The desert glowed pink around us, the river a black ribbon. The eastern contours of far-off craters and hills glowed deep red in the mists of Mare Imbrium, the "Sea" of Rains. It was called a sea on account of the dependable rain and mist every summer that flooded the plain for a month, but just now there was no sea - just a sea of sand. I could see the Lunar Alps, east of Plato, the squareness of the Straight Range to the southwest, and just the jagged tip of Pico Mountain, named after the Lunar governor of Venus, said to be almost two miles high - the mountain, I mean. The governor is considerably less tall. And I could see, through a low part of the rim of Plato's Crater, the town that used the crater for its walls.

Inside the dirty yellow town, I saw the long rows of white cloaked monks, ceremoniously gathering around each of the cannons pointed at us. Their mean little muzzles lay flat on the low crater wall of Emperor Iturbide Avenue, previously occupied most pleasantly by lovely lunaritas. This arrangement of cannon was called Fort Paredes, after the latest Lunar general who got himself called president by kicking out the previous general - Herrera - who called himself president. It really got my goat that Paredes had the gall to call himself president (which was like...if Polk called himself one of the Pope's saints). Moreover, I didn't like the fact that this Paredes character used Herrera's peace negotiations with Polk - a real, elected president - as justification to steal himself that democratic title and honor. I felt nice and neighborly about the Moon in general, but I wouldn't think more than twice about Volta-bolting a Mooner general with my electric bayonet, especially one who had the nerve to sanctify his greedy nabob horns, "president".

The monks blessed each cannon, one by one, their Catholic crockery swinging and smoking. Still those bells, bells, bells gonged and bonged their brazen song.

"Them Lunar guns don't look too friendly-like, do they, Sarge," I said to Rutherford Weigart, a prodigious gambler, a gunner from the electromagnetics of Platform 2, upon which he had climbed to better train his spyglass on Fort Paredes. "But I hear tell they're vintage 1814. Can't throw but nine pound shot. All the Pope's hocus-pocus won't change the fact that they lost Waterloo. I'd bet the devil my head that those pop-guns couldn't hurt a fly."

"Well, they should scare you, Borginnis," he said.

"Yeah," I scoffed. "You think all this Christian devotion will kind of make their shots, well, - make `em a bit luckier...? They ain't Christian exactly, you know, they're Catholic. "

Weigart put down the spyglass. "First of all, Catholics are Christians."

"They are and they ain't," was my reply. That's what folks always said about the Pope and Catholics. Folks talked like they were a kind of heathen foreign kind of Christian pagan foolery. I recalled something Hernani Klager had said about it...but then again, he was a Catholic, so whatever he had to say was partial and influenced.

"Oh, they are," said Weigart. "It's just that Protestants are more Christian ..."

"Oh, I get you," I said, relieved.

"Second," said the gunner, "nine pound shot will kill you just as fast as lightning can. According to Major Ringgold's chart, I figure they can just make it over the wall."

I snatched his spyglass. "Oh, bunk and bowlderdash! Those 9- pounders could hardly make the distance from Fort Paredes to the shore! Rest easy, Sarge." I trained the glass on Plato's Crater, looking for lunaritas. But all I saw was soldiers, monks, horses, wagons, and cannons.

Weigart insisted, "I figured it all out mathematical on one of Ringgold's charts, and those 9-pounders can make it over this wall."

"Impossible," I said. I wasn't so sure, but I was bored, so I thought I stoke up the coals of his dander, just to see some sparks of gall and gumption fly.

"Impossible? What about the wind?" he asked me. "Wind blows generally our way."

"Wind!" I scoffed. "What's wind going to do? Does the Pope control the wind, too? Less them pesky Lunars rig up their 9-pounders with fore `n' top sails," I added, pretending to be worried. I laughed a crazy laugh like a monkey. " - Forget it! Those antiques can't kill a fly, if that fly be so fortunate as to be inside this fort I helped to build. If they kill anyone, I hope they kill me first."

