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Flag?' Jase wondered aloud,  or  Dixie? 
Euphemism tilted his head, listened for a moment.   Hail to the Chief,' he said.
 I think you may be right."
The band came marching down the bluff to the river, followed by most of the town's civilian population.
News had reached the population of Arcola's victory on the Yazoo.
Which meant, Jase thought as he doffed his boater to wave it at the crowd, that Farragut would find out
tomorrow.
13.
Jason seeketh the blind prophet Phineus, and finds him beset by Harpies
Tomorrow brought Pendergas, the Senator and his wife bellowing into town on a special early morning
train. Jase traveled up the bluff to meet them at the headquarters of General Van Dorn, who commanded
the department. Van Dorn was thin, shorter even than Jase, and pugnacious; he was an able general who
had never won a battle, and Jase reckoned that Van Dorn wasn't about to win this one, either. Pendergas
demanded his ironclad. Jase refused to give it to him, and showed his authorization from Secretary
Mallory. Tobacco juice sprayed from Pendergas lips as he shouted that Arcola did not belong to the
Secretary of the Navy. Jase replied that, on the contrary, it did. Pendergas demanded that Van Dorn put
Jase under arrest. Jase suggested that if he were to be placed under arrest, it should be the Department
of the Navy, not the War Department, that should do it; and further offered the opinion that in light of the
losing battles of Belmont, Forts Henry and Donaldson, New Orleans, Island No. Ten, Shiloh, Memphis,
and Corinth he tactfully avoided mention of Van Dorn's own defeat at Pea Ridge he, Lt. Jase Miller,
was the only successful Confederate commander west of Virginia, and that to place him under arrest
would irretrievably damage the morale of the civilian population.
 Besides, Jase said,  my crew is personally loyal to me, and will fight for no one else."
 You bribed them! Mrs. Pendergas roared.
 I paid them their wages, Jase said,  which is more than the Senator ever did."
 Snake in the grass! she screamed, and went for his eyes. For the next few moments Jase dodged
about General Van Dorn's office like the Bee beset by an Eads ironclad, until Van Dorn and the Senator
between them got ahold of Madame Pendergas and wrestled her into a chair.
Van Dorn looked as if a twenty-pound Parrott rifle had just gone off next to his ear.  Gentlemen, he
said,  this is out of my sphere. All I can do is wire Richmond."
 Your servant, sir, Jase said, saluted smartly, and made his way out.
In the street he asked directions, then walked east of the courthouse to a smart town house in the Empire
style, with Corinthian capitals atop the pillars of its marbled portico and a truly astonishing array of
flowers in the garden, all blossoming beneath a bronze statue of a nude Venus poised atop a fountain.
The house, according to the bronze plate at the front gate, was called Lemnos.
A thickset, middle-aged woman opened the door to Jase's knock. She wore black mourning silks, and
the frown on her face, so deep it looked as if it had been scarred into her with a knife, did not so much as
twitch as Jase introduced himself and asked to speak to Phineas Proffitt Thackeray, former governor of
the Territory of Missouri, onetime US emissary to the Sublime Porte and the Court of St. James, and
member of the Cabinet under Jackson and Van Buren.
The woman's eyes gave a disdainful flicker.  The governor doesn't see anyone."
 I carry a letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, Jase said.
The woman gave a sniff, then stood away from the door.  You can come in, then, I suppose."
The house, Jase noted, was one of those in which the doorframes had been carefully painted to look like
expensive imported wood instead of the cypress it probably was. The woman in black led Jase through
the house and out the back door, where there was another extravagant garden, fountains and trellises,
vines, flowers, and tinkling water. Governor Thackeray sat in the sun in a wrought-iron chair. He was a
rail-thin elderly man with a long white beard and thick shoulder-length hair combed back off his forehead.
His suit was of a slightly old-fashioned cut. Despite the thick summer heat he wore a blanket around his
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