This strange behavior kind of spooked me, and spooked lots more beside just me. So Major Jake Brown had us assemble again and tried to rouse our gumption.

"Men," he told us, "I must congratulate every one of you - and the ladies, too," he added with a friendly smile. "Our fort is finished - I mean, complete," he smiled, "and the Lunar Peninsula of Texas secure. You all deserve a reward for your hard work. So! All men - excepting those now on duty - are granted one half-hour of liberty (just keep your muskets handy.) We will have a second half-hour of liberty this afternoon at one, so don't fret, those of you on duty now. Oh yes, - artillery crews!" (They groaned knowingly, for Major Ringgold had imparted a philosophy of drilling and drilling, to the point of making his gunners automata, that Captain Lowd continued.) "All watches. Run through your drills. After staff council Captain Lowd will re-assess your targets. Staff council at the flagpole in five minutes. All soldiers and their wives, servants, slaves, and automatons are invited inside the shady Bomb-Proof gallery, where Reverend McKnight will read you The Responsibilities of A Christian Non-Combatant in Time of Adversity. Dismissed!"

We hadn't had any liberties at all since we marched down from Annex Agonies to the tip of Timmy's Promontory. Well, we all ran amuck, making the best of our liberty. Some of the men sat down for big hands of poker inside a tent. Some found shade along the eastern walls since the sun was just rising, and dozed off. Some formed a ring around two bare-chested pugilists. Some few even sat down with Martha Miles, who was, as regularly, reading Maria Monk's Awful Disclosures aloud (for which McKnight, being particular because his sister was in just such a Montreal nunnery, wouldn't speak to her, and organized his rival reading). And some, myself included, collected around the cactus queen, Sarah, my famous camp-wife.

She offered to teach Company A and Company C how to play this newfangled divertissement called Base-Ball.

She had learned it from one of her husbands at Anaxagoras Crater, a Yankee, that one, who deserted. So a few dozen of us Dough- Boys collected down at the empty stretch of yard under Gun Platform 6, behind Martha Mule's little Bomb-Proof-like corral. We gathered round and got all Morsed about learning this thing, this Base-Ball, which was locomotin' our Young American generation just like the Gay Paree Waltz knocked the pantaloons off the Bank-Slaying generation - the proof in the Bomb-Proof that ever generation's got to set a bomb to the ways of the older generation. That's true up and down, whether it be ballooning to Venus and the Moon and tarnation, like we Young Americans were doing with or without the old Whigs; or slaying banks, like Andy Jackson did despite the nabobs; or, repealing penny-tariffs and sedition laws, or exchanging an Articled Confederation for a Federated Union, or even kicking the old Tories, their snuff-boxes full of taxes, and their king the heck back to Great Deimos.

Not only did Sarah have her Colt repeater, her Apache scalp, her Chinese Abacus, and the rattle from a rattlesnake, but she produced a large, black ball made of smelly Saturn "caoutchouc," which is pronounced "kat-choke", but since the majority of us were partial to the noble feline race, we took exception to this, and held a meeting, appointed speakers, one for, one against, and took a vote, and decided to call our ball the friendly name, General Washington, on account of we were his children, the newspapers said, and we were doing his good work.

Anyway, Sarah's base-ball looked like a five pound solid shot to me. She directed Sergeant Rutherford Weigart, the gambling gunner and biped lightning rod, now waiting in the shade of the Number 2 guns while the other watch rolled the cannon forward and back. Rutherford loaded us his spare wadding-bunger, a kind of stout oaken mop for one of the electromagnetics. Fortunately, Captain Lowd, commander of the artillery company, was away at the flagpole, so he couldn't see what abuse his equipment would suffer.

"Hush, now," called Sarah, "and I will now endeavor to explain to y'all the ten principles of this here Base-Ball, which I larnt back in Camp Annex Agonies from a feller named Abner in Company E of the 1st Artillery; he's the only grease-stained Yankee I know who invented anything useful - no offense, Perfessor," she added with a wink at the Prince-President, Franklin Stove, whose ever-benign porcelain countenance made no response, other than to jet a little steam from the escape-pipes of his nostrils.

"Y'all will like this. It's a game consarnin' homesteading the frontier. Y'all is two rival wagon trains aimin' to settle the same piece of land."

Sarah scratched something in the dirt with her bare heel. It looked like the front end of a church.

"Rule Number 1," she said, counting on her thumb. "Consarnin' Homestead.

"This here's called homestead, and it's where you start, and it's where you aim to finish. This is where the pioneer stands - he's a kind of immigrant, and he's a kind o' artillery, too. This is where he makes his stand, and fights off the attack of this here ball."

"Rule Number 2. Consarnin' the Three Forts Along the Way.

