Thermopolis had seen it all before. While he agreed with Ben in theory, he felt there were better ways to accomplish it, other than Ben's blunt and oftentime brutal methods.

Thermopolis also knew that while he could discuss it all he wanted with Ben, in private, one did not question commanding generals in front of their troops. Therm also could recall several times when members of his group had questioned his decisions in a rather sarcastic and demeaning manner ... in front of the others. He also recalled that he had knocked them on their a.s.s.

"I'll lay it out for you, Bannon," Ben told the brute of a man. "This town is about to become a Rebel outpost. A clean zone, so to speak. In more ways than one . . ."

"Shet up!" Bannon told him. "And git off my property."

"I have been informed that this isn't your property,"

Ben replied. "And kindly do not tell me to shut up. When I am finished then you may have your say.

Now then, how many children do you have under the age of twelve?"

"Why . . . hale's-fire, I don't know. A whole d.a.m.n pa.s.sel of 'em."

"d.a.m.nit, man, they are your offspring! Don't you know how many you have living under your roof?"

Bannon tensed up and glared at Ben.

"Get them out here!" Ben told him.

"Ill be d.a.m.ned ifn I will!"

Ben lifted the muzzle of his M-14, pointing it at Bannon's chest. "You will most certainly be dead if you don't," he said coldly.

Bannon sucked in as much of his gut as he could. He hunted with a .308. He knew what kind of damage that big slug could do. He turned his head and hollered, "Thelma! Git all them younguns of ourn out here!"

The porch literally filled with people, most of them kids.

Ben guessed their ages from about three to twenty-one, and he pegged the older kids as impossible to rehabilitate. He smiled at a little boy of about eight and the boy shyly returned the smile. Ben noticed the lad's face was swollen and there was a large bruise on the boy's face.

"How'd you get that bruise, son?"

The boy pointed to his father.

Bannon slipped down another notch in Ben's estimation. "You like to read, son?"

"Cain't," the boy admitted.

Ben turned to Leathers. "You told me you had schools, Mister Leathers."

"Of course, we do!" the man replied indignantly. "Nothing on the order of what we were used to before the war, but we certainly have schools! But the only way we could have taken these children into schools would have been to kill Ed Bannon." "Then why didn't you?" Ben asked the question with about as much emotion in his voice as if he were requesting a cup of coffee.

Leathers knew then that everything he had heard about Ben Raines was true. Both the good and what many, both before and after the Great War, would consider the bad.

Leathers shrugged his shoulders.

Ben looked back at the young boy. "What's your name, son?"

"Adam."

Ben pointed to a huge battle tank parked by the curb. "You ever seen one of those, Adam?"

"In pitcher books."

"Would you like to go for a ride in one?"

The boy's face brightened. "I sh.o.r.e would!"

"Then go on. Your father doesn't mind. Do you, Bannon?"

Bannon's eyes were bright with hatred. He knew exactly what Ben was doing; and it was being done as smooth as owl s.h.i.t was slick.

"As a matter of fact," Ben said, "all you kids can leave the porch and go riding in the tanks and APC'S. That's all right with you, isn't it, Bannon?"

"Can I go too?" a weary voice came from behind the screen door.

"You shet your mouth, Thelma!" Bannon yelled over his shoulder. "An" git your a.s.s back in the kitchen and to cleanin' and cookin' them fish for us."

"Of course you can go for a ride, Mrs. Bannon,"

Ben said. "Come on. Your husband won't bother you."

The woman stepped out onto the porch, grabbed the hand of a tiny girl, and hurriedly walked toward the line of Rebels by the road, all the rest of the younger kids following her.

"I'll take a strap to your a.s.s, woman!"

Bannon squalled. "You'll pay for this, I promise you."

"Shut your G.o.dd.a.m.ned ignorant mouth," Ben told him.

Bannon glared hate at Ben. "I ain't never gonna see them kids agin, is I?"

"No. They'll be taken to Base Camp One and placed with people who will care for them and see to their education.

You stupid son of a b.i.t.c.h!" Ben lost his temper, as all gathered around knew he probably would, for Raines hated ignorance above all else. "Can't you understand that education is the key to rebuilding this nation?

Unless we educate our young, we're doomed! Can't you see that?"

"I got a high school education," Bannon said.

"Hit never done me no good. All them smarta.s.s college boys always a-tellin' me what to do on the job.

After I whupped four or five of "um they wouldn't n.o.body hire me."

"No, Bannon. You didn't get a high school education. You got socially pa.s.sed from one grade to the next. But that's as much your fault as the teachers. You didn't want to learn. But I bet you were a star football player, weren't you?"

"d.a.m.n right."

"That figures. And an ex-coach was the superintendent of schools, right?"

"d.a.m.n sh.o.r.e was."

Ben looked at Leathers. "It took a world war to break that cycle of stupidity in America. And I'll be G.o.dd.a.m.ned if I'll see it repeated."

He turned to Bannon. "Bannon, this is now a Rebel-controlled zone. There is no place for you or your kind here . . . not living the type of life you have been. I was informed on the way over here that you are a bully; probably been one all your life.

That you've killed several men in fights and seriously injured others, and that most of them were people who had done you no harm. Is that right?"

was 'At's rat" Bannon said with a grin. "I lak to fight. I laks to whup up on them that thinks they's better than me. And if you'd lower that there gun, I'll come off this porch and stomp the guts plumb outta you, General soldier boy bigshot."

Ben measured the man carefully with his eyes. He guessed Bannon was a good ten years younger, and probably outweighed him by a good fifty or sixty pounds, but forty pounds of that was in the gut.

The tanks and APC'S had rumbled off, taking the kids and the battered wife with them.

Ben lowered the muzzle of the M-14 and handed it to Jerre.