"Did you account for the rotation of the Sphere? See, the shot goes up, up, way up high, and meanwhile the Moon moves under it."

"Rotation?" I laughed.

"Yeah, and curvature - ?"

"Curvature!" I said, amazed. "Look, Sarge, it seems to me you think those Catholic savages are more Christian than we are. Don't hide behind Ringgold's charts, and wind and curvature. Just say it plain out. Seems to me you're chicken."

His faced stiffened. "I'm not afraid."

I shrugged. (I wasn't bored any more.)

"I am not afraid!" he said.

"Easy to talk..."

"But I really am not afraid!"

"It's all right, Sarge, I believe you."

"Liar!"

"Well then," I said. "There it is. I'll bet you ain't brave enough to wear my Bad Luck Charm."

"...Bad Luck Charm?"

"Yep."

"What Bad Luck Charm?" he frowned. "...It gives you bad luck?"

"Why Sarge! You are afraid again."

"No I'm not."

"H'm? Did you say something?"

"I'm not afraid, you idiot!"

"It's all right, I believe you."

"I'm not afraid. I am a good Christian. I mind the bible and I don't drink and I don't take whores - " I gave him a dirty look because he seemed to be implying that my Sarah was a whore. Of course, Sarah had said she didn't mind being called one. Weigart continued, "And I trust Ringgold's charts. I fear God and Mathematics, not your heathen Bad Luck Charm!"

"It's all right, there, Sarge, just forget it."

"No, it's not all right, I tell you! I'll wear your infernal Bad Luck charm for a week. I'll bet you that I can. - I'll bet you fifty - in exchange for your twenty-five."

"What twenty-five? I never been paid in a dog's age. I got a Louisiana V-spot, though. Five gives me ten? `Less you take Regimental vouchers..."

"Vouchers, my eye! Just because I wear crossed cannons on my buttons doesn't mean you can fool with me, Dough-Boy! Give me ten. It's ten on ten, then."

"Ten it is," I agreed, putting out my paw. We shook on it, and each gave our double-V-spot to another gunner to hold. (Turned out he kept it forever.) In a little while Company G came along the wall, and Francis Paterson replaced me. So I left Francis scratching his head, full of lice, and went off to make my Bad Luck Charm. "What can I make that's really frightening?" I wondered. My Bad Luck Charm was all humbug, but humbug is as humbug does, and I figured I had a chance at winning the bet. I got an idea. I went down into the Bomb-Proof, and once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I did not have too much trouble locating a small fragment of that fossil that the sappers had destroyed. It was a disc of spine, looked like. Ugly brown and black. I looped a piece of string through it. "Hello, Bad Luck Charm," I said. The bells across the sea kept up their public nuisance. What an awful clatter!

I went back up to Gun Platform 2. Sarge looked at me with a sort of superior air. It was a mask - he was curious.

"You sure you want it?" I said quietly, to taunt him.

"Give it to me!" he cried, and snatched it out of my hand. He immediately stuffed it in his pocket. Seemed to me he was afraid to look at it.

"Oh no," I said. "You got to wear it around your neck." I wanted him to feel that worrying tug on his neck. "Wear it so god and the devil can see it."

He grinned and put it around his neck. He crossed his sunburnt arms.

"This charm makes you a lightning rod of bad luck," I explained.

He snickered. He wasn't afraid. I thought to worry him some. I remembered that Weigart always took the front stool in Reverend McKnight's bible-studies.

"Y'know, it's funny. I trust you are a good Christian, but I also figure that according to what you said, those Catholic savages across yonder are good Christians, too. Why not? But it's funny. Both of you can't be good. Here you good Christians are, all set to try to kill one another. Both of you can't be right. But I figure both of you can be wrong. That's how my Bad Luck Charm can get into your bones and work on you, because you say you are a good Christian."

"And you?" said Weigart, much annoyed. "What about you?"

