—Paradine had seen them on occasion. Jackson, named Stonewall for invincibility, kneeling in unashamed public prayer; Jeb Stuart, with his plume and his brown beard, listening to the clang of Sweeney’s banjo; Hood, who outcharged even his wild Texans; Polk blessing the soldiers in the dawn before battle, like a prophet of brave old days; and Lee, the gray knight, at whom Teague had laughed. No, they had never done anything like it. And, if they could, they would not.
“Teague,” said Paradine, “this isn’t right.”
“Not right? Oh, I know what ye mean. Ye don’t like them names I wrote into the Pow-Wows, do ye? But ain’t everything fair in love an’ war?”
Teague laid a persuasive claw on the sleeve of Paradine’s looted jacket. “Listen this oncet. Yore idee is to win with sword an’ gun. Mine’s to win by conjurin’. Which is the quickest way? The easiest way? The only way?”
“To my way of thinking, the only way is by fair fight. God,” pronounced Paradine, as stiffly as Leonidas Polk himself, “watches armies.”
“An’ so does somebody else,” responded Teague. “Watches—an’ listens. Happen he’s listenin’ this minit. Well, lad, I need a sojer to figger army things fer me. You joinin’ me?”
Not only Teague waited for Paradine’s answer. . . . The young trooper remembered, from Pilgrim’s Progress, what sort of dealings might be fatal. Slowly he got to his feet.
“The South doesn’t need that kind of help,” he said flatly.
“Too late to back out,” Teague told him.
“What do you mean?”
“The help’s been asked fer already, son. An’ it's been given. A contract, ye might call it. If the contract’s broke—well, happen the other party’ll get mad. They can be worse enemies ’n Yanks.”
Teague, too, rose to his feet. “Too late,” he said again. “That power can sweep armies away fer us. But if we say no—well, it’s been roused up, it’ll still sweep away armies—Southern armies. Ye think I shouldn’t have started sech a thing? But I’ve started it. Can’t turn back now.”
Victory through evil—what would it become in the end? Faust’s story told, and so did the legend of Gilles de Retz, and the play about Macbeth. But there was also the tale of the sorcerer’s apprentice, and of what befell him when he tried to reject the force he had thoughtlessly evoked.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked, through lips that muddled the words.
“Good lad, I thought ye’d see sense. First off, I want yore name to the bargain. Then me ’n’ you can lick the Yanks.”
Lick the Yankees! Paradine remembered