"Oh, s.h.i.t, Ben!" she muttered. "What don't you let Ham do it."

was 'Cause then it wouldn't be any fun," he returned the whisper.

Ben stepped back, slipping on leather work gloves and then holding his hands wide apart. He looked up at the wad of bully. "Well, come on, you jelly-belly son of a b.i.t.c.h. What are you waiting on?"

Bannon came off the porch roaring like a maddened bull, his big feet pounding the earth. He took a wild swing at Ben. Ben ducked the punch and gave him a right to the wind, his fist sinking into the softness of belly.

Thermopolis shook his head in disgust at the very idea of the commanding general of the largest standing army in the country fistfighting with a redneck bully . . . but he understood why Ben was doing it. He looked at Rosebud. She was jumping around shadowboxing the air.

"The campaign is certainly bringing out the baser instincts in you," he remarked.

"Punch his lights out, Ben!" Rosebud yelled.

Ben caught a looping left to the side of his head that stung and backed him up. He knew he could not hope to win by standing and slugging it out with the man.

Bannon was too powerful. But Ben knew he could win by keeping the man moving, using up his air, and by concentrating his blows to the man's body.

Ben danced away and drove a fist above the man's kidney, then moved to the other side and popped the man a good, solid right directly on the man's ear, bringing a howl of pain from Bannon.

Bannon tried to hook a toe behind Ben's boot and trip him. Ben grabbed onto the man's shirt with his left hand, maintaining his balance, and drove the stiffened fingers of his right hand into Bannon's throat. The 'neck gagged and choked and Ben busted his nose with a short, savage right fist.

With blood streaming down his face, Bannon coughed and backed up, the light in his eyes telling Ben that Bannon was desperately trying to figure out how best to fight him.

Ben didn't give him much time to ponder the situation. He faked a left and Bannon followed it, dropping his guard. Ben drove a combination through the opening, the left catching the man on the side of the jaw and the right hitting him flush on the mouth, splitting the man's lips and loosening rotting teeth.

With Bannon's face registering his shock at being punched so easily, Ben pressed the attack with a left to the gut and a right to the jaw.

Bannon closed, fighting to regain his wind, and grabbed Ben in a bear hug, trying to break his back. Ben stomped on the man's instep with his jump boot and Bannon screamed in pain, his grip lessening. Ben slipped free and hammered at the man's kidneys with left's and right's.

Bannon turned and flung one big arm out, the forearm catching Ben in the mouth and knocking him off balance and to the ground. Bannon lumbered forward, trying to kick Ben. Ben rolled and came up on his boots, his mouth b.l.o.o.d.y.

Ben stopped the 'neck in his tracks with a hard right to the mouth, then followed that with a left to the man's belly. Bannon backed up, trying to clear his head.

Ben gave him no time. He stepped forward and hit him twice in the face: another right to the man's mouth and a left to the jaw. Ben stepped back and kicked the man on the kneecap. Screaming his pain, Bannon staggered and Ben gave him the toe of a jump boot to the b.a.l.l.s.

Bannon dropped to his knees, both hands holding his throbbing crotch. Ben kicked the man in the face, the toe of his boot shattering Bannon's front teeth and knocking the man backward.

Bannon struggled to get to his feet. But Ben had no intention of allowing that. He kicked the man in his big fat a.s.s and knocked him sprawling on the ground, on his face.

Walking to the man, Ben kicked him as hard as he could in the belly, doubling the man up into a wad of painful and largely self-imposed ignorance.

The fight was over.

Ben pulled off his gloves and stowed them in a back pocket of his BDU'S.

"You kilt our daddy!" one of the cretinous-looking young men on the porch squalled.

Ben ignored him and walked over to Leathers. The civic leader involuntarily backed up at the advance.

"What about these older boys?" Ben asked.

"Just like their father. Thieves and bullies."

Ben turned to Ham. "Let them get what clothing they want out of the house. No guns. Then burn this shack to the ground." He swung his glance back to Leathers. "They'll be back, Leathers. And they'll cause you trouble until you finally make up your mind to shoot them. Or hang them. That will be your decision to make. But I a.s.sure you, unless Bannon changes, you will have it to do."

"You ain't got the right to do this," Bannon moaned from the ground. "This ain't no decent thing to do to a hooman bein"."

"I wouldn't do it to a decent human being, Bannon," Ben told him, after taking a sip of water from his canteen. "But the only resemblance between you and a decent human being is your ability to walk upright." He took his M-14 from Jerre.

"Don't ever let our paths cross again; not if you insist upon living the way you have been. Because I'll kill you without hesitation."

Ben watched the light in the man's eyes change from cruel defiance to defeat. Social workers and shrinks would argue the point until exhaustion felled them, but Ben knew, and knew without doubt, that there are people in the world who can respond only to brute force and violence. They cannot relate to compa.s.sion because they do not possess even a modic.u.m of that emotion.

They have to be hammered into the ground, picked up, and hammered again. Once they realize that unless they change, to fit into the established mores of whatever society, they will know only pain. Then they will understand that society has but two choices: allow them that change, or dispose of them.

"I ain't got no place else to go," Bannon pushed the words past battered lips. "I was borned around here."

Ben looked at Leathers. "It's up to you. You're the leader of this zone. You make the decision.

I can't make all of them for you."

"We'll have a town meeting on the subject." "Good. That's the way it should be." "You'll delay burning down this house?" "No. We don't allow shacks in any controlled zone."

Leathers sighed. "I agree with that. To allow filth would be unfair to others who try to maintain a clean living area."

"We're pulling out now. Have your town meeting and make your decision about Bannon."

"Whichever way we vote, you won't interfere?"

"No. Not unless I learn that the man has returned to his old ways and you people refuse to do anything to correct the problem."