VII

“I used to do all the right things on the Fourth of July,” Catto mourned. “Choke up, and hate the English; one year I went three months without telling a lie or swearing. All the churches cooked up beans or meatballs, and the band wore three-cornered hats. One time Stephen Douglas stopped by and made a speech. A lot of us went fishing or thieving but I always stayed to hear the band, and the volley. I saw my first soldier at one of those, a captain with a blond beard, a courtly man, bowing, saluting. I would have sold my soul to be him.”

“And now you are.”

“And now I am, and fought a war, and what the hell for. No, I don’t mean that. What for wasn’t so important. It was a great country and if a war had to be fought it was not for me to ask questions. I believed. How could you not believe in Mister Lincoln? And when the war is over we will all join hands again—that was a promise. If I had to go around shooting people, at least I knew that there would be an end to it, and we could get on with more important things. Not that I’ve put much stock lately in all the pretty sentiment. That’s for the children. All I wanted was to snake my way through, and in the end I would be something—a soldier or a scout or a trapper, or at the worst a grocer or a cigar wholesaler or a bank clerk. Make a living, get children, live to be an old man.”

“Move your chair,” Phelan said, “And stop squinting into the sun.”

Catto hitched his chair around, clattering and scraping. He sat like a schoolboy with his hands flat on his thighs, his head bowed, his full lips pursed in a fat pout, his eyes dull and sad. “I was thinking of one of my masterpieces. It was a running shot, at an angle, and he spread his arms and went down on his face and slid along the grass that way. I was proud of it.”

“And now you’re not.”

Catto shook his head slowly.

“All this because of Lincoln.”

“Well, maybe I’m only growing up. But I cried, Jack. I cried. That’s for Europe, killing kings. Not for us. I’d like to move out of here and maybe settle in a whole new country somewhere. Or make one. On an island.”

“Go back to Scotland.” Phelan smiled halfheartedly. He rolled the r’s richly: “Surround yourself with freckled get.”

“It was all over. Lee kept his sword. And now Lincoln is in a box on that train and the country is worse off than it was five years ago.”

“No. Five years ago there was a war coming. That much at least is done. Otherwise I can’t cheer you up. I can only recommend that you start drinking again and remember that everybody dies.”

“Right. All men are created equal as soon as they die.”

“Omnia—”

“I know. Well. I suppose I better get over this. I wonder if that fellow Booth was proud of himself.”

“Go to Charlotte.”

“For Christ’s sake, Jack. I can’t even spell her last name.”

“Go to Charlotte. The flesh is half the cure for grief.”

“And half the cause of it. She doesn’t like me any more. I wonder if Hooker’s happy. He hated the man.”

“Hard to say about Hooker. He’s off in Springfield now, for the funeral.”

“Oh, they’ll all be there. With their heads bowed, mumbling all the right things. And thinking how he should have promoted them faster.” Catto rose. “I’m going out to walk around. A nice sunny day. I must see if the people are still grateful to their heroes.”

“They’re still in mourning. This has been a quiet city, with the Copperheads afraid to say a word out loud.”

“Mm. Tell me something, Jack.”

“Your servant.”

“What’s all this about the Catholics? Some rumor. Anything in it?”

“Why do you ask me?” Phelan glared. “Do I look like an assassin? They need somebody to blame, you know. If something goes wrong and there’s one Catholic in it, it’s a plot straight from the Pope.”

“Cheer up,” Catto said. “In fifty years we’ll all be Catholic. I have it on good authority.”

“May your spleen wither, boyo.”

Catto fled the surgeon’s curse.

He stood at the river with Silliman and they pitched pebbles into the scummy backwash. Silliman had aged, and appeared at least twenty-one. “You’ll be off soon,” Catto said.

“A couple of weeks. I suppose my father saw to that.”

“Don’t apologize. Country needs folks like you.” A momentary rage gripped Catto: “Don’t let those stay-at-home rangers run things. You get in there and go to Congress or some such thing.”

“Maybe I will.” Silliman skimmed a flat stone at a placid river bird; the white bird squawked once and beat upward. “Come with me. You work the mill while I make laws to favor you.”

