Dover went over to the field telephone station. The state of the art there had improved a lot since the Great War. Then people used Morse more often than they shouted into field telephones, just to make sure their message got through. Now you knew the guy on the other end of the line would hear you.

Whether he felt like listening to you might be a different story. For years, Dover had battled people who tried to palm off lower-quality meat and seafood and vegetables on him and to give him what he needed later than he needed it. Now he turned all his suavity and charm on the Confederate military policemen who hadn’t delivered the promised convicts on time.

“This here’s Major Dover in the Quartermaster Corps south of Columbus,” he rasped. “Where the hell are they? You lazy sons of bitches, y’all tryin’ to lose the war for us? How’re we supposed to get the shit to the front if you hold out on us?…What do you mean, I can’t talk to you that way? I’m doin’ it, ain’t I? An’ if those convicts don’t show up in the next hour, I’ll sic my colonel on you, and we’ll see how you like that!” He slammed down the phone without giving the MP he was talking to the chance to answer back-always a favorite ploy.

He knew Travis W.W. Oliphant was useless in these turf battles. He knew it, but the MP didn’t. And the unhappy fellow evidently didn’t care to take chances with an angry senior officer. The convicts arrived less than half an hour later.

“About fucking time,” Dover snarled at the driver who brought them. “You should have got ’em here when you said you would, and saved everybody the aggravation.”

“Sir, I don’t have nothin’ to do with that,” the driver said. “They load the truck, they tell me where to go an’ how to git there, an’ I do it.”