"Now if that pioneer whacks that ball back at the Injuns, sendin' them runnin' after the ball, back from their reservation - the farther, the better - if he do that, he can run, hell bent for glory, to make that first frontier fort, called simply a base, where's he's safe from the savages. Once there, he can turn his eyes on the next base. Sometimes he can go ahead and run for her, sometimes he can't, which is explain in the third rule.

"Let's say them empty water barrels is the first base, the mule's ditch is second - don't fall in, boys, and the third is the busted chuck wagon."

She tapped her third finger.

"Rule Number 3. Consarnin' the Three Seasons and Winter.

"There's three seasons in this here Base-Ball:Spring, Summer, and Fall, which we number one, two and three, and furthermore, we call `em outs, cause that's when your pioneer can get outside. After fall, then, which is out number three, you got to hole up and wait till spring again. That's winter. And that's when the two rival wagon train team change over, and the other folks play Injuns, and the other folks play at homesteading. The seasons advance every time a homesteader gets a free Apache haircut - I'm talking about scalped, boys, I'm talking out every time a homesteader gets killed, that's another out, get it? Cause the folks got to bury him and all, they lose time. Hush, now, I'm gettin' to the good part.

"Rule Number 4. Consarnin' the Four Ways to Get an Apache Haircut." I'm a-gonna first summarize them, as follows:you run out of ammunition (cause you only get three shots); you shoot bad and miss your targets, in which case your targets get you; you run for a base but you get ambushed first; and if you're a slow poke you can get betrayed by your friends and thrown out of a fort that's too crowded."

Instantly we Regulars understood the principles of Base-Ball. Hardly had she explained a rule, when it was as if we had already known it, deep down. It was just like our Manifest Destiny. Running immigrants from fort to fort to homestead was just like adding stars to Old Glory's collection. Naturally, it was a contest, too, to see just whose pioneers would dominate the territory's constitutional convention, and decided, free or slave?

Sarah found her last finger:

"...And finally, Rule Number 10. Striking Gold.

"Every pioneer's got one dream:Now if he is strong enough, or lucky enough, and hits the ball over that wall yonder, well, that's called a hum-dinger, and that feller gets to drive to drive all his wagons - and his friends' wagons - round all the three forts, to Homestead. He done struck gold on his land, as it were. If any Mortal, Metal, or Yankee can do that against one a' my own patented red-hot cannonballs, I will personally award him ten dollars in the purty script issued by the State Bank of Texas - an edifice of brick. I will do that because I am one lady who is very hard to impress, and yet I have never seen nobody hit a hum-dinger off a' the likes of me. Don't you skinny Cotton Balers make me wait too long, now, to give away my purty ten dollar note - " She tossed "General Washington" (the ball) in the air to give us time to think about her reward, caught it, and explained a few more things.

"...Keep it clean and Christian and mind your manners. No cussin', no fightin', and no spittin'. Button up your uniforms! Let them superstitious scalliwaggin' little Lunars bless their firecrackers! Boys, we defenders of our Star-Spangled Banner will enjoy our new American invention called Base-Ball right here, on A-merican soil, even if we is on the moon. All right, now! I'll pitch for Company A, then - h'm, well - the Calhounian Crawdads. Perfessor Metal, I figure you to pitch for Company C, the - the - the Henry Clay Chickenhawks. All right, now, play ball, boys!"

"Hang `em high, Crawdads!"

" - Hip Hoorah fer the `Hawks!"

Naturally, we asked Sarah to "go west" first. She gave her revolver to me to hold, rubbed dirt in her palms, tested her grip on the electromagnetic wadding bunger, swinging it back and forth with an cheerful grin. Satisfied, she walked over to the "home-stead", dug her feet in, loosening her skirts. She tested her swing one more time. After adding some spit to the dirt, the cheerful grin grew mean.

<<Tick!...Sss-sss-Tick! - Sss-sss-Tick!...Tick-ick-ick!>> pondered Prince-President Franklin Stove, calculating for a short while, and threw General Washington nice and easy, straight as a whistle. Sarah whirled the oaken bunger. What happened was a miraculous thing to behold!

There was a small explosion, all the ball flew past the ticking Metal Man, past Corporal O'Harris at the second base, into the unfinished well pit, whacked poor old Martha Mule, who sawed the air with her disapproving grunts and hooves; but the ball didn't stop. It then sailed up and up, followed by down and down, slow as you please, and Six-Fingers Bourdett plucked it out of the sky like a Trapeze Artist taking the hand of his Flying Sweetheart.