“You’re a generous fellow and I thank you. I suppose everything’s possible for you. Lucky man. Some bright young thing waiting too.”

“Several,” said Silliman, and blushed.

“Damn liar. I bet you never yet had your hand—”

“Never mind now. What about it? You have nowhere to go. Might as well make money.”

“I’ve thought of it. Let’s get out of here.” They turned away, and trod cobblestones toward the center of the city. Catto was calmer of mind in the noonday sun; even in Cincinnati spring smelled good, the air a heady compound principally of manure and beer, yet fragrant. “I can’t decide right now. Been feeling too low lately.”

“Me too. But you’ve only got a week or so.”

“Six days. But I could always let the hitch run out, and sign on later.”

“As a private.”

“Yeh. I had some higher rank in mind.” Catto was sleepy. The sun warmed his back and he remembered that day in the meadow, Thomas Martin rising like an angel to shoot him dead. Not a hundred miles from here. “Trouble is, old Ned, I don’t want to sign on for something and find out later I’m wrong for it. Hell of a thing if you put me in the mill and I turned out to be a born poet.”

“But there isn’t time to try everything.”

“True. I always thought that when the war was over I’d know. Have a vision. Instructions: Catto, rise up and go breed hogs. Instead of which they kill my president.”

“Mine too.”

“I thought once I might travel. Go to work on a boat. See the old country.”

“You won’t see much without money. They pay about a dollar a week on boats. And you eat garbage.”

“Well, that’s out.”

They walked on, inspecting shops.

“It’s all so strange,” Silliman said. “Everything so empty. Like the sun would never set again. A war is your whole life, and when it ends you just stand there blinking.”

“That’s how it is, all right. And I been in longer than you. Where we walking to, anyway?”

“Oh, anywhere,” Silliman said. “Let’s go up and smell the canal. This is one city I don’t plan to return to, and I might as well experience it to the full.”

Catto smiled. “Now look at that. You made me cheer up.”

“Good God,” said Silliman. “Next thing you’ll be drinking again.”

They laughed, puzzled and ashamed, and fell silent once more, edging away from wagons and loaders and stacked baskets as they crossed a market square.

“How long do you suppose people feel this way?”

“I don’t know. Never had a war end before. Or an assassination.”

“No.” Silliman was grave. “When the news came, or when I made myself believe it, I remember thinking I ought to keep close track of how I felt and what people said and all that, so I could tell my children about it someday. But all I remember is this gloomy, gray sort of sadness.”

Catto nodded and began an answer, but jumped a foot when the welkin dissolved in a sudden shimmering, golden clangor. The two stared upward. Bong. “Saint Peter in Chains,” Silliman said. Look at that.” Bong. “Over two hundred feet tall.”

“That’s some bell.” Bong. “Must be noontime. It rings slow.”

“It’s for the funeral,” Silliman said.

Bong, sang the great bell, and Catto thought, bong. Bong. He drew in a deep breath, trying to open his throat, but it contracted and tears sprang to his eyes; he fought them down, swallowed, took another breath, and could not look at Silliman. The bell boomed on, and Catto stood with his head down and his hat brim hiding his hot eyes, and said goodbye to Mister Lincoln. Goodbye, Abe. Goodbye, Mister President. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

He dreamed that night, dreamed a story the men told, of the girl who cropped her hair and enlisted to be with her brother. It was said to have happened in Massachusetts, in New York, Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin, in 1861, 1862, 1863 and 1864, and the girl was aged fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, never older; had black, brown, red or blond hair; but invariably this sort of bosom—I mean to say, how could she possibly have bound it down, and what a loss to mankind! In his dream they found her in a grove with the horse sergeant, and Catto watched writhing and fuming. It was Hooker who caught them, and no escape; Catto leapt to his feet and covered his nakedness with one hand while saluting with the other, but it was insufficient, no hand could cover this unruly upstart, this extravagant indecorum. As a flag passed by in his dream, and a drummer-boy, Catto awoke; behind the drummer-boy a caisson clattered and rumbled under the weight of a coffin. He was sick with loss, and lay still hoping to recapture sleep, the woman, the consoling warmth; but hoping was a daylight activity, and woke him further.

