"From what you've said about McNally, that wouldn't be hard." Foster might have gone on, but a small crowd had gathered at the corner of Seventh and Cary. He pointed. "I wonder what's going on there."

"Shall we find out?" Without waiting for an answer from his friend, Reggie hurried over toward the crowd. Shrugging, Foster followed. "Oh, I see," Bartlett said a moment later. "It's a political rally. That figures, with the Congressional election next Tuesday. But what the devil is the Freedom Party? I've never heard of'em before."

"I've seen a couple of their posters," Bill Foster said. "Don't rightly know what they stand for, though."

"Let's get an earful. Maybe it'll be something good." Reggie scowled as his wounded leg gave a twinge, which it hadn't done in a while. "Couldn't be worse than the pap the Radical Liberals and the Whigs are handing out."

"That's about right." Foster nodded. "Everybody who's in is making noise about how he never much cared for the war, and everybody who's out is saying that if he'd been in he never would've voted one thin dime for it."

"And it's all a pack of lies, too," Bartlett said with deep contempt. "Why don't they admit they were all screaming their heads off for the war when it started? Do they think we've forgotten? And when Arango ran against Semmes for president two years ago, he said he'd do a better job of fighting the Yankees than the Whigs were. He didn't say anything about getting out of the war, not one word."

The Freedom Party spokesman didn't have a fancy platform or a fancy suit, which proved he belonged to neither of the CSA's major parties. He stood in his shirtsleeves on a box or a barrel of some kind and harangued the couple of dozen people who were listening to him: "-traitors to their country," he was shouting as Reggie and Bill Foster came up. "Traitors and fools, that's what they are!"