"Don't come back, either," Jake snarled.

Leaving the inner office, Jeb Stuart, Jr., got the last word: "I wish you the same." He closed the door behind him.

With another snarl, this one wordless, Jake snatched up his pen and began to write furiously. He filled two pages in Over Open Sights in something less than half an hour. But even venting his anger through the growing book was not enough to satisfy him. He slammed his pad shut, threw it into his desk, and locked the drawer that held it. Until he was ready for it to see the light of day, it wouldn't.

He sprang up and paced the inner office like a caged wolf. The Party would lose ground when elections came, and they were only four months away. He saw no way around it. The trick was going to be holding as much as he could-and making people think the Freedom Party would be a force to reckon with in elections after 1923. He'd known it wouldn't be easy long before General Stuart stopped by to gloat.

He wished he could talk with Roger Kimball. But Kimball was dead, and the damnyankee woman who'd murdered him had got off scot-free. That was one more on the list he'd already started compiling against President Mitchel. "Go ahead, kiss the USA's ass," he muttered.

He wished he could talk with Anne Colleton, too. He valued her money, he valued her sense of theatrics, and he valued her brains. But she didn't value him or the Freedom Party any more. Of all the defections he'd had to endure over the past year, hers might have hurt most.

Since he couldn't talk with either of them, he telephoned Ferdinand Koenig. "Jeb Stuart, Jr.?" his former running mate exclaimed. "Well, isn't that a kick in the head? Stopped by to gloat, you say?"

"That's just what he did," Jake answered. "Said the Party was as good as dead and buried, God damn him to hell."

"Don't take it too much to heart," Koenig said. "If he's as right about that as he was during the war, we're in fine shape."

"Yeah!" Featherston said gratefully; he hadn't thought of it like that. "You've got a good way of looking at things, Ferd."

"Don't reckon you'll let us down, Sarge," Koenig answered. "I remember where we were back in 1917, and I can see where we are now. Maybe we haven't climbed all the way to the top of the mountain, but we'll get there."

Thousands of Party stalwarts might-would-have said the same thing. But Jake set no special stock in what stalwarts said. They weren't stalwarts because they were long on brains. They were stalwarts because they were long on muscle and short on temper. Ferdinand Koenig was different. He not only had good sense, he wasn't embarrassed about showing it.

"Of course we'll get there," Jake said, sounding more confident than he felt. "Just have to come through this November without getting skinned."

"Figure we will?" Koenig asked.

"That's the question, all right," Jake allowed. He let out a long, slow sigh. "We'll get hurt some. We'll have to put the best face on it we can, and then we'll have to start building toward 1925. We can't afford to waste a minute there. I only hope to God we don't lose so much, people won't take us serious any more." With Kimball dead and Anne Colleton gone, Ferdinand Koenig was the only one to whom he would have said even so much.

Koenig answered, "You never can tell, Sarge. Folks don't think we matter so much now that money doesn't burn a hole in their pockets if they leave it in there more than a minute and a half, but who knows how long that'll last? Who knows what all's liable to go wrong between now and 1925?"

"That's right," Jake said, smiling for the first time since Jeb Stuart, Jr., had left. "That's just right. With the Whigs running things, they will go wrong, sure as the sun comes up tomorrow." He hung up feeling better, but only for a little while. Would anything be left of the Freedom Party when a chance to rule came round at last?

"Mama!" Clara Jacobs screeched from what had been the storeroom. "Little Armstrong just tore up the picture I was drawing!'" She was almost four, more than twice the age of her little nephew. But Armstrong Grimes, even as a toddler, gave every sign of being hell on wheels. He takes after Edna, Nellie thought. I bet Merle Grimes was a nice man even when he was a little boy. She had such a good opinion of almost no one else in the male half of the human race; the more she got to know her son-in-law, the more he impressed her.

Fortunately, the coffeehouse was almost empty. She could hurry back to the old storeroom and mete out punishment. Armstrong hadn't just torn up Clara's picture; he'd made a snowstorm of pieces out of it. He was happily sticking one of those pieces in his mouth when Nellie yanked it away from him, upended him over her knee, and walloped his backside. "No, no!" she shouted. "Mustn't tear up things that don't belong to you!"

Her grandson howled. Since he was wearing a diaper that shielded his bottom, Nellie knew she wasn't hurting him much. The spanking made an impressive amount of noise, though, as did her yelling.

"Now," she said, "are you going to do that any more?"

"No," little Armstrong answered. Nellie wiped his nose, which was dripping yellowish snot. She didn't believe him. For one thing, he was heading toward the age where he said no every other time he opened his mouth. For another, a toddler's promise lasted only till he forgot he'd made it, which meant anywhere from two minutes to, in extraordinary circumstances, an hour or so.

"You be good, you hear me?" Nellie said.

"No," Armstrong Grimes answered. That was neither defiance nor ignorance, only the first thing that came out of his mouth.

"I'm good, Mama," Clara said, so virtuously that Nellie expected to be blinded by the halo about to spring into being above her head.

"Of course you are-when you feel like it," Nellie told her own daughter. "Pick up those scraps, and don't let him eat any more of them. Don't let him eat your crayons, either."

"I won't, Mama." Clara turned to her nephew. "You see? You can't have anything." Thus made forcibly aware that he was being deprived, Armstrong started crying again. Nellie had to spend more time soothing him before she could go out front again.

Edna was supposed to come get her son at half past three; she'd left him with Nellie so she could do some unencumbered shopping. She didn't show up till a quarter after four. "Hello, Ma-I'm sorry," she said in a perfunctory way. "How crazy did he drive you?"

"Crazy enough," Nellie replied. "I was thinking he reminds me of you." Edna laughed, but Nellie wasn't joking. She went on, "Please come get him when you say you will. I've got enough to do keeping up with Clara and the coffeehouse. Put Armstrong in there, too, and I start climbing the walls."

Edna sniffed. "I take care of Clara for you sometimes, and you don't hear me complaining about it."

"Oh, I do sometimes," Nellie said. "And besides, when you take care of the children, that's all you do. You have Merle to make a living for you. I've got to make my own living, and this place won't run by itself"

Before Edna could answer, Armstrong picked up something from the floor and started chewing on it. He bit Edna when she stuck her finger in his mouth to get it out. She finally did-it was a nasty little clump of hair and dust-and then whacked him a lot harder than Nellie had done. He wasn't crying now because he was angry or frightened; he was crying because his bottom hurt.

"You've never been fair with me," Edna said.

And here we go again, Nellie thought. One more round in the fight that never stops for good. She said, "You think being fair means doing whatever you want. I've got news for you, dearie- it doesn't work that way."

"I've got news for you, Ma-you never do what I want." Edna glared. "You do as you please, and what pleases you most is doing whatever you think will make me maddest."