Later he remembered the dream and pondered it, because he had little to do, wiling away a Friday morning like the ten-toed sloth he was, scribbling orders for batting and socks and fresh pork; he understood that he had dreamed about his sorrow, about Lincoln, perhaps about the sweet young lady he had yet to meet. But the horse sergeant? His own base behavior? He goggled at the memory of it, and was still smiling when the door flew open. He looked up in query, which altered to amiable welcome when he saw Jacob, but when Jacob said, “They goin to kill Thomas,” Catto betrayed unmannerly disgust, despairing of this black man who got things wrong, who could misunderstand what had doubtless been a perfectly plain, if unfunny, joke; already another thought was forming, a knowledge not yet knowledge because not yet made word, given flesh, image, but there, lurking and looming; so Catto sat back fighting irritation and fear, laughter and terror—as if his spirit were crying out, “I will not hear this”—and said to Jacob, “Don’t be a blockhead.”

“Gen’l Willich say they have to kill Thomas.” Jacob’s eyes shimmered.

Catto set down his pen in utter stupidity. “It was like I was suddenly turned into a potato,” he said to Phelan next day. “I know I quit breathing, and I think my blood quit running. After a moment I remembered that this country was a madhouse and Jacob might even be right. I got up in a hurry then and knocked some papers off the table and went out in the street and ran. I just left Jacob standing there. I also left my hat, so I was out of uniform the whole rest of the day. My blouse was open and the damn belt flapping. People looked at me and shied off, like the war might be starting up again and this crazy captain was rushing to save the city. I hooked up the belt while I ran. God knows what I looked like when I got to McLean Barracks.”

Today there was a sentry but Catto was a whirlwind. “Stand aside,” he called, and took the steps in one leap. He plunged through the doorway, glided a long three steps to Willich’s door and burst into the general’s office. He saw several figures and perceived that he was among gentlemen of the first importance, so shook his head quickly, panting, and looked Willich in the eye and said, “What is all this?” Then he groped for buttons and again became a soldier, huffing, blowing, doing up his blouse and standing rather straight.

Willich said “Captain Catto” like a man still asleep. Catto knew then that it was all true. He recognized the others: Dickson, that was, and Stallo, and in a corner Captain Booth, who was Willich’s adjutant He remembered the morning sky, cottony clouds.

Dickson asked, “Who are you?”

“Captain Catto, Judge. What is this about the boy?”

“What does it matter to you?” Dickson was annoyed.

Catto stared coldly.

“We are all here to do what we can,” Judge Stallo said, and Catto nodded without hostility, recalling that this man was a physicist, mathematician, philosopher and so on, and also the number one Deutscher in the city. Alle menschen.

He turned back to Willich. “Please. Tell me what’s happened.”

“Yes. Sit down,” said the general. “What’s the time?”

“Close on to nine, sir,” Booth said.

“Where is Hooker anyway?” Catto asked.

“En route. We’re trying to find him. A message. We cannot do this.”

“Do what? Will you please tell me, sir.”

“President Johnson has signed the order for Thomas Martin’s execution,” Stallo declared formally.

Catto restrained a bellow. “Do you mean Lincoln never tore it up? You mean you just left it on a desk in Washington all this time?”

“At that level there is nothing we can do,” Stallo said.

“It was Hooker,” Dickson said angrily, almost shouting, accepting Catto. “Damn the man! He was cleaning out his files, if you can believe it, and he found the signed verdict. He’d forgotten all about it. He inquired whether sentence had been executed.”

“And it had not,” Willich said. “We had never received an order to execute the boy. Lincoln would not sign it; he would not pardon the boy but he would not sign the order. He hated to sign them. So I told Hooker about the boy. I was laughing. I was laughing! That day he wired for authority to carry out the sentence, and the President signed an order. Hooker ordered me to shoot the boy and went off to Springfield. I said nothing until last night because I could not believe that there would be no intervention, from Washington, from Hooker himself.”

