Free American Front by Harry Turtledove Page A

the cavalryman said with a French accent that explained his swarthiness. “I am Pierre Lapin, lieutenant”—his fingers brushed the single pip on his shoulder board—“of the horse. Is it that my men and I could use your well for the purpose of watering ourselves?”
    “Yes, sir, go right ahead, all of you,” McGregor had to make a conscious effort not to stiffen to attention. The couple of weeks he spent drilling every year made him give an officer automatic deference.
    “You are gracious.
Merci
,” Lapin said, and waved to his men. They all followed the path he had taken.
    “Dipper’s in the bucket,” Maude McGregor said, pointing to the well. Lieutenant Lapin tipped his hat to her again, which made her flush and giggle like a schoolgirl.
    Unlike Lapin, who carried a pistol on his officer’s Sam Browne belt, his troopers wore carbines slung on their backs and had sabers fixed to the left side of their saddles. They queued up at the well, chattering in the odd mix of English and French McGregor remembered from his own days in the Army. Not so long ago, as such things went, Canadians who used French and those who spoke English had disliked and distrusted one another. But with both groups disliking and distrusting their giant neighbor to the south even more, the older rivalry was less remembered.
    McGregor went up to Lapin, who was waiting for his men to finish before he drank himself. Quietly, so Maude wouldn’t hear, the farmer asked, “Will they get this far?” When the cavalry lieutenant didn’t answer, he went on, “I’ve got a rifle in the house—use it for hunting. I’ll hunt things in green-gray if I have to.”
    Lapin’s shoulders went up and down in a Gallic shrug. “Whether they will come so far I cannot say with certainty. I will say, though, if they do come so far and you have not been called to the colors to resist them, be cautious with that rifle. The Americans, they take their lessons from the
Boches
”—his curled lip said what he thought of that—“and the
Boches
, in the war with France in the last century, were harsh against
francs-tireurs
.”
    “Thank you, sir. I’ll bear that in mind,” McGregor said. “But if they invade your country and you’re defending your home, shouldn’t matter whether you’re in uniform or not.”
    “What should matter and what does matter,
monsieur
, are not one and the same thing, I regret to say,” Lapin answered with another shrug.
    A muttering in the distance, almost too deep, almost too soft, almost too far to hear.
Thunder, a long ways off
, McGregor thought. But it wasn’t thunder, not on this fine, bright day—he realized that with the thought hardly formed. “That’s artillery,” he said, his voice flat and harsh.
    “
Vous avez raison
,” Lieutenant Lapin agreed. “I could wish you were wrong, but—” Yet another shrug. “And so perhaps it grows more likely the Americans will reach this place. But if they do, they will have paid a stiff price.”
    “Good,” McGregor said. “What price will you have paid, though?”
    “That is of no consequence, not to my country,” Lapin replied. His turn at the well came at last. He drained the dipper dry, refilled it, and drained it again. “It is the price I agreed to pay when I joined the Army.” He touched the brim of his cap in half a salute. “I thank you for the water, and I wish you the best of fortune in the hard days that surely lie ahead.” He swung up onto his horse, calling on his men to hurry and remount. They soon rode away.
    More of what wasn’t thunder came from the south. It didn’t sound closer, but it was louder: more guns in action, or bigger guns.
Both, most likely
, McGregor judged. Now that the fight had started, the Americans, the Canadians, and the men of the mother country would throw everything they had into it.
    With that growing rumble in the background, McGregor’s satisfaction in his fields of amber grain evaporated. With his country and the