The Crystal City Page 0,105

figuring out where these five or six thousand souls might find refuge, you'd not only come up with a good answer, but you'd be the very man best suited to persuading folks to let them go there."

Lincoln looked off into the distance. "I'm a terrible salesman," he finally said. "I always tell the truth about what I'm selling, and then nobody buys it."

"But how are you at pleading for the downtrodden? Especially when every word you'd say about them would be true?"

"In case you haven't noticed, Mr. Cooper, the downtrodden get less popular as their numbers increase. A man approached by one beggar is likely to give him a penny. A man approached by five beggars in one day won't give a thing to the last one. And a man approached by five beggars at once will run away and claim he was being robbed."

"Which is why we need to have a refuge for these folks before anybody can see with their own eyes how many they are."

"Oh, I know how many five thousand is. It's about four times the population of Springfield, and about equal to the population of this whole county."

"So there's not room for them here," said Verily.

"Or any other town along the Mizzippy. And I reckon if they're being carried on boats up the river, you'll want a place for them that's near a landing."

"Not on boats," said Verily.

"Walking? If they can make their way to Noisy River, with the militia of every slave-owning county roused against them, they don't need any help from me."

"They're not walking up the east bank of the river."

Lincoln grinned. "Oh, now, you're telling me that Alvin got them reds to let his people pass through."

"Pass through, but not linger."

"No, I reckon not," said Lincoln. "You let in five thousand one day, you'll have to let in ten thousand the next."

"Mr. Lincoln," said Verily, "I know you don't think you can do the job, but Margaret Larner thinks you can, and from what I've seen of you, I think you can, and all that is lacking at the moment is your agreement to try."

"Knowing that I'm likely to fail," said Lincoln.

"I can't fail worse with your help than I'm bound to fail without it," said Verily.

"You know that Coz will want to help, and he's even more of a blockhead than I am."

"I'd be happy to have the help of Coz, whoever that might be, as long as I can rely on you."

"I'll tell you what," said Lincoln.

"There's something you want in return?"

"Oh, I'll do it anyway," said Lincoln, "or try my best, I should say. But since you and I will be together for a while, and likely to have many an hour on the road together, what would you think of using your time to start teaching me the principles of law?"

"You don't talk law," said Verily Cooper, "you read law."

"You read law after you've decided that a lawyer's what you want to be," said Lincoln. "But before you decide, then you talk law so you find out just what it is you're getting yourself in for, and whether you want to spend your life doing it."

"I don't think you'll spend your whole life doing any one thing," said Verily. "I don't think that's in you, if I know anything about a man. But I think if you set your mind to lawyering, you'd be a good one. And not least because there's no chance under heaven that you will ever, for a single moment, look like a lawyer."

"You don't think that's a drawback?"

"I think that for a long while, every lawyer who comes up against you in court will think you're a country bumpkin and he won't have to work at all to beat you."

"But I am a country bumpkin."

"And I'm a kegmaker. A kegmaker who wins most of his cases in court."

Lincoln laughed. "So you're saying that by simply being myself, as I am, not pretending to be anything else, I'll fool those highfalutin lawyers better than if I tried to lie to them."

"You can't help what other people choose to believe about you, before they have all the evidence in hand."

Lincoln reached out his hand. "I'm with you, then, till we find a place for this tribe that Alvin's recruited. Though I have to say, he ain't gonna need some camp on the outskirts of a town. Lessen he's figuring to split those folks up among twenty towns or more, nobody's going to want them."

"Splitting them