David Healey - Rebel Train

“I’m sure the engineer knows what he’s doing, ma’am,” he said easily, although he felt his armpits become more damp. Trouble was starting.

She turned to her husband, a white-haired gentleman beside her. “Alfred, pull the signal cord. That engineer must stop this train.”

The signal cord was suspended by straps from the ceiling of the passenger car. The cord ran the length of the train, all the way to the locomotive, and was used when the conductor wished to signal the engineer. Tugging on the cord sounded a bell up in the locomotive’s cab. This system saved the conductor from making a somewhat perilous trip across the tender to the locomotive itself.

From the resigned way in which her husband silently complied, it was easy to see he knew better than to argue with his wife. He was past sixty, paunchy, and puffed a bit as he stood up and reached for the signal cord overhead.

Flynn gave his pockets a final pat, then let his hand rest beneath his coat on the butt of his Le Mat revolver.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to sit back down, sir,” said Flynn, as he walked down the aisle and came up beside the man.

“What are you talking about?”

“Conductor’s orders, sir. Please sit down.”

“I’ll do no such thing.” The old man was as stubborn as his wife. “Now, if you’ll kindly step aside—”

Almost casually, Flynn pulled out the Le Mat and leveled it at the man’s belly. The old man’s eyes grew wide in disbelief. “What’s all this about?”

“Sit down.”

Wide-eyed, the old fellow retreated to his seat. His back had blocked Flynn’s gun from view of most of the passengers, but some up front had seen the huge revolver. A woman gasped. A man cried out, “Now see here—”

“Shut up,” Flynn said harshly, and he moved down the aisle, the brutal-looking Le Mat revolver in plain view. “Listen up everyone. I am a Confederate soldier. Several of us on board have commandeered this train. We’re taking it west. Now, we’re not in the business of shooting civilians, but we will if we must. The best way not to get shot is to stay in your seat and keep quiet.”

The portly matron began muttering indignantly. “This is a travesty. Where’s your uniform? Soldiers? I doubt it! You’re nothing but common thieves.”

Flynn moved toward her.

“Shut up, Henrietta,” her husband said, clapping a hand over her mouth. “He’s an outlaw. He’ll shoot you.”

“That’s right, sir. I’ll shoot her if she opens that big mouth of hers again.” He winked. “From the looks of it, I may be doing you a favor.”

No one else spoke. The train was moving even faster. Flynn was just beginning to think everything was going well when two hard-looking men who were sharing a seat stood up.

Damn, thought Flynn. Quickly, he glanced at Benjamin, who nodded and quietly slipped his own revolver from a coat pocket.

One of the men spoke up. “Way I see it, they ain’t but one of you,” said one of the men. He smiled. “And they’s two of us.”

“Don’t do it, lads,” Flynn said.

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Both men clumsily drew revolvers. Someone screamed.

Flynn fired. His bullet missed and blew out one of the windows at the back of the car. He fired again and his bullet ricocheted off the stove pipe in a flash of sparks. More women were wailing. A bullet snicked past his ear.

To his right, Johnny Benjamin jumped up and shot one of the men through the head. Flynn got off another shot, and this time he was dead-on, the Le Mat’s .40-caliber slug knocking the remaining man into the seat behind him.

“Nobody move!” Flynn shouted.

The gunfight had lasted only seconds. Flynn’s ears rang. The car was filled with bluish smoke and stank of sulfur. A woman cried hysterically, while a terrified hush had fallen over the other passengers.

“Stop that wailing,” Flynn shouted at the crying woman. He raised the Le Mat and swung the muzzle around the car, demanding, “Any other Yankees present?”

No one moved. Finally, a bald, bespectacled man spoke up. “This one’s still alive,” he said. He was bent over the man Flynn had shot. There was a ragged hole in the wounded man’s chest that was making ugly, bubbling noises. Pink froth showed at the man’s lips and his eyes flicked desperately around the car. Flynn had seen enough men lung shot to know that the man had just minutes to live.

“Help me drag him out,” Flynn said to the man with the glasses.

“He shouldn’t be moved—”

“Shut up and grab his feet, you four-eyed son of a bitch, or I’ll shoot you, too.”

The man hurried to grab the feet.

Flynn turned to Benjamin. For all his talk about shooting Yankees, the boy was white as a boiled shirt. Flynn clapped him on the arm to snap him out of it. “Keep an eye on the passengers,” Flynn said, speaking loudly so everyone in the car could hear. “Shoot anyone who moves.”

Benjamin managed to nod, but kept his lips drawn into a tight line.

The door opened and Captain Fletcher appeared. “Colonel Percy sent me to see what all the shooting was about.”

“Nothing we can’t handle, Fletcher, unless you want to give us a hand with these bodies?”

Fletcher gave him a horrified look, then withdrew.

Flynn and the passenger carried the dead man out first, laying him on the small platform outside the car.

“What’s your name?” Flynn asked the passenger.

“William Prescott.”

“What do you do, Mr. Prescott? Obviously, you’re not a soldier.”

“I’m a lawyer,” he said. “I have a practice in Baltimore.”

Flynn smirked. “It’s a shame you couldn’t have gotten a bit of business from these two writing their wills. Too bad.”

They went back for the wounded man. He was still alive, wheezing hard, his mouth ringed with pink froth from his lung wound. They laid him next to the dead man.

“He needs help or he’s going to die,” Prescott said.

“Oh, he’s going to die, all right.”

Then, as Prescott watched in horror, Flynn kicked first the corpse and then the wounded man off the platform. The train was moving at a good speed and the bodies bounced and tumbled, then flopped in the brush along the tracks.

“Oh my God,” Prescott stammered. “You killed him.”

“That was the idea,” Flynn said, enjoying himself just a little too much. “Lung-shot like that, he had a minute or two to live before he drowned in his own blood. We did the fellow a favor. Now shut up and sit back down — unless you want me to throw you off the train, too.”

White-faced, the fat lawyer scurried back into the car, and Flynn followed, wondering how long it would be before he had to shoot someone else.

Greer dashed across the bridge and raced down the tracks after the Chesapeake .

“Come on!” he shouted over his shoulder at Frost and Schmidt, who were already falling behind. Schmidt’s huge belly flopped like a tub of raw sausages as he ran and Frost wasn’t much faster than the big German.

But someone was stealing his train, and blind rage was enough to propel Greer in a sprint down the tracks. The uneven railroad ties threatened to trip him at every stride and his leg ached from his old battle wound, but Greer stuck out his chin, pumped his arms, and ran for all he was worth.

Up ahead, he could just see the last car of the train, where two men stood on the platform. They were rapidly disappearing from sight.

Greer knew damn well that a man on foot couldn’t overtake a train. However, he was counting on the train stopping before long. It was one thing to get a locomotive rolling — with a little luck, almost anyone could do it if there was still a head of steam in the boiler — but it was another thing altogether to keep it moving. He was sure they would find the train around the next bend.