"Me, I'm a bad Christian, so I don't need a Bad Luck Charm. I know I'm going to suffer," I said smugly, like a nabob. I figured it was time to take my leave, before he got so annoyed as to quarrel. In the army, among us lower ranks, quarrels usually lead to fisticuffs - only we called it "duels" on account of respect for Walter Scott.

I plopped down in the yard, pooped. We all laughed at Old Sock, as he ran by, terrified of all the bells like they were some kind of Hoodoo omen. We called him an ignoramus, and lots of worse things, because as we well knew, all them bells was just the Lunar way of saying, "Howdy-do?" But then, as I got up to look for Sarah, I saw Captain Miles running after Old Sock with one boot on, brandishing his "soft" whip, because the offense wasn't a serious one. It was only that his boots were not polished to his satisfaction. He wanted his boots as shiny as a Junker's.

Sarah was busy. She bore a water bucket in each hand. She tried to pass me with just a smile.

"Darlin' pretty Sarah, how lonesome I am for you!" I told her.

She stopped. She wiped the sweat from her face.

"War's mighty sore on kissin' and huggin'," she sighed, and splashed a little water on her face. She tried to look at her reflection, but the water was jiggling around too much. "And it's downright heck on a woman's complexion. Jack, sweetheart, I miss you too. Sometimes I curse myself, seeing as I ain't no soldier, born a woman, but still I feel a powerful love of duty that keeps me runnin' around like a chicken with its head cut off...I know! Why don't we meet at sun-down at the Number 5 gun - " She winked. "I know Cap Seawell purty well, and he'll let us smooch behind that 6-pounder there, seein' as he ain't got nothing to shoot at...yet..."

At sundown I was there. I even dunked my head in a bucket of river water, wrung my beard, and combed my hair with my fingers. It was a waste of water but despite Rough and Ready, Perfect Bliss had set an alternate example more acceptable to the womanfolk. I was still ragged and dirty, however, from the neck down. Sarah, on the other hand, was somehow immaculately clean in her floral print dress. I bowed to her and she curtsied back. It was most civilized and gentile. Captain Seawell returned my salute and called his men over to the far side of the 6-pounder. Sarah and I scooted down low in a little nook where the emplacement met the bastion wall. There we found privacy as complete as on the fifth floor of the United States Inn of Baltimore.

"Oh, I do love kissin' and huggin' with you Jack Borginnis," Sarah whispered, tickling my earlobe.

"Darlin' pretty Sarah, what blue eyes you got."

"They're reflectin' the blue of the Gulf," she said, looking up, where the sky was a most strange and pure blue, a blue with silver and black behind it.

"Most the time men tell me my eyes is grey," she said.

"Tell me Sarah, are the men bothering you?"

"You jealous?" Her dreamy smile left her face. She scowled, scrutinizing me carefully, as if for Chicken Pox.

\pard"Heck, no," I made myself laugh, taking her hand and squeezing it.

"Good," said Sarah, relaxing. She snuggled closer. "Cause I hate a jealous husband worse than jiggerbugs in my hair. Tryin' to get rid of a case of jealousy's like dunking your head in turpentine but it never gets rid of that jiggerbug. You got to cut your hair off - all of it. Understand?"

I nodded.

"What I like `bout you, Jack, is that you is such a good-natured solid boy, who loves me straight-up but loosed-laced, and don't fuss all over me." She squeezed my hand back. "Now kiss me."

Because I was kissing her I was too busy to admit that I would have fussed over her if it wasn't for the Army, which now separated the wives from us, on account of the danger so close, and gave them their own private Ladies' Dugout - the cleanest underground section of bomb-proof in the history of Human Warfare - it even had a rug, lacquered table and chairs, and flower vases, somehow. It had a big framed painting of some Prince in a toga, too, curtsy of Mrs. Frederickson. (No wonder so many of the 7th's mules died - I thought it was just the weight of the company water barrels, Piles, Galvinics, Captain Miles' silver platter and china plates, and Reverend McKnight's Patented Folding Foot-Pumped Camp-Church Organ, that exhausted them.) They certainly made us men feel like barnyard creatures - our Dugouts was already filthy, foul-smelling holes, and we hadn't moved in yet.