He beamed as we all - Crawdads and Chickenhawks alike - cheered him, a rare event for a Mormon. He felt so charitable he kissed Martha's nose, and Sarah's knuckle, not once, but twice and again, with a respectful nod at me. Just so that Sarah didn't think I thought I was a cuckolded husband in addition to being her latest lucky fool, I yelled, "Hoo-ee, does that S on your sleeve mean Sarah done branded you next?"

"That's not how I brand `em, I go and do it like this," called Sarah, and put her arms around Bourdett's chicken-head - she being so much taller - and kissed one of his protruding ears. This caused much barnyard clamor, which aggrieved me sorely. Fortunately I had something to occupy my red faced attentions. For the first time in my hands that shiny new soldier's toy, that Colt repeater of Sarah's. I gave the drum a couple spins. I sighted appraisingly along the barrel, of a necessity pointing it, in a general way, toward the Mormon.

I was fourth in line to Go West. But now Sergeant Mallory, the big fiend with a tree trunk for a head and frigates for fists, took up the big wadding bunger. He swung that bunger like a Highlander's two- handed battle cleaver; our heads all swung round to the south, expecting a hum-dinger for sure. But P. P. F. S. had by now built up some steam. General Washington whizzed by like lightning, making a little thunder crack in the catcher's bare hands. Mallory spun around and fell down - oh how we laughed! Poor Half-Lip McCoy, the Chickenhawk hell-catcher, wrung the pain out of his hands catching all three of Mallory's misfires.

The hundred or so Dough-Boys who watched all around on the slopes of the fort, a natural arena, hooped and hollered and danced jigs and offered odds. ( I saw Sergeant Weigart, the gunner, up there, waiting for his turn to drill. He saw me and held up my "Bad Luck Charm", and kissed it. Looked bad for my wager.)

"Lightning rod!" I called.

Allan Featherstone craftily swung his bunger just a little, and nicked enough of the steam-engined pitcher's cannon ball, to set it rolling forward -

- Then it was a race between him and Half-Lip. Allan's hob-nails dug the yard and spat up explosions of sand, but Half-Lip's bare feet gripped its prehensile toes around the ball, lifted it up quick - and he slung it like a tomahawk right into the back of Allan's head. Allan stood there, right at the gate of the base, stunned. Old Corporal Tucker, the first base guard, picked up the ball and dispatched the last pioneer of that wagon train.

The Chickenhawks howled savage war-whoops and ran in to form rank behind Homestead. We Crawdads slunk out and scuttled to our defensive positions all around the Oregon Trail between bases. Franklin Stove puff-puffed Smoky Mountains as he picked up the wadding bunger.

Our Crawdadian hell-pitcher, Sarah herself, stared down at the Metal Man. I imagined she was giving him the delicious worst of her big black Apache eyes. She squeezed and squeezed General Washington behind her back. I imagined it was my heart. In that quiet moment I again took notice of the sinister silence coming from over yonder, Plato's Crater & Fort Paredes. The Prince-President's stove pipe let out such a choking welter of black, greasy smoke, it was plain that he was building up his boiler pressure well nigh to bursting. As for myself, I was the Left-handed Go-Git-It, strewn with the other two Go-Git-Its far out in the great wilderness of our game. That was fine by me, since I figured that if we got ourselves in a massacre in the hands of them Chickenhawks, I could look at the birds and clouds, and if I got jealous of all the attention on Sarah I could dream of long-braided lunaritas tickling my fancy. I figured I wouldn't see too many Base-Ball cannon balls, so far from the bases. I figured wrong...

Sarah lifted her dress skirts on her high-heeled triple-stitched Apache-fringed and "Lone Star"-beaded boot, curled it around in a sort of Jim Bowie throat-slitting lunge, and - calling out, "EEE - " she flung General Washington at the Metal Man, concluding with a coyote " - YOO!"

With the force of effort, her big straw hat tumbled backward, two buttons of her rattlesnake apron popped open, and an ace of diamonds fluttered from her sleeve.

To the fort's general amazement - and even the artillery crews left off their drills - when P. P. F. S. swung the oaken plunger-bunger, tick- tick-ticking with incredible allegro velocity, letting out a great swoosh of hot steam and iron clanking, we all heard the crackle of colliding mass and vectors, and then, most Newtonic, we saw the ball's equal and opposite reaction spinning up so high in the air! It spun over me and then behind, over Wall Number 1 of Fort Slow-Polk. I stood gaping. It grew smaller and smaller.

"Ha ha! Metal Man, you is funner than frog hair! - WHOO - EEE! YEE-HAW!" howled Sarah, jumping a quick jig, hands on hips, turning a circle.

"A HUM-Dinger!" shouted a hundred voices. The ball grew still smaller, but it didn't disappear. I saw where it landed. "Go git it!" screamed my fellow Crawdads. George Washington had crossed the Mare Frigoris.

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