Beauregard opened his eyes painfully. His head ached, and his left arm hurt horribly. He was lying on a rumpled bed in his torn uniform. Piquette and a wizened, very black Negro man were standing beside the bed, looking down at him anxiously. He recognized that he was in the house in Winchester, in the room where he had spent last night ... or was it last night?
"Quette!" he croaked, trying to sit up. He couldn't make it, and he gasped at the pain in his arm. "I thought I told you to leave Winchester."
"I didn't want to leave you, Gard," she answered softly. "And it's lucky I didn't. Some men on an ammunition truck found your car. Your driver was killed and your arm blown half off. They brought you here."
"Dammit," he complained, "why didn't they take me to the base hospital?"
"Because the base hospital took a direct hit from a bomb."
That startled Beauregard into the realization that there was no sound of firing, no crash of bombs, outside. There were men's shouts and the normal sounds of a town occupied by the military. Had the union forces been repulsed by some miracle?
"Well, for Pete's sake, call the medics and get me to a field hospital," he ordered. "And you head south for Birmingham, like I told you to."
"Gard," she said soberly, "I thought it ought to be your decision, and not mine. If we call the medics, they'll be Federal troops. Winchester was captured hours ago, and it's just chance that they haven't entered this house and found you before now."
Beauregard lay silent, stunned. The strange man beside the bed spoke for the first time.
"It is not his decision," he said. "There is work that I must do which may be delayed forever if he is captured."
"This is Adjaha, a friend of mine," said Piquette. "He came to Winchester to see you. He thinks he knows a way to end the war."
"Poppycock!" snorted Beauregard weakly.
"General Courtney," said Adjaha intensely, "you spent last night with Piquette. Where did you spend the night? Here or in Chattanooga?"
Beauregard opened his mouth to say, "Here, of course." Then he stopped. Suddenly a vision, almost a memory, rose up before him and he could not be sure. There was a chandelier, and a black voodoo charm....
"You do remember some of it!" exclaimed Adjaha delightedly.
"It seems that I dreamed the South was winning, and I was going to drive on Tullahoma, and I went to Chattanooga to see Piquette," said Beauregard slowly. "But it's mixed up in my mind with another dream, in which there was no war at all, and I was elected governor...."
"Those were not dreams," said Adjaha. "They happened and yet they did not happen."
"I remember you in a dream," said Beauregard faintly, "and words about 'fan-shaped destiny'...."
"You have to understand this or I can do nothi............