First I kissed Sarah, then I hugged her. Then I felt so good it made me feel bad so I stopped. I felt such a yen and yearning for plain and simple-hearted Adam and Eve association, that I just coal- steamed myself enough gumption-pressure to untwist my tongue and spit out the Awful Truth that like black bile was filling me with shame and self-scornification.

"Hold on, Sarah, I want to talk to you."

She put her nose in my ear. "If we talk, Jack, we can't kiss."

"I got something that's irking and worrying me to death."

"It ain't that bad, Jack. If it is I don't want to hear it."

" - I killed a man," I blurted.

"Why Jack Borginnis ain't you a soldier? Hush, now. I order you to kiss me."

"Hold still and listen! - It was more or less an accident."

"Oh, it was an accident, then."

It rankled because I couldn't confess it. She wouldn't satisfy my need to tell it out. But the scorn was in me like a fever.

"But I'm beginning to have bad dreams."

"I ain't no angel meself and this is no time and place to catalogue our trespasses." She put her lips on mine but I pushed her away. This made her mad but I was already mad.

"You say you're worried but you don't want my womanly comforts?"

"Be quiet! You're not doing me any favors."

"I ain't doin' you no favors, ...I'm doin' what comes natural," she whispered in my ear.

Somehow, almost perversely, because I knew it was like trying to ride a bee-stung unbroke horse with no saddle, all these thoughts made me tell her, "You're the only gal for me, Sarah, ever."

She stopped hugging and pushed me away to look at me:"Don't say that, Jack. You'll be sorry. It's a stupid thing to say to me. Just know how much I love you - so much, I could scream! - right now. You know I'm not the stay-put kind. Even if'n we don't get skewered on General Lunarita's bayonets, sooner or later we'll stop lovin' and start fussin'..."

"Sarah, you are souring me a bit on our camp-marriage. It seems to me you don't love me deep down and serious. You don't want to help me carry any sorrow."

"Why should I want to carry your sorrow? Jack, dear, ain't it good enough that I want to give you jest a little bit of happiness? Why you got to load our love balloon down with all that old sorrow-ballast?"

"I don't know. I got to think about it, Sarah," I said, and looked at her, smiled a little, and added, "As a balloon sailor, I can tell you, balloons need a little bit of ballast."

Sarah crossed her arms. "I think you is jest yeller to love me."

That pricked the balloon of my heart, and hot dander poured out. "I ain't afraid of nothing. There's no call to mean about it, you corn-cob witch," I said, and walked away.

Kelly was sitting on the Bomb-Proof roof trying to read his Walter Scott by moonlight. I complained to him about Sarah, though I didn't mention the bit about the accidental murder, which he knew about already. "It's strange, but though no preacher could say she is an innocent, she often seems that way to me, `specially when she has her arms around me - not innocent like dumb-innocent, but innocent with her feelings. But she ain't no paper doll. Maybe she already has too much pain in her life, she can't bite the bullet any more."

"How could a girl who knocked out a Ranger with jest one punch be so weak as to not bite no bullets?" Kelly scoffed.

"No, I figure you're right, Kelly, she's just too wild. You know she's got skin on her feet a half inch thick. Maybe she's got a tough hide covering her heart. Keeps it innocent inside, but none of Cupid's arrows can get their Apache barbs into her. Well, I guess I'm not like that. She pretty much owned up to the fact that our camp marriage isn't a keeper. So fair's fair, I knew what I was getting into. I'm not complaining. Even so, I got a little angry at her, Kelly, when she wouldn't listen to me when I wanted to talk. Strange as it may seem, it seemed to me like she's doing me wrong to keep me quiet by kissing me."