“A frightful man,” Stallo said.

“It seems there was no one to plead for a pardon,” Willich said softly. “If only his mother had been alive to plead for a pardon. Lincoln was free with pardons.”

“Where is the boy’s rifle,” Catto asked tonelessly. “This is madness.”

“Locked up,” Booth said. “What about it?”

Catto and Booth exchanged the easy direct nod of comrades, professionals, men of an age; like regretful farmers on a pitching steamer they nodded. “Where’s the boy?”

“Also locked up.”

“Well let’s get him out of here,” Catto said, “and across the river.”

“Captain!” That was Willich. But silent Booth understood.

“You are in the presence of two judges and a general,” Stallo said sharply.

“Who I take it—with all respect, sir,” Catto said as drily as possible, “—would rather see a boy murdered than risk General Hooker’s displeasure.”

“No one has been murdered,” Dickson said, “and it is not a matter of General Hooker’s displeasure, I assure you. You will permit me to point out,” and Dickson was also dry, “that we have just fought a war to preserve government by law and not by impulse. Please, Captain. We are here to find a way out, and not to outrage your finer sensibilities.”

“Take a cigar, Captain,” said Willich, and wood whispered upon wood.

“Yes, thank you, thank you,” Catto said rapidly. “And when is this lunatic order to be carried out?”

“At noon today,” Willich muttered; Catto bent almost double like a man with the cramp, and just before he raised his angry face he brought a bitter iron captain’s fist marteling down upon Willich’s desk, hurting himself and striking up a mad dance of nibs. “Booth. Can you and I get him out and away?”

“No,” said Booth.

Catto was instantly calm. He gazed at the three older men with a helpless, earnest curiosity.

Dickson spoke first: “Captain Catto, Captain Catto, we all feel as you do.”

“Then let’s do something,” Catto said.

“We are telegraphing to all likely stops on Hooker’s route,” Stallo said. “A slim chance, but a chance. Then, Judge Dickson has asked Mister Gaither to send a telegram directly to Major Eckert, who will take it personally to Secretary Stanton.”

“Who is Gaither?”

“Superintendent of the Adams Express Company,” Dickson said. “My dear Captain, who are you and why are you suddenly in command?”

“My apologies,” Catto said wearily. “I am merely a captain of infantry, in charge of the hospital company, and I am the fellow who brought the boy in, long ago, and was shot by him, and I am the only man in the world who has any cause to dislike him. But I like him. I don’t know him very well, but I like him. Nobody knows him very well, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll plead for the pardon. I’m not the boy’s mother, but I’m his victim. By God, General Willich!” He rounded abruptly, ferociously. “The boy has been your, your, your page boy for half a year. How can you? How can you?” Willich was still. “And who is Eckert?”

“Superintendent of the military telegraph,” Stallo told him. “Major Thomas Eckert. He may be influential, and he will certainly be quick. On election night last year President Lincoln sat up with him, in the telegraph room, receiving the returns.”

“God bless Major Eckert,” Catto said. “And I take it none of you gentlemen will mind if I keep vigil with you. No, of course you won’t mind. Oh, what insanity!” He flopped into a soft leather chair, lit his cigar, and dropped the match into a copper ashtray strapped to the chair’s arm. “A black man brought me the news. The boy’s friend. Free now, you understand. All men are created equal.”

Willich raised his shaggy, gray-blond head. “Captain Catto.” His voice was once more the voice of a general. “That will be all. I want you to stay, but I want you to remember your place. And remember too that we may bear this day to our graves.”

“Then—”

“No. Nothing you can say has not been said already this morning.”

“I’m sorry,” Catto murmured. “Can nothing else be done? Can I see the boy?”

“You may not see the boy,” Willich said. “He is locked up in this building, and you may not see him. Father Garesche is with him. And you should know that I have ordered a firing squad to be made ready, and the place will be the big ravine on the Walnut Hills road, above the Deer Creek Valley and below the Pendleton house.”

