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By Root 1481 0

as Ben searched for its red hand in it all, he could tell that Tepee Weepy's influence was not necessarily there this time. To his certain knowledge, it had kept hands off Dex all the while he was at the conscientious objector camp; if it had ever tried to push him into military service, the politically connected Cariston dynasty would have shown the Threshold Press War Project what real pull was. No, go over it every way he could find, it kept coming out the same: Dex surely must have enlisted on his own, and matters took their own course from there. A medic for the smoke jumpers, he offered himself as one for the infantry. Another Montanan built rugged enough to tackle jungle life, off he went to the next jungle awaiting invasion. All Tepee Weepy had to do was sit back and keep track, these past several months, and at the right time send Ben out to the Montaneers and there was the story, Dexter Cariston in change of uniform and conscience. It was heartless, but only heartlessly professional.

Feeling like he was in a vise the size of the TPWP teletype, Ben headed for the nearest wire room clerk. He grabbed up the paper pad, made two quick jabs with a pencil, and handed it over. The teletype operator blinked at it. "I can't just send a punctuation mark."

"You goddamn well will or you'll be peeling spuds until your thumbs fall off."

Sourly the operator hit the single key.

?

The reply came in a matter of minutes.

GOOD QUESTION, YOUR ANXIETY ABOUT PRIORITY UNDERSTOOD. FILE KAMIKAZE PIECE FIRST. CARISTON TO HAVE FUNERAL. NO REMAINS OF DANZER; YOUR STORY THE LAST WORD. SEND SOONEST.

He had to give it a number of tries, but by late that night he had a thousand words that managed to say between the lines that it had taken the largest naval battle in history to corner the Dancer.

The eleventh day of the eleventh month came white and gray in Helena, sticky snow in the early morning hours and sullen overcast for the afternoon. At the cemetery, Ben and Jake were encased in the coarse military overcoats besides their dress uniforms, but it was cold on the feet. They picked their way through the slushy snow toward the graveside where the Cariston clan and what looked like half of Helena were assembling, Jake grousing at the weather and the war and funerals and the Alaska duty he still was stuck with. "Nome sweet Nome, they ought to give the place back to the Eskimos," he was ending up with. "Thanks for getting me out of that frozen dump for a couple of days for this, I guess."

"Habit by now." The words came from Ben as chilly as the fog of breath around them, and Jake looked at him with concern. He didn't notice. He could feel everything about this day crushing in on him, this icy conclusion of Dex's life to be written, and what waited later. Armistice Day with the world caught up in an even worse war was in itself not anything to help a mood. Fingers stiff and unwilling, he took out his notepad and started with the inchwork of writing, details of the burial service.

Snow lay in the stone folds of the carved monuments in the section of old Helena families where Dex was being interred. The Cariston family plot was granitic in its standing stones. Oddly as if on perpetual guard, not far away stood the commemorative statue of the World War One doughboy, bayonet fixed in readiness. While Jake was at atttention with the rest of the pallbearers and the Presbyterian cadence of the minister went on, Ben was pulled to the statue to make sure of something that had caught his eye. The bronze plaque appeared to be out of proportion to the natural dimensions of the base and as he drew nearer he saw this was not simply an artistic misfire; the list of names of the county's World War One dead stretched so long the plaque barely fit onto the soldier's pedestal of sculpted patch of battleground. Death in war was thought to be a random harvest, but the outsize crop of young lives taken here made a person wonder. Bill Reinking had always said the so-called war to end all wars drained a generation of lifeblood out of Montana. About like this