"Jack," said Kelly, rolling his eyes, "just listen to yourself. That is the craziest fool thing I ever heard. Won't let you talk! Doing you wrong by kissin' you! Brother, you are savin' yourself a whole lot of money."

"Kelly, you don't get it, do you. She's not my whore, she's my wife, more or less. I'm talking about things of a higher altitude."

"All right, Jack, if you say so. Seems kind of crooked and contradictory to me. But I don't see as you can do a thing about it. You don't dare give her what-for like her lord and master. She ain't exactly the kind of woman who complains that their husband don't love her because he never beats her, like Milly Jellison does about Horace. Sarah's an Amazon, and it'd take more than a labor of Hercules to tame her."

I laughed at the idea of giving her a matrimonial drubbing. "Ask Wallis Gordon about it. Anyhow, Sarah's six foot two inches tall, three inches taller than me, with a longer pugilistic reach, and I dare say she's got more natural fight in her than me. What little fight I had in me once is just about all gone from joining the Army," and I was more or less going to talk about the Camp Greenhorn troubles but Kelly already knew about it so I figured when he didn't bring it up, he didn't care to comment about it. I walked around some more and found Six-Fingers Bourdett.

"Six-Fingers, you know women, having so many wives and being a Mormon and all..."

"Yes I have wives but I don't have nothing the likes of Sarah," he grinned.

"But I can't see how she could love me and not want to hear my troubles."

Six-Fingers nodded. "Looks like to me that frontier life could sometimes be harder on a more or less quiet fellow who sometimes read books, than these half wild camp-women."

"Sarah'd already said she wasn't going to be my camp-wife forever."

"Did she now?" he said, perking up with an interest that I understood.

"And every man in the Seventh Infantry is in love with her, she is so winsome, cheerful, and strong," I said to myself, giving him a mean look and turning away.

It made me feel sad.

Bourdett got up and tugged my shoulder. "Hold on there, Jack. You don't got to be giving me ornery looks. Five wives is plenty, believe me. Why do you think I joined the Regular Army, not the Mormon Battalion?"

"All right," I said.

The bells of Plato's Crater rang on and on, ominously.

Kelly found me. "Jack, Lieutenant Harris wants you."

I found Lieutenant Harris beside the Bomb-Proof. "There you are. Private, Captain Seawell wants you on the double!"

I hurried across the yard to Gun Platform 5. Captain Seawell was sitting on the barrel of the 6-pounder, with Sarah beside him. Both hopped down as I climbed up the embankment. Captain Seawell looked at me square in the eye. "Private," he said. "I order you with all the power invested in me by the President of the United States to make friends again with your wife!"

"Yes, sir," I said, saluting. He nodded and walked to the other side.

Sarah was looking at me with a shy smile.

"Ah, Sarah," said me, "you make me feel so lonesome and blue. Why do you want to start fussin' now?"

She took my hand and pulled me down.

"You're right, Jack. Just kiss me. Yes, and now kiss me again. Ooh, that's better, ain't it? You're a right sensible feller. Won't you kiss me again? ...Just listen to all them bells! I wonder if Old Zach will come get us out of this fix tomorrow..."

"Nah, he knows we got a dozen days' rations left..."

I almost didn't want General Taylor to come rescue us. I almost didn't. Because when he did, Sarah wouldn't be locked in a fort with me. She'd be free to go. Right now, I knew she'd stay with me. But because she made me feel so sad she made me love the more her see-no-evil blue eyes, her good-natured dreamy smile, and most of all, her sweet and symmetrical ways. After a good long time of sweet, symmetrical fun, Captain Seawell coughed, and we ignored him. Then he whistled, and called "Sarah?" He said Major Brown was coming round on his nightly inspection. Sarah and I didn't get much time to kiss and hug after that. We walked back under the whirligig heavens, drinking secretly from our last pint.

We had no idea what was about to happen to us all -

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