Catto closed his eyes.

“You must understand, Catto,” Stallo said. “This is a terrible period. Washington is full of grief, confusion, even hysteria. Against the rebels, against unnamed conspiracies. Seward wounded, Lindoln dead, how are they to know who is the next target?” Grave, ambassadorial, he turned to Willich. “Do you know,” he said pensively, “there is something else that could be done. A telegram to Johnson himself. Signed by the three of us, and Pendleton, and perhaps a few other first citizens.”

“Who’s Pendleton?” Catto asked him.

“Who’s Pendleton?” Stallo was astounded, reproving. “The Democratic candidate for vice-president last year. That is who. And Judge Dickson’s wife is a cousin of Mary Todd Lincoln. That might help.”

Dickson said, “Yes.”

My platoon would be more help, Catto was thinking. Move in and move out fast, like with the apples that time, and across the river and the boy is free.

But he knew that was impossible.

Willich said, “Yes. Write it out. Give it to Gaither.”

Stallo drew a wooden chair to the desk and busied himself with pen and paper.

“There’s something else you can do,” Catto said. “You can delay this execution until you have an answer. This is an appeal. This is the only appeal the boy will have, and Hooker is away and you’re in command.”

“A reasonable delay,” Willich said.

“Reasonable!” Catto said. “I don’t see why. Nothing else about this is reasonable. And remember all that about mankind and revolution.”

“Yes, yes.”

“General,” Catto begged, “could I have some schnapps?”

Catto learned later, with some bitterness, that while he had been forbidden the boy’s room, reporters were more privileged. “I had to,” Willich said. “I have spent my life fighting the censorship, but if the story had been printed that day a mob of ghouls would have flocked to us. So I asked the publishers to withhold the story for a day. In return I admitted reporters. Do you see?”

Catto saw. By then the fight was gone out of him. When the man from the Cincinnati Times arrived, Father Garesche was reading Scripture to Thomas Martin; the two were seated on the boy’s bunk, which was carefully made up, as if it might be used again. Martin wore a ball and chain, and a crucifix lay beside him. A fire “snapped and crackled in the genial old-fashioned fireplace. Near the bunk was hung the scanty wardrobe of the condemned and beneath was a brown jug of water.” Martin was unsure of his age. The reporter thought him under twenty. The boy was unnaturally calm, and asserted his innocence. The Gazette, the Commercial and the Enquirer were also privileged to meet him. The reporters admired him. He was serene and courageous. While they took notes a roly-poly gentleman of cheerful aspect came in to Martin and took his measure. The boy expressed curiosity, and learned that the man was a carpenter, and that the measurement was for a coffin. The reporter from the Gazette considered this cruel. Martin remained calm. Father Garesche remained calm. The reporters remained calm. The carpenter achieved his task and left.

Willich, Stallo, Dickson and Catto did not remain calm. They paced. They sent messengers to the telegraph office. Catto chewed at expensive cigars and damned his country in silence. Stallo’s telegram had been dispatched. They were all tortured by the passage of horses outside Willich’s windows. Each return of the messenger was a moment of hope and grief. Catto thought of his few friends. He would unquestionably leave the army, perhaps the country. Routledge! Routledge had been right! That fat, stumbling, incompetent genius!

By mid-morning the watchers had settled into hopeless silence, and when the messenger knocked and strode into the room Catto scarcely stirred. “By heaven,” Willich said, “it’s from Hooker!” And they sprang up, Catto agog and then enraged, deriving early knowledge from the messenger’s glum mouth and downcast eyes. He sank back into his leather chair. After a pause Willich said in infinite dejection, “He will do nothing. He says there is nothing he can do. He cannot countermand an order from Washington.”

A new silence fell, a new dimension of horror infusing the oppressive air. “He could,” Catto said. “Any other general. Any other general.”

“Catto.” But there was little heart in Willich’s rebuke.

“There is still time,” Stallo said; and to the messenger, “You may go. Be quick if there is news.”

The messenger saluted and went away.

“General Hooker will be leaving this department soon,” Dickson said. “What a difference a week or two might make!”

