“Who shot a bullet through my father’s hat?” he demanded.
Hay pressed down the flap with a fist. “Who told you that, Colonel Thomas Lincoln?” he inquired with careful unconcern.
“You never told me,” stormed Tad, “nor my father—nor Mama.”
“Your mother doesn’t know about it. We hope she’ll never know. Also we hope your father won’t ride alone out there at the Soldier’s Home any more.”
“Cavalry ride with him. With drawn sabers.”
“Now they do. But he rode alone out there and somebody shot a bullet through the top of his high silk hat. He doesn’t want his family or anybody worried about it, so I wouldn’t mention it if I were you, Colonel.”
“I won’t.” Tad was flattered by being addressed as colonel, and he liked his father’s grave secretary. He obeyed John Hay more readily than any one else. “But I want to see the hat.”
“We burned the hat. Too bad—it was a good eight-dollar hat.” Hay folded another sheet after verifying the scrawled signature: A. Lincoln. “We burned it by order of the President.”
Tad looked a trifle shaken. He came close and leaned on the desk. “Why do people want to kill my father, Mr. Hay? They do. I know. That’s why we have Company K here in the house and all over the yard.”
John Hay shook his head. “This is war, Tad. You could ask, why is there a war? Why are there millions of people over there across the river who’d liked to blow up this town and kill everybody in it? Everybody who stands for the Union. Give me an answer to that and I’ll answer your why. It’s a black cloud of hate, Colonel, smothering everything decent in the country. Maybe it will lift some day. Meanwhile there’s not much sense to it.”