Stallo was even more mournful: “There will be an amnesty. We all know it.”

“The Johnny officers are being wined and dined in every Union garrison,” Catto said. “Their soldiers are paroled and gone home.”

At noon there had been no word.

“We sat there,” Catto told Phelan later, “me and Booth and that general with one withered arm and those first-class judges. All that aristocracy and they couldn’t do a thing. I kept thinking there was something I could say that would change it all, some magic word, if I could only find it, if only I was a lawyer or a deep thinker. But what? All I could tell them was that men don’t kill boys. It turned out they knew that. So there was nothing I could tell them that they didn’t already know. Unless maybe that if something this wrong could happen, then maybe there was something wrong from top to bottom. But try telling that to judges and generals. ‘What what what,’ they would say. ‘Anarchy. Anarchy.’”

“Nothing. We sat about like people with no arms and no legs. I still say Willich could have let the boy go. Sent him across the river and made up a good story about his escape. I’d have taken the blame myself.”

“Not Willich. Willich is a man of honor. A good man, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred you thank God for such men. And the hundredth time is all the more bitter.”

“Honor. He promised me once that nothing would happen to the boy.”

“And who are you beside the government of the United States?”

“I wonder,” Catto said.

“I cannot wait longer,” Willich said. “An hour after the time already.”

Dickson sighed and Stallo frowned.

Willich asked, “Where do we stand, Booth?”

“The boy and the priest are ready,” Booth reported. “The provost marshal will lead. Then the troops, muskets slung, butts up. A closed carriage for the boy and the priest. A hearse following with the coffin. Then the surgeon. I’ll be in command,” and briefly his gaze met Catto’s “but Lieutenant Prentice will command the firing party.”

“Prentice. I thought he was gone.”

“Day after tomorrow, General.”

“His last command.”

“It won’t matter,” Booth said. “He’s a dumb roughneck.”

“Yes,” said Willich, “and we are clever gentlemen.”

“Will you go?” Dickson asked him.

“No. No, I will not. Catto?”

“Yes. I have to.”

Willich nodded. “Now. That Sands is at the telegraph office, with a fast horse. Silliman is with him. If word comes there will be no time wasted.”

“Silliman? Silliman knows? Silliman is part of this?”

“Yes. He feels as we all do.”

“You could have left him out of it,” Catto said. “The surgeon is Phelan?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll ride behind,” Catto said. He looked at their faces. “I suppose you’re going to tell me this is life, or c’est la guerre.”

“No, Catto,” Stallo said. “It is not life, and the war is over. It is cruel, it is wrong, and it is happening by law in an exhausted republic.”

“The beloved republic,” Willich said softly.

They stood with nothing more to say, as if in a last moment of prayer, as if they were about to part forever.

“It is time,” Willich said. “God forgive us.”

“If he does, he isn’t worth a damn,” Catto said. “Booth, have you got a horse for me?”

The clouds had thickened, merged, turned gray, and a breeze harried the procession. Catto mounted and fell in beside Phelan, who was subdued and owlish and asked, “Where have you been?”

“In there,” Catto said, “and I’ll not talk about it now. Just shut your gob.”

“I got an order an hour ago. I’d heard nothing.”

“Have you seen Jacob?”

“No. My God, man, my God.”

“Ah, be quiet,” Catto said.

Strollers stared and murmured, all the way to Mount Auburn, and some ragtag and bobtail followed; Catto turned once to curse them. There was no sign of Jacob.

It was two miles to the execution ground. Toward the end of the march Phelan said, “The bloody war.”

“Yes.”

But it was not the bloody war and they knew it.

“A little conscientious drinking afterward,” Phelan said.

“It won’t help,” said Catto, and there was the ravine. They had come up a long, winding, uneven trail, tricky for the horses even at a walk. They debouched into the ravine; it was squarish, a hundred feet or so wide. One wall of it was a bluff, almost perpendicular, some twenty feet high, and the soldiers drew Thomas Martin’s coffin from the hearse and placed it about twenty-five feet from the face. The boy would be blindfolded and would stand directly before the coffin, his back to the bluff. Eight men would face him with loaded rifles, one cartridge a blank. Prentice would load the rifles and pronounce the three words. Prentice was a dumb roughneck.

The boy and the priest stepped down, Garesche murmuring. The boy was pale but in command of himself. He stared straight before him and did not see Catto. There was no sun to warm his last moments.

Booth issued orders, stationed the men and conversed with Prentice.

“What do you do?” Catto asked. “Pronounce him dead?”

“Yes.” Phelan too was pale. “Will you speak to him?”

“No. What would I say? You speak to him. Tell him all about heaven. How he will be at God’s right hand. With the angels and all. And the Virgin Mary baking up a batch of corn bread for him. He’s having the last rites and every prayer and attention that money can buy, or the might and majesty of the United States of America.” Catto’s eyes brimmed. “And he will shortly be circling above us on wings of purest white, garbed in a silken bedsheet. Go on. Tell him.”

“God forgive you,” Phelan said. “He will be in heaven this night, the boy will. Never talk to me like that again.”

“Ah, for God’s sake,” Catto said. “There can’t be a heaven! If there’s a heaven what the hell’s the sense of living?”

Booth inspected the muskets. Behind Catto a murmur: twenty or thirty spectators. He did not see Jacob among them. He damned them again, then stared off beyond them for the horseman who would not come.

Booth led the boy to the open coffin and shook out a blindfold. He seemed to take forever and Catto realized that he was delaying, stretching every motion and word; gazing beyond the crowd, listening. Catto examined them once more. What were they? Shopkeepers? Wives and mothers? He saw a child, a boy of six or seven. The undertaker sat respectfully, his face carefully dismal, on the cab of the hearse.

I should pray, Catto said to himself. For what it’s worth. Who knows? Be good to him, God. Forgive him. Don’t forgive us.

When there remained no more shilly and no more shally Booth retired toward Catto and signaled to Prentice. Prentice called to Father Garesche, who blessed the boy one last time, placed a gentle hand upon his fair hair, and moved away.

Prentice stood beside his squad, a dark, thick-set man with a full, fanning black beard. Even he, even the dumb roughneck, seemed at a loss: how to begin? He stood for a moment scratching the back of his neck. The mob was silent. Catto fought nausea. Phelan closed his eyes. The undertaker removed his silk hat.

If Catto had not been present he would have believed none of this: not the tragic possibility, not the sickening reality, surely not the mock-heroic climax. The firing party was awaiting its orders, and the crowd stood dead silent before an enormity, even those who approved or enjoyed, standing there some of them holding their breath. This last pause seemed interminable. It dragged on. The crowd murmured, fell silent again.

And then they heard hoofbeats. They heard hoofbeats, and they all turned, all but Thomas Martin, who was facing that way to start with, though blindfolded, and the hoofbeats grew louder, and a man named Lawrence Sands, on a foaming horse, came crashing through the brush, panting and whooping and waving a telegram.

The telegram was signed by Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War of these United States, and it said: “Suspend the execution of Thomas Martin, who was to be executed today, until further orders. By order of the President.”

The reporter for the Gazette wrote that the officers looked blank and the soldiers looked curious, “as they about-faced and marched down the hill again. The crowd though evidently disappointed, manifested no uncivil or ferocious feelings.… The undertaker, we thought, seemed to occupy the most unpleasant position, as he drove back with a second hand coffin to dispose of.”

The Enquirer’s man demurred: “We never saw so happy a set of men in our lives as these soldiers.… Too much commendation cannot be bestowed upon President Johnson for his promptitude in thus, at the outset of his career, imitating the humane example of his illustrious predecessor, in putting his veto upon the shedding of any more blood; while to General Willich … and all the military officers having charge of this execution, there is just praise and gratitude for staying the tragic scene until the very last minute and using the utmost diligence in preventing the effusion of blood.”

And Catto? When they were all gone back down the hill Catto was still there, with Phelan, and he dismounted and sat heavily upon the grassy earth and bawled like a lamb.